Her hand strays to the back of her neck, where newly exposed skin meets the tufty roughness of her hair. She can’t seem to stop worrying at this spot. There’s a strange sort of comfort in pulling it, tweaking, until it hurts.
Mark’s mouth was a perfect ‘O’ of shock when he saw what she had done to herself. Melissa mumbled something about it being ‘better for the summer’ but she was aware her husband thought she was going mad.
It hadn’t felt like madness, the evening she had started to cut it with the kitchen scissors. It seemed necessary and right. She wanted the Russian girl’s hair out and away from her. It didn’t belong to her. She had no right to it. It needed to be gone.
Hacking away, she had watched the hair pile up on the table in front of her; the translucent plugs queasy reminders that these soft tresses had grown on another, poorer, woman’s head. When she had finished, she stared at it for some time before bundling it up and almost running to the bin to throw it inside. Then she’d poured another glass of wine, filling it so high it slopped over the rim, and gone to watch television. She didn’t care what she watched these days. Cookery programme, drama, documentary … it didn’t matter. It just helped her to stop seeing Jamie bobbing about in that icy water. For a short time, at least.
But Tilly’s reaction the next morning prompted Melissa to go to a salon in Kentish Town to have it tidied up. She’d looked almost tearful and Melissa experienced a twinge of regret.
She couldn’t face her usual place. This salon, Hair by Jayne, was small and tatty and doing a bustling trade with chatty, elderly women having perms. She asked the stylist just to ‘make it look better, I don’t care’ and studiously avoided eye contact and conversation until it was done.
Now as she leaves her bedroom, she pulls the belt of her dressing gown around her narrowing middle. She hasn’t been able to face food, telling Mark and Tilly that she has been hit by a virus. Which doesn’t explain the hair.
Or why Hester is suddenly in her kitchen, seemingly all the time.
In the first few days after that horror trip to the river, she tried to convince Hester that she was too sick for visitors. But Hester had chirped, ‘Nonsense, you just need a rest! I’ll be back later with something home-cooked!’ and bustled off home. She came back later with a shepherd’s pie that Tilly said tasted ‘kind of weird’. It lay congealing on the side until Melissa had guiltily gouged the fatty, solid mass of it into the bin.
Hester made old-fashioned so-called ‘comfort food’, but it didn’t offer much in the way of solace. Devoid of even garlic, chilli, or coriander, it wasn’t the kind of thing her family was accustomed to eating. She was secretly glad Tilly was as fussy about this as she was about Melissa’s more adventurous cookery.
Hester came back with something else, Melissa forgets what, a day or so later. She had breezed in and sat down at the kitchen table as though nothing had happened there. As though they were normal neighbours who hadn’t hefted the lumpen weight of a dead man onto plastic together. As though Melissa wasn’t a murderer and Hester an accessory.
Every time she saw Hester, she felt even worse. And resentment towards the small, fussy woman was beginning to spread like a poison inside her. What would have happened if they had just called the police? It was Hester who had really come up with the bulk of the plan. She had been the one who first suggested getting rid of the, of Jamie’s, body. She had suggested the place in Dorset and insisted on driving them there.
She had been so eager to help. Such a good, concerned neighbour.
Mark had asked why Hester was suddenly coming round to their house with gifts of food. ‘I mean, you don’t even like her!’ he said.
‘I do!’ Melissa had protested feebly. ‘We’ve sort of … reconnected.’
Mark made a frustrated sound she couldn’t interpret and left the room.
Melissa walks down the stairs on wobbly legs. She knows she must try and eat something.
Tilly is still asleep at midday, Mark at the hospital.
In the kitchen she makes an espresso and then takes it to the table, where she opens her MacBook and goes through the secret ritual she has done every day for the last week and a half.
She is itching, as always, to Google, ‘body found in Dorset river’, but forces herself instead to browse Dorset local news sites. If anyone wants to know, she will say the family is thinking of buying a holiday home there and she is interested in learning about the area. As subterfuge goes, it is pathetic. Yet still she scrolls through pages of stories about car accidents and robberies and primary school children winning prizes before deleting her browser history.
Still nothing.
In some ways she would feel better if his body turned up. Waiting for disaster to fall is eating at her like a malignancy. She forensically analyses the many reasons the police might come to her door in the middle of the night, every night. It seems her brain is to do this, rather than sleep, between the hours of 1 a.m. and 4 a.m.
There’s a sound at the French doors now and Melissa slams down the lid of the laptop and rises to her feet in one movement, heart pulsing in her ribcage almost painfully.
Saskia peers in, framing her face with the curve of her hand. She mouths, ‘Let me in!’ before doing some comedy rapping with her fists on the glass.
Melissa tries to smile but her cheeks are too stiff; her whole face feels rigid. She has been avoiding Saskia, citing stomach flu that started around the time of the party. But the sight of her now causes a shift inside Melissa. A need for human comfort swells inside her. She hurries over and opens the door.
‘What the fuck, Lissa?’ says Saskia.
Then she is holding her because Melissa is suddenly sobbing into her warm, spicy-scented shoulder. She is much smaller than her friend, and Saskia’s arms envelop her now as she emits worried little ‘ssh’ sounds.
Melissa tries to laugh and pulls away after a time. Her face is blotched and puffy with tears and exhaustion.
‘God, I don’t know where that came from,’ she says, trying to inject normality into her tone. ‘I’ve been a bit under the weather. I’m sorry.’ Her voice bubbles with mucus and she goes to get kitchen towel from under the sink, before honking loudly into it.
