Читать книгу Two Little Girls - Kate Medina - Страница 11

Just one glass. There was nothing wrong with having a small glass of red wine before Roger came home. It was a quarter-to-seven – perfectly respectable. She used to drink all the time in her old job: nip to the pub at lunchtime with her colleagues, pop out for drinks after work on Fridays as a reward for making it through another emotionally draining week dealing with all those traumatic cases.

Cupping the wine glass, she wandered into the sitting room and switched on the television. It was an early-evening chat show, five glossy women with expensive highlights, dressed in clothes that Carolynn would have worn for a night out in central London, in the days when she had friends to go out in the evening with, sitting behind a pink panelled desk. The women, all her age or older, looked immaculate even under the harsh studio lights; they were so removed from the image she saw in the bathroom mirror every morning, they might as well have been aliens from another planet. She had looked like that once though, hadn’t she? Dewy-skinned, bright-eyed and sleek. Before the pain took its toll …

At the sound of the front door, her shoulders stiffened, the muscles under her skin bunching into tense knots. Roger’s footsteps echoed across the tiled hall as he walked into the kitchen, then stopped. She heard the sound of his breathing and, though he said nothing, she knew he was surprised that she wasn’t in the kitchen preparing dinner. A good meal was important to him after a long day at work. Uneasy, Carolynn looked quickly for somewhere to stow her wine glass, out of sight. But before she’d taken a step, she sensed rather than heard him standing in the lounge doorway, felt his eyes on her.

‘I, uh, I didn’t expect you back,’ she murmured, pasting on a poor impression of a smile as she turned.

A shadow crossed his face when he saw the glass in her hand. ‘I left early so that I could be with you. Because of … you know.’ Because of today.

Carolynn nodded, feeling like a reformed drug user, caught sneaking a hit. ‘I … I just fancied a small glass,’ she said.

‘It’s a bit early, Caro.’

They stood, facing off against each other across the living room. ‘It’s nearly seven, Roger, and it’s only a small glass.’ Her tone sounded like that of a child defending the state of their room.

‘I don’t think you should be drinking alone.’

‘It’s just one.’

‘One leads to two, then three.’ He puffed air into his cheeks and blew noisily out of his mouth, like a balloon deflating. ‘What did you do today?’

I went for a run. I go every day. You couldn’t expect me not to go today of all days.

She didn’t say it. She had changed out of her running clothes, as she did every day before he got home from work, had taken a shower, put on a dress. He liked her to look pretty, feminine. He hated to think of her punishing her body with that obsessive running. He didn’t realize how much she needed it, how it was the only thing keeping her sane.

‘I popped to the supermarket,’ she said. ‘I bought steak for dinner. I thought it would be nice to have something tasty, expensive.’

‘I’ll look forward to that.’ His tone was flat.

When had their relationship become more about what wasn’t said, the undercurrent, than the words actually spoken?

Carolynn chewed a fingernail. ‘I want to integrate a bit, Roger,’ she said. ‘Make some friends … a friend, at least.’ Dr Flynn. Jessie.

His forehead creased. ‘We came here precisely because we didn’t want to integrate.’

‘I know, but I’m lonely.’

‘You have me, Caro.’

‘You’re out at work all day.’

He shook his head. ‘We have each other.’ There was an edge to his tone. ‘You don’t need anyone else.’

Carolynn nodded, feeling like one of the spring-necked plastic animals in the box on the counter in the pound shop, placed there to tempt small children as their parents were paying at the till.

‘We came here to escape, to protect you. I can’t keep you safe if you make friends. Friends ask questions, they need to know about your past, your history. What would you tell them?’

The vexed tears that had been poised behind her eyes since the moment they had snapped open this morning, were creating a film across her corneas now, furring Roger’s face, softening the uncompromising light in his eyes.

‘And I think that you should stop seeing that psychologist. She’s too close.’

Carolynn gasped; couldn’t help herself. In the short time that she had been seeing Jessie Flynn, she had come to live for those sessions, looking forward to them days before they happened and sinking into depression the day after at the prospect of another week dragging by before she’d get to chat again. Really chat.

‘Maybe just one more session.’ That plaintive tone again; she hated herself for it. That tone wasn’t her, she never used to be this needy and dependent.

‘After today, you won’t need to.’ His voice was firm.

After the second anniversary of her death, was what he meant. As if life would miraculously return to normal when they woke tomorrow morning. As if life would be wonderful for the 364 days that followed, until the third anniversary, the fourth …

Carolynn dipped her gaze to the swill of burgundy liquid in the glass. ‘I’ve been careful,’ she murmured. ‘She doesn’t know who I really am. But I think we could be friends. I’d like her as a friend.’

‘A friend?’ He laughed, a bitter sound. ‘You’re paying her, Caro. Actually, let me correct that: I’m paying her. That’s why she’s listening to you. A woman like that will have loads of friends.’

How did he know what Jessie Flynn was like? Oh. She remembered now. He’d collected her after her third session. It had been Flynn’s final appointment of the day, and she’d walked out with Carolynn. Roger had been leaning against the car, warming his face in the late afternoon sun, and she’d noticed even then, though she hadn’t liked to admit it to herself, how his eyes widened when he clocked her psychologist.

‘Christ, I might book a few sessions with her myself,’ he’d muttered, half under his breath, as they drove away.

She shouldn’t have been surprised at his reaction. Jessie Flynn was stunning. She even made those women on the TV chat show look ordinary, with that jet-black waist-length hair and those spectacular ice-blue eyes.

‘I’m only protecting you, Carolynn. You know that, don’t you?’

She gave a faint nod, tuning him out. She could be friends with Jessie Flynn. Tons of her old friends had been like that – cool, edgy, beautiful – when she had lived and worked in London, before motherhood, before Zoe. She had been like that too. Before.

‘Let’s save the wine, eh?’ Stepping across the carpet, he laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘I’ll change out of my work clothes, have a shower and we can have a glass together.’

As he dropped a hand to take her glass, the words on the television cut into Carolynn’s consciousness. She hadn’t even noticed that the chat show had ended.

‘… The body of a young girl has been found at West Wittering beach. Details are still coming in, but police believe that her death was not due to natural causes. A doll was found by her side. Detective Inspector Bobby Simmons of Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes has warned parents to be vigilant.’

The wine glass slipped from her fingers, every rotation in its tumble to the carpet freeze-framing in her mind, like individual pages in a flip-book. The glass hit the cream wool and cartwheeled, once, twice, red liquid fountaining out of it, spraying Roger’s pale mustard boots, peppering the wallpaper, coating the carpet in blood red. A sliver of her brain registered the damage and knew that Roger would be furious about wine stains on his brand-new nubuck Timberlands, but all she could think was:

Another dead girl. Another doll.