The Breakdown Read online

  ‘So you didn’t see him do anything suspicious?’

  ‘No. But I think he might have been looking up at the house.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you didn’t actually see him looking at the house.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No,’ I tell Matthew. ‘I decided not to bother her.’

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s just that I don’t like the thought of you being on your own.’

  His worry increases mine. ‘I wish you’d told me that before.’

  ‘You’ll be fine. Just make sure that the doors are locked before you go to bed.’

  ‘They’re already locked. I wish we had an alarm.’

  ‘I’ll have a look at the brochure when I get back,’ he promises.

  I hang up and phone Rachel.

  ‘Are you doing anything tonight?’

  ‘Sleeping,’ she replies. ‘I’m already in bed.’

  ‘At nine in the evening?’

  ‘If you’d had the weekend I had, you’d have been in bed long ago. So if you’re phoning to ask me to go out, I’m afraid it’s a no.’

  ‘I was going to ask you to come round and share a bottle of wine with me.’

  I hear a yawn on the other end of the phone. ‘Why, are you on your own?’

  ‘Yes, Matthew’s got an inspection at one of the rigs. He’s away all week.’

  ‘How about if I come and keep you company on Wednesday?’

  My heart sinks. ‘What about tomorrow?’

  ‘I can’t, sorry, I already have something on.’

  ‘Wednesday it is, then.’ I can’t keep the disappointment from my voice.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ she asks, picking up on it.

  ‘Yes, everything’s fine. Go on, go to sleep.’

  ‘See you Wednesday,’ she promises.

  I wander into the sitting room. If I’d told her that I’m nervous about being on my own, she’d have come straight round. I turn on the television and watch an episode of a series I’ve never seen before. Then, feeling tired, I go up to bed, hoping I’ll sleep straight through until the morning.

  But I can’t relax. The house is too dark, the night too silent. I reach out and turn the light on, but sleep eludes me. I put my headphones on to listen to music but take them off again when I realise they’d mask the sound of someone creeping up the stairs. The two windows I found open, the one in the bedroom after the alarm man left on Friday and the one in the kitchen on Saturday play on my mind, as does the man I saw outside the house this morning. When the sun begins to rise and I find myself falling asleep, I don’t bother fighting it, telling myself that I’m less likely to be murdered in daylight than at night.

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 29TH

  I’m woken by the phone ringing in the hall. I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling, hoping the caller will give up. Yesterday morning the phone had rung insistently at half-past eight but when I’d answered it there’d been no one there. I look at the clock: it’s nearly nine so it’s probably Matthew, phoning before he starts work for the day. Leaping out of bed, I run downstairs and snatch it up before the answering machine kicks in.

  ‘Hello?’ I say breathlessly. There’s no answering hello, so I wait, because the connection is often bad from the rig.

  ‘Matthew?’ I try. There’s still no answer so I hang up and dial his number.

  ‘Did you just call?’ I ask when he picks up.

  ‘Good morning, darling,’ he says pointedly, but with laughter in his voice. ‘How are you today?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say hastily. ‘I’ll start again. Hello, darling, how are you?’

  ‘That’s better. I’m fine, it’s cold up here, though.’

  ‘Did you call me a moment ago?’

  ‘No.’

  I frown. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The phone rang but there was no one there so I thought it was a bad connection from the rig.’

  ‘No, I was going to call you at lunchtime. I’m afraid I have to go, sweetheart, let’s speak later.’

  I hang up, annoyed at having been got out of bed. There should be a rule against cold-callers calling so early. The day stretches in front of me and I realise I don’t want to spend another night on my own. During the night, when I’d got up to go to the loo, I’d looked out of the window and, for a second, I thought there was someone there. There wasn’t, of course, but after that I couldn’t get back to sleep until the early hours.

  ‘Then go away for a couple of days,’ Matthew says when he phones at lunchtime and I tell him I’ve hardly slept for the last two nights.

