The Sixth Window

by Rachel Abbott

  ‘We don’t know, Lauren, and even if it was, it’s not your fault.’

  ‘That’s not what Mrs Bale will say. She’ll say I should have stuck with Jen whatever she asked me to do. She’s probably right.’

  ‘How old were these boys?’ Becky asked.

  The girl shrugged. ‘I don’t know – sixteen, seventeen? Boys of that age are so childish. I couldn’t see what the fascination was myself.’

  Tom had already requested the CCTV from the pool, and while Lauren waited in the interview room with her mother he asked for stills to be printed of people leaving the reception area the last time the girls had been there together. The pictures of the two girls were interesting. Lauren had a face like stone, and Jennifer was almost skipping along by her side, laughing and chatting. She was clearly excited about something.

  He showed the images to Lauren, who identified the boys Jennifer had been fooling about with, the lifeguard standing by the exit in his tracksuit, arms folded, making sure they left the premises.

  Tom didn’t think Lauren had anything more to tell them, and as soon as she left the team had begun the process of tracking each of the boys down. It had proved easy enough because the pool receptionist said she knew where one of them lived. Of the four, the youngest was on holiday, but Keith had been out to interview the other three, and none of them appeared to have the first clue who Jennifer was, even when shown her photo. It seemed to Tom that they had been totally absorbed in their own games and possibly hadn’t even noticed the skinny girl sitting on the side of the pool watching them.

  So if she hadn’t met this guy to whom she belonged at the swimming pool, where had she met him? They didn’t have any other route to pursue.

  Becky put her head around the door. ‘I’m off, boss. Have a good night,’ she said with a knowing look.

  Tom refused to rise to the bait. At some point he was probably going to have to tell her, but not yet.

  ‘You too,’ he said, not looking at her but staring instead at his computer screen.

  He didn’t want to answer questions about Louisa. He had sent her two texts and tried to call her, but she hadn’t responded. That said it all, as far as he was concerned.

  33

  As soon as Natalie opened the door to Alison, her friend glanced beyond her into the flat. ‘No Scarlett?’

  ‘She’s hiding in the bedroom.’

  ‘What’s up with her?’ Alison asked, frowning as she leaned in to give Natalie a kiss on the cheek and a quick hug.

  ‘I don’t think she wants to sit and listen to us talk about Bernie,’ Natalie said, taking in her friend’s loud but somehow perfect outfit of tight bright-pink jeans and a predominantly orange patterned baggy T-shirt. She felt dowdy by comparison in her smart black work trousers and blue silk top. Alison had an instinct for colour, and paired the most outrageous choices, but it always worked. ‘Scarlett’s very confused by everything at the moment. And who can blame her?’

  ‘Who indeed?’ Alison responded, dumping a supermarket carrier bag on the worktop that clinked as she put it down.

  Natalie smiled. ‘I’ll get the glasses. What do you think of the place?’

  Alison frowned. ‘What place?’

  ‘This place, of course. Our new – if somewhat temporary – home. We were lucky to get it. Thank goodness one of the agents came up trumps.’

  Natalie reached into the cupboard for two wine glasses and put them on the breakfast bar as Alison walked to the far end of the room, gazing around her.

  ‘Well, I’m glad it’s okay for you, but before we talk about your meeting with the police tomorrow, are you going to tell me why you felt you had to leave Ed? You know I had my doubts, but you seemed so sure. What happened?’

  Natalie hesitated. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened that afternoon, so she covered the pause by filling two glasses with wine. She handed one to Alison, who she felt sure would take no more than two sips all evening. Both women sat on the sofa and, folding one leg beneath her, Natalie turned towards her friend.

  ‘I’ll tell you, but first I want to know why you and Ed are so distant with each other, and why you thought us moving in together was such a bad idea.’

  ‘Oh come on, Nat. You were distraught about Bernie – understandably. Ed was your knight in shining armour, and I thought you’d put him on a pedestal. The problem with pedestals is that people invariably fall off them, so I was worried that when you stopped being so incredibly grateful to him and realised that he’s just an ordinary guy, you might not feel the same way.’

