Why did she waste her time with worry, Grace thought as she kicked off her shoes and swung her legs up on to the sofa. Sarah was a grown woman: she could do what she liked.
Grace reached for the television remote control and flicked channels. This was it: a night on her own with only a bottle of red and Coronation Street for company. How tragic.
Hours later, she woke up on the sofa. The television was still on and she had managed to knock her glass over during her sleep, staining a patch of carpet blood red. She searched for her mobile phone and found it wedged between the cushions at the back of the sofa. She pressed the screen to read the time.
Grace had assumed she’d just nodded off briefly, but it was twenty to eight in the morning. She rubbed a hand across her face and tried to focus her tired eyes. The empty wine bottle on the coffee table was a reminder of why her head was throbbing and her mouth was filled with a sickly sweet aftertaste that was making her nauseous.
She went to the bathroom, peed and brushed her teeth, dragging the toothpaste across her tongue in an attempt to rid herself of some of the wine’s aftertaste. She remembered being annoyed at Sarah and resolved not to be a bitch when she saw her. Having a go at Sarah had never got Grace anywhere. If she was going to talk any sense into her, she would have to find another way to go about it.
Back on the landing, Grace noticed the door to Sarah’s room was still slightly opened. Sarah could have seen her sleeping on the sofa and not closed it to avoid making a sound and waking her up. Maybe she’d been trying to dodge the lecture she knew she’d inevitably get. Sometimes, Grace felt as though she was playing the role of mother where Sarah was concerned, making constant attempts to keep her on the straight and narrow; failing, despite her repeated efforts.
Grace carefully stuck her head around Sarah’s bedroom door, careful not to push it and make a noise. It was dark in the bedroom, the curtains still closed. The light from the landing illuminated enough of the small bedroom for Grace to make out the bed and its crumpled duvet. She narrowed her eyes, searching out the shape of Sarah beneath it. Putting a hand to the wall, Grace flicked the bedroom light switch. The duvet was piled on the bed as Sarah had left it the day before. The bed was empty.
Sarah rarely stayed a night away from the flat. She occasionally slept over when she visited her mother, but those nights were rare. She had never stayed a night away with Connor; of that much Grace was certain. Connor had a family to go home to, and he had made it clear to Sarah that their affair would never involve nights spent away from home. Sarah had made the mistake of mentioning it to Grace on a few occasions, complaining of the fact that she had never got to spend a night with him.
Grace had seen him once, by chance. She had been in the supermarket with Sarah and they had turned into the bakery section and almost collided with a man who was pushing a trolley with one hand and dragging a screaming boy by the other. Sarah and Connor had acknowledged one another silently, each unwilling to speak to the other in front of his son. Instead, Sarah had mumbled an apology at having walked into his trolley, then made some pointless comment to Grace about washing-up liquid. They hadn’t needed any: there had been a full one on the kitchen window sill when Grace had cleared away her breakfast things that morning.
‘That was him, wasn’t it?’
‘Who?’
‘Connor.’
Once again, Sarah had made an attempt to change the subject.
Grace recalled her frustration with her friend. Here she was once again making the same mistakes, never learning from the things that had caused her so much pain.
Grace had felt frustrated before. Now all she felt was a growing sense of panic.
She went back to the living room and retrieved her phone, trying Sarah’s number once more. Again, it went straight to answerphone. She thought about contacting Connor; she knew he had a Facebook account and it should prove easy enough to find him. But what would Sarah say when she found out that Grace had contacted him? She was bound to go nuts. She had assured Grace that the affair was over – why would she lie about that?
A mounting sense of worry crept through her.
If Sarah wasn’t with Connor, then where was she?
Chapter Twenty-One
Alex stood in the superintendent’s office deliberating over the words that were perched on the tip of her tongue. She had gone over it in her head countless times, weighing up the pros and cons of requesting permission to access the files relating to Emily Phillips’s case. Although she remained adamant that this wasn’t the right time to go over old ground and reinvestigate anything relating to either Emily’s or Luke’s cases, Alex was convinced that if she could reassure Chloe that they would get permission to do so once Lola Evans’s killer had been caught then Chloe would resume normal practice and devote her full attention to the case she was supposed to be working on.
She fully expected the request to receive a less than warm response, but for Chloe’s sake it was a reception she was prepared to face.
‘Hypothetically speaking, how averse would you be to the idea of having a closed case reopened?’
Superintendent Harry Blake studied Alex cautiously. He still looked so tired, Alex thought. He had been off work for almost a year and, although his treatment had been deemed a success by doctors, the general consensus was that he had returned to work too soon. In his absence, Alex had acted as investigating officer in a couple of key cases, one of which had drawn closer to home than anyone had been comfortable with. The experience had taught Alex a lot, but she hadn’t been ready to park herself in the firing line on a permanent basis. She was happiest and, as far as she was concerned, most efficient when she was working amongst the team.
She was glad to have Harry back, but she wasn’t happy to see him looking so exhausted so soon upon his return.
‘How’s the search into Lola Evans’s murder going?’
Alex’s lip curled slightly. She wondered, briefly, if she had in fact spoken her own question aloud or merely run it through her brain one final time before airing it.
‘I… we’re following up a couple of leads and trying to establish Lola’s final few hours.’
‘“Trying”,’ the superintendent repeated. ‘As in, you’ve not got very far? So why are you asking me, hypothetically or not, about closed cases when we’ve got an open and very much ongoing one already on our hands?’
Alex made a conscious effort to uncurl her top lip. She knew it was a habit, a reaction that occurred when she found herself annoyed or angered by something, and often she could feel herself slipping into the gesture. Other times, she remained oblivious to it.
‘The investigation into Lola Evans’s murder is moving forward, and the case I’m referring to won’t impact upon it.’
‘So there’s nothing hypothetical about this “case” then?’
The inverted commas were audible. Alex’s brain exhaled an expletive at her careless turn of phrasing.