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‘Sean?’ she calls after him, wanting to ask him if he’s all right, or at least to find out what he’s doing here, so near her home. But he either doesn’t hear her through his music or chooses to ignore her.
Perhaps he lives nearby. But as he rounds the corner and heads away towards the town, it occurs to her that no, he doesn’t live around here. He was late for the first lesson because of roadworks. If he’d driven in from Richmond Hill, he would not have hit those roadworks, only the heavy traffic that chugs through the one-way system in the centre.
Why, then, is he wandering around near her house?
She calls out again, a ball of heat in her chest. ‘Sean?’
But he is gone. She would have to run to catch him, but she has not moved. She is standing there with the buggy as if her feet are attached to the paving stones, staring and thinking that she did not check the folder before leaving college today, after her coffee with Aisha and Jenny. She did not check it when she got back just now. Sean was coming from the direction of her house. It’s possible, she knows it, that in her haste to get some fresh air, she left the back door open. It’s possible, then, that Sean was able to enter the house when no one was there.
‘Shit.’
Her rubber soles fall quickly on the pavement. Another few seconds and she is shoving open the iron gate, pushing the buggy up the path, plunging the key into the front-door lock. From the living-room window, the lamp glows. Her stomach clenches before she remembers that it’s programmed to come on at five.
The hallway is chilly and dark. Keeping her coat on, she leaves Emily in her pram, heads for the kitchen and flicks on the overhead light. The homework folder is on the kitchen table. She has no memory of getting it out of her bag, which she discovers on the floor next to a chair. She blows into the roll of her fingers and puts the heating on. Chafes her hands together. Maybe she threw her bag down after pulling out the folder to look at later.
‘No,’ she says, to no one. She didn’t take the folder out.
Which leaves Peter. Or …
She tries the back door, feels her chest heave when the handle gives, a surge of nausea when the door opens.
A soft whine escapes her.
On the table, the folder stares at her in challenge. She cannot open it, not now. Her nerves are too frazzled. Pathetic, but there it is. She cannot open that—
She picks it up, grabs the pieces of flash fiction. The names of her students barely register as she throws the sheets one by one onto the table. They slide on the smooth surface; one skids over the edge, lands a moment later with a soft shush on the terracotta floor tiles. And there it is, the blank, anonymous sheet. Handwritten this time, a short paragraph. A paragraph she reads against a terrible heat that climbs from her chest, up her neck to her face, her ears, her scalp.
A very sociable man
He was a very sociable man, everyone said so. And smart, liked to dress well. He made his girls laugh, made them think, made them want him. He offered them the world, his lovely house on the hill with all the pictures on the walls. He liked pretty things. Like girls. He liked girls almost as much as he liked clothes and red, red wine. Chose his girls like fruit: just as their colour changed, but still a bit green. Just like his daughter, all grown up now. And him, Peter Pan. His childhood never ends. Mine ended long ago.
The paper shakes in her hand; her breath is hot against her palm. The piece has that same mix of vagueness and specificity, enough detail to send a chill through her veins, not enough to take it to the police. Planted secretly enough to be sinister while allowing the possibility that this was done in plain sight. Sean was right outside her house. He looked sheepish. He must have written this and put it in her folder while she was out. That means he must have been watching the house, waiting for her to leave. He could be watching it now, from a distance. God knows, he could beinit.
She shivers, pulls her coat tight. Emily.
In the hallway, Emily is still asleep, fists raised, lips pursed in a kiss. Samantha tears her hand away from her panting mouth, forces herself to think clearly.
Lock the back door. Yes.
She returns to the kitchen, turns the key, leaves it in. She doesn’t want to lock anyone in. Her breath is ragged in her chest. She calls Peter, but his phone is off, as it always is when he is teaching. She thinks about calling the police, but what would she say? She is not in mortal danger. And yet she can taste danger like stale breath on her tongue, can feel the solid lump of it in her belly. Something is not right. Even Peter, by turns so loving and tender, then so cold and disapproving … There is something, something …
She runs upstairs. In her and Peter’s room, she looks out of the front window on to the street. There is nothing, no one. In Emily’s nursery, out of the back window, the dark shapes crouch like monsters: the shed, the neighbours’ gardens, the pale squares of light in the other houses. There is no living shadow lurking, no rustling movement in the hedges.
She runs down the stairs. Emily sleeps on, oblivious. Samantha is pretty sure there is no one in the house. She would feel it if there were. She would sense it. Wouldn’t she?
In the living room, she slides her hand behind the sofa cushions. The pills are gone.
With a cry, she pulls the cushions onto the floor, digs down into the base. The bag is not there.
She replaces the cushions, runs out of the living room, takes the stairs two at a time. In the bathroom, she rifles through his toiletries – hair wax, hair gel, hair fudge, shaving foam, Dior eau de toilette, liquid facial cleanser, a small wallet of grooming tools – scissors, tweezers, cuticle removers … Good God, he has more of this stuff than she does.
In the bedroom, she throws herself to the floor, peers under the bed. Nothing. Peter doesn’t approve of keeping things under the bed, says they attract dust.
At his bedside table, she hesitates. This is an infringement of privacy. And Peter has done nothing wrong. She has no right to—
She opens the drawer. At the top, a box of condoms. She thinks about the night they ran out, how, caught up in the moment, they carried on regardless. Would she change that now? Would she grab her stolen youth and run? She shakes the thought away. She would not be without Emily, that’s all that matters. There is a pot of cufflinks, a book of Dylan Thomas poems. There is a red paper wallet of what look like photographs. Are photographs.
She sits on the bed and spreads the glossy pictures on her lap. It is weird to have them printed out like this, to physically touch and handle, not thumb through on a screen. There is a small picture of a teenager dressed in an elegant school uniform: black blazer with a gold insignia on the breast pocket, white shirt and black tie with diagonal gold stripes. He is standing by the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He is in the foreground, holding out his hand so that the tower balances in his palm. It is Peter; she recognises his eyes, his smile. He is no more than a child, but still it strikes her as ironic that he should be posing in exactly the kind of naff tourist stance he would openly deride now. Another photograph is of him at university by the looks of things – his hair is less long than big, almost fluffy, and this, his square clothes and the fact that he is quite obviously inebriated makes her smile despite everything.
