by Lisa Hall
‘Caro?’ Rupert stalls, his heart rate speeding up. Glad he is wearing sunglasses, he risks a glance towards where Emily lies, but she has her eyes closed as she waits for his response. ‘What… what do you want to know about her?’ He supposes it was inevitable that Emily would ask questions about Caro eventually.
‘What happened?’
‘You know what happened. She died.’
‘No.’ Emily turns to him and props herself up on one elbow. ‘I mean what happened? I know she died, and I know it’s hard to talk about, but I just want to understand.’
‘Understand what?’ Rupert gives a shaky laugh. ‘There’s nothing to understand.’ He reaches for her, stroking from behind her ear and tracing a line down her neck and along her collarbone in the way he knows she loves.
Emily shivers, and leans down to kiss the back of his hand. ‘Who she was. Why she did the things she did.’
‘You already know that.’ Rupert sighs. ‘She was bi-polar, her moods were all over the place. The police knocked on the door and said they’d found her car close to the Severn Bridge, along with a note. It was pretty obvious what she’d done.’
‘It must have been devastating for you.’ Emily grasps his hand tightly, and presses it to her lips. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine it, how it must have felt.’
‘Yeah,’ Rupert nods slowly, ‘it was devastating. But you know, you can’t let things like this make time stand still, you have to keep going, move on. I took the time to heal and deal with things and then you walked into my life and look at us now.’
‘Did you have any idea, though? That she would go that far? I mean, lots of people are bi-polar, but they don’t do what she did.’
‘Emily…’ Rupert sighs, closing his eyes for the briefest of moments as the warm sea breeze rustles his hair. ‘No. I didn’t have any idea. It was a total shock, and now I’m just glad I have you, and our life together ahead of me.’
‘Yes, but…’ Emily starts to say something, but Rupert silences her with a kiss, a proper kiss that takes her breath away as he slides his tongue into her mouth, his hand stroking her nipple through her bikini top.
‘Come on,’ Rupert pulls Emily to her feet and leads her gently towards their hotel room, any other unasked questions sliding right out of Emily’s mind, forgotten as Rupert lays her down on the huge white bed and covers her body with his own.
Chapter Thirteen
Something’s not right. The thought crosses my mind the minute I step foot inside the house, goosebumps rising on my tanned forearms as Rupert bumps our heavy suitcase into the hallway behind me. I can’t put my finger on it, as I walk past the living room into the kitchen. Nothing is out of place, not that I can tell, and nothing seems to be missing, but there is a feeling in the air. As though someone has been in the house, and recently too. Walking back, I pause at the foot of the stairs, almost unwilling to go up them.
‘Em? What’s the matter?’ Rupert appears beside me, his face flushed pink with exertion from wrestling with the heavy bags.
‘Nothing,’ I say quietly, and start to climb the stairs, heading towards our bedroom. As I open the door it gets stronger, the feeling that someone has been in our house while we have been away. I sniff the air delicately, wondering if I can really smell a faint hint of perfume or whether I’m imagining it. Rupert appears behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist and nuzzling against my neck.
‘Straight to the bedroom, eh? I like your style, Mrs Milligan.’
‘Rupert, stop.’ I pull away, a ghostly draught washing over my skin and I wrap my arms around myself, unable to stop the shiver that ripples through me. ‘Does it feel weird to you?’
‘Weird? Does what feel weird?’
‘The house.’ I reach out a hand and smooth the already immaculate duvet, not sure what it is that I’m looking for.
‘The house?’ Rupert shakes his head. ‘Sorry, Em, I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘It feels… odd. Like someone has been in here. You know like, when you come home and you know that I’m here, just by that feeling in the air. You know that there’s someone home, right? That’s how it feels. Like someone just left.’
‘Em, please,’ Rupert sighs, reaching out for me. I let him pull me into his arms, even though I feel as though I need to look under the bed and check in the wardrobes. ‘Not this stuff again. I told you, no one is interested in us. There wasn’t anyone watching the house, and I certainly don’t think anyone has been in here while we’ve been gone. And if they have, it’ll only be Amanda – I asked her to keep an eye on the place.’
