Chapter 9: The Window

The club holds its meeting on Monday nights, and it never finishes before midnight.

I had known that for nine years and never used it.

At half past ten I let myself into my own house with my own key.

The kitchen light was off.

A line of yellow showed under the door of the spare room.

I knocked once and went in.

Poppy was sitting up in the narrow bed with the baby asleep on her chest.

The lamp was on and her hair was in a knot.

She looked at me.

She didn't say anything.

"Hello," I said.

I shut the door and sat on the end of the bed.

I put my phone down between us on the duvet.

"I watched the video of my thirtieth," I said. "Every minute."

Her face went still.

"Joss told me it happened in June, on a night I was at work."

I held her eyes.

"I was with him all night on the seventeenth. He was never out of my sight. So it wasn't Joss."

"Mari."

"I'm not asking what he told you to say. I'm asking you."

"I can't."

"I know why you can't." I made my voice quiet. "Somebody frightened you."

I took a breath.

"You've been frightened since the day you turned up on my step."

Her mouth trembled.

"I climbed in a boy's window once," I said. "I was nineteen, and my stepdad had locked me out."

I smoothed her sock.

"The boy had left that window open on purpose, and I slept on his floor. That's all it was. Somebody left a window open."

I put my hand on her ankle, over the yellow sock.

"This is yours. It's open. You don't have to say a thing you don't want. But I'll not have you carry it on your own."

She cried.

Keep reading free with an account. Start His Wife, Her Sister, Their Secret from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.