CHAPTER 5
Ella
The living room stretches out before me, the soft track marks from a hoover still visible in the far left corner.
A reminder that the cleaner was here on Sunday, and so was someone else.
Yesterday was spent avoiding work and phone calls deep beneath my covers, the past whirling around my head as I tried to make sense of it.
My options are in short supply. I can’t go to the police, not until I am certain that no one will find me.
I can’t face Rufus, not while the past is creeping a cold hand over my shoulders.
“Are you okay?” Rufus had asked in the quiet of our bedroom last night.
“Yes, fine,” is all I managed, the space growing between us. I can’t tell him yet. Not until I know what I am dealing with.
A door closes somewhere in the house: Rufus.
I never noticed how much time we spend apart, moving like shadows that never meet.
My shoed feet tap a rhythmic pattern and the ticking clock above the dresser echoes into the silence.
Jude is late. We had planned to meet for a quick coffee before I spent the afternoon with Immi.
It’s not Henry. It can’t be. He can’t find me.
I find myself pacing, the thoughts crashing as I make a repeated loop from the front window to the door and back again.
Finally, on my fourth trip, the bell rings.
“I’ll get it,” I say to no one, my voice shrill.
“Jude!” I swing the door open.
“Jesus!” Jude steps back, her hand still hovering in the air.
My chest rises and falls. “It’s a nice morning, should we do a quick walk instead of coffee?”
There’s a light laugh as she steps back, watching me yank the door closed before turning on my heel. I’m moving too fast, there’s too much energy.
“Um, sure. I have an hour before my next meeting. I’ll walk you to Immi’s,” Jude says, a smile forming.
I try to mimic her smile and keep things light as we move down the drive, but the name Elsabelle floats on the wind and taunts me. I shake my head.
“Did you enjoy the celebrations?” Jude says before I can speak. A small detector on my key fob registers that we’ve passed the gate at the end of the drive and so it begins to close behind us. We turn left, following the natural curve of the street through the village.
Shearwood Village is one of those quintessential false places.
An area I would have turned my nose up at when I was young, purely to hide my jealousy.
Behind the large entrance gates that sit on the bottom of the hill are four cul-de-sacs, each housing between four and six houses.
Each house, if you can call it that, has a drive, and each drive has its gate.
There are no shops, no communal areas. Two large, manicured roundabouts filled to the brim with plump bushes of yellow, burgundy and pink roses sit in the centre and ferry traffic to either side of the residential areas.
Once, when I first moved in with Rufus, I called it an estate, and despite his instant fury at that term, that’s all it is. With a pretty penny attached.
I pull myself back to Jude as we pass the left roundabout that takes us out of the village. It’s not made for walkers, but Jude and I often do it.
“Yes, it was marvellous,” I say, answering her question just as I had practised. Happy but humble, grateful but pleased. A perfect balance. Jude has stopped in her tracks. I turn to her and she raises a single brow.
“Marvellous?” she says, waiting for a beat before she joins me.
I can’t help but smile, weaving my arm through hers.
“Too much?” I say.
“Laying it on a tad thick there, Mrs Marple. As long as you really did have a good time.”
We fall back into stride and I can’t help but laugh.
“You mean Miss Marple,” I offer back with a smile.
I love that about Jude. She has a gorgeous abrasive approach to things, a trait that makes her a powerhouse of a journalist and a fierce friend.
It reminds me of when we first met. I sat making my way through a warm beer with another failed date in the books and my feet sticking to the floor of the dive bar.
The music was too loud, and the people too drunk, but it was one of those days where that was perfect.
The duffel bag strap was looped over my left ankle as I sat on the bar stool, an old habit that took months to kick, and I wanted nothing more than to go home.
A home that I didn’t have. Jude had jumped onto the stool opposite me, mid-conversation, before I realised she was talking to me.
Something about her, perhaps the shimmer in her eyes, or the way she bounced as she spoke, or the way she tilted her head back to laugh.
It was that evening that I told her I had nowhere to go and she offered her room for the night, leading to a sequence of events that brought me happily here.
“Okay, yes, a lot of the guests were from Rufus’s firm and that’s not necessarily how I wanted to celebrate. And it was all a bit showy, a bit too Shearwood,” I say.
