Authors: Clare Mackintosh
Sheer relief prompted tears to form in Kelly’s eyes. She blinked them away and picked up her phone, swiping through apps in search of distraction. She scrolled through her Facebook feed, filled with photos of decorated Christmas trees and tiny snowmen made from the pathetic smattering of snow they’d had the previous night. A status update from Lexi caught her eye.
A few more wrinkles
, she’d posted,
but still the same Durham g
an
g
!
They’d recreated a photograph from their student days; Lexi posting the two side by side, prompting a stream of amused comments from the friends and family of those tagged. In both pictures Lexi had the biggest grin of anyone in the group, and Kelly couldn’t help but smile.
Great photos, she typed. You haven’t changed a bit.
Matt
drives carefully, taking every corner slowly and approaching speed bumps as though I’ve broken a bone. The hospital insisted on checking me over thoroughly, in spite of my insistence that – aside from the cut on my neck, which required no stitches – Melissa hadn’t touched me.
I was placed in a bed next to Katie; treated for shock but otherwise unharmed. The ward nurse gave up on keeping us separate, eventually opening the dividing curtain so we could see each other. We’d only been there half an hour when Isaac arrived, racing through the doors without any of his usual assurance.
‘Kate! My God, are you okay? I came as quickly as I could.’ He sits on the side of her bed and takes her hands, his eyes travelling over her face, her body, looking for injuries. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘I’m fine. I’m so sorry about tonight’s show.’
‘Christ, don’t worry about that. I can’t believe what you’ve been through.’
‘But everyone’s tickets—’
‘I’ll give them a refund. Forget about the play, Kate. It’s not important. You are.’ He kisses her on the forehead, and for the first time he doesn’t look as though he’s putting on a performance. He really does like her, I realise. And she likes him.
He looks up and our eyes meet, and I wish the curtain hadn’t been pulled back after all. I can’t read his expression, and I don’t know if mine says all I want it to.
‘You’ve
had quite a time of it,’ he says.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m glad it’s all over for you.’ He pauses, emphasising what comes next. ‘Hopefully you’ll be able to forget about it now. Put everything that happened in the past.’ If Katie is wondering why her boyfriend is taking such care over the way he speaks to her mother, she doesn’t comment on it. Isaac holds my gaze, as if wanting to make sure I’ve understood. I nod.
‘I hope so, too. Thank you.’
‘Nearly there,’ Matt says now. Simon, sitting next to me in the back seat of the cab, puts his arm around my shoulder, and I rest my head against him.
I told him in the hospital I had thought he was the one behind the website. I had to – the guilt was consuming me.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say now.
‘Don’t be. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. You must have felt as though you couldn’t trust anyone.’
‘That notebook …’ I remember the scribbled notes I’d seen; the woman’s name, her clothing. How convinced I’d been that I was holding evidence of a crime.
‘Jottings for my novel,’ Simon says. ‘I was creating characters.’
I’m grateful that Simon has taken it in his stride; that he seems not the slightest bit offended to be accused of something so horrific. On the other side of Simon, Katie gazes out of the window as we near Crystal Palace; Justin is in front of her, in the passenger seat next to Matt. Isaac has gone into town to handle the disappointed theatre-goers and convince them to come and see the show tomorrow evening, when Katie is adamant she’ll be fit to go on stage.
How can everything look as though nothing has happened?
On the edge of the road, grey slush dirties the pavements and drips from the top of buildings. A sorry excuse for a snowman sits in the walled yard outside the primary school, its carrot
long since lost. People are heading out for the evening, while others are still coming home from work, checking phones as they walk, oblivious to the world around them.
We drive past Melissa’s café, and I can’t stop the intake of breath; the tiny cry that escapes me. All the times I’ve joined her there after work for a cup of tea; given her a hand with the lunchtime prep. There’s a light on in the café, casting dark shadows as it falls on the unstacked tables and chairs.
‘Should you go and close up properly?’ I ask Justin. He turns to look at me.
‘I don’t want to go in there, Mum.’
I can understand that. I don’t, either. Even just being in Anerley Road is making my pulse quicken, and I feel a fresh wave of hatred for Melissa for sullying the memories of a place in which I’ve loved living. I never imagined moving again, but now I wonder if we might. A fresh start for Simon and me. Space for Justin and Katie, of course, but a new chapter for us all.
We pass the Tube station. I’m seized by the image of Katie, walking towards the entrance and looking up at the cameras; terrified, yet determined to succeed. Determined to save me.
I glance at her, wondering what she’s thinking, but her profile gives nothing away. She’s so much stronger than I gave her credit for.
‘What will happen now?’ Matt asks. It was all over by the time I called him, and he walked into the hospital to find his ex-wife and his daughter in a bizarre assortment of garments that Simon had hastily gathered from home. The police seized the clothes we’d been wearing at Melissa’s house. They’d been gentle about it, explaining that i’s had to be dotted, and t’s crossed, and that I shouldn’t worry. Everything would be fine.
‘I’ve got to give a voluntary interview next week,’ I reply, ‘then the Crown Prosecution Service will look at the file and make a decision over the following few days.’
‘They
won’t charge you,’ PC Swift reassured me; the furtive glance over her shoulder suggesting she was overstepping the mark with this assertion. ‘It’s very clear you were acting in self-defence.’ She stopped talking abruptly as DI Rampello appeared on the ward, but he nodded in agreement.
