Page 39 of The Temp

Tom rolls his eyes at me before chasing after her. ‘Sweetheart, wait!’

Once Georgia and Tom are safely out of earshot, I round on Daisy, grab her hand and pull her down onto a chair at the kitchen table, throwing glances at the door in case Tom comes back. ‘Daisy,’ I pant. ‘I’m so sorry. The letter knife. I put it in the pocket of Tom’s dressing gown when I wore it on Friday morning. I’ve been looking everywhere for it.’ I pause, do a hysterical little laugh for effect. ‘Honestly, I’d forget my head if…’

‘I know,’ Daisy cuts across me.

‘Pardon?’

‘I heard you talking at the door about dumping it. You weren’t talking about Linda’s bicycle.’ She jerks her head towards the ceiling where her bedroom is. ‘It was that.’

‘No.’ I close my eyes briefly. Fuck. ‘Daisy, it’s not…’

‘It’s okay, Bella.’ Reaching forward, she curls her hands around my shoulders firmly. ‘I know you guys are in some sort of trouble and I’m guessing Frank’s involved.’ I shake my head to and fro, to and fro. ‘I want to help. You took me in when I was desperate. Saved my life. Now it’s payback time.’

‘No.’ Tears sting my eyes. ‘You don’t owe me. I didn’t help you out in exchange for anything.’ I look at the clock. It’s twenty to ten. Linda and Zelda will be awake. It’s not an unreasonable time to call on a Sunday. I need to return their calls, let them know I’m okay. But first I need to find out exactly what happened when I fainted and how much Daisy knows. ‘What happened after I fell over?’

Daisy sits back in her chair. ‘The man at the cash machine gave me the letter opener, said it flew out of your pocket as you ran away. He was mortified when your flip-flop overturned and you fell over and fainted, blamed himself for alarming you. We had to call an ambulance, Bella, you were spark out.’ I nod, tell her she did the right thing. ‘I rang Tom while we waited for the paramedics to arrive. A few moments later you regained consciousness but were completely out of it, saying crazy stuff about Frank, something about him trying to kill Zelda. I told the gentleman you were a bit confused, thanked him and said I’d take it from here, that I was your sister.’ She laughs lightly, and I smile. ‘Hope that was okay,’ she adds, going red. ‘It was the only way to get rid of him.’

‘Of course it was. Good call.’

‘He was gone before I drew my next breath. He’d had an op and was still recovering. Stank of booze, though.’

‘Yes,’ I agree. ‘I smelt it on his breath when he spoke to me.’ I bite my bottom lip. At least I didn’t mention Frank’s body and Zelda stabbing him. ‘I’m sorry, Daisy, and thank you for looking after me. Now, about the letter opener, you’ve got it all wrong. It’s an office device,’ I say, and she frowns. ‘It was my dad’s, a bit of an heirloom, hence my panic.’

‘It has a Monte Carlo stamp on it,’ Daisy says. ‘Zelda and Frank just got back from there.’

‘Yes, they did. What a coincidence.’ I laugh lightly. ‘Dad was stationed in the south of France, loved Monaco, used to tell us stories about his time there.’ Her features soften. She’s buying it. I plough on. ‘I don’t know what you overheard outside Zelda’s, but I can categorically tell you that we were not talking about getting rid of my letter opener. Linda’s bicycle really is in Zelda’s garage and we need to get rid of it. Theo refuses point blank to have it back in the house.’

‘Oh, right. I see. I just... Gosh, I’m so sorry for thinking the worst. It’s lack of sleep,’ she laughs and my muscles unclench. ‘Theo is a bit of a moody chops, isn’t he? And slightly scary.’

‘Exactly. So, if I could have it back please.’

‘Oh, absolutely.’ She gets to her feet. ‘Good job Ginger-Haired-Man found it, eh? Might be worth a few bob if it’s antique.’ I close my eyes as I follow her out of the kitchen and up the stairs – feeling sick with nerves and deceit.

Later that night, I stare into the darkness, with the weight of Frank’s disappearance pinning me down like lead, willing sleep to come, but it doesn’t.

Chapter 36

The moment daylight breaks, I whip back the duvet and throw on the first thing I find. I then scribble a note for Tom, and one for Daisy, saying an urgent job came up via text. I place Tom’s on the bedside table, and slide Daisy’s under her bedroom door, before slipping quietly out of the house, stomach twisted like a wrung-out rag.

I arrive at Waterlow Park in Highgate in just under twenty minutes. On the bridge, I retrieve the weapon from my handbag, which I wrapped and secured in a terry tea towel and a brick to give it extra weight, and drop it into the lake. Job done.

‘How’d it go, Bette Davis?’ Linda yells over the thunder of several kanga drills, the moment I step into Zelda’s lounge for our Monday morning meeting.

‘What?’ I say tetchily, inhaling a fug of musky smoke, cheap air freshener and the slight mist of doom. ‘What’s an old Hollywood movie star got to do with anything?’

‘Great disguise,’ Zelda smiles, pointing at my face, and it is only then I realise that in my haste to get away from an old chatty couple, with two barking dogs, at the exit gate of Waterlow Park half an hour ago, I forgot to remove my head scarf and dark glasses when I climbed into my car and I now look like a Hollywood diva.

‘Everything okay?’ Linda is sitting in an armchair, glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, iPad in hand. ‘No one saw you, right?’ I hesitate, for a nanosecond. I can’t tell them about the frantic dogs and the elderly couple. It might make them anxious. ‘How’s the injury? Is that why you’re wearing the sunnies? Sorry, I didn’t think.’

‘It’s just a scratch,’ I say, dismissively, ‘concealer is a godsend.’ I look at two flowery mugs on the coffee table, trembling from the vibration of a blaring dumper going up the shared driveway. ‘Everything went to plan,’ I confirm, pulling off my sunglasses and untying my headscarf. ‘No one saw me.’

‘Well, you should try telling your face that,’ Linda snuffles.

‘Sorry, Linda. I barely slept.’

‘How’re you feeling after the fall?’ Zelda asks. I tell her that I’m fine now. It was a fuss over nothing. ‘And you’re definitely sure no one saw you in the park.’ Zelda looks at me anxiously.

‘Yesss,’ I hiss, annoyed. The dog owners saw me in the park, but they didn’t witness me chucking the weapon into the lake. So, technically, I’m not lying. ‘The letter opener has vanished.’

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