by C. L. Taylor
been in. What was it she’d nicked that time? She couldn’t even remember. Her initial reaction was to get up and leave, but then she decided that she had as much right to be in the cinema as
anyone else and stayed in her seat.
As George Michael’s dulcet tones fade away a newsreader’s
voice fills the cab.
‘Thirty-two-year-old mother of one Kerry Wilson was stabbed
to death in her home in South Bristol last night. A man has
been arrested and is being held in custody.’
Wilson. An image of a brown parcel with a white label. Wilson.
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It was on a parcel she loaded into her van that morning. She
goes cold all over. Paul Wilson. The man from number six.
‘Move! Move! Move!’ Ursula presses her palm to the horn,
sounding it repeatedly at the bin lorry that’s blocking the road.
One of the bin men appears and gestures for her to back up.
‘We’re not going anywhere for a while, love!’ he shouts, but
she’s already put the van in reverse. It takes her two, maybe
three minutes tops to navigate an alternate route but every
second feels like a lifetime and as she turns the corner into The Crest her heart is beating in the base of her throat. She’s not sure what she expects to see outside number six – police tape, officers, maybe men in white suits, something to alert her to the fact that a crime’s been committed. But the house, and the
surrounding area, looks exactly as it did the previous day.
She runs up the steps and thumps on the door, then peers
through the living room window. No child, and no woman. She
bangs on the door again and is just about to crouch down to
peer through the letter box when the door swings away from
her. It only opens a couple of inches, constrained by a gold safety chain, but it’s enough for her to see who’s on the other side.
‘You’re alive!’
The woman doesn’t reply. She stares at Ursula blankly, her
face – or at least the tiny sliver of it that’s visible – is impassive.
Relief so powerful it almost makes her cry surges through
Ursula’s body. ‘You’re not Kerry Wilson.’
The woman gives the tiniest shake of her head.
‘It was on the radio . . . a Kerry Wilson was killed by her husband and I . . . I thought it was you. I thought that you might . . . I was worried that you might be dead.’
The other woman’s lips curl, but it’s not a smile of amusement.
It’s not sadness either; it’s wistfulness. Ursula stares at her in alarm. She wishes she were dead.
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‘Sorry?’ Ursula says as the other woman says something so
softly she doesn’t catch it. ‘Sorry, what was that?’
‘You shouldn’t have called the police.’
‘They were here? They came?’
The woman nods.
‘Did they speak to your husband?’
The woman’s breathing becomes quick and shallow. She’s not
maintaining eye contact any more. Her pale blue eyes are flicking back and forth, scanning the street below.
Ursula turns sharply but there’s no one there. ‘What’s your
name?’ she asks as she turns back.
‘Nicki.’
‘Did the police tell him not to lock you in any more? Is that
why you can open the door?’
‘You need to go.’
‘Is he due back? He’s not normally here at this time of day.’
‘Please. You have to go.’
‘Wait!’ Ursula shouts as the door begins to close. ‘Let me give you my number. I want to help you.’
‘I can’t . . . you can’t . . .’
‘Please. One second.’ Ursula puts the parcel she’s holding on
the low wall beside her and frantically digs around in the pockets of her hoody for a pen and a piece of paper. She rips a ‘sorry you were out’ slip from the pad, scribbles down her name,
number and address and just manages to shove it into the gap
before Nicki closes the door in her face.
‘Wait!’ She snatches up the parcel. ‘You forgot this.’ As she
raises her hand to tap on the door she senses someone watching her and swings round.
There’s a man at the bottom of the steps. He’s tall, but not as tall as Ursula. He’s clean-cut and attractive, dressed in a smart navy suit with a white shirt and paisley tie, with dark hair that’s short at the sides and longer on top, swept back with gel. He’s 169
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the husband; Ursula can tell from the proprietorial way his gaze flicks from the front door to her. She keeps very still as his eyes travel the length of her body and then return, dismissively, to her face. She’s endured a similar sweep from men before, more times than she can count: curiosity swiftly followed by an analysis of her heavy breasts, thick waist and sturdy legs – (‘Would I?’) and then they scan her face (‘God, no. Definitely not’). But there’s something different about the way Paul Wilson is looking at her.
He’s studying her the way a man might look at another man
when they’re looking for a fight (‘Can I take him? Can I not?’).
‘Can I help you?’ His whole demeanour changes when he
smiles. There’s light in his eyes and an easy, friendly smile that would be utterly disarming if Ursula hadn’t just watched him
give her the once over.
He walks up the steps towards her and holds out a hand. ‘I
take it that’s for me.’