  ‘Do you think he’s ordinary?’ Natalie asked, wondering if her friend had ever suspected that Ed had a dark side.

  Alison reached over and put an arm around her friend. ‘Ordinary’s not a derogatory term, you know. He’s solid, reliable, dependable, but he’s not Bernie, is he?’

  Natalie knew what she meant. When Bernie walked into a room, people looked up and smiled, knowing he was going to entertain them. Ed was the person you turned to when you needed help… Well, that’s what she had always thought.

  For a moment Natalie considered how it used to feel going home at the end of a working day. With Bernie she had felt a frisson of excitement just being with her man. With Ed she had felt cocooned, warm and safe, as if she had left her troubles at the door. So different, but who could say which was better?

  ‘Does Ed know what you think about us getting together?’ Natalie asked.

  ‘I’m afraid so. I told him, and he accused me of jealousy – said that I resented the fact that you needed him more than me. But we’ll get over it. You’re my best friend, and I didn’t want you making any mistakes, that’s all.’

  Natalie took a large gulp of wine and looked at Alison over the rim of the glass. Was she right? Had she put Ed on a pedestal? Was that what had happened? Had she believed him to be perfect, and when a flaw appeared she had run for the hills?

  No. That was ridiculous. This wasn’t some minor irritation, like leaving used teabags on the draining board. This was about her daughter’s safety – and possibly that of other kids too.

  ‘Anyway, what did make you leave?’ Alison asked, breaking eye contact. ‘You still haven’t told me, and Ed wouldn’t say a word when I asked him.’

  Natalie had known Alison was going to ask her, and she had decided to use the same story she had used with Megan, knowing it was a weak excuse. She told her about Ed searching through Bernie’s boxes.

  ‘Really? That’s not on, is it? He should have respected your right to privacy more than that. But if you’re worried about him going through Bernie’s boxes of rubbish, why have you left them there with him?’

  ‘I didn’t have a fat lot of choice. I couldn’t get them all in my car along with our suitcases, and I didn’t want to drag the whole leaving thing out any longer than I had to.’

  ‘Do you want me to go and get them and take them to my house?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. You haven’t got a square inch in your house that’s not covered in builder’s rubble. It doesn’t matter, it’s not as if there’s anything terribly exciting. It’s just that along with bits and pieces from his childhood Bernie had notebooks and random scraps of paper. He jotted all sorts of things down as ideas came to him – everything from plans for cheap holidays to what he was going to buy me for Christmas. I never looked at them when he was alive. I thought he was entitled to his own thoughts.’

  Alison’s expression was unfathomable. ‘I didn’t know that about Bernie.’

  ‘Well, why would you? He always said that ideas came to him at the oddest of times, and he could never remember them even an hour later. So it was best to write them down. One day I want to go through them, maybe with Scarlett, and I don’t want anyone else reading them before I do.’

  ‘Then I’ll go and get them for you,’ Alison said. She put her still-full glass down heavily on the coffee table. ‘I’ll store them safely in my studio until you’re ready for them. I’ll get them tomorrow evening, then
you can stop worrying.’

  Natalie didn’t relish the thought of calling Ed to give him this news, especially after today, but in spite of the fact that it wasn’t the main reason she had moved out, she would love to know why he had been searching through Bernie’s boxes. What was he looking for?

  She had too much else to worry about now, though, including an interview with a detective tomorrow morning.

  ‘What do you think the police will want to ask me, Ali? I know I’ve been through it before, but it’s all a bit of a blur, to be honest. I was so devastated, I’m sure I was barely coherent.’

  Alison reached out to hold her hand.

  ‘If they’ve got someone for it, they probably want to be sure they didn’t miss anything first time round that might get him off. They’ll want to know if things were okay at home, was he worried about anything or had there been any trouble with anyone – even something as trivial as a neighbour arguing about the height of your hedge. That kind of thing.’

