Page 71 of The Girlfriend

D ANIEL GROANED IN HIS SLEEP AND TURNED HIS FACE FROM SIDE TO side.

“Go away,” he mumbled, but Rufus kept on licking him. Somewhere, deep in his unconsciousness, he knew it was the puppy, but he couldn’t seem to wake. He was also very aware of this fact, and it made him want to fight against it, so he mentally forced his way upward through the fog.

Even as he lay on the pillow, blinking in the dark, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming.

Rufus was delighted to see him awake, but Daniel’s head was pounding.

He felt groggy and could feel himself slipping between waking and sleeping.

Maybe he was coming down with something, but it didn’t feel like that; it felt as if he’d been drugged and he couldn’t understand how that could be.

He wondered where Cherry was. A light was left on in the hallway, but nothing in the rest of the apartment.

Surely, she hadn’t gone out, not at this time.

Checking all the rooms, with the puppy scampering after him, just in case she’d fallen asleep or something, he started to worry when she wasn’t anywhere in the flat.

He located his phone and called her, but it went straight to voice mail.

“Cherry, where are you? It’s late and I’m worried. Call me as soon as you get this.”

He tried to think. Something was most definitely not right, but his brain wasn’t letting him work it out.

He considered calling the police, but first thought there might be someone else who would know where she was.

There was Wendy, but somehow he doubted she’d know.

Still, there was no one else, so he picked up his phone again and then he noticed it: an unread text.

Thinking it was Cherry, he quickly went into the menu, but it was from his mother: Great, see you in a few minutes. X

He didn’t know what she meant. It had been sent about forty minutes ago.

Daniel struggled to understand. He thought his mum had gone to bed.

She hadn’t replied to his voice mail. So, why was she seemingly expecting him?

Tonight? He called her phone, but it rang out.

Odd. And where is Cherry ? None of it made any sense.

Who was his mum responding to? In a rush, an answer came to him.

He stared at the phone in confusion. Did Cherry go there?

Why?

Various unwelcome answers came to him, but none of them were fully formed; all of them were ominous. Quickly he grabbed his jacket and keys and left the apartment.

The chill air was helping, he thought, as he walked rapidly down the street, then felt an urge to run, even though his whole body was leaden with fatigue.

His urgency was fueling a growing panic, or was it the other way around?

If he could keep up this pace, he’d be there in five minutes.

Off the main streets, the sidewalks were empty.

Security lights flashed on outside sporadic houses as he raced past them.

By the time he got to his parents’ house, his limbs were aching and he knew he was under the influence of some sort of soporific drug.

There was only one possible explanation as to how he could have ingested it and this realization shocked him.

Cherry did this me. However, the question that frightened him most, the question that he was now starting to dread, was Why?

He turned up the path to number 38 and rang the doorbell.

A thread of light was barely visible through the drawn curtains on the hallway window to his right.

He stood back and looked up at the upstairs windows, which were dark and lifeless, and then he rang again, but this time didn’t wait.

Instead he took his keys from his pocket.

Unlocking the door, he stepped inside, listening carefully for sounds of his mother, but it was silent.

“Hello?” he called. “It’s me, Daniel.”

There was no reply. Slowly he made his way through the house, to the living room first. The TV was on and Moses was half asleep, lying lazily on the sofa.

Next he went into the dim kitchen. Almost as soon as he walked in, he felt the cool breeze; and then across the room, he saw the open back doors and through them, in the garden, his mother and Cherry.

At first, he didn’t understand what they were doing. Cherry had her back to him, and his mother was upset about something, but although he could hear voices, he couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying.

* * *

In the soft darkness, with the six-foot-high walls surrounding the garden, Cherry had a sense of privacy, of being cocooned in their own shadowy little bubble.

It would be so easy. No one was around. She glanced up at the sky and pretended to admire the moon, clouds scudding across, but really she was checking the windows of the neighboring houses .

“A new moon,” she said lightly.

No lights on either side, not for as far as she could see. They were completely alone in a place outside time or space.

It could so easily happen. Laura comes out here to the garden, goes a bit close to the hole, stumbles, slips, and falls. She shuddered. It really was too dangerous, she thought disapprovingly.

Cherry ran back through the evidence in her mind.

She knew little of crime scenes, and it would’ve been helpful to research in advance, but she’d seen enough shows to know what to do.

Daniel was asleep, so her alibi with him was secure.

In the house, she’d touched the doorbell, the inside front-door handle, the fridge door, the juice bottle and glass, the key and the handle on the bifold door. That was it.

She remembered it all with the utmost clarity and knew with absolute certainty she could replay every footstep to its exact position if she went back in there.

It was as if she had been watching herself move, as if she wasn’t really there at all, and that other self would make sure she left safely and without any trace.

She glanced up at the windows again. Black sleeping sockets, each and every one, curtains drawn as if to deliberately keep them ignorant. No evil in these high-class streets.

A fox slunk in from the back fence, pushing past one of the panels that looked as if it was broken.

For a microsecond she wondered if it was her fox, from Tooting, before realizing that was ridiculous.

Before the fox had crossed the garden, Cherry raised her arms and, opening her mouth in a silent roar, ran, like an enraged animal, at Laura, whose face suddenly contorted with stupefied terror as she instinctively staggered back, away from the attack.

“No!” a voice shouted, and Cherry turned in shock to see Daniel bursting through the back door. She lost her balance at the same time Laura flung out her arms in desperation, scrabbling at whatever she could touch.

Laura was screaming now. In fact, the screams kept coming from her throat as she fell to the ground; the plastic barriers flying away from her; she didn’t want to die; she couldn’t fail; she flung her arms violently around, feeling the weight of Cherry against her and she shoved; then, hands and face in the dirt, she tried to crawl toward the house, still screaming in terror; then she heard a strange, distant thud and Daniel had his arms around her and, sobbing, she clung to him, burying herself into him, her mind blank with terror, like an animal or a small child cowering in her son’s lap, terrified that Cherry was still coming, but somehow she didn’t; and as the seconds passed, she began to understand what the sound had been.