Page 49 of The Mistake
Fifteen minutes later, the car pulls up outside Vanessa’s building, and Pete glances up at the top floor. A single lamp burns in her sitting room window, and he hurries up the front steps, jabbing at the buzzer repeatedly until she opens the door.
‘Pete? Oh my God, are you OK?’ Vanessa answers the door in a silk kimono, her expression concerned but not unwelcoming, as she stands to one side to let him in to her immaculate flat. ‘Come in.’
‘I’m sorry about Erin,’ she says as he walks down the hall into the sitting room. The Tiffany lamp emits a soft glow, aided by the help of several large Diptyque candles burning brightly in the fireplace, and the television mouths silently to itself in thecorner. ‘I’ve been so worried about you. I was going to call, but then I didn’t know if …’ She lets out a long breath. ‘My God, I can’t believe this has happened. Can’t imagine what you must be going through. Is she going to be OK?’
‘We don’t know yet.’ Pete’s voice is gruff, and he starts as Vanessa’s hands slide onto his shoulders and ease his jacket off. ‘That’s part of the reason I’m here.’
‘Well, I’m glad you came.’ Her voice is soft, her breath tickling the nape of his neck. She drops his jacket, and then slides her arms around him from behind, hugging him to her. She feels warm and familiar, and for one dizzying second it’s as if none of this has ever happened. It’s as if Pete has just slipped back here after work, and Natalie doesn’t know anything about the affair, and Erin is safely tucked up in her cot.
‘Don’t, Vanessa.’ Pete pulls her arms away and turns to face her. She blinks at him, her hair falling over one shoulder, the kimono sliding from the other one, leaving it bare.
‘I’m sorry.’ She steps back, and Pete can almost believe for a moment that she is.
‘Things are touch-and-go with Erin,’ Pete says, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘Someone knew when they took her out to the woods that she could potentially die out there. What kind of person does something like that?’
Vanessa’s eyes narrow. ‘Why are you here, Pete? Shouldn’t you be at the hospital?’
‘What the fuck are you playing at, Vanessa?’
Vanessa stares at him for a long moment, before she shakes her head and pulls the kimono back up over her shoulders. ‘Pete, I—’
‘Your lipstick was all over her blanket! What the hell were you trying to achieve? Did you just want to hurt me? Hurt Nat? Is it revenge for me dumping you? Because you’re sick in the head if it is.’ Pete feels breathless, as if it is painful to get the words out, a crushing weight sitting on his chest. ‘Erin is just ababy.’
‘Jesus Christ, Pete, you really are losing it.’ Vanessa picks up the crystal tumbler sitting on the coffee table and sips from the amber liquid inside.
‘Did you think if Erin wasn’t around I’d leave Natalie? That I’d come and set up a nice, cosy home over here with you?’ Pete steps towards her, his hands itching to slap the glass away from her mouth, to smash it to tiny shards all over her expensive oak flooring.
‘Pete, I never went anywhere near Erin, not even when she was being handed around the garden like a little dolly.’ The words ring hollow, and as she sips at the whisky in her glass to cover the flush rising on her collarbone, Pete knows she’s lying. ‘Don’t you think there was more than one woman at the party wearing red lipstick?’
Pete does know that – he’s thought about it in the Uber on the way over here – but it can only be Vanessa. No one else would want to hurt him like this. ‘You wear it every day, the same shade as the one in the photo the police showed me.’ Pete moves to the small clutch bag on the sofa, the same one Vanessa brought to the party. He tips it out, letting out a yelp of triumph as a lipstick rolls out, MAC written in silver where the lid meets the rest of the case. He stoops, scooping it up and twisting it out to show what he’s now certain is the exact shade on the blanket. It is worn down, the end slightly mangled. ‘See? I knew I was right. You asked me if things would be different for us if there was no baby to keep me with Natalie.’
‘You’re crazy, you know that?’ Vanessa snatches the lipstick out of his hands.
‘My child could havedied. She still might! Can’t you see what you’ve done?’
‘The only thing I’ve done is follow your lead, Pete. I never took Erin from her bed,’ Vanessa says. ‘You might think I’m mad, and do you know what? Right now, I’m inclined to agree with you.’ Vanessa steps towards him, and he can smell her perfume, fusedwith the peaty scent of the whisky. ‘I must have beenstark, raving madto have ever got involved with you. I loved you, Pete, but not enough to kidnap your child. It’s crazy you could ever even think that.’ She blinks, and a tear falls onto the silk of her kimono. ‘I wanted you to be with me because you wanted to, not because I forced you.’
