The Other Woman’s House Read Online Free Page B

don’t tell him what I was thinking. Not that he couldn’t guess. ‘There was a woman, in the lounge, face down on the floor, blood all around her, a huge pool…’ Describing it makes me feel as if I might throw up.
    Kit takes a step back, looks at me as if he’s never seen me before. ‘Let’s get this straight: you went onto Roundthehouses, took a virtual tour of 11 Bentley Grove, which you happen to know is for sale, and saw a dead woman in one of the rooms?’
    â€˜In the lounge.’
    He laughs. ‘This is inventive, even for you,’ he says.
    â€˜It’s still up on the screen,’ I tell him. ‘Go and look if you don’t believe me.’ I’m shaking, freezing cold suddenly.
    He’s going to refuse. He’s going to ignore what I’ve told him and go back to sleep, to punish me, and because it can’t possibly be true. There can’t be a dead woman lying in a sea of blood on the Roundthehouses website.
    Kit sighs. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll go and look. Evidently I’m as big an idiot as you think I am.’
    â€˜I’m not making it up!’ I shout after him. I want to go with him, but my body won’t move.
Any second now he’ll see what I saw
. I can’t bear the waiting, knowing it’s going to happen.
    â€˜Great,’ I hear Kit say to himself. Or maybe he’s talking to me. ‘I’ve always wanted to look at a stranger’s dishwasher in the middle of the night.’
    Dishwasher
. The tour must be on a loop. In my absence, it’s started again at the beginning. ‘The obligatory kitchen island,’ Kit mutters. ‘Why do people do it?’
    â€˜The lounge is after the kitchen,’ I tell him. I force myself onto the landing; that’s as close as I’m willing to go. I can’t breathe. I hate the thought that Kit’s about to see what I saw – no one should have to see it. It’s too horrible. At the same time, I need him to…
    To what? Confirm that it was real, that you didn’t imagine it?
    I don’t imagine things that aren’t there.
I don’t
. I sometimes worry about things that maybe don’t need to be worried about, but that’s not the same thing. I know what’s true and what isn’t. My name is Catriona Louise Bowskill.
True
. I’m thirty-four years old.
True
. I live at Melrose Cottage in Little Holling, Silsford, with my husband Christian, but he’s always been known as Kit, just as I’ve always been known as Connie. We have our own business – it’s called Nulli Secundus. We’re data management consultants, or rather, Kit is. My official title is Business and Financial Director. Kit works for Nulli full-time. I’m part-time: three days a week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I work for my mum and dad’s business, Monk & Sons Fine Furnishings, where I have a more old-fashioned job title: book-keeper. My mum and dad are Val and Geoff Monk. They live down the road. I have a sister, Fran, who’s thirty-two. She also works for Monk & Sons; she runs the curtain and blind department. She has a partner, Anton, and they have a five-year-old son, Benji. All these things are true, and it’s also true – true in exactly the same way – that less than ten minutes ago I took a virtual tour of 11 Bentley Grove, Cambridge, and saw a dead woman lying on a blood-soaked carpet.
    â€˜Bingo: the lounge,’ I hear Kit say. His tone sends a chill shooting up my spine. How can he sound so flippant, unless…‘Interesting choice of coffee table. Trying a bit too hard, I’d say. No dead woman, no blood.’
    What? What’s he talking about? He’s wrong. I know what I saw.
    I push open the door and make myself walk into the room.
No. It’s not possible
. 11 Bentley Grove’s lounge turns slowly on the screen, but there’s no body in it – no woman lying face