As she’d watched from the window, clouds had drifted across the moon like a cliché, and the figure had seemed to disappear before her very eyes. Yes, she’d looked away, but only for a second or two.
Now, in the cold light of day, she knew she’d managed to get herself in such a state, she really couldn’t be certain that she hadn’t imagined the whole thing.
Maybe nobody had ever been out there watching… except in her head.
Logic told Holly that it was very early days for someone to have found out where she worked, where she lived. It wasn’t as if Manchester was on the doorstep; it was over eighty miles further north.
At work, she’d been careful to study every customer’s face as they’d entered the shop, and no one had ever looked remotely familiar to her, apart from some of the regulars she was now getting to know.
Why did this have to happen? Things at work were going better than she could ever have imagined. Since Emily had left, Holly had been undisputed top dog in terms of sales.
Emily.
Holly shuddered at the thought of her previous threat, and then it hit her… She’d assumed the figure watching her last night had been a man, but what if it wasn’t? What if it had been Emily, come to seek revenge for having resigned from Kellington’s – something she’d made clear she considered Holly’s fault.
Thanks to Martyn spilling the beans yesterday, Holly knew that Emily was quite capable of scheming someone else’s demise. She’d certainly had no trouble getting rid of poor Lynette.
Holly had been telling herself that the woman she’d seen walking away from the shop window yesterday and the mystery phone call to the house both had perfectly logical explanations.
But what if her instincts had been spot on, and it was in fact Emily Beech who’d been watching her as she worked? She could have obtained Holly’s address from Kellington’s records and traced Cora’s landline from that.
Likewise, the figure could easily have been Geraldine. Or someone sent by her. Geraldine had more than enough financial clout to pay some violent numbskull to track Holly down.
But if that was the case, why hadn’t something awful already happened to her? Perhaps Geraldine was just waiting for the right moment.
Holly didn’t know how long she could cope living constantly on her nerves, waiting for something to happen.
Last night she’d had a few glasses of wine again to help her sleep. She knew that if she didn’t watch it, she could find herself with a drink problem like before. But it seemed at the moment that booze was the only thing that could keep her frayed nerves at bay.
On the surface, most of the people around her seemed supportive and kind. But Holly knew only too well that under their benign everyday masks, people could turn out to be truly monstrous.
* * *
The night of their family dinner, as Geraldine had insisted on referring to it, Brendan had got up time and time again to refresh their glasses.
Holly’s head had felt woozy, but she knew there was no point in protesting that she’d rather have a coffee. She’d learned a while ago that what she wanted simply didn’t count at Medlock Hall.
Brendan had brought her yet another glass of champagne.
‘Now, this is the Pol Roger 2008 and it’s not cheap, so don’t spill a drop,’ he’d instructed her with mock sternness before breaking into a grin. ‘Go on then, taste it.’
She’d taken a tentative sip while he watched. ‘It’s good,’ she said, feeling a little queasy.
‘It’s good!’ he had mimicked, then turned to Geraldine, laughing loudly. ‘Well, that’s reassuring to know, at nearly seventy quid a bottle.’
His wife had managed a weak smile but didn’t chortle back as she usually might. Holly noticed through bleary eyes that Geraldine’s previously perfectly made-up face had become a little smudged and her earlier soft expression had now turned brittle.
Brendan had sat down with his own glass and quietened down at last. Thank God, she’d thought, the stories had finally stopped.
Geraldine and Brendan had looked at each other and then back at her.
Holly clamped her hand across her mouth… had she actually said that out loud?
As her employers watched her, they seemed to be moving very slowly away from her. Further and further they slid, until Holly had barely been able to distinguish their individual features any more.
Her fingers had still been wrapped around the delicate stem of the crystal champagne flute, but now she seemed completely incapable of lifting it to her mouth. It had felt like she was no longer sitting, but floating in mid-air.
She’d smiled, finding the incapacity quite funny, until a sick dizziness hit and her head lolled back against the soft, buttery leather.
George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’ sounded like a distant echo. The whole room softened like melting wax around her, and then the walls began to spin closer and closer, pulling her around with them.
Holly had fought the extreme tiredness but simply could not stop her eyelids from closing.
Looking back, she realised that must have been the moment she finally passed out.
* * *
She’d known something wasn’t right that night, felt it in her bones, but she’d ignored her gut feeling.
Standing here in Cora Barrett’s house ten years on, she still couldn’t trust herself to decide whether or not someone was watching her every move.
All she could do was try and be vigilant without becoming paranoid. Not an easy balance to strike with the growing sense of panic that seemed to be rising from her core.
Maybe it was time to do something about it, to put her plans into action.
Maybe it was time for her to finally take control.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Holly
After her shower, Holly tried to steel herself for the day at work that lay ahead.
But first, she sat at the dressing table, stared into the mirror and waited for the little girl to come.
She could feel her stirring from her place of slumber, restless with her eternal nightmares. It took a while, but then there she was, staring back at Holly.
Holly lifted a hand and gently traced her smooth, creamy skin.
‘You’re beautiful,’ she told her. ‘They told you the opposite, but you are, you know. You are beautiful.’
A warm glow broke through the cold, empty feeling in her chest. Just briefly, but it helped.
‘You made it through. You’re strong, clever and kind.’ Holly caressed the child’s dark wavy hair. The hair she had hated, that they had cut short because it was wild. ‘You’re safe now. They can’t ever hurt you again.’
The warm feeling returned, flooding Holly’s chest and remaining there for a second or two longer. She breathed in and out, long spaces that let the relief expand within her.
The tiny flame within that they had tried to stifle, to snuff out… she felt it flickering, growing in strength, deep in her core. They hadn’t tried to kill her; it was worse than that.
Over the years, they had tried to dim her glow, to silence her, to make her disappear. Nobody had really wanted her.
Yet despite the cruel words, the rejection, the loss, that little flame survived and burned bright still.
From the mirror, the little girl smiled at Holly.
It felt like the noose around her slender neck had finally loosened. The rope was still there; it probably always would be. But at least she controlled it now.
Nobody else could pull it tight again, and because of that, the fear would slowly begin to dissipate.
No more strange men in the house, brought back by her mother. No more waking to a dark shape above her in the middle of the night. No more lying awake until the early hours, listening for a creaking step or a light on the landing.
‘You’re perfect, little girl,’ Holly whispered, cupping her own chin gently and smiling into the glass. ‘You always were. Nothing they said or did can ever change that.’
The little girl cried. Holly allowed her glistening teardrops to fall unhindered onto the pale wood veneer of the dressing table.
Perhaps, she thought, this was what people felt when they cut themselves. A pure relief, a sense of creating space within.