The Couple on Cedar Close Read online

  The woman walks past Laurie without saying a word and her rejection elicits a stab of misery within her as she makes a hasty retreat to the tills, her effervescent mood all but diminished in the few seconds it’s taken to get there. She stares at the produce as she places it onto the conveyor belt, her heart beating rapidly. Has she remembered everything? This meal has to be her most spectacular. It will be her final parting gift to Robert. He is coming over to ‘talk about the next step’. She knows what this means. He wants a divorce. He wants to talk it over with her, check that she won’t go ‘off the rails’ again and appease what little conscience, if any, he possesses. He no doubt wants to finalise the details, discuss the finances and who gets what, a conversation she has been dreading and one she is going to make sure will never take place. He wants a divorce so he can marry Claire, so they can be a proper family unit. Robert, Claire and Matilda together. The family they should’ve had. Tonight, she’s going to make sure that this will never happen.

  * * *

  The house is spotless and smells fresh as Laurie enters the hallway, yet it still feels as cold and empty as she does inside. This place is far too big for her now. It was probably too big for them both to be fair, but the plan was always that they would fill it, that there would eventually be the four of them. She is painfully reminded of her solitude once more.

  And then there were none…

  Laurie’s nerves are in ribbons so she decides on a leveller. Just one to steady herself because she needs a clear head tonight. She reaches for the vodka inside the carrier bag, empties it into a glass and swallows it back neat like lemonade. She pours another almost instantly, savouring the burning sensation as the clear liquid slips down her throat and hits her empty stomach. Anaesthetised.

  Screwing the lid back on the bottle purposefully, she sets about prepping the meal: washing, chopping, seasoning. She makes a beurre blanc sauce like a professional and rolls the pastry around the beef with effortless skill before placing it in the oven on a low temperature. Then she turns to herself. She’s already been to the salon today for a blow-dry. Her Chloé maxi dress, the one he likes, is hanging on the back of the kitchen door, freshly dry-cleaned. It felt good to have a sense of purpose again, someone to buy and cook a meal for, to look beautiful for, one last time. She takes a quick shower, careful not to get her hair wet, dresses herself in the walk-in closet cum ‘powder room’ that he’d let her design – she’d always wanted one – and observes herself in the full-length mirror: her glossy blow-dry and subtle make-up, the fluidity of the dress attaching itself to her skinny frame. She’s too thin and knows it. The accident had re-triggered her eating disorder, a legacy from her early teenage years when she had been consumed by low self-esteem and helplessness. Her breasts are almost non-existent, but she doesn’t care. What good were they to her now?

  She spritzes herself with Thierry Mugler’s Angel perfume, a signature scent she’d been wearing the day of their wedding. He said it reminded him of her.

  It’s 7.30 p.m. and the table is beautifully laid, the candelabra lit, emanating a warm, rich glow in the homely yet chic kitchen she’d spent painstaking hours designing to his taste. The Wellington is cooked, keeping warm in foil; the dauphinoise is gently bubbling; seasonal veg is ready to be blanched. The scallops could be flash cooked upon his arrival. She takes the apple strudel from the oven, the comforting smell of freshly cooked filo pasty and fruit filling her nostrils.

  Laurie checks the chilled wine, thinks about opening it and pouring herself a glass in a bid to kill the butterflies inside her belly that are dancing like they’re on ecstasy. Butterflies. Only she knows they aren’t real, that they’re simply a potent cocktail of chemical triggers that she has become a slave to. So her therapist says.

  At 7.48 p.m. she pours herself another vodka. She’d prefer a glass of wine but doesn’t want Robert to see that she’s already opened the bottle, so vodka will suffice. She throws it back and pours another, hoping the beef Wellington will keep warm. At 8 p.m. the flutters of anticipation dancing inside her guts have slowly morphed into spiteful jabs of fear. Robert is late. He’s probably stuck in traffic she consoles herself and checks her phone, but there’s only a message from Monica that says, ‘Good luck tonight, hon.’ She manages a thin smile, touched by her friend’s support. Tonight will mark the first time she’s seen Robert since the barbecue, an event she would rather forget, a day she wished had never happened, one which changed the course of everything, again.

