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The sequins catch the sunlight. She wobbles slightly, balancing on killer thin black patent stilettos. She’s gripping a small evening bag with both hands.
I get up and start walking over the grassy mound that dominates the middle of the park, sliding my phone into my back pocket and gripping the coffee cup tightly in the other hand, walking across the grass towards the house.
I want to hear what they’re saying.
The chaotic curls that define the children’s hair suggest Alex has just got out of bed.
‘That’s okay. But call me. If you want to,’ the woman says in a high flirting tone that belongs in a bar, not on the doorstep of a posh street.
‘I did say it was a one-off …’
One hand brushes her hair back. ‘Yes.’
If Alex looks across her shoulder he will look at me.
‘But thank you for last night.’ His hand is holding the door, telling her without words he wants to close it.
He’s wearing the same loose grey jeans I saw him wearing through the living-room window last night, and they look like the ones he wore to work on Friday. His T-shirt is creased – as if it has just been picked up off a bedroom floor, but his clothes are always creased. Today, though, his feet are bare as if he’s dressed quickly, solely to say goodbye to this woman; as if they have got up together and he’s only dressed to walk her downstairs.
I doubt there was even a stop for breakfast, his body language is so keen to dispose of her.
The woman takes a single step back. ‘It was my pleasure.’ The clutch bag is moved awkwardly from one hand to the other as she turns away and the door bangs shut, rattling the doorknocker again.
She walks a few paces then stops, fumbling with the catch on her bag. She takes out a cigarette and a lighter, lights it, before carrying on with her walk of shame.
It is obvious what went on in that house last night.
Louise’s spirit lurches, with the leap of a panther racing into my heart. If she had the ability to control my body she would make me run, and make me scratch out that woman’s eyes.
Vengeance becomes a pressing emotion on the back of my tongue, as Louise tries to shout abusive words through my lips.
I don’t care about the woman. He can sleep with whoever he wants to.
But it’s a quick bounce-back for a man whose wife has only recently died.
Louise screams in my ears, trying to focus my attention on her anger. She wants me to feel it.
Did he love Louise?
It’s less than three months since she died in a horrific way. And that was clearly a one-night stand.
A tremor of disgust twists in my stomach. What if the woman is a dangerous bunny-boiler?
Are the children in there? I don’t care about Alex or that woman, but the children …
From the level of anger welling up inside me, I know Louise cared about Alex, though.
Dan let me down.
What about Alex? Has he done this before?
Are most men unable to keep their dicks in their trousers?
Is this why Louise jumped from the car park? Because he’s a cheating bastard.
Now I am angry. I’d like to see revenge dished out on every man who is like Dan. Telling shallow lies about love. Setting up a false shop window about what life would be like with them – from happy ever after to The Little Shop of Horrors.
What if Alex created a family with her and then betrayed her?
Bastard.
I need to get inside that house and save the children from him, not just his nanny.
I walk forward and stand on the edge of the mound, the steep slope dropping away in front of me, down to the wall with the doors for the passages that run under the road.
It is like an ancient moat, a boundary defending the houses on the far side.
Louise is willing me into that house. She’s working in my mind as well as my heart, trying to help me think of a plan. I listen, waiting for the words and ideas she is trying to put there, but I can’t hear them.
‘Is this why you gave me your heart? Because you know I’ll rescue the children, and get them away from him?’
Chapter 18
9 weeks and 5 days after the fall. Day 1, after I saw that woman.
I thrust my fist into the pillow again and lie back down. The pillow feels like a lump of cement tonight even though it is stuffed full of soft downy feathers and releases the aroma of lavender.
I can’t stop thinking. I can’t stop seeing that fucking woman.
Slut.
Louise is so angry her thoughts fizz amongst mine, spitting out from a shaken champagne bottle, and she keeps shaking the bottle; she will not let the anger die.
I thought Louise had a perfect life. Perfect parents. Perfect children. A handsome, wealthy husband. A perfect family.
That was the façade. Behind the scenes Alex was a bastard; that’s what she’s been trying to tell me.
Just like Dan pretending for months with me, while he made another woman pregnant.
Louise and Alex’s marriage produced three beautiful children, but at some point it became loveless. Heartless.
