The Question: A bestselling psychological thriller full of shocking twists. Jane Asher
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main entranceway they were superseded by images more tranquil, more domestic and far, far more hurtful. Ruth cooking an amusing little Italian meal in the tiny kitchen of John’s pied-à-terre; John creeping up behind her, sliding his arms round her waist and kissing the nape of her neck in a clichéd movie version of cosy domesticity. Eleanor stirred herself and made to cross the road before she had to let them move into the bedroom and onto the white-framed Heal’s bed she had chosen with such care. Some things were not to be looked at – at least not for now. Anger drove her in through the front door of the flat and towards the confrontation she now felt was inevitable – and even to be welcomed.
The darkness of the inner hallway was comforting; she was less exposed in here, and more able to let her face reveal the anguish and fury which fought for expression in the set of her mouth and the tension in the muscles round her eyes. She stood still a moment to listen, tilting her head upwards towards the stairwell, expecting to hear the hum of the lift’s motor making its way up to the third floor with its hated cargo. But there was nothing; just the distant sound of a television set. She frowned, puzzling over the speed at which Ruth had apparently managed to get into the lift and up to the flat in the short space of time that it had taken Eleanor to follow her in, then tutted to herself at her stupidity.
Of course, she thought, she’s gone up the stairs. Just because I always take the lift it doesn’t mean she does. She’s young and fit – even if she was carrying that shopping. No doubt she does aerobics, or step or whatever it is now. Gym. She goes to the gym. In a leotard and tight shiny Lycra leggings. She puts her hair up in one of those scrunchy things and her face goes shiny and red with the effort of toning herself. Honing herself. Honing and toning. John likes her honed. He likes to see the gleam of sweat on her neck, the tiny droplet of moisture running down from the damp hair. He puts his mouth to the—
‘Oh shut up, you silly woman!’ Eleanor snapped at herself out loud and made her way towards the lift.
She stepped out at the third floor and turned to shut the old-fashioned metal lift gates quietly, not wanting to alert her prey to the avenging eagle in camel skirt about to descend on her. As she pulled the outer gate across, she suddenly panicked, all at once completely unsure of what she would say, what she would do, when directly facing the horror of looking Ruth in the eye. She could see how the girl would greet her: an immediate smile of recognition and pleasure at the sight of her boss’s wife, a flicker of guilty knowledge at the realisation that she shouldn’t have been found here in his flat, at the possibility that this woman in front of her knew that the husband was not only a boss but a lover, then a quick and smoothly accomplished murmur of excuse and explanation.
Eleanor took the door key from her pocket and crossed the worn maroon-carpeted landing towards the front door of the flat. She held the key out in front of her, waving it about slightly as if pushing aside the irresolute thoughts threatening to stop her momentum, like a blind man feeling with his white stick for objects in his path. As she made to push it into the lock, she stopped again and listened. Still nothing but the distant sound of audience laughter from the television. She almost believed she could hear her heart beating, but knew it was the sensation of it throbbing against her chest that she was aware of, and that the two senses of feeling and hearing had become confused. As she turned the key in the lock, surprised to find her hand far steadier than her thoughts, she shut her eyes tightly against what was about to be revealed by the opening of the door.
Eleanor took a deep breath and pushed open the door. The bottom edge of it brushed over the cream carpet with a faint swishing sound as it swung away from her, and she opened her eyes and looked into the darkness of the flat’s unlit hallway. She frowned a little, surprised into a mixture of relief and disappointment to find no lights on and to hear no signs of life coming from the kitchen at the other end of the passage.
‘Hello?’ she called out bravely into the silence.
Nothing.
She stepped into the hallway and closed the flat door behind her, feeling rather as she thought a lion tamer must when shutting himself into a cage with one of his animals, uncomfortably aware of the possible presence of her rival in one of the rooms in front of her. She coughed loudly as she walked along the length of the hall, unsure now whether she wanted to see the dreaded glimpse of red hair or not as she looked quickly into first the lavatory, then the bathroom, kitchen and sitting room.
She moved towards the bedroom and was annoyed to feel her heart begin its dramatic thumping against her ribs again. As she breathed in deeply but quietly in an attempt to calm it, or at least to give it more space in the uncomfortable tightness of her chest, she sensed for what seemed like the hundredth time that day the terrible urge to cry. She couldn’t remember ever feeling as alone as she did at this moment. To be creeping towards her own bedroom – or at least the bedroom she occasionally shared with John on her rare visits to London – in dread at the thought of finding the beautiful young girl she had convinced herself must be inside, was so miserably humiliating that she longed to turn to someone and appeal for the sympathy she knew she deserved for being placed in such an impossible situation. She even found herself crying out from some dim place in her soul for her mother to comfort her, a person and presence she hadn’t thought of with any particular warmth for many years.
By the time she entered the bedroom, registered it as empty and collapsed in frustration and fury onto the bed, the storm had broken, and she burst into the kind of relentless and exhausting tears that she hadn’t experienced since childhood.
But she didn’t let them last for long. If Ruth wasn’t here in the flat, where the hell was she? Had Eleanor fantasised that it was indeed the same girl that worked for her husband whom she had seen entering the building ten minutes ago? Could her overstimulated jealous imagination have created this doppelgänger of Ruth to taunt her and mislead her? Eleanor suddenly found herself feverishly examining yet again the early morning’s evidence that had begun the nightmare she had been living in ever since. Once more she trawled her memory for the tiniest hint of uncertainty or ambivalence. But even as she did so, she knew she was right. Some deeply rooted female instinct told her not to waste her time. There was an affair going on. And she had seen Ruth walk into this very block of flats. Ignoring the puzzling question as to where the girl could possibly have got to, pushing aside visions of her escaping from a bathroom window or hiding under the kitchen sink, she rose instead from the bed in a movement of intense but controlled energy and began to search the bedroom and bathroom for any evidence, however tiny, of an alien female’s occupation, certain that nothing could escape the concentrated scrutiny she gave to every corner, examining everything as intently and revealingly with every effort of her mind as with the needle-sharp beam of a finely focused torch.
After twenty minutes or so she gave up. She was certain that no other woman had occupied the room, or, if she had, she was so extraordinarily clever at covering her tracks that Eleanor knew she was no match for her. She carefully tidied everything back in place, splashed her face with cold water in the bathroom sink and made her way out of the flat and back towards the lift.
After waiting by the gates for a couple of minutes and hearing no sign of life she abandoned it and decided to walk, much less daunted by the thought of going down three floors than she would have been at having to climb the stairs coming up. The time it would take her to get back down to the ground floor stretched ahead of her rather comfortingly; the three or four minutes spent in the no man’s land of the stairwell would give her a further chance to recover and take stock. She was aware again of the sounds of the television she had heard earlier, and as she made her way down the stairs it became louder, reaching a climax on the first floor, where it clearly came from the open door of one of the flats. The sheer ordinariness of the varying notes and cadences of the human voice, interspersed with bursts of clapping or laughter, was deeply reassuring, and Eleanor glanced up at the door as she passed, catching a brief glimpse of a grey-haired woman in the doorway. She heard the door close quietly behind her as she went on down, muffling the noise of the television, and she reached the ground floor in a better