  ‘I could, I suppose,’ I say. ‘Maybe the hotel I went to a couple of years ago, after Mum died. It has a pool and spa. I’m not sure they’ll have any room though.’

  ‘Why don’t you phone them and find out? If they do, you could go today and I’ll join you on Friday.’

  My spirits lift immediately. ‘That’s a great idea! You really are the best husband in the world,’ I say gratefully.

  I phone the hotel and while I wait for them to pick up, I take the calendar from the wall, just to make sure of the dates I need to book. I’m just calculating that I’ll need to book it for four nights if we’re to stay until Sunday when the words ‘Matthew to rig’ jump accusingly out at me from Monday’s square. I close my eyes, hoping they won’t be there when I open them again. But they are, as are the words ‘Matthew back’, written on the square for the 31st – Friday – followed by a smiley face. My heart drops and worry begins its familiar gnawing in my stomach, so that when the hotel finally answers and the receptionist tells me they’re fully booked apart from a suite, I don’t even ask him how much it costs, I just go ahead and reserve it.

  I hang the calendar back on the wall, turning the page over to August, ready for when we come back from the hotel – and so that Matthew won’t see he was right when he said he’d told me he was going to the rig.

  *

  It’s only once I’m at the hotel, waiting to check in, that I begin to feel better. The suite is fabulous, with the biggest bed I’ve ever seen and once I’ve unpacked, I text Matthew to let him know where I am, then change into a swimsuit and make my way down to the pool. I’m just pushing my belongings into a locker when a text arrives, but from Rachel:

  Hi, just to let you know I’ve arranged to leave early tonight so will be with you around 6. Are you cooking or shall we go out?

  My heart plummets so fast I feel as if I’ve stepped off a cliff. How could I have forgotten that Rachel was coming to stay tonight when we’d only arranged it on Monday? I think of Mum and a hot-sick fear claws my stomach. I can’t believe I forgot. Jane’s murder and the guilt I feel have distracted me, yes, but to forget about Rachel coming to stay? I fumble with my phone and press the Call button, desperate to confide my growing fears in someone.

  Despite Rachel only just sending the message, she doesn’t pick up. The changing room is empty so I sit down on a damp wooden bench. Now that I’ve made the decision to tell Rachel I’m worried about my short-term memory, I’m desperate to act on it in case I dissuade myself later. I call Rachel again and this time she answers.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to spend the night in a luxury hotel instead of at the house,’ I say.

  There’s a pause. ‘Depends where it is.’

  ‘Westbrook Park.’

  ‘The one with the fantastic spa?’ She’s whispering, so I guess she’s in the middle of a meeting or something.

  ‘That’s the one. Actually, I’m already there. I felt like having a bit of a break.’

  ‘It’s all right for some,’ she sighs.

  ‘So will you join me?’

  ‘It’s a bit far to come for one night – I have to work tomorrow, remember. How about I join you on Friday?’

  ‘You could,’ I say, ‘Matthew’s coming here straight from the rig, so it’d be the three of us.’

 
; She gives a quiet laugh. ‘Awkward.’

  ‘Sorry for standing you up tonight.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. See you next week?’

  ‘Hang on, Rachel, there’s something else…’

  But she’s already gone.

  FRIDAY, JULY 31ST

  By the time the afternoon comes, I’m desperate to see Matthew. The weather isn’t brilliant so I hang around in our room, waiting for his call to tell me what time he’ll be arriving. I watch a bit of television, relieved that there’s nothing on the news about Jane’s murder, yet strangely annoyed that two weeks on from her violent death, she’s already been forgotten.

  The phone rings and I snatch it up.

  ‘I’m at the house,’ Matthew says.

  ‘Good,’ I say happily. ‘You’ll be here in time for dinner.’

  ‘The thing is, when I arrived, there was a man here from that alarm company, practically sitting on the doorstep.’ He pauses. ‘I didn’t realise you’d actually gone ahead with it.’

  ‘Gone ahead with what?’

