About the Author

Before turning to crime, A.M. CASTLE had a long career as a feature writer on national newspapers including the Daily Express, The Times and The Daily Telegraph. She grew up in south London and, after a stint in Brussels, she is back where she belongs. As well as writing psychological thrillers, she also writes cosy mysteries as Alice Castle. She is married with two children, two stepchildren and two cats.

The Perfect Widow
A.M. CASTLE

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © A.M. Castle 2019

A.M. Castle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © November 2019 ISBN: 9780008364717

Version: 2019-10-17

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

A Letter from A.M. Castle

Dear Reader …

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

To William, Ella and Connie, with love

Prologue
Louise

I thought nothing of it, the first time the doorbell rang.

Parcel delivery guy – bound to be. It was that time of the evening. School run done, supper running late. They just want to catch you at home, don’t they? Don’t care if the timing’s terrible, up to your elbows in kids and cooking. Not their problem.

I did a quick mental scan through my recent purchases. Hmm. A few. Well, I had to keep up appearances. And it was hard to get it right just now. A strange September, sweltering by day, then plunging straight to frost when night fell. I wanted to get everyone twittering in the playground when I appeared in something shiny and new. For a second, I was excited. Was it that red handbag? Bit pricey, but I hadn’t been able to resist. But no, it was bound to be those boots I’d ordered last week on sale. Helping Giles was more important.

I looked over at him. Dark head down over the exercise book. Bless. That maths. I could see the line of jagged numbers. He was snagged, like a lamb on a barbed wire fence. But would he ask for help? Ha. I stayed put. Boys. If I didn’t nurse him through it, he’d go off the boil, drift. I’d lose him to that new game, the one he’d been hankering after. He’d be skulking in his bedroom for hours. That would be that. So I called to Emmy – well, yelled. It’s a big house.

‘Love? Can you get that?’

I cocked an ear. No reply, no movement. I sighed inwardly. Girls were no easier. Emmy was 11 going on 17 when it came to attitude. Especially towards her mother. The more love and encouragement I lavished on her, the more elaborate the eye-rolls at everything I said or did. I envied her the freedom to rebel. Did I begrudge it? Most days, no. Today, I was feeling a bit antsy already. I couldn’t face more shouting. That last yell up the stairs had done my head in. It had been a busy day. Very busy.

I was about to give in and get up, but then Giles turned to me. ‘Don’t go, Mum. I can’t do this.’ The voice was all over the place, now he was 13 – Barry White one minute, Sam Smith the next. That pushed-out bottom lip, though, was the same as when he’d been 4, trying to ride his new bike without any help from us, and coming a cropper. I smiled, love filling me like light pouring through a window. Who could resist?

The bell shrilled again. I couldn’t break off, not now Giles was finally concentrating, but I certainly didn’t want to be schlepping to the post office tomorrow to pick up those boots. Outside, the guy would be scribbling the usual hieroglyphs on his card, ready to drop and run. I was torn. But, just in time, there was Emmy, scampering down the stairs, two at a time. Miracle. Bless her. That was the only little-girl thing about her, the bouncy gait.

She never did it again, after that afternoon.

I turned back to Giles. ‘Now, you take this number …’ But I still had half an ear out for Em. Heavy click as the door opened. Murmurs. The sharp slap of cold air. Distant street sounds. More talking. Too much.

I thought for a beat, then two. Why would she chat to the delivery guy? And was that two adult voices I could hear? A man and a woman?

Something was off. But it couldn’t be … could it? Not yet. Surely not.

Then her stifled gasp.

I breathed in, hard. But I was still reluctant to leave Giles, the books and pens at the table. If I didn’t move, everything would stay the same. The cluttered table, the peaceful room, the pristine house. My house, that I’d fought so hard for. I was paralysed.

‘Mum!’

Now there was no mistaking the bleat of fear in Emmy’s voice. But I sang out, ‘No need to yell, love,’ as though she was just being a pain as per usual. I pushed myself up, felt a twinge. It had been a long day, my muscles ached. That morning pilates class. And the rest. I even remembered to give the spag bol a quick stir as I passed the stove.

‘Mum!’ came the shout again, desperate now.

‘Coming.’

But as soon as I got out into the hall, there was no more escaping it. The door was flung wide open. Cold air, gusting in, knifing us after the sizzling day. Normally, I would have told Emmy off, letting the heat out, letting too many curious neighbours peer in, but my eyes flew straight past her to the two figures in the doorway, silhouettes bulky against the cold blue lights pulsing from their car.

Police.

This was real. It was actually happening. I felt sick, but my voice stayed steady.

‘Patrick,’ I said, looking from one granite face to the other, automatically reaching for Emmy. She burrowed her head into my side. I heard the maths book thud heavily from Giles’s hand, his chair scrape back. He ran out into the hall. And then we were three.

Chapter 1
Now
Louise

Looking back on that night, I see the whole thing playing out like one of those jerky black-and-white newsreels. Some bits speeded up, some in slow motion. That policewoman moving towards me, breezing down my hall as though she owned the place – this part was fast, much too fast. Then, when we’d all reached the kitchen, time got stuck, snagging on her brutal words. Patrick. Dead.

Then my mouth was open in a big, round O. Was that right? I didn’t know what to do, how to be. Where to put myself, even in my own home. There I was, backed up against a unit, the handle pressing into me. And wearing Lycra, of all things. I was suddenly horrified. I should have been in black, a proper widow’s weeds, but instead, I stood there in my least favourite yoga pants, with the waistband going and the colours clashing.

The kids had no such qualms, they just did what came naturally, both running to me. Giles slamming into my side so that the bruise was visible the next day, Em trying to crawl almost up into my arms like the baby she’d so recently been. They knew what to do, what was necessary, without being told. The three of us, then, clinging together as though we were on a raft and too much motion would pitch us off into the deepest, darkest sea. A little clump of sorrow. That felt right at least.

Even if you are ready for the news – if someone’s being dying of cancer for years, say – there is still no preparing you for the actual moment when you hear. The gulf between your acceptance of the way things must soon be, and the bald fact itself, is as big as the divide between the living and the dead. That last goodbye, the final slam of the door. Patrick gone, already?

Now time was moving like treacle, as I tried to compute it all, get my head round it. Patrick was beyond explanations, apologies, reproaches. All the opportunities I’d had over the years to sort things out, call a truce, make things better, or even just to enjoy life with him, were just ashes now.

Of course I asked, I had to. I forced the mask that was now my face to frame the question. Whispered it over their heads. ‘What happened?’ I didn’t want the kids to hear, but I knew it had to be done.

‘A fire. At the office.’

The heads that had been buried into my side lifted at that, both of them. ‘Dad hates fires,’ said Giles. We were the only house that didn’t have a big shiny barbecue in the garden. No scented candles. And the fireplace by the sofas was gas, flicking on and off with a remote control.

I couldn’t quite see Giles’s face from the angle he had found, but I could imagine it crumpling, like all the times he’d cried as a small child. The mouth suddenly shifting sideways, the rest of his face creasing over it as though to hide the shame of giving in to tears. Em cried differently, so much more openly. Her face now was as wet as though she’d been under the shower. She held it up to me, my beautiful broken-hearted girl. I pressed a kiss onto the top of her hair, with its summer holiday scent, the coconut shampoo she loved. Which I would now forever associate with this moment. I wrapped my arms tighter round the two of them.

‘There were smoke alarms …’

‘Yeah. Didn’t work, did they?’ This was the stocky little policewoman, her head on one side as she looked up at me, face as shuttered as an off-licence after closing time. ‘Or no one heard. Inhalation.’

Did she want a reaction of some sort? I could do nothing but stare back at her, feeling these two smaller hearts beating against mine. It made me think of all those months when I’d carried them inside me, long ago. I didn’t have time to appease her, too. Things were going fast again.

‘Do I need to …?’ I tailed off. Swallowed. I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Someone had to identify him, didn’t they? Go to the mortuary, give that nod so they’d pull back the sheet. I felt nauseous at the thought.

‘No, that’s being taken care of.’ The policewoman looked at her notebook briefly. ‘His mother.’ There was a stab of pity for my mother-in-law, but also a wave of relief. The building?’ She looked back at me. Her eyes, dark as currants, were narrowed, expectant. Had there been a question?

‘Sorry?’

‘The building.’ She tapped the notebook with her pencil. ‘It would have been insured?’ she persisted. This time she was shushed by her colleague. A big, kindly man. Now he apologised, put a hand very briefly on my arm. His knees creaked slightly as he bent forward, almost like a toy policeman. He had the kind of pale skin that mottles with the sun, hair that would have been ginger once but was now the colour of a British beach. His eyes were a watery blue. Patrick had had a polo shirt that exact shade. My sight blurred suddenly. At last. ‘So sorry for your loss. Anyone we can call?’

I shook off all offers of help, even their suggestion that they make me tea or coffee, though later I realised that had no doubt come over as churlish. The widow should accept things gratefully, graciously, after all. Pity is her lot. And the woman officer was probably dying for a cuppa, not to mention a biscuit or three. Never mind. I had very little faith in the ability of that great cure-all, hot sweet tea, to improve this mess. I just wanted these two out, away, gone, with their platitudes and darting eyes. I wanted the doors shut, I wanted to sit and comfort my babies. To push all this horror far away. As far away as my dead husband now was.

So the three of us could start living again.

Chapter 2
Now
Becca

PC Becca Holt turned to leave Louise Bridges’ house, whacking her hip painfully against the doorjamb. She still wasn’t used to the extra inches her stab vest put on her, together with all the paraphernalia of radios, cuffs, pocketbook … the list went on. Ironic, really, when you thought about the hours – who was she kidding, years – she’d put into dieting. In this little lot, you couldn’t see if she weighed eight stone or fifteen.

She remembered her mum’s face. Wanting to be proud of her daughter, longing to cheer her on after all that training. Then, seeing her in the full kit, she hadn’t been able to hide her disappointment, rushing forward to try and yank Becca’s stab vest down over her bust. But there was nothing even the most determined mother could do to make this rig look attractive. So much for all that stuff about uniforms being sexy. ‘Well, the hat’s nice, anyway, love,’ her mum had finally managed, turning from her with a sigh at the grandchildren she’d never have.

Becca felt it all the more sharply, ambling out of Louise Bridges’ place. There was something about the woman’s freshly ironed blonde hair, even the way she stood there, pushing the wooden spoon into the spaghetti Bolognese once she’d finally allowed them over the threshold, her work-out gear (athleisure, Becca sniffed) gliding over yards of leg. On Becca, those leggings would have been creased like an accordion, cratered like asphalt after snow. But Mrs Bridges’ thighs were as smooth as an airport runway, and as long. Cellulite? How very dare you.

All that shouldn’t matter. It was irrelevant, absolutely. And so was the fact that the house – what a house! – was like something you’d get in a sitcom about perfect family life. Though Becca had a suspicion that there weren’t many laughs around the place, even at the best of times.

It was all very serious. Seriously stylish. The huge, open-plan kitchen-cum-living room, with high-gloss units that looked like they were polished on the hour, every hour. The whisper-grey velvety sofas in an L-shape, arranged around a plasma telly on the wall, just an inch short of out-and-out vulgarity. The large room, lined floor to ceiling in books, that they’d passed in the passageway. Even that kitchen table, casually strewn with the homework that had been abandoned and sheaves of papers that Louise had rapidly gathered up and tried to shove in a cupboard. A mess that wasn’t really messy. It gave Becca a pang. It was a symbol of family life, something that, according to Becca’s mother’s ill-concealed fears, she was unlikely ever to achieve, going on the way she did.