  By 8.38 p.m. she’s opened the Prosecco and is three quarters of the way into the bottle. She feels light-headed, drunk, defeated. The darkness in her mind is creeping in like the night outside, the dim light of hope within her fading almost simultaneously. Where the hell is Robert?

  She checks her phone again but there are no messages. Rage suddenly rises up in her like blood rushing to the surface of a fresh wound; all the effort she’s made, all the trouble and expense she’s gone to! That evil bastard! Perhaps he was never really coming at all and it had simply been another of his wicked games.

  And then the thought enters her head: what if he really has had an accident? Oh God, a car crash! Panic grips her. She slumps over the kitchen table, stretching her thin arms out in front of her and closes her eyes. ‘Til death us do part,’ she says quietly, over and over again.

  Two

  Laurie wakes with a start some time later. Her head is spinning; her mouth is as dry as a sandpit. Her lips are stuck to her teeth through dehydration. She struggles to focus in the pitch dark and groans. She’s lying on the bed; she thinks she’s in her own bedroom though she cannot be completely sure. How did she get there? She exhales heavily. Has she blacked out? It wouldn’t be the first time. Shame creeps in and threatens to engulf her as she attempts to prop herself up on her elbows and her fingers touch something cold on the bed next to her. It feels like metal. What is it? She feels for it again but can’t find it in the darkness. It’s a struggle to pull herself up into a seated position, but when she does she realises she is wet, that her dress is sticking to her thighs and her hands feel slippery.

  She reaches out in the dark, arms outstretched like a zombie, feeling her way through the room. She needs to find the light switch on the wall. Her eyes are starting to adjust a little now but it is too dark to fully focus. Her fingers meet the wall and she whispers ‘thank God’ as she locates the light switch. Only nothing happens, so she presses it again. Jesus Christ.

  Feeling for the handle, she opens the door. The entire house is in darkness. Carefully, she makes her way across the landing. Familiarity, like muscle memory, tells her there’s a lamp on the table at the end near the stairs and she feels for it, attempts to switch it on, almost pulling it over in her haste. It doesn’t work. She curses. She needs water, to rehydrate, and to get out of her wet dress. It’s sticking to her legs… cold and uncomfortable. She tries to remember the last thing she did before she blacked out. She was in the kitchen, waiting for Robert, the dinner ruined, her heart destroyed.

  Disorientated, she navigates her descent downstairs, hitching her dress up with one hand, the other steadying her against the wall. The staircase is winding and wooden so she is careful – she’s fallen down them before. Panic swells inside of her as she concentrates on keeping herself upright. She promises herself once more that she will never touch another drop of alcohol again in her life.

  Practically blinded by adrenaline, she locates the understairs cupboard in the darkness and is hit by a rush of cold, musty air as she opens it. She’s on her hands and knees now, frantically scrabbling around for a torch, but it’s too dark and her fingers can only find shoes and wellington boots, an umbrella and other unidentifiable objects that she casts aside in haste and panic. She starts to wail with sheer frustration. Her phone! There’s a flashlight on her phone! She races into the kitchen and begins to search the table in the darkness, knocking the empty vodka bottle onto the floor in her haste. It smashes loudly, causing her to gasp and curse but at
least she’s found her phone. Laurie’s relief is almost palpable as she presses it with shaking fingers. Flooded with emotion she starts to cry as it comes on. She has just 7% left on the battery. It will be enough.

  Switching the flashlight on she races back to the understairs cupboard and locates the electric box. As she suspected, the switch looks like it has tripped out and she flicks it back up. Light violently floods her vision, causing her to cover her eyes with her hand. She stands back against the wall, exhaling deeply, her head pounding, her whole body visibly sagging with exhaustion and relief. And that’s when she realises, as she looks down at herself, that she is completely covered in blood.

  Three

  ‘Afternoon, boss. Did I wake you?’

