Page 70 of Don't Let Him In

“What the hell?” Nina mutters. “What is she up to?”

The woman rings the bell and stares into the hallway, her face still contorted with anxiety. She waits for just under a minute and then slowly walks away from the door and goes out of the shot. Two minutes later, she is back in the shot, climbing into her car, and then a moment after that she is gone.

Ash stares at her mother’s phone. She’s pretty sure she knows who that woman is, but she cannot say. Not yet. They flick through a couple more clips, and then there it is: Nick leaving at roughly midday, a rucksack over his shoulder, his weird doctor’s bag (apparently it belonged to his late father who was a GP) in his left hand, his coat on, a woolen hat over his white hair. He leaves quickly and smoothly, without looking back. And then he, too, disappears out of the shot, just the sound of his feet crunching on the graveled road and a note of winter birdcall from a nearby tree before the recording falls silent again.

Nina doesn’t say anything for a while after watching the clip. She sighs heavily and pulls her hair off her face with both hands. “I’m a little confused. What did I just see?”

Ash draws in her breath. “OK,” she says, “I have an explanation. But you have to promise me that you will hear me out. This is nothing like what happened in London. Nothing. I am completely sane now. I have never felt more sane. Everything I am about to tell you is the truth and I have people who can corroborate it. You have to trust me and you have to believe me. OK?”

“OK,” says Nina. “I’m listening.”

Ash recounts it all, every last bit of it, from the pacifier clip in Nick’s coat pocket to her visit to Martha’s shop this morning and her meeting with Emma Greenlaw.

“Jesus Christ,” says Nina, her expression stricken. “Jesus fucking Christ! I can’t believe I let him… I can’t believe I… Oh my God. I’m such a fucking idiot.” Nina slams her fists down against the kitchen table and growls.

Ash touches her shoulder gently and says, “I’m really sorry, Mum. You do believe me, though, don’t you?”

Nina’s face softens and tears fill her eyes. “Oh, baby,” she says, taking Ash’s hands in hers. “I believe you. Of course I believe you. But I want you to know that I would never have been one of those women. I honestly never would have. I would not have let him use me and manipulate me. I would not have let him take my money.Ourmoney. I just wasn’t that into him. Not in that way. Not in the way that I was into your dad.” She laughs softly, and Ash smiles. “But I do see how those women fell for him. I do get it. He is a consummate professional. He somehow knows just what buttons to press, just how to play things. He just knows. But it was different with me, the way he was with me, it never quite rang true. It wouldn’t have lasted. I would have ended it. Very, very soon. You are my priority, Ash. You and your brother. Always have been. Always will be. And I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel unwelcome in your own home. Unsafe. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you and I’m sorry I let that stupid man in here. All I want in the whole world, Ash, is for you to be happy. I cannot be happy unless you are.”

As her mother says these words, Ash knows she has to share one more thing with her. “There’s something I didn’t tell you, Mum. About what’s been going on. I haven’t been investigating Nick by myself, I’ve had someone helping me.”

Nina raises her brow quizzically.

“Jane Trevally.”

Her mother frowns. “Mad Jane?”

“Yes. Mad Jane. But she’s not mad. She’s great. And I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you’d believe me even less—I know how you felt about her, how you and Dad both felt about her. And I only gotin touch with her because I thought she might have known Nick from when he said he was working in that restaurant with Dad, and of course that was a big lie. But she wanted to help. And I needed help. I’m sorry I did that behind your back, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

Nina pushes her chair toward Ash and takes her in her arms. She holds her against her heart and Ash hears her sigh heavily. “I don’t blame you, angel,” she says. “I don’t blame you at all. I have not been there for you…” She pauses and breathes in hard “… for a very long time. I really haven’t. I’ve been very self-absorbed, and I think a lot of that was to stop me from feeling the things I should be feeling. To distract myself from everything that has happened. Because if I think too hard about what happened, I start feeling like I might lose my mind. And I cannot afford to lose my mind, not now.”

Ash nestles closer into her mother’s body. “Will you come with me tomorrow?” she asks. “To Enderford? To see Martha? Have you got time?”

Her mother squeezes her hard. “First thing,” she says. “I’ll cancel all my meetings, and we’ll go first thing.”

