Never Out of Sight: The chilling psychological thriller you don’t want to miss!. Louise Stone

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1

      October

      I opened the front door slowly, my eyes darting left and right. Right and left. My ears were keen to any sound but, as far as I could tell, Stephen wasn’t at home. He had told me he was away on business. Blood roared in my ears as I tiptoed quietly into my own house, my whole body alive to any sound or sign of my husband or daughter.

      Clearing my throat, I called out, ‘Stephen?’

      No answer.

      ‘Zoe, darling? Are you home?’

      Silence.

      I shut the door quietly and let my laptop bag slip from my shoulder to the floor. I gasped when I saw the lace of the black bra I had been wearing earlier poking out of the top of the bag and quickly shoved it out of view. It made me nauseous with guilt. I was sneaking in like a teenager after a party. At the beginning, if I was being honest, it had felt exciting, but now it felt fraught, making me jumpy and anxious.

      Walking quickly to the kitchen and sitting at the table, I squeezed my eyes shut and wished, as I did whenever I got back home, that the images of Robert would disappear. It made me feel dirty. My feelings for Robert had grown so out of control, and I with it. I leant backwards, feeling around in the drawer for the medication the doctor had prescribed to calm my nerves, swallowed one whole without water, pulling a face at the bitter taste left in my mouth. Pushing the chair away abruptly, I headed upstairs for a shower.

      Turning the shower on to its highest heat, I stripped off my mundane work suit and greying underwear and entered the water. It scalded my skin but I scrubbed hard, trying to rid myself of Robert before Stephen came home. It was wrong, yes, but the problem lay in my inability to give up the happiness Robert had brought me over the past year; I had never believed I would ever feel this good again. Not since Stephen and I first met. Stephen, then, I had thought was the man of my dreams, but it hadn’t taken long for his controlling character to shine through. By which point, I was pregnant with Zoe.

      Robert’s scent rose up with the steam and I allowed myself a moment to inhale deeply and, with it, I could almost feel his hands gently caressing my body. Before long, the water started to turn cold, snapping me out of my daydreaming.

      What had I become? I was meant to be the responsible adult. I should have known better from the start, but Robert had found me in one of my darkest hours, and our relationship had hurtled out of control. I often wondered whether, if Stephen hadn’t been spending less and less time at home, I would have made the same decision that day in October last year? But he’d pushed me to it, and one day, I found his phone. I couldn’t help myself. My gut instinct had told me to look, my deepest fear had told me I would regret it.

      It had taken me seconds to find the messages from someone called Sarah asking for more money. He clearly had some sort of mistress or was using an escort service. I never confronted him because I was relieved, partly because I thought perhaps he wouldn’t notice if I spent more time at the office – with Robert – and, partly because Zoe had been going through a tough time at school preparing for her GCSEs. The last thing she needed was me and her father arguing.

      As my mind wandered, I thought about what I had seen a few nights ago. I had spotted Robert talking to someone, a girl, in the college quad. I had seen her silhouetted as she stood behind a column and I’d thought I caught the briefest glimpse of blonde hair. It was dark, the night heavy with fog, and I had heard her laughter tinkling through the air like smashed glass falling on a tiled floor; its sound had cut through my heart. They had walked in the direction of the library. I followed behind, slipping in and out of the shadows of the maze of ancient stone corridors leading onto other bare stone rooms, trying desperately to keep up with their brisk pace. I lost them momentarily but then I opened a rickety door out onto the college green, my eyes scanning the arcade running around its perimeter. I headed in the direction of the main entrance and, as I approached, I had caught a flash of movement off to my left.

      I remembered how I walked softly over the lawn and moved towards the corner of the Elizabethan building.

      Then I heard them.

      I’d flushed hot at being witness to their voices, their hushed tones and urgent whispers. I had not dared enter the room; I hadn’t wanted to see Robert with a younger woman, despite having known deep down that it was bound to happen, that it would be better for him. I peered through the slit in the door and had been able to make out the briefest glimpse of the woman’s ankle. I remembered now how I’d thought I had seen a tattoo, my eyes momentarily captivated by her young skin; then, with a sudden rush of overwhelming jealousy, I ran to my car and drove home quickly. I hadn’t been able to remove the tattoo from my mind, and I still couldn’t. It jarred me every time I thought about it; I felt the same whenever I thought about Robert’s tattoo. His gift, he had called it, to me. Only it felt symbolic of everything I wasn’t: a tattoo represented smooth, unwrinkled skin, spontaneity, and unfulfilled adventures. My life, in comparison, had often felt stale and uninspired. That was until Robert came into it last September.

      I had vowed to forget about it. I hadn’t actually seen anything after all, but having lain awake all night, I’d confronted Robert the next afternoon.

      ‘What, Anne? She’s just a friend.’ He had smiled that heart-melting grin and I’d nodded, and momentarily convinced myself he was telling the truth. But the niggling doubt wouldn’t subside and I knew it was fuelled by my guilt. Who was I to tell him he couldn’t see another woman?

      I slapped the shower tile with my hand in frustration, my skin covered in goosebumps from the air hitting my skin. The frustration was that Zoe would never understand that her father, Stephen, was still punishing me for the early days with Zoe. No matter how many medical reports had confirmed the post-natal depression, he’d never forgiven me, and he never would.

      I stepped out of the shower, my skin red-raw from first the heat and then the cold air, and cleared the steam from the mirror with the palm of my hand. My reflection caught me unawares: how did Robert find me attractive? I looked old, tired and long past my prime.

      I knew I should phone Zoe, check she was okay, check she’d had a fun night at Keira’s house, but I worried she would somehow know I hadn’t been at home. She would know that I was sleeping with a man almost half my age. She would know that I was trapped in the most deliciously exciting and terrifying situation I had ever known.

      I wrapped a white fluffy towel around my body and padded over to my dressing table. I started to apply blusher to my cheeks but quickly stopped. What was I doing? Stephen would expect to see me without make-up. I had to keep up a level of normality for Stephen, and for Zoe. I put down the blusher brush and raided the walk-in wardrobe for a pair of jeans and a shirt. Running a brush through my hair, I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror, and let out a sharp laugh. Robert would sooner die than see me like this. He had seen me in my work suits, in silky underwear that I had to keep in my locked drawer at work, but he had never seen me dressed down like this. No, I realised, staring at my image, this was what came of nearly eighteen years with a controlling husband. I glanced at a photo of our wedding day on the dresser. The gilt-edged frame had been a gift from Stephen – a gaudy token that only reminded me of the furious argument and weeks of silence for which it had been an apology. The frame, to me, reflected everything in our Oxfordshire house and stale marriage: Stephen surrounded himself with the finest, showiest things, whatever would hide the cracks in the critically unstable foundations. To outsiders, perhaps, we looked like a family who were doing well. We had been in the house for our entire married life; it was all we knew. Years ago I had tried СКАЧАТЬ