Chapter 36

The moment daylight breaks, I whip back the duvet and throw on the first thing I find. I then scribble a note for Tom, and one for Daisy, saying an urgent job came up via text. I place Tom's on the bedside table, and slide Daisy's under her bedroom door, before slipping quietly out of the house, stomach twisted like a wrung-out rag.

I arrive at Waterlow Park in Highgate in just under twenty minutes. On the bridge, I retrieve the weapon from my handbag, which I wrapped and secured in a terry tea towel and a brick to give it extra weight, and drop it into the lake. Job done.

‘How'd it go, Bette Davis?' Linda yells over the thunder of several kanga drills, the moment I step into Zelda's lounge for our Monday morning meeting.

‘What?' I say tetchily, inhaling a fug of musky smoke, cheap air freshener and the slight mist of doom. ‘What's an old Hollywood movie star got to do with anything?'

‘Great disguise,' Zelda smiles, pointing at my face, and it is only then I realise that in my haste to get away from an old chatty couple, with two barking dogs, at the exit gate of Waterlow Park half an hour ago, I forgot to remove my head scarf and dark glasses when I climbed into my car and I now look like a Hollywood diva.

‘Everything okay?' Linda is sitting in an armchair, glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, iPad in hand. ‘No one saw you, right?' I hesitate, for a nanosecond. I can't tell them about the frantic dogs and the elderly couple. It might make them anxious. ‘How's the injury? Is that why you're wearing the sunnies? Sorry, I didn't think.'

‘It's just a scratch,' I say, dismissively, ‘concealer is a godsend.' I look at two flowery mugs on the coffee table, trembling from the vibration of a blaring dumper going up the shared driveway. ‘Everything went to plan,' I confirm, pulling off my sunglasses and untying my headscarf. ‘No one saw me.'

‘Well, you should try telling your face that,' Linda snuffles.

‘Sorry, Linda. I barely slept.'

‘How're you feeling after the fall?' Zelda asks. I tell her that I'm fine now. It was a fuss over nothing. ‘And you're definitely sure no one saw you in the park.' Zelda looks at me anxiously.

‘Yesss,' I hiss, annoyed. The dog owners saw me in the park, but they didn't witness me chucking the weapon into the lake. So, technically, I'm not lying. ‘The letter opener has vanished.'

‘Thank fuck for that. You had me worried for a moment.' Linda yawns, while Zelda flaps around with a can of air freshener, and I notice that Linda's eyes are a little bloodshot. Poor Linda. I'm going to have to make it up to her. Once this is over, I'll treat her to a weekend health spa in the New Forest. Linda coughs raucously. ‘Can you please stop doing that?' she cries, fanning a hand in front of her face. ‘I can't fucking breathe.'

‘I'm sorry. I just want to get rid of the smell of bleach,' Zelda yells, aerosol in hand, over the sudden blare of a drill that sounds like a machine gun.

‘You've got cement on your shoes,' Linda points out. ‘Mine were soiled too.'

I look down at my black kitten heels, spotted with grey dots. ‘Shit,' I groan. ‘They're new.'

‘I'll give you a wet cloth to wipe them down before it sets,' Zelda offers, ushering us into the kitchen. ‘A lorry load of cement arrived for next door this morning. Their hose had a tiny leak. Splashed it all over my front lawn. Landlord will be livid.'

The next twenty minutes are filled with a mixture of yells and tears as we scream at each other across the kitchen table to be heard. They big me up for getting rid of the evidence and I tell them I'd do it again in a heartbeat, for either of them. Although, if I'm honest, I'm not sure this is true. Criminality is not my forte. There's a heaviness in the pit of my stomach that won't shift.

‘Have you guys checked Frank's socials?' Linda asks, as we gather ourselves to leave.

‘He's not on Facebook or Twitter,' I say. ‘Or TikTok, as far as I know.'

Zelda nods. ‘I checked his Insta and there's been nothing since last Saturday. But he doesn't update with any regularity, so that doesn't mean anything.'

‘He might be lying low. Maybe he just wants to forget all about it,' Linda says, shrugging on her jacket. ‘He obviously hasn't reported it to the police.'

On the doorstep, there's a stumbling of hugs and kisses, and as Linda gets wolf whistled by one of the builders next door, who looks about Georgia's age, an email alert pings on my phone.

‘Sorry,' I say, ‘got to read this. It might be work.' I pull out my phone. One new message. I tap on Inbox. It's from a sender called [email protected] with the caption HELLO ISABELLA. ‘It looks like a spam message,' I announce. One I should probably delete without reading, but I'm a big fan of Killing Eve and it has made me smile.

Curiosity bubbles in my stomach as the message loads to the hullabaloo of Zelda and Linda discussing the building work next door. But as I read the email, my breath snags in my throat and my ears start buzzing.

Those with blood on their hands must pay.

F.