  ‘Well, the alarm.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The guy said he agreed with you that someone would fit the alarm yesterday but when the technician turned up there was nobody in. They’ve been phoning every half an hour, apparently.’

  ‘I didn’t agree to anything at all,’ I say, annoyed. ‘All I said was that we’d get back to him.’

  ‘But you signed a contract,’ Matthew says, sounding puzzled.

  ‘I did no such thing! Be careful, Matthew, he’s trying it on, pretending I agreed to something when I didn’t. It’s a scam, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. But when I said that as far as I was concerned we hadn’t decided anything yet, he showed me a copy of the contract with your signature on it.’

  ‘Then he must have forged it.’ There’s a silence. ‘You think I went ahead and ordered it, don’t you?’ I say, realising.

  ‘No, of course not! It’s just that the signature looked a lot like yours.’ I sense him hesitate. ‘After I got rid of him I had a look at the brochure you left in the kitchen and, inside, there’s a client copy of the contract. Shall I bring it to the hotel so that you can see it? Then if it’s not above board, we can do something about it.’

  ‘Sue the pants off him, you mean,’ I say, trying to lighten things, trying not to let any doubt cloud my mind. ‘What time will you be here?’

  ‘By the time I’ve showered and changed – about six-thirty?’

  ‘I’ll wait in the bar for you.’

  I hang up, momentarily annoyed that he could think I’d order an alarm without telling him. But a little voice is mocking me: Are you sure, Cass, are you really sure? Yes, I tell it firmly, I am sure. Besides, the man from the alarm company had seemed like the type of person who would do anything to get a contract, even if it meant lying and cheating. I’m so confident I’m right that when I go down to the bar, I order a bottle of champagne.

  It’s waiting in an ice bucket when Matthew arrives.

  ‘Tough week?’ I ask, because he looks horribly tired.

  ‘You could say that,’ he says, kissing me. He eyes the champagne. ‘That looks good.’

  The waiter comes to open the bottle and serves us.

  ‘To us,’ Matthew says, raising his glass and smiling over at me.

  ‘To us. And our suite.’

  ‘You booked a suite?’

  ‘It was all they had left.’

  ‘What a shame,’ he says, grinning.

  ‘The bed is huge,’ I go on.

  ‘Not so big that I’ll lose you in it, I hope?’

  ‘No chance.’ I put my glass down on the table. ‘Have you got the copy of the contract I’m meant to have signed?’ I ask, wanting to get it out of the way so that nothing can ruin our weekend away.

  He takes a while taking it from his pocket and I know he doesn’t really want to show it to me.

  ‘You have to admit it looks like your signature,’ he says, apologetically, handing it across the table, and I find myself staring, not at the signature at the bottom of the page, but at the contract itself. Filled out in what is unmistakably my handwriting, it’s even more damning than my signature, at least from my point of view. Anybody could have forged my signature, but not the line after line of neatly completed spaces, each capital letter formed exactly as I would form it. I scan the page, looking for something to tell me that it wasn’t me who filled it in but the longer I look, the more convinced I am that it was, to the point where I can almost see myself doing it, I can almost feel the pen in my hand and my other hand resting lightly on the paper, anchoring it down. I open my mouth, prepared to lie, ready to tell Matthew that it definitely isn’t my handwriting but, to my horror, I burst into tears.

  He’s beside me in a minute, holding me close. ‘You must have been tricked into signing it,’ he says and I can’t work out if he really believes it or if he’s giving me a way out, just as he had only days before when he said he must have forgotten to tell me he was going to the rig. Either way, I’m grateful. ‘I’ll contact the firm first thing tomorrow and tell them there’s no way we’re going through with it.’

  ‘But it’ll be their salesman’s word against mine,’ I say shakily. ‘Let’s just leave it. He’ll only deny everything and it’ll only delay things. The fact is, we need an alarm.’

  ‘All the same, I think we should try and get the contract cancelled. What did he say, that it was just a quote or something?’