I can feel the embarrassment, pain and loss of Alex’s betrayal oozing like a picked scab – as deeply as I feel my own because of Dan’s. The pain is gathering up in me, in an increasing avalanche, tumbling through my thoughts. Every time I try to sleep, my mind returns me to children’s homes, and hospitals, or sitting in restaurants listening to Dan gush about a love that in the end had no roots.
Alex’s affections are not only as shallow as Dan’s, they are as shallow as my father’s and mother’s.
I think Louise is telling me there were other women before she died, but even if I am wrong and he didn’t have sex with other women, he can’t have loved Louise properly. People who love you do not have sex with a stranger three months after you’ve died.
Louise is loved by her parents, and her children must miss her. But their father …
I am scared now. If his love is that shallow, what might happen to the children?
They need a nanny to look after them and love them as strongly as Louise loved them.
I will love them that much. I will be their mother – if I can get into the house.
I roll over and look at the clock. 3:04. I might as well give up trying to sleep. Maybe if I do something for a while Louise will press an idea into my mind.
I touch the light stand to turn the bedside light on, sit up, pulling the cushion that was on the side of the bed behind me and reach for my laptop.
Robert Dowling’s Facebook page appears as I open the laptop; the last thing that I looked at.
Is Robert Dowling friends with Alex’s nanny? I have glanced through his friends’ faces before, but now I have the picture on my phone to compare with.
Forty minutes later, I can say for certain that she’s not among his Facebook friends.
It was always an unlikely hope. A nanny who shares her social life with her employer’s father-in-law would be rare.
The Facebook pages that Robert Dowling likes include Alex’s business page. I click through to it because I’m still not tired.
If I were working for someone I would take an interest in their business.
About the thirtieth post down, a familiar face appears in a small icon in the comments.
The date of the post is five months ago. Before Louise died.
I click on the image to enlarge it. It is her. The nanny.
She posted a thumbs-up emoji in the comment stream under a picture.
Her name is Susie Brooke.
One click from the tip of my forefinger and I can see Susie Brooke’s Facebook page. It’s private. There is just one profile picture of her, a black screen header and a few shared posts from a music band.
I do not send her a friend request. There’s no point. Younger people are generally more savvy and judgemental about who they befriend online. She would see that she doesn’t know me and wonder why the woman who sits in the park has sent her a friend request in the middle of the night. Then she’d wonder how I know her name.
One thing the page does show me, that I didn’t know, is that she isn’t employed directly by Alex. Her employer is listed as an agency.
I open another search engine tab and type in Shearing and Smith Recruitment Agency. The company specialises in childcare and other household staff.
The name Susan Brooke goes into another search tab. It is a common name. I open Twitter and trawl through accounts with her picture on my phone to compare. Not one Susie Brooke looks like her.
I open Instagram to search there, scanning through face after face. I want to find images that will not be blocked. Images that will tell me how to get rid of her.
There. I see her.
My fingertip taps the screen by her image as I look from that to my phone. It is her. It’s a different picture from the one she used on Facebook but it’s her and the account isn’t private.
The posts open a door into her life. Places she goes to most, where she drinks, where she eats; and her friends are there, in pictures and comments. Patterns emerge as I scroll through the months. A pub, in Bath, where they all meet up. A nightclub in Bristol that she visits at least once a month. A park she takes the children to more than anywhere else.
The music band that was in her Facebook posts appears several times, and lots of those pictures are group selfies, including Susie. She is either a fan or a friend.
Another internet tab and another search takes me to the band’s Facebook page. They’re a local, unsigned band made up of young men – they have 4328 likes on the page and Susie is one of their followers.
They play a lot of gigs in and around Bath. Susie’s profile image appears in nearly all the comment streams and she hearts everything they post.
When I compare Susie’s Instagram posts with the dates and venues the band have performed at, every date aligns with a picture on Susie’s stream.
The floorboards on the landing creak, with the sound of soft, careful steps. Click. Electric light fills the thin gap around the bedroom door. A different sort of light is seeping through the blind covering the window.
I look at the clock. 5:19.
The floorboards continue creaking and I hear a door. The bathroom door.
I close the lid of the laptop, leaving all the tabs open, put it down and turn off the bedside light.
The toilet flushes, the bathroom door opens again and then there are more creaks as my landlady, Pippa, walks back along the landing.
I try to sleep but my mind will not stop spinning with ideas and plans.
Louise is excited. My heart is kicking. She thinks we have taken another step.
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