Before I Let You In (7 page)

‘What, the kids?’ Fran grinned. ‘The secret is to stop caring about the things that aren’t really important. Are my surfaces always fingerprint-free? No. Is there an empty milk carton back in the fridge? Probably. Did we have fish finger sandwiches for tea twice this week? Absolutely. But the kids had clean clothes on every day and they were fed and watered. I’ve learned not to worry too much about the stuff in between. I’ll have a perfect home when they’ve moved out.’ She snorted. ‘If they move out.’

‘I reckon Eleanor could learn something from you.’ Bea had always envied Fran’s simple approach to life. Her sister had never worried about whether her clothes were bang on trend, or cared about being at the top of the career ladder. All she ever wanted was to enjoy her family and be happy, and as a result it seemed as though she was. Bea didn’t necessarily want her sister’s life, but it would be nice to feel as content with the one she had.

Fran snorted. ‘Don’t say that in front of Karen, will you?’

Bea raised her eyebrows. ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing, just that she’s hardly my biggest fan, is she? I mean, she’s always seen herself as more of a sister to you than I am.’

‘That’s not true!’ Bea’s response was a little too fast. ‘Karen loves you, she’s just a bit intense sometimes. It’s probably the psychiatrist thing.’ She wondered if her words sounded as forced to Fran as they did to her. If Fran noticed, she didn’t pass comment.

‘Yeah, well I guess she’s got issues of her own.’

‘What issues?’ asked Bea, surprised.

There was a huge crash from the living room, followed by two voices shouting, ‘Mum!’ in unison.

‘Oh shit. Look, wait there, I’d better go and see what’s going on.’

Fran disappeared, leaving Bea staring into her coffee cup and wondering what kind of issues her sister thought Karen was dealing with. After a minute, her sister returned and began rummaging around in the cupboard under the sink.

‘Sorry, Bea, they’ve made a right mess in there, knocked over the bloody side table. I’m going to be scrubbing milk out of the sofa all night or it’ll stink like a drain.’

‘No problem.’ Bea swilled down the dregs of her drink and put her mug in the sink. ‘I’ll bail out. I’d rather watch my nails dry than watch you clean.’

‘You’re too kind.’ Fran screwed up her nose.

‘What are sisters for?’

12

Karen

Michael had arrived home that evening brandishing a bunch of flowers like a fencing sword. They’d chatted about work, and Karen had filled him in on as much as she could about her caseload without breaking her monk-like vow of silence. Three times she’d almost told him about seeing Adam with the mystery woman and three times she’d thought better of it. He’d looked exhausted; his complexion was sallow and he downed the glass of wine she had poured for his meal before she’d even dished up. The last people he’d want to talk about were her friends and their marriage problems.

‘Tough weekend?’ she asked, snaking her fingers over his shoulders, kneading out the knots in his muscles through his shirt. He nodded but said nothing, just leaned his head back so his forehead nearly touched her chin. She bent forward and kissed it gently.

Michael turned to her and buried his face in her stomach. She kissed the top of his head, then knelt down so they were face to face and kissed him harder on the lips. This was how it was between them: they let passion wash away the pain rather than talking through it. She would have laughed had it not been so pitiful – a psychiatrist who couldn’t get her own boyfriend to talk about his problems. She recognised the irony, but to push him would be to push him away, and she’d missed him too much to risk an argument tonight.

They took their troubles to the bedroom and cast them away along with their clothes. The sex was rougher, more urgent than usual. It must have been a bad weekend.

By the time they got round to eating, the chicken was tough and dry, so Michael called for takeaway and got dressed to go and pick it up from their favourite place a few miles out of town.

While he was gone, Karen made herself a coffee and sank herself down on the sofa to read a magazine – one of those real-life ‘my mother stole my husband’ types that she swore she only bought for the quizzes.

The downstairs of Karen’s home was modern – sleek lines and chrome kitchen appliances – but it could hardly be called cosy. Everything she owned was a fingerprint hazard, and the off-spec glass patio doors had been a nightmare to find blinds for – even more so considering she never closed them.

