Kitabı oku: «In a Cottage In a Wood: The gripping new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of The Woman Next Door»
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Copyright © Caroline Green 2017
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photographs © Mark Owen/Trevillion Image;
Shutterstock.com (trees)
Caroline Green asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Source ISBN: 9780008248956
Ebook Edition © September 2017 ISBN: 9780008248963
Version: 2018-07-04
Dedication
For all the orphans I know,
and the ones I’ve never met.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Cass Green
About the Publisher
1
Neve stares up at the nicotine-yellow ceiling and thinks about the long journey between here and her own bed. Or at least, the sofa bed in her sister’s flat.
She has a fierce longing for ice-cold Diet Coke and paracetamol. Her head is already starting to hurt and she hasn’t been asleep. She needs to pee, badly.
Squinting at the small travel clock that blinks with neon aggression on the bedside table, she sees it is 03:00. They got here about two. The sex had taken about fifteen minutes, tops. Maybe she had briefly fallen asleep after all.
Whatsisname sighs and gently farts in his sleep.
Christ.
He told her he had his own software company and was in London for a conference. But it didn’t ring true. Surely no one held conferences a few days before Christmas? Plus, he said ‘pacific’ instead of ‘specific’ and smiled in a glazed, uncomprehending way at a couple of her more acerbic comments. He didn’t seem bright enough to have his own company.
Now she slowly begins to extricate herself from the bed, placing her bare feet down onto the rough, worn carpet. It feels greasy and gritty. She curls her toes with a shudder and spots the squished comma of the condom lying next to the bed.
The air smells of hot dust from the ferocious radiator that’s within touching distance of the bed, with a base note of damp.
The outside of the hotel – which was grandly named the Intercontinental, London – had looked alright with its jaunty blue and white awning, potted plants and fairy-lit windows.
Neve has always been a sucker for fairy lights.
But the room, with its shabby MDF table and undersized kettle, feels like the kind of place travelling salesmen go to commit suicide. There’s a white extension cable snaking across the middle of the floor and she makes a mental note that she mustn’t trip over it on her way to the bathroom. The wallpaper is the textured sort popular in the 1970s, splashed lumpily with a jaundice-yellow emulsion.
Whatsisname’s (Greg? Gary? Something like that) wheelie case is sitting open on a chair next to the table. The arm of a jumper hangs languidly towards the carpet. She pictures him getting ready earlier, selecting a shirt that would mean the best chance of getting laid. Well, it had worked.
Self-disgust puffs through her like hot steam. She has somehow bypassed the numb, unconscious part of this scenario and gone straight to the hangover and guilt. She’s suddenly appalled by the idea of him waking and suggesting she come back to bed. Or, worse, wanting conversation.
This whole thing had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Her own office party – dinner in an uninspiring Italian restaurant, followed by drinks in a bar near Waterloo – had ended early because, in her view, her colleagues were a bunch of lightweights, all making excuses about babysitters or night buses or I’ve-had-quite-enough-haven’t-you? Well, no, she hadn’t, clearly.
Her usual ally and best friend, Miri, was too pregnant to last beyond eight p.m. and Neve’d had to work hard, again, not to make a wistful comment about the fun they’d once had on nights out. She knew that Miri might as well be emigrating to the other side of the world soon. Nothing was ever going to be the same again between them. Watching Miri expand and step tentatively into this new world, she felt jabs of real grief.
So when someone decent looking had come over and bought her another bucket-glass of Merlot, she hadn’t said no. Plus, she wasn’t wearing her contacts and was drunk enough that everyone looked quite attractive in their own way. And he was Irish and therefore exotic.
She can almost hear Lou saying, ‘You’re thirty now, Neve,’ in that mouth-like-a-cat’s-arse way she reserves for her only sister.
A wave of misery washes over her and she carefully gets up and starts to hunt for her knickers among the discarded clothes on the floor. She spots them lying in a forlorn figure of eight where she’d shucked them off earlier.
She’d already been thinking this was a mistake by then. The kissing – hard up against a doorway outside the bar – hadn’t been that promising. His tongue had been a muscular slug that poked and jabbed at the inside of her mouth as though on a mission to find something.
Now Neve fumbles for her bra and, once on, reaches for the gold silky top she’d bought especially for the night out. She’d been delighted with it at the time because it was half price, but wearing it she’d discovered that it made her sweat under the arms. She’d spilled red wine down it earlier too. She wrinkles her nose as she rolls the top over her head and down her body.
‘You leaving?’
The voice makes her jump. She turns to see Whatsisname looking up at her from the rumpled bed, propping himself up on pale, muscular arms.
‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘Um … I’d better get going.’ She smiles as though they’d just had a casual coffee together instead of a joyless, drunken shag. ‘I’ll just …’ she hooks a thumb in the direction of the bathroom and then goes in, closing the door behind her as she pees.
She quickly washes her hands and avoids her reflection, aware it will only make her feel worse in the circumstances. Maybe she is faster than he expected, because when she comes back into the room a minute later, he’s leaning out of the bed, vigorously checking the pockets of his trousers that are pooled next to it.
He stops and regards her with a sheepish shrug.
