The Other Woman’s House (3 page)

I shake these thoughts from my mind.
You could be asleep now, you lunatic. Instead, you're sitting hunched over a computer in the dark, feeling inferior to Cliff Richard. Get a grip.

To bring up the full details, I click on the picture of this house I know so well, and yet not at all. I don't believe anyone in the world has spent as much time staring at the outside of 11 Bentley Grove as I have; I know its façade brick by brick. It's strange, almost shocking, to see a photograph of it on my computer – in my house, where it doesn't belong.

Inviting the enemy into your home…

There is no enemy, I tell myself firmly.
Be practical, get it over with, and go back to bed
. Kit has started to snore. Good. I've no idea what I'd say if he caught me doing this, how I'd defend my sanity.

The page has loaded. I'm not interested in the big photograph on the left, the one taken from across the road. It's the inside of the house I need to see. One by one, I click on the little pictures on the right-hand side of the screen to enlarge
them. First, a kitchen with wooden worktops, a double Belfast sink, blue-painted unit fronts, a blue-sided wooden-topped island…

Kit hates kitchen islands. He thinks they're ugly and pretentious – an affectation imported from America. The avocado bathroom suites of the future, he calls them. He'd got rid of the one in our kitchen within a fortnight of our moving in, and commissioned a local joiner to make us a big round oak table to take its place.

This kitchen I'm looking at can't be Kit's, not with that island in it.

Of course it's not Kit's. Kit's kitchen is downstairs – it also happens to be your kitchen.

I click on a picture of a lounge. I've seen 11 Bentley Grove's lounge before, though only briefly. On one of my visits, I was brave enough – or stupid enough, depending on your point of view – to open the gate, walk up the long path that's bordered by lavender bushes on both sides and divides the square front lawn into two triangles, and peer in through the front window. I was afraid I'd be caught trespassing and couldn't really concentrate. A few seconds later an elderly man with the thickest glasses I've ever seen emerged from the house next door and turned his excessively enlarged eyes in my direction. I hurried back to my car before he could ask me what I was doing, and, afterwards, remembered little about the room I'd seen apart from that it had white walls and a grey L-shaped sofa with some kind of intricate red embroidery on it.

I'm looking at that same sofa now, on my computer screen. It's not so much grey as a sort of cloudy silver. It looks expensive, unique. I can't imagine there's another sofa like it.

Kit loves unique. He avoids mass-produced as far as is
possible. All the mugs in our kitchen were made and painted individually by a potter in Spilling.

Every piece of furniture in the lounge at 11 Bentley Grove looks like a one-off: a chair with enormous curved wooden arms like the bottoms of rowing boats; an unusual coffee table with a glass surface, and, beneath the glass, a structure resembling a display cabinet with sixteen compartments, lying on its back. Each compartment contains a small flower with a red circle at its centre and blue petals pointing up towards the glass.

Kit would like all of these things. I swallow, tell myself this proves nothing.

There's a tiled fireplace with a large map above it in a frame, a chimney breast, matching alcoves on either side. A symmetrical room, a Kit sort of room. I feel a little nauseous.

Christ, this is insane
. How many living rooms, up and down the country, follow this basic format: fireplace, a chimney breast, alcoves left and right? It's a classic design, replicated all over the world. It appeals to Kit, and to about a trillion other people.

It's not as if you've seen his jacket draped over the banister, his stripy scarf over the back of a chair…

Quickly, wanting to be finished with this task I've set myself – aware that it's making me feel worse, not better – I work my way through the other rooms, enlarging their pictures. Hall and stairs, carpeted in beige; chunky dark wood banister. A utility room with sky-blue unit fronts, similar to those in the kitchen. Honey-coloured marble for the house bathroom – clean and ostentatiously expensive.

I click on a picture of what must be the back garden. It's a lot bigger than I'd have imagined, having only seen the house
from the front. I scroll down to the text beneath the photographs and see that the garden is described as being just over an acre. It's the sort of garden I'd love to have: decking for a table and chairs, two-seater swing with a canopy, vast lawn, trees at the bottom, lush yellow fields beyond. An idyllic countryside view, ten minutes' walk from the centre of Cambridge. Now I'm starting to understand the 1.2-million-pound price tag. I try not to compare what I'm looking at to Melrose Cottage's garden, which is roughly the size of half a single garage. It's big enough to accommodate a wrought-iron table, four chairs, a few plants in terracotta pots, and not a lot else.

That's it. I've looked at all the pictures, seen all there is to see.

And found nothing. Satisfied now?

I yawn and rub my eyes. I'm about to shut down the Roundthehouses website and go back to bed when I notice a row of buttons beneath the picture of the back garden: ‘Street View', ‘Floorplan', ‘Virtual Tour'. I don't need a view of Bentley Grove – I've seen more than enough of it in the past six months – but I might as well have a look at number 11's floorplan, since I've got this far. I click on the button, then hit the ‘x' to shut down the screen within seconds of it opening. It isn't going to help me to know which room is where; I'd be better off taking the virtual tour. Will it make me feel as if I'm walking around the house myself, looking into every room? That's what I'd like to do.

Then I'd be satisfied.

I hit the button and wait for the tour to load. Another button pops up: ‘Play Tour'. I click on it. The kitchen appears first, and I see what I've already seen in the photograph, then a bit more as the camera does a 360-degree turn to reveal the rest
of the room. Then another turn, then another. The spinning effect makes me feel dizzy, as if I'm on a roundabout that won't stop. I close my eyes, needing a break. I'm so tired. Travelling to Cambridge and back in a day nearly every Friday is doing me no good; it's not the physical effort that's draining, it's the secrecy. I have to move on, let it go.

