Rupert takes his hands from her throat, panting, his breath hurting in his chest as he looks down at Caro, her face pale and her eyes wide, the purple marks of his fingers already standing out against the alabaster white of her skin.
‘Caro?’ He whispers it, as if worried he’ll wake her and he waits a moment for her to blink, to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. But she doesn’t. And Rupert feels a sick sense of dread start somewhere around his stomach, a whispered ‘fuck’ escaping his lips as he presses his fingers against her already cooling skin in search of a pulse.
The third thing Rupert sees as he stands in his study is the safe door, wide open and swinging. In two strides he is across the room, peering into the now empty safe, and realization begins to dawn. There was no glitch at the bank, there will be no compensation for inconvenience. He pulls out his phone and opens the app. Every bank account is empty. He covers his face with his hands as he remembers Emily, sitting at the kitchen table as he rushes around getting ready for work, waving a utility bill in his face.
‘Just give me the log on and I’ll do it online,’ she says, a trace of irritation in her voice. ‘You did say you’d do it last week, Rupert, and I’m worried they’ll cut us off. Give me the bank login and I’ll sort it out before you forget, set up a direct debit so it’s done for the future.’
And because he was busy, stressed with work, because she made his heart flip over when he looked at her and sometimes – most of the time – he felt the blood shoot to his groin when she smiled at him, he gave it to her.
Rupert goes into their bedroom, but he can see before he’s even looked properly that she is gone. Caro’s jewellery box stands empty on the dressing table, the en suite is cleared of cleanser and make-up, her hangers swing empty in the wardrobe. Groaning, Rupert slams the wardrobe door closed, blaming himself before a wave of fury washes over him. How dare she do this to him? He swipes the phone screen, dials a number and waits for it to connect. Pacing the floor downstairs in the sitting room, Rupert tries and fails to see the signs that Emily wasn’t who she said she was. That he was taken in so completely. He is lost in thought, when just ten minutes after making the call, the doorbell rings and with a looming sense of déjà vu, Rupert opens the door to the police.
‘Mr Rupert Milligan?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Come in.’ Rupert stands to one side to let them through. ‘Thank you so much for coming out to me so quickly. I can give you a list of everything taken, I’ll do anything I can to help you catch her.’
The two officers exchange a quizzical look before the taller one, an officer that Rupert realizes with a sinking feeling that he has seen before, says, ‘Mr Milligan, we are arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Mrs Caroline Osbourne-Milligan.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
Early September, and it’s been six months since I fled Rupert’s house, taking everything I could and putting in a call to the police before I turned my back on the house for good. Today is our one-year wedding anniversary. I should have been spending it somewhere warm, having let Rupert pay for some extravagant holiday to celebrate. Instead, he is languishing in a cell and I am sitting on the beach in Devon, the home of my new life, enjoying the early autumn sunshine.
It didn’t take me long to piece together what I thought had happened to Caro, and it took me even less time to pack my stuff and get out, clearing Rupert’s bank accounts on the way. I picture him now, hefting Caro’s dead weight into the soakaway, watching as Nick and his men piled on the topsoil. Driving Caro’s car away in the dead of night to leave at that notorious spot near the bridge, while she cooled back at the house. His hand shaking as he forged her one-word suicide note. I should have known that letting myself get attached was a mistake, but there was something about Rupert that I couldn’t resist. My plan on getting the job was to make him fall for me, take the money and go, like I have so many times before, but he crawled under my skin and I let myself fall for him. Things got a bit sticky with Harry, especially at the end, when I broke into the house and waited in his bed, and he lost it completely… but this time I definitely bit off more than I could chew.
People only show you the façade that they want you to see. Everyone does it. We all show our best faces to the others around us.
Rupert’s words come back to me, from the night I realized that he wasn’t who I thought he was. I’ve spent my life putting on a façade in order to drag myself up from nothing to where I am today, thanks to my mother’s training and the hefty bank balances of Rupert, and Harry, and a guy