Realization burns. ‘What the actual fuck?’ she says. ‘Did you think I was going to take your wallet?’
Her head is far too sore to be speaking this loud. But it’s better than smashing him in the face with the travel kettle, which she might do otherwise.
‘I don’t really know you, do I?’ he says, defiantly raising his chin.
‘No you don’t,’ she hisses, hunting for her bag and shrugging on her coat. It feels as though these actions take far longer than they should.
Finally, she is able to take the few paces to the hotel door.
‘By the way, you’re shit in bed,’ she says as she wrenches it open. ‘Merry Christmas, arsehole!’
She wants to slam the door behind her but it’s on one of those safety hinges and, instead, it gently closes with a disappointing sigh.
The word ‘Bitch’ is lobbed through before it shuts.
Outside on the street, she pulls her fake fur coat together at the throat. Fury pumps through her. She half thinks about going back and giving him a further piece of her mind.
But instead, she walks away, her high heels ringing out against a pavement that’s glossy with recent rain. She swallows down a surge of self-pity and blinks hard, trying to concentrate on which way to go.
Neve has a terrible sense of direction. Several boyfriends, and Lou, have claimed not to believe quite how poor it is, as if getting lost often is some sort of affectation. As if it is a choice, to experience the freefall sensation of panic when you don’t really know where the hell you’re going.
At the end of the street she stops and considers which way to turn.
There’s some sort of factory on the opposite corner and she’s sure now that they passed it. So she heads off that way, praying that she will find herself somewhere near Waterloo. If she can get over the water to the Embankment, she can probably find a night bus.
Her shoes chafe the backs of her heels and her teeth are gently chattering with the bitter cold. Whatsisface had a fashionable beard and it feels now as if a cheese grater has been taken to her chin. She’ll have to slather it with E45 when she gets home or she’ll look like she’s been sunburned. And Lou will be all over that in the morning.
It’s like being seventeen again, and not in any good way.
Neve takes another turning and begins to feel the usual thrum of worry that she’s going in the entirely wrong direction to where she wants to be. But she keeps moving and soon finds herself on a promisingly major road. Tall brown buildings soar on either side, glass-fronted windows lifeless, and a long row of bikes for hire seem to be resting like a tired herd.
Before long, she can see the distinctive glass sphere of the IMAX building by Waterloo and she lets out a breath of relief that curls in the frigid night air.
She’s grateful for the few other people around now, either party-goers draped in tinsel, laughing and shouting to each other, or London’s invisible army of workers dressed in cheap, sensible coats; heads down, hurrying from one service job to another.
Neve isn’t nervous about walking alone in London at night. It’s the sort of thing her parents would have fretted about but now … well, there’s only Lou and hopefully she’s asleep. She has only once been the victim of a crime, when her phone was stolen from her bag in a nightclub. The thief had clearly decided it wasn’t new enough to keep anyway, because it had been dropped in the beer and dirt and found by the doorman.
She hurries on, wondering whether Miri will find this a funny story tomorrow or give her friend the new look, the one that is just ever-so-slightly disapproving.
Neve tries to remember exactly where she can get the night bus to Kentish Town. Then, with a cold plop of realization in her stomach, she remembers taking her keys out of her bag that morning because a pen had leaked in the front pocket. She can picture them, still lying on the big kitchen table. Frantically, she begins feeling around inside her bag now, but knows by the lack of heft in the pocket that they’re not there. She closes her eyes for a moment and says, ‘Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit.’
Lou will have a field day with this. The whole house will get woken up.
She can hear her now, with her martyr face on: ‘It’s about time you took control of your life.’
Neve has been staying with her sister, brother-in-law and their two children since breaking up with Daniel, six weeks before. It feels so very much longer.
If she could go and sleep under her desk, she would, but she’d need a key for that too. It’s too cold to hang about, and anyway, it will probably take forever to get home. Maybe her sister will be up with the baby by then.
She hurries on towards Waterloo Bridge.
2
It’s surprisingly quiet. Apart from the occasional vehicle hissing past on the damp road, she has the bridge to herself. She stomps onward, ignoring the bright blue corona of the London Eye to her left and the comforting glowing face of Big Ben across the water. Normally she gets a thrill from these sights; loves the reassurance that she no longer lives in a tiny village near Leeds. But it’s too cold and too late for that.
Here, exposed on the bridge, the knifing wind feels mean and personal so she tries to tuck herself down into her coat, tortoise-like.
When she sees the figure ahead of her, she has the disorientating sensation that it is a hallucination, or even something ghostly. It’s partly because of the paleness of the woman’s skin and hair, combined with the clingy, bone-coloured dress. Maybe it’s the sheer incredulity she feels on registering that the woman wears no coat in the small hours of this December night.
The woman stands on the left, facing towards Blackfriars Bridge and the gold-lit Parliament, staring out over the water. She is very still.
Neve involuntarily shivers at the sight of the woman’s thin, bare arms, which hang by her sides. In one hand she carries a small, silver clutch bag.
As Neve approaches, the woman turns to her, with a hopeful look on her face. Neve feels the stab of embarrassment of the Londoner, despite the late hour and the strangeness of the encounter. She dips her head but can tell the woman is watching her. She turns, reluctantly, to face her again.
