Page 6 of The Dead Ex

The woman swivels round. ‘We were hoping you could tellus.’

‘Why should I know?’

‘Come on, Vicki.’ It’s the detective this time. Voice silky smooth. Reeking of suspicion. ‘Mrs Goudman tells us that she saw you near their home in Kingston just before Christmas.’ He gets out a notepad. ‘ “Standing at the gate and staring at my house.” Those were her exact words.’

‘I had an appointment with a consultant,’ I say hotly.

His eyes narrow. ‘In London?That’s a long way to go.’

I shrug. ‘The outskirts, actually. He wasn’t far from my old house, so I walked past. I felt nostalgic. Anyone would be.’

I note a swift flicker of sympathy in the policewoman’s face.

‘They’d dug up my roses and replaced them with ahideous rockery,’ I add. I’ve never cared for rockeries. Too cemetery-like.

‘You can prove that?’

‘The roses?’

‘Your visit to your“consultant”.’ His voice is tight, as if he thinks I’m taking the mickey. I’m not. I’m still livid about those roses. ‘Peace’, they were called. A beautiful creamy petal with a to-die-for smell.

I reach for my address book and scribble down a name and number. ‘There. Ring that.’

‘We will.’

‘The lounge is through here,’ I say, anxious in case they make too close an inspection of another room.

We go into the small lounge with its duck-egg blue throw on the sofa (just like my studio).

‘No television?’ the woman remarks, looking around.

‘No.’

She raises an eyebrow and then hands me a card. I want to turn it down, as she had done earlier to me.

‘If you do hear from your ex-husband, please get in touch immediately.’

I nod. Vine shakes my hand. They go. I double lock the door. Put thesafety chain up. Run to my bedroom.

Then I pick up the phone and dial the number, which is firmly engraved in my head.

‘This is David. You know what to do.’

My ex-husband’s voice is deep. Dark. Comforting, despite everything, in its familiarity.

‘Please answer,’ I choke. ‘It’s me.’

2

Scarlet

8 March 2007

What a clever, grown-up girl! That’s what Mum was always saying. They didn’t need anyone else. Just the two of them. They were a team. Especially when it came to the game.

There were three types: the swing, the see-saw, and hide and seek. Out of the three, Scarlet preferred the last.

‘Sometimes, love, we have to do the others too,’ Mum would tell her in that sing-songvoice that came from a place called Whales.