“But the police never linked them,” I say. “They were all treated as separate, individual cases.”
“OK,” she says. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that there are these unsolved crimes from goodness knows how long ago. Has it occurred to you that this supposed detective might be more involved than you think? That he might be implicated himself?”
“It’s possible, I suppose. But it doesn’t seem likely.”
“Because it seems to me that Helena is just a pleasant, efficient person who was recommended by our neighbors and who came here because I asked her to.”
“All I’m saying is we don’t know for sure about Webberor anyone else. We just need to be extra careful until we do know, so I was thinking we should probably cancel Helena for the next few weeks.”
“After you sent her away today, I’ll be surprised if she wants to come back at all. Have you any idea how mad and paranoid you’re starting to sound? And don’t imagine it’s not affecting the kids too, because they’ve definitely picked up on it. Takes ages to get Daisy settled down at night now because she’s convinced that the bad man’s going to come back in the middle of the night. Callum’s been a bit tearful too and I know it’s affecting Leah’s revision for her GCSEs.”
I take a sip of my own red wine.
“We need to protect ourselves.”
“By cutting off all contact with everyone else?”
“Does it not seem like a coincidence that we get a gardener in last week, we have no real idea who he is, and he’s working out there unsupervised, right under our noses, and then we find a surveillance camera in the garden, spying on us?”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I wish I could pull them back.
Jess’s expression darkens. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He could be anyone; he could have his own agenda for all we—”
“Just say it,” she says, cheeks flaring red. “This is just like what you said the other night, isn’t it? That it’s all my fault, all of this?”
“All I’m saying is that we need to be careful about who we invite to the house, who we give a key to.” I reach into my pocketfor the kitchen door key. “This is the one you gave to Helena, right? Just hope she hasn’t made copies.”
My wife is shaking her head.
“Don’t you dare put this on me, don’t youdare!” She’s shouting now. “You’re the one who started all of this with the bloody phone and the watch and all the other crap from that stupid room on the top floor. If you’d bagged it up and taken it to the dumpster with everything else, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation!”
She takes an angry swallow of wine and for a second I think she might throw the glass at me. But instead she slams the glass down on the counter so hard that Merlot sloshes over the counter.
“Jess—”
“This has got to stop, Adam! Do you hear me?”
I’m about to reply when I realize the kitchen doorway is pushed half open and Daisy is standing there in her pajamas, thumb clamped in her mouth, muslin cloth held tight to her cheek. Her blonde hair is tangled, her pale face streaked with tears.
“You shouted,” she says to me in a small voice. “You woke me up. Why are you being mean to Mummy?”
I have no idea how long she’s been standing there, how much of our row she has witnessed. Before I can reply, Jess holds out her hands and scoops our youngest into her arms.
“Sorry, baby,” she says, making for the door. “No more shouting. Come on now, it’s bedtime.”
64
WEDNESDAY
If I want to check into Helena’s background, there’s an obvious place to start.
Daisy and Callum are both subdued when they wake for school and I have to cajole them through every part of the morning routine from the moment they roll, grumbling, out of their beds. They both perk up a little by the time we arrive at St. Jude’s and once they’re dropped off I go back to my car, sitting with my phone as all the other parents drive off and head to the office, or back home, or wherever else they were going on this cloudy spring morning.
By ten past nine I’m pretty much the only car parked on this suburban street but I’m not going home—not yet. Instead, I dive back into the neighborhood WhatsApp thread again, scrolling back until I find it again: a request from Jess, posted soon after we moved in and had just been added to the group, to ask if anyone could recommend a cleaner and gardener. The rapid response from user Sarah@84GT with a glowing recommendation for Helena and Tobias.
Helena, who would have been in her early twenties at the turn of the millennium; and Tobias, the supposed “cousin” who had some kind of claustrophobia. There was something about those two that had not rung true right from the start.