‘Look, are you okay?’ she says. Her voice sounds hoarse from the cigarettes she smoked with Whatsisface earlier. ‘Haven’t you got anything else to put on?’
The woman shakes her head in a quick, sharp movement and then smiles with something like sympathy. It’s almost as if Neve is the odd, vulnerable one rather than the other way around.
Make-up-less, apart from a slash of scarlet lipstick, the woman is startlingly beautiful, with wide pale eyes and a full mouth. Unlike Neve’s thick, dark blonde hair, the other woman’s is so pale it’s almost white. It is pinned at the sides and falls in silky waves around her thin, white shoulders. Her waxen skin is almost blue from the cold.
She’s clearly not poor, thinks Neve, eyeing her. The dress is made from some kind of ivory silk and clings fluidly to her slim frame. It’s almost unnatural, the way it hangs in a sweeping circle around her feet. A princess dress. The words float into Neve’s brain from some childish part of herself and she’s a little ashamed.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asks with a sigh. This one brief exchange means she now has a sense of responsibility to this woman. It’s why no one usually bothers in London.
She should know better. She delves into her handbag and pulls out her purse.
‘Look, I haven’t got much,’ she says, ‘but I can probably stand you a night bus. What happened to your coat?’
A particularly vicious gust of wind sweeps across the bridge, making both women take a step to the side. The bitter cold is ramping up Neve’s headache now and the other woman’s silence is starting to get on her nerves. Maybe she doesn’t speak English?
Neve has had enough and is about to walk away when the other woman finally speaks.
‘You’re lovely,’ she says. Not only is she English, but she has the refined, smooth voice of the girls who always looked down on Neve at school. The swishy-haired ones who dominated the sixth form common room.
‘I’m not, not really.’ Neve feels strangely annoyed by this compliment. ‘I can see how cold you are, that’s all.’ She pauses. ‘Look, I’ve just had a totally shit evening too. Is this about a bloke? Have you had a row with someone?’
The woman makes a non-committal sound that Neve takes to be assent and takes a step closer.
‘He’s not worth it,’ she says. ‘Trust me. And no offence, that’s a lovely dress and everything but you really will get hypothermia wandering about like that.’
‘What’s your name?’ the woman says quietly. Neve sighs again. Why did she get sucked into a conversation? Her instinct is to tell the woman to mind her own business but she is too tired now. Her heels hurt. Her head aches. It’s freezing here.
‘It’s Neve.’ Neve wraps her arms around herself as a shudder of cold mingles with a yawn.
‘Neve … what?’ says the woman.
Neve stares at her.
‘Why?’
‘Please?’ says the woman, and her eyes sparkle. She makes a small, desolate sound in her throat. Neve takes another step towards her.
‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Don’t cry.’
‘Please,’ says the woman emphatically. ‘Can you just tell me your name?’
Neve stares at her for a moment before replying. ‘Neve … Neve Carey. Um, what’s yours?’
‘Isabelle,’ says the woman in barely a whisper, and then, with more force, ‘Neve, will you do something for me?’
She pictures herself getting on the night bus with this strange wraithlike creature and both of them rocking up at Lou’s. Clearing her throat, she has to work hard not to sound sulky.
‘Uh, yes, I guess,’ she says. ‘But it depends on what it is.’
Isabelle opens the clutch bag and produces a small brown envelope. ‘I want you to take this.’
Neve hesitates and eyes it suspiciously. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s a gift. For being kind to me.’
Neve takes a step back and holds up her palms. ‘Look, I’ve done nothing. I just don’t want you freezing to death on my conscience. I’m not that kind, trust me. I’m actually a bit of a cow. Ask anyone.’
‘You are kind,’ says Isabelle quietly. ‘I can sense it. Will you take this, just to humour me? Say you will. Say it.’
Neve stares back at the woman, discomfited by her intense, strange manner.
A passing car washes them with its headlights. For a moment Isabelle looks cadaverous, her eyes sunk in deep pockets of shadow.
‘It’s important,’ she says fiercely. ‘Please.’
Neve is so unnerved now that all she can do is thrust out her hand and take the envelope.
Isabelle’s shoulders droop and she seems to shrink in on herself.
‘Thank you,’ she says quietly. ‘Thank you so much.’
She fumbles inside the bag and, after producing a mobile phone, turns away and whispers something quietly into it. The she returns the phone to the bag and looks at Neve. Her eyes are gleaming now, as if she is close to tears.
‘You should go,’ she says thickly. ‘I’ll be fine here.’
It’s tempting.
Neve sighs heavily.
‘Come on,’ she says, ‘let’s get the fuck off this freezing cold bridge. Where do you need to get to? I can—’
‘No.’ The sharp retort makes her gasp. ‘I’m sorry. But you need to go now. Leave me here. You shouldn’t be—’
She seems to bite the end of her sentence off and, for the first time, Neve sees that she is terrified in a way Neve has never witnessed before in real life.
Neve crosses her arms.
