This Girl, That Girl, page 15
And yet men did hurt women. They did it all the time. Clive Hamlyn had killed Rebecca Quilter, hadn’t he? Bludgeoned her to death in her own bed. And that wasn’t an isolated case. Men killed their wives and their girlfriends and their ex-wives and their ex-girlfriends and women they thought should be their girlfriends all the time. Some of them killed their children too.
And people lied. People you thought were honest and good did stupid, stupid things – bad things. Dee got up and took her empty plate and mug out to the kitchen, started washing them up. She was getting things out of all proportion. She was upset, that’s all, because of what Lindsay had done. Having that argument the other day had destabilized her. She wasn’t thinking straight. The sooner she forgave Lindsay and apologized for the horrible way she’d spoken to her, the better. Maybe then she’d settle down and stop imagining the worst of everybody.
33
Scarlett stood outside her aunt’s bedroom, her hand hovering over the doorknob, discomfort prickling her neck. She didn’t want to be up here again. Every fibre of her body was screaming at her to get out. But Ollie’s reaction when she’d suggested relocating the summer house had scared her. She felt a burning need to make one last attempt at finding her aunt’s diaries. What good it would do if she did find them she really didn’t know, but she had to do something. She couldn’t just sit about imagining the worst.
Her breath quickened. ‘Go on, open it up and walk in!’ Rebecca’s voice in her ear made her jump. ‘It’s just a room, Scarlett. Four walls, a floor and a ceiling.’
She took a deep breath and opened the door wide in one firm sweep, stood at the threshold, peering in. The first thing she noticed was the astringent smell of cleaning fluids. The second was how different it looked without the carpet.
She swallowed down her fear and took a step inside. The room was dark on account of the drawn curtains, but the light from the landing was enough for her to see by. Something stopped her from flicking the overhead light switch on. It was partly the same feeling that had stopped her the last time she’d been up here, in her aunt’s sitting room that time – a desire to keep her presence hidden from the outside world – and partly a fear of seeing the room fully illuminated.
She turned slowly to the left to see the large pine frame of her aunt’s bed with its slatted base. Had the neighbours seen the stained mattress being removed from the house? She could just imagine them observing it all from their windows. Their horrified fascination.
She took another step, then another, until she was standing in the room, the curtained window to her left, the dressing table to her right. Scarlett glanced down at her aunt’s hairbrush, lying at an angle on the glass top. The sight of it made her heart lurch. She picked it up and touched the strands of grey still entwined in its bristles, brought it to her face and breathed in the faint traces of her aunt’s hair. Then she put the brush down and opened the drawers in the dressing table. They contained nothing more than emery boards and cotton pads, various pots and tubes of cream – her aunt’s ‘lotions and potions’, as she used to call them – but still she rummaged through them, not quite trusting herself not to miss something.
Satisfied that there was nothing of interest in the dressing table, she turned away from it and had full sight of the empty bed frame. A shudder of revulsion ran through her like an electric current. All she could think of was Rebecca lying there, oblivious of what was to come. From the corners of her eyes, Scarlett glimpsed the wall behind the bed. She didn’t want to let her eyes dwell on it but found she was overcome by a ghoulish compulsion to take it all in. The blood splatter stains had been cleaned by the specialist firm, but their shadows were still visible where they had soaked into the paintwork.
Her mouth went dry as she walked towards the big old mahogany wardrobe that stood to the left at the bottom of the bed. She was dreading opening it up and seeing her aunt’s clothes. If she remembered correctly, there was a shelf that ran across the top and several smaller ones down one side, where her aunt might, perhaps, have stashed personal notebooks or diaries. But after several minutes rummaging through jumpers and tops and old pairs of trousers, all neatly folded or rolled, Scarlett knew she wasn’t going to find any paperwork.
She moved on to the chest of drawers next to the wardrobe, but all the time she was looking she was painfully and acutely aware of the empty bed behind her and the hideous shadows on the wall. She was in the process of pushing the final drawer back in place when the sound of the front doorbell made her jump. She stood stock still and waited for whoever it was to go away. She wasn’t expecting any visitors and she didn’t want any.
Was it Ollie, coming round to continue their conversation, to reassure himself that she wasn’t going to do anything stupid? If it was him, and he’d yet again taken time out of his supposedly busy schedule to come and see her, she’d know she was definitely on to something. She’d know he was running scared.
She edged nearer to the window and stood at the outer edge of the curtain nearest the wardrobe. She moved it aside just a fraction and peered out but couldn’t see who it was from this angle. She let the curtain fall back and waited. The doorbell remained silent. It was probably one of those door-to-door salespeople, or someone to read the electricity meter. If it was important, they’d have tried again, wouldn’t they? Pushed the bell at least one more time for good measure. Scarlett had lost count of the number of times she’d answered the door and wished she hadn’t, cursed herself for not ignoring the interruption. She thought she heard the sound of someone slipping something through the letterbox and breathed a sigh of relief. Whoever it was had gone away.