I stand there, silently, wishing I could believe him.
‘Is this about the messages you received?’ Rupert holds me at arm’s length and looks into my eyes, making me feel as though I’m under a microscope. ‘I told you, I’ll look after you. Whoever it is, they’re no threat to us, to our marriage. I swear to you, Em, no one has been in the house. It’s been a long day.’
I nod and pull away, tiredness tugging at my bones. We’ve been travelling for over twelve hours and with a five-hour time difference, jetlag is already starting to kick in. ‘OK. I expect you’re right.’ And he probably is. I haven’t lived here for very long, and I don’t know every creak, every groan of the house like I did in the flat. I feel a sudden wave of longing for my tiny, cluttered bedroom, the thud of Mags’s terrible music coming through the wall. No, Emily, I think, this is who you are now. This is what you chose.
‘I’ll make us some tea.’ Rupert kisses me on the forehead and I feel that tickle of irritation toward him dissolve a little. I’m sure he is right – I’m just overtired and thinking things that aren’t really there. ‘Why don’t you get into bed? It’s nearly one o’clock, and I have to be up at six for work in the morning.’
As Rupert leaves the room, a chilly draught settles over my skin again and I shiver more used to the warm Caribbean breezes of the past two weeks, than the autumnal September air we’ve come home to. Shivering, I move towards the en suite, intent on running a cleansing wipe over my tired face and brushing my teeth, when I see where the draught is coming from. The window in the en suite is open a little, not wide open, but pushed to as though someone has forgotten to latch it. It’s not a huge window, but it’s long and wide and potentially someone could get through it if they wanted to. Which means the fact that it is open doesn’t make any sense. Neither Rupert nor I would have left this window open, not when we were leaving for two weeks. I rack my brains, thinking back to the morning after the wedding. I definitely remember shutting all the windows upstairs because I had thought to myself how I never had to worry in the flat, being above the takeaway.
Now, I tiptoe across the bathroom floor, the underfloor heating warming my toes as I reach up and peer through the crack in the window. Just as I thought, the large recycling bin is under the window, to the left of the orangery, right where I left it, only… I push the window wide open and look out as far as I can. The recycling bin is on its side, a small spillage of plastic and a couple of glass bottles on the patio beside it. That doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself, my breath coming fast in my throat. A fox could have knocked it over. Maybe there was a storm.
I slam the window closed, latching it tight and sit on the cold toilet seat, rubbing my hands over my face. Just because the bin is on its side doesn’t mean that someone used it to stand on, to climb up onto the orangery roof and then force their way into the house through the bathroom window. It doesn’t mean that when they heard our taxi arrive they climbed out of the bathroom window and tipped the bin on its side in their hurry to get away. It doesn’t mean anything.
‘Em? Are you in there?’ Rupert’s voice rouses me, and I move to the sink, quickly scrubbing at my face with a wipe before pulling open the bathroom door. He hands me a steaming hot cup of tea, and gestures towards the bed where he has pulled back the duvet and plumped my pillow.
‘Thanks.’ I gratefully take the tea, wrapping my cold hands around t
he mug. ‘Rupert, the recycling bin. It’s on its side out there, some of the rubbish has fallen out. The bathroom window was open too.’ I wait, watching his face to see what his reaction is.
‘Oh bugger, really?’ He pauses in stripping his T-shirt over his head. ‘You don’t want me to go and sort it out now, do you? It’s just started raining.’
‘No, it’s OK.’ I shake my head and climb into bed, relieved when Rupert finally turns out the lamp. Maybe Rupert is right and I’m just being silly. Maybe there is nothing to worry about.
The next morning, I watch through the living-room window as Rupert chases down the last bits of recycling from behind the two small stone lions that flank the porch – plastic wrapping that has blown round the side of the house – and stuffs them deep down into the black bin. In the cold light of day, I feel ridiculous for getting worked up over the bin toppling over – and Amanda was keeping an eye on the house; she must have opened the window upstairs to air out the bedroom a little. Either that or I really did forget to close it before we left. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway. It was such a busy week, after all, the week before the wedding, maybe I only thought about closing the window. An icy finger crawls up my spine, making me shudder and I pull my cardigan tightly around my body. It did feel as though someone had been in the house though; the air had that disturbed feeling about it, and I am sure I wasn’t imagining the faint hint of perfume, the light scent of something that might have been nectarines on the air.