Becca was acutely conscious that she and her partner, PC Tom Burke, had lumbered into this show home like creatures from a sub-standard zombie movie, where things went wrong and life got tangled.

Was she crazy, envying a woman who’d just had the news they’d broken? It was surely the worst thing that could ever befall a wife, a family. How could Becca even be thinking this way?

It was the woman’s behaviour. Yes, she’d clasped her children to her, yes, she’d asked all the obvious questions. So far, so normal. But had she really been shocked? As shocked as you should be if you got the news, out of the blue, that your husband had just died a horrible death? Becca really didn’t think so. It had been more like the kind of reaction you’d have when a nasty rumour about a nextdoor neighbour is confirmed. It’s unpleasant, it’s upsetting for the kids – but it’s something you’re half-expecting.

No, there was something out of kilter with this Louise Bridges woman. She’d been too watchful, too guarded. And, crucially, she was not nearly sad enough, in Becca’s view.

It was a cliché, a woman breaking down, sobbing, turning pale, tearing out her hair. Expressing some genuine emotion. But clichés existed because, well, they fitted the bill.

Maybe it was because Becca herself cried if she ran out of teabags. She might be built like a tank, yes – and now like a tank festooned with novelty items, like cuffs and sticks – but she was a marshmallow inside, welling up whenever she saw an anxious child or a dog waiting for its owner outside a shop. She felt for others. But not for this Louise Bridges woman, it seemed. Becca had looked on for once, a disinterested observer. She hadn’t had to restrain herself from coming over all unprofessional, hugging and crying too.

The fact that Becca’s not-insubstantial sympathy gland wasn’t working, at this of all times, said something. Surely?

As she buckled up in the car, she turned to Burke. ‘What’d you make of her, then?’

Burke was silent for a moment, his face hard to read in the gloom. The drive at the Bridges’ place was long, and the streetlights were a way off. Becca waited.

‘Totty, obviously.’

She swatted his arm and he laughed. ‘Well, come on, I’m only human. Yeah, she’s a bit chilly, if that’s what you’re getting at. But seriously, Becca, what are you expecting, news like that? She’s not going to welcome us like long-lost members of the family.’

‘No. But don’t you think something was odd? The way she kept stirring that bloody stew?’

Burke faced the front for a moment, hand on the ignition. ‘Bolognese, you heard her. They’ve got to eat. She’s got to feed the kids, whatever’s happened.’

‘But—’

‘Becca. Not everything is more complicated than it looks.’ He sighed, his hand dropping from the car key, resigned. She knew he found her attitude tiring at the best of times. ‘Poor woman, give her a chance. You’re expecting her to be on the floor. She can’t do that with the little ’uns. She’s got to be strong, hold it together.’

‘What about when she saw us at the door? The first thing she said was “Patrick!” She knew. She knew what was up. That means – that means she must have had something to do with it.’

There was a silence. Becca could almost hear the cogs turning. Finally Burke spoke. ‘You’re right, that was a bit funny maybe. But you’re making a huge leap. She makes a wild guess, so she’s a killer. Nah, I don’t think so. Look at it the other way, who else would we be coming about? The rest of the family was already sitting there. It was obvious, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes but … she didn’t know we were coming with bad news, did she? Could have been anything. Neighbour’s cat missing, whatever.’

‘People always know, Becca. There’s an instinct.’

Becca hated it when Burke adopted that lofty ‘seen it all before’ tone. She tried again. ‘Yes, but when we asked her if she wanted someone with her? If she wanted us to ring her mum, for example.’

Burke gave her a look. She could just about interpret it as exasperation in the gathering dusk. ‘I can’t think of anything worse than having my mum around in a situation like that.’

‘But what about your kids? Wouldn’t it be good to have their gran there?’

‘You’re making a lot of assumptions. Not every family works like yours. Mine aren’t crazy about their nan, she’s pretty strict. Maybe Mrs Bridges, or whatever, is the same? Maybe they just don’t get on?’

‘OK, so not her mum – but why not another friend? Is she seriously going to sit there all night on her own with those kids? After what we’ve just told her?’

‘Why not? Maybe she wants to get her head around it first. Maybe she doesn’t actually have any friends. Basically, Becca, that’s not a crime.’

‘I’m not saying it is, but—’

‘You’ve got to stop expecting everyone to be the same as you. When you’ve been doing the knock for as long as I have, you’ll realise people take it all ways. Forget the textbook, forget what you think you’d do.’

A cold drizzle started to fall. The windscreen wipers were soon beating a soothing tempo, as English as a nursery rhyme.

‘Truth is, you won’t know till you’re there. Where she’s sitting now. Just pray you never are,’ Burke said, turning the key at last, putting the car into gear with his usual heavy deliberation and signalling to pull out.

Perhaps he was right. He had years of experience, in the end. All she had was instinct, and they were always being told to make that secondary to the rule book.

‘Amen to that.’ Becca shrugged, accepting defeat. For now.

Chapter 3
Now
Louise

All I want to do today, the day of the funeral, is make sure Giles and Em get through it, that we all do, as best we can. It’s not going to be easy. There was the delay, due to the … circumstances. You’d think that would make things less painful. It should be less raw. But it’s like pulling the plaster off bit by bit. They’ve had time to get used to the pitch of their grief, we’ve pared down our lives to fit around it. Now we have to open ourselves up again, parade in front of strangers.

Still, if we can keep putting one foot in front of the other, get to the end of this long and dreadful day, then it’s one major ordeal over. I’m not saying we can then move seamlessly on with our lives. I know now that recovery will be slow. But still, it will be one less thing hanging over us.

Em is in a dark-purple dress, one that Patrick liked. Better than black, for a girl of her age. We’ve scrambled together a dark suit for Giles. Boys can look wrong, dressed up in men’s clothes. Vulnerable necks, shiny jackets. But Giles looks good. Pale as his shirt, of course, and so sad, so brave. But smart, well turned out. Just like his dad.

I’d taken one of Patrick’s suits to the undertakers. His best. They’d asked me if I wanted to see him then. I refused, of course.

Unwisely, I mentioned it to the kids and then, of course, they felt obliged to see him. So I had to do it after all. Back to the funeral parlour, the careful obsequiousness of the staff, the décor that was so inoffensive it managed somehow to be revolting. We waited with another red-eyed family, offering each other stunted little smiles. Then we were led into the ghastly viewing room. Real flowers, at least. A pale pink carpet, suspiciously clean. I loathed it all. I looked at anything except the dazzling high shine of the coffin we’d picked, and the snowy white satin around his head. We were a tight little clump again. I could feel their fear and dread, the horror the living have of the dead, but I could feel their determination too. They are the best part of me, that’s for sure.

I shuffled them forward, tried to make things easier, all the while averting my own eyes as much as I could. I couldn’t avoid a glimpse. And the worst thing was that he somehow looked so untouched, after all that he – we – had been through. That dressmaker’s dummy was not my husband. But he was still my children’s father.

Chapter 4
Now
Becca

Becca Holt stumped into the station building and dropped the results of her shopping trip on her desk. It was cluttered already with clumps of empty Costa cups and plastic bags as shrivelled as autumn leaves. Tutting audibly so her colleagues wouldn’t think it was all her rubbish, she shoved the lot into the nearest bin, hesitating only briefly over whether it should go into ‘recycling’ or ‘general waste’. Even throwing stuff away was complicated nowadays.

Once the decks were cleared to her satisfaction, she snuffled in the pristine white paper bag she’d brought in. Just inhaling the doughnuts calmed her, the reassuring, wholesome smell of vanilla undercut with the hidden raspberry jam. She breathed in a bit too hard and had to splutter, finding a sudden unwilling sympathy for the coke addicts they were constantly moving on from under the arches down near the station.

She darted a quick glance around. At most of the desks, her fellow PCs were sprawled flat or had their noses pressed up against screens. Opposite, Burke was knocking a biro against his teeth in a rhythm that was doing his dental work no favours and would soon be messing with her head. She’d bought the doughnuts to share. She knew she should be tearing open the bag, leaving it on the side of her desk, making a general announcement of her largesse. Getting them all to love her. But bugger that. She wanted them all to herself.

She carefully edged a doughnut up a tad in the bag, ducked her head down, bit and sighed. It was good. So good it was bad. A bead of jam oozed down the side of her mouth and she licked and rubbed ferociously. Didn’t want to look like Dracula, did she? Or be caught snacking, either. She could do without being teased. As she’d discovered, the banter here wasn’t imaginative. Give them a stick, and they’d be beating you with it until you collected your pension.

She chewed carefully and swallowed, the movement making her waistband dig in that little bit more. She felt a prickle of shame. It suddenly made her think of that woman’s thighs. Her first and only knock, and as such seared on her memory. But she didn’t think she’d have forgotten it anyway, even if she’d called on as many of the recently bereaved as the Co-op Funeral Service.

Louise Bridges. That had been her name.

There’d been something about her, for sure. She couldn’t say it had been eating away at her. She was the one who had been eating away, and not at that case, but at mounds of stuff she shouldn’t even be looking at. She knew that. But this was a tough job, physical. She could walk it off. In theory. Unfortunately, her beat didn’t cover Land’s End to John O’Groats. As often as not, she was welded to the seat of her patrol car, and even that was stationary in traffic.

The truth was, it was the kind of work that you wanted to compensate yourself for doing. Demanding, sometimes demeaning. Requiring a lot of patience. Being polite, however absurd the calls on her time. Stepping in to defuse rows between grown men that would have shamed toddlers. Picking drunks up out of the gutter, and still treating them with respect, even when they hurled all over her clodhopping shoes. She needed a treat after a long day – and sometimes in the middle of a long day. And occasionally, like now, right at the beginning of what was, after all, bound to be a long day.

Unbidden, that woman’s legs unfurled in her mind again. How did you even get legs like that? Genetics, that’s how. Her own tree trunks would always be just that, even if she ate nothing but tofu and quinoa from this day forth. She knew that to be the truth. Yet there were steps she could take, to make sure the rest of her didn’t run the same way as her legs. She didn’t need Mrs Bridges rubbing it in.

But that wasn’t really why the woman had stuck in her mind. Or wasn’t the only reason, at any rate. Something didn’t stack up. Whatever her partner said, Becca hated a loose end even more than she hated an untidy doughnut. She lowered her head to the bag again, and nibbled the corner until it was flattened off. Perfect. But was that another bit poking up? She sighed. And nibbled again.

Even the hit of sweetness wasn’t enough to keep her mind off Louise Bridges for long. With a powder-white thumb she prodded her terminal into life. Burke would kill her, but he didn’t have to know. Thanks to her IT degree, she could just sneak a quick peek, set her mind at rest. Then enjoy her snack for as long as the job would let her. She licked her fingers, pressed a couple of keys, realised they were getting sticky and shrugged. This wouldn’t take a sec. Then she could give the whole keyboard a good wipe down. She fumbled in her drawer, found a piece of paper, studied the letterhead and tapped in the name.

A few strokes later and she was in. The doughnut, jam haemorrhaging away quietly inside the bag, was forgotten.

