Madeleine Reiss - Someone to Watch Over Me - A gripping psychological thriller

Trove was situated about fifteen minutes’ walk from the centre of Cambridge and was tucked down a side street in a largely residential area of expensive Victorian terraces. It was in the middle of a small row of shops; a delicatessen whose clientele accepted the overpriced olives and mozzarella in exchange for the rakish charm of the owner who wrapped up their loaves of bread in tissue paper with exaggerated reverence, a greengrocer who had a tendency to use organic as his excuse for limp leaves and shrivelled carrots, a betting shop and small Chinese supermarket. Although the street was a little out of the way, it was on the main route into town and the shops benefited from the footfall of local customers.

Jen was there when she arrived, and had already turned on the feather-fringed lamps that were placed strategically around the shop. She had also sprinkled orange and clove oil on the radiators so that the place smelled delicious. She was engrossed in the task of dressing the old wire dummy that stood next to the racks of vintage clothes Carrie had sourced from charity shops, fairs, eBay and her own extensive hoarded wardrobe. With her head buried under the folds of silk, she struggled to pull the narrow-hipped dress down over the wire frame.

‘I didn’t know you were going to get here so early,’ said Carrie, taking off her scarf and gloves.

‘Gnnf … too excited to sleep,’ Jen replied, the words muffled. She emerged from the fabric with her hair mussed and her eyes bright.

Carrie had met Jen at college on the very first day of term. She had been a young eighteen-year-old then with no experience of being away from home, let alone living in London, which seemed terrifyingly large and noisy to her and full of people who talked too fast or who looked at her strangely. She had seldom been to the capital and wasn’t really prepared for the homesickness that engulfed her in the first months. Her mother had despatched her briskly at Coventry station with the words, ‘Remember, the best way to avoid loons on the tube is to sit with a bit of string trailing out of the corner of your mouth. Works every time.’

Although economical in her farewell, Carrie’s mother, Pam, was devastated by her daughter’s departure and remained on the platform, hidden from sight behind the newspaper stand in WH Smith to watch the train pulling out of the station. Not usually given to public displays of emotion, she found to her surprise that tears were running down her face and gathering inside the collar of her pink cashmere coat. To cheer herself up she went to John Lewis and bought three skirts, four pairs of shoes and a hat for which she had no wedding.

Jen was older than Carrie and had spent the previous two years travelling and working. She had seemed very sophisticated to the other girl who had attended one school, dated one boy and had been drunk only once, after drinking half a bottle of peach schnapps taken from the back of her parents’ kitchen cupboard. Unlike Carrie, condemned to live in smelly university accommodation, Jen had also been the proud possessor of a flat in Clapham, bought for her by her father just before he had absconded to France with a young lawyer who worked at his firm. After knocking down a few walls of their chateau and indulging in the purchase of some enamel jugs, the young lawyer (who it turned out was somewhat susceptible to rashes) decided that Jen’s father wasn’t, after all, quite what she had expected and she returned to home to Surrey and set up a sanctuary for maimed hedgehogs.

Jen had looked after Carrie during that first year at university, advising her on how to acquire and then ditch various hapless young men who were drawn to Carrie’s legs, lustrous hair and air of vulnerability. Jen herself had to beat men off with a stick. Dark and curvaceous, she treated the smitten youths who had the misfortune to succumb to her charms with ill-concealed contempt. In her third year, much to her mortification, she fell hard for a high-profile, married politician, who treated her with just enough disinterest to keep her frantic. She finally gathered enough strength to call a halt to proceedings when, on her twenty-third birthday, she found herself having sex with him in a restaurant lavatory again. The thought came to her that perhaps she ought to want something more meaningful from a relationship than being rammed against a sanitary towel disposal unit.

Although Jen had a very warm heart and had a real aversion to hurting small creatures, when roused, she was scary. The twinkle in her politician’s previously sparkly blue eyes dimmed somewhat when he discovered that a rumour (planted into the ear of his demoralised secretary) had been circulating, describing details only his wife (and the five other young women with whom he had enjoyed white tiles and the smell of bleach) could possibly have known. Information such as the fact he had a penis that curved sideways and that he had a tendency to shout out random French words at his moment of climax was used by his political enemies to such good effect that he was never again able to stand up in public without some wise ass muttering ‘Brioches massive!’ or ‘Le fanny de ma tante!’ sotto voce .

After her politician, Jen steered well clear of any serious or lasting entanglements, preferring to remain firmly in control. Every now and again she would meet a bloke on a Friday or a Saturday night with good teeth or an affable smile and invite him back to her dusty flat, with its battered sofas and heavy velvet curtains. In the morning however, she would always wake alone, ready for a solitary walk on the common followed by two butter-laden croissants and a bowl of milky coffee. Throughout college and beyond, Jen looked out for Carrie. She scrutinised prospective boyfriends (‘Looks to me as if he might wear women’s shoes on the sly’), doled out travel tips (‘Never stand behind a donkey’), and advised on the best job interview techniques (‘Look them in the eye and imagine them on the toilet’). In return, Carrie vainly tried to get her to have a decent haircut and dress in a way that showed off her ample breasts and tiny waist. Despite her best efforts Jen persisted in wearing droopy garments of the sort found on women who like to dress up as Anglo Saxons in their spare time and she stubbornly resisted any attempts at restyling her mop of curls. Over the years the two women stayed in touch, despite the fact they were often on other sides of the world and then other sides of the country.

Carrie smiled at the thought of what the two of them had been through. She was glad and grateful that Jen was still in her life. She looked at her watch. It was time to open the shop door for the very first time.

‘Come on, girl,’ she said. ‘Let’s open the doors to the hordes!’

Molly often woke with a sense of urgency; this morning it took her several minutes to realise that it was Saturday and there couldn’t be anything that needed her immediate attention. Although she and Max had been living in the house for over a year she still wasn’t used to its noises. The house was full of scratchings and creakings, as if the very bricks and wood it was made of were shifting uneasily. It was a house with a restless soul she’d decided, although the more prosaic side of her knew quite well that many of the late-night rustlings were due to rats. A couple of days after blocking a large hole in the edge of the kitchen floorboards with wood filler, the house had smelt unmistakably of rotting rat, a sweetish odour like overripe apples mingled with something more meaty and rancid. She thought that she had probably trapped a rat family beneath her floorboards. The smell didn’t subside for almost two weeks, by which time she had almost become accustomed to it.