The Girl in the Photo by Sam Carrington

Author:Sam Carrington [Carrington, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2023-05-26T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter 32

Erica

Jamie asked me if I was going to the gym when he left for work this morning. My skin is alive with tiny electrical impulses as I pace the bedroom floorboards, my bare heels slamming hard against the wood, making them sting. I’m dressed as if I’m going to do a yoga session, but it’s only for show. How dare he think he can get away with this. I can’t believe I’ve been so blind.

I’ll drive out, as I usually would, heading towards town for a few minutes. I’ll go right around the roundabout before returning, parking in a side street close enough to walk back. My initial plan was to go to the back entrance of our house, see if I can spot Jamie’s car. But if he is using that way, he might well see me and that’ll be that.

Dragging my old winter coat from the wardrobe, I stuff it in a holdall. I’ll wear it on my walk to Jean’s; I haven’t worn it in ages, Jamie won’t recognise it as mine. If he does happen to look out the window at the exact moment I go into the neighbour’s house, hopefully it’ll act as a disguise. It’s the best plan I have. From Jean’s I have the perfect view. Maybe I’ll ask to go upstairs as she did mention Jamie being ‘nifty with his hands’, which I’d taken to mean she’d seen us together in the bedroom.

Now I’m wondering if she’s seen him with someone else.

Shit. Had she been trying to tell me in her own way? Did she know about him having an affair but wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject? The times she’s been staring at me, even beckoning me to hers that time – I bet she was trying to warn me. I slam the wardrobe door closed, screwing up my eyes as I hear the glass door crack.

‘Dammit!’ I run my fingertip over the lightning-bolt-shaped line. Now I’m going to have to explain that. I laugh. As if that’s the worst of my worries.

After Jean described the woman at my house – specifically ‘the coat’ – my mind hasn’t stopped conjuring theories as to who this woman is. If it really is Mercy, the biggest question is why? Meeting her at Bateman’s was an encounter I’d assumed was random. Or partly. I mean, I shop there weekly, have done for years, and she admitted she’d seen me there on other occasions. But Karen, the checkout woman, said she was there every week, bothering loads of customers, not just me. It’s not as though I was purposely targeted; I was simply there at the right place, and the right time. And, with no disrespect to Mercy, what would Jamie see in her anyway? She’s literally the opposite of me – dowdy and plain.

She might not have always looked that way, of course. It might only be since her daughter went missing that she’d ‘let herself go’. Her cabin is spotless, well looked after – she herself probably was too before all of her trauma.

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