Gently, reluctantly, she took one last look at her aunt’s clothes and shut the wardrobe door. There was only one place left to search in here, and that was the bedside cabinet. Scarlett went over to it now. The smell of disinfectant was even stronger over here. She pulled open the drawers, but all she could find were boxes and boxes of tablets, much like her own medicine drawer downstairs.
She sighed in frustration. If Rebecca had kept hold of her diaries from ten years ago, then she must have hidden them well. Perhaps she had got rid of them altogether. Scarlett had looked everywhere she could think of.
She turned to leave the room, then froze. A floorboard had just creaked on the landing.
There it was again.
Somebody was up here with her.
34
‘Scarlett! What on earth are you doing?’
Scarlett stared at her father as he appeared in the doorway.
‘I could ask the same question of you! You nearly gave me a heart attack, creeping up on me like that. How did you get in?’
‘With my key, of course.’
She blinked at him in confusion. She knew he had a spare key to the main front door, and to her own apartment, in case of emergencies. She hadn’t realized he had a spare for this one too.
She bit down on her tongue to release some saliva. Her mouth had gone completely dry. Why had he let himself into the house in the first place? Wasn’t Saturday his and Claire’s ‘special day’? The day they pootled about in Greenwich or had lunch with friends in town?
He took a tentative step into the room. ‘I can’t believe you’ve come up here all alone,’ he said. He narrowed his eyes at her. ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to see it for myself.’
He looked around the room, his gaze travelling haltingly over the slatted base of the bed then bouncing off the stained wall and back to Scarlett’s face. He looked awful. She had a sudden memory of finding him in the hallway staring at Rebecca’s front door, that evening he and Ollie had come round to discuss the funeral arrangements. The wary expression on his face.
He steepled his fingers over his nose and mouth and took a long, deep breath. ‘Well, now you have. Now we both have. Come on, let’s get out of here.’
Back in her kitchen, Scarlett made them both a coffee with shaky hands.
Her dad looked down at his shoes. ‘It’s going to take us all a long while to get over this.’
Scarlett stared at him in astonishment. ‘Get over it? How will we ever get over it?’
He sighed and shook his head. ‘I didn’t mean that, I meant come to terms with it.’
Scarlett handed him his coffee. ‘I’ve never really understood what that means. If it means accepting what happened, then I’m not sure I can. How can I accept that someone killed Rebecca?’
Her dad looked up. ‘Someone? You mean that spineless excuse for a human being Hamlyn?’
‘Yes, yes, of course that’s what I meant. I guess I can’t bring myself to say his name.’
‘No. No, quite.’
Her dad sipped at his coffee. He looked as if he wanted to say something.
‘You okay, Dad?’
‘Me? Yes, I’m okay. Well, depends what you mean by “okay”, I suppose. I’m hanging on in there. What else can I do? What else can any of us do?’
Scarlett walked over to the sofa and sat down. Her dad followed her and sat on the armchair.
‘What made you go up there?’ she asked.
‘I was coming round to see you. To make sure you were okay. When there was no answer, I got worried because I could see your living-room light was on. So I let myself into the hall and was about to knock when I thought I heard something upstairs. I didn’t know what to think, whether it was you up there or … or someone else. So I crept up to see what was going on.’
He sat back in the chair and crossed his legs. For a few moments, neither of them spoke.
Her dad broke the silence first. ‘By the way, I spoke to Ollie on the phone earlier.’ He cleared his throat. ‘He said you’ve got some hare-brained plan to pull down the summer house and put a gravel garden in.’
Scarlett went very still. He’d been lying just now. This wasn’t some random visit to check in with his daughter. He’d come round with the express purpose of talking her out of her plans. Why did everything seem to revolve around the summer house?
She moistened her lips. What was going on here?
‘It’s not a hare-brained plan. Bloody hell, Dad, don’t you think I need something other than work to occupy my brain? I want to do something different with the garden, make it my own.’
He was about to say something, but she carried on. ‘Every time I look out of the window I’m reminded of Rebecca pottering about out there with her trug and her gardening gloves and those little rubber clogs she used to wear. I want a clean sweep so I’m not ambushed by memories every time I set foot out there. And why the hell is Ollie reporting everything I say straight back to you?’
Her dad gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Don’t be daft! He’s doing no such thing. I phoned him. It just came up in conversation, that’s all. It’s your garden now. You can do what you want with it. It’s just that …’
Once again, he cleared his throat. ‘It’s not the grandest of constructions, I’ll give you that. But it’s sturdy enough to last. A lick of paint might cheer it up a bit. Maybe you could design a gravel garden around it and get a path laid from the house. I could ask one of my landscaper contacts to get in touch with you, if you’d like?’
For a few seconds Scarlett just sat there, unsure how to respond. Why was her dad taking so much interest in this?
She pressed on, determined to see how far he would go in trying to dissuade her. ‘That’s very kind of you, Dad, but I don’t want to give you any more work to do. You’ve done enough for me already.’ She watched him closely as she spoke. ‘Don’t you think it’s about time I took control of my own life? I’m perfectly capable of project-managing my own garden. And I can’t believe Ollie is that bothered about what is, let’s face it, a fancy shed.’
