Nell
PRESENT
Alex calls. We’ve progressed to doing video calls and I can see at once that he’s upset about something.
I swallow my disappointment. “Oh. Will you be there for the whole weekend?”
“All week, I’m afraid. I haven’t seen her since the summer and there are some things we need to sort out.”
I wait, wondering if he’ll invite me to join him in Paris for a couple of days so that I can meet his mother. But he doesn’t.
“Will you see your ex-wife while you’re there?” I ask.
“Probably. My mother always invites Delphine over for dinner when I’m staying with her. Despite everything, we get on well.”
“Right. Will you see Stephane too?”
“I would love to but I doubt it. He always refuses to meet with me.”
“So when will you come to London?”
“Saturday week.”
Another ten days away.
“And you’ll be staying two weeks?”
“No, just a week. I have a flight booked to Washington the following Sunday.”
My heart sinks.
“I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
“It’s fine,” I say.
But it isn’t fine. It’s been a tough ten days since Alex left.
I’ve had the lock on the front door changed and a second one added.
The locksmith also put sensors on the windows and a sturdy lock on my bedroom door.
The following day, the feeling that I was being followed came back with a vengeance, so I began varying my routine, taking the bus from different bus stops and leaving at different times in the morning and evening to throw my stalker off.
It was exhausting but it worked, until yesterday.
I’d left the office at three, telling Sadie I’d work the rest of the day from home, and I’d immediately felt someone behind me, as if they’d been hiding somewhere nearby, waiting for me to leave.
I’d jumped in the first taxi I could find, glad that I’d only have to suffer the terror of being followed for another few days, because then Alex would be back.
Except that now, he isn’t coming back on Saturday.
If it wasn’t for my past, I would speak to the police.
But, like Simon, they will ask me if I have any suspicions as to who might be following me and if I mention Damon Parker’s name, I would have to tell them of my connection to him.
And within less than twenty-four hours, someone in the police will have tipped off the media and everyone will know that I was once Elle Nugent.
It seems a small price to pay for my life; yet I have no proof that Damon Parker is following me, no proof that anyone is following me.
It is just a feeling, and I know what the police would make of that.
Sometimes I tell myself that it is my imagination, that my mind created a stalker for me because it remembered that Damon Parker was due for release this summer and that he’d said he would kill me.
By the time Friday comes, the thought of another lonely weekend with nothing but French lessons to keep me occupied makes me even more depressed.
Before Alex, I’d never found the weekends long but now I’m climbing the walls by Saturday lunchtime.
Last weekend, Romy had come over for a couple of hours while Rob was playing rugby, which had relieved the monotony of spending two days on my own.
But this weekend she and Rob are going to Scotland to visit his family.
I think about calling Béatrice and Victor, then remember Inès saying that the two of us should meet for lunch sometime. I find my phone and call her.
“Hi, Inès, it’s Nell.”
“Nell! Lovely to hear from you! How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks. I was wondering—when we saw each other at Béatrice and Victor’s, you said we should get together for lunch. Are you free at all this weekend?”
“Let me think—how about tomorrow?”
My spirits lift. “That would be great.”
“Why don’t you come round to mine? My flatmate is away this weekend so we’d have the place to ourselves. Shall we say twelve?”
“Perfect. Thanks, Inès.”
“I’ll message you my address.”
“Brilliant.”
Relieved that I have something to fill the day, I push away from my desk, thinking about Alex arriving in Paris tomorrow to spend the week with his mother.
I know he won’t invite me to join them but it doesn’t stop me wishing he would.
I imagine him calling me once he’s arrived and suggesting it.
Hey, Nell, why don’t you jump on a train and come to Paris?
I’ve told my mother about you and she’d like to meet you.
Perhaps you can take a couple of days off work.
I’d take a train to Paris and he would meet me at Gare du Nord and after lunch together in a little bistro and a walk along the Seine, he’d take me to meet his mother and I’d speak French to her and Alex would be amazed at my prowess and—my phone rings, snapping me out of my daydream.
It’s one of our sponsors and I slip seamlessly into work mode.
I take a taxi home because I don’t want to have to cope with the feeling of being followed.
It’s only seven thirty so I’m happy for the driver to drop me off at the top of the road.
As I approach the house, a flash of white on the doorstep catches my eye and as I get nearer, I see a bouquet of flowers propped up against the door.
My smile of pleasure quickly fades when I see that the lilies are already decaying.
I unlock the door, then pick up the bouquet, turning my head away from its pungent smell. All I can think is that the delivery was left with a neighbor earlier in the week and they forgot to give them to me until today. But if Alex had sent them, wouldn’t he have asked if I’d received them?
I take the lilies through to the kitchen and once I’ve checked the house I look for the card that came with the bouquet.
There isn’t one and, remembering the time I received flowers from Alex at the office without a message to tell me who they were from, I frown at the coincidence of it happening twice.
I check the doorstep in case the card fell out but there’s nothing there.
And there’s no card to tell me which florist they’re from, just an empty staple where it should have been.
I study the bouquet uneasily. What if they’re not from Alex but from my stalker?
What if there’s a hidden meaning behind the decaying flowers?
I take out my phone, google “lilies” and find that they’re popular funeral flowers.
A cramping fear settles in my bones—but also a surge of excitement, because if they are from my stalker, they’re the proof I need that he exists.
I think for a moment then take the lilies back to the doorstep and photograph them as I found them, propped up against the front door.
Then I take them to the kitchen and cram them in the bin, ramming their heads into the rubbish and crushing their stalks with the lid.