The Other Side of the Door, Nicci French [new reading .TXT] 📗

He gave a soft laugh. ‘You think?’

After

I woke up with a start. What was it? Was someone in the flat? I listened for a few seconds. A car drove past. I heard voices but they were far away, out in the street somewhere. No. It wasn’t that. Something in my dream, but not just a dream, something important. Suddenly it came to me out of the dark. The key to Hayden’s car. Why had I kept it? It was unbelievably stupid. That it was in a clever place made it even more stupid. If the police searched my flat and found it just lying around, I could pretend, just about pretend, that during our affair Hayden had lent me a spare car key. But if they found the key in the bottom of a jar of sugar, there could be no possible innocent explanation. And they probably would find it. I was a panicky, amateur hider and they were professional finders. They knew the kind of places where idiots like me hid things, and if they didn’t know they’d find them anyway, because when they really wanted to find something, they ripped everything apart.

Not that it was a particularly brilliant hiding-place. What if someone who came to the flat suddenly did something that needed lots of sugar, like making lemonade or baking a cake, emptied the jar and found the key? It sounded stupid, but what would I actually say?

I got up, ran to the kitchen and plunged my hand into the jar. I suddenly thought: What if it isn’t there? But, of course, it was. I placed it on the table and sat and stared at it. It was like a talisman, representing my contact with Hayden, my guilt. It almost exuded energy, so that I hardly dared touch it. Instead I thought about it so intensely that I almost felt dizzy. What I needed to do was throw it, and the flat key I still had, away somewhere they would never be found. Why on earth hadn’t I done that in the first place? Why? I tried to interpret the motives of this other person, the earlier me, who had abandoned the car. There must have been a reason, even if I hadn’t articulated it to myself at the time.

I forced myself to think about this, even though it was in the past and all I really wanted was to shut it away. Yes, there had been a reason for keeping the key. If I had thrown it away, I would have lost my last chance of doing anything to the car. If I had remembered a mistake I had made, something I had left behind, there would have been nothing I could do about it. Now the car and its location wormed their way into my thoughts. Was leaving it there really such a great idea? If the police started to search for his car, wouldn’t an airport car park be one of the first places they’d look? It wasn’t as if they’d have to check all those thousands of vehicles one by one. They’d probably just have to type the registration number into a database. They’d be able to find the exact time the car had arrived there, which would give them the time of Hayden’s disappearance. They could start asking for alibis. Was it really likely that we hadn’t left some traces in the car? Even if we hadn’t, the photograph of us entering the car park would show a woman driving. There were too many weaknesses. I made myself think and think and, with a sickening lurch, realized where my thoughts were taking me. I was like a person with vertigo who was making herself walk to the edge of a very steep cliff and lean over as far as possible to stare down into the depths.

I washed and dressed, but it was too early to go out. I needed to wait until the shops opened, and I wanted to get to the airport when there were lots of people around. The key lay in front of me, burning a hole in the table, as I drank cup after cup of coffee and hunted through the phone book until I found what I needed. I tore a corner off a newspaper and wrote the address down.

It was eight thirty when I finally left the flat. First I went to a cash machine and withdrew £300. I was now £233 overdrawn: how would I pay my mortgage next week, or buy food? I walked up the high street until I reached a shop I vaguely remembered but had never been into before. It sold strange clothes at unbelievably cheap prices. I bought a garish pair of maroon slacks for five pounds, a horrible sweatshirt that bore the slogan Spalsboro Sports Club and a picture of an eagle for two pounds, and a pair of cotton gloves for two pounds fifty. I went back to the flat, put them on and faced myself in the mirror. I looked strange. I looked poor. But it didn’t matter. All I needed was the cash and the key.

I went out to Stansted on the train, surrounded by people with luggage, heading off on holiday. I stared out of the window at the canals, the vast construction projects, the scrubland that eventually gave way to a brief moment of countryside. I felt another sudden stab of horror. The car-park ticket. What had we done with it? I was almost sure we’d left it in the car. I thought of ringing Sonia, then decided not to. I’d probably have to tell her what I’d done, but I’d leave it till afterwards. Was it in the car? What would I do if it wasn’t? I’d just have to leave the car, go back to Plan A, and worry about it for the rest of my life.

When I got out of the terminal building, ready to catch the shuttle