For a split second she has no idea what he’s talking about.
‘The parcel,’ he says, as though she’s slow.
‘You’re not normally here at this time.’
‘Am I not?’ He makes a big show of glancing at his watch,
pushing back the sleeve of his suit jacket and holding his arm further away than is necessary so he can look down his nose at the time. ‘I suppose you’re right. Are you keeping track of my movements?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It was a joke.’ He squeezes her arm. His fingers tighten around her bicep and remain there for one second, two, before he lets go.
In the distance she can hear a child crying, a dog barking and the faint squeal of an ambulance going by. The street is still deserted. It’s just her, Paul Wilson, and Nicki, hiding behind the door.
‘You knew I’d be here,’ she says steadily. ‘That’s why you
ordered a parcel, isn’t it?’
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The man’s gaze flicks towards the upstairs window of his
neighbour’s house. Checking whether there are any witnesses,
Ursula thinks. He might terrify his wife but she’s standing firm.
‘Are you criticising my shopping habits?’
‘Of course not.’ She forces a smile onto her face. Two can
play at this nicey nicey charade.
‘I don’t think our paths will cross again,’ Paul Wilson says.
He reaches, again, for the parcel. ‘If I could just . . .’
Irritation is starting to show on his face, in the tight set of his jaw and the twitch of his nostrils, but Ursula doesn’t move her hand from her side.
‘Possessions are so important, aren’t they?’ she says. ‘That’s why we like to keep them safe.’
‘Aren’t we the philos
opher?’
‘Just making conversation.’
‘You like a chat, don’t you? No, wait. That’s wrong, isn’t it?
It’s gossip you enjoy.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think you do. I think you know exactly what I’m talking
about.’ And there it is again, the full beam of his grin: friendly, unassuming and warm. It’s terrifying, Ursula thinks, how easily he can flick the switch. Is that why Nicki’s still scared? Because Paul charmed the police? Did he tell them that his wife was
agoraphobic, that she was mentally unstable, that the well-
meaning courier had it all wrong? ‘My parcel, if you please.’
This time Ursula raises her hand, but as Paul’s fingers close
around the package she has to force herself to let go.
‘Come here again,’ she hears his voice calling softly after her as she walks down the steps to the pavement, ‘and it’ll be the last thing you do.’
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Chapter 29
Alice
Lynne doesn’t sound convinced when Alice explains on the phone that she’s not feeling well. ‘Came on overnight, did it?’ she asks.
‘This terrible cold?’
Alice coughs pathetically, then picks up the length of kitchen roll she’s laid out on the counter and noisily blows her nose.
‘My throat was all scratchy when I went to bed and when I
woke up this morning . . . it was all I could do to get up.’
Her voice sounds feeble, even to her own ears, but in a fake
rather than a convincing way. But there’s no way she’s going
to work today, not after Simon dropped his bombshell last
night.
‘Want me to pop round later?’ Lynne asks. ‘I could pick up
some stuff from the chemist in my lunchbreak.’
‘No, no. That’s very kind but Emily’s looking after me.’
‘She’s home, is she? Not at work?’
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a day off. She’s on her way to the corner shop right now to get me some Lemsip.’
‘Aw.’ Lynne sighs. ‘Well I’m glad someone’s looking after you.
Get lots of rest, sleep and drink lots of water. Hopefully see you tomorrow.’
Alice sniffs. ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure it’s just a twenty-four-hour thing.’
There’s a pause. Lynne doesn’t believe her, she can feel it, but she doesn’t want to tell her the real reason why she’s not coming into work. Lynne would want a complete rundown of exactly
what happened the night before and who said what, and she
just can’t face it. Not yet.
‘Hope you feel better soon,’ Lynne says tersely. ‘Look after
yourself, bye.’
Cringing, Alice sets her mobile down on the kitchen table and
stands up, stretching her arms out to the side. She went straight back to work after Michael assaulted her and it’s utterly pathetic, calling in sick because she got dumped. It’s not as though she’s heartbroken – she and Simon only had two dates, three if you
counted lunch, and they hadn’t even slept together, but it’s the not knowing that kept her up all night. She’d texted him back, as soon as she got out of the taxi:
I understand if you don’t want to see me again, but could
you let me know why?
Seconds ticked into minutes and when he still hadn’t replied
half an hour later she texted him again.
Please, just let me know why. I can take it. Was it because I had a go at you about you not texting (yes, I can see the irony there . . .) or is there another reason? I can’t stop thinking about how urgently we had to leave the cinema? Was it to do with that? Or the weird messages I’ve been getting? Whatever the reason I can take it, Simon.
