Some instinct told me I needed insurance.
The pestle’s unpleasant residue is now a deep rusty brown. I can’t face cleaning it (and why should I? I didn’t hit the man with it, after all) but neither can I bear to carry it like this. I rip off a piece of the blue paper that Terry used to keep for wiping his hands as he worked on the van and wrap it around the pestle’s base.
The night air is sweet and cold on my face when I open the back door. They lock that side gate at night, but luckily there is a piece of broken fence (which I have asked Mark to mend to no avail) that should be just about big enough for me to squeeze through.
I hesitate as I contemplate the damp grass and, taking off my slippers, I hold them to cross the garden. My heart pitter-patters a little bit but I am becoming adroit at doing things that intimidate me these days. The cold dampness of the grass under my toes makes me shudder.
The piece of fence comes away with difficulty and I squeeze through the gap, gasping as a nail snags my dressing gown. I extricate myself, grimacing at the aching in my knees as I manoeuvre myself to the other side of the fence.
I walk quickly across the grass, my toes scrunching in protest until I get to the French doors, where I slip my chilled, wet feet into my slippers again.
I have this all planned out but my hands shake as I turn the key in the lock.
Mark’s car isn’t in its usual spot out front. I don’t want to run into Tilly, but I am banking on the fact that teenagers sleep like the dead. And Melissa, well, she’s no stranger to sleeping pills. She told me herself.
The kitchen is bathed in the milky under-lights of the cupboards, along with neon slashes of green from the cooker and microwave. How typical of Melissa not to turn off energy-guzzling appliances at night. The room smells sharply of cleaning products with a very slight hint of cigarette smoke.
My eyes drag to the spot where the body lay and for a horrible second I think he is still there. I swear I can see a lumpy shape, black blood spreading across the floor.
But then the vision clears. I am just being silly.
I go to the ornate metal grate over the air vent in the corner of her kitchen. It’s a quirk of these buildings. I have the same one.
The grate comes away easily and I place the object inside. It makes a metallic screech of protest as I push it back into place. I wait for a few moments, checking there is no sound coming from upstairs, before I get to my feet and dust myself down.
The strange thing is, now I am inside, I am not really afraid. I feel a sense of power, if anything. And I’m not ready to go home yet, to Bertie and my own quiet house.
My eyes stray then to the glint of Melissa’s knife rack on the wall and I wonder how it would feel to use one of them. How hard would you have to push? Would it slide in easily, or would the muscles offer resistance? I imagine the soft gasp of pain and her eyes meeting mine. We would be united by death once more.
Something frantic inside me stills.
Then I am a little shocked at my own imagination. I am a good person and there has been enough violence. I will get my own back my own way.
I’m a small, slight woman and in soft slippers I make no sound as I ascend the staircase. I watch each foot press onto the stair as I rise, acutely aware of the smooth wooden banister under my hand. My nerve endings seem to sing and fizz like a broken fluorescent light. I am electrified with the thrill of this act. More alive perhaps than ever before.
I reach the landing and listen to the gentle sighs and ticks of the sleeping house. A dog barks somewhere outside. Not Bertie. It feels like a night-time companion.
I know which room is hers, of course. The door is pulled over, but not closed. I push it slowly and the door seems to gasp as wood rubs on carpet.
Stepping into the room, I pause and allow my eyes to adjust to the gloom. There is a sour sleep smell in the air, mixed with some sort of perfume I don’t recognize. Hair products, perhaps. The curtains are heavy and at first I can’t make out the bed. Then I see it and – after a second or two – the hump of her body beneath the duvet.
My heart begins to pulse and thrum in a pleasurable way as I pad on silent feet across the room. Melissa is on her side, her face a pale moon, hair a tangled halo on the pillow. I see a hand reaching out – bone-white in the dark, warm room – and realize it is mine. Snatching it back, I feel a little dizzy with the sense of my own power.
I could do anything.
Melissa makes a sound: a groan mingled with an unintelligible word. And where closed lids had been I am looking into the shine of her open eyes. I fancy I can see a tiny version of myself reflected in them. I don’t move a muscle. She mumbles something in her sleep and closes her eyes again.
It’s as I get to the bottom of the stairs on shaking legs that I hear the sound. Urgent whispers are coming from the landing. My heart seems to stop beating as I pad quickly to the kitchen door and try to dissolve into the shadows.
It’s only now that I really think about what I am doing. How this might appear to others.
The voices are coming down the stairs now, getting closer.
I bunch the sides of my dressing gown in my fists and try to quell the panic inside me. I think I might be having a heart attack. My chest is tight and I want to run, run away from here, but I must be silent.
I can’t be discovered.
‘I didn’t mean to drop off!’ says a familiar male voice in a low, sleepy murmur.
There is a giggle. Tilly. ‘I know! Me neither!’ she hisses. ‘But my mum would go mental if she found you here! Go on, go home.’
I move my head very slightly to the left to see Tilly pressing her body up against Nathan’s. He slides his hand down her back. She is dressed only in her bra and knickers and he grabs and squeezes her bottom as though it is made of putty. I want to look away, but cannot.
‘Call you tomorrow, okay?’ he whispers and she nods and kisses him on the lips before opening the front door.
When the door closes, she runs back up the stairs, rather heavily.
I am feeling quite calm again now. I did the right thing, coming here.
A few moments later I am squeezing through the fence and back into the safety of my own garden.
All in all this has been a most useful neighbourly visit. I’m sure Melissa won’t think so much of her friend when she discovers her son has been sleeping with her fifteen-year-old daughter.
And now I must get some sleep. Tomorrow, I have a busy day ahead of me.
MELISSA
Wandering the aisle of Wholefoods, Melissa sips from her Starbucks’ cup, closing her eyes as the extra hot, extra shot latte suffuses her bloodstream. She has tied the scarf around her hair and is wearing make-up for the first time in a week. It feels, pleasantly, as though she has stepped back into her own skin.
Maybe having a prosaic, domestic problem to deal with has forced her back to normality.
But she is in no hurry to rush home to face her sulking, red-eyed daughter.
Stopping to look at the vegetables, she idly picks up an aubergine just because the taut, midnight skin is pleasing to look at. She places it in her basket.
It’s always therapeutic, shopping in here.
The shelves are loaded with organic produce that is almost aggressively healthy and wholesome. Melissa pictures the mean little Spar at the end of the road when she lived with her mother. Newspapers, porn, sweets, tinned crap. Maybe a wizened banana or two and a sad collection of tomatoes that tasted of nothing but acid.
She belongs here, not there.
She wants all of it, from the sweet, scarlet tomatoes on the vine to the grimy potatoes designed to make rich metropolitan buyers feel at one with nature.
Tonight they will eat as a family.
Something has to change.