Alex Lake - Killing Kate

And all of them full of men looking for someone to have a summer fling with, perhaps a pretty woman in her mid-to-late twenties who’d recently broken up with her boyfriend and was emotional and vulnerable, and would easily fall for their cheesy lines.

Only once in the entire week had he heard her voice and it had been such a relief to know she was alive, to be in touch with her again, to be connected to her in however paltry a form, at least until she had hung up on him and then it had all been even worse than before.

Yes, it had been a long week, but now she was back. She. Was. Back. He’d tracked her flight on the Internet, watched the tiny plane crawl across the screen from Dalaman airport to Manchester airport, then, when it landed, gone online and checked the arrivals board just to be sure.

Of course, he was only sure that the plane had landed, not that she was on it. So, unable to sleep, he got on his bike – a cyclo-cross, designed to work both on and off-road, that he had bought second hand a few months back – and rode to her house – their house – at midnight (when he was pretty sure she’d be through Customs and back home). He used his bike as often as possible these days; riding it cleared his mind. He tended to stay off the roads, preferring the paths and snickets and alleys that connected most parts of the town, routes that most people didn’t even know existed, leaving them quiet and unused, which was perfect for the solitude he craved.

As a cloud obscured the moon, he turned into the street their house was on, and there it was.

Her car. Parked outside the house. Proof, absolute proof, of her return.

And upstairs, a light on. Her – their – bedroom was at the front of the house. The house he had offered to move out of, even though she wanted to break up, an offer he now regretted. He’d hoped it would show her how unconcerned he was, how magnanimous, but all it meant in the end was that he was squatting at a friend’s flat.

He stared up at the windows and, as he watched, her silhouette appeared behind the blinds that they had installed together.

Even though it was only a silhouette, the sight of her shocked him, and he gasped. She was safe. She was home. She was back.

And now he was going to fix this.

He was going to fix this, whatever it took.

Kate’s alarm – a loud, old-fashioned bell sound that she had chosen on her phone as it was the only noise that could reliably wake her at six a.m. – was ringing. She opened her eyes. It took her a few seconds to remember where she was – back home, Monday morning, a week of work ahead.

The first day back from holiday was always a struggle. It was the contrast: the day before you’d been immersed in a free, technicolour life, doing new things, meeting new people, living life the way it should be lived. And then: a six a.m. alarm, and back to normality.

She stared at the ceiling. Her eyes felt swollen. She was very tired; much more than she would have been on a normal Monday. It was amazing how exhausting holidays were. Late nights, too much to drink, bad sleep (on one night in someone else’s bed, which was a memory she was glad she could leave behind. What happens on holiday, stays on holiday, after all), and then, on the way back, a delayed flight which meant she had finally got home shortly after midnight.

And discovered that she didn’t have her house key.

Before leaving for holiday she’d detached her house key from her key fob – on the grounds that she wouldn’t need the back-door key, electronic pass for work, keys to her mum and dad’s house or any of the other things she had attached to it – and then stashed it in a side pocket of her bag and forgotten about it, in the expectation that it would be there when she got home.

Well, it wasn’t. Under the dim glow of the interior light in her car, she’d emptied her bag onto the front seat and scrabbled around.

No key.

Then she’d unpacked her suitcase, spreading the contents all over the inside of the car.

Nothing.

So she’d slammed the car door in frustration, which had woken her neighbour, Carl, an engineer in his fifties, who, on hearing the commotion, came downstairs.

Need a hand ? he said.

I’ve lost my key. Left it in Turkey. It must have fallen out of my bag somewhere.

Oh. Want me to help you break in?

Can you do that?

Sure. It’s easy. All you have to do is tell me which window you don’t mind being broken and we’ll be away.

Ten minutes later, she was in, with a broken kitchen window and a promise from Carl that he’d call a friend of his in the morning who would be able to replace it.

So, all that, less than six hours’ sleep, and now back to work.

Back to the slow commute along the M56 into Manchester, back to hours lost to the ridiculous traffic, back to the panic when you saw the red lights of the cars ahead as they braked and you thought Oh shit, what’s happened? Don’t let this be a delay, I want to get home and eat and read and go to bed .

Back to the offices of her law firm; a solid, well-respected regional company that offered a good salary and career prospects in return for your life and soul. Back to her boss, Michaela, a forty-two-year-old woman who thought she should have done better than merely reaching the level that made her Kate’s manager, especially since she had worked and worked and waited and waited to have kids and then found that she couldn’t, that it was too late, that although there were articles and advice out there claiming that pregnancy and childbirth were options for women well into their forties, they weren’t options for her.

And she resented Kate having already reached the rung below her, along with the obvious fact that she would rise further still, maybe making partner by her mid thirties, which would leave her with plenty of time to have a couple of kids and the life that Michaela thought should have been hers.

Back, in short, to the daily grind.

Kate swung her legs out of bed. She felt groggy, jet-lagged almost, which she supposed she was: her body clock had adjusted to late nights and lie-ins, and here she was, dragging herself out of bed hours earlier than she was now used to.

It was going to be a long, painful day.

She walked along the landing to the bathroom. Her feet were tanned, a white V splitting at her big toes and running up to her ankles tracing where the straps of her sandals had been. She smiled as she remembered walking through the markets in the sunshine, evading the traders who tried to get her and May and Gemma into their bazaar with the promise of cheap leather bags or real gold jewellery or – this was her favourite – the offer of genuine fake watches. She’d laughed out loud when the man, a young Turkish guy with wide eyes and an infectious smile, had stepped in front of them and gestured to his stall.

Come in , he said. Only for a look. Best watches in Kalkan. Genuine fakes!

And then he laughed, and they laughed, and went in. Gemma bought a Rolex – a real, honest to God, no messing genuine fake Rolex – for Matt. Kate would have got one for Phil, in a different life. There was a Tag Heuer that he would have loved, and she almost bought it, but no: it would have sent mixed signals, and she had enough to deal with where Phil was concerned already.

The shower took a few minutes to warm up. She wondered briefly whether the boiler was broken – Have to get Phil to look at it , she thought, then remembered that Phil was no longer an option for that kind of thing, so she’d have to call someone. She thought they – she – had a service contract, but Phil had dealt with it, so maybe she’d have to call him to find out, unless there was paperwork somewhere – in the kitchen drawer, maybe … Then the hot water came and she relegated the boiler service contract to a mental note – that she would ignore – to check it later.