The Waiting Game Read Online Free PDF Page A

only one person in the reception area when Ellen went downstairs. A tall, attractive woman with longdark hair wearing a navy-blue trench coat and a red silk scarf with a pretty butterfly pattern. Monica Telford. A local artist Ellen had met at an exhibition a few months ago. She’d liked Monica’s work and ended up buying one of her paintings.
    When Monica saw Ellen, she stood up and smiled.
    ‘Ellen. Thank you so much for seeing me.’
    At the exhibition, Ellen and Monica had only chatted briefly. Ellen couldn’t even recall telling Monica she was a copper. It was flattering, she supposed, to think she’d made a lasting impression. Flattering or not, Ellen wasn’t about to let this drag on for too long.
    ‘What can I do for you?’ she asked.
    Monica looked around the waiting area, as if she was scared of being overheard.
    ‘Is there somewhere more private we could go?’ she asked.
    Ellen nodded. ‘Sure. Follow me.’
    * * *
    ‘Someone’s watching me.’
    Ellen waited, dreading what came next.
    ‘I know it sounds crazy,’ Monica said. ‘And I probably wouldn’t have come in at all, if I’m honest with you. It was only when I saw that piece in the
Star
. Maybe you haven’t had a chance to see it yet? There’s this woman…’
    Ellen held a hand up. ‘I’ve seen it.’
    ‘Of course,’ Monica said. ‘Sorry. Oh God, and you’re going tothink I’m some sad sap who’s making all of this up because I’ve read that? Shit. I should have realised that’s what you’d think.’
    ‘I don’t think anything yet,’ Ellen said. ‘Because you haven’t told me anything.’
    Monica smiled. ‘I haven’t, have I? I’m making a right mess of this. Okay. I’ll start again.’
    The story she told closely echoed what Ellen already knew about Chloe Dunbar, repeated in today’s paper for the rest of the world. For the last few months, Monica thought someone was watching her.
    ‘Just a feeling at first,’ she said. ‘Like, I’d be walking down a street, or in the park, and I’d think someone was following me. But whenever I looked around, there was no one there. At least, not anyone I recognised.
    ‘Then I started to notice things around the house. Stuff started moving. Oh, don’t look at me like I’m a crazy woman. I don’t mean moving around by themselves.
Being
moved. By someone else.’
    ‘What sort of stuff?’
    By now, Ellen was going through the motions. Monica’s account was too similar to Chloe’s to be taken seriously.
    ‘The cushions in the sitting room,’ Monica said. ‘I arrange them in a very careful way. You haven’t seen my house but if you did, you’d know what I mean. I care a lot about how things look. I’ve organised my house just the way I like it. Everything perfectly beautiful and exactly in its right place. When something’s moved, I notice. Believe me.’
    Ellen thought of her own child-friendly home, nothing where it was meant to be, and felt a pang of envy. It was a constant struggle to rein in her desire for neatness and order in the face of her children’s boundless enthusiasm for chaos and mess.
    ‘My kitchen, too,’ Monica said. ‘A bag of pasta put into the wrong cupboard, the salt cellar in the fridge. That sort of thing. And then this morning, something else. Something that’s really, properly freaked me out.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    Monica leaned forward in her chair, making sure she had Ellen’s full attention. She looked excited. Almost like she was enjoying this.
    ‘He left me something,’ Monica said. ‘A cup of tea and a flower. A rose. They were on the kitchen worktop when I came downstairs this morning. The tea was still warm.’ She shivered. ‘Like he’d only just left.’
    In her mind, Ellen was already running back through Chloe’s newspaper interview, going over what she remembered word for word. Making sure she hadn’t missed it. Even though she already knew.
    There was one detail Martine Reynolds had left out of the piece. Something no one