From the Inside

by Collette Heather

  I cast my mind back, giving his question some serious consideration.

  “No, I didn’t know her, really. I mean, she was a lovely girl, and I really thought that me and her were going to become friends, but I don’t recall anything…”

  I stop talking when I remember that it had mostly been me spilling their guts, rather than her.

  “Are you sure, Mrs Crawford?”

  I regard him levelly. “Yes, quite sure. I didn’t know her. But she was lovely.”

  A lump rises in my throat, and I swallow it back down again.

  He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket as he gets to his feet, and walks over, handing it to me. “I think we’ve about covered everything, and I’d like to thank you for your time. But if you should think of anything else that you feel may be of interest or importance, please don’t hesitate to call me on my personal number.”

  I accept the card with a murmured thanks, staring down at it without really seeing it.

  “Will you talk to my husband, too?”

  “We are obliged to follow up all leads.”

  Leads? I think. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Is Luke a suspect?

  And then, once again, I think of how Friday night is just a big fat blank to me.

  “Thanks again, Mrs Crawford.”

  I get to my feet, Bella hoisted onto one hip.

  “No, no, it’s okay, I’ll see myself out. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you should think of anything you feel may be of importance.”

  “Right. Thanks,” I say, somewhat stupidly perhaps.

  I watch him leave, my mind whirring. I feel sick and shaky.

  Poor Beth, is all I can think.

  Oh my god, what happened to you?

  PART THREE

  DAISY

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I heard the entire conversation over the baby monitor. Tanya is an idiot – did it not occur to her that the baby monitor in here is rigged up to hear everything in the living-room? Sure, sometimes their voices grew fainter with their movements around the large room, but I caught most of what was said…

  And it was truly shocking. A young couple murdered in cold blood, during a home robbery? Who would do such a thing? There are some real psychos out there.

  For the briefest of seconds, I think of Luke. I remember the way he had handled my body the three times we had sex, and how, after each time, it had taken me a while to recover. I don’t know why I think that. His penchant for rough sex has no bearing on this.

  And now, as this Detective Inspector Breed makes moves to leave, I hurry back over to the wall of glass that overlooks the back garden and resume my polishing of the internal panes. The window cleaner takes care of the windows, but he doesn’t do the insides, so this morning it is the job of me and Mr Sheen. Tanya has pretty much given me free rein when it comes to the cleaning of the house, saying that everything is at my discretion, like she’s doing me a really big favour, or something.

  The only place I am not allowed is in their bedroom. I do however, have every intention of going into their bedroom, but this is beside the point.

  I resume cleaner mode at the speed of light, making sure to check that my earphones are firmly plugged into my ears, attached to my smartphone via a long pink lead. The phone is in the front pocket of my baggy black jeans, over which I wear a light blue, loose-fitting sweater in a thick, brushed cotton. The material is so thick, and perhaps too hot for this time of the year, but I like it because it disguises my tiny waist, especially when I wear a sports bra beneath it. This further prevents that dip forming between my breasts, so that the sack-like material hangs straight down from my chest and makes me look shapeless and thick-waisted.

  There is nothing coming out of the tiny earphones, but I hum along anyway to an imaginary song, really putting my back into the wiping motions with the cloth. I am aware of movement behind me, and, with much effort, I resist the urge to spin around, instead scrubbing harder and humming louder. I am humming along to the most inane and recognisable song that I could think of – The Girl From Tipperary – and my heart is thumping so hard in my chest, just like it always does when I’m alone in a room with her.

  She’s not going to acknowledge me, I realise in a great wave of irritation that crashes over me. The bitch is going to ignore me.

  The anger that constantly simmers beneath the surface threatens to overwhelm me and I force it back down again; I haven’t come this far just to lose it over nothing. I really have to keep my irrational fits of rage in check.

  When she approaches my line of sight to my left, all the way over on the other side of the kitchen where the appliances are, I hum the tune even louder…

  …young and love-er-ly…

  …then gasp loudly in shock, spinning around on the spot and clutching my heart in horror.

