Melissa roots desperately through the kitchen drawer, pushing aside packs of cards, string, broken bits of toy from when Tilly was small, and assorted other rubbish she can’t believe she hasn’t thrown away. Stabbing her thumb painfully on a mini screwdriver that came in a Christmas cracker a couple of years ago, she swears expressively, then sucks the thumb. The coppery taste of her own blood causes another swell of panic.
Don’t do this, a small voice says in her head. Stop this now. It’s not too late. Tell the police he attacked you.
But the sensible little voice doesn’t suggest how she would explain that Jamie’s wound is on the back of his head and not the front.
She turns back to the drawer and roots inside it, more cautiously now. She hasn’t smoked properly in years, but had bought a packet during the Sam episode and was happy to find she was able to stop again at will.
The action of placing the cigarette between her lips is rooted deep in her muscle memory. The papery toasted taste floods her mouth with anticipation of the hit to come.
Finding the cook’s matches in another drawer, she sparks up and lights the cigarette. The nicotine burn hits her in a dizzying wave and she sucks greedily, instantly feeling a pleasurable roughness in her throat. Christ, she’s missed this.
Her hand shakes as she takes another deep drag and her head spins a little. She pictures Hester’s disapproval and the strange reprimand about swearing.
‘Well fucking fuck it all,’ she whispers to the empty kitchen.
She is acutely aware that her strange little neighbour has crossed the threshold into a dark place for her. She can’t imagine a single other person who would have done what Hester has done for her already. Mark would have called the police straight away. Saskia would have been no use to anyone. But Hester is almost calm. There is no reason for her to help like this and Melissa is grateful for her cool, practical sense.
She’s suddenly aware of the nipple that Jamie sucked chafing against her bra and she closes her eyes in distress. How can these physical sensations have outlived him? Damp misery slaps at her and she feels sure that she will never feel pleasure or happiness in anything again. Melissa finishes the cigarette in a few deep puffs then stabs it out viciously in the sink before running the tap and putting the wet, squashed remains in the bin.
Catching sight of the notepad she leaves on the side, she reads the words, ‘Flowers 10 a.m.’ and ‘Pay Zofia.’
The ordinariness of this other life, which existed just yesterday, seems sweeter and more remote now than she can believe. Cleaners, day-to-day quibbles with Tilly over homework, laziness, and laundry seem like precious jewels that have slipped out of her fingers and been lost forever. Even her relationship with Mark has taken on a rosy hue, as though her life before today were more perfect than she had ever appreciated. Who cares if Mark fucked another woman? What does that really matter?
She glances at the clock. Time seems to move strangely in this new reality, like a liquid that turns without warning from fast-flowing water to something muddy and listless. Last night seems like another lifetime. Yet four o’clock this afternoon seems to have only just passed but now it is almost eight. In just a few hours, everything has changed.
He’s dead. She really did kill him.
Jamie had waited until late into the following afternoon to make his move, when they were alone. Long enough for her to think that maybe she had got him all wrong and her only problem was how to get rid of him. She had resolved to tell him that enough was enough. They’d had some fun and bonded over old times.
But now he needed to get out of her life again and never come back.
He must have guessed what was coming because, as if continuing an earlier conversation, he’d suddenly said, ‘So I used to hear about what you were up to, on the grapevine.’ He’d paused and given her an almost lazy smile. ‘Back when you were ordinary old Mel Ronson. Before all this.’ He’d made an expansive gesture to indicate everything she now had.
Melissa’s heart had begun to thud with dread. Jamie wagged his finger in front of his face as though scolding her.
‘Dear, dear, you really were a naughty girl, weren’t you?’ he’d said and then, coldly, ‘So the sixty-four million dollar question is, does he know? Your Mark?’
Her expression told him all he wanted to know. Jamie smiled again. ‘Or should I say, the ten grand question? Because that’s what it will take. Really, Melanie, what do you think the red tops would make of it all, eh? Wife of the handsome telly doc, a little jailbird? Someone with blood on her hands?’