Chapter 5
Then

The first time I ever laid eyes on Patrick was at work. He just sauntered right past me. He didn’t need to tangle with me and Jen, the beautiful bookends sitting on reception. He was already in, shoulders swinging in his sharp suit, security pass wafted at the guard. Not that the fat, middle-aged geezer they’d hired to protect us all would have been able to stop anything other than a rampaging doughnut. Patrick knew where he was going, walked as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He owned everything. The job. The building. And now, suddenly, me.

That confidence. That sense of blithe entitlement. It wasn’t arrogance, he wasn’t really flash. He was just sure, steady, unshakeable. He was in the right place, at the right time. Everything was within his grasp, his for the taking. That definitely included me. Patrick was a living, breathing symbol of everything I’d wanted, my whole life.

I was attracted, an iron filing to a magnet. Stuck forever, just like that.

He gave Jen the ghost of a wink as he passed, shirt like a washing powder ad, glimmer of a smile, then clocked me and something changed in his expression. Too soon, he’d passed us and was at the lifts. On a better day, I might have mustered the boldness to get up, sashay past him, pretend I was on my way to the ladies’. But as it was, I just felt as though I’d been socked in the stomach.

That’s all it takes, sometimes. A look, and your life is sealed.

It was my first day in the job. God, I loved that place, the office building. Looking back on it, it was very ‘new millennium’, as they now say with a sneer. At the time, the shiny glass, chrome and marble seemed breathtaking. A palace to commerce, to possibilities, to a bright, clean future. Smart. Glitzy. Everything I badly wanted to have – and be.

So many things to remember, that morning. Who was who, where everything should go. It was crucial I shouldn’t look as though I was out of my depth. I’d blagged my way onto the temp agency’s books. The middle-aged woman at the dingy office had been deeply sceptical, but – surprise, surprise – the manager, puffing out of his shirt, was dead keen to have me on his books. Probably in all ways, but I just didn’t want to go there, even in my imagination.

This was my second temping gig. The first had been fine; boring. A solicitor’s office. Sitting there, I’d soon felt there was more dust settling on me than on the files they guarded so jealously. I hadn’t expected much from this next booking, as a result. But as soon as I approached the building, I got butterflies. Even the door handles looked like they had more class than I did. Long, chrome rods, running the length of the sheet glass doors. I was reluctant to grasp one, get my smutty prints all over it. But that only lasted a second. They had people who spent their days buffing this stuff. I took a deep breath and strutted in like I wasn’t dirt, like I didn’t come from nothing – as if, contrary to everything I knew in my heart of hearts, I had some sort of a right to try my hand at a better life.

It must have been an Oscar-winning performance, as Jen, the permanent girl, barely raised an eyebrow. They’d taken me on to cover her colleague’s two-week summer break, the idea being that Jen would bring me up to speed, though if I couldn’t hack it, it wouldn’t much matter, as she had everything under control. I couldn’t believe my luck. From the moment I sank into that leather-and-chrome swivel chair, rich and squishy as chocolate mousse, I was determined they’d never drag me out of it. It was beyond me why anyone would want time off from a job like this.

It’s hard work, pretending everything’s fine when it’s not, pretending you know what you’re doing when you really, really don’t. But I’d had practice. Sucking in every possible clue you can glean from your surroundings, your companions, can make the difference between passing unnoticed and getting into, well, let’s just say, a sticky situation. ‘Where are you from?’ Jen’s eyebrows were elegantly arched, but geography wasn’t on her mind. Her eyes travelled up and down as I gave out the mixture of truth and lies I practised every morning. She smiled and returned to her keyboard, shoulders relaxing slightly. She was somewhat reassured. My answers had passed muster. But I’d clocked that my outfit was a catastrophe which needed immediate attention.

As soon as I could, I ran to the loo. This little get-up had cost all the money I had. But it was wrong, wrong, wrong. I looked at myself in the mirror. Shame and disgust blurred my vision and when it cleared, I saw my fancy sheer blouse for what it was. So pretty, when I’d popped it on this morning and slid my feet into my towering scarlet heels. So tarty, now I looked at it coldly, while the shoes would have been better on a street corner. The tiny pucker between Jen’s eyebrows had shown me the terrible error of my ways. Highly polished invisibility was what we were after, as though we’d grown out of our marble reception desk like Greek goddesses.

I was devastated. Humiliated, yet again. A less determined girl might have thrown her hands up at that point, called the agency, asked for something … more suited. But I swallowed hard. Got to work. The desk would shield the shortness of my skirt. I couldn’t do much about the silly shirt, except fasten every single button, right up to the neck. I felt as though I was being strangled, but instantly the look was less … available. Anything else I could do? I scrutinised myself, tried to be dispassionate. The bling. I took off a bangle, then two, and stashed them in my bag. The fewer personal touches, the better. Instead of refreshing my make-up, I scrubbed half of it off, brushed my hair with furious vigour until my scalp burned. I did my best to glide back to my seat with a detached smile, just like Jen’s.

Every morning after that, I pared myself down, shedding hoops and necklaces, dumping outfits I’d saved up for, sloughing off the vibrant shades I’d loved. Working out that they shouted so much that I wanted unsaid. In the space of days, I became a monochrome, sober version of myself. The only ray of light left was my curtain of hair. It hung like the sun in the sky during that long, hot summer. Something told me that blonde would always be the one colour that went with everything.

Sometimes I’d see a hand on my keyboard and wonder who on earth it belonged to. Those tasteful taupe nails, just long enough to show they were high-maintenance, could they be mine? Fire-engine-red had been my favourite since I left school, except when I went for blue or a green or a shrieking neon. But soon I was swiping through my bathroom shelf at home, chucking my little rainbow straight into the bin. That was now definitely in my past. And the mound of jewellery on my bedside table, so beguiling when it was bought? It oxidised almost overnight, showing me who was right. All that glitters is not gold. Lucky I was a quick learner.

Chapter 6
Now
Louise

Standing in front of my mirror, today of all days, I know that, ironically, I’ve finally found a look I can definitely pull off. Well, who doesn’t suit a little black dress? Patrick’s wedding ring round my neck on a simple chain. And lilies – the other perfect accessory.

The rest of it isn’t so great. My eyes seem to have shrunk from crying, while the lids are as puffy as the vol-au-vents which are already standing in serried ranks downstairs in the kitchen for the wake. Well, reception. Or aftermath? Whatever you want to call the ghastly gathering after the funeral, where we will all chat awkwardly until the alcohol kicks in. Then the laughter will suddenly ring out too loudly and we’ll be embarrassed again.

Meanwhile, my children are in pieces and my mother-in-law has barely spoken since it happened. Because of the delay, you’d think things would be less awful. They’re absolutely not. By the time we get to the crematorium, I feel as though I’m floating about a foot above the scene, or six feet below it.

Jill’s arm is round my shoulders, mine round hers, as we progress slowly up the aisle. The children sleepwalk in front of us. It’s like a negative of my wedding photos, all that white tulle and hope swapped for black and nasty pine veneer.

Patrick is already here, as arranged. We meet at the top of the aisle, just like we did before. But this time I slide into my pew, leaving him in lonely splendour on his dais. The shiny coffin nailed down hard over his smart suit. Goodbye, my love.

I planned the service down to the last word but after it’s over I couldn’t tell you a thing that was said, done or sung. I know the pieces complemented him, and our life together, and celebrated our children, our finest achievement by far – and I know they did the trick because I could hear the sniffs behind me from the congregation. Giles and Em too, they snuffle on either side of me, tiny soft creatures again, needing all the protection I can give them. Jill is on the end of the pew, back ramrod straight, knuckles white on the shivering service sheet.

It feels right to be here, instead of in a church. We’ve only ever been fair-weather members of any congregation, only there for the jolly bits, not slogging it out every Sunday. The kids aren’t at church schools so, to put it bluntly, there’s been no need. The last time we were in one was probably Em’s christening, at Jill’s urging. She was too shattered to insist that we hold the funeral there. I’d feel bad about this awful municipal solution to Patrick’s death, but I really don’t have that much emotion to spare. I’m sure God, and Jill, have worse things to worry about.

As far as I know, Patrick had never given a thought to all this – death and the rigorous tidying away it requires. But he would have enjoyed being centre stage, all eyes on him. People often say that, and I’ve thought how discordant it sounds, yet today it’s true. The full rows of friends, neighbours, distant relatives and vague acquaintances who have turned out for him. And quite a number of attractive women sobbing. That would have tickled him. He loved to cause a stir. If he’d been here, he’d have been so busy, up and down the aisle, a handshake there, a kiss, a look, a word. And turning, now and then, to give me that wink.

I think about him as the recorded organ music starts up. It was loud and rousing during the hymns, filling out the gaps where we all blundered, after the first couple of familiar lines. I muttered along for form’s sake, while Giles and Em were hardly audible. What do you expect? They don’t do proper hymns anymore at school, even the posh places like theirs. If they sing, it’s all about dolphins, not Dear Lord and Father and forgive our foolish ways. Jill’s voice was husky, catching on cigarettes and grief.

Now, the organ sound dribbles away, mild and meandering, ushering us out of the crematorium and onwards, to the rest of our lives. We shuffle obligingly to our feet when the celebrant, whose eulogy for Patrick gave new meaning to the word bland, gestures for us to go first. Once again, it’s a wedding march, except now Patrick is being left behind forever.

On the way back down the aisle, where once I grinned from ear to ear, my veil thrown back, ring gleaming on my third finger, my prize the wonderful man on my arm, now I walk uncertainly with Giles and Em, glancing quickly at the friends and colleagues who don’t know whether to smile or not. There’s Patrick’s university friend, they shared a flat back in the day, after graduation. A group from our old firm – it all seems so long ago now. A few more recent clients – I dread the chats to come. The miscellaneous blondes – my gaze skates over them and they busy themselves with bags and tissues, darting out of my view like a shoal of silvery fish. And there’s Jen, kind and lovely Jen. Still gorgeous. Still with that idiot Tim. She gives me such a lovely smile. Ah, Stacy Johnson, my best friend, right in the middle of a row. She’s in bits. Of course she is. I try not to catch her eye. I really can’t afford to set myself off again. I need to hold it together.

Then, in the last pew, I do a double take. The little policewoman. Not in uniform, but I recognise those bold, beady eyes, running over my face. She’s wearing a hoody and jeans. Not even black. Is nothing sacred? What is she doing here? It was bad enough that evening, her stare. But at my husband’s funeral? I hope the children haven’t seen or recognised her. I press them closer to me. Her gaze follows me as I pass. I do a mental tut. Here? Really?

And I swish on out, the flawless skirt of my black crepe dress flowing around my legs.

Chapter 7
Then

By my second day, I’d found a skirt that was within shouting distance of my knees, and I listened like an over-eager schoolgirl, lapping up everything Jen told me. Not that I needed much help to work out how the great bank of phones worked. Yes, it looked like something Lieutenant Uhura would have sat in front of in Star Trek, but I had mastered it in minutes. At least it wasn’t the olden days, when you had to plug in little wires and make a cat’s cradle, physically joining one call to another. That might have given me pause. Now it was just the flick of a switch.

Reception was all about smiling, really. The name said it all. Receiving people, welcoming them, looking them right in the eye. And pacing yourself so you didn’t feel as though your face was going to split after the first half-hour.

