This Faith sounds like a right character. She knew what she was getting into when she found out this bloke had had an affair with a married woman. She should have known he was trouble.

35

The first thing April noticed when the front door opened was the blood. It was splattered across Faith’s face and dripped from the sleeve of her rain jacket as she pressed a bloodied hand to her neck. She staggered onto the step.

‘No!’ April cried as her friend’s knees buckled.

Faith’s make-up was muddied and her features ashen. Her lips moved but she could manage only a series of guttural gasps. As April comforted her friend, she peered through the open door and down the hallway, following the trail of blood towards the kitchen. There was no sign of Nick, but April would feel better if she could hear the wail of a police siren above Dexter’s fretful yaps. Had Tara made the call yet?

As she glanced over her shoulder to the car, a figure loomed over her. April shrank in horror when she saw the golf club in the man’s hand, but this wasn’t Nick. The man was grey-haired, with what looked like a century’s worth of wrinkles that deepened as he shuffled towards her in his slippers.

‘I’m Mr Newton from next door,’ he said. ‘The emergency services are on their way. What on earth happened?’

‘We need to get her away from the house,’ April said, aware of the open door and the danger beyond. She pulled her scarf from her neck and prised her friend’s hand from her throat. She expected a gush of blood, but the wound she glimpsed before pressing her scarf to Faith’s neck didn’t appear deep. Where had all that blood come from?

‘Mrs Cavendish, can you walk?’ asked Mr Newton. ‘We need to get you to safety.’

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Too late.’

‘What do you mean?’ April asked. ‘Where’s Nick?’

Faith recoiled at the sound of his name. ‘Dead. He’s dead.’

A shudder ran down April’s spine and rose up as bile in her throat. She wanted to feel relief, her friend was safe, but a man was dead. Nick was dead. She couldn’t take it in. She didn’t want to. Where the hell were the police?

‘I heard her screams,’ said Mr Newton, shaking his head.

As April glanced up at Faith’s neighbour, she noticed Molly standing behind him. ‘You should get back in the car, Molly. You don’t want to see this.’

Molly didn’t move. She was staring at Faith.

‘He laughed at me,’ Faith said. ‘He said if I was stupid enough to believe the story about Erin, I only had myself to blame. He picked up a knife and told me he liked taking money from dead people. I thought he was going to kill me.’