It felt strange being in there, looking at her shoes in the wardrobe, the beads and earrings hung from a jewellery stand on the dresser, a framed photo of her and Alex with Sam on a beach somewhere. They all looked so happy. Again, wouldn’t she have moved that if she had another man over? I didn’t know. I was no expert at relationships. I’d spent less than two years with Jeremy, and even though in name he’d been my husband, in reality we were more like flatmates. Feeling guilty, I checked the bedroom drawers. Nothing, apart from some sexy lingerie. It looked unworn, some of it, tags still on. Interesting. Perhaps there really had been someone else, then, a secret new lover.

I found nothing of note in Sam’s bedroom, just some more toys and books, his little-boy clothes folded in drawers. The bed was unmade – sloppiness again. The bathroom was not as clean as it could have been, toys piled on the wide windowsill. Peppa Pig bubble bath. I then came upon a small room with a massage table in it, draped with a sheet. So Anna had worked from home after all. Had she seen a client who took things too far, misinterpreted her touch?

I poked about the room, which also contained a desk with a square of dust where a laptop might have been. The police likely had it. I sifted through the mess of papers on the desk, finding nothing except a copy of the local free newspaper from just before the murder, when Anna must have woken up with no idea that this would be her last day alive. How much more fragile life is than we know.

I was realising with frustration that the police had already taken anything of interest from the house, and I was about to give up when I heard the noise. The front door slammed. Footsteps on the tiled hallway. Someone had come into the house. I froze like a thief. They were coming closer, down the hallway.

‘Hello?’ It was Alex! ‘Is someone here?’

He would have found the door unlocked. Would he know it was me?

The sensible thing to do would have been to own up and show myself. But I had not been doing the sensible thing for quite some time now, and I couldn’t bear to be caught in his dead wife’s house, after all I’d already done to damage our relationship. So instead I ducked under the sheet on Anna’s massage table, hiding beneath its folds, and I held my breath.

Casey

Casey

OCTOBER 2000