Where had I got the training for this? Ushering friends into our home? Ha. Don’t make me laugh. It had all been about keeping people out. ‘The busies,’ my mother called them. Not just the police. Social workers, top of the list. Then all the other undesirables. Relatives, not that they bothered much. Mum had successfully alienated all of them. Various complex grudges that I never really got the hang of, though I suppose everything boiled down to money and sex in the end. Women friends were the same. Sometimes she’d shout about it all, depending how far down the bottle she was. I learned to block out the noise. Then there were the more obvious no-nos – ex-boyfriends, retribution on their minds. Money lenders, occasionally. And, more than once, the bailiffs. Hard to stop them, though, after they’d stoved in the door. All of the above could fit more than one category, a Venn diagram with more circles than hell.

So my instincts were to curl up, protect myself, hide from the light. But I was desperate for this to work. So I learned. And soon, I blossomed. Not in a showy way. Concealing my feelings was one of the very few transferrable skills my upbringing had given me. But I could pin on a smile brighter than the chrome of my fancy office chair when I had to. And I felt so much more at home at that desk, than I ever had anywhere else before. Including my actual home.

Partly, that was because of Patrick.

I couldn’t have told you what it was about him that clicked with every bit of my DNA. But it was as though a key had been turned, somewhere. Like a Chinese puzzle, my shrivelled heart was now open, ready to be trashed. I distrusted the feeling. Protected myself as best I could. But it was no good. I didn’t know his name, which floor he worked on, or anything else about him. Yet I was already his.

As it turned out, the more I found out, the more I loved the idea of him. Or just loved him. I asked Jen, all casual, as soon as the lift had swished closed on him that morning, but of course she was no fool. Immediately, she warned me off.

‘He’s a bit of a player, Louise. You need to be a bit careful there. I’d think again, if I were you.’

Whether it was genuine concern for me or not, I neither knew nor cared. All it did was make me keener. If that were even possible. Though those words of hers would come back to haunt me.

Chapter 8
Now
Louise

As I glide around town, going about my business, I’m used to feeling eyes on me, tracking me. As often as not, I look up at some man and shake him off with the force of my indifference. I’m a widow. I’m in black. Are they sick?

But sometimes it’s a woman and then I wonder. Was she one of them?

I wonder about Patrick and about how many there were, before there was one too many.

Because Jen was right, he was a player.

I sometimes wondered if she knew this from the outside in, or whether she had once been one of his, shall we say, playthings herself. I never asked her, and she never admitted as much. But the strength of my love for him made me preternaturally aware. I used to think I’d be able to spot a woman who wanted him at thirty paces, and certainly sniff one out if I was sitting next to her.

But whatever might or might not have been between them was history by the time I arrived and slid behind the marble desk. If I’d been Jen, I wouldn’t have liked it, the way he started to flirt with me. Even if they had never really been an item, it was asking her to play gooseberry in an outrageous way. And if they once had been together, well, then it was insensitive in the extreme. But what can I say? That was Patrick.

The girls I see now are Patrick’s type: self-contained and sleek. They look sophisticated, aloof. They are basically just like me, but annoyingly they are ten to twenty years younger. Of course, I have no proof. And it’s so much better, so much more dignified, to turn a blind eye.

I got very used to doing that, so keeping going is no stretch. Carving out a new role for myself as a widow is much more difficult. I no longer fit into anyone’s dinner party plan. I’m an extra even for drinks, and there’s always the possibility that I might bring down the atmosphere, be sad. Weep, even. Good gracious. Or, worse still, I won’t be sad enough, won’t live up to everyone’s image of what grief should look like, how long it should last, how deep it should go. Everyone has a view about how a woman like me does things.

As usual, I’m playing a part and it’s tiring. But I don’t really care, at this stage my life has had more costume changes than Madonna. What I do care about is my kids.

People ask me why we don’t move. ‘A change of scene, that’s what you all need, it’ll be good for Giles and Em.’ To me, that seems ridiculous. Patrick will still be with us, wherever we go. He’s an inescapable fact of our lives. The centre of everything, even if he’s no longer there. So I’d rather stay here, in the home we built together.

I’ve written letters to the school, I’ve got the kids sessions with a counsellor, I’ve put photos in their rooms of their dad looking his best, and I’ve put a big one of Patrick in the kitchen, looming over us, even though I love my clear surfaces.

It won’t bring him back, nothing can or will. But it means that the children feel that, unlike Elvis, Patrick hasn’t quite left the building.

Chapter 9
Then

There’s no accounting for taste, is there? I wouldn’t have swapped my shiny marble desk for a thousand beach bars and all the sun in the sky, but the dozy girl I was replacing decided to stay on in Malaga or Portugal or wherever. I was overjoyed when they made my job permanent.

That left me and Jen, smiling serenely through our days. We were like the figureheads on a ship in full sail. Then the wind suddenly dropped. The company was in the doldrums and there were whispers in corners about economy measures. The talk was of a cull, of people being ‘let go’ from all departments. It terrified me, that expression. I would be in free fall if I had to leave, I knew that. This place was my only solid ground. I dreaded getting the tap on the shoulder.

Jen had been with the firm for two years and didn’t want to move on either. But by now, we had an even flashier phone system, one which was a nightmare to operate. Jen, who’d taught me so much at the beginning, struggled with the nuances of the new rig. Well, we both did. At first, anyway. It didn’t help that the instruction booklet was nowhere to be found. In those days, you couldn’t just download another from the internet. So it was me trying to give her pointers. It was a reversal of our normal roles and it felt odd for her. Jen had once held all the cards, played them with the effortless élan of a major-league poker champ. Now she kept fumbling.

I was lucky – I’d just happened to pop to the loo when a crucial call had been booked in for the managing director. Funding. From the States. Jen accidentally cut him off in his prime, the source of revenue went south and no one was amused. I told her we’d just talk our way out of it, blame the machine, mechanical error. But the more we blathered, the stormier the faces grew. The chop. I looked on, gutted, but the chaps upstairs had the excuse they’d needed. Just her, though, not me.

I owed Jen so much. From my perfect beige nails to my immaculate blouse (now real silk) to my accent, which had been gradually morphing into hers. The desk wouldn’t be the same without her. I hated crying, couldn’t ever afford to start in case I never stopped, but my eyes were stinging the day she left. I felt so sorry for her, exiled from the firm. She had been its serene public face. Now she was gone. For a while, I felt as though everyone who came through that door was searching for her, disappointed that there was only me. I tried to beam more brightly to compensate.

Chapter 10
Now
Louise

Just when I think we’re beginning to make progress, something comes along to upset all our apple carts, throw a pall over our lives again.

We managed to stagger our way through Christmas. It was hideous. We spent it with Jill, mourning her son but doing her best to celebrate what she still had – her grandchildren. They’d become all the more important to her. To us.

We’d had our differences, in the past. In fact, I’d blamed some of Patrick’s wandering ways on his mother turning a blind eye way back. There wasn’t a woman alive, it seemed, who didn’t let Patrick off the hook. And fair’s fair, it was his father who’d done the dirty, upping and leaving Jill for a younger version, begetting another bunch of kids. It didn’t take a genius to work out this displacement was the reason Patrick constantly sought reassurance, acceptance, attention.

But now Patrick was gone, taking all his faults away with him. We were left with the man smiling from the photos, who was perfect, of course. I much preferred to pretend this was the man I’d lived with and known, and as far as Jill was concerned, it was gospel. Meanwhile, Giles and Em took comfort from seeing him around.

I was glad once the last cracker was pulled and the dried-up Christmas pudding could be decently ditched. Only Patrick had ever liked it. This year, Giles had solemnly swallowed down a symbolic mouthful and the rest had mouldered until I could bear the sight no longer.

Chucking all that wrapping paper into the recycling was more liberating. It seemed to promise some sort of renewal, the end of yet another test, like the funeral. But I hadn’t realised, then, that every single day would go on being an ordeal of a sort.

This time it’s Em, coming home from school with that ominous cried-out look. What’s happened? I instantly want to know, but I resist asking straight out.

‘Nice day?’ Sometimes the oblique question nets the answer. Not this time.

‘Fine.’ She storms off to her room. I turn pointedly to Giles. He slings his bag on the counter, shrugs his shoulders. I realise, suddenly, that he’s grown again. One day soon he’ll be his father’s height. Every day he looks more like him. I have to be careful, on the landing in the dark. More than once, he’s nearly given me a heart attack, coming out of his bathroom all of a sudden, dumping his towel on the floor just like his dad used to.

‘Well, something happened,’ I say.

‘What’s for tea?’

‘Supper. Pasta bake.’ This is in honour of Em’s new status as a vegan. I’m hoping she won’t notice the cheese; that the whole phase will, in fact, be over as quickly as possible. Giles’s wince at the prospect doesn’t help my temper. ‘Do you know what happened? Going to tell me?’

He cracks under pressure. ‘School project. Family tree. Someone teased her.’

‘What about?’ I immediately square up to fight. How dare they? And our tree, thanks to my marrying into Patrick’s lot, is perfectly respectable.

‘Oh, some cow. Said there were so few people on Em’s, it was more like a stick.’

I close my mouth. Whoever it was, she had a point. With my parents MIA, her dad now dead, little contact with his half-siblings, and me an only child, our family tree is indeed a slender branch rather than a mighty oak. But Em doesn’t need it rubbing in.

I march up to her room. I don’t wait to be asked in. Don’t want to be standing there until the Day of Judgement, do I? She is bunched up on her bed, sad as dirty laundry. I ignore her token resistance, give her the biggest hug I have and tell her straight. She has a family to be proud of, a mum who will always love her, a doting gran and a big brother who really isn’t that bad.

And a dad whose memory she should always treasure. And never once let go of.

Chapter 11
Now
Becca

Becca sat in her car, slowly and carefully peeling the wrapper off a Twix. Not really her favourite, but her dad had loved them. She wasn’t quite sure why she still bought them. No, that was a lie. It was something that brought him closer. She remembered him opening the packet, handing one stick to her, eating the other himself. They’d chomp together in harmony, while her mum was out.

That stuff will kill you. Her mum had a point. Maybe her father wouldn’t have died so young if he’d reined in on the chops and chips and chocs. But it wasn’t as though Mum was into health food herself, was it? She battled the scales, same as Becca did. She just denied it, got ratty on her chickenfeed diet, and had a go at her daughter instead.

Becca sighed, looked out of the window. Her breath was steaming it up, giving a dreamy edge to the view. Suburbia stretched on mistily, trees bare and black now on the edges of still-perfect lawns. It was like the place she’d grown up in, just that bit bigger and better, as though everything had been inflated by some sort of celestial bicycle pump. Even the streetlights seemed taller. They’d flick on soon, twilight was falling. An SUV purred up the road, swung in to park outside a nearby garage, crunching over the gravel drive. Not the Bridges lot. Children and a dog burst out. Before anyone could pop a head up over the privet to complain about the sudden din, they were engulfed by their huge house. The silence settled over Becca again.

Leaving the car heater on meant her Twix had melted into a lump. She held it up to the light, strangely deformed, the bars fused together. She thought again of Louise Bridges’ legs in that get-up. Bloody woman. She snapped the biscuit crossly, munched for a while. Then, when she was feeling soothed, she started licking the residue off her fingers. You could say one thing for chocolate, it always tasted delicious, no matter what shape it was.

