Page 41 of The Girlfriend
W HAT WAS SHE GOING TO DO? HE WAS GETTING STRONGER BY THE day.
Soon he would follow her home and then it would be a matter of days before he bumped into Cherry and everything she’d said would blow apart.
Laura squirmed as she walked, her stomach so knotted she had to stop for a moment.
How had she thought she’d get away with it?
She must have been insane. Worry affected everything she did—she couldn’t work, eat, sleep, without being consumed with a growing panic.
Stopping outside Daniel’s building, she took a deep breath, then again and again, puffing out her cheeks, trying to get rid of the sick sensation in her stomach.
She held herself still for a moment, waiting for some respite, then let herself in.
Daniel wanted to move back to the family home when he came back from France, at least to begin with, which suited Laura just fine.
She liked having him around and had offered to go to his flat to get him some clothes.
He’d also asked if she could get his laptop.
She said hello to Ian, the porter, then checked Daniel’s mail locker—just a bit of junk.
Most of his mail had dried up some months before.
She went upstairs and opened the front door to a musty, stale smell, the summer sun having cooked the air inside many times over .
Going into the bedroom first, she knew vaguely from his instructions what he kept where: T-shirts, shorts, underwear, a jacket he particularly liked.
The room had a strange Marie Celeste feel to it, a glass of water left on the bedside table from the previous summer, a layer of dust on its surface, a pair of dirty socks on the floor.
They’d had a cleaner come in a couple of weeks after the accident, but Laura had only instructed her to empty the garbage and the fridge.
Everything else she had wanted left untouched, hopeful it was only a matter of days before Daniel came round.
She filled his clothes into a large bag he had stuffed at the top of the wardrobe.
He also wanted some of his study books, as he’d been accepted back into the hospital training program, a year deferred, but he said he’d get those himself when he got back in two weeks.
Only two weeks. What was she going to do?
The cold sweat broke out again and Laura hurried on, this time to the kitchen.
Medical books and papers were left on the breakfast bar, some open.
A newspaper from the previous August, yellowed in the sun.
Daniel’s laptop was also there, plugged in, and Laura was about to pick it up when she noticed its standby light winking.
He mustn’t have closed it down fully the weekend they left for Wales, instead just sandwiched the screen down.
It was probably best she did it, before carting the laptop over to the house.
Laura lifted the screen and it sprang back to life.
A visual reminder of Daniel’s life all those months ago, just before the accident.
One by one, she closed them down: the Guardian newspaper, a site selling fancy mountain bikes, the weather in Wales.
It felt odd, looking at a snapshot frozen in time, still lit up and yet forgotten about—and a lifetime ago.
A medical site and then something else. A Twitter account.
That’s odd, she thought; Daniel wasn’t on Twitter.
And then she saw. It was Cherry’s. The acidic bubbles erupted in her again.
Cherry was going to bump into him, Laura knew it.
She’d get back with him and there’d be no stopping her this time.
She’d take everything. Anxiety filled her, magnified by not knowing anything about Cherry the last few months.
Where was she? What had she been doing? Laura couldn’t help being drawn to her adversary, needing to know something, a battle-weary defendant’s need to position the enemy before the final defeat.
She looked at it again and something sank in that she hadn’t noticed before. The password box was filled with x’s. All she had to do was click on the “login” button .
She could find out anything she wanted, just by scrolling through. Her finger hovered over the key. It was wrong, an invasion of privacy, probably illegal.
And then she had an idea. She gasped and the adrenaline made her sit bolt upright.
It was brutal, disgusting, but it might get rid of her problem.
She sat for a moment, taking quick shallow breaths, not quite believing it.
Clicked. But she didn’t waste time reading the entries, after all. Instead she began to type.