‘A formality,’ he said.
As we near the end of Anerley Road I see a police officer in a fluorescent jacket standing in the road. A line of cones closes off one lane, in which two police cars and a white forensics van are still parked, and the police officer is allowing cars to pass in turn. Matt pulls up as close as he can get to the house. He gets out and opens the rear door, helping Katie out and keeping his arm around her as they walk towards the house. Justin follows, his eyes glued to the blue-and-white police tape that flutters in the breeze outside Melissa’s house.
‘Hard to believe, isn’t it, love?’ I say. I pull away from Simon’s embrace and slip my hand into Justin’s. He looks at me, still trying to process everything that’s happened today.
‘Melissa,’ he starts, but words fail him. I know how he feels; I’ve been struggling to find the words ever since it happened.
‘I know, love.’
We wait by the gate, until Simon catches us up and unlocks the door. I don’t look at Melissa’s house, but even without seeing it, I can imagine the white-suited figures in her beautiful kitchen.
Will Neil continue living there? The blood will have dried now, I think, its glossy finish darkening; the edges of each spatter crisping into flakes. Someone will need to clean it, and I imagine them scrubbing and bleaching; the tiles forever hanging on to a shadow of the woman who died there.
My front door swings open. Inside the house is warm and welcoming. I’m comforted by the familiar pile of coats on the banister, and the disorderly heap of shoes by the doormat. Simon
stands to one side, and I follow Katie and Simon indoors.
‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ Matt says. He turns to leave, but Simon stops him.
‘Will you join us for a drink?’ he says. ‘I think we could all do with one.’
Matt hesitates, but only for a second. ‘Sure. That would be great.’
I wait in the hall, taking off my coat, and adding to the pile of shoes by the door. Justin, Katie and Matt go through to the lounge, and I hear Matt asking when the tree’s going up, and if there’s anything they want for Christmas this year. Simon comes out of the kitchen carrying a bottle of wine and a fistful of glasses, their stems precariously slotted between the fingers of one hand.
‘Are you coming through?’ He looks at me anxiously, not sure how to help me. I smile reassuringly and promise that I will.
The door is still ajar, and now I open it a fraction more, and stand with the cold air on my face. I make myself look next door, at Melissa’s front garden with its fluttering police tape.
Not to remind myself what’s happened, but to remind myself that it’s over.
And then I shut the door and go to join my family.
Melissa
never could see the potential for expansion. Couldn’t, or wouldn’t. It wasn’t clear. It was the only thing we ever argued about. She was so clever in many respects; so willing to work with me, so ready to believe in me when no one else would. Yet so short-sighted, in other ways.
Things were fine as they were, she said, we were making money. Why rock the boat? But I knew we could do so much more, and it frustrated me that she wouldn’t accept that. Some entrepreneur she turned out to be.
She liked to think of herself as my mentor, but the truth is; she needed me more than I needed her. She would never have hidden her tracks as successfully without me.
Melissa was nothing without me.
The game of cat and mouse – hunting Katie across London; that was my idea.
The two of them wouldn’t let it lie, and the police were getting closer all the time.
A final fling,
I told Melissa.
Do this, and you can disappear to Rio with 80 per cent of everything we’ve made, and no one will ever find you.
It had been a good partnership, but it was time for us both to move on.
Oh yes, 80 per cent.
Ever the hard-nosed business woman. Even though it was me who placed the adverts, me who hacked the CCTV system, me who approached the clients – with a little help from Neil’s address book. And what did I get for all that? 20 fucking per cent.
Do
this,
I told Melissa.
Play this game, and walk away. Do it for me. Do it because I’ve helped you, and now it’s your turn to help me.
And she did.
I saw Katie’s profile go out and I knew it had started. I felt my blood pulse and I wondered if Melissa was excited. We’d never done anything like this before, but it felt right. It felt good.
As for Katie … I considered this payback. Payback not only for her constant need for attention, but for being the favourite. For never being in trouble; never bringing the police to the door or getting thrown out of school.
It was payback for
her,
too.
Zoe.
From your loving son.
Payback for leaving Dad even though he’d sacrificed everything for her. Payback for taking me away from my friends. Payback for fucking a man she’d only just met, before she was even divorced, then bringing him into our house without caring what I thought.
They think they’ve won the game, now that Melissa’s dead. They think it’s all over.
They’re wrong.
This is just the beginning.
I don’t need Melissa, I don’t need adverts in the
Gazette,
I don’t need the website.
I have the concept, I have the technology, and I have a mailing list of customers all interested in the sort of niche service I can provide for them.
And of course, I have you.
Hundreds of thousands of you, doing the same thing every day.
I see you, but you don’t see me.
Until I want you to.
Clare
Mackintosh spent twelve years in the police force, including time on CID, and as a public order commander. She left the police in 2011 to work as a freelance journalist and social media consultant and is the founder of the Chipping Norton Literary Festival. She now writes full time and lives in the Cotswolds with her husband and their three children.
Clare’s debut novel,
I Let You Go
, is a
Sunday Times
bestseller and was the fastest-selling title by a new crime writer in 2015. It was selected for both the Richard and Judy Book Club, where it was the winning title of the readers’ vote for the summer 2015 selection, and ITV’s
Loose Women’s
Loose
Books.