This Girl, That Girl, page 17
38
Ever since her dad’s unexpected visit on Saturday, Scarlett had been in turmoil. Where was the card from Gina? Had Ollie taken it the last time he’d visited? Was that why he’d popped over with those chocolates, so that he could have a snoop around when she wasn’t looking? She’d left him napping on the sofa. He’d had ample opportunity to nip into her bedroom while she was distracted in her office. He was the only person who’d visited her since she’d found the card. Apart from Mickey, of course, and he hadn’t been anywhere near her bedroom. She’d kept him firmly in her sight the whole time, hadn’t she?
And why was her dad so intent on dissuading her from reorganizing the garden? She tried to make sense of it, but couldn’t. Her mind was a mess. A total jumble. What the hell was going on? Was she losing it, as her dad had seemed to imply? She’d even found herself considering whether he might have taken the card. After all, she hadn’t heard him coming up the stairs when she was in Rebecca’s bedroom. What if he’d let himself into her apartment first and taken it before coming up?
All weekend, she’d tried to focus on displacement activities: unnecessary little tidying jobs, folding and sorting laundry, ordering her groceries online. The rest of the time, she’d wandered around the apartment in a daze.
Was Ollie responsible for Gina Caplin’s disappearance? And had Rebecca known something about it? Was that why she’d never mentioned her? And what about her dad? Was he in on it too? No, it wasn’t possible. Not her own family. Not the people she was closest to in the whole world.
But still, the images came swarming in. Rebecca standing in the garden in her nightie in obvious distress. Ollie prowling around the garden at night, letting himself into the summer house with the key he’d stolen from the hook. She didn’t want this in her head, any of it. Couldn’t cope with it squatting there. An ugly, toad-like creature. But there it was, and it showed no signs of budging.
She went into her office and sat at her desk. If she didn’t get on with her work soon, she’d fall even further behind. Then she saw it. The envelope with the card inside. It was sticking out from under a pile of her papers. She stared at it, unable at first to quite take in what she was seeing. So Ollie hadn’t taken it. Nobody had. She must have brought it in here and forgotten all about it.
She put her elbows on her desk and rested her head in her hands. Maybe her dad was right. Maybe she had been taking too many painkillers. Maybe she really was cracking up. Or was it simply a case of brain fog, another bloody symptom of ME?
For the rest of the day, she tried to focus on her to-do list. Her office had always been a refuge. A place to switch off the worries in her mind and focus on numbers and calculations. But it was no longer working. She couldn’t concentrate for more than a couple of minutes at a time, had to keep stopping and staring into space. She’d never experienced such restlessness before, but then she’d never experienced this level of disquiet before either.
Somehow or other, she got through the day and managed to complete a couple of long-outstanding tasks. At any other time, she’d have been disappointed at how little she’d managed to achieve but, right now, achieving anything at all seemed pretty amazing.
Later that evening, after an early supper she had to force herself to finish, she decided she would go to yoga after all. There was a class tonight, wasn’t there? She checked the timetable online to confirm. Yoga was the only activity, apart from her work, that had the effect of clearing her mind and giving her a sense of purpose. Maybe she needed to get out of the house for a couple of hours, have a complete change of scenery. It couldn’t be good for her, being cooped up here all day.
She changed into a loose pair of yoga trousers and a baggy T-shirt. Then she twisted her hair into a ponytail, made sure she had her purse and her keys in her bag and left the house with her walking cane. She felt better as soon as she was standing at the bus stop in the fresh night air. Why hadn’t she done this before? Why did she never remember that it was routine her body and mind needed? Routine that she craved.
And it would be nice catching up with her yoga acquaintances. The last time she’d been to a class was a few days before that party in Bedford. A few days before Rebecca was killed and Scarlett’s life had been turned upside down. Thankfully, nobody there knew her that well. They were on what Scarlett called ‘yoga friend’ terms, which encompassed smiling and passing each other mats from the pile, maybe sharing the odd comment about the teacher, or the temperature of the hall, or the tendency of the earlier aerobics class to take too long to leave the room. That kind of thing.