The daylight was leaching away now, greens fading to browns, browns to velvet black, and still she sat on. She knew none of Louise Bridges’ neighbours would complain about the car. There’d been so much to-ing and fro-ing lately. The police, then the papers. Attracted like flies by death, the fire, the inquest. People were inured to it now. And she’d sat here often enough. Just watching. Waiting. Plain clothes, they’d assume. If anyone knocked on her window, she was always ready with a story. Just keeping an eye on the place. They’d wander off nodding, happy as Larry. But no one would knock. That was the joy of the suburbs. All that rabid curiosity, but contained by its own net curtains, as though they were made of steel. Nobody would confront you. Write an anonymous note, yes. Ring the station to complain, possibly. But that hadn’t happened yet.

She could stay on here for hours, waiting, watching, and all these little householders would actually feel safer for having her around. She smiled and dealt with the last blob of chocolate. She was willing to bet the neighbours were in her camp. Suspicious, but unable to voice the dark thoughts in their heads. Yet. They didn’t know as much as she did, but they were all waiting, just the same. Just like her.

Then Louise’s door cracked open. Yellow light shone behind her, highlighting that hair. She wasn’t in the yoga gear this time, she was in flowing black trousers. Becca couldn’t see the detail, except for the way the fabric fell, caressing as nothing ever had on her own body. Pricey. Of course. A sweater, equally black. Soft, understated. Was it a bit fluffy? A boat neck, they called that. Ordinary clothes, on anyone else. On Louise, they developed a special sort of grace and elegance, her collar bones rising up, carved like a dancer’s. Becca wished she hadn’t finished that Twix. Then wished she had another to crunch to oblivion. Then she thought about the calories and felt sick. The usual backwash of guilt.

Louise strode out, oblivious. Though Becca was sitting there large as life – well, larger, as her mother would have said with a sigh – Louise never seemed to see her. Was she invisible to the woman? Or just so insignificant that Louise didn’t give a toss? It would make things harder if Louise did know she was here, and Becca wouldn’t be able to watch her like this. But sometimes, like tonight, she was tempted to lean on the horn, make the bitch look up, acknowledge her existence, at least.

But Becca stopped herself and Louise moved fluidly on, eyes never once flicking to the parked car. She went round to the side, unlatched the little hutch that cocooned her wheelie bins. Not for her the vulgarity of an exposed rubbish bin, oh no. That sort of thing had to be tidied away, hidden, so she could pretend that she and her brood didn’t generate used teabags, carrot tops, coffee grounds, tissues, rotten fruit, sanitary pads … the usual detritus of human life. Now she was pushing the bins out onto the street, one at a time, putting her back into it. Becca watched with a smirk. That’s a proper work-out for you, isn’t it, love? None of this pointless stretching and bending that you pay through the nose for.

When all three bins were finally out there, beyond the garden wall, Louise smoothed her hair back from her forehead and went back inside. Ha. Don’t like the donkey work, do you? Not such a clever idea to get rid of the hubby after all, was it? Once the door clicked shut and the outside light went off, Becca decided reluctantly that it was time to move on. The show was over. For tonight. She turned the key in the ignition and flipped on the headlights at last.

She drove back through the dark streets to her empty flat, a silent promise running through her head. I’ll be back, Louise, don’t you worry.

I’ve got my eye on you.

Chapter 12
Then

Jen and I kept in touch. The idea of losing her made me feel dizzy. What would I do? How would I know if I was getting it right? So we got into a habit of having drinks after work and bitching about our bosses, though my heart wasn’t in the whingeing. I loved the company almost as much as I loved my desk – and Patrick.

We became even better friends once she’d left the company. From the outside, I liked to think we were now peas in a pod, but keeping tabs on her felt like touching wood, keeping myself grounded, checking I was really where I needed to be. So much of what I now was, I owed to her template. And having a friend like her was proof of how far I’d come. The girls at school would have collapsed in amazement if they could have seen me, swanking about in wine bars, with gorgeous, poised Jen. She would definitely have been one of the popular gang back in the day, the ones in giggling gaggles, while the likes of me slunk past, friendless and invisible.

So I was surprised, one night, to see her in stacked heels with chunky ankle straps, far from the pure lines and vertiginous height of the stilettos she normally favoured. Perhaps I wasn’t the only chameleon in town.

I’d worried about her, once she’d got the sack, but of course she’d found a job within seconds of leaving. Who wouldn’t snap her up? She was with an ad agency now, and her clothes seemed to be edging out to match. Nothing crazy, just a zing of colour, a bag by a bad-boy designer. It disconcerted me. I understood why it was imperative that I reinvent myself, but Jen? She’d been perfect as she was. I’d seen her as the fixed star in my firmament, an ideal to aspire to, a goal I was – sometimes – close to reaching. But if Jen herself had to change, what did that mean for less perfect mortals like me? Was there nothing but constant messing and fixing ahead? Would I never really know what I was aiming for, let alone attain it?

It turned out, of course, that she’d fallen for one of the account directors, all flash car and expense account lunches. Perfection wasn’t enough; now she had to be trendy with it. We were all just lumps of clay when it came to getting our man. My mother had been the same, bending over backwards for whatever lowlife had had her that week.

I didn’t know it then, but the germ of a resolve was forming, as I sat at the bar with Jen, sluicing my week away with white wine spritzers. I’d always have more work to do than anyone else to fit in, make the grade. That I accepted. It was my fault, the price I’d be paying in perpetuity for being my mother’s daughter, and for daring to try to escape that life sentence. And though I was willing to tweak the externals as far as they needed to go, I now promised myself that, inside, I’d be true to myself. Whoever that was.

I came to love those evenings, chucking Chardonnay on my own troubles, sighing along with Jen’s non-existent worries, pretending to take them seriously. She dithered endlessly about which dishes to cook for her dinner parties, stressed about the nuances of who’d said what to whom at the agency. I knew that these things didn’t matter, they were tiny glitches in an otherwise perfect life.

Sometimes it amused me to enter into them with Jen, pretend that I cared whether she served watercress soup or rhubarb fool. But part of me was always leaning back from the table, chair tilted on two legs in the way people used to warn me about at school, as if toppling was the thing I had to fear. I couldn’t help but be angry that I was forever shut out of feeling such mundane concerns. How could I care about gravadlax, when I knew that I was worthless? And how could Jen be hanging on for my opinion? If she cared what I thought, that meant she was worthless too. It was a spiral of nihilism that no one wanted to know about or go down, least of all me. So I’d push it away, lean forward, and debate liver pâté versus smoked duck starters as though my life depended on it.

Jen knew, of course, about my passion for Patrick. How could she not? Twice a day, more often if he went out for lunch, I’d been transformed right in front of her eyes from the reasonably together, elegant young woman I’d fashioned in her likeness, into a tongue-tied, beetroot-blushing idiot. She didn’t need to be Hercule Poirot to realise something was afoot.

‘Made your move yet?’ she’d josh me every time we met, knowing the answer would be a mumbled negative. ‘Come on, Lou. You’ll be old and grey by this rate. Or he’ll get snared by someone else.’

This was my dread. That, during the many hours of the day when Patrick wasn’t under what I thought of as my roof, he’d wander into the clutches of another. I couldn’t bear the thought.

Jen was patient, talking through strategies with me, week after week. We were like chess grandmasters, trying to outwit Deep Blue. Would that scenario work, or was this the way forward? It was much more time-consuming than our actual jobs.

I was the one who came up with the idea. I’d move off the desk, into Patrick’s department. It was a measure of how desperate I was at this point. The desk was, without a doubt, the best part of my life – apart from these sessions with Jen – and I wanted to hang on to it like a wino clutching their last can of Special Brew. On the other hand, I was getting nowhere with Patrick; if I was more colleague than underling, and in his own space instead of marooned out in reception, surely something would give?

Jen was unconvinced. Did this reflect doubt in my abilities to hold my own in the inner office? I’d like to think not. But then, she’d never dared try it herself. As we both knew, she was less flexible than me. I seriously doubted she’d ever have been as much of a whizz with our current comms package as I now was, even if that manual hadn’t gone walkabout. And she had that very ordinary failing, of believing that if she couldn’t do something, no one else could. Least of all her erstwhile junior.

Sometimes I thought she might still have a soft spot for Patrick herself. She’d sat up straighter when he was around. But then, of course I could see why. Her own boyfriends – she always had one on the go – were generally so wet, I felt like handing them a towel. Nothing wrong with them, they just didn’t measure up to Patrick. Then along came Tim from the ad agency, the one she’d become trendy for.

On paper, Tim was great. Tall, solvent. An account director. He was, she whispered, ‘so artistic’. I assumed that meant he did strange stuff in bed. He certainly looked a bit more edgy than her previous numbers. Enough to get her reconsidering her wardrobe, at least. But at my age, I felt I was looking for a lot more than he could offer. Even Jen, after the initial thrill wore off, started treated him like a mildly disappointing pet she’d somehow got lumbered with, at least in our chats. I couldn’t understand it. She was only five years older than me. Surely she should be living a little, before she settled?

But it cut me to the quick when she turned up to All Bar One with an extra glow about her. I was just wondering what it was, and how I could get it – new moisturiser, special eye shadow? – when she flashed her left hand at me. There it was, a rock of a ring. I’d thought she was wasting her time with Tim, and hoped I was the one getting it right, wanting more. But the sight of Jen’s diamond cluster made me realise I wanted one too.

Obviously I didn’t want Tim. And I didn’t envy Jen at all, being stuck with him for life. But I did immediately buy into all that wedding stuff. Well, it’s inevitable, isn’t it? Every little girl is brought up on a solid pink diet of handsome princes, ballgowns, fairy godmothers and, crowning it all, the massive fuck-off wedding at the end. I hadn’t had a lot, growing up, but my mother had always been willing to stick a DVD on, keep me occupied while she got up to … whatever. I’d more or less taught myself to read, freeze-framing the credits of Cinderella.

Part of me knew the whole idea was seriously flawed. Relationships didn’t last. I only needed to look at my mother to see that writ large. But the fact that her own romantic quest had been never-ending, despite the pitiful results, showed me how hard-wired the desire for a happy-ever-after was. As a young girl, I’d sneaked books of fairy tales out of the school library and read them under the covers at night, Matilda-style. And I still loved a bit of chick lit. Who doesn’t? From Sophie Kinsella all the way back to Jane Eyre, the idea was the same. Man equals happiness. Once you’ve got rid of the madwoman in the attic.

I would have questioned it more if every cell in my body weren’t crying out for Patrick. If I had him, oh, if I did, my troubles would be over. I knew that, and no one could tell me any different. I’d seen the kindness behind his confidence, you see. He had the most beautiful manners, the way he always held the big glass doors open for colleagues. He had charm, at ease with everyone from the chairman of the company to the security guard. And he was fun. He told the best jokes, he set the tone.

And, on the rare occasions when he was alone, he changed the energy in the building as soon as he set foot in the door. I knew, before looking up, when he’d arrived in the mornings. Something changed in the very air of the place. There was a new feeling of urgency, full of promise. He usually stayed much later than I did – he was hard-working as well! – but if he ever left before me, the life went out of the building the moment the door swung closed on his sharp suit.

