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‘No reason. I just keep seeing one outside the house. It must belong to one of the neighbours.’
In the bedroom, I send a WhatsApp message to Taylor’s new phone, asking if he’s spoken to Molly Hughes yet. And then I wait.
It’s only a few minutes before his reply comes. We can meet her at her house in Cricklewood at eleven, and Taylor offers to drive.
Feeling as though I’m having some sort of affair, I send him a thanks, then slip my phone in my pocket. This is what Max was doing to me for months, with the difference being his was a real affair.
Time passes excruciatingly slowly until the doorbell rings. I rush to answer, and Paula stands at the door. Her arms are folded, and when she forces a smile her mouth barely turns up at the corners.
‘Hi,’ she says, glancing past me. ‘I guess he told you I was coming?’
I nod. ‘He’s in the living room.’ I don’t add that he’s been staring out of the window for the last half hour, as if the only thing that matters is Paula turning up here this morning.
‘Why did you come?’ I whisper. ‘After everything you told me.’
She peers past me again. ‘Because I need my job. I like my job. As soon as he’s back in the office I’ll put in another transfer request.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’m not the one who’s married to him. That’s worse, isn’t it?’ She stalks past me, slipping off her shoes in the hallway.
I watch how Max reacts to seeing her, surprised at first that there’s a smile spread across his face. Until I remember that he has no memory of her standoffish behaviour towards him at work over the last few months.
‘Paula, it’s good to see you.’ He reaches out his hand and she takes it briefly, before settling into the chair opposite.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I say. ‘I’m just popping out to get a few things.’
Paula glances up and gives a barely perceptible nod.
‘See you soon, darling,’ Max says, smiling.
He never calls me that.
As I’m walking out, I set my phone to record and slip it onto the bookshelf by the money jar. Neither of them notices.
Taylor picks me up by the river, and I jump into his car, praying no one has seen me. How would I explain this to Max? To anyone? ‘Drive fast,’ I say.
The sooner we’re away from Putney the better.
We pass the River Walk Hotel on our right, and both of us look out of the window but stay silent. Everything looks normal there now, as if Alice was never there.
It takes us an hour to get to Cricklewood, even though it’s only a few miles away. ‘I didn’t think about how bad traffic would be,’ Taylor says when we pull up in a tree-lined residential street. ‘We’re a bit late.’
Molly Hughes’s home is a narrow Victorian terraced house with a small front garden. The grass is overgrown, and most of the bushes along the front have withered and died.
‘She normally takes good care of the garden,’ Taylor explains.
I do a quick calculation: it’s been just under two weeks since Alice was killed. Yet what I’m looking at is months of neglect. It’s winter, though – not a time when gardens are a priority.
Behind the net curtains, someone watches us; Molly, I presume. Taylor told me her husband had died, so I assume she lives alone.
So much tragedy for one family.
Molly disappears from behind the curtain and a few seconds later opens the door. Grey shadows surround her sunken eyes, and she’s clutching a tissue in her hand. She’s tall and thin, and can’t be more than sixty, yet she appears as frail as someone decades older. Her shoulder-length hair is grey at only the roots; the rest of it is dark, almost black.
‘Thanks for seeing us,’ Taylor says. ‘I brought you some of that loose tea you love.’ He holds up a bag, offering a thin smile.
‘Thanks,’ she says. ‘That’s kind of you.’ She speaks slowly, her voice husky, as if the exertion of forcing out words is too much.
‘This is Hannah,’ Taylor says.
I step forward and take her hand. ‘I’m so sorry. Alice was a wonderful woman. She really helped me.’ Though there is nothing true about my words, I find them easy enough to say. I don’t blame Alice for sleeping with my husband – it’s Max who should have walked away.
