Page 64 of The Girlfriend

I T WAS SIX A.M. DANIEL, FULLY DRESSED, LOOKED AT CHERRY SLEEPING in their bed, her shiny dark hair falling across her slightly flushed face.

Her arms were outside the duvet, the skin smooth and inviting.

He wondered whether to give her a kiss good-bye.

They’d had their first fight the night before and hadn’t yet made up, not properly.

And he still didn’t really know what it was all about.

The evening had started pleasantly enough.

While Cherry was at her mum’s flat, Daniel had had a call from his friend Will, delighted to find him not on a shift.

Will was looking for someone to celebrate with, as he’d just learned he’d gotten the promotion.

He invited himself round and they were waiting for Cherry to come back, so they could all go out together.

Daniel was aware none of his friends had seen Cherry since just before the accident; and now that they were back together, it would be good if they got to know each other a little better.

The guys grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge while they were waiting.

“Got to say, Dan, you’re pretty forgiving. Especially after the way she gave you the elbow,” said Will as he popped the top of his bottle.

Daniel remained noncommittal. He didn’t want to incriminate his mother by divulging the whole story, so he settled on a vague: “It wasn’t as bad as you think. ”

As was the way with men, Will didn’t dwell on the subject long. He clinked his friend’s bottle with his own. “Good luck to you,” he said without malice. “What do you fancy doing tonight? We could try out that new Japanese—you know, the one Theo’s friend owns. Cherry like Japanese?”

Daniel didn’t know. The front buzzer sounded, and answering, he saw on the screen the man with the van already unloading the boxes onto the street, ready to carry them upstairs.

“She’ll be back in a minute,” he said, “we’ll ask her.

” The man carried the boxes up the stairs and into the apartment.

He barely said hello and wasn’t interested in a cup of tea.

Daniel asked him where Cherry was and if she’d followed him back; the mover raised his eyebrows.

“Hope not, mate. She slap you about like she does her old lady?”

Daniel’s mouth dropped, and realizing he’d said too much, the man was in a hurry to leave.

“Got to get going, if that’s all right, mate. You got the cash?”

“Hold on, what did you mean, ‘slap about’?”

“Now I ain’t getting into no domestic. If you don’t mind, I’ll get paid and be on me way.

” He stuck out his hand stubbornly and Daniel could see he wasn’t going to be drawn further.

He paid him his two hundred quid and the man was gone.

The remark left Daniel with a sense of unease, although he thought that the man must be mistaken somehow. He rejoined Will in the living room.

“Everything all right?”

Daniel was quick to smile. “All good. So, are you getting your own office now?”

As he listened to Will talk about his job, he kept an ear out for Cherry’s return.

About twenty minutes later, he heard the key in the lock.

The living-room door swung open. She looked tense, strained, and not pleased to see Will.

Daniel jumped up to give her a kiss, which she accepted on her cheek. He turned to indicate their guest.

“Will’s got the new job.”

“Oh, right. ”

“You know, Risk Engineering Manager.”

“You said.” She took a breath, knew she had to try harder. “Congratulations!”

Will raised his bottle. “Cheers!”

Daniel put his arm around her. “He came round to see if we wanted to go and celebrate with him. Fancy coming out for some dinner?”

“Um . . . I’ve got a terrible headache, but you two go and celebrate.”

Embarrassed, Will took a swig of his drink. He obviously felt he’d stumbled into some sort of lovers’ tiff.

Cherry stood there for a moment, aware of what she’d done, but unable or unwilling to make amends. She felt like she was suffocating and needed to get out of the room. “I’m just going to get changed.”

After a split second, Daniel scrambled after her and followed her to the bedroom.

“Is everything okay?”

Cherry tugged off her tights and threw them on the floor. She lay down on the bed. “Fine.”

“Your mum okay?”

“Yes, she’s good.”

She was obviously blocking him. He didn’t know how to bring up what the moving man had said, and instinctively knew it wouldn’t go down well. “It doesn’t look like everything’s okay,” he said gently.

“Honestly, everything’s fine. It’s just this headache.”

“I’ll tell Will I can’t go out. Make something up—”

“Just go,” she snapped.

There was a silence.