‘No way,’ she says. ‘I’m not leaving you here. It’s bloody cold and—’
She yelps as Isabelle lunges, kissing her quickly on each cheek with cold, dry lips. Her grip is surprisingly strong. Neve feels a flash of fear as Isabelle’s lips brush her ear.
‘I’m sorry. Please forgive me. And keep it, if you can bear to.’
Then she turns to face the water and, in one neat movement, climbs over the side of the railing and jumps into the river.
3
Neve sits in the back of the police car now, wrapped in a silver thermal blanket as blue light smears rhythmically across the windows. The hiss and crackle of the radio begins to fade as icy rain pounds onto the roof of the vehicle.
The RNLI had arrived first, confusing her with their jaunty logo because she thought they were people who rescued you at sea. They came with astonishing speed after she made the call. Later she would learn that one of their emergency stations was situated close to Waterloo Bridge.
They arrived before the police. Neve’s phone had died before she could finish the conversation with the operator so for ten surreal minutes before the police car had arrived, she’d stood on the bridge alone, looking down at the boat as it turned slow circles in the blackness below, its spotlight swishing back and forth. She half thought about hurrying away and leaving them to it. But it seemed desperately sad that this stranger should have no one apart from the emergency services rooting for her to be found.
So instead she kept up the vigil, staring into the depths below. Her heart had jolted when she saw something white swell and roll in the water, then she realized it was a large plastic bottle. The sensation of relief, that she wouldn’t have to jump in and attempt a rescue, had almost buckled her at the knees.
Later, she would understand that no one would expect her – someone with only average swimming ability – to try and rescue a drowning woman from the Thames in winter. But guilt periodically comes in a bright, sharp jab under her ribs. This at least is a sensation she recognizes.
When the police arrived she’d told them what happened in jerky, shocked sentences. They’d gently encouraged her to start again from the beginning and tell them the whole story.
Now here she is, in the strange aftermath and she can’t stop shivering. Every now and then a particularly strong shudder jerks through her, which makes her clench her jaw. It’s unnerving. She read somewhere that shock can be dangerous in some physiological way she doesn’t really understand and wonders whether she ought to ask for something from the ambulance crew.
She looks out the window and sees through the condensation and raindrops that one of the RNLI men is talking to the policewoman. It’s the small, Northern one with tight curly hair and an efficient air about her. The policewoman nods and then glances at the car. Neve draws back, as though caught doing something wrong.
The door of the police car opens, but it is the young black officer who pokes his head in and peers at her.
‘You alright, love?’ he says gently. He has pretty eyes, thickly lashed, and a cold that clogs his voice and makes him fumble for a tissue. He honks into it and regards her.
Neve nods.
‘Look,’ he says, ‘we have been informed by the rescue crew that the tide is very strong tonight and the weather is taking a turn for the worse. They’ve made the decision that they aren’t going to continue the search.’ He pauses. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying?’
His formal words are countered by the kindness in his face.
‘I think so,’ she says in a small voice. ‘There’s no hope. Will she just … stay down there?’
He makes a face.
‘Probably not,’ he continues, ‘but it can take a little while for, uh, people to wash up at this stretch of the Thames.’ He pauses. ‘Was she a friend of yours, the woman who jumped in?’
Neve swallows, picturing the moment again.
The shocking speed of it all. Cold, dry lips on her cheek and clawed hands gripping her shoulders. The bright flash of the dress as she tipped herself up and over into the black water.
‘I was just walking past,’ she says. ‘I don’t know her at all. I was just … going home and there she was. I started talking to her. And then she …’ she swallows. ‘She just did it. Right in front of me.’
The policeman makes an indeterminate sound of sympathy, his head to the side.
It’s only now Neve remembers the envelope, realizing she must have dropped it on the pavement in the shock of the moment. ‘Look, she gave me something,’ she says. ‘An envelope? There was something really strange about it. I only took it to stop her being weird.’ She swallows again, feels a tremble judder through her and then she laughs, loud and inappropriately. ‘But it didn’t work, did it!’
The policeman nods. ‘We’ve got that, also her phone and bag. In a bit we’ll get a written statement and then get you home. Bit of a rough night. You’ll feel better tomorrow.’
Neve nods gratefully, her eyes brimming.
4
It’s almost six a.m. when the police car pulls up in front of Lou and Steve’s building on a leafy street in Kentish Town. It’s still dark outside. Several windows are lit. A handful of people are quietly closing front doors, slinging bags over shoulders and jamming in earbuds, walking, hunched with fatigue, down the road to the tube.
Neve thanks the two police officers, noticing the lingering look from the attractive black one. As she closes the car door she realizes gratefully that she is so late home her sister will almost certainly be up, tending to her eleven-month-old baby, Maisie.
The car pulls away and Neve makes her way carefully down the slippery steps that lead to the kitchen.
Lou and Steve live on the bottom two floors of the tall Victorian building and she is hoping she can alert Lou’s attention through the window rather than ringing the bell and waking the entire household.
But she realizes with a sinking heart that all the lights are off in the kitchen. It would be typical if Maisie had chosen to sleep through for the first time ever, on this of all nights.