I open my eyes and see a mass of red. At first I don't know what I'm looking at, and then…
Oh, God. It can't be. Oh, fuck, oh, God
. Blood. A woman lying face down in the middle of the room, and blood, a lake of it, all over the beige carpet. For a second, in my panic, I mistake the blood for my own. I look down at myself.
No blood
. Of course not – it's not my carpet, not my house. It's 11 Bentley Grove. The lounge, spinning. The fireplace, the framed map above it, the door open to the hall…

The dead woman, face down in a sea of red. As if all the blood inside her has been squeezed out, every drop of it…

I make a noise that might be a scream. I try to call Kit's name, but it doesn't work. Where's the phone? Not on its base. Where's my BlackBerry? Should I ring 999? Panting, I reach out for something, I'm not sure what. I can't take my eyes off the screen. The blood is still turning, the dead woman slowly turning.
She must be dead; it must be her blood. Red around the outside, almost black in the middle. Black-red, thick as tar. Make it stop spinning
.

I stand up, knock my chair over. It falls to the floor with a thud. I back away from my desk, wanting only to escape.
Out, out!
a voice in my head screams. I'm stumbling in the wrong direction, nowhere near the door.
Don't look. Stop looking
. I can't help it. My back hits the wall; something hard presses into my skin. I hear a crash, step on something that crunches.
Pain pricks the soles of my feet. I look down and see broken glass. Blood. Mine, this time.

Somehow, I get myself out of the room and close the door. Better; now there's a barrier between it and me.
Kit
. I need Kit. I walk into our bedroom, switch on the light and burst into tears. How dare he be asleep? ‘Kit!'

He groans. Blinks. ‘Light off,' he mumbles, groggy with sleep. ‘Fuck's going on? Time is it?'

I stand there crying, my feet bleeding onto the white rug.

‘Con?' Kit hauls himself up into a sitting position and rubs his eyes. ‘What's wrong? What's happened?'

‘She's dead,' I tell him.

‘Who's dead?' He's alert now. He reaches under the bed for his glasses, puts them on.

‘I don't know! A woman,' I sob. ‘On the computer.'

‘What woman? What are you talking about?' He throws back the covers, gets out of bed. ‘Your…what have you done to your feet? They're bleeding.'

‘I don't know.' It's the best I can do. ‘I did a virtual…' I'm having trouble breathing and speaking at the same time.

‘Just tell me if everybody's okay. Your sister, Benji…'

‘What?' My sister? ‘It's nothing to do with them, it's a woman. I can't see her face.'

‘You're white as a sheet, Con. Did you have a nightmare?'

‘On my laptop. She's there now,' I sob. ‘She's dead. She must be. We should call the police.'

‘Sweetheart, there's no dead woman on your laptop,' Kit says. I hear the impatience beneath the reassurance. ‘You had a bad dream.'

‘Go and look!' I scream at him. ‘It's not a dream. Go in there and see it for yourself!'

He looks down at my feet again, at the trail of blood on the rug and the floorboards – a dotted red line leading to the bedroom door. ‘What happened to you?' he asks. I wonder how guilty I look. ‘What's going on?' The concerned tone has gone; his voice is hard with suspicion. Without waiting to hear my answer, he heads for the spare room.

‘No!' I blurt out.

He stops on the landing. Turns. ‘No? I thought you wanted me to look at your computer.' I've made him angry. Anything that interrupts his sleep makes him angry.

I can't let him go in there until I've explained, or tried to. ‘I did a virtual tour of 11 Bentley Grove,' I say.

‘
What?
For fuck's sake, Connie.'

‘Listen to me. Just listen, okay? It's for sale, 11 Bentley Grove is for sale.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘I…I just know, all right?' I wipe my face. If I'm under attack, I can't cry. I have to concentrate on defending myself.

‘This is just…Connie, this is
so
fucked up, I don't know where to…' Kit pushes past me, tries to get back into bed.

I grab his arm to stop him. ‘Be angry later, but first listen to me. Okay? That's all I'm asking.'

He shakes me off him. I hate the way he's staring at me.

What do you expect him to do?

‘I'm listening,' he says quietly. ‘I've been listening to you talk about 11 Bentley Grove for six months. When's it going to stop?'

‘It's for sale,' I say, as calmly as I can. ‘I looked it up on Roundthehouses, a property website.'

‘When?'

‘Now, just…before.'

‘You waited until I was asleep?' Kit shakes his head in disgust.

‘There was a virtual tour, and I…I thought I'd…' It's better if I don't tell him what I was thinking. Not that he couldn't guess. ‘There was a woman, in the lounge, face down on the floor, blood all around her, a huge pool…' Describing it makes me feel as if I might throw up.

Kit takes a step back, looks at me as if he's never seen me before. ‘Let's get this straight: you went onto Roundthehouses, took a virtual tour of 11 Bentley Grove, which you happen to know is for sale, and saw a dead woman in one of the rooms?'

‘In the lounge.'

He laughs. ‘This is inventive, even for you,' he says.

‘It's still up on the screen,' I tell him. ‘Go and look if you don't believe me.' I'm shaking, freezing cold suddenly.

He's going to refuse. He's going to ignore what I've told him and go back to sleep, to punish me, and because it can't possibly be true. There can't be a dead woman lying in a sea of blood on the Roundthehouses website.

Kit sighs. ‘Okay,' he says. ‘I'll go and look. Evidently I'm as big an idiot as you think I am.'

‘I'm not making it up!' I shout after him. I want to go with him, but my body won't move.
Any second now he'll see what I saw
. I can't bear the waiting, knowing it's going to happen.

‘Great,' I hear Kit say to himself. Or maybe he's talking to me. ‘I've always wanted to look at a stranger's dishwasher in the middle of the night.'