  ‘Oh,’ Natalie said, her voice flat. ‘I don’t know what I can tell them that would be any use. You know Bernie – Mr Nice Guy. He never argued with anyone.’

  That was true, but Natalie also remembered that over the last few months of his life for some reason Bernie had been far from enthusiastic about her spending a lot of time with Alison. Maybe he thought she shared more with her friend than she did with him, but typically she had never delved too deeply.

  ‘Just tell them the truth, Nat,’ Alison said. ‘You were happy, and there’s nothing you can think of that was worrying him.’

  Alison was right. She could say that, and it was probably what she said in the height of her anguish two years ago. But that wouldn’t be entirely true, and maybe it was time to admit it.

  *

  Scarlett could hear the low murmur of voices coming from the next room. She tried to shut out the sound. She didn’t want to know what they were saying about her dad, pulling apart the last few months of his life. Hunting through her hastily packed suitcase for her headphones, she plugged them into her phone to listen to music and tried to engage herself in Snapchatting with her friends, but neither distraction could block out her thoughts.

  Tomorrow she was going to have to talk to the police. And this time she had to tell them about the text on her dad’s phone. She was going to check out her own suspicions first, then she would tell the police everything.

  There was too much going on in her head. Thoughts of the police interview, the text, the conversation in the next room were overlaid with images of the fat caretaker fiercely telling her to get away from the posh part of the apartments, as if she was some toerag who had broken in.

  He had to be wrong about the apartment being empty. He just didn’t want her to know who was living there. She wished that Cliff was still around. He would have been much more helpful.

  She had decided not to tell her mum about the run-in with Martin, or about Ed bringing the package. There was no need to add extra worries to what seemed to be a growing list. Scarlett would go back to the apartment tomorrow and see if anyone answered the door. She had to know for sure.

  She was so deep in thought and the music was so loud that she only realised her mum was standing at the foot of the bed when she waved her arms, windmill style, to attract Scarlett’s attention. She was mouthing, ‘Dinner’ and Scarlett knew she had to go and be sociable for at least as long as it took to eat the food.

  The smell of Chinese food was enticing, and Scarlett breathed in the spicy aroma. ‘Hi, Alison,’ she said as she walked from the bedroom.

  Alison looked about to jump up to give her a kiss, but Scarlett dodged behind the breakfast bar and grabbed herself a glass for some water.

  The conversation was strained as they shared the sofa and ate the Chinese with chopsticks, but Scarlett answered when she was spoken to and smiled as much as she could. The weight of knowing what she was going to have to ask ruined her appetite, and she was only able to manage half of her plate of food.

  ‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’ her mum asked. ‘It’s not like you to let Chinese food go to waste.’

  ‘Sorry. Not hungry, that’s all.’

  Scarlett noticed that her mum had done little more than nibble at her food either, and Alison had done exactly as she always did – picked out a few pieces of chicken and the odd cashew nut. It seemed the tension in the room was affecting all of them.

  Alison pushed her plate away and Scarlett jumped up. ‘You stay there, Mum. I’ll stick these in the dishwasher.’ Scarlett took Alison’s plate from her and went across to the kitchen area.

  ‘I think I should be going, Nat,’ Alison said.

  Scarlett wasn’t going to have a chance to talk to her, and for a minute she was relieved, but with the police investigation starting up again she had to do it if she was going to tell them anything useful.

  ‘I’ll see you out,’ Scarlett said, to the obvious surprise of Alison, who had no chance to comment before Scarlett had opened the door and walked out into the black hall.

  As she moved away from the door and the corridor flooded with white light, Scarlett looked back at her mum, standing in the doorway, saying goodbye to her friend. The harsh lighting threw her face into a pattern of stark shades of grey, and she suddenly seemed older and more vulnerable.

  Neither Scarlett nor Alison uttered a word until they were out of sight and it wasn’t until they reached the lift to the lobby that Alison broke the silence.

  ‘Scarlett,’ she said, her voice low. ‘I know you’re mad at me for something and have been for a while now – I just don’t know what. If I’ve taken too much of your mum’s time over the last eighteen months, I’m sorry, but she needed me.’