Then she sees her sister, swaddled in the long baggy cardigan she wears as a dressing gown at the sink, Maisie on her shoulder, as upright and alert as a meerkat. The baby sees her aunt and waves sweetly, opening and closing her fingers over her fist.
Neve returns the wave with a weak smile. Lou turns and Neve sees rather than hears her shocked yelp. Lou disappears back through the kitchen door and a few moments later the front door a level up is noisily unbolted and opened.
Lou stands in the entrance and peers out at her sister as she climbs the steps. Her face is puffy and Neve can see right away that she has had a bad night. Lou’s eyes look small and pink, like a rabbit’s. She has patches of dry skin on her cheeks, which are flushed, as though she is the one teething and not Maisie.
‘God, look at you,’ she says. ‘Is this you just coming home? I thought you were in bed. Oh … Neve? What on earth is it?’
Neve doesn’t have any more tears but is suddenly overcome with the need for human comfort. She stumbles towards her sister, longing to hide her face in the woollen softness of her ample shoulder. To be held like a child and told everything will be okay.
‘I can’t really …’ says Lou with a sharp laugh, ‘Maisie, stop wriggling!’ The little girl pushes against her aunty with hands and feet and revs like a car in protest. All three of them awkwardly clash against each other.
Cheeks flushed, Neve walks off into the kitchen.
She should know better, she thinks. They’ve never exactly been huggers, her and Louise.
She goes to the kettle and can feel it has only recently boiled. She opens the neatly labelled jar of coffee and taps some roughly into a mug that says, ‘WORLD’S NICEST MUMMY’, knowing it will annoy Lou that she is using this cup and that she isn’t bothering with a spoon.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ says Lou from the doorway. ‘Has something happened?’
Sloshing water from the kettle into the cup, Neve then fumbles in the drawer for a spoon and adds two spoons of sugar before lifting it to her lips and chugging the bitter, lukewarm coffee down. Lou and Steve don’t believe in proper coffee.
‘Honestly, Neve,’ Lou continues in a low, tolerant voice, ‘Lottie is getting to an age when she’s going to start asking questions about why her aunty has stayed out all night. You can’t just come in looking like something the cat dragged in when you are in a family home. Don’t you think that it’s time you—’
‘I watched a woman commit suicide tonight. Right in front of me.’
Lou’s eyes widen and she slaps her free hand across her mouth.
‘Oh God, no. Where? On the tube?’
Maisie grizzles. She buries her face into her mother’s shoulder, squidging her legs up and rounding her back.
Lou swings from side to side. She is always moving to some maternal metronome inside her, even when she isn’t holding a child. She shushes and pats the baby’s back, her eyes pinned to Neve’s face.
‘Where? What happened?’
Neve goes to fill the kettle again and Lou bustles over.
‘Here, let me get that. You sit down and tell me everything. You look awful. Are you warm enough?’ Lou is finally in her comfort zone. Looking after people’s physical needs is what she does best.
Neve does as she’s told, sitting, and shakes her head to indicate that no, she isn’t warm enough. She can’t envisage ever being warm again, in fact. Lou leaves the room and comes back with a travel blanket from the sofa. Neve wraps it around her neck and shoulders, trying to ignore the vaguely sickly smell emanating from it, thanks to various small, dirty hands.
As Lou makes her another coffee she begins to tell her about what happened, starting with walking across the bridge.
‘Wait,’ Lou interrupts her straight away, a deep frown on her face. ‘Was this after your work thing? Have you been at a police station all night?’
Neve sighs. She’s tempted to lie then she thinks, why should I?
‘I’d been back to someone’s house,’ she says, as a compromise. The hotel really does sound so sleazy. Despite their decidedly agnostic upbringing, Lou has turned a bit Christian since meeting church-goer Steve.
She looks her sister directly in the eye as she says this and Lou looks down at the baby’s head and pats her back gently.
‘Okay,’ she says patiently. ‘Go on …’
Neve tells her the rest of the story in a series of terse sentences.
‘What a thing,’ says Lou in wonder. ‘What a terrible thing.’
They sit in silence.
It is only as Neve is slipping gratefully into her chilly bed and fighting off the returning shivers that she remembers she didn’t tell her sister about the strange exchange with the envelope.
I wonder what was in it, she thinks as scrambled images race across her mind. Finally, as she begins to warm up for the first time since she left Whatsisname’s hotel room, she tips into sleep.
5
Neve doesn’t have any difficulty in recalling what happened when she wakes. There’s no moment of mental filing from night to day. It’s right there at the forefront of her mind.
A woman talked to me and then she jumped off the bridge.
Isabelle. Her name was Isabelle.
She cracks her sore eyes open and gazes up at the white meringue swirl of the ceiling rose above her.
From downstairs she hears the squawks and shrieks of CBeebies, Maisie’s low-level grizzling and the rumble of Steve’s voice.
The thought of being with them all makes her groan and turn her face into the pillow.
Steve has never actually said he doesn’t want her there. Neither has Lou.
But she sees the looks that slide between them when she’s forgotten to wash up, or left a glass and plate on the patio. Her toiletries had been a growing skyline on the bathroom shelf and every morning she sees that they have been tidied and grouped together. Steve practically follows her around with a dustpan and brush.