  That part at least isn’t a lie, for my heartrate is sky high.

  “Jesus, you scared me half to death.”

  Her head snaps in my direction, and she stops whatever it is that she is doing over by the fridge. She appears to be looking for something, and when she glances over at me, she seems dazed, like she is in shock. Which, I concede, is hardly surprising, given the news that she has just received. I mean, who would do such a thing?

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to creep up on you,” she says.

  “Earphones,” I say, plucking one out of my ear. “My fault – didn’t mean to be so jumpy. I can’t hear a thing when I’m listening to music.”

  “Right.”

  Only then does her gaze flash to the baby monitor on the sideboard, opposite the patio doors where I stand. I can see the penny dropping. Thick bitch. Clearly, the realisation is only now dawning on the stupid cow that maybe I heard.

  I keep my expression neutral, an inquisitive – yet concerned – half-smile on my face. That’s right, bitch. I heard everything.

  “Is everything alright, Tanya?”

  “I… Yes.”

  She studies me, as if only then deciding that I didn’t, in fact, hear anything. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. She may be the one that looks like Nicole Kidman, but God, I’m the best actress around here.

  “What is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” I say.

  I can see the inner war raging behind her baby-blue eyes. She wants to confide in me, I can tell, but something is holding her back.

  Good sense, perhaps.

  “I’m fine.” She even manages a pathetic smile. “I think I might take Bella out for a walk. I’ll be back long before you go home… Ah ha, there it is.”

  She is referring to her phone, which is on the work surface next to the fridge, and she snatches it up. I get it now. She’s upset. She’s in shock. She needs to go out, get some fresh air. Maybe give Luke a call.

  I am still quietly seething that she didn’t trust me enough to confide in me. But then, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. This is only my third shift, and I’m only the cleaner, the hired help. Friendships don’t happen overnight.

  “Okay, enjoy your walk. If you’re sure you’re okay?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she says breezily, composure perfectly recovered. “Thanks, Anne, you’re doing such a great job.”

  “Thank you, Tanya.” Patronising bitch, I think, boiling over inside.

  She opens the fridge door, grabs a pre-made bottle of milk for her precious little brat, then leaves me alone in the kitchen without another word.

  I attack the windows in earnest. I’ve started, so I’ll finish, I think humourlessly to myself. My cleaning efforts are fast and aggressive. I want these damn windows gleaming, because I know that the snot-nosed cow is going to be checking them, as she saw me starting on them.

  By the time I go upstairs, I want them shining like the surface of the calmest, most crystal-clear lake. There is no way that I am going to do a shoddy job. I am going to be the best goddam cleaner that bitch has ever had, and then I’m going to become her best friend.

  Watch out bitch, I
think, panting slightly with my vigorous, jerking movements. I am closing in on you, it is almost the time of reckoning…

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  What’s she got that I haven’t?

  This is the question I ask myself up in their bedroom, as I gaze at my reflection in the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door.

  Why didn’t he want me?

  It’s just so demeaning. Luke only ever saw me as a one-night stand. Okay, so technically we had three one-night stands over the course of the month we officially met, but whether we had sex once, or three times, it amounts to one and the same thing. Luke never saw me as anything more than a no-strings, casual lay. I feel thoroughly used and humiliated. Especially given the fact that I think I might be in love with him. I wanted – no, I needed – for him to fall for me, and it hurts so much that he didn’t.

  No matter. At least I got the main thing that I was after, namely, a recording of the first of the three times that we had sex. For three months, I sat on that recording, watching it again and again every single night, unsure as to quite what to do with it. Yes, I could’ve sent it to Tanya at any point over Facebook, but that didn’t feel like it would be satisfying. I so want to see her fall apart from the inside. I want to witness her destruction in the flesh.

  I cleaned the downstairs, internal patio doors at such breakneck speed, I figure that I deserve a fifteen-minute break, that it will go unnoticed. I have bought myself some time to wallow in their room before the bitch comes back.

