A distant thud snatches me back to reality and I bolt upright, sure it was the front door closing for a second time.
FORTY-THREE
Pulling myself up, I go to the window that overlooks the annexe to find Lina looking out at me from the facing window. She waves at me, smiling as if she doesn’t have a care in the world. Snapping my gaze away, my head spinning and my chest heaving with the effort of trying to breathe, I hold on to the sill for a second for support and then retreat.
Why is she watching me? Panic twists inside me. I feel as if she’s stalking me, yet how can that be when it was me who invited her into my life? Had I, though? She turned up on my doorstep, a woman I had no knowledge of. Natalia’s mother, living right here in this village. I should have been aware of her existence. Jack should have told me.
Walking shakily to the middle of the room, I hold on to the back of the sofa and wait for the wooziness to pass. Feeling a little steadier after a moment, I go to the stairs. They seem to stretch before me like a mountain, but I grab hold of the rail and heave myself up. I might be becoming neurotic, but I don’t think so. There was someone here, I’m sure there was. Had Lina come back for something? But she doesn’t have a key. In any case, she couldn’t have got back to the annexe and her window so fast unless she’d run. Might it be Evie?
I call her name as I head along the landing. There’s no answer and I go to her bedroom door, knock and call again. Still she doesn’t answer, and I hesitate briefly, then push the handle down and peer into the room. She’s not here, and Jack’s Land Rover isn’t on the drive, so it had to have been Lina.
Needing to reassure myself there’s no one still in the house, I go to the main bedroom and, nerves jangling, push the door open. My heart almost stops beating. The room has been ransacked, turned upside down. Wardrobes wide open, contents strewn across the floor, clothes hanging from drawers like hungry tongues from gaping mouths about to swallow me up. Kai’s shoebox. My breath stalls and I hurry across to where it lies upturned on the floor, his little shirt crumpled beneath it, his Jellycat Louie Lion lying face-down next to it.
A guttural sob escaping me, I drop to my knees and gather up the precious mementos of my little boy.Why?Pressing them to my chest, another ragged sob escapes me. Whowould do something like this? It can’t have been Lina. She would have struggled to climb the stairs, let alone do all this in the short time I’d slept. Unless she’s lying about her illness. But she can’t be. She has her medications. They must have been prescribed for her. Did I see her name on the packets? I rack my brains. Try to think. Press my hand to my forehead. Ican’tthink. Nothing makes sense, noneof it. Why would someone dothis, desecrate the memory of my child, try to destroy me? What did I do to deserve it? But I know what I did. Guilt rears up inside me to remind me. I killed my little boy. I killed his father.
Rocking silently to and fro, I press his T-shirt to my face, breathing him in deeply. It still smells of him, such a bittersweet smell, it rips my heart from inside me.
Eventually, my sobs slowing to a shudder, I carefully place the T-shirt back in the shoebox, along with the toy he’d been desperate to snuggle up with on the night he’d fallen asleepforever. Then, reaching for the bed for support, I pull myself to my feet. As I glance around, taking in the physical evidence of my life being torn so calculatingly and maliciously apart, something hardens inside me. I won’t let them. Whoever it is, I will root the evil out of my life. I will fight. I place a hand over my tummy.I will keep you safe, little one, I promise.
Straightening my shoulders, I walk across to my wardrobe and place the box back on the shelf, then begin clearing up the mess. Going to the dressing table, I pull clothes from drawers, shaking them and hurriedly folding them before replacing them and slamming the drawers shut. I pick up the trinkets and cosmetics that have been swiped from the surface, then go across to straighten the bedside lamps, one of which lies on its side. I’m about to pull up the duvet, which has been torn from the bed, but decide against it. I can’t sleep between those sheets. Despite my exhaustion, I drag the bedding off and dump it on the landing, then come back to make a start on the wardrobes, where clothes have been arbitrarily ripped from hangers and dropped to the floor, all the while asking myself:Why?