It’s not like she’s deliberately taking the piss. She really is grateful that they’re putting her up like this. It’s just that mess seems to follow her. She can enter a room and within minutes has laid her keys in one place, her handbag somewhere else and where did she put her phone again?
Steve doesn’t drink much, doesn’t smoke and doesn’t even swear. He runs, he cycles, he plays five-a-side football with people from the large insurance company where he works. He has two comfortably off parents and likes to think of himself as a hands-on dad to his daughters.
He is almost completely lacking in a sense of humour.
Unfortunately, people like Steve bring out the worst in Neve. The little pursed crease at the corner of his mouth as she sloshes more red wine into a glass, or says, ‘Fuck me, it’s cold,’ only eggs her on.
She’d passed him on the way back from the shower early the other morning, dressed in only a towel. He’d kept his eyes so averted it had given her a wicked urge to drop the towel just to see what would happen. He’d probably have spontaneously combusted, like that picture of the sad stockinged leg in a pile of ash she’d seen in her dad’s old Unexplained part-work magazine as a little girl.
Steve’s prudishness has got worse since an evening a couple of weeks before. They’d all got unexpectedly drunk together. Steve only had a couple of beers but had loosened up enough that Neve found herself quite liking him.
But she’d made a smutty joke while helping him load the dishwasher after Lou had stumbled off to bed and he’d reacted as though he’d been bitten by a snake. Neve can’t even really remember what she’d said now. Somehow, his brain had interpreted this as her coming on to him in some way and ever since he’d avoided eye contact.
He clearly thought she was some sort of mad sex fiend now who would jump on him, were it not for the restraints of him being married to her older sister.
It was all so tedious.
Neve gets out of bed feeling like an old woman and wraps herself in her dressing gown before heading to the bathroom. Thank God it’s Saturday, although these days, the pleasures of the weekend are tempered by being a) more or less homeless and b) miserably single.
When she goes into the kitchen she sees Steve at the sink, carefully cutting sandwiches into fingers. He has already been for a run; she can tell by the ruddy glow of his cheeks. He will no doubt have a long cycle later, just at the time the girls are needing their tea. Neve has noticed this, that he manages to live exactly like he had before kids, yet gets praised for the little he does with them.
‘Morning,’ she says and goes to fill the kettle.
‘Lou told me what happened,’ says Steve, without preamble. ‘That sounds a bit grim.’
She’s about to reply when a high fluting voice floats through from the adjoining sitting room.
‘What’s grim, Daddy?’
Lottie appears below them. She peers up, scrutinizing them. Neve loves her four-year-old niece but somehow always feels as though she has been assessed and found to be wanting in some way. Maybe it’s a genetic thing.
She has black hair like her mother, but it bounces and jiggles around her head in spirals. Her eyes are very pale blue, like Steve’s, and her small snub nose is dusted with dark freckles.
Steve reaches over and chucks her under the chin.
‘Never you mind, Miss Lotts. Are you ready to go to the Heath?’
But Lottie is not to be deterred so easily.
‘Did something happen to Aunty Neve?’ she says. Neve and Steve exchange glances.
‘Why would you say that?’ says Steve.
The little girl hoicks her cuddly lamb higher under her armpit and regards them both seriously.
‘Because Mummy said you must be nice to her today and you said God, I’ll try but I’m not promising anything. And then Mummy hit you on the arm.’
Steve barks a sharp embarrassed laugh. ‘Well …’
Neve smiles weakly.
‘I’m fine, Lot,’ she says. ‘Nothing wrong with me, look.’ She holds her arms up and does a strange little turn. She’s not sure why she has done it.
Lottie runs back into the living room, mind already elsewhere. Steve ferociously begins organizing snacks, head bent as he chops carrots and decants houmous into a Tupperware pot.
Neve makes herself coffee and toast.
‘Anyway,’ says Steve now in a low voice. ‘Sorry about the … thing … that happened. Must have been rough to see.’
‘Thanks,’ murmurs Neve. ‘It was.’
Half an hour later the family are ready to go. Maisie arches her back and complains as she is strapped into the buggy, while Lou says encouraging things with a bright, cheerful voice that feels like nails on glass to Neve’s ear.
They call goodbye to Neve, who collapses with relief onto the sofa and takes out her phone, grateful that she remembered to charge it when she got home.
Her thumb moves across the screen and before she can stop herself she has stroked up Daniel’s number. She hovers over it, filled with a dragging desire to speak to him.
Before she can change her mind she taps out a message.
Can I come round 2 pick up few things?
She hesitates and then adds an N and an X. Just the one.
Neve is suddenly desperate to tell him what happened last night and once again begins to shuffle through the pack of images in her head.
She thinks about the first sight of her, Isabelle, looking across the water. It seems strange now that Neve’s first thought wasn’t that she was a potential suicide. Ridiculous, in fact. But she’d been cold and tired. Still a bit drunk, not to mention a little humiliated by what had happened with Whatsisname. She wasn’t really thinking straight.
With a shiver she remembers those last seconds; the cold lips on her cheek and the whispered words in her ear.
