Just Like the Other Girls - Claire Douglas Page 0,63

more clothes, a crop top, a floaty summer dress, a tatty pair of white tennis shoes, a few cardigans, two pairs of pyjamas with Snoopy on the front, as well as some Body Shop toiletries and a comb. There’s no phone, or purse, and I’m just about to stuff everything back into the bag when I notice a passport tucked into one of the inside pockets. I take it out and open it, shining the light from my phone onto the photo. A girl of around my age with blonde hair and a familiar face stares back at me. It’s Jemima.

I hear a movement in the garden and I quickly return everything to the bag, zip it up, my heart pounding while my mind is still trying to process why Jemima’s clothes are in Elspeth’s cellar.

The door banging against the wall makes me jump. I turn. Someone is standing there.

22

Kathryn

She’s found the bag. Of course she bloody well has. What did Kathryn expect? She should have hidden it better, buried it even. But she hadn’t expected someone to be snooping in the cellar. It’s usually only her that goes in there.

Una’s trying to look nonchalant, which is hard when she’s stooped, with a pained expression on her face. She witters on about Elspeth sending her here for some wine but Kathryn can tell by her panicked air and the way her eyes dart, almost unconsciously, towards the holdall, that she knows.

What is she going to do now? Think, Kathryn, think.

She contemplates blocking Una’s way, but what would that achieve? It would cause a scene, not to mention alert her mother. No, she wants to keep Elspeth out of this. And she can’t very well trap Una in the cellar for ever, tempting though that is.

Una walks towards her, the bottle of wine held in front of her, as if she’s brandishing a weapon. Kathryn has no choice but to stand aside without speaking, and Una almost runs past her, while trying to appear as if everything is normal. It’s almost comical.

Kathryn breathes in the dank smell of the cellar, her mind working overtime. Then she kicks the bag further into the corner of the room. She’ll have to come back and retrieve it. Burn it, if necessary. Maybe she could convince Ed to light a bonfire, until it dawns on her that Ed has never started a fire in his life and probably wouldn’t know where to begin, and if she did go home requesting such a thing, how suspicious would it look?

Damn it. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Nobody uses the cellar. Why has her mother decided to ask Una to come down here? And why can’t anybody find the fucking key for the lock? It went missing years ago and nobody’s ever bothered to replace it. Kathryn slams the door and stomps up the stairs towards the French windows. She’d only popped over to collect a painting her mother had bought from a local artist. Bloody ugly piece of a woman in a rocking chair holding a dog: the background is too dark, while the figures are cumbersome, as though the artist has used paint that was too thick. Kathryn worries that her mother’s eye for art isn’t as good as it once was. And when Elspeth had told her Una was in the cellar, Kathryn remembered with a sudden panic that that was where she’d dumped the holdall.

When she returns to the kitchen, Una and her mother are sipping wine from Elspeth’s best crystal. Not that Una seems to be enjoying it. Every swallow looks to be an effort. She doesn’t meet Kathryn’s gaze.

Elspeth’s eyes are bright. Too bright. Playful. Cruel. Kathryn braces herself for some acidic comment that’s obviously brewing in her mother. And, sure enough, ‘Checking up on Una, are we?’ she says to Kathryn, a smirk on her lips. ‘Satisfied she hasn’t made off with the Pétrus?’

Kathryn bristles. Why can’t her mother make her feel, just once, that she’s the most important – the most loved – person in the room? Instead she’s always the butt of her nasty comments. She doesn’t bother to respond. Instead she throws her mother a withering look and turns to Una. ‘Well, I’d better be off. Una, would you mind helping me carry the painting to the car? I’m parked right outside.’

Una looks as if she’d rather do anything else but she pushes her seat back obligingly and follows Kathryn to the library, like an obedient pet. She