She told herself she’d wait a full hour before contacting him
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again, telling herself that maybe he was dealing with whatever emergency had called him out of the cinema, but she cracked
after ten minutes and rang him. Her call went straight to voicemail and she hung up. There was nothing to say that she hadn’t already said in her text.
She tried to watch TV but couldn’t concentrate. She made
herself soup and toast for lunch but found she couldn’t eat more than a mouthful. She tried putting her phone in her bedroom
so she wouldn’t obsessively check it but ended up pacing the
room instead. She turned to Google, searching for answers:
Why did my boyfriend suddenly dump me?
Why do men blow hot and cold?
My stalker scared off my boyfriend
She read some interesting theories – that maybe her boyfriend
had been feeling that something was wrong for a while, that he wasn’t ‘that into her’ or she was too keen. The last explanation rang bells. She had come across as needy with all the unanswered text messages, and then confronting him about them, but that
didn’t explain why he’d suddenly decided to leave the film part way through. No matter which way Alice looks at what
happened, and she’s examined it from every conceivable angle,
Simon’s sudden decision to dump her had to be down to the text message he received in the cinema. Everything he’d done
since they’d met – running after her with her purse, bringing
her flowers, offering to speak to the police, accompanying her home after her car was scratched – suggested that he was a
decent, honourable man. Had Flora threatened her in some way?
Had he dumped her to protect her? It was the only theory that
made sense.
She scrolls through her phone, pausing over DC Mitchell’s
number, then swipes past it. She’s got nothing new to report to the police. There’s no text she can show the detective, no evidence of abuse. A slow rage builds as Alice strides around the kitchen, 174
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phone in hand. Whoever’s been stalking her has won. They got
what they wanted when Simon messaged her to say it was over.
She looks at her phone again and scrolls through her Facebook
messages until she finds the one from Ann Friend.
I hope you’re happy, she types back. He’s split up with me because of you. You won. Well done.
Her thumb hovers over the send button. Should she send it
or not? If they reply they might say something that gives her a clue to their identity. But what if they don’t? She doesn’t think she could bear the smugness of their silence.
She deletes the message. Her stalker has only won if she lets
them. If she gives up. She didn’t fight for her marriage when
Peter told her he was seeing someone else. She let him walk
away. She didn’t have the energy, or the inclination, to work
out why he’d cheated on her. There was a conversation to be
had about what had gone wrong in their marriage but she didn’t want to pick over the bones of their relationship so, rather than find closure, she chose to shut down emotionally instead. But
this is different. This isn’t about infidelity or a failure to commu-nicate. It’s about control, and she’s going to take it back.
Why, Alice asks herself, head in hands, did she never think to ask Simon his surname? She had so many opportunities – in the cafe, over dinner and during
their many text marathons. How
had it never come up? Or maybe it had? She can vaguely
remember asking him his surname, so why doesn’t she know it?
He must have changed the subject or distracted her with a joke.
She types Simon Insurance Bristol into Google and looks at the results. There’s a Simon James, a Simon Lancaster, a Simon Perkins and a Simon Kelly but they’re mostly company owners
or in very senior roles and, more importantly, they’re not the Simon she’s looking for.
She enters a new search Insurance Company Bristol and raises 175
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her eyebrows as she scrolls through the results. One hundred,
there are exactly one hundred insurance companies listed in Bristol. She’d had a half-baked idea that there might be thirty, forty tops, and she could spend the day ringing them to ask if they employed a Simon. But a hundred? She’d have to book
time off work to get through them all. And that’s assuming a
receptionist would share employee information with a complete
stranger. If anyone rang her at work to ask who she employed
she’d tell them that was confidential and give them short shrift.
She texts her daughter: Emily, if you were trying to track someone down on the internet where would you look? I’ve
already googled Simon + insurance companies in Bristol but there are a hundred results. How can I narrow it down?
A few seconds later her phone pings with a response:
WHAT . . . ARE . . . YOU . . . DOING . . . THAT . . . FOR?
Alice texts back: I’m trying to find out who sent me the weird text messages on Facebook and scratched my car and I can’t do that unless Simon talks to me.
So ring him.
I can’t. He won’t answer my calls.
Why? What have you done?
Nothing as far as I know. He dumped me last night.
There’s a pause then: Oh, sorry to hear that, Mum. I know
you liked him.
So? How do I track him down?
You don’t. You let it go.
What about the weird Facebook messages?
Have you had any new ones?
Not since he dumped me.
Well then. Forget about it, Mum. He’s obviously got a psycho ex-girlfriend – and you don’t want to be a part of that. If anything else happens, contact the police.