What had she said? She should remember a soon-to-be-dead woman’s last words. Isn’t that the very least she can do?
Neve holds her head tightly in her hands and stares at the wooden floorboards splashed with pale winter sun, trying to dredge up the exact memory.
But it has gone.
So instead she taps on Safari and searches for local news about a woman jumping off a bridge. Of course there is nothing. She realizes as she is doing it that this is not even news for London. She wonders how many people have thrown themselves into the Thames in the last year. Probably loads.
Her phone pings with a text and she snatches it up.
Not around much this week and away for Xmas. Can we make it in the NY.
There’s no question mark. No D. And no X.
And before she gets any warning that it is coming, she is crying. Hard, hot tears course down her face and she clamps her arms around herself, rocking with grief.
6
Neve’s office is set to close for Christmas a couple of days later.
Portland Cavendish Crafts is a publisher of specialist magazines on Gray’s Inn Road. Across from the reception desk at which Neve sits for eight mind-numbingly boring hours every day is a stand filled with various magazines with cheerful titles in colourful fonts, titles such as Cross Stitch Crazy and Creative Craft Weekly.
When she had first started here, she’d vaguely thought she might become a journalist. Wasn’t this the kind of career thing successful people said? They were all, ‘Oh, I started out making tea and now I am the Controller of the BBC,’ and the like. She imagined herself laughing fondly about the funny old magazines she used to write for, before she was taken on in some blurrily defined way for a more glamorous position elsewhere.
She doesn’t particularly want to be a journalist anyway, which is a good thing because five years on she’s still answering the telephone and saying, ‘PCC, can I help you?’
More often than not she says, ‘No, I’m sorry, this isn’t the Police or the Press Complaints Commission,’ and, ‘No, that’s IPC. It’s a different magazine company.’
The rest of the time she photocopies things and tries to do as little work as humanly possible while still getting paid a salary. A terrible salary, but it had been just enough to live on when she was with Daniel.
Now that she is staying with Lou and Steve, it’s almost but not quite enough to live on. But it certainly isn’t enough to live on judging by the flat shares she sees circled pointedly in Biro by Steve on the dining room table.
This is one of the things that causes icy licks of fear in Neve’s stomach late at night.
Now she attends to the few admin jobs required before the office closes and ponders miserably the thought of a whole week under Lou and Steve’s feet.
His prim parents are coming for Christmas Day and she can already feel the claustrophobia of sitting around the table and wishing someone else would have a second glass of wine.
She hears a loud out-breath now and looks up to see Miri, bent over the photocopier. Her friend is tiny – barely five feet – and with her swollen body is now almost as wide as she is tall. She kneads a fist into her back and groans quietly.
Neve told Miri all about the woman on the bridge as soon as she was back at work. Once, Miri would have been agog at a story like this but late pregnancy has made her formerly feisty friend oddly fearful about the world. Miri looked away from her as she described the moment Isabelle jumped off the bridge; Neve had sensed she didn’t really want to hear it, even though she had made the right noises and hugged her friend awkwardly, the hard bullet of her belly nudging Neve’s side.
A few moments later she had scurried away, eyes gleaming. It made Neve feel as though she was the one who had done something shocking and violent.
She’s gazing balefully at her friend now when someone comes through the double doors and stops by the desk. It’s Fraser, the editor of Modeller Monthly, a magazine filled with stories about model trains that is, bafflingly to Neve, one of CPP’s best sellers.
He’s only in his thirties but favours tweedy academic-looking jackets and, with his unfashionable glasses and thin pale hair, looks much older. He behaves as though he’s the editor of a major broadsheet and heaven help anyone who cracks jokes about the readership, as Neve has done many times.
It’s why, she thinks, he likes to throw his weight around with her, and gets her to do silly little admin jobs he’s perfectly capable of doing himself.
She pretends not to notice him, so he has to clear his throat. It’s childish, but she takes her pleasures where she can in this job. Looking up, she rewards him with a beaming smile, all teeth and sparkly eyes, which makes the tips of his ears flush almost purple.
‘Uh, yes, Neve,’ he says, quickly, ‘I wonder if I can trouble you to do something for me.’
Neve leans over, conspiratorial, and says, ‘Fraser, you know that serving your needs is what I live for.’
She’s hoping Miri will hear and that they can snigger about it later, but she glances over to see that Miri has finished her copying job and gone.
‘I did actually email you about this earlier,’ Fraser says pointedly and Neve, chastised, lets her grin slide away.
‘Phones have been crazy,’ she lies.
‘Yes, well, anyway, there was a problem with some of the subs for Creative Stamp Monthly and Weave It,’ he says. ‘I need you to send out a standard apology letter to the readers affected.’ He pauses and his eyes gleam as he adds, ‘There are quite a few. Should keep you busy for a while.’ He hands her a sheet of paper, dense with names and addresses.
Neve takes it from him and murmurs that she will get on to it. As he moves away with his quick, pigeon-toed walk, she watches him go and thinks there’s no sport in this job any more. She is suddenly filled with an overwhelming weariness.