  ‘I’m not sure what he actually said but, yes, I suppose I thought I was only agreeing to a quote,’ I answer, grabbing at the excuse. ‘I feel so stupid.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with using those sort of tactics.’ He hesitates. ‘I’m not sure what to do now, to be honest.’

  ‘Could we just let them install it, especially as I’m partly to blame?’

  ‘I’d still like to have it out with him.’ Matthew’s voice is grim. ‘Although the chances are, I won’t even see him tomorrow because they’ll send one of their technicians. He’s just the salesman.’

  ‘I really am sorry.’

  ‘I suppose in the great scheme of things it’s not such a disaster.’ He drains his glass and looks at the bottle longingly. ‘Shame I can’t have another.’

  ‘Why not? It’s not as if you have to drive anywhere.’

  ‘Well, yes, I do. Because I thought everything was above board, I agreed they could come and install it tomorrow morning. So if we’re not going to try and get it cancelled, I have to be there for when they arrive.’

  ‘Can’t you stay the night anyway and leave early?’

  ‘What, at six-thirty in the morning?’

  ‘You wouldn’t need to leave that early.’

  ‘Well, I will if they’re going to be there at eight.’

  I can’t help wondering if his refusal to stay the night is his way of punishing me because he won’t let himself be angry with me for ordering the alarm in the first place.

  ‘But you will come back tomorrow evening, once they’ve finished?’ I say.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he says, taking my hand in his.

  He leaves shortly after and I go up to my room and watch a film, until my eyes droop with tiredness. But I can’t sleep. The knowledge that I managed to fill in a whole contract without any recollection of doing so has shaken me to the core. I try to tell myself that I’m not doing anything as bad as Mum was when I first realised there was a real problem. It was in the spring of 2002 – she’d gone to the local shops and had got lost on her way back home, only turning up three hours later. Before the alarm, it was only little things that slipped from my memory. Forgetting what I was meant to have bought for Susie, forgetting Matthew was going away, forgetting I’d invited Hannah and Andy for a barbecue, forgetting Rachel was coming to stay – all those things are bad enough. But ordering an alarm without realising what I was doing is huge. I want to believe more
than anything that the salesman tricked me into it. But when I think back to when we were in the kitchen together, I realise that I don’t remember very much at all – except at the end when he handed me the brochure and assured me that my husband would be impressed.

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 2ND

  We don’t talk very much as we check out from the hotel. I’d suggested going on somewhere for lunch but Matthew said he preferred to get home. I know we’re both disappointed that the weekend didn’t live up to our expectations. Even though Matthew’s explanation of why he didn’t want to stay at the hotel on Friday night held up, I couldn’t help worrying that he was getting fed-up of all the hassle my forgetfulness has been creating. So, yesterday, while he was at the house waiting for the alarm system to be fitted, I plucked up my courage and googled ‘periodic amnesia’, which directed me to ‘transient global amnesia’. Although the term was familiar to me in relation to Mum, my heart still dropped a little further with each line I read and I soon closed off the page quickly, trying to squash the panic mounting inside me. I don’t know if it’s what I’ve got and, more importantly, I don’t want to know. For now, ignorance is bliss.

  When Matthew finally turned up at seven last night, in time for a drink in the bar before dinner, I was aware that he was watching me more closely than usual and I kept expecting him to tell me that he was worried about me. But he didn’t say anything, which made it somehow worse. I thought that maybe he was waiting until we were in the privacy of our room. But when we eventually went up, instead of saying that he wanted to talk to me, he turned on the television and I wished that he hadn’t because there was a special report about Jane’s murder following her funeral earlier in the day. They showed footage of her flower-covered coffin being carried into the little church in Heston with her distraught parents following behind, and tears had seeped from my eyes.

  Then a photo of Jane appeared on the screen, a different one to the one they’d been using before.

  ‘She was so pretty,’ Matthew said. ‘It’s such a terrible shame.’

  ‘So it would be less of a shame if she hadn’t been pretty?’ I retorted, suddenly angry.