Читать книгу: «In a Cottage In a Wood: The gripping new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of The Woman Next Door»

1

Neve stares up at the nicotine-yellow ceiling and thinks about the long journey between here and her own bed. Or at least, the sofa bed in her sister’s flat.

She has a fierce longing for ice-cold Diet Coke and paracetamol. Her head is already starting to hurt and she hasn’t been asleep. She needs to pee, badly.

Squinting at the small travel clock that blinks with neon aggression on the bedside table, she sees it is 03:00. They got here about two. The sex had taken about fifteen minutes, tops. Maybe she had briefly fallen asleep after all.

Whatsisname sighs and gently farts in his sleep.

Christ.

He told her he had his own software company and was in London for a conference. But it didn’t ring true. Surely no one held conferences a few days before Christmas? Plus, he said ‘pacific’ instead of ‘specific’ and smiled in a glazed, uncomprehending way at a couple of her more acerbic comments. He didn’t seem bright enough to have his own company.

Now she slowly begins to extricate herself from the bed, placing her bare feet down onto the rough, worn carpet. It feels greasy and gritty. She curls her toes with a shudder and spots the squished comma of the condom lying next to the bed.

The air smells of hot dust from the ferocious radiator that’s within touching distance of the bed, with a base note of damp.

The outside of the hotel – which was grandly named the Intercontinental, London – had looked alright with its jaunty blue and white awning, potted plants and fairy-lit windows.

Neve has always been a sucker for fairy lights.

But the room, with its shabby MDF table and undersized kettle, feels like the kind of place travelling salesmen go to commit suicide. There’s a white extension cable snaking across the middle of the floor and she makes a mental note that she mustn’t trip over it on her way to the bathroom. The wallpaper is the textured sort popular in the 1970s, splashed lumpily with a jaundice-yellow emulsion.

Whatsisname’s (Greg? Gary? Something like that) wheelie case is sitting open on a chair next to the table. The arm of a jumper hangs languidly towards the carpet. She pictures him getting ready earlier, selecting a shirt that would mean the best chance of getting laid. Well, it had worked.

Self-disgust puffs through her like hot steam. She has somehow bypassed the numb, unconscious part of this scenario and gone straight to the hangover and guilt. She’s suddenly appalled by the idea of him waking and suggesting she come back to bed. Or, worse, wanting conversation.

This whole thing had seemed like a good idea at the time.

Her own office party – dinner in an uninspiring Italian restaurant, followed by drinks in a bar near Waterloo – had ended early because, in her view, her colleagues were a bunch of lightweights, all making excuses about babysitters or night buses or I’ve-had-quite-enough-haven’t-you? Well, no, she hadn’t, clearly.

Her usual ally and best friend, Miri, was too pregnant to last beyond eight p.m. and Neve’d had to work hard, again, not to make a wistful comment about the fun they’d once had on nights out. She knew that Miri might as well be emigrating to the other side of the world soon. Nothing was ever going to be the same again between them. Watching Miri expand and step tentatively into this new world, she felt jabs of real grief.

So when someone decent looking had come over and bought her another bucket-glass of Merlot, she hadn’t said no. Plus, she wasn’t wearing her contacts and was drunk enough that everyone looked quite attractive in their own way. And he was Irish and therefore exotic.

She can almost hear Lou saying, ‘You’re thirty now, Neve,’ in that mouth-like-a-cat’s-arse way she reserves for her only sister.

A wave of misery washes over her and she carefully gets up and starts to hunt for her knickers among the discarded clothes on the floor. She spots them lying in a forlorn figure of eight where she’d shucked them off earlier.

She’d already been thinking this was a mistake by then. The kissing – hard up against a doorway outside the bar – hadn’t been that promising. His tongue had been a muscular slug that poked and jabbed at the inside of her mouth as though on a mission to find something.

Now Neve fumbles for her bra and, once on, reaches for the gold silky top she’d bought especially for the night out. She’d been delighted with it at the time because it was half price, but wearing it she’d discovered that it made her sweat under the arms. She’d spilled red wine down it earlier too. She wrinkles her nose as she rolls the top over her head and down her body.

‘You leaving?’

The voice makes her jump. She turns to see Whatsisname looking up at her from the rumpled bed, propping himself up on pale, muscular arms.

‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘Um … I’d better get going.’ She smiles as though they’d just had a casual coffee together instead of a joyless, drunken shag. ‘I’ll just …’ she hooks a thumb in the direction of the bathroom and then goes in, closing the door behind her as she pees.

She quickly washes her hands and avoids her reflection, aware it will only make her feel worse in the circumstances. Maybe she is faster than he expected, because when she comes back into the room a minute later, he’s leaning out of the bed, vigorously checking the pockets of his trousers that are pooled next to it.

He stops and regards her with a sheepish shrug.

Realization burns. ‘What the actual fuck?’ she says. ‘Did you think I was going to take your wallet?’

Her head is far too sore to be speaking this loud. But it’s better than smashing him in the face with the travel kettle, which she might do otherwise.

‘I don’t really know you, do I?’ he says, defiantly raising his chin.

‘No you don’t,’ she hisses, hunting for her bag and shrugging on her coat. It feels as though these actions take far longer than they should.

Finally, she is able to take the few paces to the hotel door.

‘By the way, you’re shit in bed,’ she says as she wrenches it open. ‘Merry Christmas, arsehole!’

She wants to slam the door behind her but it’s on one of those safety hinges and, instead, it gently closes with a disappointing sigh.

The word ‘Bitch’ is lobbed through before it shuts.

Outside on the street, she pulls her fake fur coat together at the throat. Fury pumps through her. She half thinks about going back and giving him a further piece of her mind.

But instead, she walks away, her high heels ringing out against a pavement that’s glossy with recent rain. She swallows down a surge of self-pity and blinks hard, trying to concentrate on which way to go.

Neve has a terrible sense of direction. Several boyfriends, and Lou, have claimed not to believe quite how poor it is, as if getting lost often is some sort of affectation. As if it is a choice, to experience the freefall sensation of panic when you don’t really know where the hell you’re going.

At the end of the street she stops and considers which way to turn.

There’s some sort of factory on the opposite corner and she’s sure now that they passed it. So she heads off that way, praying that she will find herself somewhere near Waterloo. If she can get over the water to the Embankment, she can probably find a night bus.

Her shoes chafe the backs of her heels and her teeth are gently chattering with the bitter cold. Whatsisface had a fashionable beard and it feels now as if a cheese grater has been taken to her chin. She’ll have to slather it with E45 when she gets home or she’ll look like she’s been sunburned. And Lou will be all over that in the morning.

It’s like being seventeen again, and not in any good way.

Neve takes another turning and begins to feel the usual thrum of worry that she’s going in the entirely wrong direction to where she wants to be. But she keeps moving and soon finds herself on a promisingly major road. Tall brown buildings soar on either side, glass-fronted windows lifeless, and a long row of bikes for hire seem to be resting like a tired herd.

Before long, she can see the distinctive glass sphere of the IMAX building by Waterloo and she lets out a breath of relief that curls in the frigid night air.

She’s grateful for the few other people around now, either party-goers draped in tinsel, laughing and shouting to each other, or London’s invisible army of workers dressed in cheap, sensible coats; heads down, hurrying from one service job to another.

Neve isn’t nervous about walking alone in London at night. It’s the sort of thing her parents would have fretted about but now … well, there’s only Lou and hopefully she’s asleep. She has only once been the victim of a crime, when her phone was stolen from her bag in a nightclub. The thief had clearly decided it wasn’t new enough to keep anyway, because it had been dropped in the beer and dirt and found by the doorman.

She hurries on, wondering whether Miri will find this a funny story tomorrow or give her friend the new look, the one that is just ever-so-slightly disapproving.

Neve tries to remember exactly where she can get the night bus to Kentish Town. Then, with a cold plop of realization in her stomach, she remembers taking her keys out of her bag that morning because a pen had leaked in the front pocket. She can picture them, still lying on the big kitchen table. Frantically, she begins feeling around inside her bag now, but knows by the lack of heft in the pocket that they’re not there. She closes her eyes for a moment and says, ‘Shit-shit-shit-shit-shit.’

Lou will have a field day with this. The whole house will get woken up.

She can hear her now, with her martyr face on: ‘It’s about time you took control of your life.’

Neve has been staying with her sister, brother-in-law and their two children since breaking up with Daniel, six weeks before. It feels so very much longer.

If she could go and sleep under her desk, she would, but she’d need a key for that too. It’s too cold to hang about, and anyway, it will probably take forever to get home. Maybe her sister will be up with the baby by then.

She hurries on towards Waterloo Bridge.