Page 51 of We Live Here Now

50

Emily

“Sally.”

Merrily Watkins comes in to refill her wineglass—her flushed face, red jumper, and burgundy wine clashing and yet making her a portrait of earthy joy—as I’m getting Sally some painkillers and a glass of water. “You’re looking well.”

“I wish I felt it. Awful headache.”

Laughter comes from the hallway, followed by Joe and Iso tumbling into the kitchen, Iso leaning her head against his arm, before they high-five each other.

“We beat Freddie and the vicar three times. Shots for shots,” she says, breathless. “They have had to drink a lot.”

“We didn’t beat them, we annihilated them.” Joe grins at Iso. “You don’t look like a pool shark, but you have the moves.”

“All that wasted time at university had to pay off somehow, right, Em?”

“I guess so.”

Iso’s glowing, her eyes sparkling, in a much better mood than when she arrived, and I’m sure her flush is as much about Joe as it is from wine, and when he winks at her I have a sudden tiny twinge of surprising envy.

“I’m not feeling so great.” Sally puts the glass on the side. “I think I’m going to head home. Do you mind? Sure you can get a lift back from someone.”

“Hey.” Joe’s immediately all concern as he comes closer and studies her face. “You do look pale. Come on, I’ll get our coats.”

“You stay and have some fun.”

“No arguments.” He kisses her forehead. “I’m taking you home.” He looks at me. “It’s been great, Emily. Thanks for having us.”

I help them with their coats and see them to the front door, wondering if Sally will glance upward as we go past the stairs, but she doesn’t, instead leaning into her husband, as if she’s suddenly exhausted. There’s something so touching about it. They may have an unusual relationship, but the love between them is clear.

I stay in the doorway to wave them off, and I’m sure I hear her mutter something about how strange she feels, or how strange it was to be in the house, or maybe something akin to both.

They’re getting in the car when Merrily joins me, holding out a mug. “I saw you weren’t drinking,” she says. “Thought you might like a cuppa.”

“That’s so kind. Thank you.”

She lights a cigarette and I hug the warm mug and we watch as Sally and Joe drive away.

“Me and her were best friends when we were young. For a bit. Hard to believe, looking at us now. And it’s hard to believe that those two are still together, with the way she was at the start. I’ve heard of mellowing with age,” Merrily says, exhaling smoke and misty breath, “but she’d have had your pretty friend’s eyes out just for looking at Joe back then.”

“Sally?” I’m surprised. “But she’s so chill about the girls he paints.”

“She might be now. She pretended to be, sure. She wanted to be. And maybe at first, when he was adoring her, she was cool. But she was too naturally insecure. And it’s not like he was promising monogamy. Love, maybe. I think he did—and does—emotionally faithfully love her. But sex? You’ve seen him. That’s like breathing to men like Joe. Sally couldn’t deal with it. God, she would lose her shit. Get jealous of every woman he spoke to.”

“That bad?” I ask. After finding her upstairs, I want to know everything there is to know about Sally.

“She even got jealous of me once.” She snorts a laugh. “Mad as a hatter. I could never talk her down. Got fed up of trying. It got to the point where women stopped talking to him and he stopped talking to them, around her at any rate. And then there was that lovely Georgina Usher.” She leans against the wall of the house and sniffs in the cold. “Sally drove her out of town completely. She just up and vanished one night. She was an artist. Taught in the school part-time. Very different from Sally. Sally back then anyway. Very sixties. Wild. Free. Dark eyes, dark hair.”

It’s freezing outside, but I don’t care, absorbed in this glimpse into the past. “Was she close with Joe, this Georgina?”

“Georgina had been to a couple of the art classes Joe ran here at Larkin Lodge, but as far as I know, nothing more. But that was enough for Sally. She was convinced they were doing something or that Georgina was trying to seduce Joe. I know she threatened her at the school. And then she told whoever would listen that Georgina slept with married men and danced naked at a bar in town on weekends. Ridiculous accusations, but the intent was to cause just enough gossip to get her sacked. When none of that worked to get rid of her, Sally saw her in the liquor store in the village buying beer and was convinced it was for Joe. For some clandestine meeting. I’m pretty sure Sally had taken to following her by then. Our friendship was pretty much over because it was all she talked about, and Pete and me were getting serious. I remember Sally looked terrible by that point. Thinner than ever. Not sleeping. It was eating her up.”

“What happened?” I hear a scuttering sound overhead, birds in the eaves, maybe as impatient as me to hear the rest of the story.

“She walked straight into the shop. Took the beer bottles out of Georgina’s hands, put them back on the shelf, and said very calmly and coolly—in front of Peter Lamb, the shopkeeper—that if Georgina didn’t leave Joe alone, she’d slit her throat.”

“Wow.” I stare at Merrily. “That’s quite something.”

“Yes, it is. But that was enough for Georgina. No one saw her again. She dropped in to say goodbye to Joe—and probably tell him to get rid of his crazy girlfriend—and that was that.”

“Did she move to Taunton to be closer to the school?”

“Oh, they never saw her again either.” She stubs her cigarette out on the gravel and pockets the butt. “Vanished in the night. I thought that fiasco would be the end of Sally and Joe—because who’d stay with her after that?—and I wasn’t the only one who thought it would be the best thing for both of them. I think Sally’s mum was ready to pack her off to her aunt over in New Zealand to start afresh, she was so worried about her. But we were all wrong. Within two weeks they were engaged, and maybe he got her some professional help because she stopped with all that jealousy stuff as far as I could tell. Never showed it again, that’s for sure. I guess they figured their shit out. But I never wanted to be friends with her again. Leopards and spots.” She looks at me, wry. “She’ll always be crazy Sally Freemantle to me.”

She turns to go inside, but I don’t follow her. My head is a whir as I watch the mist spilling over the wall, a tide creeping in to drown the house in the night.

Vanished in the night. Last seen in this house. Did Sally kill her? Did she kill her in this house?

Don’t do it , I tell myself. Don’t go back down that path. The room upstairs is fine. There is no ghost. You’ve got bigger problems .

And I almost do it, I almost put it right out of my head, but then a thought strikes me and it makes me catch my breath.

Sally Freemantle . That’s what Merrily called her. Not Sally Carter. She used Sally’s maiden name.

F R E E M. The writing in the mirror steam. It wasn’t Free me at all. It was Freemantle . That’s what the haunting was trying to spell on the bathroom mirror. The name of their killer.