by B. A. Paris
“And we have a mortice lock on the inside of the front door, so nobody can get in anyway,” I point out. “Unless you to forgot to lock it before we went to bed?”
“No, I don’t think I did. But make sure you lock it tonight, Alice. And carry on asking around, will you? We need to find out who that man was.”
“Will do.”
But there isn’t anyone else to ask. The mystery man has slipped away as easily as he slipped in.
EIGHT
I gather my pillows and quilt together and carry them upstairs, slightly embarrassed at having slept in my study for the last two nights. But when it came to going to bed on Monday evening, I couldn’t bring myself to sleep in the bedroom alone. It wasn’t just that Leo had thought there was someone in the house the previous night, it was also the knowledge that we’d had an uninvited guest. Feeling safer downstairs, I pulled out the sofa bed and slept there.
I re-make our bed, because I can’t sleep downstairs forever, and go to my wardrobe for a pair of jeans. As I take them from the shelf, I see my white sundress, the one I’d wanted to wear on Monday, wedged between two other dresses. I take it out, glad to have found it. If I add a cardigan, I’ll be able to wear it today. As I slip it over my head, the slight scent of washing powder tickles my nose; despite having worn it at the party, it still feels fresh and clean.
The mail comes as I’m having breakfast, bringing a copy of the novel I’ve been commissioned to translate from Italian into English. I like to read books through twice before I start translating, making notes as I go, so I take it through to the study and curl up on the sofa, glad that I’m going to be able to get back into my usual routine of working from nine to seven, four days a week. Until now, I’ve given myself Fridays off so that I could have three-day weekends, but with Leo working from home on Fridays, I’m going to take Thursdays off instead.
It’s hard to concentrate at first, because my mind is still preoccupied by our gate-crasher, wondering if we’ll ever be able to find out who he was. And more importantly, why he turned up, because that’s what’s bothering me most.
Toward the end of the morning, when I’m quite a few chapters in, I hear voices in the road outside. Closing my book, I go through to the sitting room and from the window, see Eve standing in front of the small black wrought-iron gate that leads into the square, chatting to Tamsin and Maria who, judging by the numerous bags they’re carrying, look as if they’re on their way back from the local shops. I watch enviously as they laugh together at something Eve has said. A wave of loneliness hits; I want so much to be part of their group that before I can stop myself, I’m heading out to join them.
I walk down the drive and wait to let a supermarket van pass. It stops in front of Lorna and Edward’s and I cross the road behind it, giving a wave to Edward as he comes out of his house. The three women are no longer laughing but are huddled together, the way people do when they’re talking about something serious, something secret. I curse my bad timing. I don’t want to interrupt them—but it’s too late. Maria has seen me.
“It’s amazing that it doesn’t seem to bother her,” Tamsin is saying as I approach.
“I’m beginning to wonder if she actually knows,” Eve replies.
“Of course she does,” Tamsin scoffs.
Maria looks up brightly and I realize that they were talking about me.
“Hi, Alice, how are you?”
“Fine, thanks,” I say, smiling at her.
Eve and Tamsin turn quickly. They’re both wearing dark sunglasses and I feel even more intimidated at this visual barrier between me and them.
“Alice!” Eve cries, as if she hasn’t seen me for months. She pushes her sunglasses on top of her head and her pixie cut splays out on each side. “What have you been up to?”
“Reading. I heard voices and thought I’d take a break.”
“What are you reading?”
“A book I have to translate.”
“Into which language?” Maria asks.
“English, from Italian.”
“Impressive.”
“Will’s grandmother is Italian and he’s trying to teach me so that I can speak to her, as she doesn’t speak any English,” Eve says. “I’m not managing very well.”
“You should try Russian. It took me ages to be able to hold a conversation.”
Eve looks at Maria in awe. “I didn’t know you spoke Russian.”
“I do, but not very well. I’m not fluent or anything.”
