‘Roger. Roger!’ He was still shaking his head and there was a distant look in his grey eyes, as if his mind had closed down, moved out.
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, have it your way.’
As she fished her mobile out of her handbag, Reynolds roused himself. Pulling something from his pocket, he held it out to her.
‘What’s that?’
‘Carolynn’s wallet. I found it on the floor under the hall table. She has no money, no cards, nothing.’
‘How much petrol was in her car?’
‘I last filled it up for her three weeks ago. She doesn’t drive far, but I can’t imagine there’d be much left.’
So not Birmingham or Manchester. London was seventy miles away. Did she have enough to get to London? She wouldn’t risk running out of petrol and being stranded on the side of the road, would err on the side of caution.
‘Does she have any friends left in London?’
‘No one she would trust.’ His gaze met hers directly, for the first time since she’d entered the house. There was an odd look in his eye, something intense and unsettling. A slight, sick smile crept across his face. ‘The only person she trusts is you, Dr Flynn. Where do you live?’
73
Though she hadn’t had cause to pick a lock for years, Carolynn opened Jessie’s back door with ease, the lock cheap and flimsy, no secondaries to back it up, lax security that only someone who never felt at risk in their own home would choose. Picking locks was a useful skill that she had learnt from the boys on the estate where she’d grown up. It was about the only useful thing that she had taken from her upbringing, with the exception of resourcefulness and resilience. And the knowledge of how to kill.
Stepping into the kitchen, Carolynn pulled the door closed behind her and wiped her feet thoroughly on the back doormat. The kitchen floor was pale grey limestone, matching the dove grey units, and she knew that Jessie wouldn’t wear dirty shoes inside, not with her OCD. She wanted to respect her new friend’s house, behave as she would.
The sitting room’s decor, as with the kitchen’s, was straight out of World of Interiors. Cool and stylish, it was everything she had hoped it would be: two cream sofas and a reclaimed oak coffee table, white bookshelves bare of clutter, show-home spotless. Only the photograph of the little boy on the cream marble mantelpiece was jarringly out of place, chocolate ice cream smearing his idiotic grin. She was tempted to lay the photograph flat, erase him from her view, write him out of the serenity that was Jessie’s home, but she knew who the boy was, knew his and his older sister’s history. She had researched her psychologist’s history well, chosen her because she had known family tragedy in her past. She had wanted someone who would feel an innate, subjective sympathy for her plight, who wouldn’t judge her, as she had been so judged and condemned in the past. She had wanted to see a psychologist on her own terms this time, to help her reclaim her stability, her sense of self, to help her see a way through to rebuild her life after all that she had lost. She had researched her psychologist’s background far better than her psychologist had researched hers.
Mounting the stairs, her shoes sinking into the plush pile of the cream carpet, Carolynn found Jessie’s bedroom at the back of the house, overlooking the garden and the field of sheep beyond. A crisp white duvet covered the oak-framed bed, a faux silver-fox-fur throw draped the single white chair, and the chest of drawers and built-in cupboards that lined one wall were painted the same soft white as the woodwork throughout the rest of the house.
A second photograph, on the bedside table closest to her, caught Carolynn’s eye. But unlike the one of Jessie’s dead brother downstairs, this photograph fit. The couple pictured were arrestingly attractive. Jessie and a man – her boyfriend – must be.
Is he hot?
Beautiful. Truly. I’m very lucky.
Jessie was right. He was broad-shouldered and long-limbed, blond with the most unusual amber eyes, far more attractive even than Carolynn had imagined from Jessie’s description in the surf café. The photograph was a relaxed, fun selfie, Jessie sitting on his knee in a garden, leaning back against his chest, holding the camera in an outstretched arm, both of them laughing. One of his arms was curled around her shoulder, his other hand resting on her thigh, underneath the sky-blue silk of her dress. She could tell from the way the material clung to Jessie’s breasts that she hadn’t been wearing a bra. Knickers? Perhaps she hadn’t been wearing those either. That would account for the smile on his face.
Looking at the photograph, Carolynn experienced a sense of acute envy. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt that happy, that carefree. The photograph was a vignette of the relationship she wanted, how she wanted to feel, the life she wanted. She looked at Callan’s hand on Jessie’s leg and imagined it on her own, his fingers stroking the soft skin of her inner thigh and felt a fizzing hotness in her groin, sudden and intense. It was a feeling she hadn’t experienced in years.
Unclipping the back of the frame, Carolynn extracted the photograph and stroked her hand across Jessie’s celluloid face. Her fingers lingered on Callan’s, moved to his chest, caressed the muscled arm that led to the hand hidden under the blue silk. She tore the photograph in half, half again, tore and tore until she was holding little more than threads. Opening the sash window, she stretched out her arm and watched the fragments of the photograph scatter on the wind.
74
So Workman had verified the gargantuan black hole in his logic that could swallow his career. Jamming his phone between shoulder and ear, Marilyn sunk his head back into his
