The Watcher by Charlotte Link

Author:Charlotte Link [Link, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Crime, Mystery & Detective, General
ISBN: 9781605985596
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Sunday, 10 January

For the first time since Tom had been murdered, she had entered the house on her own. John had accompanied her the last time. This time, no one stood at her side.

The place was smelling worse and worse. A lot of food needed to be thrown out urgently.

Gillian took her suitcase up to the bedroom. It looked just as it had when she’d left on the afternoon of 29 December. The bedspread arranged tidily on the bed. A book, a thriller she had started to read, lying open and spine up on her bedside table next to the crumpled pages of The Times. Several sports magazines on Tom’s side. One of his jumpers on a chair in the corner and a tie on the wardrobe door.

All his things, thought Gillian. There’s probably little point in holding on to them.

She decided to unpack her own suitcase later. For now she just opened the side pocket and, fishing out her toiletries bag, took it to the bathroom. She put her toothbrush in the cup for toothbrushes and placed her comb on the shelf in front of the mirror. She tried to filter out the view of Tom’s things. His shaver, aftershave, mouthwash, cleaning solution for his contact lenses. A couple of his black socks were hanging off the large woven laundry basket. Although she had tried to prepare herself for this, Gillian felt the same bewilderment she had felt on her last short visit at seeing this unaltered normality. A Sunday morning in January. Snow and low clouds outside. Inside, dirty laundry and abandoned books and magazines that looked like they were just waiting to be read again come evening. Everyday objects all around. It did not look like the scene of a bloody crime. It looked like a normal house.

Gillian felt that she had two possibilities open to her. She could sit and stare at the walls, letting the invisible horror work on her until she started to scream. Or she could dive into the activities that the house was crying out for after her long absence.

She decided on the second option.

She spent the next four hours bringing order to the house. She washed mountains of laundry, putting it in the dryer and hanging it up in the boiler room. She went through the fridge, throwing out most of what she found. She put two bags of rubbish in the bin outside. She took the decorations off the Christmas tree and carried the needle-shedding monster outside on to the terrace. She took the fairy lights down from the windows, putting them away in their cardboard boxes and then storing them in the attic. She got rid of Chuck’s cat litter, because he had gone to Norwich on Friday with Becky and wouldn’t return for a few weeks. She cleaned the bathrooms and kitchen, vacuumed and aired the entire house and put fresh sheets on the beds. Lastly, she got a fire going, brewed up a large pot of coffee and sat down with a sigh in a comfy armchair.

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