Nobody knew that Rebecca Quilter, the woman who’d been brutally murdered in her own bedroom and whose tragic story had been all over the news, was Scarlett’s aunt and, what’s more, that Scarlett lived in the house where the murder had taken place. Nobody knew any of that, thank God.
It was the first time Scarlett had been on a bus since returning home and, as soon as it started moving and she looked out at the familiar landmarks, she felt her muscles start to relax, which was odd, because leaving home and using public transport usually had the opposite effect. Usually, it made her tense and tired, having to smarten up and act like other people, hold herself upright and give the impression of being someone who was in control of her body.
But while she wasn’t always in control of her body, she’d always been in control of her mind. Or so she’d thought. She stared at her reflection in the dirty window. Her dad might be annoying and patronizing, but he was right. It was about time she started looking after herself and got back into an exercise regime. An hour of gentle stretching and breathing. An hour of being somewhere else. Anywhere but in that house.
The bus was passing the barracks now, about to turn into John Wilson Street, when something occurred to her. Something that brought her up sharp and made her grab the top of the seat in front. She hadn’t wanted to go to that party in Bedford back in September. She’d almost decided to decline the invitation, but Ollie had persuaded her to accept. Not in so many words. He’d made a jokey comment about how if she turned this one down too – there had been various others in the past year or so, events she’d always managed to wriggle out of – then her friends would probably get the message that she wasn’t bothered about them any more and not invite her to anything else. Then she’d never have to go through this dilemma again. He’d made it sound like a good idea not to go.
And that had rankled with her, because she did want to be their friend. She just didn’t fancy the journey and staying in a bedroom that was never going to be as comfortable as her own. She didn’t want to make the effort, because effort tired her out. Social occasions tired her out. Her friends knew that; she’d told them enough times. But it was hard for people to understand that ME fatigue was on a different scale from normal fatigue.
And yet friendship relied on people making the effort, didn’t it? And if she didn’t occasionally do things that took her out of her comfort zone, then that was giving up on life, wasn’t it?
Twenty minutes later, as she was lying on her back on a yoga mat with her knees drawn into her chest and focusing on her breath, everything seemed to crystallize in her mind. Ollie had made that comment on purpose. He knew the way her mind worked. He didn’t need to say, ‘Come on, Scar, don’t you think you should go? You haven’t seen them in ages.’ Because if he’d said that, she would almost certainly have declined the invitation. Ollie had known that, being the stubborn and contrary creature she was, she’d have refused to be guilt-tripped into going.
Oh yes, he’d known exactly how to play her. Which begged the question, what difference had it made to him whether she went or not?
Unless he’d wanted her out of the way.
39
Scarlett pushed her key into the lock of the main front door and stepped into the darkness of the hallway. She felt as tightly coiled as a spring. So much for the relaxing benefits of yoga.
She went into her apartment and locked the door. Then she changed into her pyjamas and made herself a mug of hot chocolate, carried it over to the sofa. Perhaps she might be able to lose herself in front of the TV long enough to quieten her mind. She needed to gather her thoughts, corral them into some kind of order so that she could make a rational decision about what to do.
She had just picked up the remote control when she heard a noise upstairs. Trembling, she put her mug on the coffee table and strained her ears. Maybe she’d imagined it. Or perhaps it was one of the hot-water pipes. They made odd noises sometimes, didn’t they?
There it was again. Someone was moving around in Rebecca’s bedroom. She remembered the terror she’d first felt when she’d been up there a week ago, the sensation of evil that had so unnerved her. But she’d been inside the room since then. She’d conquered her irrational fears and, apart from the shock of her dad creeping up on her, she’d been fine.
She stood up. She wouldn’t allow herself to believe that the room was haunted by a malign presence, so either it was an intruder, or it was one of the only two people who had a key apart from herself. Her brother or her father.