A few days later, I still haven’t shaken the uneasy feeling that settled on me the night we arrived home from Barbados, although Rupert seems to be back to his usual self. He grabs a piece of toast, shoving it into his mouth while searching for his car keys, as I sit quietly at the kitchen table, still in my dressing gown. I’m finding it strange to be sitting here, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, while Rupert rushes around frantically. I nurse the dregs of a cup of tea, as I wait for him to leave the house so I can start getting ready myself, although ready to do what exactly I don’t know.
The days are different, now Rupert has taken on a cleaner – a Polish woman named Anya, who seems to spend a lot of her time scowling at me – and taking care of the house is no longer my responsibility. It turns out that I’m not as brilliant at keeping house as I thought I would be, and after I used neat bleach to clean the marble floor tiles in the main bathroom (damaging them beyond repair, much to my horror), Rupert insisted on getting a professional in to take over. So now, instead of spending my days tidying and cleaning, I watch someone else do it. And do a better job of it, too. I pop the tiny bubble of boredom that grows in the pit of my stomach, telling myself that this is what I want.
‘What are your plans for today?’ Rupert asks, as he shoves papers into his briefcase. He’s asked me the same question every morning since we got home.
‘Probably nothing, the same as yesterday,’ I say, feeling prickly and scratchy. I get up and put my arms around him. It’s not his fault that I am irritable this morning.
‘I spoke to Sadie last night,’ Rupert’s chin rests on my hair, ‘she said she’s going to a yoga class this morning, if you’d like to join her. She’s going to text you.’
‘Oh. OK.’ That would be nice, I think. I haven’t been to a yoga class for months, not since I left Harry. It’ll keep me busy, stop me from worrying about whether someone – some unknown identity – has been in the house, whether someone is watching me. Watching us. I have to keep busy, to stop myself from worrying about things. Rupert says he’ll get the security cameras fixed outside so I won’t feel quite so jumpy at being alone in the house anymore, but right now, every time I think I am OK, that I have got over things, I see the letter on the kitchen table, BITCH etched onto the paper.
‘I’ve put Find My iPhone on your phone, by the way,’ Rupert says as he takes a mouthful of coffee, almost spilling it down his tie.
‘Oh. Isn’t that like a tracker type thing?’ I reach for my phone. I don’t know when Rupert had the time to download it.
‘Kind of.’ Rupert tips the rest of his coffee into the sink, his back to me. ‘I thought it might make you feel safer. I know you’ve been worried about things, and at least this way you know I can find you if something happens. Which it won’t,’ he says, tugging on his jacket as I look up in alarm.
‘Right. No, of course it won’t. It’s just me being silly. OK, then. Well, I won’t be going far today, only meeting Sadie.’ As if on cue, my phone buzzes with a text message from her.
‘That’ll be nice,’ Rupert says absently, and I get the feeling that although he mentioned the yoga, he’s already moved on his head. Not for the first time I wonder if he was the same with Caro, or if Caro demanded his attention. ‘I’ll see you tonight.’ He kisses the top of my head as he passes, leaving me to another day on my own.
I take my time getting dressed, and Sadie is waiting outside the gym when I walk round the corner in my leggings, her yoga mat rolled up under her arm.
‘Emily!’ Sadie leans in and kisses my cheek, before holding me at arm’s length and looking me up and down. ‘Look at the tan on you! You wouldn’t think you’d go so brown, being blonde the way you are. You’ll have to tell me all about the honeymoon, quick, before the class starts. I can’t believe you two have been back for days already and we haven’t seen you.’
I’m a little taken aback by Sadie’s enthusiasm. I’ve never really had the kind of friends that you see immediately you get back from holiday, thanks to my mum carting us all over the country in her quest for perfection, so it hadn’t really crossed my mind to check in with Sadie. ‘Sorry, I…’
‘Oh, darling, Rupert told me you’ve been a bit worried about things at home.’ Sadie lays a hand on my arm, and I don’t know what to say at first. I hadn’t realized that Rupert would have discussed my feelings with anyone, least of all Sadie.
