Chapter 9
NINE
The floor feels like it’s shifting beneath my feet and painful cramps shoot through my abdomen.
I clutch it with one hand and grab the wall with the other.
‘But,’ I say, ‘she couldn’t have. There’s no antifreeze here.
We don’t have any!’ I stare at Leo, willing him to say something, but his mouth just gapes open.
‘If she found some by mistake, then where is it? There’s no spillage or an empty bottle anywhere. The vet must have got it wrong!’
But Giles doesn’t hear my words. ‘What happened, Ria?’ His anguished words burn my ears. ‘She was fine at the barbecue. And now she’s fighting for her life. The vet said she’s lucky to be alive. If she’d been found any later . . .’
‘Giles, I swear to you, there’s nothing in the house that could have hurt her. I’ve never used antifreeze.’ I force myself not to turn away from the anguish on Giles’s face. ‘I was so careful.’
Leo places his hand on Giles’s shoulder. ‘Ria’s right, we don’t have antifreeze in the house,’ Leo says. ‘You’re welcome to have a look. Maybe the vet’s wrong about what Willow ingested?’
Giles shakes his head. ‘No, he was absolutely certain.’ He turns to me. ‘Did you take her out anywhere? Maybe when you weren’t watching, she—’
‘No! I promise. I came straight back here with her after the barbecue. We sat in the living room for a while, then I went to bed. Willow was asleep when I went upstairs.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Giles says, distraught. ‘This doesn’t make sense. My poor Willow. She is just a harmless animal. Never hurt anyone. She didn’t deserve this.’ He wipes his tear-stained cheeks with his hand. ‘I have to go.’
‘Giles, wait,’ Leo pleads, but Giles ignores him and pulls the door shut after him.
I stare at the closed door, as if any moment it will reopen and Giles will tell us it’s all been a joke, some kind of initiation to prove we belong in Silverleaf Heights, and Willow is unharmed and at his house.
It’s a moment before I can bring myself to look at Leo, and when I do, the look of shock and fear on his face is something I’ve never witnessed on my husband.
‘Leo, I—’
‘This isn’t good,’ he says, pacing the hall. ‘Are you sure you were watching her the whole time?’
I grab his arm. ‘Yes! Until I went to bed. She was fine!’
He lets out a prolonged breath. ‘I know. But . . . she would have been sick much sooner if she’d had anything at the barbecue. Was she walking okay? Wobbling or anything?’
‘No, she was absolutely fine.’
Leo’s face pales. ‘Then she must have had something here.’
My heart wrenches at the desperation in his voice. ‘No!’ I insist. ‘There’s nothing.’
Without warning, Leo rushes into the kitchen, ignoring me when I ask him what he’s doing. He rummages through the bins, and all I can do is stand and watch. I know he won’t find anything.
I wait for him to finish before I speak; this is something he needs to do. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘Of course I do! But . . . what if you didn’t realise something had been left out? It’s not your fault—’
‘I didn’t leave anything out!’ I insist. Tears I’ve been forcing back finally erupt. Over the past couple of days I’ve started to love Willow like my own dog.
‘Then what happened to her?’ Leo asks, flopping on to a kitchen chair and burying his head in his hands.
‘I don’t know.’ Terrifying thoughts crash though my head, vying for attention.
And as I look at Leo, I know that I’m asking the impossible from him.
I was alone with Willow in the house, so what happened to her could only be my fault.
How can I blame him for being unsure? But just like I know I saw that woman being strangled on the green, I know I had nothing to do with Willow swallowing poison.
‘I don’t understand any of this,’ Leo says, but there’s weariness in his eyes when he looks at me.
‘You think my mind’s been affected by my attack and that I wasn’t being careful when I was looking after Willow!’ Saying this out loud sickens me.
Leo doesn’t answer for a moment and buries his head in his hands again. ‘No,’ he says quietly, looking up again. ‘No. Of course I don’t think that.’
But the heavy silence descending on us tells a different story.
I join Leo at the table and reach for his hand. ‘I’ll talk to Giles tomorrow. I’ll try to make him see that it was nothing I did or didn’t do. I was taking good care of Willow.’
Leo looks up. ‘Maybe you should just give him some space? Let me go and talk to him instead.’ He leans his head back and sighs. ‘Though, honestly, I don’t know if we can fix this. I’m sure all the neighbours know by now.’
‘Who cares what they think!’ I say, but as soon as I’ve spoken, I realise that Leo does. He has always cared. He wants the image he presents to the world – that he’s worthy of the life he’s built for himself – to be bulletproof.