  Davis’s voice is almost irritatingly chirpy. I’ve been awake for a while but I don’t let her know this.

  ‘What time is it?’ I roll over, check my watch. It’s 11.06 p.m. I pull the duvet back and roll my feet onto the carpet, thinking it could do with a clean, or a good vacuum at least. It’s cream, the carpet, and shows every speck of dirt, but it was what Rachel wanted. ‘Wooden floors everywhere else but the bedroom,’ she’d said. There are still some of her feminine touches left: the chandelier and the ornate mirror above the dressing table; the fluffy sheepskin rug at the end of the bed; the floral duvet that I haven’t washed in weeks and the curtains that match it. But gradually she has disappeared, bit by bit, and I can feel the place becoming more and more of a bachelor pad, growing shabbier and more unkempt. Like most women, she held the place together. I have neither the time, nor the inclination for home decor now she’s gone.

  ‘Late,’ Davis says. I groan inwardly. I don’t sleep well these days, and even when I do manage some shut-eye I’m plagued by dreams – vivid and colourful dreams, practically psychedelic – that leave me feeling exhausted when I wake up.

  I yawn, scratch my head, get a whiff of my own sour breath. I’m anticipating what Davis is about to tell me, simultaneously wondering whether I’ll have the chance to treat myself to a shower.

  ‘Go on…’

  ‘Homicide, boss. Body up on Cedar Close, number 13, male victim. Robert Mills, thirty-nine. The call’s just come in.’

  ‘From who?’

  ‘The wife.’

  ‘The wife found him?’

  ‘She made the call. We’re on our way down there now.’

  ‘You said homicide…’

  ‘His throat’s been cut, boss, sliced open at the neck, and he’s got multiple stab wounds. The wife was hysterical. Looks like a domestic. You need to get down there. Woods has requested that you—’

  ‘Who’s already on the scene?’ I cut her off mid-sentence.

  Davis pauses, which fills me with dread as I think I already know what she’s going to say next.

  ‘Martin, boss.’

  I close my eyes and silently curse. Delaney. It would have to be Delaney. I haven’t seen him since the ‘Goldilocks’ case that we worked on together, finding a female serial killer. It still plagues my dreams sometimes, and it almost cost me my job, forcing me to take a sabbatical. When I returned to the nick, he’d been posted somewhere else and I felt all the better for it if I’m honest, and I always try to be. I didn’t like Delaney instinctively on sight, and there’s not many people I can say that about on the force, or in any other area of my life. I usually get to know someone a little first before I decide not to like them. He was an exception to that rule. I picture his smug, self-satisfied, handsome face and feel deflated that I’ll soon be reacquainted with it.

  ‘Right you are. Number 13 you say?’

  ‘Yes, Gov. Unlucky for some.’

  Unlucky for Robert Mills by the sounds of things.

  Four

  Kiki

  ‘It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it!’ Kiki looks up at her mother’s face bearing down on her. It’s contorted in anger, red with rage.

  ‘Thou shall not lie! Do you hear me, girl?’ She smacks her daughter hard across her cheek, causing Kiki to whimper. ‘It’s a sin to lie! And it’s a sin to steal! You’ve brought shame to this family – do you know that? We’re good people, well respected in this community, and now we have a thief for a daughter – nothing but a common thief!’

  Kiki rubs the sting on her cheek. She wants to object; she wants to say again that it wasn’t her, that she didn’t take anything, that it was Bertie who’d stolen the bag of pick ’n’ mix sweets from Mr Patel’s, but she knows it’s no good. Her mother won’t believe her – she never does.

  ‘We took you in in good faith, Kiki.’ Her mother’s rage doesn’t appear to be abating. ‘We gave you a home, a family, and look how you’ve repaid us. The shame…’ She’s shaking her head, opening the kitchen cupboards, pulling pots and pans out and crashing them down onto the cooker. ‘You were a bad seed, born out of sin to become a sinner yourself! You need to get down on your knees and pray, you hear me? On your knees!’

