The Woman Next Door: A dark and twisty psychological thriller. Cass Green

      She will get rid of him.

      It’s going to be okay.

       HESTER

      I’m looking up at an unfamiliar ceiling.

      The inside of my head thrums and pulses in sickening waves. Have I had an accident? Maybe I was hit by a car and I’m in hospital.

      I run my tongue over my dry lips, grimacing at the terrible taste in my mouth.

      As I turn my head and look to the right, I can see a pale blue wooden bedside table. It looks far too pretty and upmarket to be in a hospital. That’s not all. The wallpaper is textured with roses and looks like raw silk. Gauzy curtains shimmer and flutter at a window where a light breeze drifts in. The light is the pale bluish milk of very early morning.

      My brain scrambles to assemble a jigsaw puzzle of jagged information.

      Computer club. A party.

      Laughing and then feeling peculiar.

      Oh no, oh no, oh no …

      Memories crash into my mind with the violence of bumper cars. I’m talking too loud to the couple whose faces are frozen with embarrassment. I’m on the landing, feeling queer. And then I’m in Tilly’s room and …

      Oh my goodness. I start to cry a little, but am so dehydrated I don’t seem to make any tears. All I can do is a strange sort of mewling, like a cat in distress. That’s when I remember poor Bertie. My darling boy has been alone all night long. My guilt and horror increase tenfold.

      I groan and turn onto my other side. I wish I could hide in this room forever but I can’t leave my boy any longer. I have to get up. I have to face what I have done. Peering at my watch with eyeballs that don’t seem to fit the sockets anymore, I see that it is only 5 a.m. in the morning. I must leave, but I will somehow have to make amends later.

      It’s then I notice the glass of water next to the bed and a packet of paracetamol. The kindness of this simple act twists my insides with more guilt. I don’t deserve it. I start to cry again. But my head hurts too much for that so I stop.

      Almost without realizing I’m doing it, I reach for the soft skin of my inner arm and pinch myself viciously. The thin, tender skin burns and the pain makes me gasp but I deserve the pain after what I have done. I won’t take the medicine or the water. I will take my punishment, at least while I am still at the scene of my crime.

      Clambering out of the big soft bed, my balance wobbles and I almost fall back down again. Nausea rolls over me, coating me in a clammy layer of sweat, and I try to breathe steadily for a moment. I mustn’t be sick again!

      Finally steady, I walk to the middle of the floor. There’s a full-length mirror on a stand in one corner but I can’t bear to look. I try to rake my fingers through my hair, knowing it to be a futile gesture. My hair feels dirty and matted with sweat and I can taste something horrible. Sweetish and rotten.

      Slowly, with shaking hands, I make the bed and try to rearrange the beautifully soft cushions on the floor, presumably tossed carelessly there by me last night. But I don’t really know what to do with them. They are imprinted with a river scene like something from a Chinese painting, with tall herons standing proudly in water. But they look all wrong however I arrange them. I don’t have a flair for that sort of thing, like Melissa does. Frustrated, I give up and just lay them in a neat row.

      A throw made from heavy cotton in a deep turquoise colour lies half on the floor and it is so lovely I can’t help but hold it to my throbbing forehead for a moment. I hope to catch some kind of comforting scent from it. But it is curiously without any odour at all. I place it neatly along the bottom of the bed. This, at least, I can do because I have seen it on decor programmes on television. The bed is so perfect, even with the cushions out of place, that it fills me with a strange sense of longing, and then, another hot blast of shame.

      Poor Tilly. And poor, poor Melissa. She must hate me for this. I can’t understand how it happened. I don’t even remember the last time I was under the influence. It must be years ago. Any tolerance I once had must have completely disappeared.

      Miserably, I slip my feet into my court shoes and that’s when I notice a globule of something pink and lumpy on the toe of my right one. Disgust ripples through me as I reach for a tissue from the neat metal container at the side of the bed and rub at the crustiness, trying to quell the heaving sensation in my stomach as I do so.

      There’s no way I can put the tissue in the bin for poor Melissa to deal with, so, shuddering a little, I fold it over as much as possible to obscure the shameful contents and push it inside the cuff of my blouse.

      When I open the door, I listen for a moment, willing with every fibre of my being that no one will be around. I will come back later, with flowers, to apologize. I simply can’t face seeing anyone yet.

      It’s as I creep towards the stairs that I hear a door opening behind me. Oh please no …

      But it isn’t Melissa, or Mark, or Tilly. It’s a man.

      I have no idea who he is. He is perhaps in his thirties and he is dressed only in his underwear. He’s not very tall but all muscled chest and arms. Then my eyes are drawn downwards and I gasp in shock; I can clearly see the tented distortion of his boxer shorts.

      He gives a deep, throaty laugh. ‘Oops, sorry, Grandma,’ he says. ‘Morning glory and all that.’

      My cheeks flame. I scurry down the stairs as fast as I can. I am sure I can hear mocking laughter behind me.

      Thankfully the front door isn’t locked. Wrenching it open, I almost throw myself down the front steps, twisting my knee a little in the process.

      Home! Please let me just get home.

      I run up my own steps. It’s as I get inside, relief flooding my veins, that I realize the tissue containing the vomit must have fallen out of my sleeve. Panicking, I quickly retrace my steps but it isn’t on Melissa’s steps either. It is obviously lying somewhere inside.

      ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,’ I whisper.

      Bertie runs from the kitchen, yapping wildly. Telling me off, no doubt. I pick him up and hug him to my chest, kissing his rough little head and murmuring my apologies, but he scrambles to be put down. When I open the back door, he darts outside and squats straight away. The poor thing; what a clever boy he is for not having an accident on the floor. He must be hungry too.

      I think then of someone else washing up my ‘accident’ on the floor, and I have to close my eyes at the poisonous sensation of shame. I go straight to bed.

      When I awake, I am shocked to see it is the afternoon already. Forcing down tea and toast, I run a bath, and ease my aching body into the water.

      It is almost hotter than I can stand, and when I lift my leg the skin is bright and mottled. I’m not at all comfortable but I feel I am being purged. If only the shame could be leached from my skin along with the traces of alcohol.

      Images from last night keep racing through my mind: talking to that woman at the start who kept laughing like I was the funniest woman ever. Saying ‘Pimm’s o’clock!’ to someone and finding it almost unbearably funny. Someone (Tilly?) speaking to me gently and telling me a ‘nice lie-down’ would ‘sort me out’.

      My mind drifts to that man on the landing this morning. Who on earth was that? He didn’t look at all like one of Mark’s friends. Come to think of it, where was Mark?

      He had tattoos. I keep picturing the coarse black hair on his chest and arms. Some men are like monkeys under their clothes. And the sight of … that. Mocking me with his lack of modesty.

      I close my eyes in disgust.

      My head still aches, despite the aspirin I forced down with my cup of tea when I got back.