It was beyond late by the time I tumbled out of the taxi, waving a groggy farewell to Becky and Alice as they hooted and hollered their happy birthdays at me one final time.
We’d had a night full of food, fun and utterly fabulous friendship, and while deciding to drown my rampant terror with cocktails was probably not a sensible idea, it had been a successful one.
I did ask whether either of them knew if anyone was still mad at me for the wine and cheese fiasco, or whether Alice had noticed any animosity since her table-top announcement at the weekend. They waved off that suggestion with flapping hands and insistent cries that I was being paranoid.
I’d of course checked my old phone at least every two minutes before I’d left that evening. There’d been nothing. But at the end of the night, once I’d stumbled up the stairs, tugged off my velvet trousers and glittery top, I couldn’t resist checking it again.
Did you like your present?
And a second one, sent a few minutes later:
Would you like to thank me in person?
The threat hit me like a fist in my guts.
They knew where I lived. Were they coming for me?
I made it to the toilet just in time to spew up my birthday celebrations.
Sweating, shaking, head spinning with panic, I crawled back into bed and clutched the duvet for dear life, as if a mound of stuffing could save me.
My past was about to catch up with me. In more ways than one.
The following day, I dragged myself out of bed just after eight. I needed at least four days’ more sleep, but that wasn’t happening any time soon, and I desperately needed water and painkillers for my pounding head.
Daniel arrived back from dropping Hope off at Billie’s while I was boiling the kettle.
‘Ouch!’ He winced at my bleary state.
‘Thanks,’ I croaked.
‘A good night, or a bad one?’
I shrugged. ‘Both.’
He vanished into his study, magically reappearing the second I’d finished my tea.
‘Right, are you ready to do this?’ He nodded at my phone.
I slid the phone closer with a frail hand. ‘Don’t feel the need to hang about. You’ve already taken yesterday afternoon off.’
He leaned against the worktop, arms folded. His expression was grim, but when he spoke the words were gentle. I wasn’t the focus of his carefully suppressed fury. I wondered how long it would be before that changed. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Okay.’
I made the call, giving the briefest of details and being reassured that someone from the local police department would be in touch. This was followed up with a return call and appointment made for later that day. By that point I needed a second cup of tea, and Luke had arrived with new bathroom doors for the recently made doorways leading to the smaller bedrooms.
Becky joined us soon after. ‘I was going to take it easy this morning, but then Mum called and said about the bees. Bloody hell, Eleanor. Why didn’t you mention it last night?’
I mumbled something along the lines of it really not being that big a deal, but then a wayward tear slipped out, and Becky wasn’t buying it anyway, instead wrapping me in a hug before plying me with yet more tea and leftover birthday cake.
Ziva called in ten minutes later, her face scarlet, hair bristling, hands wringing with distress. ‘The H boys are gone.’
It felt as though a trapdoor had opened in the kitchen floor right where I stood. To my relief, at that point the police officer arrived, a woman in her fifties who firstly insisted we called her Brenda and secondly took charge with a brisk efficiency that was simultaneously reassuring and intimidating in equal measure.
Having relayed why we had called her, and gone over the little we knew, she then asked the question I had been dreading.
‘Has anything like this happened before?’
I took a deep breath, kept my eyes firmly in Brenda’s direction and away from Daniel, Becky and Ziva. ‘Yes.’
Brenda’s eyes flicked to Daniel, sitting beside me, who had gone rigid.
‘Can you tell me about it, please?’
‘Um. Before moving here, I was a journalist. I wrote food reviews, and a few other things, and sometimes… people sent me… messages…’
Brenda, sensing I was on the brink of choking on my own witness statement, carefully put down her pen and notepad.
‘Dr Solomon, Becky, I think I’ve got all I need from you, for now. Please don’t let me take up any more of your day.’
Taking the hint, they made their excuses and left.
‘Okay, Eleanor. Take your time. You were telling me about your previous messages?’
I nodded. Daniel was gripping his coffee mug so hard his knuckles were white.
‘I had the usual trolling on social media. Letters to the paper I worked for, comments on my blog. It was nothing unusual, never anything extreme enough to worry about.’
‘And then…?’
‘And then…’
And then I told her about the messages to my phone, the heart in the box, and the middle of the night phone messages, and with every word Daniel grew even more still.
‘And have you heard anything since?’
Oh boy.
‘Yes.’ My voice broke. I swallowed, taking a moment to breathe in some much-needed air before I continued. ‘I bought a new phone, but I’ve had a couple of messages to my old one.’
‘Can I see them?’
As I pulled my old phone out of my hoodie pocket and handed it to Brenda, to my enormous relief Daniel’s own phone rang. He glanced at it before pushing back his chair, swearing under his breath.
‘I have to take this.’
‘Of course, no problem.’ Brenda smiled. She waited for him to leave before looking me straight in the eye. ‘Now, are you going to tell me what’s really going on?’
So, with many more choked back tears, my head hung in shame, I told her precisely that.
An hour or so later, Brenda left, taking my old phone with her. She’d said that the obvious place to start was trying to locate the Alamis, but she would also look into the other restaurants that the stalker had messaged me about on the night I left London. She’d call Miles Greenbank at the newspaper, as well as seeing if she could get any more information from my parents. Another priority, of course, was to speak to Lucy. Although it seemed clear the animosity was aimed at me, and the chilling discovery about the missing H boys suggested their focus was now here, not in London, Lucy needed to know what was happening. She also had all the new passwords for Nora’s social media accounts, so we needed that information from her, too.
