Chapter 22

The way he looked at the woman, Stella should have known it was not his wife. The belief that people got married and stayed in love with their partner was half-witted. Human beings were not like swans, mated for life. They craved new experiences, new lovers.

Because of the resident parking permits, she had been forced to leave her car quite a distance from the house. Then, hour upon hour of hanging about, with no comings and goings at the house, nothing. Where was he? The second day, the woman had come out, returning later, looking tired and depressed. Was her lover playing games, messing her about?

Where did he live? She needed a better plan. But her only hope was to carry on, watching the woman’s house, and hopefully he would come back and, when he left, she could follow him home. But that would mean her car had to be close by. Alternatively, she could wait outside his university department again. Same problem where to leave the car and if he cycled it was possible he followed a route with short cuts, open to cyclists but not to cars.

Detective work was a nightmare and if she hung about much longer, a nosey neighbour would start keeping tabs on her. Wearing a hoodie was a necessary precaution, but walking up and down with your hood pulled up made it look like you were up to no good.

One afternoon, the woman had visited another house farther down the road. Later she had returned home, and much later, according to Stella’s records it was twenty to four, all her waiting had paid off and he had turned up in a car, this time with a child. It was wrapped up warm, impossible to see if it was a boy or a girl, but Stella had assumed he would have to come back for it.

And she had been right.

Just before six, he had returned and she had been ready, standing fifty yards away, head down, pretending to be checking her phone. When he turned in her direction, she was afraid he had recognised her, but he was only guiding the child into the passenger seat.

Progress at last. It was not where the child lived so it must be coming there for a particular reason. To be looked after between the end of the school day and when he finished work? No, that made no sense or he would have brought it every day. All the same, Stella had made a decision to give up her morning vigils, but come to the road each afternoon at four and sit in her car, facing in the direction of the way he drove off.

The next few days had been a frustrating waste of time but then he had delivered the child again. Except, he had come back sooner than the previous time so she had almost missed them. The woman had come out too, and the child had hopped about impatiently until he unlocked his car. A short distance away, a delivery van was blocking the road so he had been obliged to take a turning to the right, and for several minutes she had lost sight of him, sweating with relief when she spotted his car in the distance at the bottom of the hill. As she approached the junction, the lights had changed. If it had been up to her, she would have risked going through red, but the car in front had been driven by an old bloke, who had pulled up when the lights turned amber, and by the time Stella turned the corner he had disappeared.

Hours more waiting around, but at last it had paid off. Two days ago, the child had been dropped off as usual and he had returned two hours later. This time no fucking van had blocked the road. The child had been bouncing up and down and the man had turned his head, probably to tell it to sit still, then glanced in his driving mirror so Stella had been sure he must have seen her.

At the bottom of the hill, he had turned left as usual, continuing up the long straight road, then indicated left again and slowed down, pulling up outside a thirties style house, with ugly pebble-dash, painted an unattractive shade of mustard yellow.

The windows were rectangular with metal frames, and two wheelie bins, one black, one green, had been left next to a dilapidated porch. As she recalled he had never cared much about his surroundings, but what about his wife? As she watched from a safe distance, he had been greeted by a dark-haired woman, very different from the one at the other house. The child had squeezed past the two of them and disappeared, and the adults had paused for a moment, before the man walked back towards the road, but only to close the garden gate and Stella had driven off without looking back.

Today she had taken a risk, stopping on the opposite side of the road, a little farther up the hill from his house. No sign of any of them so far, but since it was Saturday they would have a different routine. How long should she wait? They might stay inside all day. Another hour and she would leave, go for drive, perhaps to Bath, returning later to check if it was possible to approach the house from behind, where she might be able to see the garden, and the windows at the back.

Did she really want go all the way to Bath? She decided to return to the basement and see if the washing machine had finished its programme or, like last time, it had stopped halfway through and she had been obliged to give it a kick. It was a disgrace the landlady was allowed to let out the place. Cheap, she would give her that, but barely fit for human occupation. Buying to let was a profitable business. Profitable if you were not too fussy about the well-being of your tenants.

Just about to switch on the engine, she paused as someone came out of the house. The woman. Dropping a bag of rubbish in one of the bins, she looked all about her, as if she knew someone was watching her. How could she? She might have been checking parked cars, ones that were not normally left in the road. Next time Stella came she would leave her car somewhere else. She was getting careless, taking risks, but the waiting was dragging her down, and the previous evening an attack of migraine had knocked her out for several hours.