  And wallow is what I intend to do.

  I open the wardrobe door, severing the sight of my reflection in the atrocious cleaning clothes. I hate my new, mousy-brown hair cut into a long bob. It is so plain. I am also wearing brown contact lenses. Doing so is probably overkill, but, on the off-chance that I should run into Luke, should he not be at work on any given morning, I don’t want him to recognise me unless I want him to. My eyes are a piercing blue, a shade not dissimilar to his bitch of a wife’s. He told me once that my eyes were stunning. Maybe he was spinning me a line, maybe he wasn’t, maybe he’s forgotten all about my stunning eyes by now. Either way, I’m not taking any chances.

  I begin to rootle through the wardrobe.

  “Jesus, talk about fifty shades of beige,” I mutter to myself. “What the hell do you see in her, Luke?”

  I can feel my temper rising, and I push it back down again. As bitchy as I am being about her clothes, there’s no denying the fact they are high-end, beautiful, classic pieces – the type of clothes that most women would kill to own.

  I am finding it so difficult to keep a cool head. Why should she get everything, while I have nothing? She steals my husband, who then killed himself because of her. My daughter died, because of her. And now she has been rewarded with the perfect husband, the perfect daughter, the perfect house, the perfect clothes, as well as possessing the perfect face and figure. She is the one with the all-round perfect life.

  It just makes me sick.

  Oh God, I hate her so much, it is a physical thing that grinds me down, that wears me away to nothing. It makes me lose all sense of self. I am gritting my teeth, grinding them together as I am apt to do when I get stressed. I slam shut the wardrobe door in a good dose of angry self-pity, then make my way over to the sleek and modern, matching chest of drawers next to the eight-door wardrobe.

  Her knicker drawer is the second drawer from the top. Luke’s underwear is in the top drawer – one side socks, the other underpants. Her drawer is just filled with row upon row of neatly-folded pairs of knickers.

  I look in the third drawer down, finding her bras. Nothing else; just bras. She is a B cup, although a few of them are an A. The fourth drawer down houses an assortment of pantyhose – plenty of which remaining unopened in packets – as well as garter belts and socks. A quick glance in the fifth and final drawer reveals a collection of silky camisoles and slips in a myriad of shades of beige and gold.

  I slam it shut and go back up to the second drawer from the top – her knicker drawer.

  Jesus, how can one woman have so many pairs of knickers? There must be hundreds in here. They’re all so pretty and clearly expensive, as most of them are made of the finest silk. And, as with her clothes, there’s little variety in colour.

  With trembling hands, I pick out a neatly-folded, silky beige pair with cute ruffles and pretty little cut-out details. A little shiver of excitement mixed with soul-crushing jealousy courses through me when I think of Luke touching her in these knickers.

  Before I know what I’m doing, I’m shucking the ugly jeans down my legs and kicking off the plain black, lace-up plimsoles. My own knickers – a low-cut cotton pair in the palest shade of baby blue that are pretty enough, but nowhere near as expensive as Tanya’s undergarments – follow suit.

  I am now naked from the groin down and a fierce stab of arousal seizes me. If I am caught right now, it would be absolutely unthinkable. I smirk, and turn to gaze upon my reflection in the wardrobe mirror.

  The fingers of one hand snake between my legs, to the narrow and neat triangle of hair. I wonder if Tanya gets professionally waxed by a beautician, or if she takes care of matters herself, like I do. I wonder if her vagina is more attractive than mine, and I wonder if Luke was thinking about her pale, slender body when he was with me.

  I touch myself and shudder in longing. The pads of my fingers come away wet. I hold open Tanya’s beige knickers that I have been clutching scrunched up in one hand and step into them, first one foot, then the other.