The darkness beyond the doors gave the impression that there was nothing there, as though the world began and ended with her house. Silly really, as she was surrounded by other houses; they just weren’t packed together like soldiers in a row. When the darkness was this thick, she felt completely cut off from everyone else. It was one of the reasons she’d chosen the house in the first place: you could be surrounded by people and yet still be on your own.

A thump against the back kitchen door pulled Karen’s attention from her magazine, but only briefly. That was quick; he’d obviously forgotten something. She wondered why he’d been so uptight when he’d arrived home. Had they fought? Did she know about Karen, or suspect? She assumed he wouldn’t be back if his wife knew about her, unless she’d kicked him out.

Lost in thoughts of Michael’s marriage ending, it took her a minute to realise he hadn’t come in. He couldn’t have forgotten his keys; he’d locked the door behind him and she’d heard his car leave. She reached over and cracked the front room curtain open. The car wasn’t on the drive.

‘Hurry up, Michael, I’m bloody starving,’ she muttered to herself, picking up her magazine again.

A second noise, like a short blast of hail against the door, pulled Karen to her feet. She dropped her magazine on the sofa, moved towards the kitchen and peered through the window, greeted by nothing but blackness. Fumbling with her keys, she pulled open the kitchen door and stared out into the night. There was not a movement or sound anywhere. As she went to close the door again, she glanced down. A jumble of items lay beneath the step: a pair of boots she hadn’t worn for years, a jumper, a necklace. Her heart pounded as she picked them up, noticing a card that Michael had sent her for her birthday a year ago, and one of her lipsticks. How had these things got out here? The last time she’d seen any of them they had been in her bedroom, the boots in the wardrobe, the card in a box under her bed.

She scooped up the items and locked the door behind her, throwing one last look into the darkness. The garden was silent; no telltale sniggering or thud of footsteps to indicate that this was the work of bored teenagers.

Shaking slightly, she deposited the items on the sofa and crossed the room to check that Michael really had locked the front door behind him. He had, but she opened it now, staring down the empty street, dimly lit by the eco lamps the council had replaced the once harsh street lights with. Who had thrown those things?

She was about to lock the front door again when she noticed the piece of paper sellotaped to the stained glass. She pulled it off and slammed the door shut, turning her key in the lock, then switched on the hallway light. Her hands trembled slightly as she unfolded the plain white notepaper and looked down at the words written in neat cursive handwriting.

I know what you’re doing. I know what you’ve done.

‘You’re sure these things were inside the house? You hadn’t thrown them away? It’s probably kids going through the bins to try and scare you.’

When Michael had returned, he’d found Karen sitting on the sofa staring at the collection of belongings she’d found at the back door, the letter laid out on the cushions next to her.

‘I hadn’t thrown any of them away. They were in the house, in my bedroom. Someone’s been here, someone’s been through my things!’

‘We should call the police.’ Michael picked up the phone. ‘If you’re sure someone’s been in here, then it should be reported.’

‘No,’ Karen replied quickly. If the police came, they would have too many questions. They would want to know who Michael was; they would blame this on his wife, probably even pay her a visit. Everything would be ruined. Besides, she knew who was responsible for this, and it had nothing to do with her lover and everything to do with her. She could hear those very same words on a loop in her mind – ‘
I kept waiting for a phone call or for her to turn up, to say “I know what you’re doing. I know what you’ve done.”’
This was about someone else’s lover. This was Jessica.

13

Eleanor

‘Wow, this place looks great! I mean, not that it doesn’t usually, but …’ Bea let her sentence trail off and Eleanor smiled and waved a hand.

‘It’s okay. I know that the redistribution of toys and general crap hasn’t been my strong point lately, but – drumroll, please …’ She paused for maximum effect, and Bea drummed her hands on the glass coffee table. ‘I got a cleaner! And please stop that now, you’re getting fingerprints on my nice clean glass.’

‘Oooh, did you win the lottery?’

