Switching the light on, I catch my breath, forcing myself to focus, even though all I want to do is squeeze my eyes tightly shut. The closed shower curtain sways gently in the breeze coming through the open window, and as much as I’m relieved that it explains a lot, I still can’t relax until I’m sure that nobody is hiding in the bath behind it.
I count to three in my head, or it might have been aloud, and pull it brusquely backward. The metal rings screech on the pole, jangling the very few nerve endings I have left.
It’s empty.
Is it me? Am I allowing paranoia to poison my mind and alter my senses? Am I hearing things that don’t exist? Seeing things that aren’t there? My faculties are so compromised that I feel as if I could conjure up anything if it matched the narrative that everyone else is convinced is my life.
I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, alarmed by the hollowed-out version staring back at me. I could collapse in a heap, giving in to whoever has set out to destroy me, or I could fight back, safe in the knowledge that I’ve not done anything wrong, aside from holding out on a few home truths. I pull myself up, standing taller and holding my head high, reveling in the inner strength such a simple gesture can spawn. I need to focus on the things that implicate me in a crime I didn’t commit and discard the psychological attempt to bring me down. It’s time to sort the wheat from the chaff.
By the time I’ve crossed the landing to our bedroom, I’ve already forgiven myself for thinking that someone had been in the house and am convinced that everything that has happened up to now can surely be explained. Nobody is out to get me; it’s all just a catalog of coincidences. I almost believe it until I see my sister’s pink bunny rabbit lying on my pillow.
20
I don’t even attempt to go back to bed—how can I when I know someone has tainted the very place where I sleep?
Instead, I make myself a hot chocolate and sit at the dining table with my laptop, wondering who has violated my home by placing Jennifer’s stuffed toy on my pillow. It wasn’t there before; it wasn’t even in the same room, as I always keep it in a box in the wardrobe where my mom’s clothes are. But it’s the intention behind it that bothers me the most; that whoever did it knows its significance and specifically chose it to cause the greatest impact.
The thought of Jennifer herself being involved clamps itself around my throat as I question what she’d be trying to prove. I know her motive; I can feel her bitter resentment at being “abandoned” as keenly now as I did all those years ago, but does she really think she’s going to scare me into confessing something I had no control over?
And what of Jacob? It’s not impossible to believe that my alleged involvement in his disappearance is connected with the break-in at my home.
In spite of all the conspiracy theories as to who might be doing this to me, I know the only way I’m going to get myself out of it is by finding the man called Michael Talbot. And right now, whichever way I look at it, his wife is my first port of call.
I type “Michael Talbot” into Google and the page is immediately flooded with the same stock image of a man with piercing blue eyes, a soft smile and a trimmed beard. His disappearance has only been reported in local newspapers, it seems, the incident not deemed serious enough just yet to run in the nationals.
But the Kentish Gazette has mentioned him in a two-by-one column and I guess the others will follow just as soon as they get a whiff of the backstory that accompanies it.
POLICE NAME ALLEGED MISTRESS AS LOVER’S KILLER is the headline I visualize across the front pages, as Jacob’s body is found washed up on the pebbled beach of Whitstable.
The papers would have a field day with that golden nugget alone, though it will only be a matter of time before it becomes KILLER’S DAUGHTER TURNS KILLER HERSELF, once an unscrupulous journalist sniffs out the real story.
I imagine the various articles and essays written by people like me; psychologists who will look to boost their profile by stating that killers are born with the killer gene. And tabloid hacks will be dispatched to New York to track down the father who I inherited it from.
I subscribe and pay for an electoral registry service that lists two Michael Talbots in the district council of Canterbury. It’s a starting point and I scribble the addresses down on the pad next to me, eager to start unraveling the dichotomy that’s become my life.
As soon as it’s a respectable enough hour, I ashamedly call the one client I have today and tell them I’m not feeling well and wouldn’t want them to catch it. It seems the more I lie, the easier it becomes.
Not wanting to stand out, I dress in a beige A-line skirt and white blouse, and throw a string of amber beads around my neck. With my hair pulled loosely back into a clip and oversized sunglasses on, I look like every other well-off Londoner who’s bought a holiday home in Whitstable in the five years since it’s become the place to be.
In the car, on my way to the first address on my list, I call Anna, just to check she’s OK, but it immediately goes to voicemail. I wonder where she is and what she’s doing.
I hope that she and Nick somehow managed to find some middle ground last night because I fear that if they couldn’t do it then, of all nights, then they probably never would. But my gut tells me they would have collided with each other head-on, clearly unable to traverse the most painful of reminders by themselves, let alone together.
I can’t take the chance of Anna feeling even more desperate than she was yesterday, so as soon as I’m done here, I’ll have to track her down and make sure she’s OK.
I park in Canterbury town center and take a shortcut through the cathedral grounds. I’m reminded of the last time I was here. It was a couple of months ago, and Leon and I were with Shelley’s husband Dave to watch her compete in a choir competition. I’d gone to the bar to get us all a beer when, turning round with a plastic pint glass in each hand, I had bumped, quite literally, into Jacob.
“Naomi!” he’d exclaimed, clearly as shocked as I was.
I’d looked around furtively, searching both the people close to us and his face for a prompt on how best to deal with this situation.
“My wife’s inside,” he said, answering my predicament. “She’s in one of the choirs.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Well, I wish her luck.”
He’d looked at me oddly, almost as if he was expecting something more, but I wasn’t keen on my bumping into his wife, any more than I imagine he was.
“Good to see you,” I said, moving away.
“Erm, yeah, I’ll see you on Monday,” he said after me.
I’d spent the rest of the concert feeling like I was being watched; though whether by him or his wife, I couldn’t be sure. He’d have no reason to tell her I was there—by rights she wouldn’t have known I even existed—yet I still felt I was in the disadvantaged position of someone knowing exactly where I was, training their eyes on me, while I only had a sea of a thousand faces to focus on. A bit like how I feel now.
When I get to King Street, I wonder how to approach this. Do I ask for Mr. or Mrs. Talbot? If a woman answers the door, should I assume that it’s Vanessa? If it’s her that’s setting me up, she’s sure to recognize me as she’s already gone to extreme lengths to find out everything there is to know about me. But if someone else is involved in this, Vanessa may just be a pawn in the game, being moved and placed to wherever she needs to be, ready for my capture.
Even though I must have walked down this road before, it’s the first time I really take in the houses, which stand cheek to jowl with their neighbors, their front doors opening directly onto the pavement.
Number twenty-one is halfway down on the right-hand side, adorned with red geraniums standing erect in painted window boxes. It looks like a friendly house, as if nice people live there; not people who would frame someone else for a crime they didn’t commit.
I press the antique gold bell and wait breathlessly, not knowing whether the door is going to be opened by a stranger—or someone I know.