The Mistress - Jill Childs Page 0,32

with bare knuckles, as Ralph had taught me.

As I stood there, waiting, looking into the streaks of reflected light across the glistening black, the time seemed suddenly to warp and I had an unnerving sense of flashback to my last visit to the house. When the door opened, I almost expected it to be Ralph who answered the door, furtive, barely revealing himself on the threshold, eager to usher me inside.

Helen. A small brown towel in her hands. A look crossed her face, fleeting and annoyed. After a pause, she smiled, feigning polite surprise.

‘Miss Dixon!’ Her voice was too loud, too cheery. ‘This is very unexpected! Anna isn’t in any trouble, I hope?’

‘Not at all.’ I held the bookbag high as if it were the chancellor’s red box. ‘Just returning this. She was quite upset at school that she’d lost it. I found it after class and wanted to get it back to her as quickly as possible.’

We stared at each other, both hesitant, as if we were waiting for someone offstage to give us a cue. She reached out to take it from me.

‘Do you mind if I say hello to Anna, Mrs Wilson? I won’t stay a moment.’ I kept tight hold of the bag and made to step over the threshold. ‘I just want to reassure her that she won’t be told off tomorrow.’

She hesitated, then reluctantly opened the door wider to let me in. When she closed it behind me, I felt suddenly trapped. The hall was suffocating. This is where Helen had stood when she came home that evening and found us, one dead, one alive. My eyes strayed to the top of the stairs, where I had stood, then to the tiled space at the bottom.

Helen’s eyes were on my face, taking it all in. When she spoke, there was an artificial brightness in her voice, as if she were auditioning for a part. Her body told a different story. Her eyes, when they met mine, were hard and vengeful. Her shoulders stooped prematurely, as if she were bowed by a great weight.

‘Anna’s watching something at the moment. In the sitting room. You won’t get much out of her, I’m afraid.’

She led me dutifully through to the sitting room. Anna and Clara sat side by side on cushions on the carpet, legs crossed, their eyes focussed on the iPad which was propped up on the coffee table in front of them. Some cartoon was playing, I had no idea which.

‘Hi, Anna!’

No response.

‘I found your bookbag!’

Helen smiled. ‘Sorry. No use trying to get their attention during screen-time. They look forward to it all day.’

She reached out and took the bag from me, opened it and checked through the contents.

‘Well, we mustn’t keep you.’

In the hall, as she tried to bustle me back out into the street, I leaned in and whispered, ‘Someone’s watching the house. A man.’

She glared.

‘Crimson car with a scrape. Go and look.’

She hesitated, then went back into the sitting room. I stood in the doorway and saw her pass the girls, then stand to one side of the window, carefully peering out without being seen. She came back.

‘You’re seeing things.’

‘I’m not!’ I pushed past and crossed to the window myself, moved back the net curtain and scanned the road. He’d gone. I turned back to her. ‘He was sitting right there, across the road.’ I hesitated, wondering how much to tell her. ‘And he was in the chapel grounds, watching everyone leave. At the memorial service.’

Her lips pursed. I remembered how battered she’d looked, struggling down the aisle to her seat in the chapel, leaning on her relative’s arm for support. She hadn’t realised. She hadn’t known I was there too, paying my own respects to her husband. To my lover.

‘Anyway, we mustn’t keep you.’ She held open the sitting-room door to usher me out again. She added with fake brightness as she propelled me towards the front door, ‘So kind of you to pop round.’

Who was she really speaking to, in this strange, brittle tone? Not to me, clearly. Was it all for the benefit of the girls?

I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to sit her down and ask her so much more. Ask her how she was, how she really was. If she could sleep at night. What the police had asked her. Were they suspicious? What had she told them about Ralph and the true state of her marriage? What did they know about me?

And what did we