take her to the nearest bench.
The taxi took as long as the walk would have. While she waited, her mind probed cautiously, looking for a reaction that she could analyse. When she thought of Eleanor a screaming pain threatened to escalate into a full-blown migraine, something she couldn’t deal with here and now, but despite her efforts to think of something else, anything else, all she could picture was her best friend’s little boys, motherless children. Noah had been found in his cot upstairs, completely unharmed but in considerable distress. The call had come from one of the neighbours who had seen a woman perfectly fitting her description walking up the path towards the house shortly before the screaming and banging started.
‘Bea, it’s Karen. Listen, I don’t know what you’ve heard about anything …’ She hesitated. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to Bea about what had happened to Eleanor in a voicemail. ‘Look, call me please, it’s urgent. I’m sorry.’
She didn’t bother going inside her house, instead getting straight into her car. There wasn’t anything there for her, and the emptiness would be too much to bear. She didn’t care about how she looked or smelled after seventeen hours in a police station. She’d told them about Jessica Hamilton but they hadn’t seemed particularly interested, concentrating more on her.
There was only one way to find out. She had known as soon as she’d taken it from the office that it was going to end this way. She’d told herself when she’d written it down that to go there would be career suicide. But now it seemed she had no career, so she had nothing left to lose.
She took the slip of paper out of her bag and laid it on the steering wheel in front of her.
Jessica Hamilton’s home address.
Karen turned the radio up so she didn’t have to think about the dozens of police officers who were working on the evidence that would lead them to Eleanor’s killer. It was only a matter of time before she was dragged back in for questioning again, and this time she might not be coming out. Not unless she could prove that Jessica Hamilton at least existed, then maybe she wouldn’t be the sole focus of their investigation. Jessica might be twisted, she might be smart, but Karen doubted she was an evil genius. It happened all the time on TV, killers being so clever that they took care of all the evidence, led the police round in circles until the very end, but the truth was that in real life it was unlikely that she’d erased all the fingerprints she’d made in Eleanor’s life. All the police needed was someone to match them to, and while Jessica remained a ghost, Karen’s was the only direction they were looking in. Hers and perhaps Adam’s.
Her phone buzzed inside her handbag and she fumbled for it, trying to keep control of the wheel with one hand and rooting around inside with the other. When she had no luck, she upended the bag, tipping the entire contents on to the passenger seat, and grabbed the phone, which promptly stopped ringing. Shit! Number unknown. She waited to see if an answerphone message appeared, but nothing. To be honest, it was for the best. If it had been Michael or Bea, she would have had to tell them where she was going and they would only try and stop her. She’d made up her mind and had no intention of being swayed by reason or logic. She felt like she’d been possessed by an impulsive, reckless spirit and she was going to embrace the feeling for as long as it took her to get there, like a drunk determined to dance until she was sober. She’d never acted without consultation with her senses before; everything she did in her life was carefully measured and considered. Even the casual sex had had none of the reckless abandon of a normal one-night stand, each episode planned methodically and executed for the exact purpose of convincing herself she was in control of the situation with Michael. He went home to his wife; she went and screwed a nameless stranger. Tit for tat to prove to herself that she couldn’t be in too deep – not if she could cheat on him so easily and without the slightest bit of guilt. Well, until the last time.
The houses on Jessica’s street were of the detached, three-storey, bay-windowed variety.