The master bedroom was dimly lit, so I opened the curtains and began to poke around. Against one wall was the flat’s only piece of non-flatpack furniture, an antique dressing table with three rectangular mirrors. I wondered how many times Charlotte had looked at herself through their differing perspectives and failed to see what her husband had seen in her.
There were photos of her and Ryan inside mismatched frames on the dressing table, together with a few bottles of perfume. Taped to one mirror was the printout of a baby scan. Beneath it was a jewellery box containing rings and bracelets, all costume, of course.
I opened the wardrobe door and skimmed, hanger by hanger, her high-street-label clothes, her maternity wear outnumbering her pre-pregnancy clothing. Hidden at the back was a wedding dress – the simple, inexpensive lace gown I’d seen her wearing in the photo in Ryan’s grandfather’s room. It was covered in a clear plastic garment bag to prevent it from decaying like its owner.
‘Perfect,’ I muttered, pulling out a pair of yellow rubber gloves from my jacket pocket and slipping them over my hands. Then I reached into my bag to remove what was making it so heavy.
‘Everything all right in there?’ Andy’s voice came from behind the door. I quietly closed the wardrobe so he couldn’t see what I’d done, put the gloves back in my pocket and made my way back into the living room, nudging the dial of a thermostat on the wall up to full.
‘I think it’s a little too pedestrian for my needs,’ I said, and a look crossed his face that said I’d just wasted his time.
I was following him towards the front door when something on the top of a bureau caught my eye. Without him noticing, I grabbed it and slipped it inside my bag, smiling to myself.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
RYAN
It was impossible not to notice the heat or the smell as soon as I opened the door to the flat.
I’d spent Friday evening at Johnny’s house with a Thai takeout and a pay-per-view boxing match. And after a few beers, I’d slept over. It felt good to get away from the flat for a night. Much of the following day was spent with my dad at the cottage, making lists and prioritising the work that needed to be done, room by room. For the first time in a long while, I’d begun to allow a little optimism into my life and not allowed Laura Morris to dominate my thoughts.
But on my return home, it was boiling hot and reeked of something foul. I checked the fridge to see what had gone out of date so quickly, but the smell wasn’t coming from there. I figured someone viewing the flat must have caught their arm against the thermostat and accidentally turned it up, as I’d done it myself many a time. But that didn’t explain the odour.
It smelled the strongest in Charlotte’s and my bedroom. I looked under the bed, the dressing table and behind the curtain for the corpse of a dead mouse or rat. Charlotte had warned me that rats can climb up through the toilet bowl, even in a third-floor flat, though I hadn’t believed her until now. But as I edged closer to the wardrobe, I realised something inside it was causing the stench. I put my hand over my mouth as I opened the door.
‘Jesus!’ I yelled, and stumbled backwards. Charlotte’s wedding dress had been moved to the front, stripped from its polythene cover and the stomach area covered in blood.
At the foot of the dress was the small, pinky-white foetus of a dead piglet, also with blood on it. I kept approaching it, then stepping away, unsure of what to do and trying to process what the hell had happened during the thirty-six hours I’d been absent. Then, suddenly it hit me: Laura had been there. It was the only explanation. She’d been inside my bedroom, and not only was she mocking my dead wife but she was mocking my dead child, too. Furious, I held my breath and grabbed the stinking piglet using a tea towel, picked up my car keys, dropped the body into a recycling bin outside and made for my car.
Andy, the estate agent, was sitting in his office at his desk and facing the door when I stormed in, disturbing his quiet Saturday afternoon.
‘All right, mate,’ he began, ‘how—’
But I wasn’t interested in polite conversation.
‘Who have you shown around the flat in the last two days?’
‘Is something wrong?’
I raised my voice. ‘Who, Andy?’
His two female colleagues turned to stare at me. He nervously scrolled through his phone, checking his diary.
‘A young couple with a baby, two gay lads and then some bird. Is everything all right?’
I really didn’t want the woman to be Laura. Life would be so much easier if it wasn’t her.
‘What was her name?’ I asked.
‘Charlotte Smith. Same surname as you.’
Andy opened his mouth and began to say something else, but I was already out of the front door before I could hear a word.
My car’s alloy wheels scraped against the kerb as I pulled up sharply outside Laura’s house fifteen minutes later.
I threw open the car door, and a vehicle I hadn’t spotted behind me jammed on its brakes and stopped just short of knocking me down. I didn’t even turn to apologise as they blasted their horn at me. Instead, I ran across the road and up Laura’s driveway. The window blinds were partially closed as always, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t in. I banged with both fists on the door and peered through the glass, but everything appeared dark inside despite it being daylight.
‘Open this fucking door!’ I yelled, then crouched to repeat my demand through the letterbox. ‘I know what you did, you sick bitch!’ There was no response. In all my life, I had never been angrier than I was in that moment.
My eyes scanned the front of the house to find a way through to the back, and I pulled on a gate but it was locked and too steep to climb. Suddenly, I had an idea. Laura’s house backed on to playing fields. I’d played many a Sunday-league game there in the past. I ran along the street and into a cul-de-sac until I found an alleyway that took me to the grassy fields and then the rear of Laura’s property.
The renovation work made it stand out from the others and easy to spot. It was larger from behind. A modern, double extension turned it into an L-shape and there were dormer windows where the roof sloped, suggesting they’d renovated the attic to create a third floor.
Behind low bushes and a waist-high wooden fence, I could see a trampoline with a torn, patchy net hanging from the side, on a knee-high lawn. Everything in her garden was overgrown and unkempt. It looked like it belonged to a different house. A gap in the hedgerow allowed me to clamber over the fence and into her garden.
I made my way towards the kitchen window first. No lights were on inside so I got up close to the tinted glass and peered in. The work surfaces and sink were clean and clutter-free. The cupboards were dark grey, and the walls close to black. I put my hand above my eyes to minimise the reflection and squinted, before realising the walls hadn’t been painted like that; they looked like they’d been damaged by smoke. I stared into another window inside what looked like a pantry, and it was exactly the same. What had happened in there?