  Kiki does as she is told and drops to the floor; she begins reciting her prayers in a low whisper.

  ‘Faster!’ her mother says. ‘Louder! Beg for forgiveness… Tell Him what a sinner you are and that you renounce the devil inside you. Tell Him!’

  Kiki shuts hers eyes tightly though it doesn’t prevent her tears from coming. She didn’t take the sweets from Mr Patel’s shop. She didn’t. God sees all, that’s what her mother and father tell her and what they say at Bible study. So how come he didn’t see that it was Bertie who had stolen the sweets? Why was God punishing her? She’d get the belt for this.

  ‘You just wait until your father gets home.’ Her mother’s warning tone confirms her fears and Kiki begins to cry louder. ‘Stop whining!’ Her mother slaps her again, across the top of her head this time, sending her sideways. ‘You’re no good, Kiki. Your own flesh and blood knew it and got rid as soon as they could. That tramp who gave birth to you never even knew who your father was…’

  Kiki wants to cover her ears but doesn’t dare. Instead she lets the hopelessness she feels inside claim her once more. She’d always known she was adopted from as far back as she could remember. Her mother had told her four years ago, when she was just five years old. She’s nine now, ‘going on seventeen’ as her mother has said to her derisively, although she didn’t really understand what she meant by it, not fully. In fact, she didn’t understand anything at all and certainly not why her mother seemed to hate her so much. She had always tried so hard to be good, to please her and Daddy. Daddy didn’t pay her much attention, except when he was giving her the belt, but Mummy seemed to reserve all her anger for her daughter, though only ever in private. In public, and always at church, she would even cuddle and kiss Kiki, show her a little affection, which felt good.

  Mummy did most things in secret, like drinking alcohol. Kiki knew where she kept her secret stash of it, in the back of the cupboard underneath the stairs. She had seen her take the bottles and drink straight from them sometimes, though her mother knew nothing of this and, of course, she hadn’t dared to breathe a word to anyone, except her brother Bertie. He was three years older than her and her best friend. In fact, Bertie was her only friend. Sometimes though, like today, he would betray her, make her shoulder the blame for his misdemeanours. But she would never dream of telling tales on him. Bertie had a temper on him too, like Mummy, and could be quite mean. But for the most part he was her only ally, her one source of comfort.

  ‘Get to your room now, you little bitch! I don’t want to see your face until tomorrow morning. You’ll get no dinner tonight, not after stuffing your greedy face with all those stolen sweets!’

  Kiki runs from the kitchen and up the stairs, two at a time. Bertie is already waiting for her in her bedroom.

  ‘Nice one, kiddo, thanks for not snitching. Here, I saved you some Fruit Pastilles and look’ – he pulls something out of his pocket – ‘a Creme Egg, your favourite.’

  Kiki manages a smile, even though her face is still stinging and her head feels sore. She throws hersel
f down onto the bed and begins to cry.

  ‘Mummy hates me. She says I’m evil, that no one wanted me… Not even my own mother.’

  ‘Don’t listen to her.’ Bertie lies down next to Kiki on the bed and hugs her. ‘She’s just a drunken witch who knows nothing. I think you’re the best thing since sliced bread.’

  ‘You do,’ she says. ‘I think you’re the best thing since sliced bread.’

  He laughs, holds her tighter.

  ‘Why does she hit me? Why does Daddy hurt me? Daddy’s going to give me the belt when he gets home. I’m scared—’

  Bertie sighs. ‘I won’t let them hurt you, Kiki.’ He holds her tighter. ‘It’s my fault you got caught. I’ll take the punishment like a man. We must stick together, yeah, you and me?’

  ‘I love you, Bertie.’

  ‘I love you too, Kiki.’

  She’s smiling again now, though he can’t see her face from the spooning position they’re lying in.

  ‘You’re my Kiki. And they may not love you but I do.’

  She snuggles into him some more and feels a hardness pressing against the small of her back, but she doesn’t mind. Bertie loves her and that’s all that matters.