Everything she had, everything she’d worked so damned hard for, was suddenly quicksand-soft under her feet. All of it could be taken away.
‘Fuck off, Jamie,’ she’d bluffed. ‘I don’t care what the papers say. And Mark knows already.’ This was a lie.
But Jamie hadn’t finished yet.
‘Yeah,’ he’d said, ‘but what about that girl of yours? What would young Tilly, with her jolly fucking hockey sticks school and her Duke of Fucking Edinburgh whatever, make of knowing what her mother had done? How would she feel about carrying those genes around in that fuckable little body of hers, eh?’
And he’d turned away, actually chuckling to himself, like it was all so very funny.
Her response had felt primeval and completely out of her control. Her fingers were around the pestle and, before the rational part of her mind could take over, stone was crunching into skin and bone. It had felt exactly like self-defence at the time. She’d had to stop him. To protect herself.
The doorbell pulls her out of her reverie and she cautiously goes to check that it is Hester, returning with whatever it was she went to get next door.
The little woman bustles in and her nasty little dog comes trotting behind. It smells and makes odd grunting sounds. Melissa wrinkles her nose as the dog wags its tail at her and pants expectantly.
‘Found it!’ says Hester brightly, as though she’d gone to get a borrowed casserole dish.
The dog has darted off ahead of them and, when they come into the room, they see that it is sniffing enthusiastically at the floor where Jamie had lain. Melissa feels a wave of horror that the dog can smell blood, despite all that cleaning. Her stomach roils and Hester shoos the animal away, clearly having the same thought.
Hester is holding a wooden picture frame towards her now and beaming triumphantly. Melissa cautiously takes it and begins to study the picture.
It shows a bald man with a moustache and a safari-style short-sleeved shirt. He’s holding some kind of fish in the air with a proud expression. This, presumably, is Terry, who was long gone by the time Melissa moved in. Hester has never really talked about him but, from the odd comment made here and there, Melissa got the impression the marriage wasn’t a happy one.
Melissa focuses now on the background to the picture. Behind him is a river. She can just see distinctive spiky reeds fringing the bank. The well is to his right and the house itself in the background. There is an unusual red-brick tower that is almost equidistant to the well. If it is still there (and this in itself is a long shot) it should be possible to locate it.
Hester is beaming at her in that way that causes an unpleasant ripple of emotion. There’s still something ‘off’ about her energy. It’s as though she has more colour in her cheeks than Melissa has ever seen in her before.
It’s all wrong. None of this should be happening. In a moment, the rational person she really is will take charge of things. Call the police and try to make it right.
Instead, she finds herself saying, ‘Thank you, Hester, this is really helpful. But I think we should get going soon.’
Hester pulls a doubtful face. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘as much as I am loth to try and find this place in the dark, I really think we should wait until much later. There is far less risk of us being seen that way.’
Panic rises up inside her again. ‘I can’t just sit here,’ says Melissa, her voice wobbling. ‘We could at least be doing something. And we could make sure we’re there for first light.’
Hester regards her, her expression patient. ‘It will take a few hours to get there but dawn doesn’t come until around 5 a.m. at the moment. I know because the light always comes around the edges of my curtains and wakes me. We should ideally leave at about 2 a.m.’
Her tone is decisive and bossy. Melissa wants to lash out at her, even though Hester is helping her with this terrible mess.
‘No,’ she says with forced calm. ‘I can’t wait until then. I just can’t.’
Melissa and Hester stare at each other and then Hester makes a small sound of frustration.
‘Look,’ her tone is unctuous now, ‘let’s just be sensible and wait a little while longer, then? If we have to sit at the side of the road until dawn comes, so be it, but we should at least give it another hour or two.’
‘Fine,’ says Melissa, wearily. ‘Why don’t you go and get whatever you’re going to need for the journey now and take your dog back, while I get a few things together.’
Hester actually gasps.