“Very Shearwood,” Jude chips in.
A gentle laugh falls between us.
“But it was also perfect. As an event that I have to run can be,” I say.
“Hosting is exhausting.” She nudges me with her hip. “As long as you’re happy, my sweet,” she says.
“Something happened…” I start, but find that we’ve reached the front gates to the village sooner than I thought.
The single road comes to an end and a large black metal gate rises above us, the rose emblem in the middle with Shearwood Village written in golden italics below.
To the right sits a small booth, where Graham is tucked away, a worn paperback in his hand.
Despite the automatic opening based on registered number plates, cameras and a keypad for calling particular residents’ homes directly, Shearwood management still placed Graham there as an “in-person security detail”.
“Hi, you.” Jude slides up to the window, leaning in a bit. “What’s this one about, then?”
Graham lowers the book, his aged skin wrinkling at the sight of Jude.
“A murder mystery where the killer is also being watched by someone,” Graham says, his accent thick and bouncy. He places a finger between the pages to keep his place.
“Ooh, I bet it’s the husband. It’s always the husband,” Jude says.
Graham shoves a pudgy, crooked finger into each ear. “No spoilers,” he says with a laugh. I shift my weight to my right foot, pushing my hands into my pockets.
Jude slaps a finger to her lip and winks. “Never!”
With a laugh, he pushes a button and the small pedestrian gate opens. We have passes that we could swipe but Jude tries to talk to Graham whenever she can.
“Thank you, Graham, enjoy the book!” I offer cheerily as we pass, trying to reflect his smile at him, but his face drops and a demeanour of professional boredom passes over him.
“Have a good day, Mrs Kingley,” Graham says, despite me telling him often enough to call me Ella. I falter, standing parallel to him, searching for something to say, but the moment has gone and his eyes are back on his book.
I catch up to Jude, a tightness in my chest.
“I love a good murder mystery,” she says as we wander the country lane, the silence of the road suddenly terrifying. We’re two young women walking along a thin shrubbed lane, we could round the corner to an ominous figure and be gone in moments. Never before has the feeling felt so heavy.
“I got a letter,” I say, my tongue running over the cracks in my lips.
“The downfall of having a letterbox, I would say,” Jude says as we join the main road, walking west into the local town.
“A threatening letter.” The words are soft, barely audible as a motorbike whips past, my body taking a reactionary step back.
Jude turns to me. “What?”
I don’t know if it was the way Graham’s eyes dulled when I spoke to him, or the comfort Jude’s presence had on me, but something sparks in the bottom of my chest. I’m at a crossroads of a real problem.
“The night of the party, I got a call, a weird machinelike call from someone, and then when I went to bed I found a letter under my pillow.” When I say it aloud, I hear how terrifying it is.
It’s not Henry, because Henry is in prison. But whoever it was, he was in my house. In my room.
Jude stops, and so do I. Her brows draw together, and then she blinks, slow enough that it seems to move one eye at a different speed than the other.
She opens her mouth, runs her tongue along the top of her teeth, and then shuts her lips firmly.
Her facial expressions playing out my feelings over the last few days.
I run my fingers over the edge of my coat sleeve, working my nail around the edge of the bottom that cinches it in.
“I know.” My eyes drop to my boots because I can’t see the look in Jude’s.
“Fuck,” she says finally.
Before I have a chance to formulate the response you should give at a time like this, which I suppose is offering a reason why someone would threaten you, Jude yanks me into a hug, her chin resting on the top of my head.
I smile, her hands looping around my shoulders and squeezing tight.
We stand for a moment before she pulls back.
“Is it Henry?” She drops her voice to a whisper. The one thing I don’t regret is telling Jude that I have a vengeful ex; the problem is the lies that wrap around that statement.
“No,” I say.
“Is it about Henry?” Jude asks. I can see it in her eyes, the spark that must fire when she sits down to write up a new article, her investigatory radar flickering. But I can’t fault her, she’s asking the right questions and it takes effort not to lie to her. She knows enough of the truth to help.
“I don’t know,” I say, and the part I leave out speaks for itself. It could be.
“How can I help?” she says, and something catches in the back of my throat.