He has the hood of his plain, black hoodie pulled up against the rain, and the fact I am unable to catch a glimpse of his most cherished face after so long is a physical pain in my chest.
So enraptured am I by the sight of my love, I hadn’t noticed the passenger door opening. But now it is open, and Mark is standing on the pavement, gripping the upper portion of the door as a figure exits the car.
Mark’s back blocks my view, but I see the person get out.
I see her.
They speak on the pavement, standing close together as only lovers do, Mark still blocking my view of this woman. A few moments later, he is hurrying around to the boot and pulling it open.
Now I see her, standing there alone on the pavement, looking around herself as if getting her bearings. Even though it is dark out, I can see that she is beautiful and my heart twists into a tight knot of jealousy. She is tall – way taller than my measly five-feet-five – she has to be five-nine, at least. She is wearing skinny jeans of indeterminable colour in the dark evening, and a thick pullover that appears to be woolly and is entirely unsuitable for a rainy night such as this. She is thin, but in the way that models are thin, with their jutting backsides and tiny waists curving gently out to their tight hips – her thick pullover cannot disguise the fact she clearly has a knock-out figure.
I can’t quite make out the colour of her hair – it appears to be dark, tied at the nape of her neck and scraped off her face. It’s either scrunched up in a bun, or short, I can’t tell which.
The boot of the car slams shut – I hear it from my living room – and Mark is by her side once more, a large holdall in each hand.
I strain my ears, trying to catch what they’re saying. I fancy that I can hear the low hum of their voices, but it could just be the rain, and every car that passes completely drowns them out with their tyres whooshing past on the wet tarmac.
Together, Mark and his lover ascend the four, stone steps that lead up to the front door.
Feeling sick, I let the blind snap back into place, alarmed to discover that I am violently trembling.
FOUR
I don’t normally take Bertie out for a walk this time of night. Broadgate isn’t exactly the safest place of an evening, even in this supposedly well-to-to end. Normally, I'd let him out the kitchen door for a pee in the back garden.
But not tonight. Tonight, I feel compelled to walk him a little way along the prom.
At just gone eleven at night, Bertie is sniffing enthusiastically at lampposts and the shoulder-high, concrete wall that runs along the edge of the cliff.
We pause under one such old-fashioned streetlamp while Bertie does his business. It’s not my fault that this streetlamp just happens to be opposite Mark’s place. And of course I’m only stopping because Bertie is so determined to wee in this particular spot.
Now that the nights are drawing in, I have been popping into Mark’s house more often in the evenings, so that I can switch on the lights for a few hours in random rooms, making it look as if someone is home. I vary the rooms and the length of time the lights stay on, sometimes even leaving a light on all night. But it feels strange standing here, knowing that it isn’t me who has switched on the lights.
And usually, if Mark is home, I am invariably invited round, seeing as I am his best friend. But not tonight. Because tonight, and for every night after, she is with him. I have been replaced. Not that I was ever with him, in the truest sense of the word, but I still feel thoroughly shut out, abandoned like the unloved buildings Mark is so fond of painting. Now I am the one literally on the outside, looking in.
At least it isn’t raining so hard anymore, even if a light drizzle still permeates the air, a feather-light mist that settle on the outermost fibres of the green parka jacket I have thrown on, like glittering specks of dust.
I stare at his house, the hood of my parka pulled up against the drizzle while Bertie snuffles around the lamppost. Unlike my house, where every window is adorned with blinds, his house has curtains. They are all thick, expensive velvet, apart from the voile material of his studio curtains, which he says he likes because they diffuse the light when it streams in at peak times in the mornings and evenings when the sun is low, as his studio is one of the knocked-through bedrooms, and is both east and west facing.
Skinny chinks of light are visible around the edges of the curtains in the downstairs living room and the upstairs bedroom on the second floor – in Mark’s childhood bedroom, which is adjacent to the studio. His studio, the two uppermost bedrooms and the dining-room downstairs which was knocked through into the kitchen years ago, are in darkness.
I am surprised to see that light on in Mark’s bedroom. It is the smallest bedroom in the house. I can understand him not wanting to sleep in his parents’ old room, but the guest bedroom on the uppermost floor is far more suitable. It is beautifully done out, and has a four-poster, queen-sized bed, as opposed to Mark’s small double.
Or maybe it isn’t strange at all, and I am merely insanely jealous of another woman sleeping in Mark’s real bed. Just the thought of it leaves me feeling sick and shaky and makes me want to weep.
I stare up at his window, lost in my own jealous misery, when the crimson curtains twitch. I let out a little gasp, rooted to the spot, unable to tear my gaze away. Just when I think I had imagined the movement, the curtains part slightly down the middle.
I should look away, I know that I should, but I can’t. I am staring up at his damn window like a stalker, like a pervert. Like a dirty, peeping Tom. The curtains pull further apart, and I see a figure standing there. A nude, female figure, silhouetted against the light of the room.
I gasp, paralysed in shock. I feel dreamlike and strange, dirty and voyeuristic, yet at the same time I feel like this is happening to someone else.