I turn to Tamsin, aware that she’s been silent. Today she’s wearing pale blue jeans and an orange T-shirt, which on any other redhead would look weird. On her, it looks great. “How about you? Do you speak any languages?”
“No.” Her voice is curt.
“Right.” She might not like me but she’s bordering on rude. I look at her appraisingly. She’s stunningly pretty but there’s an air of sadness about her. Suddenly, I want to find out more about these three women.
“I was wondering—would you like to come in for a coffee instead of standing in the road?” I ask. “Unless you have work to do?”
“I don’t!” Eve says. “Not today.”
Maria smiles. “Me neither, so that would be lovely.”
“I can’t.” Tamsin lifts her arms to show her bags of shopping. “I need to go and put this away. But I’ll see you two later.”
I know I shouldn’t take it personally. But I do.
* * *
By the time we’re halfway through a pot of coffee, I’m getting a real picture of who my new neighbors are. Eve and Will have known each other for twenty years and they’re thirty-one now.
“We got together at our school’s theater club,” Eve explains. “He didn’t want to join at first because it was mainly girls. But as we were friends, he began to tag along with me and suddenly everyone realized that he had this amazing talent. Except he wouldn’t do anything about it until I persuaded him to audition for RADA—and he only agreed because I refused to go out with him unless he did.”
“I love that story,” Maria says. “Tim and I met taking our rubbish bins out at uni.”
Maria and Tim are in their late thirties. Tim is a qualified psychologist, working part-time while he undergoes further specialist training in psychotherapy, and Maria is a speech therapist, working four days a week until Luke, their youngest son, starts at nursery.
“I work every day except Wednesday,” she explains. “It’s lovely to have a day off in the middle of the week. It means I can go to yoga with Eve and Tamsin, and pick the boys up from school afterward. Tim does the school runs otherwise.”
“I never work Wednesdays either,” Eve says. “If I did, I’d never see Maria.”
I mentally move my day off from Thursday to Wednesday. The yoga class sounds fun.
“That’s funny, Wednesday is my day off too,” I say with a smile.
I ask about Tamsin and Connor. They’re the same age as Maria and Tim and, as I already knew from Leo, Connor is in whiskey, selling high-end brands to rich clients. Tamsin, who used to be a model—no surprise there—is now a stay-at-home mom.
“She’s also a mathematical genius,” Maria says. She’s dressed from top to toe in black and with her dark hair, she looks amazingly dramatic. “She does all these online courses and once she’s passed her exams, she’s going to set herself up as an accountant.”
“Wow,” I say, impressed. “I’d love to have a mathematical brain.”
“So, have you found out any more about the mystery man?” Eve asks, reaching for a biscuit.
“No. I’m trying not to let it bother me but what I regret most is the effect it’s had on Lorna, because she was the one who let him in. It’s really shaken her.”
“That’s a shame.” Worry chases Eve’s smile away. “She and Edward don’t need any more stress in their lives. Do you know about their son? He was killed in Iraq. He was their only child, which makes it somehow worse.”
“How awful,” I say, shocked.
“It must have been terrible for them.”
“They lived on the coast—Bournemouth, I think—but they moved here three years ago,” Maria says, taking up the story. “Lorna told me that as time passed, the memories dragged them down more, and they wanted a fresh start. They chose London because they loved going to the theater and visiting museums and, because of their advancing age, they’d found the traveling up and down from Bournemouth more difficult. And they were fine for a while, they were really sociable and went out quite a bit, just as they’d planned. But then the whole thing of losing their son caught up with them and they’ve become near recluses. It’s sad really, because they never go anywhere now, not even shopping. They get everything delivered, even their clothes. It’s as if they’ve lost all their confidence.”
“Or their will to live,” I say quietly. I catch them exchanging uneasy glances and decide to get it out there. “It’s just that I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. My parents and sister were killed in a car accident when I was nineteen. I kind of lost the will to live for a while afterward.”
