Chapter 22 Fenna – Day 5
Fenna has tossed and turned in bed for around twenty minutes since Luke left.
It’s no use. She’s too restless to sleep.
She pulls on her robe, pads down the corridor and knocks on Rosie’s bedroom door.
It’s time for a chat. She needs to get over this niggling doubt that something is wrong with Theo’s girlfriend. Fiancée.
‘Rosie?’ Fenna knocks again.
Perhaps she was abrupt earlier, suggesting things may go wrong before the big day.
Rosie hasn’t done anything wrong. Ok, the scribbles in her notebook are odd and the eagerness to be liked is irritating, but Luke’s right, she’s going to be part of the family now.
Fenna needs to get over this weird gut feeling that she can’t put her finger on.
Things have been stressful back home since the burglary and the difficult birth and the stretched family finances, so it’s no wonder she’s overthinking things. Fenna is here to enjoy a much-needed holiday, not convince herself everyone is out to get her.
She knocks a little louder this time. There’s still no answer. She presses her ear to the wood to see if she can hear the shower running from their ensuite. Silence.
‘Rosie?’ she calls again and pushes the door open. The wood scratches against the floor with an ominous creak. ‘Rosie? I wanted to check if you were ok . . .?’
Fenna stops.
There’s nobody here.
The bed is made up from the morning. The plump pillows are waiting to be used. A side lamp is on and Rosie’s shoes, the patent black sandals that she wore to dinner, are kicked off near the antique mirror.
‘Rosie?’ Fenna knocks on the ensuite but the door moves open with her touch.
Where is she?
Did she change her mind and stay downstairs drinking with Marianne and Evelyn?
Fenna strains to see if she can make out women chatting but all she can hear is the faint hum from Alba’s white noise machine that helps her to sleep.
Rosie definitely complained that she didn’t feel great so perhaps she’s gone to get some painkillers or maybe she had a miraculous recovery and went to meet the men at the bar. Either way, she’s not in here.
A sound from down the corridor makes Fenna jump. She automatically checks her phone. The monitor app shows both children are sleeping. Fenna pulls her dressing gown tight.
Something catches her eye as she turns to leave. There’s a stack of family photo albums shoved under her side of the bed. Why are those here? Hidden away like this? Does Theo know?
Fenna returns to her room. But no sooner does she slip into the soft sheets does a light brown coloured moth hop around the bedside lamp, flittering erratically above the bulb.
Grumbling under her breath, she gets up to open the window to let it out.
There’s no way she will be able to sleep otherwise, imagining the paper wings and furry body trapped in the bedroom with her.
They sleep with the fan on and the windows shut to keep any bugs out, but it’s nice to have a sudden waft of the nighttime air.
She inhales the smell of the sun-scorched earth and honeysuckle from the climbing plants.
The stars are twinkling overhead. She turns off the lamp and the moth obediently flies out through the open window.
She’s about to close the shutters when she sees a figure in the garden.
Paulo? No. It’s too late for him to still be here.
It takes a second for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The person is lit by a small torchlight.
Rosie?
Fenna presses herself closer to the glass and holds her breath.
What is she doing? The beam of light, from a phone, moves as if whoever is holding it is walking quickly. It disappears behind a wall. A chill dances over Fenna.
She leaps from her skin when an alarm rings out. Raffi’s due his night feed now. She hurriedly turns the sound coming from her phone off but when she looks back the figure is nowhere to be seen. She scans the empty gardens one more time and then closes the shutters and scurries back to her bed.
Luke said he’d checked Rosie out but there’s still something about this woman that doesn’t sit right. Call it women’s instinct. She should have done it herself, not taken his word for it.
Raffi isn’t stirring for his feed so she’s got time. Fenna sits upright with the glow from her phone screen lighting her face and opens her internet browser. She types two words: Rosie Riley.
The only social media profile she can find is on Instagram.
Nothing comes up anywhere else. Her feed is like Rosie in real life.
Quiet. Unassuming. Boring. Her photos are mainly linked to the primary school where she works or arty shots of nature.
There are a couple of older photos from Christmases long ago with her mum and dad and a young Rosie in a dated sweater and nineties hairstyle.
She celebrated her last birthday at a chain chicken restaurant with a friend; a woman called Lydia is tagged in the post.
Fenna clicks on Lydia’s profile. This feed is bright and busy, full of people and smiling faces and trendy brunch food.
There’s a photo of her leaping onto a blow-up flamingo in a swimming pool, a wide, cheesy grin on her face.
This is a girl who likes to have fun. Fenna keeps scrolling, wishing Lydia was here on holiday instead.
She wouldn’t put Rosie and Lydia together as friends.
A cry from Raffi pulls her back to reality.
She blinks, her eyes tight and gritty from the light on the screen. She’s been searching online for the past twenty minutes. She’s not discovered anything suspicious, and yet . . . Something in her gut refuses to accept that.
Something is going on with this girl.
She’s determined to find out what.