She went to get her own key and stepped out into the hallway again, anxiety lying in the pit of her stomach like sediment. She unlocked Rebecca’s door and called up the stairs before she could talk herself out of it.
‘Ollie? Dad? Is that you?’
Silence. Whichever one of them it was, Scarlett sensed their surprise. They must have thought they were alone in the house. But how had they known she’d be out? Had they been watching her?
‘Yeah. I’ll be down in a sec.’ It was Ollie. He sounded casual, matter-of-fact, as if there was nothing in the least bit strange about what he was doing. Scarlett took a few deep breaths. Ollie couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Gina Caplin’s disappearance. And yet …
‘What are you doing?’
‘Just taking a look around, seeing what needs to be done. It’s going to take ages to get this lot cleared out.’
Scarlett went up a couple of steps. ‘You should have said you were coming round. I thought you were a burglar.’ She waited a beat. ‘You know that, legally, you shouldn’t be up there at all.’
Ollie peered down at her from the top of the stairs. ‘What’re you talking about? This place is mine now. I need to get it cleared and decorated and rented out.’
‘Yes, but you’re meant to wait until after probate is sorted. Seriously, Ollie, you need to come down.’
‘Don’t be daft. What difference does it make? And how are they going to find out? Who’s going to tell them?’
He gave her a look that Scarlett couldn’t help interpreting as a challenge. He was searching for something, she felt sure of it. Was it the same thing he’d been looking for in the summer house?
Her heart beat faster, but she knew that if she backed off now, she’d be acting out of character. And besides, she didn’t want to back off. She didn’t want him up there. If there was something to be found, something else that linked her aunt to Gina Caplin, Scarlett wanted to be the one to find it.
‘It’s not right, Ollie. You could get into all sorts of trouble. We don’t want to fall foul of the law.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Scar! What is wrong with you? I’m just having a look and doing some measurements and calculations. I’ll be down in a sec.’
‘No, Ollie. You need to come down now. We’re joint executors, so this is my decision too. You need my consent to go through Rebecca’s things and I’m not giving it.’
Ollie came to the top of the stairs, an incredulous look on his face. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? This is my property now.’
She felt a flutter of fear. Did she even like Ollie? She loved him, of course she did. And they were bonded by more than just blood. That old childhood alliance ran deep. But did she truly like the man he’d become? Not right now she didn’t.
‘Not until probate is granted it isn’t. It’s a legal process and you have to do things properly. I’m a professional accountant, Ollie. If I’m found to have acted unlawfully by turning a blind eye to something like this, it’s my reputation on the line. My career. You have to get out of there now.’
Ollie came thundering down the stairs so fast Scarlett barely had time to get out of his way.
He stared at her in disbelief, anger distorting his features. ‘You’re fucking shitting me, aren’t you?’
Scarlett stood her ground. Was this really her little brother talking to her like this?
She swallowed hard. ‘No, I’m not. There’s a reason things are done like this, and we have to comply.’
His silence was mutinous. He pushed past her and yanked the front door open. Then he stopped and turned around. ‘Just because you’re a pen-pushing bureaucrat, it doesn’t mean you can tell me what to do. I’m talking to Dad about this.’
Scarlett raised her eyebrows. He was no longer her handsome, roguish brother. Now, his expression was grim. He looked sullen, like an angry little boy. Scarlett scarcely recognized him.
‘How old are you, Ollie? Do you really think Dad is going to come round and tell me off for making sure we stay within the law?’
‘Dad’s right. You’re not yourself lately, Scarlett.’
Scarlett bristled. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
Ollie sighed. When he started speaking again, his voice was softer, kinder. ‘We’re worried about you, Scar. Smashing a window and climbing into the summer house when all you needed to do was go back to the house and get the key. Planning gravel gardens before we’ve even buried Rebecca. It’s a bit weird, you’ve got to admit.’
