‘Of course.’ Holly beamed. ‘I’d be honoured to look after you from now on.’
And that had been the sum of it. Thanks to the Fenwicks’ superficiality, Emily was swiftly forgotten and it was business as usual.
Half an hour after Holly’s short conversation with them, the Fenwicks had spent another few hundred pounds in the store and Holly’s commission pot had risen yet another notch.
After the couple had left, Holly made a cup of tea and took it to her desk so she could complete the paperwork from their purchases.
On her way back across the showroom, she spotted that Martyn was free. She walked over to him.
‘How’s things?’
He looked up from his phone and smiled at her. ‘Good, thanks.’
She wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject so decided to just jump in with both feet. ‘Listen, did you know the girl in the job before I joined?’
His smile faded. ‘Lynette, yeah. Only as a colleague, but… She was OK. Nice girl.’ He tapped his fingertips on the table next to him.
‘She left the job quickly, as I understand it.’ It was obvious Martyn felt a bit awkward, but she had to know. ‘What happened?’
Martyn looked at the stairs and back down to the floor.
‘We were told never to speak about it or it’d be a disciplinary,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Holly.’
‘Come on, you know I won’t say anything,’ she pressed him.
He glanced at the stairs again.
‘Look, you didn’t hear it from me but basically, Josh was shagging her.’
Holly’s mouth fell open. Josh? She would never have had him down as a sleazeball.
‘Emily told me she got rid of her. How did she do that… and why?’
‘Let’s just say things got complicated.’ Martyn sighed.
‘Complicated how?’
‘You don’t give up, do you?’ He laughed but shuffled on his feet. ‘Josh was… well, he was also shagging Emily. Neither of them knew about the other one.’
‘Josh was… with Emily?’ Holly also recalled that Josh was married. ‘What a rat!’
‘Yeah, I know. She was less of a dragon then. We suspected something was going on between them, but they were quite discreet.’ Martyn glanced around the showroom yet again, obviously nervous of Josh somehow gathering that he was gossiping. ‘Then Lynette came to work here and he started his double game.’
‘And Emily found out?’
‘She followed him after work, apparently. Watched as he met Lynette in a bar in town and screamed the place down, we heard.’
‘Did she make Lynette’s life hell, then?’ Holly shuddered, able to imagine just how miserable Emily Beech could make you if she set her mind to it.
‘Well… Lynette left under a bit of a cloud. She was found to be stealing. Items from the shop-floor displays were found in her car.’
Holly could hardly believe her ears.
‘Pretty much the same method Emily tried to use on me.’ She frowned. ‘Trying to convince everyone I’d broken the vase.’
‘Yeah.’ Martyn shrugged.
‘Pity everybody seemed to believe her at the time,’ Holly said acidly. ‘Still, the truth shone through, thankfully.’
Martyn looked relieved when she moved away. She stood near the window and sipped her tea, watching as the traffic crawled by, still in shock that she’d been such a bad judge of character with Josh.
The previous day, after clearing it with Josh, she’d transferred the contents of her own drawers over to the larger desk that sat close to the window. Emily’s old workstation. Josh had arranged for a couple of the warehouse men to relocate her computer there too.
It was a much nicer spot. From here she had an excellent view of the entrance doors, and it was easy to identify the genuinely interested window browsers and know what they had their eye on before they even entered the shop.
She had to hand it to Emily, she had been even cleverer than Holly had given her credit for. But now even Emily knew that things didn’t always go her way. She hadn’t been able to dispose of Holly quite as efficiently as poor Lynette.
Holly tapped at her calculator and happily added the day’s sales figures to a piece of paper. She was just leafing through a product brochure to find a particular code when, for no apparent reason, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled.
She stopped working and looked up, just in time to see a woman in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt turn and walk briskly away from the window. Had she been watching Holly working?
As soon as the woman was out of sight, the creepy feeling left her. It had been impossible to see any identifying features from the back, but the woman had been around the same height and stature as Geraldine. Or even Emily, without her heels.
If only she’d glanced up a couple of seconds earlier.
Holly knew that David finished his shift at one, so at twelve thirty she slipped out of the back entrance to visit his office, as he seemed insistent on calling it.
‘Holly,’ he beamed, putting down his flask. ‘How was your morning?’
‘Have you seen anyone skulking around here at all?’ She swallowed. ‘I thought I saw Emily just now, at the front window.’
David frowned. ‘Emily doesn’t work here any more. Josh told me to revoke her staff parking rights.’
Holly shook her head in frustration. Why did he always have to take everything so damn literally?
‘I’m fully aware she doesn’t work here any more, David. That’s my point. She shouldn’t be anywhere around here.’
He reached for his jacket. ‘I ought to tell Mr Kellington she’s been seen trespassing.’
‘No! I don’t want you to do that because I’m not sure it was her; it might have been… Oh, never mind!’
‘I’ll be round later to do some jobs for Mrs Barrett,’ she heard him call after her. ‘Will you be in?’
That was all she needed, David and Cora rattling on all evening. She needed space to get her head straight.
The awful thoughts had started to come back with a vengeance. She could feel them.
Chapter Fifty-Four
David
I lie in bed, turning this way and then that, but every muscle in my body feels stretched to its limit. My neck and shoulders tense and burn, my face and hands are sticky.
The glaring red digits on my clock inform me it is 1.30 a.m.
I wonder if Holly is sleeping soundly, just across the way. She was agitated when she came to speak to me at lunchtime. She even snapped at me a couple of times.
I know she didn’t mean it. It will be the goings-on on the shop floor. I’ve heard all sorts of unsavoury rumours about who is getting up to what.
It feels like I haven’t been in bed that long, but I came up at the normal time, I’m sure of it. My head feels full of fuzz, so I lie still for a few minutes in the hope it might dissipate.
It doesn’t.
I get out of bed and crack the window open slightly, stand there a moment to enjoy the trickle of the cool breeze that filters through.
A cat walks nonchalantly across the grass and the outside sensors activate. It disappears into the hedge, and a few seconds later the lights go off again.
That’s when I see that the Browns are still up.
As their house sits on the bend of the crescent, I can partially see the back of the property if I lean out of the window.
Their lounge is situated at the rear, unlike ours and the lights are still on… at this hour! Although the curtains are pulled to, they’re of poor quality and don’t quite meet in the middle.
With the aid of the binoculars, I see Mr Brown’s feet and his striped-pyjama-clad legs. A light flickers within as the television bathes the room with its flashing images.
Upstairs, the curtains are closed and their bedroom is in darkness.
I’ve seen Mrs Brown drawing the curtains in there at bedtime, but I’ve never seen him. I wonder if they’re sleeping in separate rooms. I ought to try and ascertain this, because if so, when put together with the other information I know about the Browns, it could be a sign that trouble is brewing again.