‘No,’ I say, my fingers running over her silky fur, the tiny pads of her feet. ‘Lola is perfect. Thank you.’
‘There’s another present under here,’ Will calls out. He has taken Rupert’s place on the footstool and is rummaging under the tree. ‘It says it’s for Emily.’ He holds out a gift, the firelight making the gold writing of my name glint.
My stomach drops as I take it from him, the kitten making her escape onto Amanda’s lap. Hand delivered. Familiar words scrawled onto a familiar parcel.
‘Where did this come from?’ I say, my voice cracking on the last word. Rupert is frowning, a deep V etched between his eyebrows.
‘Under the tree,’ Will laughs, ‘it was tucked at the back there.’
‘It was in the bag of presents that you left by the front door,’ Rupert says finally. ‘Didn’t you put it there?’
‘No,’ I say testily, ‘I didn’t put it there. Rupert, I put this behind the bin.’
‘Why would you do that?’ Amanda pauses in her stroking of Lola.
‘Who put it in the bag? Did you, Rupert? Please just tell me if you did.’ I can feel the panic rising, the tightness of my chest reaching up into my throat.
‘No, I didn’t. I thought you did,’ Rupert says, ‘Anya probably put it in there, you know how she is. She probably saw it was a present and thought you’d forgotten to pack it.’
I stare at him incredulously, my fingers shaking as I run my hand over my name. ‘No…’
‘Emily, why don’t you just open it?’ Will says, smiling, although there is confusion on his face. ‘Does it matter how it got into the bag? Just open it and see who it’s from.’
I nod, taking a deep breath. It’s probably nothing. Just a gift, it is Christmas after all. Your first Christmas together. And your last. Forcing the words from my mind, I strip off the wrapping paper, gasping as I tear off the tissue paper underneath to reveal the present. It is a photo, in a silver frame, last seen on my mantelpiece and one that I hoped never to see again. It’s Rupert and Caro’s wedding photo.
Chapter Nineteen
‘I don’t know what you want me to do, Emily.’ Rupert keeps his eyes on the road as the glow from the streetlamps lights his face in strips of black and orange. We are travelling back from his parents a day early, after a tense Boxing Day, the two of us barely speaking.
I huddle against the car door, watching the verge of the motorway speed past. ‘I want you to believe me,’ I say eventually. ‘I told you someone was… harassing me, I suppose. That’s the only way I can describe it. I showed you that text message I received on Christmas Day.’
And I had. After I had unwrapped the photograph of Rupert and Caro on their wedding day, Christmas had been ruined. Diana had swooped down and scooped it up, as I had rushed from the room in tears. Rupert had found me sitting on the edge of his childhood bed, my phone in my hand.
‘Here,’ I say, thrusting it towards him, ‘I got this earlier while we were on the beach.’ I watch his face as he reads it.
‘Who is it from?’
‘I don’t know, Rupert. An unknown number, just like the ones before. The other ones I told you about that you just brushed under the carpet.’ Bitterness leaches into my voice and I shake my head, tears dripping off the end of my nose.
‘It could be a wrong number.’
‘Jesus, Rupert.’ I get to my feet and start pacing. ‘What do I have to do to show you that someone is trying to get to us? To me? This is proof – how can I be exaggerating, or misreading something when it’s right there in front of you?’
I had snatched the phone back and refused to discuss it with him again.
Now, he says, ‘It’s not that I don’t believe you. I do. I saw the message. I was just trying to… I don’t know, make you feel better, I guess.’ He blows out a long breath and flicks on the indicator to come off the motorway.
‘We could call the police,’ I say, thinking of how Sadie suggested it before the holidays. ‘Tell them someone is harassing me.’
‘Really?’ He glances towards me but looks back at the road before I can read his expression. ‘I’m not saying this to brush it away, Em, but it’s just a couple of text messages. I don’t think they’ll do anything.’
‘But someone was in the house, Rupert, I heard someone when I was in the shower.’ Irritation makes me snap, and I bite the inside of my cheek hard in frustration.
‘I don’t doubt that, Em, but we don’t have any proof. Trust me, I had enough dealings with the police when Caro was alive – she’d get herself into a state, saying people were watching her. She called the police multiple times and they never did a thing.’
‘Oh.’ The kitten stirs on my lap, maybe reacting to the tension that makes my nerve endings sing, and I scratch behind her ears to soothe her back to sleep.
‘How about I get a couple of extra security cameras? Ones that I can link to your phone. And I’ll get one of those doorbells with the camera in it, too, so you don’t even have to answer the door if you don’t want to.’
It’s not as good as Rupert rushing to my defence, telling me that of course he believes me and that we’ll slay this particular dragon together, but I guess it will have to do.
Once we are home, Rupert disappears into the small spare bedroom to get some work done, despite the fact that the construction industry mostly shuts down for the last two weeks in December. I potter around downstairs, finding homes for the gifts we received, the kitten winding her way