Her friend regards her carefully.
‘What’s happened?’ says Saskia quietly. ‘Is it Mark? Has he done it again?’
For a moment Melissa is utterly confused. Done what again? Then it comes to her and she can’t help the bitter laugh that forces its way out. She experiences a sharp stab of nostalgia for the time when this was the worst of her worries.
‘Ah, no, no, nothing like that,’ she says feebly. ‘Look, have a seat. I promise to stop blubbing now and I’ll make you a coffee.’
‘I don’t want coffee,’ says Saskia, taking her sunglasses off her head and sitting down at the table. ‘I just want to know whether you’re all right. We’ve barely spoken for two weeks.’
Melissa sits down opposite and tries to look at her friend. Saskia is staring at her, eyes gentle but appraising.
She can’t think of anything to say.
‘Okay,’ says Saskia, ‘Are you at least going to explain the chemo haircut at any point?’ she says. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything but it’s a bit hard to miss.’
Melissa is surprised at the laughter that froths up from inside. She can always rely on Saskia to cut through the bullshit and she feels a deep thud of love for her now, like an ache.
Just be normal, she tells herself. You can do that. Pretend you can do it.
‘It’s bloody awful, isn’t it?’ she sighs, patting the back of her head. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just fancied a change. But … it went a bit wrong.’
‘I’ll say,’ says Saskia. ‘Here, let me.’ She pulls a scarf out of her handbag. It’s chiffon, patterned with thin grey stripes on a mustard background. She comes over to Melissa and expertly begins to wrap it around her head. The gentle touch of her fingers is a comfort that makes Melissa want to cry again so she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, willing herself to keep it together. Saskia finishes with a knot and stands back with a look of satisfaction.
‘There you go. All you need is a pair of shades and an open-topped car and you’d give Grace Kelly a run for her money.’
Melissa smiles back gratefully. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ She has to swallow a fresh wave of tears and forces normality into her voice. She is suddenly desperate for Saskia to stay. ‘Look,’ she says, ‘are you sure you don’t want a coffee or anything?’
‘No, it’s too muggy for coffee.’ Saskia walks to the fridge and opens it, looking for one of the many Diet Cokes she drinks each day.
‘Christ, what’s all this?’ she says with a laugh. ‘You auditioning for Bake Off?’
Melissa tries to think what’s in there. Pasties, a quiche, some sort of apple pie. All from Hester. There is no point in lying. Saskia knows she would never cook this sort of food.
‘No,’ she says, slowly and carefully. ‘It’s, um, it’s all from Hester.’ Her stomach seems to crawl with ants. She silently begs Saskia not to question her any further.
‘Really?’ says Saskia with ease, opening a can with a sharp fssht before sitting back at the table and taking a long drink. ‘Why’s she doing that all of a sudden?’
Why? How can Melissa possibly begin to answer this question? She feels paralysed by its intricacies.
Saskia sighs and speaks again, saving her from having to answer. ‘Gawd, has she forgiven us, do you think?’ she says. ‘Honestly, bloody Nathan! I still can’t believe he did that to her of all people.’
Melissa smiles and looks at the table with a shrug. She can’t think of a single thing to say. Her mouth has become dry and her knee is shaking. She has to place her hand on it to stop it from banging against the underside of the table.
But Saskia isn’t going to let this go. ‘So come on,’ she says. ‘Seriously, I’m curious. Why is she suddenly back on the scene? Didn’t you manage to get shot of her a few years back?’
Melissa hesitates. She imagines, just for a moment, the sweet relief of unburdening herself.
‘Well,’ she says with care, ‘we just started talking again, I suppose. She’s not so bad really.’ Please, Saskia, stop, she thinks. She wants a moment’s peace from Hester invading her head and her kitchen.
‘Rather you than me,’ says Saskia, making a moue. ‘I think she’s downright weird. Didn’t she once suggest she moved in with you?’
The laugh that bursts from Melissa springs unnaturally loud from the knotted ball of tension inside her but Saskia doesn’t notice.
‘No! It was nothing like that!’ she says and then pauses. ‘It was coming on holiday with us.’ She covers her face with her hand as more laughter rises, unstoppably.
‘Can you imagine?’ says Saskia beginning to rumble with her distinctive husky giggle. ‘You’d be getting into bed and she’d pop up between you to remind you to floss or something. Or, you’d just be getting down and dirty and she’d tell you off for making her lose her page in the Reader’s Digest.’
Laughter cascades from Melissa. She can’t stop it.
‘Budge over, Mark,’ Saskia speaks in a high-pitched, prim voice that is uncannily accurate. ‘It’s my turn to cuddle up next to Melissa tonight! You’ve had your go!’
‘Oh stop!’ Melissa manages to gasp through her hysteria. ‘It’s too easy to picture it!’
Tears trickle from the corners of her eyes. Her empty stomach aches but it feels so normal, so sane and healthy. The kind of thing non-murderers do. Melissa wants this moment to go on forever, despite the guilt that nips at her. Poor Hester. She can’t help being so odd.
‘But really though,’ says Saskia as they start to settle down again. ‘Do you really want her back in your life?’
Melissa stares down at the kitchen table and sighs heavily.
‘Not really, no,’ she says quietly. But it’s not that simple, she thinks.
It is only now that she can admit to herself how suffocating she is finding Hester.
She is going to have to find a way to pull away from her if she has any chance of coming through this nightmare.