‘I can’t leave Bertie all night!’ she says. ‘He must come with us!’
‘But won’t it …?’ Melissa starts to ask the question but her vocabulary can’t accommodate the monstrous images her mind is creating; the dog sniffing and snuffling at Jamie’s plastic-wrapped corpse, desperate to get at the juiciness inside. That’s all he is now … rotting meat. Her stomach heaves.
Luckily, Hester seems to understand what she cannot say.
‘No, no,’ she says hurriedly, ‘of course he won’t because he will have to sit up in the front with us. He’ll be fine. Won’t you, Bertie?’ She reaches down and strokes the dog’s ears. It gazes up at its owner.
Melissa looks away. It is clear that Hester has drawn a line that Melissa will not be allowed to cross. One way or another, that mutt is coming with them to Dorset.
Melissa sighs. She needs to be alone.
Upstairs she showers and changes her clothes. For some time, she sits numbly on the edge of her bed, wrapped in the towel, until her skin begins to chill and she forces herself to get dressed.
She stares into the wardrobe for a good five minutes because she can’t seem to work out what she should do next. Finally, still shivering, she goes to the chest of drawers to find underwear, then jeans, and a long-sleeved t-shirt, which she puts on with the slowness of a much older woman. Her body aches strangely and she feels mildly feverish as she pulls on her fleece hoodie and scrapes her hair back into a ponytail. Glancing at the mirror, she sees a haunted woman staring balefully back at her.
The dress she wore at the party is pooled on the pale blue armchair by the window and she has the strange sensation that if she put it on she could climb back into Before.
Yesterday she was a different person. How naive she had been to think there would be only one Before and After in her life. Yet here was another chasm between her old life and this new one.
Jamie is dead. She murdered him. The words roll around like marbles inside her skull.
A thought jolts through her mind then, making her gasp audibly.
The bag Jamie had with him last night. Where did he put it?
She hurries into the guest room and stops when she sees the evidence of his presence straight away. The bed is made and she pictures his body warming the sheets last night before he came into her room. The bed probably still smells of him.
She turns away hurriedly to the chest of drawers, where he’d lain out a Lynx deodorant, a small soap bag, a handful of change, and a mobile phone. There’s something neat about the way he has put them there. Then she realizes. It is a habit from prison: keeping your small amount of belongings neat and tidy. She wishes she didn’t know this and, at the same time, feels a belly punch of sorrow.
Melissa scoops the mobile into her pocket. They’ll have to dump it somewhere on the way to Dorset. She glances around the bedroom, searching for the holdall he’d arrived with. It isn’t lying anywhere obvious and so, grumbling under her breath, Melissa pulls out drawers and looks in the wardrobe. Then she spots that one of the big drawers under the bed, where she keeps spare bed linen, isn’t flush. It’s jutting out a little on one side. Dropping the items on the bed, she gets to her knees and pulls the large drawer towards her. It rolls smoothly on its runners until it is entirely free of the bed.
Crouching low, Melissa leans forward and feels around with her fingertips until they meet the roughness of an unfamiliar material. It’s an ugly, cheap bag that looks as though it came from some army surplus shop about thirty years ago. It’s slightly greasy to the touch and Melissa grimaces as she yanks at the zip and peels the sides back to look inside.
Pants, socks, a t-shirt or two, and another pair of jeans, which are folded neatly.
It’s as she is about to zip up the bag again that she notices a Hamleys’ carrier bag with its familiar black and red logo at the bottom. Hesitating, Melissa pulls it out and reaches inside.
It contains a teddy bear with a wide smile and a little gold bell on a red ribbon around its neck. The fur is soft and cool under her fingers and Melissa knows the bear was expensive; she once bought something similar for a friend who’d had a baby. The bear’s lifeless eyes shine up at her.
Angrily stuffing the bear back into the bag, she zips the whole thing up again. Getting to her feet, she hefts the holdall over her shoulder before going downstairs to Hester and whatever comes next.