‘I know I shouldn’t care,’ Leo says. ‘But we live here now, Ria, and they’re our neighbours. They don’t know us yet, so all they’ve got to judge us on is what’s happened since we moved here.’
He won’t come out and say it, but I know Leo is talking about the woman I saw and my attempts to find out who she is.
‘Like I said, I really don’t care what they all think,’ I tell Leo, but we will never see eye to eye on this.
‘Giles is the reason we’re living here,’ Leo says. ‘There was such demand for our house, and he chose to sell it to us. Do you know how lucky we are? And now the poor man’s dog almost died at our house.’
‘That wasn’t me!’ I shout. Despite how diplomatic Leo is being, I know what bubbles under the surface of his words. ‘I’m devastated about Willow, and for Giles, of course, but I couldn’t give a shit about Silverleaf Heights!’ I say. ‘I was happy in our flat.’
Leo stares at me. I’ve never said these words to him and have no idea how he’ll take them. ‘Your flat,’ he says.
His words feel like knife cuts. ‘Only to start with. Then it was ours once you moved in.’
‘But it never felt like mine, Ria. It was never my home. I moved in there with you because you didn’t want to leave it. But it wasn’t mine, even after we were married.’ He flaps his arms. ‘Silverleaf is home to both of us.’
This is an opening to finally tell Leo how uncomfortable I’ve felt since the moment we moved in, but it wouldn’t go down well after what’s happened today.
‘What if Willow wasn’t poisoned?’ I say.
‘The vet could have got it wrong. Can we . . . is there a way to get a second opinion? I need to prove to Giles that nothing in this house harmed her.’
Leo nods. ‘We can try. But I don’t see how any vet could get something like that wrong.’ He pulls out his phone and starts tapping on it, his eyes flicking from left to right as he reads something. ‘If Willow dies . . . People can go to prison for killing a dog.’
A hard lump lodges in my throat, but I don’t protest my innocence again. Instead, in as calm a voice as I can muster, I say, ‘I don’t have to worry about that.’ I stand and push my chair back. ‘It’s late. I’m going to bed. Are you coming?’
Leo shakes his head, and as I walk upstairs, I realise that, for the first time, a crack has appeared in our marriage. And how long do I have before it spreads?
At around 2 a.m. I wake, but I don’t get out of bed this time, instead forcing myself to stay put and wait for exhaustion to pull me under.
Leo is beside me, not in his usual position on his front but lying on his side with his back to me.
I play over all the events since we’ve moved here, like a movie I have no control over.
The video I was sent felt like a warning, and I had ignored it.
Could someone have hurt Willow in a further attempt to silence me?
When I’m still awake at four forty-one, listening out for unfamiliar sounds, I give up and get out of bed, pulling the duvet back over Leo. He hates it when any part of him isn’t covered, even in extreme heat.
Willow’s bowls are still out in the kitchen, but I can’t bring myself to move them just yet. I make a cup of tea and take it to the table, my phone pinging as soon as I sit down. It’s a WhatsApp message, and I know before reading it that it won’t be good.
Unless you want to be next – keep your mouth shut.
I’m frozen, unable to move as I stare at the words. And just as I kick into action, ready to take a screenshot, it disappears and I’m left staring at familiar words: This message was deleted.
I jump up, ready to tell Leo, but then I remember how anxious he was last night.
I can’t put this on his shoulders, especially when I have no evidence.
But now I know for sure someone is trying to silence me.
And it can’t be Peter Harvey – I already told the police about what he did, so him telling me to keep my mouth shut now doesn’t make sense.
This is about the blonde woman I saw – it has to be.
It’s 8 a.m. before Leo comes down, later than he’d normally emerge on a Sunday. I’ve showered and I’m sitting on the sofa when he appears, and he sits beside me and gives me a brief hug.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks. ‘Stupid question,’ he corrects. ‘I’m sorry for how I was last night. It was just a bit of a shock. I should take Willow’s things back to Giles,’ he says. ‘It will give me a chance to speak to him. Set his mind at rest that you didn’t do anything.’
I shake my head. ‘I appreciate that, but I really want to do it. It should be me. I’m the one who was looking after her. I’m not going to hide away as if I’m guilty of something.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ Leo says.
‘Giles is so cut up about Willow. I think he just needs time. We can’t make it seem like we’re harassing him.
I get how much you want to go, but I think I should do it.
I know him a bit better than you do, and that might help, given how difficult this situation is. ’
Leo has a valid point. Giles needs time and space to reflect and come to his senses. Then he’ll realise that I’m telling the truth.