The Other Woman’s House (29 page)

Sam was having trouble concentrating. He knew something was on its way that he wouldn't be able to predict if he tried for a million years. Would Simon know where Jackie's story was heading, if he were here? Would he already have a theory? Sam was straining to pay attention to every word, and his awareness of the effort he was making was interfering with his ability to listen. Grint's looming background presence wasn't helping.

‘By the time the brochures were done, I'd already rung round a few of the buyers on our priority list,' Jackie went on. ‘Anyone I thought might be interested. Not university people – they all want historical buildings and period features, and there's not much of that on Bentley Grove. Luckily the science park and Addenbrooke's lot don't care – they want square footage, shiny and new, big gardens. I had a family who were gagging to be shown round, the Frenches – they were the first ones I rang, to be honest. I knew they'd be perfect for 11 Bentley Grove.'

Odd way to look at it, thought Sam. A house needed to be right for its inhabitants, surely, not the other way round.

‘When I turned up at the house with the Frenches, I let myself in and walked into this woman I'd never seen before. Except I had – I'd seen a photo of her, a passport photo. She looked terrified, as if she thought I was going to attack her, or something. She asked who I was, what was I doing in her house, how come I had a key? She went white in the face – honest to God, I thought she was going to pass out. I asked her who
she
was. She said she was Selina Gane – well, she
was
Selina Gane, I know that now – but she wasn't the woman
I
knew as Selina Gane.' Jackie patted the nape of her neck, as if to emphasise her own identity. ‘She had no idea what I was on about. Some bloody woman had only gone and put her house on the market without telling her.'

Charlie was taking photographs. As many as she could, of as much as she could: of the pool from every angle, her favourite trees and plants in the gardens, her and Simon's bedroom.
Otherwise known as the site of only one shag
. He'd put his arm round her in bed last night – in that way of his, stiff with significance and awkward invitation – but she'd been too upset about Liv and Gibbs, then more upset still because Simon hadn't seemed to mind her not wanting to.

She took one picture each of all the empty bedrooms they hadn't used, a few of the lounge, kitchen, dining room, the various sun terraces. God, she loved this place. How was it possible to love a place when you'd been nothing but miserable there? In the same way that it was possible to love a person with whom you were miserable, she guessed.

Grudgingly, she included in her photo-shoot the annoying mountain that doggedly refused to show its face to anyone but Simon. She had asked Domingo about it this morning; he hadn't been able to see it either. From his evident bewilderment, she'd concluded that no other guest had ever mentioned it. Yet again, Simon was the special one. Charlie still hadn't ruled out the possibility that he was pretending to see something that wasn't there: another of his twisted thought-experiments.

Was she going to take a photograph of Domingo's wooden
lodge? Yes, why not? For the sake of completeness, she ought to have one. If she ever spoke to her sister again, she could show her the picture and say, ‘That's where I was when I found out you were screwing Chris Gibbs.'

As she approached, she heard Simon's voice. He'd been talking to Sam for nearly an hour. They were going to have to offer Domingo a contribution towards his phone bill. Charlie listened outside the open door: something to do with Roundthehouses, the property website. And a murder, or a death. Connie Bowskill was involved; Simon had mentioned her name a couple of times at the beginning of the conversation, before Charlie had given up trying to understand what was going on and gone to find her camera.

She photographed the hut from every angle. Leaning into the dark, stuffy room that smelled of Domingo's woody aftershave, she pushed Simon to one side so that she could get a shot of the wicker chair through the open door, the blue and red blanket draped over it.

That's where I was sitting when you ruined my honeymoon, you selfish bitch.

‘I'll try to get Sam later,' Simon was saying. ‘I'll have to go to Puerto Banus, find another phone to ring him from. I feel under pressure here, with the caretaker waiting to get his gaff back. Can't really concentrate. What? There are no other rooms, only this one and the bog. For as long as I'm on his phone, he has to stand outside.'

Get Sam later? Charlie frowned. Sam was the person Simon had said he was phoning. Had he rung somebody else afterwards? The Snowman? No; the rigid hatred was missing from his voice, so it couldn't be Proust. Colin Sellers, then. It had to be.

Simon grunted goodbye. He didn't put the phone down straight away. Charlie took a photo of him tapping it against his chin, mouthing words to himself – that was always a sign that his obsession levels were soaring, well on their way to being off the graph. ‘Smile, you nutter,' she said.

‘I thought you weren't taking any photos till the last day.'

She laughed. ‘You think this isn't our last day? Don't kid yourself.'

Simon took the camera from her hand. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘You want to go home.'

‘No, I don't.'

‘It'll be a few hours before you admit it to yourself, a few more while you pluck up the courage to tell me we're going.'

‘That's crap. We're going nowhere.'

‘Sellers just told you something about a dead woman. You want to be there, where the action is. Where the rigor mortis is, rather.'

‘I want to be here. With you.'

Charlie couldn't allow his reassurances to penetrate her wall of resentment. It would hurt too much if she believed him and then he went back on it. ‘Why wouldn't you want to go home?' she said angrily. ‘Your friend Connie witnessed a murder and wants to tell you all about it. What a coincidence that she just happened to stumble across the body. Is the dead woman her husband's girlfriend, by any chance?'

‘Nobody knows anything.' Simon sighed. ‘Least of all you. Connie Bowskill saw a dead body lying face down on a bloodstained carpet on the Roundthehouses website. In one of the interior shots of 11 Bentley Grove – the house her husband had in his SatNav as “home”.'

Charlie stared at him. ‘You're serious, aren't you? You're actually serious.'

‘Friday night, this happened – early hours of Saturday morning.'