There were other men around who were confident, some who were good-looking too. But there was no one who combined it all like Patrick. It made him irresistible to me. He was so different from anyone I’d met before, so open in what he wanted. He seemed so honest and free, unafraid to aim for the top, unabashed about looking at me. He wasn’t, like my mother’s men, giving me sneaky little glances, opportunistic, speculative. He had no reason to hide, nothing to feel guilty about. He made me feel clean, instead of dirty. He was the chance of a new life, the hero who would, finally, save me from the fiery dragon.

So when I saw the ring sparkling as hard as it could on Jen’s freshly manicured hand, I suddenly saw my own future in those glittering facets. This would be me! Me and Patrick. I mouthed all the right things, oohed and ahed at the proposal (actually not bad – Tim had got down on one knee at an up-and-coming Soho club, managing to fuse the arty and the traditional in a way that couldn’t fail to melt Jen’s heart) and pledged to help her arrange the wedding. After all, it would be good practice for my own.

Jen’s success, again, had shown me the path. I could get what she had. And I would. All I needed was a strategy to follow. I’d been idling away until now, not realising how serious the game was, not conscious that everything, including me, had an expiry date. But Jen’s ring had shown me the prize I should be aiming for, and had also reminded me that I needed to get on with it. Things changed. Look at Jen. She’d left the desk, and yes, she’d still thrived and found Tim. But if I left, would I ever see Patrick again?

I had him near me, five days a week, yet I was relying on chance, fate, kismet, something other than myself, to organise things for me. Everything about my life so far should have told me that wasn’t the way to go. If I wanted something, I had to go out and get it done myself.

Chapter 13
Now
Becca

Becca threw her biro down onto her cluttered desk. It ricocheted off yesterday’s sandwich wrapper and rolled onto the floor. She grimaced as she rooted for it, but a decision had been made all the same. She needed to sort this out. There was no other way. She’d been worrying at this puzzle for what seemed like forever, after what she’d found online. She’d been going through the motions here, doing her job to the best of her abilities, but her mind was always … elsewhere. All right, on Louise. Checking up on the woman was becoming a habit. Too much of one, people would say. But she knew there was something there. It wasn’t imagination. Nor obsession. Not this time.

She still didn’t have quite enough at her fingertips to dare to confide in anyone else, though. She stared away from her screen, accidentally catching Burke’s eye. His sandy hair was plastered down today, his usually mild blue eyes giving her a shrewd glance. She bobbed her head back. She could just imagine what he’d say if he knew what she was spending her time doing.

She yawned and drooped back over the latest report, struggling to fill it in. Registering all this stuff had never seemed so pointless, when she knew that, not more than ten minutes’ drive away, sat a woman who was literally getting away with murder.

Becca knew Louise Bridges was a bad ’un, she could smell it on her. There was no doubt in her mind that there was more to the whole business than it seemed. So what if the coroner had taken one look at the grieving widow and rubber-stamped everything? So what if no one else seemed to bat an eyelid at the way Mrs Bridges was carrying on with her life as though nothing had happened?

As usual, the thought of Louise filled her vision and she stood up abruptly. At the desk opposite, a colleague stopped scratching behind her ear with a pen and ran their eyes up and down her, then turned away. Becca felt more conscious than ever of the soft rolls straining against her uniform trousers. Across the way, Burke tutted, then went back to his in-tray. He’d be happy doing paperwork forever. Routine, structure, block capitals on the dotted line. This wasn’t what she’d joined the police for.

Why had she joined? It was partly something that her mother couldn’t reproach her for. She was never going to get a job doing anything her mother really rated. The sort of glamorous career celebrities dabbled in, between interviews with Hello! The police, though, that was solid, respectable. Her mother could see the point of it. It seemed to cancel out that one brief wobble Becca had had, the depression. She’d been ill, but she was better.

Unfortunately, it turned out that she didn’t want to do the bits of the job that Mum thought would keep her nicely out of trouble. She wanted to do the tricky stuff. Search out the hidden. Make deductions. And, above all, make sure people didn’t cheat justice.

One person in particular.

It was going to be a slog, she could see that. So far, no one had ever seen her potential – apart from poor old Dad. She’d have to claw her way up alone. But this Louise Bridges business could help her. Becca would just have to prove them all wrong about the woman, simple as that. Shatter some illusions.

And no, it wasn’t going to be like last time. She was perfectly fine now.

She was just a person who liked to focus.

Chapter 14
Then

I blush to admit it, but at this point I hadn’t really got as far as saying two whole consecutive sentences to Patrick, unless you count stammering and stuttering as conversation.

At first, Patrick seemed determined to keep a constant distance of three metres from my orbit. Perhaps he sensed that if he got any closer, he’d be sucked into my gravity like a hapless meteorite. I mooned over him twice a day, more often if he was getting a sandwich. I had failed to move up to his floor, though the big bosses hadn’t quite told me no. It was just not yet. I wondered if they were stringing me along. I should have wondered the exact same thing about Patrick, but I was too much in love.

Because all of a sudden, he was sauntering over. He’d always had a bit of a chat with Jen, and sometimes winked at me. But now he was coming over just for me. Me.

The first time, I felt like a flower singled out by a bee, every cell of me was alive and producing nectar at a prodigious rate. From a single word, ‘OK?’ we were soon up to a sentence, ‘How’s it going?’ Then, one day, he smiled properly, right at me, and we actually had a real conversation. It was a red-letter day.

All right, he was only asking if a courier had left a package for him. They hadn’t. If they had, I would have been on the phone to him like a shot. I didn’t say this, of course. I just stammered and blushed like a stupid idiot, shaking my head as though I had some sort of neurological misfortune, while he looked at me, amused blue eyes running over every inch of my overheated face and body. It was a wonder I didn’t spontaneously combust.

After this, the wink and a little ‘hello’ became our regular thing. I spent hours, at home and in the ladies’ at work, practising responses, acting cool, trying desperately to develop some vestige of nonchalance.

Then, for no reason that I could divine, things went backwards again overnight. He started passing me by. The whispers and winks dried up. Days and weeks passed and I was in the desert. He still walked by, regular as clockwork, sometimes with his little coterie of admiring colleagues, sometimes on his own with that brisk, purposeful stride I loved, but he didn’t glance over anymore. I was distraught. Had I done something to put him off? Smiled too widely, given myself away somehow?

I tried everything to lure him back. New perfume. Undoing another button on my blouse, then rapidly doing it up again when I attracted the others instead. I straightened my hair, then plaited it, then put it in a bun. Finally I left it hanging down, as dejected as I was, though I carried on smiling my merry smile.

But just when I wasn’t expecting it, just when I was resigned, there he was again one fine morning, leaning towards me. I almost swooned into his eyes, they were so blue up close. Even the pores in his skin were beautiful. I was concentrating so hard on not hyperventilating that I forgot to listen.

‘Sorry, what?’ I was flustered.

‘Just asked if anything had been dropped off here for me? It was supposed to be in the post, but it hasn’t come.’

The mail was sorted elsewhere and delivered by various spotty youths with red trolleys. I did my best not to be aware of their presence in the building, just as Jen had shown me. Now it seemed as if Patrick, for all his years in the firm, was equally ignorant of the workings of the post room.

‘Um.’ I looked frantically under my desk, and then wondered why I was doing it. There was nothing there, except my box of tampons, and though I might be discombobulated by his presence, the scent of his clean shirt and the slight citrus waft of his aftershave, I wasn’t far gone enough to get those out. ‘I’m so sorry, no,’ I said, my eyes pleading. Had I let him down in some way? Was it my fault? I felt as though the world might easily come to an end.

‘Don’t upset yourself, darling,’ he said with a wink. ‘I’ll get them on the phone. Bang a few heads.’

My eyes opened wider and now I knew I wasn’t imagining it. A current ran between us for an electric moment. I loved his voice. His gaze. I basked in the way he looked at me, as though we were equals, as though we were seeing each other for the first time. As though I was really worth the time of day. But then he was off again, and that was that. He sauntered away with me watching every step, wishing I could call him back but with not a thing to say for myself. Then I subsided, a tulip deprived of water.

God, I was hopeless. I cursed myself. Other girls would have known what to do, would have quipped back at him, would have stretched that moment like bubble gum. They would have had him snapping back to their desks time and time again. But no, not me.

I kept up my façade but underneath, depression rolled over me like a sea fog.

If I hadn’t filled my non-working hours with my quest to get on (I was now taking evening classes in French), my life would have been totally empty. The continuing squeeze on the business meant a freeze on promotions, or so they’d told me. So I was still stuck at my desk, likely to take root in the marble.

It was clear, now, that Patrick would never make a move of his own accord. He knew who I was, vaguely, but didn’t care nearly enough. Yes, he gave me that twice-daily twinkle, when it suited him, but what was that worth? He’d done the same to Jen, until she’d left. Then he’d moved his twinkling on to me. It was just a reflex – the kind of low-level acknowledgement that a cocksure man with everything on his side felt he owed to subordinate but attractive women. ‘Hi, I’m busy and successful, you’re lowly and unimportant, but if we had world enough and time, I’d probably give you one.’

I’d thought about it, of course I had, in the long lonely hours of my empty nights, and had come up with every possible answer as to why he’d started speaking to me, only to stop again. A few times now, he’d sought me out. It meant something, didn’t it? It had to. Sometimes, in my fevered daydreams, it was the gateway to a wild romance. But then, in my nightmares, I decided it meant nothing at all, except an interest in getting his hands on his post. I could easily drive myself mad, seesawing between the two. I needed to get out of the theoretical realm, gain some concrete knowledge of the man.

Maybe he didn’t repeat his visit to my prettily polished counter because he wasn’t after a receptionist. He probably had his sights on higher things, a personal assistant, even a fellow account executive. His colleagues weren’t so fussy. They flocked to me. Lounged around, telling me jokes, reporting on the weather outside, as if I didn’t have floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass right in front of me giving me better minute-by-minute coverage of the elements than most TV weather girls had. Some did that general boasting men indulge in, every story coming back to their terrific prowess in football or DIY and therefore, by implication, between the sheets. My smile was a fixture, as shiny as the firm’s nameplate on the door, but it meant nothing. I didn’t dislike these lads, but they were puppies, frolicking at my feet.

Picture an old-fashioned musical – a girl on the desk with shiny blonde hair, and a knot of admirers around her dressed in black and white, showing off frantically with their dazzling leaps and spins. Then the hero saunters past, in grey suit, magenta tie, winks briefly at the girl, and the admirers freeze in mid-dance. She sighs and leans her head on her hand, tracking him with her eyes.

I was that girl and the lads were the cardboard cut-outs prancing around me. I indulged them, while feeling twinges of annoyance at their elbows wrecking the patina of my counter. Their attempts at flirtation didn’t even bore me, I just watched them like someone parked in front of a screen, letting the images flick across my irises, not taking anything in. Yet any one of these boys would have done me fine as a boyfriend, husband.

Who was I kidding? They were all way, way above me. If they could have seen how I’d been brought up, they’d be running for the hills, no question. But my indifference was as powerful as catnip. Cracking me became their game. I gave them the shortest shrift I could, while remaining polite and cheery. It didn’t do my status any harm for Patrick to see me as hugely popular, though I had to be very careful that he didn’t get a whisper that I was the office bike. But act too cool, and maybe he’d be scared to approach me properly himself. I didn’t want to give the impression that I’d freeze him off. On the contrary, I felt like Vesuvius, primed and ready, in the strange stillness that came before an eruption powerful enough to obliterate a thousand Pompeiis.

