‘Rupert!’ Emily’s cry from upstairs is a piercing shriek, and Rupert drops the mug he is holding, shattering it into a million pieces over the tiled floor. He eyes it for a moment, before stepping to the bottom of the staircase as Emily calls him again, a panicky edge to her voice. Rupert steps on the bottom stair with leaden feet, his heart sinking in his chest. Emily was back to her old self at the cottage, but from the sound of her tone now, the relaxed, funny, laughing Emily of the past three days is gone.
‘What is it? Em, are you all right?’ Heading upstairs, Rupert peers into their bedroom but it is empty.
‘In here.’ Tears make her voice sound thick and clumsy. ‘Look.’
Rupert pushes open the door to the spare bedroom, the room he found Emily in just a little while ago, surrounded by his dead wife’s clothes. ‘What is it?’
‘I came in here to see about redesigning it into a nursery…’ Rupert says nothing as Emily swipes at her eyes. He didn’t think they’d agreed to start a family yet. ‘And look.’ She gestures towards the wardrobes, the closets that should be standing empty. The hangers are full, crammed with silks, satin, dresses, coats and other clothes. Caro’s clothes.
Chapter Twenty-Five
So much for a fresh start. The door to the spare room is firmly shut, and I hurry past it, the urge to go in and check the wardrobe, to see Caro’s things hanging there neatly after I dropped them at the charity shop – and I did, I remember doing it – almost a compulsion.
In the kitchen, I make myself a cup of Earl Grey and pull my mobile from my pocket, scrolling down until I reach Mags’s name. I need to talk to someone, a person I can trust. A friend. Rupert won’t talk about it. I picture his face as he looked into the wardrobe last night, the way he had gone a grey, waxy colour before he made an excuse, just like he had before.
‘Are you sure you dropped these things off at the charity shop?’ he says, stumbling slightly over the words. That’s how I know that he’s shaken too.
‘Yes,’ I snap, my sharp tone belying the fact that my hands are shaking, ‘I’m not an idiot, Rupert. I dropped them off at The Children’s Trust. I thought that was the best place for them, given Caro’s connection to them.’
‘Well, that explains it then.’ Rupert visibly brightens, and my heart sinks as I realize that he’s still not going to see this the way I do. ‘If you took them there, that explains everything.’
‘How? How does it explain the way your dead wife’s clothes got back into our house?’
‘Obviously, Angus visited the shop and saw them and thought that they had been donated in error. I…’ he looks at me sheepishly, ‘I did once say that I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to get rid of Caro’s things.’
‘Right.’ A pulse flickers at my temple and I have to hold in a deep breath in order to keep my temper. ‘So, say that Angus did return the clothes to the house – which, to be honest, just sounds like a complete fantasy to me – then how did the clothes end up hanging neatly back in the closet?’
‘Anya hung them up, of course. While we were away.’ Rupert looks completely satisfied with this answer. ‘She didn’t know Caro, she didn’t start working for us until after we were married, so she probably assumed they were yours and hung them all back up. She probably thought she was doing you a favour. I don’t see what part of this is a fantasy,’ he snaps.
‘Jesus, Rupert…’
‘No, tell me. What makes more sense? That Angus returned the clothes and Anya hung them up, or your latest paranoid idea? Presumably you think that some mysterious someone broke into our house and put all the clothes back. It’s ridiculous, Emily, and you know it.’ He storms from the room leaving me standing there, open-mouthed, because he’s right. I do think that someone got those things back from the charity shop and put them back in our house. And now I know that they never found Caro’s body, the whole thing doesn’t feel as imagined as Rupert is making out.
I click on Mags’s name, praying that the call will connect. I imagine myself sitting on the threadbare, overstuffed, leaking sofa, eating custard creams and letting Mags make cup after cup of hot, sweet tea with two sugars, as I pour my heart out to her. She’ll know the right thing to say to make things better, she always does. It’s only now I’ve been away from her overbearing, suffocating brand of caring that I realize how much I miss it.
The phone beeps in my ear and cuts off without connecting. I’m debating whether to just head over to the flat – I don’t know if Mags still has my number blocked or if she hasn’t paid her bill again – when the doorbell rings and I see Sadie’s outline through the glass in the front door.
‘Darling!’ Sadie barges her way into the house, much the same as she did that first time I opened the door to her, what feels like a hundred years ago. ‘Rupert called me.’
‘He did?’ I follow her into the sitting room, where she is already sitting in the corner of the sofa that is my usual spot. ‘What did he say?’
‘He’s worried about you…’ She pauses, cocking her head to one side. ‘He’s worried about your health. Physical and mental. You do look dreadful, Emily.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I mutter, unable to rein in the irritation that fizzes in my veins, ‘there is nothing wrong with my health, mental or physical.’ I pause. This is my chance to get Sadie to tell me
