There was a thoughtful note to his voice when he replied, and at that instant, Ellie knew what he was going to say.
‘If I tell the police and they question you, you’ll have to tell Max, won’t you. And we both know that he won’t forgive you. So if I admit I was seeing you, you’ll be free. Free for me. So tell me, Ellie - why shouldn’t I do it?’
At that moment, Ellie saw the bedroom door begin to open, and she quickly hung up and shut the bathroom door.
‘Ellie?’ It was Max’s voice. ‘Are you in there? Are you okay? You said you were making lunch, but then you disappeared.’
She took a deep breath, and tried to disguise the nervous tremor of her voice.
‘Be out in a minute, Max. Sorry - I felt a bit grubby after the drive.’
Damn this accident, she thought. Damn it to hell.
She knew that was a terrible thought and her suffering was nothing in comparison to Abbie’s family’s, but if she wasn’t careful it was going to bring her whole world crashing down around her ears.
Running some cold water into the sink, and flushing the lavatory for effect, Ellie opened the bathroom cabinet to stash her phone until she could rescue it later. She would struggle to explain why she’d taken it with her into the bathroom.
She looked in the cupboard and paused. She stared for a minute longer.
What was wrong?
Nothing appeared to be missing, but it was as if everything had been moved slightly. Max never opened this cupboard - all his stuff was on the shelf. She kept tablets, antiseptic cream and some of the necessary but less alluring female bathroom products in here.
She rushed into the bedroom, randomly pulling open drawers.
But she already knew what she was going to find.
* * *
Since the children were now happily playing in the kitchen, Leo decided to pop upstairs quickly and get her laptop so she could update her blog. Max had gone in search of Ellie, and she didn’t know whether she was supposed to leave the twins on their own or not, but she was sure they would be okay for two minutes. She disconnected the laptop from where it was charging, and headed back down.
Damn, she thought. The lid was fully closed. She must have done it by mistake as she picked it up. She always left the lid open by about a millimetre so that the screen went off, but the catch didn’t engage. It had broken a couple of weeks ago, and she had kept meaning to get it mended. Now she was going to have to root around and find a paperclip or something that she could bend to open it. That’s what came of being in a rush.
Returning to the kitchen, she fished around in the utensils’ drawer until she found an old corkscrew. The end of that should do it. She twiddled around, and finally managed to open the lid, and the laptop sprang back into life. Vowing to get the catch fixed, she decided to write up some bullet points for her next blog. Her conversations with Ellie today had her thinking about how easy it was for two people who are so close to begin to move in opposite directions, perhaps without even noticing it.
She opened her documents folder, and stopped. She hadn’t used her computer since she got up that morning, but three of her files had been accessed. The time stamps showed today’s date. Two were only blogs - her client files were all password protected thank goodness - but the other one that had been opened was the file on her father.
She looked up as Max returned to the kitchen.
‘Ellie will be down to make lunch in a moment, Leo. Can I interest you in a glass of wine? I’m going to get on with the salad so that Ellie only has to worry about the clever bits.’
‘No wine, thanks. Water’s fine.’ She paused. ‘Max, have you used my computer for any reason this morning? It’s not a problem, of course, but I just wondered.’
Max grabbed a bottle of fizzy water from the fridge.
‘Now why on earth would I want to do that when we have a super duper twenty-seven inch iMac in the office? Why are you asking? Have you got lots of exciting secrets on there?’ Max wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, and turned back to the task of helping with the lunch.