And, all the time, I had to conceal my passion. I knew my eyes caressed him as he sauntered through the marble hall to the lifts and back. I tried to stop myself. When he flicked his smile in my direction, I had to make sure I wasn’t already gawping at him as though he was a juicy steak and I was a big cat waiting to pounce. It was hard. And it wasn’t getting any easier.

The worst days were those when he was on his phone while he breezed past, hunched into the call in that way he had. Phones were smaller back then – didn’t some wag make the joke that until you started getting porn on the internet, phones were getting tinier and tinier? Once filth was only a download away, the screens magically started growing again.

Well, Patrick’s then was a titchy thing, the latest must-have gizmo, and when he was schmoozing a client, I could have been invisible. If it was one of those days when I’d planned my appearance down to the last eyelash, had on the carefully laundered, lovingly ironed blouse that had seemed to elicit more of a response when I’d worn it last week, I’d be gutted if he didn’t even look my way. To some extent, it made me admire him more. Look at the way he gave his all to his work! Mind you, for all I knew, he could have been chatting to his bookmaker, his mum or even, banish the thought, a girlfriend.

I told myself he was just a really hard-working guy, but I couldn’t shut myself off entirely from the possibility that Patrick, unlike me, had a life outside these glossy walls, that yes, he did have a girl or even a fiancée waiting somewhere in the wings, a significant other that he did all the fun things with.

I was hazy about what these might be, never having had what you might describe as a sunny life thus far, but I’d read my share of romances, hadn’t I? And I’d walked around my hometown, seeing the happy couples, like a child, nose pressed up against the sweetshop window. Strolling in parks, boating on lakes, feeding each other spaghetti. That sort of thing. Though if it applied to other people, I found it a little revolting. It reminded me of my mother, throwing herself all over the latest scumbag. But the idea that it might, one day – one day soon – be me and Patrick mooning around, hand in hand, brought a smile to my face. And that’s how he caught me, one day.

‘Hey, gorgeous? Hope you’re thinking about me?’ He sauntered past, that wink perfectly timed to flip down over his blue, blue eye just at the end of his jaunty line. I was so startled that I sat up, bolt upright, like a total idiot, and lost the misty, smiling gaze that had finally tempted him into speech again, so long after those cursory enquiries about his post. Thank God I just managed not to spill my coffee. That would have killed all my attempts at insouciance stone dead. As it was, the sound of his heels faded away and all I could hear was the blood pounding in my head. If he’d turned around, he’d have seen me looking poleaxed, nothing like the girl of his dreams after all.

That episode convinced me that I had to get a grip, somehow. Give up. Get him out of my system. Or change something. At the moment, I might as well have had a sign above my head reading, ‘take me, I’m yours,’ every time Patrick walked past.

He was blind to it, but my dread was that someone else would see my yearning for what it was – and would tell him. The shame, the humiliation, didn’t bear thinking about. I had to make myself less vulnerable. And I had to be a lot less available. There’s nothing people like more than a bit of a challenge. Watch kids in the playground. They all want the same toy. One picks it up, and it’s suddenly the hottest thing in the sandpit. Meanwhile, a hundred identical toys, just as good, lie unwanted and unseen.

At the moment, I was like a discarded plastic bucket, aching for Patrick to pick me. I needed to stir things up, make him see me, realise that I was a must-have. And feel that he had to fight to get me.

Or I had to contemplate something much more difficult. Something terrifying.

I needed to accept defeat and move on.

Chapter 15
Now
Becca

Becca stared straight ahead, kept her eyes on the sitcom, just the way her mother liked her to. She could sense her mother’s gaze coming to rest on her occasionally when the canned laughter rang out, checking she was smiling. Becca stretched her mouth obligingly, but inside, she was thinking. She’d have to stir things up. If she was right about Louise – and she was – she’d have to make others see it. Because at the moment they were blind.

This was the easiest way to be with her mother. Let it all wash over her. And if Mum wanted to have her say about Becca’s life, the telly was the referee. All points were made via the set. ‘Doesn’t she just look lovely?’ Compared with the state of you. Her mother sighed as a 20-year-old with a size-six body wafted across the screen.

‘That mother is so kind, isn’t she?’ Why can’t you stop being a bitch? Becca countered, as the cosy TV matriarch poured out more tea, apparently without the whiff of martyrdom hanging over her every action.

They sat in a silence that passed for companionable for a while, then Becca burst into speech. ‘Would you ever think that she’d be capable of murder?’ she asked, jabbing a biscuit towards the sitcom daughter.

‘Murder?’ Her mother’s eyes were as round as the coasters on the coffee table. ‘But why would she need to kill someone? She’s got everything, hasn’t she? Look at that boyfriend, he worships the ground she walks on, you can tell.’ Why haven’t you got one? Her mother was tutting, shifting in her chair. Becca knew the signs, realised glumly she ought to go. These Saturday nights were never easy, at the best of times. And now, with her mind so occupied with thoughts of pulling that one trailing thread that would make Louise Bridges unravel, well, she hadn’t got the energy to play her mother’s games.

Suddenly, her mother turned to her, actually looked straight at her. ‘It’s not like before, is it, love? You know, when you got everything … out of proportion?’

Becca stared at her. She thought they had a pact never to mention those dark months, the medication that had kept her tethered to her bed, as secure as any strait jacket. ‘No. No. Of course not, Mum. Why would you say that? I’m better now, that was ages ago. All in the past.’

‘It’s just … you’ve got that expression again. You know, that look on your face …’ Her mother was still gazing at her, checking for something, Becca didn’t know what. She shook her head.

‘You’ve got it wrong, Mum. Just busy. Busy at work, you know. But it’s great to be here. So relaxing after a hard week.’ Her fingers gripped the armrest.

Her mother subsided. So willing to be reassured, so glad to have her fears laid to rest. She didn’t want that trouble again. Becca didn’t blame her. It was … well, it was a hole that she had fallen into. But she had crawled out of it, too. This wasn’t the same at all. Back then, she obsessed about anything. Everything. Light switches, lampposts. Yes, she could see now that it wasn’t healthy, she’d needed help. But this time was different. She was looking into something, legitimately. A concern. A desire to protect the public. And this time, she was right.

On the screen, the soundtrack erupted into guffaws again, then a smattering of applause. Becca chuckled obediently, felt her mother’s eyes rake her face again, smiling this time. Becca slumped back in her chair, forgot about escape. She let the evening wash over her. She’d play the game her mother’s way, for once.

Chapter 16
Then

I assessed the rest of the herd. Yes, they all played at wanting me. But it was just a game. They were little boys, compared to Patrick. I sensed, though, that Patrick would only make a move – say a few more words, even – if he thought there was real competition.

There were possibilities, all right. So many men, and all of them apparently so single. While Patrick remained immune to my charms, the rest of his floor was mine for the asking. But that gave me pause. Did I really want to foul my own nest? Risk a recommendation scrawled in the gents? I, of all people, knew what men could be like.

At the moment I had an ice queen reputation. That gave me an odd kind of status, that I surely didn’t deserve by virtue of birth, education, or anything else much. If I unbent enough to date one of his cohort, would Patrick forever see me as tainted? I thought he might. Men can be territorial. I’d seen that often enough with my mother. It was fine for them to stray, make it clear they’d lost whatever interest they’d had, but if she put a foot out of line, started sizing up the next Mr Oh-So-Wrong, well … It was never pretty.

I wasn’t saying that my lovely Patrick was anything like the scum Mum chose to hang about with. But still. I wanted everything tidy, above board. Letting him see me with another guy from work was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

I decided, instead, to try to get a little bit of practice elsewhere. For now, I’d accept that things were going nowhere with Patrick, that he was just out of my league. Instead, I’d make the day of one of the blokes in my French class, just by trying a bit of light ooh-la-la flirtation. Because, despite having seen enough rounds of the battle of the sexes to write the book on it, thanks to my mother, I actually had no direct experience.

This was in pre-Tinder times, when dating advice ran along the lines of, do an evening course or die alone. Do you know anyone who met their life partner learning to upholster or gleaning the basics of car maintenance? No, of course not. But still the advice got dished out, as though there was something deeply erotic about adult education centres. There wasn’t. They were basically schools used after hours, and most of the time we were all sitting on those piddly orange plastic chairs that are big enough for you to swing your legs like metronomes in Year One but pretty well cut off the circulation in grown-ups. How could anyone think of sex while scrunched up like an old crisp packet? Must have been desperate. I know I was.

True to form, I would hunch there once a week, vacuuming up information. I was always trying to claw my way up. But there were a couple of guys on my course who’d already sidled up to chat, and not just about whether dimanche came before lundi. Perhaps they’d been given the ‘join an evening class’ spiel by a well-meaning parent or friend. The next time one of them came over, I told myself I’d try not to blush, stammer or freeze. Instead, I would chat. Heaven knew I could do with a few more moves, which would hopefully stop me needing a defibrillator every time Patrick spoke to me. If he ever did again.

The first of the likely lads was Mike. A nice enough boy. He’d read somewhere – or been told by his mum – that humour was the way to a woman’s heart. All those personal ads with ‘GSOH essential’ had a lot to answer for. His jokes were terrible. But it was sweet of him to try. I couldn’t help smiling up at him after one of his better efforts, not wanting to encourage him too much – after all, he wasn’t fit to lick Patrick’s boots – but grateful all the same. It felt good to be seen, for once.

And here my point about the sandpit comes in. No sooner had Mike sidled up to me at the coffee break and tried to get me laughing, than Pete, the other obvious singleton in the class, was hanging around at my elbow, asking me if I wanted another coffee from the dire machine and generally behaving like a dog guarding a bone.

I joshed along with them both, then mercifully it was back to irregular verbs, something I already felt more at ease with than most regular human interactions. I managed to slip out of the class as soon as the session was over, before either had got themselves sorted out. I needed time to think about this. Vanity aside, I was a pretty girl and thanks to Jen, I was beginning to acquire a bit of polish. Were either of these lads a particularly tempting prospect? Pete was an obvious doer-upper and, by the looks of him, would be grateful to be taken in hand, in all ways. Could I face it? Mike was in better nick – but those jokes …

At home, I realised I was being ridiculous. And much too fussy. Here was I, alone night after night in my bedsit. I was hopelessly in love with a man who, on a good day, winked at me twice and ignored me for the rest of the seven hours, fifty-nine and three-quarter minutes that we spent in the same building. As for the great swathes of time when we weren’t even partaking of the same oxygen, well, I might as well have been dead as far as he was concerned. I certainly felt that way myself.

Nope, it wasn’t like I had a whole lot going for me. Pete and Mike would be wise to run a mile, once they knew the real me. At least they both seemed to have people pushing them into social situations, whereas I was pretty much alone from the moment I left work every evening to when I rocked up again in the morning.

Over the weeks that followed, I auditioned both Mike and Pete for the role of boyfriend. Neither was perfect, by a long way, but I was used to bringing shoddy goods up to standard. After all, I’d done it with myself – and now look at me. Being fought over, in French. Admittedly, by two slightly lame canards. But still. All I needed was the raw material to work with. By the time I’d finished with them, they’d be damned near ideal.

It’s quite an art, to spot the person who wants to learn, who isn’t too attached to their own ways or too convinced they’re right. There’s a certain malleability some of us have at our core. We’re willing to change, if the prize is great enough. We’ll do what it takes.

