The Other Side of the Door by Nicci French (best novels to read for students .txt) 📕

and newly happy. All these people whom I’d never known existed. Of course I’d realized that Hayden had a life of his own, friends, relationships and a complicated history behind him—but never before had I understood what a tiny corner of his existence I had occupied, how very little he had communicated to me. It was as if he could only live in the perpetual present, blotting out all that had gone before and all that would come after.

I closed the paper and folded it so I wouldn’t have to see his face. He had a mother and a sister; he had an abandoned wife and son; he had best friends who would miss him; and presumably he had made dozens of enemies along the way, people who would have wished him dead in the way that most of our band had done at one time or another. Even me. There had been times when I had wanted him, if not dead, at least wiped from my consciousness without a trace left behind, so that I could forget not just about him but about the me that I was when I was with him.

I put the newspaper on the table when I left and walked blindly home, with no idea of what I was going to do with myself when I got there.

SALLY WAS CRYING. She lay on my sofa in a crumpled heap, her skirt above her knees, her blouse bunched up at her waist and her hair half over her face, sticking to her wet cheeks. I had never seen her weep like this—or anyone at all, really, except my mother on her worst days. Her body seemed entirely taken over by wretchedness: she gulped and sobbed; tears streamed from her eyes and ran down her face and into her neck; words came out in whimpers and hiccups and she couldn’t catch her breath for long enough to make any sense. Her crying was more like uncontrollable retching. She was heaving up her misery. All the while, Lola stood beside her, occasionally reaching out a hand to give an anxious poke at Sally’s shoulder or stomach.

She didn’t seem distressed, more curious and a bit nervous. ‘Mummy?’ she said every so often, but Sally would only wail louder. At first I tried to calm her, crouching beside her and putting a hand on her writhing body or wiping away the snot and tears from her cheek, but after a while I gave up and concentrated on Lola instead.

‘Do you want a biscuit?’ She stared at me. ‘Or some juice? No, sorry, I don’t have juice. I have milk. I think I have some milk. Or some—’ What did someone of Lola’s age like? ‘You could draw something,’ I said. ‘Shall I get you a pencil and some paper and you could make a picture for Mummy, to cheer her up?’

Lola went on staring at me. She chewed her fat bottom lip.

‘She’ll be all right soon,’ I continued. ‘Everyone cries sometimes. What do you cry about?’

Lola shifted from one leg to another. Her face was scrunched up with effort.

‘Do you need a wee?’

She nodded.

‘Here.’ I took her hot little hand in mine and pulled her towards the bathroom. ‘Do you need help?’

She nodded again.

I pulled down her knickers and lifted her onto the toilet. Her legs dangled; she was wearing red shoes with striped laces. We waited. She put a thumb in her mouth and gazed at me pensively. We could hear Sally’s loud sobs; there was a certain regularity to them now and I wondered if she was coming to the end of her crying fit at last.

‘Done?’ I asked.

She shook her head firmly. Sally’s sobs turned into long, shuddering breaths and then there was silence. I lifted Lola down from the toilet, wiped between her legs, pulled up her knickers and then washed her hands under the cold water. When we went back, Sally was sitting up, her skirt pulled down over her knees, her shirt straightened and her hair pushed behind her ears. Her face was puffy and there were red blotches on her cheeks.

‘You OK?’

‘I think so. Sorry. Lola?’ She opened her arms but Lola shrank back against me, her thumb in her mouth again. ‘Lola, will you come and give me a hug?’ There was a note of panic in her voice.

‘I’m going to make a pot of tea,’ I said, and left them alone.

I stood in the kitchen and stared out of the window at the blank blue sky, feeling so vastly tired that there was no room for thoughts or emotions any longer. I could hear the murmur of Sally and Lola’s voices from the other room. The kettle boiled, sending up puffs of steam. I poured the water over the teabags and found some shortbread biscuits at the back of the cupboard. I carried them through and sat on the sofa next to Sally. Lola was on her lap, her head on her shoulder and her eyes closing.

‘Do I look a wreck?’ asked Sally.

‘I’ve seen you better.’

She gave a tired grin. ‘You too. You look as if you’ve been up all night.’

I opened my mouth to say that I had, then stopped myself. I couldn’t start unburdening myself to Sally because that might be like easing the first small stone out of the wall.

Lola gave a long, gurgling snore and I could sense her body softening and slumping against Sally, who leaned her chin on her daughter’s hair and sighed.

‘Hayden?’ I asked.

‘Oh, Bonnie. Hayden, Richard, the whole sheer fucking fact of it all, if you know what I mean. Which I don’t. Bloody life. The mess I’ve made of everything.’

‘I’m sorry about it all,’ I said inadequately.

‘I’ve been staying at my mum’s for a bit, but it was awful. I couldn’t tell her anything—I didn’t know how. And then the police called me up and I had to go back to be interviewed again. Oh, God, Bonnie, it was horrible.’

‘Horrible how?’

‘The way