However, while Brenda reassured me that a crime had been committed, and she was proceeding accordingly, I couldn’t help thinking that surely underneath the calm professionalism Brenda and I shared the same opinion: I had brought this on myself. A box of bees and a lamb’s heart were insignificant compared to the upset and damage I had caused over the past few years, and I should feel ashamed at wasting valuable police resources.
I wouldn’t have involved the police at all, would have packed up my stuff and run away again if it was only me involved. But I wouldn’t even consider risking a grief-stricken maniac turning up at Daniel and Hope’s home.
So, I would stay, and cooperate as best I could, and follow Brenda’s advice about keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary, keeping the doors and windows locked, and not going for any long rambles around the countryside alone.
I would hope, and pray, and do anything I could to make sure that I wasn’t responsible for ruining any more innocent lives.
I couldn’t call Lucy myself, as Brenda now had my old phone. I did, however, look her up on every online platform I could think of that didn’t require me to set up a profile, as well as reading through as many of the comments as I could stomach.
Nora Sharp was riding high. I had no idea what was happening with her venue or event reviews, but she had clearly been having fun reviewing her own life, and the seemingly endless free items that now accessorised it.
And while I would generally baulk at the idea of any human being degraded to the level of ‘accessory’, that was clearly how Nora viewed the man currently featuring in around half of her pictures. Nameless, consistently relegated to the back of the frame, or used as a prop to drape herself over, her new boyfriend clearly wasn’t choosy about which version of Nora Sharp he hung out with.
Marcus.
I was distracted from my stalker-search enough to scroll through the pictures until I found one that stopped me in my tracks. Nora was staring into the lens, lips pursed in defiance. She wore a tiny white crop-top, across which was written in red lettering, ‘FireStarter’.
FireStarter was the name Marcus had used for the woman he’d been seeing behind my back.
Lucy had ended up with my job, my pen name, the opportunities and the attention that came with them. Had she started with my boyfriend?
Had she planned the whole thing?
She certainly didn’t look like a woman being tormented by creepy and disgusting packages.
Daniel finished his call in time for lunch, not that either of us managed to eat more than a few token bites of a sandwich. My whole body felt seized up with tension as frenzied thoughts raced through all the potential ways he might react to the interview with Brenda. Pushing his plate away, he finally put me out of my misery.
‘You should have told me.’
I gave a wretched nod. ‘I know. I’m so sorry. I genuinely didn’t think this was anything more than nuisance messages. I never would have knowingly put you and Hope at risk. I never would have stayed here if I’d known. Like I said—’
‘I can’t believe you were dealing with this by yourself,’ he reached across the table and took my ice-cold hand. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
I shrugged. ‘I thought I’d left that awfulness behind. I was trying to start again. I didn’t want to contaminate this lovely place with the disgusting dregs of my life in London.’ The one millionth tear of the past two days dribbled out, and I swiped it away with a frustrated hand. ‘I was ashamed.’
‘Eleanor, you did nothing wrong. Why would you be ashamed? And can I remind you that this entire village has been at war for the past thirty-six years? Can you imagine the nasty, petty, ugly things that people have said and done around here? I’m not living in some naïve idyllic countryside bubble. And I know that sometimes people hate for reasons that are completely irrational and unjustified.’
I knew I should tell him quite how much I deserved the hate, but I was so tired, and so scared, and needed him not to hate me too.
‘I’m a little insulted, to be honest, that you thought so little of me – of what we’re building here, together – that you wouldn’t share this.’ He let go of my hand, then, and the pain in his eyes made my throat ache.
‘It was a couple of messages… this kind of thing was an everyday part of my job. You don’t tell me every time someone at work has a go at you, or sends an arsey email…’ My voice fizzled out, unable to deliver such a feeble argument with any conviction.
‘Or sends me a heart in the post?’ He shook his head, frustrated. ‘Don’t downplay this. They sent messages to your personal phone. You left your home in the middle of the night.’ He paused, waiting for me to find the courage to look at him. ‘You should have told me.’
My whole body drooped. ‘I know. I can’t tell you how sorry I am for embroiling you in my problems. Do you want me to go?’
He sat back, then, eyes wide with shock. ‘No! I want you to trust me enough to let your problems be our problems. This is your home, Eleanor. I want you to stop thinking like I’m allowing you to stay. Like there’s any doubt about whether you belong here. I want you to not even think about that as an option.’ He paused, mouth curling in the hint of a smile. ‘Team Damson.’
I managed a rueful smile in return. ‘Team Damson.’
‘Most of all, I want us to stop dithering about pretending to play it cool and officially admit that we’re a serious, committed, exclusive, head-over-heels-for-each-other couple.’
Wow.
‘Okay.’ I ducked my head, suddenly overcome.
‘Okay? That’s it?’ Daniel leant forwards across the table so that his face was looking right into mine. When that failed, he gently reached under my chin and tipped my head up so my eyes met his.
I took a deep breath. This man, his gorgeous smile, his tenderness. He was downright irresistible.
‘That would be lovely, thank you very much.’
I would tell him. I just needed a little more time to pull myself together first.