I dropped a hint to the boys that I liked that matelot look, and the next week Pete was wearing a striped top. He asked me out to see a new French film. I admit, I’d started this whole thing to make myself look like the pick of the sandpit buckets, as far as Patrick was concerned. But, as Pete stammered to the end of his invitation, and I realised how very much he wanted me to say yes, I felt something new. It was gratitude. And actually, that little fizz of desire. There was something very flattering indeed about me, of all people, having two lads vying for my charms.

Although the men at work drooled over me, it was in a safe way that didn’t really mean a thing. These two, though, they wanted me for real. I basked in it, I really did. Finally, I’d found people who actually knew me a little bit and still saw something worthwhile. I’d never managed to have friendships, apart from Jen, and she was more of a mother to me than anything else. Back in the old days, in my childhood home, men had looked me up and down and made me feel unclean. Pete and Mike’s admiration did the reverse, and I began to feel like a bit of a siren.

I was nervous, though, about taking the plunge with either of them. Maybe they were joking? Waiting for me to register an interest, just to laugh in my face, say they’d been pulling my leg. What would they really want with someone like me? But gradually it dawned on me that they were both in earnest and, if I didn’t want to get in the way of all our prospects of learning more than the present tense in French, I had to make a choice.

Pete was the one I went for in the end. It was quite obvious, even to him, that he needed a woman’s touch. And the way his eyes lit up every time I took my precarious seat on the orange plastic chair next to his, well, it was adorable really.

The only real trouble with his rival, Mike, was the funnies. If you don’t like someone’s sense of humour, there’s not much you can do. It’s pretty fundamental, and for me it was a deal breaker. I put up with the quips for a couple more coffees before I made up my mind, and I’m afraid that gave him hope. But the fact that I sat, stony-faced, through some of what he considered to be his best lines should have given him the nudge. Anyway, he took it badly, of course.

On the face of it, my decision was absurd. Pete was a bit awkward, whereas Mike was pretty sure of himself. But that was the trouble. Mike’s veneer of confidence allowed him to plough on when it should have been clear he’d lost his audience, way back. Though he reminded me in some small ways of my beloved Patrick, always the gold standard of cockiness, this persistence ultimately only served to show me that he was incapable of learning. And that Patrick, as usual, was the real thing in a world of shabby imitations.

Pete, on the other hand, was suddenly rather presentable, when coaxed out of his nasty leather jacket. They say manners maketh man, but a reasonable selection of smart new togs can do the job pretty well. Sometimes his clothes choices had class nuances that, with my antecedents, I just didn’t understand. He loved those funny deck shoes and resisted getting rid of them. Then I finally realised they were a posh thing, as was the way he often wore a cricket jumper round his shoulders. Luckily my second-hand copy of Brideshead Revisited showed actors from the TV version on the front, wearing similar kit. So that lot stayed. After about a month, Pete looked so great that, dare I say it, I had almost forgotten Patrick.

Pete adored me, as I was fast discovering. To say this was refreshing would be a massive understatement. I’d got used to taking my mother’s assessment of my qualities as gospel, therefore it was a wonder I didn’t throw myself out with the rubbish every day.

Waking up instead with a man who thought the stars shone from my eyes was a delicious novelty. I wriggled my toes in delight when we were together, and not just because Pete had the excellent habit of bringing me a cup of tea in bed. My quest for Patrick now seemed like yet another bit of my past that I might have to move seamlessly away from. The longer my relationship with Pete went on, the more I saw that I hadn’t been ready for Patrick at all. I might never be. There was so much I didn’t know about all the couple stuff. If Patrick had taken the plunge and asked me out, I would have been a complete novice at relationships, and that would have downgraded me in his eyes.

No, if Patrick and I ever did get together (and I was now beginning to concede it was very unlikely indeed) I had to be a glittering prize. It was something I’d never been in my life before, until Pete looked at me, bless him. But it seemed that love was like that, elevating ordinary things into extraordinary ones. I enjoyed watching it all happen. Of course, I did my best to learn from it. There was, I realised, more and more I needed to finetune, in order to fit in with other people. Not least, my flat.

For me, home was downtime. I switched off, I didn’t try, I was just dormant, waiting for my next assault on the world. It didn’t matter if the place was functional, bleak even. For me, home was like the dark, empty spaces at the side of a brightly lit West End theatre set. To say the place was spartan was a little bit of an understatement. Years before it became trendy, I was more of a minimalist than John Pawson. As long as things were clean, I didn’t really see the problem. And the less stuff there was lying around, the fewer reminders there were of the chaos I’d grown up in, and the better I liked it. It was where I lay fallow, on my own. To be honest, I felt I didn’t deserve anything more. Comfort was something for the good people.

But the first time I brought Pete back, I saw the flat through a stranger’s eyes. And we both got a massive shock.

At first, I thought the poor chap was just a bit overawed that we were finally moving on to the next stage. I’d been resisting him coming home with me for a while, not quite sensing that something was off but as always guarding my privacy. For years, it was all I’d had. Now I’d finally let him in, but things weren’t going as I expected at all. He wandered around, while I made the coffee we’d allegedly come back for so we could leave it untouched and get down to basics, but it didn’t take him long to inspect the place. Well, the flat was microscopic. And, as I was beginning to realise from his expression, there was something drastically wrong with it. But what? I was at a loss. It was squeaky clean. It had everything I needed. Bed, toaster, kettle, microwave, my books. Once, it had also had my collection of jewellery and fripperies, but thanks to Jen the few of these that remained fitted inside a paper bag in the bathroom.

‘Just moved in?’ That was the question that should have alerted me.

‘Been here, oh, about three years now.’ I smiled bewitchingly over the jar of instant. His eyes dropped down to the granules – the fancy kind, mind you, I’d been treating myself – and did another curious double take. Clue number two.

‘I expect you’re too busy to get settled?’ he said, offering me a way out. But out of what? I didn’t get it. The flat was pristine, orderly. I hated mess, I’d put all that behind me and I proved it every time I undid a fresh bottle of bleach. What was his problem? Because there clearly was one.

I brought the coffees over to the bench. I only sat on it to eat, so the hardness didn’t bother me. I read my books in bed. He sat on the edge, put his cup somewhat nervously on the floor. I didn’t think to offer biscuits. Well, I didn’t have any. Extra carbohydrates were definitely not on my agenda, and the list of visitors I’d had back to my flat was short. Him. I had no graceful preparations ready, even though I’d decided tonight was going to be his night. Well, that’s not quite true. I’d painted my toenails, shaved my legs. But the flat? Fine as it was, I’d thought. But I’d been wrong.

‘No cushions. I like it. Uncluttered,’ he said, shifting uncomfortably. I made a mental note. Buy cushions. ‘Where do you hide the telly? Radio? Hi-fi? Speakers?’

I shook my head briefly. I’d decided against these distractions long ago. Although those Disney princesses had danced their way through my childhood, lulling me and blotting out so much, once I had the choice I opted for my books. I didn’t want the drone of the telly a moment longer. There was too much to get on with to waste my time on inessentials. Sometimes it meant I had to bluff my way, when some series or other was all the rage, and it was the only topic the girls at work could talk about. Not that I hung around with them much, but there were times in the canteen or as they passed my desk. There was enough in the newspapers to tell me pretty much everything I’d ever need to know about trashy TV.

I learned to make the right sort of comments, keep the conversation going, though it wasn’t really safe to offer a major opinion. The one time I had, something had been awry. I couldn’t work out what – well, I’d never seen the show. Tumbleweed for a moment, a week of strange looks, then we were back to normal. But I never risked it again.

As for music, well, I’d never got it. When you’ve been brought up with paper-thin walls, when the dubious heavy metal choices of the man living three floors down became the beat that your glass of orange squash danced to, not having sounds in your life was a blessed relief. I wallowed in the velvety luxury of silence. Same thing went for cooking. The idea of anything that lingered – fish, curry – revolted me. I’d hated the stenches of the stairwells. Even when it wasn’t effluent, other people’s cooking smelt nearly as bad to me. I loved my microwave. You only needed to use a plastic fork – prick the film, then shovel the food in. Throw the lot away afterwards, all done. How great was that?

Anything that impinged on me from outside, I hated. No mess, no fuss. Plenty of space around me, all the exits clear. After growing up in the Tower of Babel, I hardly ever raised my voice. Patrick, later, accused me of faking my tone, like Margaret Thatcher, but that was always real.

Pete, still looking around my flat like a drowning man casting about for something to latch on to, piped up at last.

‘Well, I can see what you do like. Books.’ He sounded overawed, and now I looked around in my turn. I thought of my library as a kind of comfort blanket. But maybe it was daunting, if you weren’t a reader. I’d had the sense to kick the self-help section under my bed that morning, when I’d decided it was Pete’s lucky day, but otherwise the full might of all the knowledge I wanted or needed was staring down at us from serried ranks of Billy bookshelves that I’d picked up from Ikea, braving the maze of families and cheap meatballs, and assembled myself – not without peril to my manicure.

‘Books do furnish a room,’ I said gently, knowing that, despite an education I’d begun to suspect was quite expensive, the reference would probably fly several miles over his head.

At that point, my cat, Mephisto, strolled in and saved the day. Black and fluffy, from a distance Mephs looked the business and could pass for a Persian cross. Close up, you noticed his battered ear, the gash over his eye which had left the trace of a scar, even the fact that his fur was more of a dark rusty brown than true black. Like his mistress, he wasn’t quite what he seemed. But unlike me he had bags of swagger. Pete dropped to his knees and started cooing, while both Mephs and I looked on in surprise.

‘I didn’t take you for a cat person?’ Pete said, looking up from where he was now giving Mephisto a full belly-rub. The cat had not hung about long before capitulating. He was now emitting the special low humming sound I’d thought he saved just for me.

‘Mmm,’ I said, non-committal. It wasn’t the moment to disabuse him. I just hadn’t been able to leave the cat with my mother when push came to shove. One of her hook-ups had given it to her – as a joke, I was pretty sure. She wasn’t fit to look after a child, we all knew that much. Why burden her with an animal as well?

Anyway, despite my better judgement, Mephs and I had been together ever since my final flit from her place. There’d been no time to be organised. I’d just grabbed what I could and I’d run. At the last minute, Mephs had miaowed. I’d looked under the sofa, wasting precious seconds, and seen the green glass of his eyes. I couldn’t leave him. I’d grabbed him and shoved him unceremoniously into my backpack, and that was that, we were together.

Unlike his namesake, this Mephistopheles had never promised me the world, just a load of hairballs and the occasional scratch to keep me in line. He’d definitely fulfilled his side of the bargain. He’d been the king of our old estate, but I’d forced him to become an indoor cat with a litter box and a view out of our new tenth floor window on the other side of town, take it or leave it. Well, I could hardly cut a cat flap in our front door. I was pretty sure it was against all the council regulations to have a pet, though I didn’t look too closely. That would have interfered with my pleas of ignorance if we got caught.

Lugging cat food home with my frozen lasagnes was a chore. But I loved the old dear, and I’d thought he was equally discerning. I now saw, as he writhed and purred for Pete, that he was a shameless old tart who’d go with anyone. Wonder who he got that from? I thought sourly.

But Mephisto’s appearance had saved the day. Pete relaxed completely. Keeping an animal had, oddly enough, proved I was human.

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