Once my own wardrobe is in some semblance of order, I make a start on Jack’s, plucking his clothes from the floor. A shirt half-clinging to a hanger slides off as I hang the others. Sighing, my new-found energy, which had no doubt been fuelled by anger, beginning to wane, I bend to retrieve it, noticing a laptop at the bottom of the wardrobe as I do. I hadn’t noticed it before. It’s obviously his old one.
After replacing the shirt on its hanger, I hesitate, then pull the laptop out, take it across to the dressing table and switch it on. It doesn’t power up, of course. The battery’s obviously depleted. I’m about to carry it back, but then wonder whether there might be a lead. Going back to the wardrobe, I search the shelves. A minute later I find it, tucked at the back of one of them.
Once the laptop fires up, which seems to take an eternity, I realise it needs a password. I try Evie’s birthday, because it’s the one he uses for his current laptop and his phone. Guilt twists inside me as it occurs to me that he’s never made an attempt to hide his passwords, and I wonder why I’m doing this. A brief search soon answers my question, and prompts another, more sinister one. A folder marked ‘N’ is packed with photographs of the woman I know to be his wife, all of her with a man who’s definitely not Jack, many of them taken in restaurants, bars or nightclubs, the body language a clear indication of the intimacy between them. She’s holding his hand across a table in one, openly kissing him in another. In another, she’s pressed right up close to him, his face nestled into her neck, his hand sliding up her thigh, under her skirt. Another is taken in the foyer of a hotel, where Natalia and the man, who seems more like a lover than a one-night stand, appearing to be booking a room.
Jack had beenfollowingher. These photographs prove it. I try to reconcile this revelation with what he’d told me, that he’d loved her and didn’t want to leave her, but then why would he have kept these unless as evidence against her? He’d lied, led me to believe that he’d only ever been aware of her sexual encounters when she’d woken up in some unsavoury place, having had sex with a stranger, and called him, as if he was her saviour. That she would often be injured, indicating what kind of encounters she’d had. He’d thought she felt she wasn’t worth loving. That she didn’t deserve to be anything but abused.The bruises and the broken arm.Who was the abuser?
My hands trembling, I quickly check his emails. They’re all historical. The account hasn’t updated in a long time. I go to his WhatsApp. Again, it’s all historical stuff, as if the PC is no longer linked to the account. My eyes are drawn to a number alongside a profile a young girl might use, that of a female silhouette releasing an angel butterfly. I hesitate, then click on it. Thenfreeze as I read the message:I have the place to myself. Fancy coming over? X
I stare at it, stunned for a second, then read the response:Too risky.
It’s from Jack. It’s his number. Swallowing back the sour taste in my throat. I’m trying to work out when it was, who it was, when I hear the front door open.
‘Kara?’ Jack calls, and I slam the laptop shut.
FORTY-FOUR
‘Won’t be a minute,’ I call back, hurrying to stuff the laptop and lead into his wardrobe. Closing the door, I glance quickly around, making sure everything looks as normal as it can. I don’t want him to know what happened up here. Not until I’ve had time to think about all I’ve just seen.
Satisfied, I grab a tracksuit and tug it on, then head quickly for the landing and down the stairs.
Jack comes from the kitchen to meet me. ‘I was worried about you. You sounded exhausted when we spoke,’ he says, his forehead creased in concern.
‘I’m okay,’ I assure him.
He doesn’t look convinced. ‘I’m just making some tea,’ he says. ‘Do you fancy one?’
I shake my head. ‘No thanks. I’ve not long had one.’
‘Oh, right.’ He looks me over quizzically. ‘Are you sure you’re okay? You look pale.’
‘Fine. Just morning sickness again. It will pass,’ I lie. I’ve never felt more nauseous in my life.
‘Sure?’ His frown deepens.
‘Positive.’ I nod and force a smile, then walk towards the front door.
