I nod.
‘I knew you would be. I mean, why wouldn’t you? You’re more beautiful now than ever! You’ve got kids too.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Two. Boy and girl. Nelly and Nathan.’
‘I’d love to meet your kids,’ says Hollis, smiling benignly. ‘Little versions of you. I bet they’re amazing.’
‘Yes, that’d be nice.’
‘What about us?’ he says.
‘Us? I’m married now.’
‘To me first, though, right?’
‘There’s so much to take on board, Hollis. We need to just slow down.’ I realize at this point that Option 1 (a quick and quiet divorce) might not be possible, Hollis clearly wants me back, and Option 2 (ignore it) is now impossible.
Things are feeling a little too close for comfort, so I tell him I’m overcome with emotion, and we agree to meet the following week. Life had been simpler just four weeks earlier, and now, as well as killing a policeman and incinerating Cait’s husband, I have an additional husband who could void my own marriage in an instant. I don’t tend to be a blamey person but I do feel that all of this is Hollis’s fault.
At home, I sit at my desk and turn to a perfectly blank new page in my Moleskine notebook. I write the date and then the simple two words: ‘To do’. I look out at the garden. A blackbird is jumping from spot to spot, jabbing at the lawn. I’m momentarily distracted. The bird finds a worm and tugs it hard until the worm is out of the ground and curls itself around the blackbird’s bright orange beak in a last desperate attempt to live. I look back down at my page and write:
Pick up dry cleaning
Phone Nelly’s school for reference
Secure Stephen’s partnership
Kill Hollis
Chapter41Charged
Tuesday, 10 December
Birch and Mattoo pull up in their white Ford Focus as I’m heading down the steps towards my car. I hope to make it past them, but they’re surprisingly quick to emerge from their seats and intercept me.
‘I’m in a real rush, I’m afraid, can’t it wait?’
‘We thought you’d want to know what we found out,’ says DS Birch, intentionally blocking my path.
‘I’ve enough on my plate, actually. My daughter needs a good reference for her next school, so I’m buying flowers for her head teacher.’
‘I think you might need to know what we’ve uncovered about Mr Mercer,’ says Birch, looking at me archly.
‘Well, go on, then, but please be quick,’ I say. ‘None of this slow insinuation you’ve learned from watching too much TV.’
‘It might be better if we went inside,’ Birch says rather pointedly. I give her the wide-eyed stare that I usually reserve for the children.
‘I see. Well, Mrs Rook, I’ll be direct. We’ve got one witness statement saying Jason Mercer was here on fifteenth November, near your house.’
‘He was probably walking along the street, which most people are permitted to do freely.’ I sidestep her and head to my car.
‘That’s not all we have,’ she shouts.
I wave my hand in the air and beep my car; it welcomes me with an elated flash of several lights.
‘He took photographs of you,’ she calls out. ‘Quite a few. All in different locations over a few weeks.’
I stop and turn. ‘So, not my lover, then?’