Scarlett opened her mouth then closed it again. She’d been about to say, How could I get the key when you’d already stolen it?, but something told her to keep quiet. Something told her that whatever was going on here, antagonizing Ollie wasn’t the way forward.
‘I’m tired, Ollie. I need to get to bed. Let’s talk in the morning.’
She shut the door before he could say anything more and pulled the bolts across. She stood for a few moments until the roaring sound in her head subsided and her pulse rate slowed. A sob welled up in her throat, but she swallowed it down. There was only one person she wanted to talk to right now. Only one person who would understand how she was feeling and who would know what to do. But that person was Rebecca.
40
Dee heard Lindsay leave the office. Her shoulders sagged. This was intolerable. It was the second day in a row that Lindsay had gone home without saying goodbye. Ever since their argument yesterday morning, the two of them had barely spoken to each other.
Dee logged off her PC and put her coat on. She made a decision. She would go round to Lindsay’s house this evening and see if they couldn’t get over this somehow. Or, at the very least, get through it. Together. Just like they’d got through everything else together. They couldn’t go on like this. It wasn’t good for their friendship, and it certainly wasn’t good for their business. She would apologize for offending her, for lecturing her about professional boundaries, even though Lindsay was the one in the wrong here.
Dee locked up the office and walked to her car. She would drive home first, get changed, then take the bus back to Woolwich. She’d stop off at Tesco and pick up a bottle of Lindsay’s favourite wine, maybe some chocolates too. The only thing that mattered was getting their friendship back on track. She’d already lost one best friend. She couldn’t bear it if she lost another.
An hour and a half later, Dee got off the bus and turned the corner into Lindsay’s street, hoping she’d be in the mood for her peace offering and that in a little while the two of them would be over this bump in their friendship and ready to move beyond it. Perhaps they’d end up ordering a pizza and watching something on Netflix. Perhaps Dee would sleep over on the sofa and they’d go out for breakfast together in the morning before work. Cement their reconciliation with a big fry-up.
But as she approached the house Dee saw a man get out of a car a little further along on the other side of the street and cross over. It looked suspiciously like Ollie Quilter, and he was carrying what appeared to be a handful of plastic rulers in his hand.
Dee quickly crossed to the other side and stood just out of sight behind a tree. It was Ollie Quilter. She watched as he sauntered up to Lindsay’s front door and rang the bell. What was he doing at her house? How did he even know where she lived?
A few seconds later the door opened and Lindsay emerged, smiling and laughing. She was wearing her tight-fitting jeans and knee-length boots, a big baggy jumper and a scarf Dee had never seen before. Her blonde hair was piled on top of her head, stray locks escaping in front of her ears. One of those haphazard, just-put-it-up-any-old-how arrangements that Dee knew for a fact took her ages to perfect. She watched in appalled fascination as Lindsay stood on her tiptoes and greeted Ollie with a kiss on each cheek. Then he showed her what he had in his hand and Dee realized at once what they were. Packets of sparklers. Of course. It was 5 November. Bonfire Night. Ollie Quilter must be taking her to a firework party. They must have arranged it on Sunday at the football match. She must have given him her address then.
Dee stood, rooted to the spot, her left hand grazing the trunk of the tree she was hiding behind, her right holding tightly on to the bag of wine and chocolates, and watched as the two of them crossed the street and got into Ollie’s car. She waited until they’d driven off, then turned round and walked back to the bus stop. Tears burned the back of her eyes. She sniffed crossly and blinked them away. Why the hell was she reacting like this? As if she’d been snubbed. Rejected. As if it were a date, for Christ’s sake! Lindsay hadn’t even known she’d be coming round.
But it was more than that. It was knowing that Lindsay was already going out with someone else, so soon after sleeping with Trevor Cooper, so soon after Callum and all the rest. It was knowing that Lindsay obviously didn’t give a toss about getting involved with one of their clients, or how that might be perceived. Okay, so she wasn’t actually breaking any rules, but it was common sense, wasn’t it, not to mix business with pleasure?
