avoided looking at the left side, where the patches made her look like she was suffering from some kind of disease. Tears pricked at her eyes but didn’t spill down on to her cheeks – maybe they were drying up once and for all.
Adam had treated her as though she was made of glass ever since the horrific incident with her hair. At first she’d tried desperately to convince him it really was an accident, but he’d refused to listen, talking instead about doctor’s appointments and asking Karen for recommendations. Karen. Whenever he mentioned her name these days, Eleanor found herself prickling and she had no idea why. She’d never noticed before how he spoke about her as if she was a higher class of person than them, as if she was a messiah rather than a psychiatrist. She’d found herself snapping at him, ‘She’s not even a real doctor; it’s not as if she’s ever saved anyone’s life.’ Adam had smiled, seeming not to notice the sting in her voice, and replied, ‘We don’t know that.’
She knew it was just a reaction to the news about Karen and Michael’s relationship. It had made her paranoid about every time her best friend and her husband had been in a room together.
She thought back to the day of the hair incident. Karen had left their house before Bea to get back to the office – just as Adam was going to his meeting and she’d heard her tell Adam that if he needed to talk about anything he should call her. The way she’d said anything, so loaded … Eleanor hadn’t stopped thinking about it ever since.
‘Did Toby leave his PE kit in your car?’ she shouted through to Adam, who was miraculously cooking dinner. Guilty conscience?
‘Don’t think so,’ he called back.
‘I’m just going to check,’ she said, slightly quieter than before and hoping he wouldn’t hear over the noise of the cooker fan. He didn’t object, so she lifted his keys off the hook and slipped out of the front door, closing it quietly rather than letting it slam.
The car was the junk tip she was expecting, crisp packets shoved in the door pockets and an empty McDonald’s cup in the cup holder. She worked fast, opening the glove box and rifling through the contents. Nothing out of the ordinary: cables to charge a mobile phone, the satnav, a black leather wallet with the car’s service history. She checked the boot – a pair of her old shoes, three of Toby’s woolly hats and a car cleaning kit. She gave up, the chant of crazy, crazy, crazy reverberating in her ears as she went round to the driver’s side to lock the door.
That was when she spotted it, just a tiny glint of gold on the passenger side, hooked over the side of the door pocket and nearly covered by rubbish. It was probably foil from a sweet wrapper, she told herself as she opened the door and climbed over. A ring pull. A pen. She was still going through the list of things it was going to be as she picked up the delicate gold bracelet and lifted it to the light. It wasn’t one of hers, but it was familiar. Her mind couldn’t process where she’d seen it before; it was too busy reeling from the realisation that Karen had been right. Her husband was having an affair.
69
Bea
The laptop seemed to take forever to boot up, and the minute it did, Bea clicked on her email app so many times the screen froze.
Who the hell had sent her that video? Where had they even got it? Had he filmed it … Paul? He’d been one of her few attempts at a relationship in years, and if he had filmed it he certainly hadn’t … her mind searched for the words as she slammed her fingers on ctrl alt delete … he hadn’t obtained her consent. The mobile phone tucked under her chin rang and rang, then switched over to Orange answerphone once more.
‘Eleanor. Ring me.’
She didn’t even want to think it, but she couldn’t help herself. Had Karen sent her this? Karen had tried calling her a couple of times since her ‘date’ with her fake work colleague, but Bea had had nothing to say to her so-called best friend. She would confront her, but in her own time and her own way. She’d had a lucky escape the other night, and every time she thought about it