She turns the switchboard to the answering machine and goes to the Ladies to hide for a while. Inside the cubicle she blows her nose furiously until the desire to cry passes.
When she is washing her hands she hears a flushing toilet. She’d thought she was the only one in there and is relieved when it’s Miri who emerges from the cubicle.
‘Christ on a bike,’ says her friend. ‘I swear it would be easier to wear a nappy and be done with it. That’s the sixth time I’ve had to pee since nine.’ She pauses and sees Neve’s blotchy face. ‘Oh, what’s the matter, honey? Thinking about Mum and Dad?’
One of the many reasons Neve loves Miri is that her friend is capable of mentioning Neve’s orphan state.
Neve shrugs and washes her hands. When she speaks, her voice is thick and snotty.
‘Not really. Just … this place, you know? Can’t believe I’m still here sometimes.’
Miri washes her hands and regards her in the mirror, her brow creased and her eyes soft.
‘Well you’re not alone there,’ she says kindly. ‘Anyway, not long now until the holidays.’
Neve snorts, impatiently.
‘Yeah, I’m really excited about Christmas,’ she says, deadpan, then makes a doomy face in the mirror.
‘Spending it with Mr and Mrs Tight Arse?’ says Miri doing a pert, rabbitty gesture with hands bent like paws.
‘Yep,’ says Neve. ‘Yay.’
Miri sighs. ‘You know I’d have you to mine in a shot,’ she says, ‘but I have several million aunties and uncles coming over in order to create my own festive hell.’ She slips into a broad Indian accent and waggles her head, ‘You need to eat a bit more, Amira-Ji, or that baby is going to come out a lanky bean like his father.’
Neve laughs as she throws the tissue into the bin.
‘Arjan is dreading it,’ continues Miri with a sigh. ‘It’s his first one where he hasn’t been on call and he’d rather be there. Can you imagine preferring to help sick people than have a family gathering? That’s my lot for you.’ Miri holds her hand up with a flourish, as though revealing words on a banner. ‘The Sharma family: Not quite as much fun as a winter vomiting virus.’
Neve laughs and feels cheered up, a little.
Miri pauses before speaking. ‘Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Did you find out anything else about that woman? The one who killed herself?’
Neve shakes her head, mood instantly sinking again. ‘I tried Googling it,’ she says. ‘But I think too many people in London top themselves for it to be news.’
Miri makes a disapproving sound in her throat. ‘That’s depressing. Still,’ she says, perking up, ‘for all you know, they may have rescued her. Why don’t you ring the police and ask someone? You have the right to know. You were there, after all.’
Neve takes her mobile out into the stairwell for privacy.
It takes ages for her to be put through to anyone who can help. She starts off with 999, then is directed to another department. Finally, after being on hold for almost five minutes, she’s connected with a bored-sounding woman who tells her someone will look on the system for further information and then puts her on hold again.
Neve sighs and entertains the possibility of hanging up. But no, she needs to see this through.
Eventually a different woman comes to the phone. She sounds a little warmer.
‘Hello, you were asking about the suicide from Waterloo Bridge on December twenty-first?’ she says.
‘Yes, that’s right.’ Neve’s heart speeds up and she finds herself clutching the receiver, her hand damp. There’s a pause.
‘I’m afraid a body was found the following morning.’
‘Oh …’ Neve puffs out the word in a sigh. She didn’t know what else she had been expecting, but the news still feels electric and cold in her stomach.
‘Did you know the individual?’ the woman continues brightly.
‘Well, no, I was just there. You see …’
She finds herself recounting the whole thing again, while the woman on the other end of the phone clucks, ‘Oh dear’ and ‘What a shame,’ at key points.
When she has finished, the woman lowers her voice a fraction before speaking again. ‘Look,’ she says. ‘It’s very common in these situations to feel guilty and think you could have done something. But put it this way, this was someone who was serious.’
‘What do you mean?’ says Neve, sitting forward in her chair.
‘Well,’ there’s a pause, ‘she made certain provisions to make sure she sank quickly.’
Neve quickly scans her memories of what the woman, Isabelle, had looked like. There was no coat that could be filled with stones, à la Virginia Woolf. She wasn’t carrying anything. So how on earth did she weigh herself down enough to drown? She pictures that silky dress, clinging to Isabelle’s thin frame. The swishiness of it and the jarring sense that it was from another, more glamorous time.
‘I just don’t get it,’ she says miserably. ‘She was only wearing an evening dress.’
There’s a brief silence and then the woman speaks all in a rush. ‘Look, I’m not sure whether I ought to release this information without the family’s permission but you were the one who had to see it all so, well …’
She clears her throat and lowers her voice further. ‘It was the hem of her dress, you see,’ she says. ‘She’d sewed lead curtain tape all around the bottom of it. This was enough extra weight for someone of that size to sink.’
Neve’s stomach lurches. ‘Oh God,’ she says. ‘That’s awful.’
‘Yes, it’s terrible,’ says the woman. ‘She had obviously done her homework. In that stretch of the Thames, most people are rescued before there’s any prospect of drowning, you see. Such a shame. She really meant business, the poor thing.’
Ücretsiz ön izlemeyi tamamladınız.
