Holly knew her mum would go mad if she found out that a stranger had been in the flat. But Suzie wasn’t a stranger to her, and she couldn’t see any harm in letting her come inside for a minute or two.
‘You’re an angel,’ Suzie said, stepping into the hallway when Holly opened the door wider. ‘Bloody hell, that’s loud.’ She glanced up at the ceiling.
‘The guy upstairs is always having parties,’ Holly told her. ‘It’ll be like this till three or four.’
‘Rather you than me,’ Suzie said. Then, shivering, she asked, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got something warm I can put on, have you? I’m getting goosebumps on my goosebumps here.’
‘I’ll have a look,’ Holly said, showing her into the living room before rushing back to her bedroom.
Suzie was at the window, peering over at her house, when Holly came back with the phone, a jumper and a pair of jogging bottoms.
‘I didn’t realize you had such a good view of my place from up here,’ she said. ‘I bet you can see straight into my lounge and bedroom when the blinds are open.’
Sure now that she had been spotted at the window on the night of the fight, and – worse – that Suzie probably thought she’d been watching them in bed as well, Holly blushed as she handed the items over.
‘You OK?’ Suzie gave her a questioning look. ‘You look a bit flushed.’
‘Just hot,’ Holly lied, perching on the sofa and slotting her hands between her knees.
‘Lucky you, I’m bloody freezing,’ Suzie said, quickly pulling the jogging bottoms and jumper on before flopping down beside her. ‘Right, let’s see where he’s at – if I can remember my number.’
‘I thought you wanted to text Rob?’ Holly said.
‘It needs to go to my phone,’ Suzie said, already typing out the message. ‘That’s what kicked him off earlier,’ she explained when she glanced at Holly and saw the confusion in her eyes. ‘He went through my phone and found some old messages from a guy I was seeing before him. I told him it was a girlfriend messing about, but he didn’t believe me, and he was threatening to ring the number to see who it was when the police turned up. If he sees this message and tries to ring back on this number, I’ll know he’s definitely there, and I’ll call the police and let them deal with him.’
‘Oh, right,’ Holly murmured, wishing that she hadn’t agreed to let Suzie use her phone now that she knew the plan. The look Rob had given her outside Suzie’s the other day had terrified her, and she already knew he was violent. What if he decided to punish her for helping Suzie to trap him?
‘What d’you think of this?’ Suzie said when she’d finished. ‘Hey sexy, are we still on for tonight? Let me know when it’s safe to come round. Kiss kiss. Doesn’t sound too girly, does it?’
Holly shook her head and twisted her fingers together nervously when Suzie pressed Send.
Rob was standing at Suzie’s bedroom window, gazing out along the road through the partially open blinds and wondering where the hell she’d got to.
He’d hidden out at his mum’s house after doing a runner earlier, and had spent the day flicking through the news channels, waiting for his mugshot to pop up and to hear that he was wanted for murder. As the day dragged into night with no mention of him or Suzie he’d begun to relax, thinking that maybe he hadn’t killed her, after all. A call to the local hospital pretending to be her brother had confirmed his theory, and he’d been massively relieved to hear that she was waiting to be seen and didn’t appear to be in a serious condition.
That was when he’d decided to come back to the house: to wait for her and see if they could put this latest tiff behind them. He’d always talked her round in the past, so he was sure he could do it again. Although, by rights, it was her who ought to be doing the grovelling, since she was the one who’d cheated.
Those messages had made him see red, and he’d wanted to fuck Suzie up so badly she wouldn’t dare look at another man again. He hadn’t meant to kill her, though, and the realization that he’d almost done exactly that had rapidly brought him to his senses. After thinking it over, he had decided to forgive her – as long as she came clean and told him who JC was. All he needed was a name and address, so he could pay the cunt a visit, then he and Suzie could put this behind them and get on with their lives.
Confident that everything would be fine – and impatient to see her, because make-up sex with Suzie was the best sex ever – Rob had placed another call to the hospital after arriving at the house. Happy to hear that she’d discharged herself by then, he had carried the bottle of whisky and box of chocolates he’d nicked from his mum’s up to the bedroom. Scotch didn’t really agree with him, but it was all his mum ever drank, and he didn’t have enough money to buy anything else, so it would have to do.
Setting the scene for their romantic reunion, he had lit some of Suzie’s scented candles and placed them around the bedroom, and then he’d lined up a playlist of her favourite R & B tracks to get her in the mood. But an hour had passed since he’d heard she was on her way home, and she wasn’t back yet.
On his third glass of whisky now, and getting a headache from the cloying scent of patchouli, he snatched Suzie’s phone off the bedside table when it pinged. An ice-cold rage
