On the nights Marcus didn’t come home she guessed someone else was hosting proceedings at their luxury apartment or town house. She never asked, and he never told her, but she’d come to recognize a descent from the drug-fuelled highs when it was in front of her.
There were other nights – lots of them – when he behaved like a regular family man, sober, a little tired, but happy and feeling generous at the end of a long, productive day. She could easily mistake him then for the man who’d comforted and befriended her after the tragedy of her first husband’s death. She still felt strangely attached to that man and the way he’d spoken so softly to her during that terrible time, and had smiled into her eyes as if he couldn’t believe how fortunate he was to have found her. He’d never been frightening then, just loving, attentive, interested. She’d married him believing he loved her, and feeling certain it was the right thing to do for her – and for her eleven-year-old daughter who’d been devastated by the loss of her father.
Now here they were, or here she was, watching him frantically snatching files from his desk and stuffing them into an old-fashioned attaché case. She hadn’t seen it before.
‘For Christ’s sake, don’t just stand there,’ he raged, ‘get that cabinet away from the wall.’
Quickly she moved to do as she was told, but the cabinet was too heavy.
He shoved her aside and did it himself, grunting, sweating, swearing … Was he crying? Or were those beads of sweat? How much did she care? How afraid was she?
She wasn’t surprised to see the safe behind the cabinet. She’d known it was there, but this was the first time he’d opened it in front of her, pressing the numbers in slowly, deliberately, not wanting to waste time on mistakes.
She couldn’t calculate how much cash was stacked on the five shelves inside, but it surely ran into hundreds of thousands, all neatly bundled until it was chaotically rammed into the case along with the files. Too much to fit in, but he was going to make it happen …
Someone knocked at the front door. Three heavy raps.
‘Shit!’ He turned to the window. Beyond was the back garden, and she wondered if he was about to throw himself out on to the lawn and make a run for it.
With lightning speed he rammed the case into the safe, spun the combination lock and heaved the cabinet back into place.
Their visitor – or visitors – tried the bell.
Police? Drug dealers? Who else would he be so afraid of?
She gasped as he grabbed her by the neck with one hand and pressed her against the wall. ‘Remember, you know nothing,’ he hissed into her face, ‘you’ve seen nothing and you’ve heard nothing.’
She nodded, gasping for breath, clawing at his hand.
He let her go and pointed along the hall to the door. ‘Answer it, but if you even think about betraying me …’ His eyes bored into hers; he didn’t have to tell her that it wouldn’t end well, she already knew.
She started to move, hardly knowing who or what to expect when she opened the door.
‘Stop!’ he seethed under his breath.
She turned around. ‘I don’t know where this is going to end,’ he growled, ‘but just in case you get any ideas about leaving me, you’ll be watched; you won’t get away and if you try, I’ll find you and by then you’ll wish I hadn’t.’
She didn’t doubt him; she never had. She knew what he was capable of, and as he turned to the door she found herself hoping with all her heart and soul that he was about to be taken out, not merely taken away.
CHAPTER TWO
‘Are you sure you’re OK to drive?’
Claudia Winters glanced at her sixteen-year-old daughter, the one who was sounding like the parent right now, and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. ‘Sure,’ she confirmed, and fixing her eyes on the road ahead she pressed down on the accelerator to pull away from the kerb. It was a jerky start, but it was a new car – bought with cash from a South London dealer who’d asked no questions – and at least she didn’t stall the engine.
‘Don’t look back,’ she advised Jasmine.
‘Would it make a difference if I did?’
‘Do you want to?’
‘No! Let’s just go.’
The place they were leaving was a smart red-brick town house in the heart of Kensington, where they’d lived for the past five years. Their departure – escape, to give it the correct term – had been carefully planned during the last few months.They’d removed their most precious belongings in bags and suitcases as if they were just off for long weekends, or perhaps to make generous donations to a charity shop. Where they’d actually been taking their cargo was to Claudia’s mother’s house in Somerset, in order to store it in a weatherproof garage. Yesterday, under her mother’s supervision, everything had been transported from the garage to the place Claudia and Jasmine were travelling to now.
Nauseous with nerves, Claudia drove along the leafy street careful to avoid the parked cars either side of her, aware of a hundred or more windows bearing witness to their departure.
Was anyone actually watching? He’d said someone would be, but they’d never spotted anyone, nor had the private investigator they’d hired to check for them.
There were the neighbours, of course, but it surely wouldn’t occur to any of them that the mother and daughter from number forty-six were about to disappear without trace.
Claudia hoped it would be that way, but a lot could happen between now and the day they finally felt safe. The past could reach for them in any number of ways; traps they hadn’t yet been able to imagine might already be set by their own oversights and unwitting mistakes, or even by fate.
Pushing the dread of it all aside, she drove on past the homes that backed on to the school her daughter had attended since they’d moved here. It was private, expensive and should have been where she’d complete sixth form before going to uni. Now she was set to continue her education at a school close to their new home, using the name she’d chosen for herself – Jasmine – and sporting a totally new look.
Once as dark-haired as her beloved father, Jasmine was now blonde, with a cute pixie cut that had been executed by her mother’s inexpert hand only last night. Jasmine loved it, thank goodness. Up to the age of eleven, she’d been a bright girl with a warm personality, and her dad’s sparkling enthusiasm for life. However, these past years in her stepfather’s home, subjected to his erratic moods and overbearing personality, she’d lost the buoyancy of her spirit and had even withdrawn from friendships and activities that should have been normal for a girl her age. So, she was as ready to escape and start again as her mother was – as relieved to be making this journey as she’d ever been about anything in her young life.
At the end of the road Claudia indicated to turn left and headed towards the Hammersmith flyover. As they passed the shop that used to be hers, Dream Interiors (secretly sold as a going concern over a month ago and soon to be renamed All About Home by the new owners) she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the empty window and it made her feel oddly light-headed. Until yesterday her hair had been fair, shoulder-length and wavy – now it was a rich chestnut colour styled in a messy sort of bob that she actually quite liked. It gave her features more definition, she thought, and seemed to warm her pale complexion. She was nothing like the woman who’d started the shop fifteen years ago, although her eyes were still sky blue and the delicate bone structure that Jasmine’s father, Joel, had captured in so many paintings and sketches remained the same. She’d been tall and curvaceous back then; confident, ambitious and quick to make friends. She was still tall, of course, but so slender now, even gaunt, that it was like watching the ghost of herself passing from the windows of her old life on her way to the new.