‘Simon, Roundthehouses is a property website,' Charlie spelled it out as if for a child or a fool. ‘There aren't any dead bodies on it, only houses for sale. And for rent – let's not forget the lettings side of the operation. Apartments, maisonettes…no dead women. Did Sellers…' Charlie stopped, shook her head. ‘It's a wind-up, isn't it? He's probably been planning it for months.'

‘I haven't spoken to Sellers. That was Gibbs on the phone.'

Gibbs
. Charlie felt as if an invisible hand was closing around her throat, gripping tightly so as to let nothing out. Probably a good thing if it was; sensible of the human body to put a system in place to prevent a person from screaming all the way through their honeymoon.

It was Chris Gibbs who, four years ago, had uttered the words that had brought Charlie's world to a standstill. He and only he had seen the look on her face as she realised what she'd done, as her life began to unravel – in public, in broad daylight, in the fucking nick of all places. Perhaps Gibbs had thought nothing of it, unaware that he was witnessing the destruction of the thing Charlie held most dear: her sense of herself as someone who was worth something. It hadn't been Gibbs' fault; all he'd done was provide her with information she'd asked for and that he'd found for her. Logically, she knew he'd done nothing wrong, but she held it against him all the same. He'd been front row and centre, spectator at the scene of her humiliation.

‘You said you were going to ring Sam.'

‘His phone's switched off.' Simon leaned forward to see
Charlie's face. ‘What? Don't look like that. I didn't say anything about Olivia. You heard the conversation – it was about Connie Bowskill. Gibbs and I don't have personal conversations.'

Everybody and you don't have personal conversations
.

‘You spend an hour on the phone to Gibbs chatting about made-up dead bodies on property websites, and you don't think to mention that he and my traitor of a sister have done their best to wreck our wedding and honeymoon?'

Simon slotted Domingo's phone back into its base. ‘They can't wreck anything,' he said. ‘Apart from their own relationships, and that's their lookout.'

‘You've changed your tune! Last night you said you'd always think of our wedding day as the day that—'

‘No,
you
said that. And you told me I felt the same way – let down, implicated…'

‘Well, don't you? It was
our
wedding day. They had no right to make it anything else.'

Simon pushed past Charlie, out into the sunlight. ‘Anything that's ours, the only people who can fuck it up are you and me. If you don't want your honeymoon ruined, stop talking about going home early.'

‘That's…you're confusing two things that have nothing to do with each other!'

‘Am I?' Simon pushed a hanging tree out of his way. Orange petals fell on Charlie; she brushed them off her face.

‘Last night you said you'd lost all respect for both of them.' She was running to catch up with him. ‘Was that a lie? Have you forgiven them already?'

‘It's not up to me to forgive or not forgive. Yeah, I think less of them. Gibbs is married, Liv's supposed to be getting married. They shouldn't have done it.'

‘You didn't sound like you thought less of Gibbs, before, on the phone. You sounded the same as you always sound.'

‘Does he need to know what I think?' Simon sat down on the steps of the swimming pool, put his bare feet in the water up to his ankles. ‘Doesn't stop me from thinking it.'

Charlie pressed her eyes shut. Nothing she said would make a difference. Simon and Gibbs would go on as if nothing had happened – talking about work, slagging off Proust, drinking together in the Brown Cow. What had she expected, that Simon would take a stand? Refuse to speak to Gibbs until he apologised and promised to leave Liv alone?

Like everyone at Spilling nick, Gibbs knew what had happened at Sellers' fortieth birthday party. He knew Simon and Charlie had been in a bedroom together, that Simon had changed his mind and made a run for it, leaving the door wide open and Charlie naked on the floor. Stacey, Sellers' wife, had been outside on the landing with three of her friends; she'd seen everything. Charlie had laughed off all references to the incident at work, and had mentioned it to nobody outside work. Liv knew nothing about it.
Yet
.

‘I don't believe in collective responsibility,' Simon said. ‘Gibbs is the one cheating on Debbie. He's met Liv plenty of times before. How many times have they been at the Brown Cow with us, without Debbie or that tosser Dom Lund? It could have happened any time – didn't need us getting married to make it happen.'

‘And if Debbie finds out we knew, and didn't tell her?'

Simon looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand. ‘Why would we tell her? It's none of our business.'

It was like trying to explain the way planet Earth worked to an extra-terrestrial. Charlie took a deep breath. ‘Liv's
my sister. If this gets out, people are going to assume I'm on her side.'

‘Then you can tell them what you told me last night: that you never want to see her fat treacherous slut face again.'

‘I said that?'

‘I was convinced,' said Simon. ‘I can't see anyone doubting you.'

Charlie hated being reminded that she'd said that about her own sister. But whose fault was it? Who had made her say it? ‘Debbie's popular,' she worried aloud. ‘All her friends are police wives – Meakin's wife, Zlosnik's, Ed Butler's – Debbie's a central part of that…network. She and Lizzie Proust go to the same Aquafit class at Waterfront. If it was Stacey Sellers, I wouldn't worry so much – everyone thinks she's a bitch. And
she's
not having IVF,
she
hasn't had a million tragic miscarriages. Did you see that “Good Luck” card that was doing the rounds, before Debbie had her first…hormone thingy?'

Simon nodded. ‘Couldn't squeeze my signature on, there were so many.'

Charlie wrapped her arms round herself, feeling shaky. ‘Everyone at work's going to hate me, Simon. I've been through that once—'

‘The only person who hated you four years ago was you.'

‘I seem to remember the tabloids offering their support,' Charlie said bitterly. ‘I can't cope with it again, Simon – I can't cope with being the bad guy everyone's pointing at.'