Destroy Me by Karen Cole (red queen ebook .txt) 📕

face a mask of dogged, solitary determin­ation as he scales the climbing frame, and I find myself wishing Theo and I had got around to having another child. But I found Dylan so exhausting as a two- and three-year-old, I couldn’t even contemplate another, and by the time he was nearly five and becoming much easier, Theo had already met Harper.

On our way home, we stop at the kiosk near the gate and I buy Dylan some sweets and a packet of fudge for me. I’ve already broken my diet today, so I might as well pig out, make the most of it and start again tomorrow. We munch in happy silence on the way home, fingers sticky and lips grainy with sugar. Life is too short to worry about calories all the time, I think. We need a treat after the past few days. The sun is shining, and I feel refreshed and buoyed by my conversation with Gaby. In the sunshine it’s easy to feel more optimistic. Gaby’s right, this whole thing will all blow over; people will soon forget and move on to the next scandal. I hold Dylan’s warm, sticky hand in mine, and he smiles up at me. We’ll be all right together, I think. I need to get my priorities straight. So long as I’ve got Dylan and he’s got me and he is well and happy, I don’t need anything else.

‘What’s that?’ Dylan asks as we turn into our street. He points towards our house at something written on the front wall in large red letters.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. I can’t read it from here. Bloody kids, I think with annoyance. How dare they? Because our house is on the end and is near to the pub it occasionally gets vandalised by drunks. Sometimes the fence gets kicked in or the flowerpots tipped over at night. But no one has ever written graffiti on it before. Besides, it’s the middle of the day. That surely wasn’t there when I left the house.

As we get closer and the letters come into clearer focus, my heart plummets. The paint has dripped in places, making it look as if the words have been daubed on in blood, but the message is still abundantly clear. Shockingly, heart-stoppingly clear.

‘What does that say?’ Dylan pesters me as I hurry him up the path to the front door. ‘Wait –’ he tugs at my hand and tries to sound out the letters the way he’s been taught at school – ‘m . . . u—’

‘Never mind. Come on inside,’ I say, trying to cover his eyes and bundling him through the door as quickly as I can, my heart racing. ‘Someone naughty has written a bad word, that’s all.’

This is bad. Very bad.

‘Ow, Mummy, you’re hurting me,’ he complains as I drag him through to the living room. I want to read the word. I can read really well now.’

‘I’m sure you can,’ I say through gritted teeth. But I need you to just sit tight in here for a bit while Mummy takes care of something.’

I switch on cartoons and plonk him on the sofa. ‘Don’t move,’ I say firmly. Then I head outside to the shed and find a large paintbrush and a half-full tin of paint. It’s Magnolia – not the same colour as the wall, but it will have to do. I lug the tin around to the front of the house and splash paint on the wall in broad brushstrokes. I haven’t bothered changing. I paint in what I’m wearing – my new summer dress. I don’t care if I ruin it. I just want to obliterate that hateful writing. As quickly as I can, I cover the letters, ­layer­ing on several coats of paint until you can no longer read the word underneath, painted in red:

MURDERER.

In the toilet, I wash the paint off my shaking hands with turpentine, scraping off the bits that have already dried with my nails. Then I head downstairs to check that Dylan is okay.

‘Will the naughty man be in trouble?’ he asks, round-eyed, looking up from his cartoons.

‘Big, big trouble,’ I say, kissing him on the head. ‘Just a sec. Wait here. I’m going to pop round next door to see if Eileen or Bob saw anything.’

I leave the front door open so that I can hear Dylan if he needs me and hop over the low wall to the neighbours. Outside their front door, I take a deep breath and try to steady my shaking hands. I don’t want Eileen to see how agitated I am.

Eileen answers, but only opens the door halfway.

‘Yes?’ she says warily.

What does she think? I’m going to barge in and hack her to death? Not such a bad idea, come to think of it. ‘Um, I was wondering if you saw anything earlier today. Someone wrote some graffiti on my house and I thought maybe you might have seen who did it?’

She purses her lips and shakes her head. ‘No, I didn’t see anyone,’ she says.

Like hell, you didn’t, I think. Like you’re not always nosing into the coming and goings in the neighbourhood.

‘Are you sure? What about Bob? Maybe he—’ I say.

‘Bob didn’t see anything either. I’m absolutely sure,’ she says and slams the door in my face.

I should have known Eileen wouldn’t be any help. For all I know, she wrote the message herself, I think angrily, as I clamber back over the wall and shut myself in my house. I feel a wave of frustration, rage and despair. Just when I thought things were going to be okay, this happens.

I manage to hold it together long enough to feed Dylan and put him to bed. Fortunately, he hasn’t learned to tell the time yet, so I’m able to convince him it’s an hour later than it is. But once Dylan is safely in bed, all the fear and anger I’ve been bottling up for the past few days surge out of me and I