Chapter 53
NADEEKA
Nadeeka’s alarm went off half an hour ago, but she is still in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, unable to move.
She has been running on adrenaline; focusing on the girls, on work, on simply putting one foot in front of the other.
Grief is more easily managed in motion. When Lauren had accused Jamie of being an extremist, Nadeeka had channelled her grief into anger, and it had fuelled her search for the truth.
But now?
Now the anger has burned itself out.
She has woken to an emptiness deep inside her; to a pain in her chest that feels as though something is pressing her on to the bed.
Tears squeeze from the corners of her eyes and soak into her crumpled pillow.
Jamie’s gone. For a few brief months Nadeeka had been given a second chance of happiness, only for it to be cruelly snatched away.
‘Mum!’ Nadeeka’s door opens, and she hastily wipes her eyes. ‘Nish said I smell.’ Maya looks at her mother curiously. ‘Are you ill?’
‘Yes.’ Maybe she is. She feels ill. Her head aches. Her heart aches. ‘Can you ask Dad to take you to rehearsal?’
‘He’s not here.’
‘What?’
‘I heard your alarm, so me and Nish got up, but Dad’s not here.’
That gets her up.
On Wednesday morning, Scott had left his bedding in a heap in the lounge.
Nadeeka had folded it neatly and put it in the big blue IKEA bag behind the sofa, knotting the long straps to keep everything tidy and feeling like an idiot for playing housekeeper to a man who hasn’t been her husband in years.
That evening, he had told Nadeeka he had some business to take care of, and had still been out when Nadeeka had gone to bed.
The following morning, she’d found his bedding folded in the IKEA bag, and naively thought he’d taken the hint.
He’d gone out last night, too, and now Nadeeka checks the bag and finds everything is exactly the way she’d left it.
Scott hasn’t slept here for two nights. She wonders wryly whether the business he’d taken care of was blonde or brunette, and feels a flash of anger.
Not for Scott’s nocturnal activities – his wandering eye is thankfully no longer her problem – but because he’s supposed to be here to protect them.
Nadeeka tosses the bag back down. Well, he can bloody well move back in with Kath, or Gabriela, or whichever other woman is stupid enough to give him a free meal ticket. She doesn’t need looking after.
She’s on her own now.
Lauren will tell her she’s not, of course. Lauren will say the police are just a 999 call away; that they’re this close to a breakthrough and that, soon, the people who killed Jamie will be safely behind bars.
But what does Lauren know?
She’d been wrong about Jamie. She’d been wrong about the events leading up to his death. Lauren wouldn’t know danger if it was staring her in the face.