“Oh Alice, that’s awful,” Eve says, reaching for my hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“My sister was only twenty-two. She’d been on vacation in Greece with her boyfriend, and my parents had gone to fetch her at the airport.”
“I can’t imagine what it must have been like.” Maria’s eyes are full of sympathy. “How did you cope?”
“I had my grandparents to think about. I had to be strong for them, and they had to be strong for me. We pulled each other through.”
As I refill their mugs, I’m secretly glad Tamsin didn’t join us. It’s why, when Maria mentioned the yoga class, I didn’t say anything to make her think I was fishing for an invitation to join them, even though I’d like to. I don’t want to get Tamsin’s back up even more. Anyway, didn’t Leo warn me not to rush headlong into friendships?
“Sorry, Alice, but I have to go,” Maria says, bringing me back to the present. “Yoga is at two o’clock and I need to run home and grab my leggings. Eve, I’ll meet you outside.”
“It’s our Wednesday ritual,” Eve explains, once Maria has left. “We have our yoga class and then I go with Tamsin and Maria to fetch their children from school. If the weather’s nice, we stop in the square so that the kids can have a play. Then we go back to someone’s for tea.”
“It sounds lovely,” I say wistfully.
Eve opens her mouth and I think for a moment that she’s going to ask me to join them. “Have you ever done yoga before?” she asks instead.
“Never.” I give her a tentative smile. “Maybe I’ll join you when the new term starts in January.”
Eve leaves, and I watch from Leo’s study as she and Maria walk across the square to meet Tamsin. It was a lovely break and I’m happy to get back to reading my book. I’m so engrossed in the story that when there’s a ring on the doorbell, I jump in alarm. I close my book quickly, hoping it’s Eve, asking me to join them in the square. I glance at the time on my cell phone; it can’t be Eve, it’s just before three so they won’t have finished their yoga session yet. Maybe it’s Lorna, or Edward.
I push my phone into my back pocket and open the door.
He has his head turned away from me, looking toward the square, but there’s no mistaking him. Instinct has me quickly slamming the door, but not so quickly that I miss his look of surprise as he turns to face me. I back away, my heart racing. Why has he come back?
The doorbell rings again. I leap forward and latch the chain into place.
“Ms. Dawson?” His voice comes through the door.
“If you don’t go away, I’ll call the police,” I say tersely.
“I really hope you won’t. Ms. Dawson, my name is Thomas Grainger and I’m a private investigator looking into a miscarriage of justice. My client’s brother was accused of a murder he didn’t commit.”
“I don’t care, I’m still going to call the police. You entered my house illegally last Saturday!”
“Actually, you invited me in.”
“Only because I presumed you were someone I’d invited!”
“You asked me if I was Tom, which I am, except nobody really calls me that.”
“I said Tim!”
“I’m not sure you’d be able to prove that in a court of law.” There’s a smile in his voice and I feel my guard lowering a little. “Could I ask you to open the door? I really do need to speak to you and I can’t have a conversation through a block of wood.”
Reluctantly, I open the door but keep the chain in place. He peers at me through the gap, bending his knees slightly so that I can see his face. Behind him, the road is empty.
“Thank you.” He takes a card from the inside pocket of his jacket and holds it out to me. “As I said, I’m a private investigator and I’m looking into the murder of Nina Maxwell.”
I don’t take the card, I can’t. Just hearing the name sends my mind spinning. It might have happened over a year ago, but I’ll never forget the murder, because my sister was called Nina.
It’s always the same. If I meet someone called Nina, I automatically want to be their friend. If I read something about someone called Nina, I’ll take their story to my heart. That’s how the death of my big sister, who I idolized, affects me. She lives on in the lives of other women called Nina.
It takes me a moment to let go of the memories that crowd my brain.
“Nina Maxwell?” I say. “I don’t understand. What has her murder got to do with me?”
A slight frown crosses his face. “Nothing, other than this is where it happened.”
