Don't Close Your Eyes by P S Cunliffe

Author:P S Cunliffe [Cunliffe, P S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction
Published: 2023-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

28

Sara

A couple dressed in matching quilted jackets and wellingtons are leaving Cavendish Square’s residents’ garden when Sara arrives. They walk arm in arm, offer her a polite smile that doesn’t quite reach their eyes. Perhaps they’re looking at her that way because they can tell – by her H&M padded parka and her lace tights and the stud through her nose – that she is not a resident of the square, and therefore not strictly allowed in the gardens. Or maybe it’s something else. She can’t help but feel exposed, as if everybody she passes on the street knows. How could they not? People must be able to tell just from the way she walks. They must be able to smell it on her like perfume. She’s a fool. An easy mark. Always has been.

Once the couple have passed by, she catches the still-swinging wrought-iron gate leading to the gardens before it shuts. Inside, she sinks down behind the collar of her coat, walks the gravel track between the trees until she finds a wooden bench, not quite opposite, but with a good view of the house.

It looks like all of the other houses in the square. Beautiful. Pristine.

The brickwork of the ground floor is painted bright white. Grey stone steps lead up to a black front door with shining brass fittings. Two cars are parked out front. A BMW and a Range Rover. Posh people cars. Sara looks for signs of activity, but the day is bright and the windows of the house are full of reflections.

This is where Adam lives.

Simon.

With his wife, and his son.

Not some poky bachelor pad in the middle of nowhere, the fictional apartment he couldn’t bear to have her visit, but here, in this beautiful square, with its rows of uniform houses and an old-fashioned red telephone box on the corner. A version of London straight out of a Richard Curtis film, where everybody is terribly uptight, stuttering their way through perfectly cosy middle-class lives.

Is she really going to tear it all apart? Because that’s what’s going to happen the moment she knocks on that door. Everything will change—

People are going to get hurt.

Why should you be the only one?

She wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her coat, looks away from the house and down at her feet. She runs a hand over the wood of the bench, finds a screw not quite flush, its edge cold and sharp, and presses the pad of her thumb against it until the metal bites.

Being here, seeing his real home, twists something inside her she thought couldn’t be turned any tighter. Why would he decide to fuck up her life, when he has all this?

It is beyond cruel.

They were going to build a life together. Renting a flat would have been the first step. Then buy somewhere, once she was earning proper money, start thinking about raising a family. That’s what Adam said.

She removes her thumb from the screw and looks at the red and white cross etched into her skin.

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