Her legs had started to tremble slightly so she crossed them and tucked her ankle behind her calf – an uncomfortable position but one that seemed to hold them still and keep her grounded.
Her dad sat back in his chair. ‘The truth is, I’m worried about you. We all are. Ollie tells me you broke the glass and climbed in. Is that right? Dear God, Scarlett, you could have injured yourself badly. If you didn’t have the energy to go back to the house for the key, you certainly shouldn’t have been climbing up on a chair and through a window. What were you thinking? And then I find you upstairs in Rebecca’s bedroom. Putting yourself through even more unnecessary stress.’
He leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. ‘Have you considered going to the GP and asking him to review your medication? How long is it since you’ve had a check-up?’
Scarlett clenched her jaw. ‘Asking her, you mean. My GP is a woman.’
Her dad gave an exasperated sigh. ‘What does it matter whether your GP is a man or a woman? Why do you always have to split hairs?’
Scarlett bit her lip.
‘Have you thought about starting your yoga classes again? Maybe you need to think about some self-care. Start prioritizing your mental health.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with my mental health.’
‘That’s what Rebecca used to say.’
‘Oh, great, so now you’re suggesting I’ve got dementia?’
‘No, of course not. For God’s sake! Can’t you just accept that I’m concerned about you?’
Scarlett forced herself to meet his eye, to soften her response. ‘Okay, Dad. I’ll make an appointment. But please don’t treat me like a child. If I want to sort the garden out, I’ll do it. And in my own way. You don’t have to take over and do everything for me, you know.’
She watched as her dad finished his coffee. ‘By the way, is everything all right with Ollie?’
He frowned at her as if she’d asked a stupid question. ‘What makes you ask that?’
She shrugged. ‘He’s been acting really weird lately.’
‘He’s grieving, Scarlett. We all are.’
‘When was the last time you saw him?’
‘Ollie?’ He frowned. ‘When we were all here, meeting that funeral girl.’ Scarlett sighed. ‘Woman,’ he said. ‘Funeral woman. Funeral director. Talking of which, has she sorted things out yet?’
Why was he lying? Mickey said he’d been turning up at the yard unannounced.
‘She’s waiting for me to confirm some possible dates. I was going to speak to you and Ollie about it next week.’
‘Right. Okay then. Look, I’d better be off, but you’ll think about what I said, won’t you? About taking things easy and not pushing yourself?’
Scarlett nodded. ‘Sure.’ But she had no intention of taking things easy. Not before she’d found those diaries.
35
Scarlett stood at the front door and watched her father walk away from her down the path. Something about his unexpected visit so soon after she’d told Ollie of her plans to rearrange the garden didn’t sit right with her. What was so damned important about that wretched summer house to have rattled them both like this, to make two incredibly busy men with companies to oversee waste their time on something so seemingly insignificant? And all that guff about being concerned for her mental health. What had he been implying?
He’d almost reached the space where the front gate had once stood when she called out to him, adrenaline buzzing in her veins. She had to find out if this reservoir of suspicion and distrust that was growing larger and deeper in her by the minute had any kind of basis in reality. She had to ask him outright.
‘Dad, you don’t happen to know if Rebecca ever knew Gina Caplin, do you?’
He came to a halt and spun round, his face creased in confusion. ‘Gina Caplin? You mean that girl who went missing? I hardly think so. She’d have told us, wouldn’t she? What on earth makes you think that?’
Scarlett held on to the door frame to keep herself steady. He seemed genuinely surprised at the question, but was it all an act? ‘It was a card I found in the summer house.’
‘Show me,’ he said. ‘Show me this card.’
Scarlett went back inside and into the bedroom to retrieve it from her dressing table where she’d left it, but as soon as she stepped over the threshold, she could see that it wasn’t there.
She opened the drawers, but, even as she was doing this, she knew it was a waste of time. She’d left it there – she was sure of it. She turned to see her dad standing in the doorway, observing her through narrowed eyes.
‘It’s gone,’ she said. ‘It’s vanished.’
Overcome with dizziness and unable to stand a second longer, she dropped on to the bed behind her and put her head between her knees. Her dad was by her side in an instant, rubbing the space between her shoulder blades with his hand. It felt strange, him touching her like this. The only physical contact that usually passed between them was a brief hug or a peck on the cheek.
‘Are you all right, darling?’
‘Someone must have taken it. It must have been Ollie.’
‘Scarlett – darling – what are you talking about? Are you sure you haven’t been overdoing things lately?’
She turned to face him, furious. ‘You think I’m imagining this?’
‘No, of course not. But sometimes, when we’re a little overwrought, our minds can play tricks on us.’
Scarlett tried not to react to his use of ‘we’, not to mention the word ‘overwrought’. Any other time, she’d have accused him of acting like a Victorian patriarch. Men who called women overwrought or emotional or hysterical or any of those other gendered insults were patronizing bastards. As were men who described a forty-two-year-old woman’s perfectly reasonable desire to relocate her own summer house in her own garden as ‘hare-brained’.