I stare at him through the gap. “What—here, in The Circle?”
His frown deepens. “No, here in this house.”
I shake my head. “No. There must be some mistake. She didn’t live here, not in this house. We would have known if she had, the estate agent would have told us.”
“I’m not sure—”
“I’m sorry,” I say, cutting him off, hating the way he’s making me feel. “You’ve made a mistake. Maybe Nina Maxwell did live somewhere in The Circle but it couldn’t have been here. We wouldn’t have bought the house if there’d been a murder here. And we would have known, because the estate agent would have told us.”
I begin to push the door shut but he holds my gaze.
“I’m afraid there’s no mistake, Ms. Dawson. This is where Nina Maxwell lived.” He pauses. “And where she died.”
NINE
For the second time in the space of a few minutes, I slam the door in the man’s face. My legs shaking, I sit down on the stairs.
“I’m sorry.” I jump at the sound of his voice coming through the door. I thought he’d gone. “I know this must have come as a shock.”
“Go away, or I really will call the police,” I say angrily.
“All right, I’m leaving now. But could I ask you to do something? First of all, google the murder. And secondly, call your estate agent and ask him why he didn’t disclose details of it when you bought the house.” There’s a sliding noise as his card is pushed through the letter box. “If you feel able to speak to me again, please contact me at this number. Both I, and my client, would be very grateful.”
His footsteps retreat down the path. Nailed to the stairs by a creeping dread, I can’t move. What if it’s true? I take my cell phone from my pocket and type “Nina Maxwell murder” into my search engine. I look at my screen, where several links to news reports have come up. I open the first one, dated 21st February 2018, and see a photo of a pretty, blond-haired woman with laughing brown eyes, a gold chain just visible around her neck. I recognize the photo; it was all over the media in the weeks following the murder. My heart in my mouth, I scroll to the article underneath.
A thirty-eight-year-old woman has been found murdered in London. Police were called to a house in The Circle, an exclusive residence in Finsbury Park, at approximately 9.30 p.m. last night, where they discovered the body of Nina Maxwell.
&nb
sp; Nausea swirls in my stomach. I force myself to read the article again, my eyes sticking on the words “The Circle,” hoping that if I stare at them long enough, they’ll disappear. But they don’t, and although there’s no mention of the house number, the possibility that Nina Maxwell was murdered here, in the house where I’m living, is terrifying. A memory from the time of the murder comes to me—a cordoned-off house with bouquets of flowers placed respectfully on the pavement outside. Was it this one?
I push myself up from the stairs, grab my keys and open the front door, half afraid I’ll find the private investigator on the doorstep. Thankfully, there’s no sign of him. Or of anyone else. I step outside, feeling horribly exposed. But I can’t stay in the house, not now.
I cross over the road, push open the gate to the square and sink onto the nearest bench, my mind still reeling. I don’t know why I feel threatened. Thomas Grainger has been perfectly pleasant on the two occasions I’ve spoken to him. It’s not who he is that frightens me, I realize, but what he said. How come he knows a murder was committed in the house where Leo and I are living, and we don’t? How come Ben didn’t tell Leo?
I find the contact details of Redwoods, the estate agents, and call them.
“Can I speak to Ben, please?” I ask, when a woman answers, trying to hide my agitation.
“I’m afraid he’s away for a few days.” She sounds bored rather than sorry.
My heart sinks. “When will he be back?”
“Monday. Can I help? I’m Becky, I work with Ben.”
I hesitate, tempted ask her if she knows anything about a murder in the house that Leo bought through them. Surely everyone who works in the agency would have to know its history, if it included a recent death?
“My name is Alice Dawson,” I say, deciding to go for it. “My partner, Leo Curtis, recently bought a house in Finsbury through Ben—number 6, The Circle. I was wondering—I heard a rumor that something happened in the house back in February last year. Someone said a woman died there?” I can’t bring myself to say the word murdered.