Cherry rolled onto her side, forced a smile. “I’m sorry, it’s just been a long day, that’s all. But you go out,” she added hurriedly, “I think I might just try and get an early night.”

Daniel went to the restaurant alone with Will, telling him something about Cherry having a migraine.

It had been a bit of a halfhearted affair and he got the feeling Will was regretting asking him to come out.

Daniel had brushed off his query of whether “everything was all right back there,” and considered calling Cherry, but he thought she might be asleep.

When he got back around ten-thirty, she was.

Just like now. He looked at her beautiful face once again, the eyelashes dark against her cheek, and decided a kiss might wake her. He grabbed Rufus, who’d snuck in behind him, and had a tendency to jump on the bed and lick your face. Then he crept out of the room and went to work.

* * *

Cherry woke at eighty-thirty with a nagging thought, like a fly that buzzed around the room before going quiet; then just when you’d forgotten about it, it started up again.

Then it came back to her. She’d behaved stupidly the night before and she cringed as she thought of how she’d made up that lame excuse for Daniel’s friend.

What was his name? Will. She’d met him a couple of times before, many months ago.

He was okay, but a bit pleased with himself, a trait that irritated her.

Just the same, she should have been charming; she should have gone out to dinner with them both.

It had gotten awkward with Daniel and she’d tried to make amends, but all she could think about at the time was her mother, what had happened.

She suddenly curled up in a tight ball of pain and guilt.

I hit my mum. It made her feel sick with guilt; but, she thought fiercely, Wendy was wrong about why she was with Daniel.

She loved him. It was just good luck that he was wealthy.

Good luck that she’d had a hand in, yes, but wasn’t there a famous saying that you make your own luck?

Cherry cringed as she went over the events in her mind again.

The thing she’d tried to hide for so long—the horrible, shameful fact that she was ashamed of her own mother—had come out, and all because Laura had been going round saying stuff, hurtful stuff, to Wendy.

The anger rose up again: God, how I hate her.

There was one point last night when she’d almost broken.

She’d wanted to tell Daniel everything: how she’d manipulated him by pretending she didn’t know he was alive, what she’d said and done to Laura to teach her a lesson, and how Laura wouldn’t just leave her alone, but she knew that she couldn’t.

Not ever. She’d sent him off to some restaurant and had lain in bed, wondering if he’d call before she fell asleep.

At some point, he’d come back and had gotten into bed without waking her, and had done the same in reverse this morning.

Restless, she jumped out of bed. Those old married couples in the news who always said never to go to sleep without resolving an argument were right.

She shouldn’t have left it to fester while they slept.

She had to make amends and decided to surprise him when he came home with a nice meal.

A cliché, she knew, but it would work. She wandered into the kitchen and pulled down some of the cookbooks she’d bought from the local bookshop for their kitchen, flicking through the pages.

Rufus barked at her and she picked him up and let him help choose.

They settled on a tagine. Exotic enough to show she’d made an effort, but actually pretty easy, judging by the instructions.

That decided, she started making coffee, and the fly buzzed inside her head again.

The Laura fly. It made her skittish and she hated the feeling.

If only she could swat it, crush it, wipe its entrails into a piece of paper towel, and then chuck it away.

Maybe someone had done it for her. Partially amused with the idea, she turned on the TV, looking at the breakfast news for signs of an accident: a woman who’d put a foot in the road a second too soon and was pancaked, or who’d been knocked off the platform on the underground.

It wasn’t likely. Laura generally didn’t take the tube.

Something had to happen to her. It was so effortless, really, just a tiny thing could upset the equilibrium.

Intrigued by the simplicity, she decided to Google it: How to cause an accidental death .

She opened up the laptop and started to type in the search engine, when her fingers froze over the keyboard.

Jeez, that was close. Cherry knew that it was impossible to completely eradicate a browsing history.

Thank God she’d only gotten to “cause.” It wasn’t like she was actually planning on doing anything.

But just in case, she closed down the computer and decided to have a little fun with her imagination instead .

Lightning . . . bit difficult to control. Being stung by a bee . . . maybe Laura was the type to suffer from an anaphylactic reaction. Could you train bees somehow? Maybe you could put something on the skin that would attract them.