Page 8 of Don't Let Him In

She climbs into the van and does a three-point turn before heading home. The high street is lit up now with the first of the Christmas lights: twinkling puffballs hanging from the trees, narrow trunks wrapped in more lights, angel wings strung across the street at three separate points. They’d cost a fortune, those angel wings; all the local shopkeepers had pooled together to buy them a couple of years ago. But worth the money. Enderford High Street is one of the prettiest high streets in Kent, a mix of Victorian bow-fronted shops and pastel-colored Georgian town houses, coffee shops, antique shops, delis, and estate agents. The shops go all out for Christmas. Martha’s is festooned with pale pink baubles and looks a treat.

At home everything is quiet. Nala is still transfixed by the superpowered dogs, Jonah is still drawing scary things on his iPad, Troy is still staring at his phone.

“Is Al back?” she asks Troy, even though she already knows he isn’t.

Troy shakes his head and slowly replaces his AirPods.

It’s nearly seven.

She mouths “fuck” under her breath, then she goes into the kitchen and gets some food on for the kids.

When Martha wakes up the next morning, she is happy for a moment because it’s the weekend and it’s not dark outside as it normally is when she rises at this time of the year. For a moment she enjoys the warm, luxurious glow of a lie-in, thinks of hot tea and buttered toast, and then it hits her—she’s meant to be going to Normandy today, with Al. Her brother is due in two hours. Her favorite dress is hanging from the wardrobe, ready to be folded into her weekend case to wear at the lovely restaurant Al’s booked them into for dinner tonight. But Al is not here.

A darkness descends.

Sorry,the message he’d finally sent her at eight last night hadsaid.Big blow-up at work. All hell let loose. Going to need to stay here overnight. Should be home by tomorrow afternoon. We can still make the dinner booking!

She hasn’t replied. She knows exactly what it means; should be home by tomorrow afternoon means I have no idea when I’ll be home. Her stomach churns with anxiety.

She pulls back her bedclothes and puts on her silk dressing gown, then heads into the baby’s room. Nala’s still sleeping—she’s a good little sleeper, much better than the boys ever were—so she leaves her and goes to the top of the stairs, smiles at Baxter lying at the bottom, wagging his tail furiously at her, and heads past him into the kitchen.

She met Al four years ago. She was pregnant two years after that. Not what she’d been expecting as a forty-four-year-old divorcée with a ten-year-old and a thirteen-year-old. Not how she’d seen the next chapter of her life. But then she hadn’t seen a man like Al in her future. She hadn’t known then that she was going to meet the perfect man.

She quells the fury and the disappointment, swallows back the nauseating anxiety of what the next few hours or days are going to feel like, fills the kettle, and switches it on.

NINE

Ash takes her morning toast into the living room and sits with crossed legs on the oversized sofa in the picture window that overlooks the sea. Sometimes you can see France from here, sometimes you can even make out the shapes of individual houses. But today there’s a pall hanging over the channel and no sign of anything on the horizon. There’s a chill in the air and she covers her bare legs with the fluffy blanket that sits on the back of the sofa, then picks up her phone and begins to scroll. She stops scrolling at the sound of breathing in her periphery, the whine of a floorboard underfoot, and turns to see Nick walking toward her. He’s in boxers and a T-shirt. The sight is quite alarming. Boxers are basically underwear. They’re pale blue with a cream windowpane check. His legs are slim and hard, deep dips carved into the point where his quads meet the flesh on the back of his thighs. His reading glasses are on his head, nestled into his thick white hair.

“Good morning, Ash,” he says. “How are you?”

“Oh,” she replies. “Good. You?”

“Yes,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck with his fingertips. “A little rough around the edges but otherwise OK. I was trying and failing to work your coffee machine.”

Dad’s coffee machine,she wants to say but doesn’t.

“Oh,” she says, peeling the fluffy blanket off her lap. “Sure. Let me…”

“No,” he says. “Please. Don’t. You look so cozy there. Just give me a quick pointer and I can work out the rest.”

She explains the vagaries of the machine to him and when he goes, she toys with the idea of tiptoeing out of the other door and escaping to her bedroom. But she’s twenty-six. She’s not a moody teen. She straightens herself and waits.

When he returns a moment later, he’s holding one of Dad’s coffee cups.

He sits himself down next to her and she clears her throat, holding back the stupid fury and the stupid rage.

“This view,” he says dreamily. “I mean, I have never seen anything like it. It’s almost as if you’re in the South of France. Hard to believe it’s Kent.”

“It’s the cedar tree,” she says, pointing into the middle distance. “That’s what gives it that Mediterranean feel.”

“Ah, yes,” he says, nodding. “I can see that. It’s beautiful. And you’ve lived here all your life?”

“Yes. Since I was a few weeks old. Apart from the bit when I was at uni in Bristol.”

“Well, lucky you. What an incredible place to grow up.”

She shrugs. “I guess.”

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