But then, lying there looking out at the trees, she started thinking.
What would happen when the wee one was out in the world, outside the protection of her womb?
What might Nick do then?
Duncan must have felt her tense up, because he held her even closer and started to whisper in her ear about the mountain stream, and she closed her eyes and visualised Nick there: the stream was swollen by floods, all churning and foaming, and he was standing there watching it. Maggie came up behind him with a rock and smashed it onto the back of his head and he fell forward into the water and went under.
Bye-bye, Nick.
Finally, she closed her eyes.
And that was when the first wave of pain hit her.
5
Lulu - May 2019
‘Good morning, Mrs Clyde.’ The porter at the desk, an older guy called Adeel, nodded to Lulu and then went straight back to reading his paper. No doubt the porters had all been told to give her as wide a berth as possible. They were bound to know the reason Harry had been sacked last week and probably blamed her.
‘Hi, Adeel,’ she said briefly, and went on past and out of the building.
She fell asleep on the Tube, missed her stop and had to get another train back to Hammersmith. As she ascended from the mineral, hot-engine smell of the Underground into the early morning London air, a mix of fumes and dusty pavements and cooking and, somehow, grass, every step shuddered pain into her head. Her phone buzzed with a text message from Nick:
Just checking you’re OK
Sighing, she messaged back:
Fine. Can’t always text you on the hour every hour.
And she left it at that. She wasn’t going to justify herself. It wasn’t reasonable to expect her to text him every hour as he’d requested. She was finding his smothering behaviour, after what had happened with Harry, increasingly hard to deal with. He didn’t let her go out alone after dark, saying he wouldn’t have a moment’s peace for worrying about her. He’d even started following her about the apartment. If she went to sit on the balcony for a few moments to herself, he’d join her. If she went back in to watch TV, he’d be there, snuggling up to her.
It was such a relief to be out of there. Even when he wasn’t physically present, there were all the damn notes. She’d taken them with her, as usual, but as she passed a bin, she rooted in her handbag for them. As she turned to drop them in the bin, she was conscious of a man some way down the pavement wheeling round and walking in the opposite direction. He was a fair distance away, but from here he looked a bit like Harry. Same lanky frame, same very narrow bum.
Oh, for crying out loud!
She was becoming as paranoid as Nick.
In her office, she just sat for a moment, eyes closed, centring herself before the first client of the day. Putting all thoughts of stalkers and overprotective husbands out of her mind.
Her phone buzzing woke her up.
‘Urrrgghhh!’ she vented, picking it up.
But it wasn’t a text from Nick.
Hi Lulu, sorry, I’m really sorry. I know I’m not due to see you until Friday but I need your help. Please. Please, Lulu, I really need to see you NOW but I can’t face it, leaving here and crossing town. I can’t face any of it. Can you come here? I’m sorry. I know I’m being a terrible, terrible nuisance but I need to talk to you pretty urgently. Thanks. Paul
Oh my God!
What did he mean, he needed her help?
What had happened?
She quickly replied to say she was on her way, sent texts to the clients she was due to see that morning saying they would have to reschedule, and left the office.
Paul’s street was a brick Victorian terrace typical of thousands all over London. Used to the wide-open spaces of Australia, where even the cities were spacious, Lulu couldn’t get her head round the way people lived here, cheek by jowl, one on top of the other. As she identified Paul’s impossibly narrow little house, the unedifying thought popped into her mind: Thank goodness Nick is rich.
There was a tiny front garden – at least, presumably it had once been a garden, but it was now just two small squares of paving on either side of a concrete path to the front door.
Which was standing half open.
‘Paul?’ She rang the bell, and when there was no response, pushed the door wide. ‘Paul, it’s Lulu.’
She stepped into the narrow hall and, through the open kitchen door, saw his legs and his feet.
Dangling.
Dark jeans. Polished brown leather shoes, swaying gently in the slight breeze from the open front door.
Then she was in the kitchen, grabbing his legs, grabbing the overturned chair and jumping up on it so she could hold him up, so she could hold him round the hips and lift him up to take the pressure off –
She looked at his face only once.
There was blue nylon twine round his neck, tied above his head to an old hook in the ceiling. A pair of eyes goggled at her, not Paul’s eyes, not those intelligent, troubled eyes she’d got to know, but ghastly fish-like orbs. His mouth was open, tongue slightly protruding as if in mockery of her vain attempts to save him.
He was dead.
Of course he was dead.
But she held onto him, she spoke calmly and reassuringly as she would have in one of their sessions. She pulled him to her with her left arm while with her right hand she fumbled in her bag for her phone.
And then she saw him.
Milo.
The little dog was cowering under the table, trembling all over, his head dipped submissively, ears folded back. He was gazing up at her.
‘Oh, Milo,’ breathed Lulu as she stabbed 999.
He didn’t stop shaking, but at the sound of his name his stubby tail moved, tentatively, back and forth.
6
Maggie - August 1997