Date Night (ARC)

by Samantha Hayes

  But right now, Libby could tell Sean wasn’t at that point of sleep at all. Even though she saw his eyes were closed in the moonlight, she knew he was very much awake and alert, his mind working hard, reflected in his breathing. Steady with a slight sigh out every other breath. Things on his mind.

  ‘What’s up?’ she said, nudging him gently.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Seriously, I can tell you’re thinking.’

  ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘You can’t just block it all out, you know. It doesn’t work like that,’ Libby said softly.

  Neither of them moved a muscle, though Libby was aware of the tension in Sean’s body – right through from his shoulders and arms, down through his middle and ending up in his calves and feet, where Libby had hers entwined.

  ‘The accident,’ she pressed on. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Libby,’ Sean said, pulling his arm out from beneath her. ‘I don’t know. I probably fell over and grazed my knee or something. You know what Mum’s like.’

  ‘No, no I don’t,’ Libby went on. ‘I saw a side of her tonight I didn’t recognise. Something… different. Tender, even.’

  Sean let out a little snort.

  ‘You’re pretty disparaging of her when, really, all she wants to do is look after you, take care of you.’

  ‘I’m forty-two. I don’t need taking care of.’

  Libby sighed as Sean switched over onto his other side. She was faced with the expanse of his back, covered in T-shirt, and ran her fingers down his spine, working her way back up again to massage the base of his neck, the tense muscles in his shoulders. He couldn’t help the involuntary shudders, the gentle moan, his hand slipping behind him onto Libby’s thigh.

  ‘It was nothing,’ he mumbled. ‘Just a farm accident. Mum felt guilty, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Libby whispered, reaching up to kiss his neck. Another moan. She decided not to press further as he clearly didn’t want to talk about it, but there was something on her mind that she did want to talk about, even if they were both exhausted.

  Libby pressed herself as tightly as she could against his back.

  ‘Sean,’ she whispered, swallowing. Her mouth was dry.

  ‘Love, I’m tired, OK?’

  ‘I know, but… but I went to get some stuff from the cottage the other day, not long after the forensics team had arrived. I wasn’t sure how long they’d be there and I needed my phone charger.’

  ‘Mmm…’ Sean said. ‘OK, Lib. Night.’

  ‘It’s the note,’ she went on, trying to hold her breath as she was speaking. ‘I mean… I needed the cookbook, I really did. For that dinner next week. I’m so behind with everything. I’d shoved the stupid thing inside the pages last week but when I flipped through it, it wasn’t there. I have no idea what happened to it and I’m wondering if the police—’

  Sean hurled himself over through a hundred and eighty degrees to face Libby. She winced as his arm flung over her head. He was a big man, and always watched out for her when he turned. But not this time. She touched her temple where the side of his hand had accidentally caught her.

  ‘Are you still going on about that?’ he said. ‘After everything?’ He propped himself up on one elbow, looming down over her. His lips were tight and pursed, his eyes narrowed to slits looking almost demonic in the moonlight.

  ‘I just thought it was odd that it had gone. Did you take it? Chuck it out, maybe?’ Libby felt herself shaking.

  ‘It’s where it belongs,’ Sean went on. ‘In the bin. Along with this conversation.’

  Libby hesitated ‘Why are you so defensive all the time? Can’t you see how it’s affecting me? With everything else that’s happened, you could be a bit more sympathetic, Sean. I’m your wife, for God’s sake. I’d quite like it if you put my feelings first. To me, all I hear is you protecting someone else’s feelings. Whoever she is.’

  Libby screwed up her eyes, trying not to cry. She felt Sean’s breath on her check, then the jolt of the bed as he flipped round and dropped his head back onto the pillow.

  ‘You’re not thinking straight,’ he said. ‘Please, get a grip.’

  ‘Who were you talking to earlier?’ Libby said, knowing she was pushing it. Fact was, she didn’t care any more. She felt the sting of hot tears burn the inside of her eyelids.

