If Dominic hadn’t insisted on us going to report Shona’s harassment on Monday, then her visit might have slipped my mind.
As it is, now I can’t quite let go of the thought of hearing her side of things. I go back to the kitchen bin to try and retrieve her phone number, but Dom has changed the bin bag and the dustbin contents have been taken by the bin men first thing that morning. I phone the office and tell them I’ll be in late, then take the Piccadilly Line to Baron’s Court. When I reach the Novotel, I bypass Reception and take the lift straight to the fourth floor. I tap on the door of Room 422.
‘Shona?’
There’s no response. I notice the ‘Do Not Disturb’ tag hanging on the doorknob. Perhaps she’s sleeping in late. I knock harder this time, but there’s still no answer. Perhaps she’s gone down to the gym or the restaurant and forgotten to remove the tag.
I return to Reception and ask the uniformed girl at the desk if she will phone Room 422 for me.
‘The guest isn’t answering,’ she says, uninterested.
‘This is Miss Watson? Shona Watson?’
She scans her registration software and shakes her head. ‘No, we don’t have a guest of that name. Somebody else is in that room.’
Shona must have checked out over the weekend, I think, as I trudge back to the tube station in the rain. I’m too late.
The following week, a manila envelope arrives, addressed to Dominic. The tax on his car is due for renewal, and since I pay the running expenses for both cars out of my business account, I open it.
It’s a speeding ticket.
The grainy CCTV image has captured the number plate on Dom’s Audi. The details for the time of the offence are printed in black and white: Old Oak Common Lane, W3, 30 March, 7.32 p.m.
It takes a while for my brain to catch up: 30 March was Friday, the night we arrived at Gray’s Farmhouse. But at 7.32, Dominic was in a jam at the North Circular approach to Hangar Lane, several miles due west. I take out my mobile and check the time of his call – 7.15 p.m.
The time stamp on the camera must be wrong, I think. If there was an electrical fault, then the time could be out by twenty minutes or so, surely? That must be it.
I leave the letter on Dominic’s desk and head to the new Comida office in Richmond, where I’ll be catching up on paperwork and accounts. Matt is out meeting a recruitment agency, so I’m hot-desking where he usually sits.
‘How do you find out about road closures?’ I’m frowning at the PC screen in front of me.
Milan looks up from his computer. ‘Why – did you get stuck in traffic on the way here? Wait, I’m confused – didn’t you come on the tube?’
‘I did,’ I confirm. ‘I want to look up a road closure that happened in the past.’
‘TFL London put them all on Twitter in real time.’ Milan holds up his smartphone, opened in the Twitter app, to show me. ‘I guess you could scroll back through their feed to the time you want to check… although why you’d want to know about closures that have already happened… Just saying.’ He gives a dramatic shrug and flounces over to switch on the kettle.
I retro-actively search the London Transport feed for closures on the North Circular on Friday 30 March.
‘Nope. Nothing here.’
‘How about the Met’s website?’
I click my way through to the Incidents page for the Metropolitan Police. It’s divided into areas and I select West London. Again, on the night in question, there was no road closure near Hangar Lane. Under ‘Latest News’, there’s just an appeal for some missing jewellery taken during a robbery, and a report of a woman missing for four days from the Hammersmith area.
My mind is jolted back to my taxi ride through Hammersmith the previous summer. Dominic, sitting at a pavement table with the party planner. What was her name? As if I’d forget: it was Nicola. Nicola Mayhew. I search ‘Nicola Mayhew + party planner + London’, but there are no hits. I could have misremembered the name, I tell myself. But I know very well that I haven’t. That name is inscribed on my brain.
My fingers trembling slightly, I dial the number of Atwell’s restaurant.
‘Hi, my name’s Alice Gill… we hired one of your private rooms for a party at the end of June last year. Could you just check some details for me? Yes, I can hold while you transfer me.’
Milan is staring at me with undisguised curiosity. On the other end of the line, the events manager retrieves the client booking file and asks me what I need to know.
‘I wanted to know the name of the party planner my husband used.’
‘Mr Gill didn’t use a party planner,’ the girl says breezily. ‘That’s not company policy. All private functions are taken care of by our in-house events manager. Her name’s Ellen Gardiner. I can give you her details if that would help?’
‘No,’ I say slowly. ‘Thanks, but there’s no need.’
I google Ellen Gardiner, but she looks nothing like the girl Dominic was with. The girl with the dark red lipstick.
A trawl through social media brings up several Nicola Mayhews. I start to check them, one by one.
And then. Oh God: Nicola Mayhew, Accounts Assistant, Ellwood Archer.
My heart thumping, I click on the link.
But this Nicola Mayhew is at least fifty; matronly-looking and plain. It definitely wasn’t her. If she’s a colleague, Dominic must know her, or at least know of her. He surely couldn’t know more than one Nicola Mayhew. In which case, who was the woman with the lipstick? I close down the window on the screen and press my hands against my eyes.
‘You okay, my darling?’ Milan asks. ‘Can I get you something?’
I gather up my coat and bag. ‘Thanks… it’s nothing. Well, not nothing, but I don’t want to talk about it right now. I need to get going.’
I go straight home to Waverley Gardens, run upstairs to the bathroom and rummage through the medicine cabinet. Pulling out a packet of contraceptive pills – the same ones I abandoned just before our trip to the Cotswolds – I find the correct day of the week and swallow the tablet. I take yesterday’s pill too, for good measure, even though Dominic and I haven’t had sex since we got back from Gray’s. Then I pull out my phone and compose a text to JoJo. I’m reluctant to provide evidence to back up her theory that Dominic is untrustworthy, but the day’s discoveries have left me rattled, and I have to confide my fears in someone.
Need emergency chat. Think D having an affair. X