Page 52 of The Woman Who Said Yes

He takes my hand and squeezes it briefly. ‘It’s all right. Don’t worry.’

‘I’m not worrying,’ I fib.

The woman’s voice has faded and now there are only children’s shouts from the far end of the football pitch. I scan the garden over the gate. There’s the grubby white plastic table, sitting wonkily in the long grass. A few beer bottles and an empty dish are being investigated by a fat pigeon. Several white chairs are parked haphazardly and at some distance from one another, as if for a small group who’ve had an argument.

There’s an ancient looking shed, its rusting, corrugated roof reminiscent of the beloved satin skirt I managed to traumatise with my reckless ironing. Lying on its side, a barbecue is partially swathed in black plastic sheet, and a lone pair of large grey knickers are hanging dolefully from a washing line.

‘Shut that door, would you?’ A woman’s voice – possibly the same one as before – cuts sharply through the air, and my breath stops in my throat.

‘I think that’s her,’ I tell Sam. ‘The woman on the phone…’

‘If it is, she’s not on her own,’ he mutters.

I look up at him as he rubs at his lightly bristled chin. Let’s go, I want to tell him. Let’s go find a coffee somewhere and agree that both of us lost the plot for a while there. Okay – so mostly me. I hold up my hands and fully admit to being Chief Plot Loser! But we’ve been nothing but unfailingly friendly and welcoming to Dom, and Eva never found out, thank God. So no harm done.

I’m turning this over, about to grab Sam by the arm before we pick our way out of this dank, overgrown alleyway. But already, he is pushing the garden gate open, slowly and carefully, as if he almost expects its rusting hinges to break. They squeak a little and it seems to require some effort for him to open it enough, over the damp, uncut grass, for us to squeeze through.

‘Are you coming?’ he asks.

I shoot a fearful glance towards the back of the house. ‘I don’t know, Sam. I’m not sure about⁠—’

‘Hey, it’s okay,’ he says. ‘C’mon.’ He reaches back to take my hand. Despite where we are – and the prospect of pretending to hunt for my mythical purse – it sends a ripple right through me. ‘Ready?’ he says.

‘Not really.’

Sam fixes me with a steady look. ‘She did say it was okay to come round, didn’t she?’

‘Yeah.’ I nod. ‘But if I end up chopped up in a bin bag, will you break it gently to Marnie and Jake?’

‘Jesus, Andie! Not funny.’ He meets my gaze, as if awaiting a sign that I am calm enough to go in. Sam’s is a face I could never grow tired of looking at, but I wish we were anywhere but here.

‘What if Dom has a wife and she lives here?’ I ask. ‘What if she’s the woman I called?’

‘It can’t be. He’s getting married.’

‘But people do crazy things! They commit bigamy, don’t they?’ I shoot another wild-eyed look towards the house.

‘Yes,’ Sam says calmly, ‘but that woman you spoke to doesn’t realise we’re anything to do with Eva, does she? Presumably, if it’s that kind of situation, she doesn’t even know about her. We’re just two random people dropping by to look for a purse…’

‘Yeah, I know.’ I run a hand back over my hair, dislodging a small twig in the process.

‘Look, we can just go if you like,’ Sam adds. ‘But we’ve come all this way, haven’t we? We might as well have a look around. Don’t you think?’

I clear my throat and take a deep, fortifying breath. As long as you keep hold of my hand, is what I want to tell him – but instead, as he lets it drop, I say, ‘Yeah, you’re right. Let’s just do it. Let’s go in.’

30

SAM

It seems to Sam that these days, Theo has a small repertoire of expressions. One being his Match of the Day face, assumed whenever he walks in to find his father committing the unspeakable crime of sitting on the sofa with said programme on TV. ‘Watching that, are you?’ he’ll enquire, disparagingly. No, no, it just switched itself on and my head seized in a telly-facing position! That’s how Sam always wants to reply, but of course he doesn’t.

‘What’s your plan here then?’ This is another Theo-face, usually reserved for when Sam is about to undertake a spot of DIY at home. Less hostile, granted – but conveying the message that, whatever it is, he is guaranteed to make a pig’s arse of it. This is the look he’d assume now, if he could see his father bravely entering an unfamiliar garden, while assuring Andie that everything will be okay.

In truth, Sam isn’t especially brave, and right now he doesn’t have a plan. What he would dearly love is for them to get the fuck out of here and jump back into his car and take off in a blur of screeching and burning rubber, if that were possible in a twelve year-old Skoda Octavia Estate. But he can’t admit that to Andie.

It strikes Sam now, as he and Andie gaze around the unloved plot, that it matters greatly what she thinks of him. It always has, to some degree. But these last few weeks, thrown together as a pair rather than their usual trio, have pulled this into sharp focus for him. Without Eva’s presence, things seem to have shifted a little. There’s an edge, Sam thinks. They are behaving slightly differently with each other, although it’s hard to put a finger on precisely why this is. Sam is picking up that Andie isn’t entirely delighted about him seeing Lucy – but why on earth would that be? He can’t think of a single reason, yet he has been conscious of his own prickly unease whenever her name has come up.

‘So… I guess we start searching for your purse?’ he suggests.