Chapter 33
AMBER
My hands are shaking as I tear through the bedclothes a second time. I’ve turned the room upside down looking for my necklace, upending drawers, pulling clothes from hangers and rummaging through our empty cases. The place looks like it’s been ransacked by burglars.
I’m feeling inside one of the pillowcases when my hand closes round a chain. I tip the pillowcase up so the necklace slithers into my hand, coiling like a snake in my palm. I close my eyes and offer up a prayer of thanks to Gran, my guardian angel.
But the relief is short-lived. The necklace feels all wrong. My eyes snap open. It isn’t a silver chain with an amber pendant. It’s a gold locket on a chunky chain.
My stomach curdles and I collapse onto the bed. I’ve seen it before… around Simone’s neck.
I prise the locket open. Who cares if I’m invading her privacy? Please let it be a wedding photo, I beg silently, even though Simone doesn’t strike me as the sentimental type.
It is a couple, but not Simone and Felix. The colour drains from my face as I study the tiny image.
Simone and a handsome, dark-haired man with crinkly eyes and a wide smile.
Dominic.
My boyfriend.
I stare at the photo, bile rising in the back of my throat as I look for clues.
It’s not recent. They are on a beach, a curve of white powder sand and turquoise sea stretched like a grin behind them.
Simone’s dark hair is long and braided, her cheeks fuller than they are now.
She’s wearing a bikini, leather bracelets on her wrists and a beaded thong necklace round her neck.
Dominic is bare-chested, his eyes hidden by a pair of aviator sunglasses.
Simone is pressed against him, his arm clamps her waist. Their skin is a matching butterscotch brown.
The sight of them together makes me feel physically sick.
I snap the locket shut, my heart pounding like I’ve run up three flights of stairs, remembering how, when I first met Dominic, I thought he was too good to be true.
He was nothing like the wasters I usually dated.
He didn’t sleep on a mattress on a bedsit floor or live with his mum.
He was solvent, reliable and kind. He bought me flowers and took me on surprise weekends away.
He was perfect – almost too perfect. For a while, I even worried he was love-bombing me, that he would turn into a controlling, gaslighting bully the minute he won my trust. So I kept a bit of myself back and waited for the catch. But it never came.
Until now.
Dominic told me he went travelling after his first year at university.
Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bali. All the usual stomping grounds for middle-class kids who didn’t have to spend their holidays waiting tables or pulling pints.
Places that might as well have been on a different planet for the young people who grew up on estates like South Langley. People like me.
Simone must have gone with him on that trip. Funny how he didn’t think to mention that. I ball the locket in my fist, squeezing until the clasp digs into my palm, sharp as a tack.
I’m missing the point. Like it or not, Dominic and Simone used to be a couple. What does it matter that they once went travelling together when they were still at university? It might rankle but it’s ancient history. The point is: what the hell is Simone’s necklace doing in our bed?
The thought that Dominic has betrayed me is a punch to the gut. He’s the first man I’ve ever truly trusted, and the prospect that he’s as faithless as every other man I’ve ever met is almost too much to bear.
I bury my head in my hands and groan. I don’t know what to do.
Confront them both, or keep the discovery to myself?
Although deeply suspicious, it’s not evidence.
Simone might blame Maria for mixing the necklace up in the laundry or claim it fell off when she was changing the sheets, even though I haven’t seen her lift a finger all week.
No. I will keep it to myself. For now. And I’ll watch them both so closely I won’t miss a damn thing.
* * *
My stomach is churning as I head back down to the pool after a shower.
I’m not sure what I think I’m going to find: Dominic and Simone canoodling on the daybed?
Cavorting in the water together? I needn’t have worried.
Dominic, Felix and Victoria are playing cards on the terrace, Willow is draped over a sunbed, on her phone, Barney is working his way through a bottle of red and Simone is nowhere to be seen.
‘Hey, gorgeous,’ Dominic says, his face breaking into a smile. ‘Come and join us.’
‘I might just read my book, if that’s OK?’ I clutch Nessa’s paperback to my chest like a shield. ‘Where’s Simone?’
Willow looks up from her phone. ‘In her lair sharpening her talons or sticking pins in her favourite voodoo doll, probably.’
Victoria and Felix both laugh. Even Dominic’s mouth twitches, and the knot inside me loosens a fraction.
‘Actually, I will join you for a couple of hands.’ I slide into the seat next to him, glad to have another chance to practise my poker face, because I can’t help thinking I’m going to need it before the week is out.
As Felix deals, I rest my head on Dom’s shoulder.
He snakes his arm round me, drawing circles with his thumb on my bare shoulder until I shiver with pleasure.
Dom loves me. I should never have doubted him.
There’ll be a rational explanation for Simone’s locket turning up in our bed, and if I accuse him of something he hasn’t done I could jeopardise everything.