My scalp prickled as I realised this must be Sheila’s mother’s room, kept like a shrine while the rest of the bungalow slid into decay. The screeching violins from the shower scene in Psycho echoed in my head, and I was overcome with the urge to put as much distance as possible between me and Sheila’s creepy bungalow. Then the imaginary violins were replaced with an intake of breath from behind me. A heavy weight crashed onto the back of my head and I blacked out.
Chapter Forty-Four
Pain radiated from the base of my skull like ripples on a lake. Intense, shooting pain like my nerve endings were on fire. The kind of pain caused by a dozen tequila shots on an empty stomach. And a throat as dry as sandpaper. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this hungover. No, wait, I could. It was in Corfu, the morning after the barbecue by the pool. The night Bill raped Niamh. The night I tried to seduce my husband, not realising someone else had beaten me to it.
I opened my eyes, bemused to find it was dark.
I groaned and rubbed the back of my head, gasping as my fingers found a bump the size of a bantam’s egg. I pressed the tender skin tentatively, wondering how pissed I must have been to have fallen and banged my head.
Where had I been? I groped for fragments of memory, but it was like catching snowflakes on a winter’s day. Every time my fingers curled around one, it melted in my palm.
Immy loved catching snowflakes on her tongue. I remembered this with a pang that was almost as painful as the lump on my head. But Immy was missing. Slowly, the events of the last few days came back to me. Police scouring the river. The press conference. Confronting Niamh. Stuart’s affair. Bill’s death. Driving to Littlebourne to check Sheila was all right. After that, it was all a blank.
I shifted position, wincing as yet another wave of pain washed over me, leaving me light-headed. I placed my hands palm down to steady myself, frowning as my fingers came into contact with bristly carpet. What the hell was I doing on the floor?
A noise made me stiffen. The unmistakable click of a key turning in a lock. A chink of butter-yellow light and a flurry of cool air on my cheek. Sheila towering over me, her arms folded across her chest and her face rigid with suppressed anger.
‘Where am I?’ I croaked.
Ignoring me, she flicked the light switch, flooding the room with artificial light. My retinas burning, I turned my head, whimpering as the sudden movement sent yet another bolt of pain through my skull.
‘Where am I?’ I said again. Again, she ignored me. I held out a hand, annoyed to see my fingers were trembling. ‘Help me up, will you? I need to go home.’
She glowered at me, her pale blue eyes as icy as glass. ‘How dare you speak to me like that? I am not your skivvy!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I backtracked. ‘I didn’t mean to…’
She laughed, a bitter sound that sent shivers down my spine. ‘This is a first. Cleo Cooper apologising. Better hold the front page.’
I looked around. I was in a small box room about 10ft square. Directly in front of me was a floral two-seater sofa with fussy trims and matching cushions. A folded yellow duvet and two pillows were piled on it. On a pine coffee table beside the sofa was an empty plate and a purple plastic beaker. A portable television sat on a matching pine unit. Newspaper was taped to the window with masking tape. With sudden clarity I remembered walking around Sheila’s bungalow, peering inside each room. This was the one I hadn’t been able to see inside. And now, here I was, on the wrong side of the looking glass.
The room smelt musty, with another underlying scent I couldn’t quite identify, although for some inexplicable reason it filled me with a longing for home.
‘This is your house,’ I said, waving a hand at the room.
A brief nod. ‘I found you in the garden. You’d fainted and hit the back of your head. Heat stroke, I should imagine.’
‘I came to see if you were all right. I was worried about you. I thought you might have done something silly after Bill…’
Sheila plucked at the sleeve of her blouse. ‘You should have stopped him.’
‘Believe me, I tried.’
‘Why should I believe you?’ She glared at me. ‘It suits you, doesn’t it, having him out of the picture? You’ll have full control of the company now. You can do what the hell you like.’
‘If you think I’d let Bill kill himself so I could take over the company, you’re delusional.’
‘Don’t you dare call me delusional,’ she hissed, and I shrank back against the wall.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But I loved Bill. I would never have let him come to harm, no matter what he’d done.’
‘He should have known I was protecting him,’ she said, talking over me. ‘There was no way I was going to let that little cow ruin his life.’
I gaped at her. ‘Niamh?’
‘The little Irish slut was blackmailing him, did you know that?’
I nodded, wincing at the fresh wave of pain. ‘He told me.’
‘She claimed he raped her. Bill!’ She stepped forwards. ‘She was threatening to tell the police!’
‘But he gave her the money. I saw him. She was planning to go home to Ireland. She wouldn’t have told.’
‘Know that for a fact, do you?’ Sheila bared her teeth. ‘Call me cynical, but she would have been back for