  ‘What?’ Sean let out a huge sigh. It signalled something, though Libby wasn’t sure what. All she knew was that she couldn’t let it lie, as though a switch had flicked.

  ‘Who were you talking to on the phone? You hung up as soon as I came into the room.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘I’m not having this conversation, Libby. Not when the police are out looking for Sasha.’

  ‘And what happens when they find her?’ Libby pressed on. ‘Will you answer my questions then?’

  ‘If they find her,’ Sean added, his voice slowing. It was what everyone was worried about.

  ‘They will,’ she said. ‘It’s just when and where.’ Libby reached over to her bedside table for her glass of water. ‘And then there was the call from that other number. Before we ate dinner, when you had Alice on your lap. You rejected it. You never reject calls.’

  ‘I do if it’s from someone I don’t want to speak to,’ Sean said.

  ‘That’s not true. Even if it looks like a nuisance call, you answer it. I know you, Sean Randell. Why did you reject it? It was from a number not in your contacts. And then you had another landline call you cancelled—’

  Libby gasped, stifling the scream as the glass flew out of her hand. It took her a moment to realise that Sean had swiped at her, sending it flying, shattering against the wall opposite.

  Neither of them said a word. Just breathing. Short and sharp, out of rhythm. Their hearts pounding. Libby listened out for Alice, who was in the next room. And Fred and Marion, who occupied each of the front bedrooms. They’d not shared a bed for years.

  ‘I can’t take it, Libby,’ Sean said, seething.

  ‘Me neither,’ Libby replied through shallow breaths, her body fixed in the same position, her hand up as if she was still holding the glass. Her heart was on fire. ‘Was it her?’ Libby said, her voice strangely calm, even though the rest of her wasn’t. She’d overstepped the mark again, couldn’t make things worse if she tried.

  ‘Who, for God’s sake?’

  ‘The woman you’re having an affair with. The woman who wrote the note. Is that who you were talking to?’

  Libby gasped as she felt the weight of her husband suddenly lying on top of her, expelling the breath from her lungs. His face was close – his eyes wide and bulging with something that she’d never seen before. His arms were pinned either side of her, clamping her down. She wasn’t sure if it was hate, love or regret in his eyes. All she knew was that she couldn’t move.

  ‘There is no other woman,’ he said flatly. ‘When will you realise this?’ Beside her, Sean’s fingers gripped the sheet, twisting it into a knot, pulling it tight around Libby’s shoulders. ‘I don’t know how you can be so selfish at a time like this.’

  And, when Libby said nothing, Sean pressed his mouth against hers, kissing her passionately – his tongue probing her mouth more deeply than she’d ever felt before, his hands cupping her face so hard she thought her skull might split, breaking only to tear off her pyjamas. And, eventually, she succumbed, allowing her body to give back what she was receiving, equally as urgently.

  After they’d finished, when they’d dropped back onto their pillows, exhausted, sweating, neither of them saying a word, Libby lay awake for most of the night wondering what it was her husband was trying to hide. Or, more importantly, who.

  Twenty-Seven

  Libby stared at Chestnut Cottage from The Green, remembering the first time she’d ever seen the place. It had been snowing, and Sean had held her mittened hand, so excited to be showing her his project.

  ‘It’s uninhabitable,’
he’d said when he first told her about it. ‘And I got it for a song because of all the rot, the roof, the everything. But nothing a few years of hard graft and three times the planned budget won’t sort out,’ he’d joked.

  Libby had seen it in his eyes – the passion for the listed building, wanting to care for it almost as much as he cared for each and every one of his animal patients. Sean had a knack for seeing the life in things, even if there wasn’t much of it left. She wondered if that’s what he’d noticed in her when their eyes first met in that most clichéd of circumstances across the pub bar. She was down, yes, still feeling bereft after the bad break-up with David a few months earlier, but she’d been determined to dust herself off from his controlling and toxic ways, not allow it to taint her future. Sean had come along at just the right time. Besides, she couldn’t deny the attraction she felt for the man she remembered from the gym.

