Page 60 of The Women

Samantha’s face burns. She doesn’t, cannot look up. Shocked silence rushes at her. She senses Aisha stealing out of the room. Minutes later, in a small, subdued voice, she calls goodbye from the living-room door. Rustling, whispers in the hallway, the latch. At the click of the front door closing, Samantha shuts her eyes a moment in relief. Madwomen, the pair of them.

Christine comes to sit with her on the sofa.

‘I told her to fuck off,’ Samantha says.

‘Apparently.’ Christine pats her leg. ‘Don’t worry about it, she’ll understand.’

‘I lost my temper.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

It is better, now, with this woman she doesn’t know, who is here only in a professional capacity, whose motives Samantha doesn’t have to guess at. It is almost calm.

‘Listen,’ Christine says. ‘They’ve spoken to most of your students over the phone. PC Davies, do you remember him from the office? He made a house call to Mr Worth and had a chat.’

‘Sean?’

‘Sean Worth, yes. He admitted to being outside your house last week and the week before. He was worried about you because he’d been sitting next to Suzanne, he said, and he’d seen her writing mean things on her notepad.’

‘What things?’

‘Just words, he said, and some doodles. He didn’t see her write anything specifically about you, but he said that when you mentioned the poem, he was worried. He followed her to the car park and took a note of her registration and went to check if her car was anywhere near your house. He said he saw it parked in the next street.’

That is so Sean, Samantha thinks. The precision of it.

‘Oh, Sean,’ she says, tears spilling.

Christine pulls out yet another tissue. ‘Second thoughts, have the lot,’ she says, handing over the whole packet. ‘He’s got a bit of a soft spot for you, I think.’

Samantha shakes her head, tries to take it in. ‘He tried to tell me. He started to say something but then he got all muddled and stressed.’

Christine nods. ‘Could be that he wanted to tell you but couldn’t find the words, do you know what I mean? Perhaps he didn’t want to cause trouble, you never know. He’s quite highly strung, apparently. Anyway, it’s looking likely that Suzanne’s your dodgy poet, although we can’t know until we hear what she’s got to say, obviously.’

‘Poor Sean. Bless him.’

Christine sighs. ‘Like you say, bless him. Might not have gone about it in the right way, but his heart was in the right place, wasn’t it?’

‘It was.’

For a while, Samantha and Christine sit in companionable silence. A siren out on the street causes Samantha to run over to the window, listen to the atonal whine as it passes. She sees Emily in the ambulance, tiny and helpless on a white stretcher, tubes up her nose, a needle in her arm, paramedics with set faces bent over her fragile form. A strange growl escapes her. She buries her face in her hands.

‘Come on, love.’ Christine puts an arm around her and leads her away, back to the sofa. ‘Try and stay calm if you can.’

Minutes become hours. She calls Peter again, but his phone is still off. She has left three messages. The sky darkens. Christine asks if she could eat something. She shakes her head, tells her to help herself. A moment later, there are sandwiches on a plate on the coffee table. Samantha stares at them. There is tea too. It is sweet, and she drinks in sips while the bread triangles harden and curl. Time is slipping. It has been slipping since the nursery assistant frowned at her and asked if she’d forgotten something.

The police radio crackles. Christine dips her head. Her trousers make swishing sounds as she strides out of the room. The living-room door clicks shut. Silence but for the occasional crackle from the fire.

Samantha presses her face to her knees. Cradles the back of her head. She hears the door handle rattle, the hinge creak. Sees the tips of Christine’s black shoes.

‘Thank God for CCTV, eh?’ she says. ‘Samantha, they’ve found her.’

Twenty-Five

The ANPR picked up a red Toyota Yaris on the M58, Christine tells her once she has calmed down, once she’s stopped crying loud, messy tears of relief. The police tailed the vehicle and pulled the driver over on the A570 after she’d left the motorway at Junction 3 in the direction of Ormskirk. Emily was found safe and well in the back seat. The suspect, Charlotte Suzanne Lewis, was arrested at the scene and has been taken into custody.

‘Can I go to her?’ Samantha asks.

Christine shakes her head. ‘They’ll bring her to you, love. They’re on their way.’

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