CHAPTER 30

 

Andrew Yates lay with his eyes closed listening to the girl breathing next to him. What was her name? Lisa? Linda? Laura? Something beginning with L. Lindsay? Yes, Lindsay felt right. From Ohio. Or Omaha. She was a paralegal. Fragments of the previous evening began to fall into place. He’d met her at a bar in 53^rd Street. He’d been with three of his friends from the office, she’d been with a married girlfriend who had a husband waiting for her so when the friend left Lindsay had tagged along with Andrew and his group. No, not Lindsay. Leena. Definitely Leena. They’d hit another bar and then Andrew’s friends had taken the hint and left them to it. He’d bought her a burger and then more drinks and then gone to a club where he’d given her an ecstasy tablet and taken one himself and that was pretty much all he could remember. No, not Leena. Elle. Her name was Elle. Or was that her nickname and Leena was her full name. That felt right. Her name was Leena but everyone called her Elle.

He looked at his watch. Half past eight. It was Saturday so he didn’t have to get to work but his wife was due in at noon, back from a two-day sales conference in Seattle. He had to be at the airport to meet her or there’d be hell to pay. He tried to remember what had happened after he’d got back to Elle’s room. There had been sex, he remembered that much. And she’d had some coke, which had been nice and a surprise. She’d had a drawer full of sex toys as well, which had been less nice. He could never understand girls who wanted to bring sex toys into the bed when they had full use of the real thing. He just hoped that she hadn’t marked him. He hadn’t felt any scratches and he hadn’t let her get her mouth anywhere near his neck just in case she’d thought that biting was sexy.

Elle moved in her sleep and Yates edged his body away from hers. She didn’t look half as attractive in the cold light of day. Her mascara had smudged and her cheeks were peppered with small white spots and for the first time he noticed the brown roots of her dyed hair. She told him that she was twenty-eight but in the cold light of day she looked closer to her mid-thirties, almost as old as his wife.

He rolled out from under the duvet, slowly so as not to wake her, gathered up his shoes and clothes and carried them to the bathroom. He draped his clothes over the side of the bath and looked at his reflection in the mirror above the sink. He ran his hand over the stubble on his chin and decided to shave. If one of the neighbors saw him going into his apartment looking as if he’d been out all night then tongues would start wagging. Especially old Mrs Wilkinson who lived next door. She’d always hated him since he’d complained about her yapping Yorkshire Terrier and she’d relish the opportunity of telling his wife that he’d been out all night. He looked around for shaving foam but there was a lady razor in the shower so he took it and splashed water on his face and then used a bar of soap to work up a lather. He looked at his watch again. He had more than enough time to pop into a convenience store on the way home so that anyone who saw him would just assume he’d popped out for some shopping.

“Andrew, are you okay?”

Yates flinched as he heard Elle’s voice. He had hoped to get out without waking her. “I’m fine, baby. Just shaving.”

“Do you want coffee? Or green tea?”

“Coffee would be great, baby. Two sugars and milk, please.”

Yates gritted his teeth. Now he was going to have to talk to her before making his excuses and getting the hell out of her apartment. He stared at his reflection as he ran the small plastic razor down his cheek but flinched when a smear of red appeared. Blood. He cursed under his breath. He wasn’t used to wet shaving, he’d used an electric razor for years. He started to shave under his chin and as he ran the razor along the soapy skin a second blob of blood appeared high up on his cheek.

He took a step back, frowning. As he looked quizzically at his reflection a small drop of blood splattered on the side of the sink. Yates looked at the razor in his hand, then back at the red smear on the sink. That didn’t make any sense. He slowly looked up and gasped when he saw the wet scarlet patch in the ceiling above his head.