  ‘It’s so beautiful,’ she’d said that snowy day. She’d literally not been able to close her mouth in awe – not because of the cold or the snowflakes that were landing on her nose, but because the face of the thatched cottage almost seemed to be winking at her, encouraging her inside – the way one end of the thatched roof hung low over one window ‘eye’ of an upstairs room. ‘How did you even find such a place?’

  ‘Ah…’ he said in a teasing, drawn-out voice. ‘I have friends in the right places,’ he went on. ‘Property in Great Lyne rarely comes on the open market. It’s all about who you know around here.’ He’d tapped the side of his nose.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ she replied, gazing around the picture-perfect village green with its ginger-stone pub and little school opposite built in the same soft and irregular hunks that looked more like honeycomb toffee than anything. ‘So who is it you know?’ She gave him one of her smiles – the type he said had attracted him to her in the first place.

  ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you,’ he joked, squeezing her hand and taking her over The Green and up to the front door. ‘Seriously though, it’s estate people. The big landowner around here owns most of the village properties and occasionally sells off the odd one here and there. Many are rented out by the estate, but this is freehold and she’s all mine. A beauty, eh?’

  Libby looked up at him, beaming. She couldn’t have been more in love. Every minute with Sean had been perfect, but seeing the cottage… well, that symbolised a future. A perfect future. Together.

  ‘All ours, I should say,’ Sean corrected. ‘Here… you do the honours.’ He handed Libby a set of keys.

  ‘Really?’ she said, taking them from him, unable to feel any more special. Snowflakes settled on her eyelashes as she edged the big key into the lock and turned it, her hands fumbling within her mittens. She felt every old lever in the lock give before she pressed down on the latch and opened the door, but before she could even see what was behind it, Sean had scooped her up and carried her over the threshold.

  Libby couldn’t help squealing and laughing as they ducked their heads to get inside. As she looked around, her nose picked up the smell of damp and rot, though that was quickly overshadowed by the potential. Everything was pretty much as it would have been a hundred years ago – the black cooking range in the kitchen fireplace, complete with its working oven to the side, the original stone sink with a single cold tap above that didn’t look as though it had been used in decades. White, furry damp patches effervesced the blood-coloured pamment floor tiles, while the walls were covered in peeling wallpaper. Libby remembered brushing cobwebs off her face, losing her footing as they trod the rickety staircase to find what would be their bedroom, and their delight when they discovered another secret room behind it, which eventually became their en-suite bathroom.

  ‘Christ,’ Libby said now, clenching her fists and screwing up her eyes, treading the exact same path across The Green towards the front door of Chestnut Cottage. She’d not been able to park directly outside. Not because of police cars this time, but because all the spaces had been taken – and she hadn’t wanted to park in the courtyard either. That would have felt too much like ‘going home’, and she wasn’t ready for that yet.

  She shuddered as she unlocked the front door, using the same old key as Sean had handed her the first time she’d ever seen the place. Except nowadays they’d got a much newer Yale lock as well.

  Libby shrugged off her coat and hung it on one of the hooks in the hallway. She noticed that Alice’s little pink denim jacket was on a different peg from usual – the first sign that things had been moved.

  In the living room, Libby looked around. She stared at the sofa and table where Sasha’s belongings had been left – though they were gone now. She supposed they should have told the police that they’d gathered them up, shoved them in her college backpack. But, in hindsight, as long as they were all there for the police to see and inspect, she didn’t think it really mattered.

  The cottage felt cold, unloved. The fireplace was still filled with ash – the remains of last Friday’s fire. Although, judging by the state of the hearth, it looked as though the police had been through it, picking amongst the embers. Libby reached for the poker, scraping through the mess, finding nothing but ash and a few charred remains of wood. She stared at it, frowning, before scanning around the rest of the room. She couldn’t see that anything obvious was missing at first glance – apart from Sasha’s stuff, of course.

