up on us. And he’ll drag you into it. He’ll get his version out there. Hysterical men-hating women, that’s what we’ll be.’ I dropped my head into my hands.
‘You can’t let him get away with this,’ Scarlett protested. ‘Bastards like him, we need to stand up to them.’
‘Let somebody else do it,’ I said, on the verge of tears. ‘I haven’t got it in me, Scarlett. He’ll win and then I’ll wind up feeling worse. If that’s possible.’
She looked mutinous, but she backed off. ‘You’re coming back to mine, then,’ she said decisively. ‘I’m going upstairs to pack a bag for you. No arguments.’
I sat there, stunned. The wreckage of my home felt like a dark stain inside me, spreading like dirty oil over a warehouse floor, tainting everything in its path. I loved this house and what I’d made of it. And he’d trashed it without a care, all because I’d wounded his precious male pride. How could I have missed this coiled rage lurking inside him? How could I have loved someone with this darkness at his heart?
Eventually, Scarlett reappeared, looking shaken. ‘I sorted out some clothes, and packed up your laptop and all the papers on your desk. Let’s go.’
Numb, I followed her out to the car, pointlessly locking the door behind me. I let Scarlett drive. Traumatised as I was, I still wanted to survive and I knew I wasn’t safe behind the wheel in that state.
Back at the hacienda, she dosed me up with tea and Valium and packed me off to bed. I slept on and off for the best part of twenty hours, and when I re-emerged into consciousness, I felt almost human.
I found Leanne and Scarlett in the kitchen, diaries open on the worktop as they went through their plans for the week. Scarlett leapt up and swept me into her arms. ‘How’re you doing, babe?’
‘Crap. But I’ll live,’ I said, disentangling myself and heading for the coffee machine. ‘I think I need to get a locksmith over there to change the locks. The bastard didn’t have keys before but he might have helped himself to my spares.’
‘No need,’ Leanne said briskly. ‘It’s all sorted.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I got a locksmith out there soon as we got back yesterday,’ Scarlett said. ‘And a professional cleaning crew. You won’t have to look at the state he left your place in again.’
That’s when I finally did cry over what Pete the bastard had done. Looking back at it now, I do take solace from the fact that it was kindness rather than malice that provoked that response.
Pete had done everything in his power to make me doubt the reality of Scarlett’s friendship. If I’d harboured any doubts, they died that morning. I knew Scarlett and I had the kind of bond that makes women friends for life.
I only wish we’d had longer to enjoy it.
25
Vivian wasn’t much of a homemaker, but even so, she understood the violation Pete Matthews had inflicted on Stephanie. It sounded as if this was a man with a serious axe to grind. The only question was whether he could bear a grudge for four years. ‘I get why you maybe thought going to the police was pointless. But you must have wanted to make him pay for what he did to you?’ she said.
Stephanie sighed. ‘To be honest, what I wanted was to have him gone from my life. I didn’t want to do anything that would prolong my connection to him. It was everybody else that wanted to avenge what he’d done to me. Scarlett, Leanne, Maggie, my other friends. My pal Mike wanted to get a bunch of the lads together and go round to Pete’s. Trash the place and beat the shit out of him. But I put the blocks on that.’ She shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t have made me feel any better. I was determined not to be dragged down to his level. Can you understand that?’
Vivian wasn’t sure whether any law enforcement officer would have felt kinship with Stephanie on that one. ‘I strive for justice in my job,’ she said. ‘I don’t think people who do bad things should walk away scot free.’
‘But shouldn’t the victims have some say in outcomes? I wanted to draw a line under what he did to me. I didn’t want to think about him for one second more than I had to. Any connection to him would have been a bad deal for me. That was my thinking at the time. As it turned out, I probably made the wrong decision. But it was the choice I needed to make then and there for the sake of my own well-being.’
‘I take it that wasn’t the last you heard from Pete?’ Now Vivian could explore what interested her – whether Pete Matthews was the kind of man who would cling to his sense of being wronged down the years.
Stephanie shook her head ruefully. ‘Far from it. I thought he’d vented his feelings and I’d never hear from him again. But he apparently thought we still had unfinished business. After I’d been at Scarlett’s for a couple of days, he started texting me. It was as if nothing had happened. He was talking about work, when he’d be finished for the day, and where should we meet for dinner?’
‘That’s very weird.’
‘You think so?’
Vivian wondered if Stephanie was quite as balanced as she appeared. Not to think Pete Matthews’ follow-up was weird seemed perverse to her. ‘You don’t?’
‘Stop and think for a moment. He didn’t know I’d seen him leave the house with the door standing open. For all he knew, I hadn’t been back there. I assumed he was fishing to see whether I was aware my house had been wrecked and, if so, whether I held him responsible. I mean, he had to be at least a little bit worried that I was going to report him to the police.’
Again, Stephanie had caught her on the back foot. This was one seriously smart woman, Vivian thought. Her stories might be long-winded, but along the way, a lot of useful points got made. ‘That makes sense,’ she acknowledged. ‘What did you do about these texts?’
‘I ignored them. I didn’t read most of them. At first I deleted them, but Scarlett pointed out that if I did have to go to the police, they would be evidence of him hassling me. So I kept them on my phone but I didn’t pay attention to them. Then he started emailing me as well. These hurt, bewildered emails, acting like he didn’t know why I was ignoring him when his only crime was to love me.’ She rolled her eyes and groaned. ‘I’m sure you’ve seen the kind of thing.’
Vivian nodded. She didn’t think it would be helpful to remark that generally she’d viewed them in the aftermath of violent death. ‘I get the picture. And did you call the cops?’
‘I didn’t think there would be any point. On the face of it, there was nothing threatening about his texts and emails. Apart from the sheer volume of them, I suppose. Scarlett said I should talk to the police, but I thought they wouldn’t take me seriously. Because there was no apparent threat.’
‘Did that change?’
‘After he vandalised my home, I stayed at Scarlett’s for four or five days. To be honest, I was dreading going back home. My recollection of what he’d done was too vivid. I couldn’t see a cleaning company doing much to erase that image. But I was wrong. Scarlett hadn’t only got them to clean the place up. One day when I thought she was at the TV studios she’d done a commando raid on John Lewis and Waitrose. Obviously, she hadn’t been able to replicate what I’d lost, but she’d done a bloody good job of finding acceptable replacements. You know that theory the quantum physicists have about multiple universes? Well, when I finally walked back through my front door, it was as if I’d walked into a parallel version of my house. It felt the same, but there were lots of subtle differences. It was very weird. It was only when I went upstairs that I really noticed big differences, because of course Scarlett had never been up there. Her guesswork wasn’t bad, though. Even when she’d gone for something very different from what had been there, she’d chosen things I liked. I was so touched.’
There was no arguing with what Scarlett had done. And Vivian imagined that if Pete had found out, it would have driven him crazy. ‘Did Pete know what she’d done?’
‘I don’t know if he realised it was down to Scarlett, but he was obviously keeping tabs on the place. His emails said things like, “You can try to erase the traces of me from the house, but you can’t erase me from your heart. You know you love me, there’s no escape from that. You can put different paintings on the wall, but I’ll still be the face you see when you close your eyes at night.”’ She closed her eyes momentarily and Vivian could see the
