Dad frowns, and sits forward, about to say something, but is interrupted by the sudden loud jangle of the old-fashioned bell pull in the hall. Someone is at the front door.
Dad looks at the clock on the wall quickly. ‘Ten past nine on a Thursday night?’ he says. ‘Does anyone know you’re here?’ He begins to move stiffly to the edge of his chair.
‘No one except Ed.’
Dad says nothing, just hauls himself up to a stand, and leaves the cocoon-like warmth of the room. I shiver as much cooler air whispers in around the door from the hall, and pick up the baby monitor to listen for James. He hasn’t been disturbed; he can’t have heard the bell. I ought to check that Sandrine is OK up in the top bedroom in a minute though. Low voices carry through to me, and I’m craning to listen anxiously, when the door pushes open wider still, and Laurel appears in the doorway, wrapped snugly in her coat and hat, clutching car keys and her phone.
I gasp with delight. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘That should be my question to you, surely?’ she says. ‘You were going to sneak down to Chichester under the cover of darkness and not tell me?’
‘Tea, Laurel?’ Dad offers, standing behind her. ‘That is – I assume you’re driving?’
‘Yes, sadly, so tea would be perfect, thank you,’ she says, and as he disappears off to the kitchen, Laurel comes into the room properly, unwinding her scarf and putting her things down on the coffee table so she can undo her coat. I get to my feet and we hug tightly. The skin of her face is cold and, as she pulls back, she sniffs and laughs. ‘Sorry! It’s freezing outside. Let me blow my nose.’ She fishes up her sleeve for a tissue and makes her way over to a chair, kicking off her boots, sitting down and folding her legs underneath her.
‘You’re looking lovely.’ I smile.
‘Oh thank you!’ She glances down at herself. ‘I feel really mumsy today. I just can’t shift this last half a stone and it’s doing my head in. I’m just going to have to stop eating completely, or something. You’re looking very skinny malinky, though. Are you on the extreme stress diet, by any chance?’
I give her a tired smile. ‘What gives you that idea?’
‘Well,’ she rearranges the velvet cushion behind her. ‘I had a text from your husband telling me you were coming down unexpectedly, and that he thought you could use a friend.’ She smiles, but I can see the worry she’s trying to hide. ‘So, what’s he done then?’
The silence that follows is only punctuated by the hiss and fizz of the fire – another log catching – and the static crackling on James’s baby monitor. ‘Um, it’s not really him that’s the problem as such, although he did something about the problem that’s so mind-blowing, I don’t even know where to begin.’
Laurel looks confused. ‘Mind-blowingly bad?’
I look straight at her. ‘The kind of thing that you read about in the papers, and wonder how someone could have been stupid enough to take a risk like that.’
Her expression changes completely. ‘Something illegal? Something dangerous?’
I don’t know I’m about to tell her everything. It’s not a conscious decision – but I suddenly simply reach my limit and disconnect from what has become my twisted reality. So much so that, as I begin to discuss it aloud, it doesn’t even feel real. ‘You know I told you about that afternoon I wound up doing a viewing at Simon Strallen’s house, and his wife went for me?’
Laurel frowns. ‘That was before Christmas, wasn’t it?’
I nod. ‘Well, last night, Ed told me, because of what she did, he sent someone round to “have a word” with her… the night she died.’
Laurel blinks, and her lips slowly part in shock as she simply stares at me, open-mouthed.
‘He says the bloke concerned didn’t touch her, but the police found Louise dead on the bathroom floor, apparently having had a seizure, but also with a head injury.’ I clasp my glass tightly. ‘Her death was written up as natural causes, so they think she hit her head after she had the seizure. Ed seems to have got away with it, which is lucky really given that his brother-in-law – a barrister – has told him if it does ever come out he’s looking at four years, minimum.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘The reason Ed told me this,’ I drain the last of the whisky and set it down on the table, ‘is because this week I’ve been on the receiving end of a hate campaign. I wanted to go to the police, but Ed asked me not to involve them because he can’t risk them finding out what he did.’
Laurel raises her eyebrows in shock. ‘And the two are connected how exactly?’
‘Ed thinks Simon is behind everything that’s happened to me this week. Someone stole my keys from my bag on Tuesday while I was out at a singalong session at the library with James, then they let themselves into the house and changed all of our clocks to the time of Beth’s death.’
Laurel gasps in horror.
‘They also used my credit card to buy a climbing frame which they had delivered to the house, and approached Sandrine on the street in the dark to tell her God loves her. Ed is convinced it’s all for show, but I’m pretty sure whoever is doing this would very much like to drag me down a dark part of memory lane and hurt me. Today there was a knock at the front door, but when Ed opened it, no one was there. The day before, the hall mirror fell off the wall and nearly crushed James, and then this afternoon, Ed found the point of a knife embedded in our bread board in the kitchen, where someone had stabbed it with such force it simply snapped. Ed conveniently didn’t think that showed any real intent however—’
‘Because you can’t call the police for fear of them finding out his little secret?’
‘Exactly. Oh – and Sandrine told me in the car on the way here that Ed has been coming into her bedroom at night to watch her sleep.’
Laurel stares at me, speechless – and then we both jump horribly as the door opens and Dad reappears clutching a mug of tea. He looks between us, puts it down on the table and quietly leaves again without a word.
Laurel hesitates, then takes a deep breath. ‘Well… let’s take the last bit first. Ed is the only bloke in the house responsible for the safety of his wife, child, and a teenager – right? I think I’d be checking everyone in their beds at night too. Have you explained to Sandrine what’s going on and that someone is targeting you?’
‘No,’ I admit. ‘I didn’t want to frighten her.’
‘So then she’s not going to understand why Ed is appearing in her bedroom, is she?’ Laurel says reasonably. ‘Of course she’s going to think it’s weird without any context.’
‘But to hear her talk in the car today, you’d have thought I was liberating her from the clutches of a predator. And the thing is, it’s not as if she’s a voluptuous, looks-older-than-she-is bombshell. You haven’t seen her, but she looks like a little kid. Even one of my friends remarked on it at the beginning of the week, about how at least I wouldn’t have to worry about Ed shagging the hot au pair.’
‘Well that backs up what I’ve just said, doesn’t it? He feels responsible for her safety, as any parent would when a child is staying under their roof. I have to ask though, what makes Ed so certain that Simon is behind all of this?’
‘His main theory is that Simon’s engineering a situation I’ll feel compelled to discuss with him – thus drawing him back into my life – because he’s obsessed with me.’
‘Re-bonding over the death of your daughter seventeen years ago?’ Laurel wrinkles her nose. ‘I can’t see that, somehow.’
‘Me neither.’