Pete snorts, not buying it for a second. ‘So that’s why you told Natalie about us? That’s why you turned up uninvited to Emily’s party? Because that wouldn’t be forcing my hand, would it?’
‘You really can’t see it, can you?’ Vanessa says, her mouth twisting, the tears drying up. ‘When I turned up at your house that day, Natalie answered the door with a glass of wine in her hand. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, Pete, and she was already drinking.’
Pete doesn’t want to believe that. The party was the first time he’s seen Natalie with a drink since before Erin was born – but even as he thinks that, he remembers the way she seems so sluggish in the mornings, the way she complains of a headache most days. Has she been drinking? Would he really have missed it if she were?
‘Erin was crying,’ Vanessa goes on. ‘Screaming her head off, but it was like Natalie couldn’t hear it. I asked her if she wanted me to go and pick Erin up, but she just waved me away and said she was leaving Erin to “cry it out”.’ She makes quote marks in the air. ‘Natalie was more concerned with whether I wanted to join her in a glass of wine than whether her crying child was OK. To be honest, Pete, it really made me feel quite uncomfortable.’
‘And you thought the solution to all of this was to offer me naked photos of yourself in front of my wife.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Pete, aren’t you listening to me?’ Vanessa moves to the sofa and Pete realises she’s a little unsteady on her feet. It’s hardly surprising, given the amount of wine she sank at the party, and it seems that she has carried on the party here alone, if she really didn’t take Erin to the woods. Just Vanessa and herdecanter of Johnnie Walker Blue. ‘The house was a fucking tip, clothes and toys scattered everywhere, although I suspect you’re already aware of that. Your baby daughter was screaming her head off, and all your wife cared about was getting another glass of Sauvignon into her.’
Pete says nothing, just waits for her to continue. If he’s honest, he doesn’t know what to say. He came over here so fired up, convinced after his conversation with DI Travis that it must have been Vanessa who came back to the party to steal Erin away from them in an attempt to force Pete back into her arms, leaving her lipstick smudge on the blanket, incriminating herself. But now … Standing in front of Vanessa, he doesn’t know what to think. Vanessa is still talking, her voice muted, threaded with strains ofexhaustion.
‘Natalie did eventually pick Erin up,’ she is saying, ‘but she was still odd … disconnected, and I just put it down to the fact she’d been drinking. Erin was sweet when she finally stopped crying.’ Vanessa lets a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. ‘I almost felt broody for a moment.’ She glances up at Pete, the smile falling away when she sees the stern look on his face. ‘Anyway,’ she goes on, ‘I complimented her – I told Natalie I thought Erin was cute and she told me, “Looks can be deceiving.” She said Erin was by far the most difficult child she’d ever had, and she honestly didn’t know how to cope with her.’
Pete’s mouth is dry and he desperately wants to sip at the whisky, the very scent of it making his mouth water, but he doesn’t want to return to the hospital with the smell of fresh alcohol on his breath. He doesn’t doubt that DI Travis would pick up on it within seconds, and he already thinks she is suspicious of him. ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ he says. ‘Vanessa, with all due respect, you have no idea what it’s like to have a new baby. You have no idea how difficult it is, how demanding. Just because Natalie said that doesn’t mean anything at all – she was probably just exhausted.’
Vanessa stands, scooping up his jacket and handing it to him. ‘I know enough to know it isn’t normal to be half-cut at four o’clock in the afternoon when you have two small children to take care of. I know enough to know it isn’t right to leave a baby screaming and in distress.’ She pushes him out into the hallway, his jacket half on, and reaches for the handle of the front door, staring into his eyes. ‘I know that all I ever wanted to offer you was a sanctuary, Pete. Away from a life you told me made you so miserable. Away from the woman you told me pushed you away, never wanted to talk to you, never had time for you. A sanctuary from the bedlam you called home.’
With a gentle shove to the small of his back, Pete finds himself in the corridor, Vanessa filling the doorway with her body. ‘Natalie isn’t well, Pete, anyone with half a brain can see that.’ She gives him one last long look. ‘If I were you, I’d be looking much closer to home for whoever it was that did this to Erin.’