‘It’s not as expensive as you might think,’ Eleanor replied, handing Bea her green tea and placing Karen’s coffee on a coaster. Get her, she was even using coasters again these days! It was amazing how having the house clean encouraged her to keep it that way – suddenly chucking a few things in the washing machine and rinsing off the breakfast dishes didn’t seem like climbing a mountain. ‘And anyway, I switched my energy providers and cancelled Netflix and my gym membership – oh don’t look like that, Karen, I wasn’t using it anyway – and saved myself nearly sixty quid a month. That pretty much pays for her to do a couple of hours a week. You wouldn’t believe what she can get done with no kids to look after. Well, okay, you two probably
would
believe it.’ Eleanor wondered for a second why she felt like she had to justify how she was spending her own money. ‘She’s a bloody lifesaver.’

‘So what have you been doing with all your new-found free time?’ Karen asked. Was it Eleanor’s imagination, or was her voice a shade cooler than it had been earlier? Surely someone who could do exactly as she pleased the whole time didn’t begrudge her a few hours a week?

‘I, um …’ What was wrong with her? She’d been steeped in desperation to tell her friends about her new venture – after all, they were the ones who had encouraged her to take back something for herself. So why did she suddenly feel as though her tongue had been pasted to the bottom of her mouth? ‘I took your advice,’ she said, putting extra emphasis on
your
, as if trying to remind them that what she was about to say was their idea. ‘So whilst Noah was napping and Lesley was ironing,
I
was putting together a plan. A business plan, I suppose. I’m thinking of going freelance.’

In the silence that followed, Eleanor realised why she’d felt so nervous about saying out loud what it was she’d been doing since their last meeting. She’d thought about little else ever since the idea had taken root in her mind and spread like ivy, obscuring everything that had seemed so important the previous week, yet she’d not actually told anyone about it. She hadn’t even said anything else to Adam after his disparaging remarks about having her hands full already. Maybe her hands wouldn’t be so full if he lifted a finger every now and then.
If it were that easy to start your own business,
she could imagine him saying,
everyone would do it.
You’ve done very well at work, but do you really think you have what it takes to get a whole marketing business off the ground? And where are you proposing we find the start-up costs?

‘That’s fantastic.’ At least Bea sounded enthusiastic, even as she reached for her mobile phone, probably to check on more interesting people. Karen had stayed oddly silent, and Eleanor wondered what was wrong with her today.

‘What does Adam think about it all?’ When her friend finally spoke, her words were tinged with an inexplicable hostility. ‘His wife the entrepreneur, and this lifesaving cleaner?’

Eleanor’s throat constricted, desperate not to allow the words she really wanted to say to spill out unguarded.
What is your problem today?

‘Oh, I haven’t mentioned it to him yet. I wanted to tell him about it properly when I had it all planned out. You know what he’s like, glass half empty and all that.’

‘He must love the idea of a cleaner, though?’ Karen pushed. ‘The house looking so immaculate and you getting some rest?’

Eleanor threw Bea a look, one that said ‘What’s wrong with her?’ in the hopes of a conspiratorial shrug or grimace to tell her she wasn’t imagining Karen’s sudden change in attitude. But Bea was tapping at the screen of her mobile, her mouth curled in a half-smile at whatever smartarse status she was posting. Eleanor was instantly annoyed. When did it become socially acceptable to sit in someone’s house and hold conversations with people not even in the room? How would they react if she got out a book and started reading it in front of them?

She was being unfair, of course; she was just as bad when her mind was a million miles from reality. It was just that right now she needed Bea to leap to her defence, to tell Karen to stop being so confrontational. Presuming of course she wasn’t imagining the sting in the other woman’s tone.

‘I haven’t told him about that either,’ she replied, trying to keep her voice breezy. ‘Let him think I’ve suddenly found the key to domestic goddessness. I’ll tell him when I’m ready. Like when I win the small business of the year award or something.’

‘Is there anything I can help with?’

‘It’s still just a bullet list at the moment. I spent most of my time researching the technical aspects – tax, website design, market research and all that boring stuff. I figured I didn’t want to get carried away with the fun bits until I was sure I could handle the serious stuff.’

‘Just make sure you’re not taking on too much,’ Karen warned, sounding much more like herself.