‘It’s not a big deal, not really,’ I say, as we turn and walk into the swanky gym that Sadie is a member of. ‘I think I just let my imagination get the better of me. Seeing things that aren’t really there, you know.’ The photo of myself, gripping my bride-to-be sash, fear etched onto my face, swims in front of my eyes, and I shake it away. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a morning of yoga with you, so things can’t be all bad.’ I force a smile and make a show of pulling my hair up into a ponytail.
Sadie gives me a small smile in return. ‘Quite. Although…’ her face turns serious, and her voice lowers, ‘Rupert did also tell me about the letter you got. He said something about an ex-boyfriend… are you OK?’
‘Oh.’ I didn’t realize that Rupert had told anyone about that, and I don’t know how I feel about it. It’s hard to write something off as nothing when other people know about it. ‘Yes. Things ended badly between us… it was, well, it wasn’t a very healthy relationship, if I’m honest, and I was a bit concerned.’ I blink away the image of Harry’s hands looming towards my throat, his face twisted and ugly. ‘But I’m sure it’s fine. Probably just… I don’t know. A mistake. Or a prank. Hopefully.’ My face clouds over and I search for something to say to change the subject.
‘OK,’ Sadie eyes me closely, ‘well, if you want to talk about anything – I’ve had my fair share of relationship troubles, let me tell you – you know I’m always here. Me and Amanda. Although Amanda can be a bit prickly at times, so maybe don’t go to her if you want any sympathy. She literally is dead inside.’ Sadie laughs, a shrill tinkle, and I try to, but it sticks in my throat a little. I’m not sure I want to talk about it with anyone, if I’m honest.
The yoga class is busier than I was expecting, and I have to wedge myself into a tiny corner of the overheated room, behind Sadie. The other women all seem to have their own space that they occupy every week, so I try to slide in unobtrusively, not wanting to draw any attention to myself.
‘Do we have any new members today?’ the instructor calls out, a tiny woman with ropy arms and big calf muscles. I keep my head down, avoiding eye contact, but Sadie points to me
with an, ‘Over here!’ and I sigh inwardly as I see the instructor start making her way across the floor, stepping over mats and bare feet.
‘Hi. I’m Sorcha. Have you done yoga before?’ The woman crouches down to where I sit cross-legged on my mat, as Sadie hovers in the background, stretching her arms over her head and bending down to touch her toes. Show-off, I think, feeling stiff and creaky in my own body.
‘Yes, I have a little.’ I turn my attention back to Sorcha. ‘I’ve done it a few times, actually. But not for a while. I’m a bit rusty, I should think.’
‘Have I taught you before?’ Sorcha looks at me quizzically.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
I can almost feel Sadie’s ears prick up, as she swings into an upright position and beams at Sorcha. ‘No, Emily hasn’t been here before. She used to go to one in the centre of town, didn’t you, Em?’
‘Oh, only a couple of times.’ Feeling awkward under the scrutiny of Sorcha’s gaze, I tug the sleeves of my thin cardigan over my hands, against the chill of the air conditioning.
‘Maybe I did see you once or twice? You do look familiar. I filled in a few times at a class over that way. You know, Sadie, the one that Caro used to like?’
I freeze, as my cheeks start to burn. I didn’t realize that this class was going to be taught by someone who knew Caro, someone who had taught Caro yoga. I throw Sadie a panicky look, to let her know that I don’t feel at all comfortable with things, but Sadie is chattering away to the woman on the mat next to her and doesn’t notice.
‘I don’t think so,’ I manage to stutter, my fingers fluttering to my sleeves again, ‘I only went once or twice. Like I say, I’m a bit rusty.’
Sorcha smiles and says something about loosening me up, but I can’t keep my focus on her. I feel more than a little furious with Sadie for drawing attention to me, and also for bringing me to a class where the instructor knows Caro. Embarrassment makes my cheeks burn hot and red, as if everyone knows that I am the second Mrs Milligan, and they are all comparing me to Caro. I lean down and fuss with my mat, making sure it’s straight before turning my attention to my feet.