  Scarlett gave a harsh laugh. ‘It’s not my mum’s time I’m bothered about.’

  Alison stopped, and Scarlett turned to face her. She hadn’t really noticed until now how thin Alison had become. Her cheekbones stood out above slightly hollowed cheeks and her eyes seemed deeper set than they used to be.

  ‘Scarlett. Look at me. What is it that’s bothering you? I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about. But I do want to help.’

  ‘I’m talking about my dad, Alison.’

  Alison said nothing, just narrowed her eyes and stared at Scarlett. Then she reached out with both hands to hold Scarlett gently around the wrists.

  ‘Get off me, Alison. You’re hurting me.’

  ‘Oh stop being so dramatic. I’m not hurting you. Just holding you so you can’t run away. What do you mean, me and your dad?’

  ‘Did you send him a text the day before he died? A text about love. Was it you? He wasn’t available, you know. He was ours!’

  Scarlett felt a burning at the back of her eyes and her throat tightened painfully. The number of the phone the text had come from had been withheld, but it had to be Alison. She didn’t need a response. All she wanted was for Alison to know what she suspected.

  She wrenched her wrists out of Alison’s grasp, turned and started to run down the long corridor, back to the left-hand turn that led towards their apartment. She heard the pounding of feet behind her as she turned the corner, and a hand reached out and grabbed her arm, holding her back.

  ‘Stop it. Stop running from me and tell me what you’re talking about. If you go home in this state, your mum’s going to be worried sick. Don’t you think she’s got enough on her plate with the new enquiry? Tell me what you mean and let’s put this straight, Scarlett.’

  Alison’s eyes were wide, and Scarlett could sense her concern – probably more for her friend than for Scarlett.

  ‘I saw the text. I saw what you wrote to my dad.’

  ‘What text? I never sent your dad a text. It’s possible that at some time I may have sent him a message if I couldn’t get hold of your mum, but that’s all. What text?’ she repeated.

  ‘I saw it. I know it was from you.’

  ‘Whatever you saw had nothing to do with me, I promise you. What did it say?’ />
  ‘I love you.’ Scarlett practically spat the words out. ‘Among other things.’

  Alison’s face was a picture of confusion. Was she acting?

  ‘What other things? Try to remember, Scarlett.’

  ‘Why? Can’t you remember?’

  Alison lifted both arms to hold Scarlett by the shoulders and looked straight into her eyes. ‘I can’t remember because I didn’t send it.’

  ‘If I tell my mum, she’ll hate you as much as I do.’

  Alison gave an exasperated sigh. ‘The text wasn’t from me, and I can prove it. You know what a neat freak I am. I’ve got all my mobile bills, complete with details of every number I’ve called or sent a text to for the last three years. Come and check them out, or I’ll scan them and mail them to you. You’ve got to believe me, Scarlett. It wasn’t me.’

  Scarlett felt the first seeds of doubt, but it had to have been Alison, and it wasn’t just the text that had made her think that. There was other stuff too. She had never said anything before because she didn’t want her mum to find out that her husband and best friend were cheating on her. But now she was going to have to talk to the police, and she would tell them everything this time.

  ‘Can you remember the rest of the message? It might be important,’ Alison said.

  Scarlett didn’t want to say any more – not to Alison, and not to anyone else.

  ‘Forget it,’ she said, hanging her head. ‘I won’t say anything to Mum. I’m sorry.’

  She pushed herself off the wall and Alison dropped her hands. Scarlett had harboured this hatred and certainty for too long and now she felt like a stupid child.

  She could feel Alison’s eyes on her back as she walked away and realised that maybe she would never know what had been going on.

  34

  At last I’ve been able to escape to my bedroom. I thought this evening would never end, but Shirley and Mike wanted to know how drama club is going. I had to lie and say that I have to go more often than once a week because it’s the school holidays. I had to make up stories about it when all I wanted to do was to get away from them and think about what happened today.