She looks down at Ash with a small smile playing on her mouth and she says, “So. Mad Jane. What does she look like these days. Is she still hot?”

SIXTY-FOUR

I drive aimlessly for a while after leaving Nina’s, but eventually I end up at Jessie’s place in Hastings. I thought I’d never see her again, but I don’t know where else to go. She buzzes me in and greets me at the elevator door, then ushers me into her apartment, which is ablaze with winter sun pouring through the plate-glass windows overlooking the sea.

“Jessie,” I say, allowing my eyes to mist over with tears. “Something terrible has happened. My mother…” I allow a note of strangulation into my voice. “I’ve been taking care of her. Living with her. But she’s deteriorated to the point that she’s had to go into a care home and I’ve had to rent out her house to pay for her care, and basically, Jessie, I’m homeless. I’ve got nowhere to live. And it would only be a few nights. A week, tops. I have a friend in London who’s said I can use their flat when they go back to the States next month. I’d be in your spare bedroom, and I would be quiet and respectful, and I won’t use your kitchen, I’ll eat out. But I really, really just need a soft bed. And a friend…?” I make a question out of this last statement because of course Jessie and I are not friends. I am a male escort, and she is my client. We have talked a lot over the years. We’ve been friendly, but we have not been friends. By framing it as a question, however, her natural instinct will be to want to reassure me that of course we arefriends, and once she has done that, then how can she possibly deny me somewhere to stay?

I see many emotions pass over her face. She looks stricken, almost, as though I have asked her to donate an organ. But then I see her nod, and with a taut smile, she says, “Yes. Of course. But please, you’ll need to be discreet. Very discreet. I’ve told my neighbors you’re a masseuse. They’ll be wondering why you’re staying here. So just keep a low profile. Stay indoors as much as possible. Are you OK with that?”

I nod and take her hands and kiss their backs. “Thank you, Jessie. Thank you so much. I promise you, I will be gone before you know it.”

I rest my rucksack and my bag on the ornate quilted cover on the bed in Jessie’s spare room. There is a small pile of plush animals on the bed that I remove and place in the corner. I take off my shoes and I lie back on the bed and stare at the whipped-cream peaks in the ceiling plaster, the tacky art on the walls, the view through the window of the side of the apartment block next door, and I let out a sigh of repressed rage.

How? How had Martha found me? How did she know where I was? I think back to the dog tracker I’d found in the car a few weeks ago. Something to do with Baxter, I’d thought at first, but then I’d had a second thought—was it possible, I’d pondered, that Martha had put it in the car deliberately, to see where I was? I’d decided to be on the safe side and parked myself outside the restaurant I told her I was working at for three hours. The next time I left the house, I smashed it to a pulp with a hammer and dropped it in a bin in a car park off an A road. But how long had it been in my car? And had Martha in fact been using it to follow me? Had she seen it? Nina’s house? Had she suspected an affair?

I hit myself hard around my temples with the heels of my hands;I am livid with myself. But also livid with Martha. What more does she want from me? I’m doing all of this forher. To give her what she wants. The dream she craves. Her Martha’s Garden empire. And in she blunders like an idiot, ringing on doorbells, ruining everything, and now what? I have nothing. Not one thing. I have a twenty-pound note in my wallet. I have two changes of clothing and some toiletries. I don’t know what to do, and I’m furious. I’m absolutely fucking furious.

I get off the bed to throw the curtains closed against the dazzling winter sun, and then flop onto the bed again.

I’m nearly fifty-six, a married man, and I’m here on a single bed in a pensioner’s spare room in Hastings with no money and no idea what the fuck to do next. How could I have been so stupid? It’s like Tara and Amanda all over again, this grotesque collision of two parts of my perfectly choreographed existence. I can’t handle it. Everything needs to be separate. All of it. I’m like one of those fussy kids who doesn’t like their food to touch on the plate. I feel itchy, I feel anxious, stressed, enraged. I want to scream and kick things, hurt people, cry. I really, really want to cry. And then I do. I cry hard and ugly. I cry so hard that a moment later there is a gentle rap at the door, and I hear Jessie’s voice.

“Are you OK, André?”

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