The Mistress - Jill Childs Page 0,12

but as I rounded the corner and entered the far end of the car park on foot, a salt-sharp breeze caught me from the sea, scouring my cheeks. Several vehicles were parked together in the darkness, noses towards the water. The stripes down the side of the nearest vehicle shone in the half-light. A police patrol car.

Heart pumping, I ducked my head and ran for the line of boathouses, trying to make myself invisible in the shadows there and take shelter from the wind.

I crept into the gap between the first two boathouses and stopped. My breath stuck in my throat. The beach was thick with shadow but as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I made out two dark figures, stocky with equipment, their heads squared off by caps, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the wall, looking out to sea. Police.

I froze, frightened to move closer in case they heard me. They were speaking in low voices, a man first, then a woman. A silence, interrupted only by the wind blowing in from the water. The woman said something else, then laughed and got to her feet, shook out the dregs from a takeaway coffee cup onto the shingle and stretched her arms.

I pressed against the roughened wood of the boathouse for support and stared out towards the water. For a while, all I could see were strands of stray light bouncing off the surface, flashing on the sudden surge of foam each time a wave broke and hurtled up the beach, only to draw back with a grumbling clatter of loose stones. Then, lifting my eyes to scan the waters further out to sea, I saw the swinging light of a boat. My legs buckled and I grasped at the wooden wall to keep myself steady. A small motorboat or launch, bobbing there on the water.

The male police officer heaved himself to standing and they both turned and crunched back across the shingle to their car, their movements easy and relaxed. I kept to the shadows as they started the engine of their patrol vehicle and left.

When I looked out to sea again, the lighted boat had disappeared.

I sank to the ground and trembled on the stones, dizzy, wondering what they knew, what they might have found.

Nine

I barely remembered driving home, just the sense of my heart pounding so forcefully that my chest ached and my breath coming short and hard as if I were running. This was it. I’d had the sense, until that moment, that it might still be possible to change my mind, to present myself to the police, to confess everything and have faith that they’d believe me, whatever Helen’s version of events might be. They had to believe me. I had the power of the truth on my side.

But there on the shingle, frightened out of my wits at the sight of the officers, I realised it was too late. My moment to speak had passed. I was part of this now, whatever I thought and however it had happened. No one would believe me if I described it as a freak accident – our disposal of his body gave the lie to that. I was too wracked with guilt to be credible. It was a crime and I had to move quickly and protect myself as best I could.

At home, I ran up the communal stairs two at a time and fumbled my way into my flat, hands shaking. I switched on the bright overhead lights and started to search through cupboards and drawers, pulling out anything that connected me to Ralph. His deodorant and shaving foam in the bathroom cabinet, preserved in the hope he might yet stay another night. In the kitchen, the packet of fancy coffee he kept here for himself, already half-empty and becoming stale, and the oat biscuits he snacked on with cheese.

In the sitting room, I tore along the bookshelves, pulling out the paperbacks he’d bought me. There weren’t many. Some volumes of poetry by writers I’d admitted I’d never read, novels he’d bought me because he wanted to share his love for them and which served as the basis of long discussions over drinks, over dinner, my eyes locked on his as he talked, our hands entwined on the table top.

In my bedroom, I rolled up the old jumper he’d once brought over here and I’d never given back. I pressed it to my face. The smell of him had already gone. In my bedside