  Libby went through to the kitchen and put on the lights. It felt cold in here too, even though she could hear the tick-tick of the central heating pipes, the soft purr of the boiler in the cupboard in the boot room. She stopped, almost sensing the police’s presence – invisible fragments of whatever they’d done still lingering in the cottage. She didn’t like it.

  ‘Fu—uck…!’ she suddenly screamed, tearing at her hair, gripping fistfuls of it, pulling hard. She screwed up her eyes as a deep growl travelled up her throat, resonating around the low-beamed room. Without even knowing what she was doing, she swiped at a couple of dirty glasses left on the kitchen table, sending them skidding off and smashing onto the floor. Glittery shards spread about as she covered her mouth, seeing what she’d done. A broken piece of wine glass with her lipstick still on the rim settled by the fridge – a reminder of the quick drink she and Sean had had before they’d gone out on Friday night.

  Libby thumped her fist down on the table, making the flower vase – stuffed with a dying spray of autumn colour – jump and wobble.

  ‘No, no, no, no, noooo,’ she wailed. ‘I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.’ She paced about, trailing her hands over everything – the worktops, the walls, the range cooker – the kitchen that had seen her prepare and cook hundreds of meals for her, Sean and Alice. What she hated the most was that the place she’d called home for the last three years suddenly didn’t seem in the least like home any more. It felt stripped of its soul. Every ounce of them gone.

  Libby fell to her knees at the end of the kitchen cupboards. The shelves were crammed with cookbooks, some of which she’d had since she was seventeen years old. She pulled them off, one by one, before flinging the rest to the floor. She grabbed several of them by the spines, letting the pages fall open as she shook them, watching for anything fluttering out in case she was mistaken about where she’d hidden the note. Then she went through them again, her fingers frantically flipping through the pages, pulling out old bookmarks and cut-out recipes flattened from years stuck inside the hardbacks.

  Nothing.

  She pulled herself to her feet – her knees aching from the cold floor, her entire body shaking. There were only two things on her mind: Sasha, and whoever left that note on her car. And, because both were filling her brain equally, Libby couldn’t help but think they were one and the same problem. That they were somehow connected.

  ‘Oh God!’ she cried, leaning on the worktop, clutching her head. She knocked a packet of biscuits onto the floor – the ones she’d bought for Sasha to help herself to on Friday night, knowing she would only eat that particul
ar brand. As she picked them up, she saw they were untouched. Then she pulled open the refrigerator door to see what was in there. Just the usual – salad stuff in the crisper drawer, cheese, eggs, a home-baked ham that she thinly sliced each morning for Sean’s sandwiches. A few vegetables, including an aubergine she’d been intending to griddle with the steaks that were still wrapped up on the bottom shelf. Saturday night’s dinner. Untouched. Of course, the food she’d left for Sasha had gone.

  Libby pulled out the steaks along with a few vegetables that had turned mouldy. She wrapped them all up in newspaper and went out to chuck them in the dustbin before dragging it out to the street. She’d forgotten to put it out for the last collection and it was almost overflowing.

  She headed back inside to the little room she and Sean used as a study. It was mostly Sean’s space for any work he brought home – usually papers he was writing for various publications. Several times lately she’d found him hunched over his laptop in the early hours, the glow of his screen lighting up his tired face. But now she was wondering what else he was doing on his computer late at night. Who he was talking to.

  She opened up the laptop and went to log in. They both knew the other’s passwords, PINs for phones, social media logins – always had done. But, tapping in the familiar password, Libby realised on the third try that it wasn’t her mistyping that was preventing her logging in – it was because the password had been changed. She stared at the screensaver – a group selfie of Alice, Sean and her on the beach at Rock last summer. She screwed up her eyes and slammed the lid closed.

  Twenty-Eight

  Now

  ‘You didn’t tell me if you have a husband,’ I whisper to Claire as we’re escorted to an interview room. It’s something to distract me, to make-believe everything’s normal even though my legs feel as though they’re about to give way.