Because this isn’t me. It can’t be me.
But it doesn’t stop me staring. The woman extends her arms at right angles to her body, holding the curtains far apart, her head twisted to the side, like she is looking at something else in the room. Or someone else.
Is Mark there? I wonder.
A fresh stab of jealousy twists in my guts, despite the absolute strangeness of this. It only then strikes me that it looks as if she is striking a pose. The way she holds herself, resting her weight on one hip and bending the opposite knee.
That actress from the series, Twin Peaks slams into my mind – the goddess emerging through the red velvet drapes...
Her body is perfect, from what I can see; skinny, yet curved in the way of a centrefold. Because of the light behind her, and because of the considerable distance, I can’t make out too much detail, but I get the impression her vagina is fully waxed, and what looks like a large tattoo of a snake is curled around her right hipbone. I could be wrong, it could just be a shadow, but I don’t think so. The light behind her illuminates her, as if she were an angel descended from heaven. There is a golden halo around her profile, and I can make out a small nose and a strong jawline on a swanlike neck, her hair still scraped off her face.
And then she twists her head forward and appears to be looking right at me.
I swear under my breath, my heart pounding in my chest as the adrenalin courses through me.
“Come on, Bertie,” I mutter, tugging on his lead, my paralysis breaking at last.
She can’t be looking at me, I tell myself. She’s just looking out at the ocean, that’s all.
I don’t look up and hurry back along the prom, back the way I came.
She knew you were there all along, a cynical little voice whispers in my mind. She was posing in the window, just for you.
But that’s impossible, I tell myself quickly. How could she possibly have known that I was there? She isn’t bloody psychic.
I scurry a good way along the wide pavement on the ocean side, way past my house so that she doesn’t see me go home. But then it occurs to me, if she did see me, she’s going to know that it was me who was looking through the window wh
en we do officially meet because she’ll recognise my dog.
Oh, that’s just wonderful, I think bitterly.
Considering this, I can no longer see the point of my nonchalant, night-time stroll along the prom. So I stop, preparing to cross the road.
Before I cross, I hazard a discreet glance up at Mark’s bedroom. I see that she is gone, the curtains drawn.
But that’s not to say that she isn’t watching.
And if she is watching, then who is the voyeur? Me or her? If she knew I was there, and she was showing herself like that, then what, exactly, does that make her? Was she flashing a stranger, or did she know exactly who I was?
I want to believe that she was just staring out at the ocean. God, I want to believe that so badly, but I can’t quite manage it.
My skin crawls on the short walk home; I am unable to shake the conviction that my every step is being watched.
FIVE
I am watching from my living room window. Mark’s car pulls up outside his house. The rain is lashing down in sheets, yet somehow – impossibly – the full moon is bright in the cloudy night sky. It hangs low over the horizon of the ocean, a huge, glowing white orb, appearing as big to me as the nearest parked car is outside my window.
This monster moon troubles me deeply in my dream, it stirs a primal fear deep in my soul, yet I don’t know why.
The driver’s door creaks open and Mark steps out into the road. The hood of his plain, black hoodie is pulled up against the rain, obscuring his face, but I’d still recognise him anywhere. There is no mistaking his long, gangly body, nor the way he carries himself. He has that distinctive strut – a walk that is more cool than arrogant or aggressive. My Mark is not these things. Not ever. Even with the huge success he has attained in his career, he retains his charming – and quite genuine – boyish modesty.
He makes his way around the front of the car, his body thrown into stark silhouette because the headlights are still on. I can’t hear if the engine is running, because the rain drowns out all else. It is lashing down, the pitter patter of raindrops so loud it feels as if the noise is coming from inside my head.
He stops there, in front of the car, facing my window.
My heart slams in my chest and a small whimper escapes my lips because he is staring right at me.
I can’t know this for sure, because his face is thrown into the blackest of shadows, but I know it, just the same. The passenger door swings open and out swivel a pair of long, shapely feminine legs.
Long, shapely, bare legs. Holly emerges from the car, as naked as the day she was born. I blink, sure that I am hallucinating, that it is a trick of the dark and the distorting rain, that she is merely wearing neutral coloured, form-fitting clothing…
But no. When she walks around the front of the car to join Mark, there is no mistaking the fact she is nude. The headlights illuminate the curves of her tall, slender figure, the light pouring between her slightly parted legs so that I am privy to the outline of her bald labia.
I can’t look away. And neither, it seems, can they. They stand stock-still in the rain, staring at my window. Holly’s face is also cast into shadows, but not as much as Mark’s, as I can almost make out the details of her features. I can’t say for sure, but it seems like she is grinning…
END OF SAMPLE.
The following novels are available for purchase on Amazon:
THE SILENCED WIFE
THE BREAK IN
AFTER SHE DIED
ONLINE
FROM THE INSIDE
TWO DOORS DOWN
IN SPITE
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In Spite: A terrifying psychological thriller with a shocking twist you won't see coming Page 19