  They are a snug fit, given that I am wider around the hips and bottom than her, but they look good on me. Moaning in need, I peel off the hideous pullover and reach behind my back to unclasp my sports bra. Oh God, if Tanya were to come home and see me now…

  I am so excited – or perhaps it is just terror at the prospect of getting caught – that my heart is racing faster than a frightened rabbit’s. I am shaking violently, and my breath is coming in ragged little gasps.

  I can’t believe that I am doing this. I stare at myself in the mirror, running my hands over my tight body, gently squeezing my full breasts. I am gorgeous, even if I do say so myself. How could he choose her over me?

  Leaning down, I pick up my jeans and plunge a hand into the front pocket, retrieving my phone. I need photographic evidence of this, or perhaps it is even worthy of a home video. I pause, staring at the screen, my finger automatically hovering over the Facebook button. Force of habit, I suppose. I am so used to spying on her umpteen times a day, that, even when I’m in her bedroom and wearing her knickers, I want to look at her Facebook. Which, I concede, is utterly ludicrous.

  But if it weren’t for Facebook, I undoubtedly wouldn’t be here right now. It is only thanks to her post from a couple of weeks ago that I am. In it, she stated that she was looking for a cleaner and asked if anyone knew anyone. She said that she was going to put an advert in the local paper in the upcoming days, which alerted me to this golden opportunity.

  It must be said that the way Tanya – and people in general – publicly overshare on social media never ceases to amaze me.

  Ignoring Facebook, I swipe into camera, walking backwards as I do so until the backs of my knees thump against the foot of the bed. I scoot into the middle of the mattress on my rump, then lie down, my head falling just shy of the pillows. I hold the phone high above my head, my face and breasts filling the oblong screen. My other hand is between my thighs, touching myself through Tanya’s knickers, the silky material of which is soaking wet.

  I snap off a dozen shots, moving the camera up and down my body, both at arm’s length and close-up. I imagine that it is Luke’s hand touching me, that I am Tanya lying here, on her marital bed.

  I put the phone down next to me and reach up behind my head to grab a pillow, which I then I hold to my face. I inhale deeply. Yes, this is Luke’s pillow, I can tell. There is nothing feminine about the faint aroma emanating from the cotton pillowcase – this is all-man. I recognise the musky scent
of his body odour. I remember when his smell was all over me and my lower stomach clenches some more in arousal.

  I love you, Luke says in my mind. I love you. I want you.

  But whether he is talking to me, or to me as Tanya, I don’t know. Sometimes, thing can get so muddled in my head.

  “I love you, too,” I gasp as the orgasm hits, crashing through me in wave after wave of spasming pleasure, leaving me weak in its wake, my face still buried in his pillow.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  After the visit from that Detective Inspector Breed, Tanya’s persona has changed towards me. It’s certainly not a huge change, she’s not rude to me, or anything. Perhaps someone else might not even notice. But I notice. She’s definitely more distant with me. She’s still perfectly polite, but that tiny window of potential friendship that was open a crack has now been firmly shut in my face again.

  She’s not letting me in.

  She’s not letting me in, and I have to up my game.

  It is Thursday morning, and my fifth shift as her cleaner. Tanya is out for her morning walk with Bella, and I am in their bedroom, lying on their bed and watching the video of me and Luke. He was so rough with me, plundering every orifice. I wonder if he is like that with Tanya.

  Somehow, I doubt it. As aggressive as he was with me in bed, I could also feel that he was, to a certain extent, holding himself back. Does Tanya sense that, too?

  My hand automatically finds its way to between my legs. Touching myself through the thick material of the jeans. But today, I’m not feeling it. As sexy as I find Luke, as dangerous and as enigmatic as he absolutely is, today I am not aroused.

  I love Luke. Or, at least, I think I do. I’m not sure anymore. I admit, there is a possibility that I have built him up in my mind to be something more than he really is.

  With a sigh, I sit up on the bed and make the screen of my phone go black, cutting dead the moving images of me and Luke on my bed. I was on all fours with Luke driving into me from behind, reaching over my back to grip me around my throat.