Friend of the Family

‘Stop it,’ she hissed, slamming the drawer shut.

She had to think logically. The question wasn’t whether David could cheat – of course he could; any man could cheat – it was whether he would. And Amy had no reason to think that. Beyond a few arguments about work on both sides, they never rowed; in fact they seemed to enjoy each other’s company a lot more than other couples they knew, who seemed to take every opportunity to get away from each other. So why was the bra there?

‘Amy?’

David’s voice from downstairs made her freeze, air halfway to her lungs. She could hear the sound of his footsteps coming up the stairs.

She rubbed her hands over her face, then, with a final glance at the dresser drawer, she made for the door. It was time to play detective.

Chapter 15

‘Are you sure you don’t want to come?’ Claire said.

‘What do I need more cheese for?’ smiled Amy, scooping her hair up into a ponytail as she stood at the front door of the villa.

‘There’s always room for more cheese,’ shouted Max from the window of the blue Range Rover. ‘What about you, Josie? Camembert?’

Josie shook her head. ‘I’m going to hang out by the pool for a bit,’ she said.

Amy stood and waved as the Range Rover disappeared through the gates and Josie put on her panama hat and disappeared towards the pool. ‘Finally,’ she whispered. After an hour of fussing and goodbyes and running back into the house for a wallet and sunglasses and God knows what else, Max, Claire, Hettie and Alex had departed for a wine and cheese run into the village. She’d thought they would never leave.

But now she was alone. Juliet and Peter had gone for a walk, and David had pulled on his Lycra and headed off for a run. Most importantly, as it was Sunday, Josie’s day off, she was doing what any young girl would do surrounded by the glorious French countryside: sunbathing by the pool, plugged into her phone.

‘Are you okay, darling?’ Amy asked, standing at the door of the media room, where her daughter was curled up on the huge cream sofa watching a cartoon.

Tilly nodded, her thumb in her mouth, too engrossed in the action to even reply.

Amy moved fast, running up the stairs, ducking down as she passed the landing window, her heart bumping, her breath coming fast, glad of the opportunity but knowing she only had a small window of time.

Josie’s room was right at the top of the house, under the eaves, but with a tiny Juliet balcony and a view of the pool. Staying back in the shadows, Amy peeked out: the girl was still lying motionless on her sunlounger. Good.

She scanned the room, but there were few possessions on show. Then again, Josie hadn’t arrived in London with much, just enough for a week of work experience. A watch, a hairbrush. There was a packet of cigarettes on the nightstand, which surprised her. She had never seen Josie smoke, never even smelled it on her clothes or her breath. Good at hiding things, perhaps.

She crossed to the dresser and opened the top drawer. It was full of knickers, high-street-branded thongs in an assorted rainbow of fake lace. On the surface they seemed pretty standard stuff for a twenty-one-year-old, but a voice in her head reminded her that they were garments designed to be seen and taken off. Not just sexy underwear, but underwear for sex. Josie had never mentioned a boyfriend, even though Amy had teased her, out of curiosity more than anything. So if these weren’t for a boyfriend, who were they for? She dismissed the thought as quickly as it had come to her, reminding herself that she was practically middle-aged, and that even though she had a discount card for Agent Provocateur, she still preferred Marks and Spencer’s midi pants.

In the second drawer, she found what she had come for – Josie’s meagre selection of bras. Aware that her heart was beating faster, she checked the labels: 32D, the same size as the garment she had found at the bottom of her bed.

Her head swam. She needed air, couldn’t breathe. Without thinking, she crossed to the window, forgetting she might be seen, and looked down at the pool. Josie was nowhere to be seen.

‘Where’ve you gone?’ she muttered, casting her gaze from left to right, past the line of cypress trees by the orchard to the outbuildings beyond the pergola.

She thought of David, running somewhere around the village, and felt cold. He’d mentioned casually a few days earlier that he liked to do a few warm-up exercises in the shade of the orange grove beyond the pool, and wondered if Josie had overheard him say that too. She turned and ran for the door.

It wasn’t until she was tiptoeing down the narrow corridor towards the stairs that she realised how little she had thought this plan through. If Josie had returned to the villa and chose to pop back to her room for any reason, Amy had nowhere to go. She was trapped.

Taking the stairs three at a time, she banged painfully into the wall and bounced off, turning and speed-walking through the library and out onto the terrace, where she forced herself to stop, feigning nonchalance. She felt a flood of relief that she hadn’t seen Josie – or rather, that Josie hadn’t seen her – but relief immediately turned to suspicion. If she wasn’t by the pool and she wasn’t in her room, where was she?

As she turned, she caught movement in her peripheral vision: a figure moving through the trees on the far side of the pool house. She followed, keeping her distance, as Josie disappeared into gardens that grew wilder the further away from the house you went.

‘Where are you going?’ she hissed under her breath, the thought flitting through her head that perhaps David hadn’t been for a run after all. Perhaps they had arranged a rendezvous, a tryst. Out here was the perfect place, she thought.

She came to a fence; beyond, she could see the orchards that flanked the house to the south. She pushed her way through a rusty iron gate, taking care not to make it squeak. The fruit trees were not long off harvest, their branches heavy with lemons, oranges and pears. And now she could see where Josie had been heading: a small group of green wooden loungers set in a semicircle where the trees gave way to gently sloping fields and a luscious view of the valley in the distance.

Crouching behind a trunk, she watched as Josie settled on one of the loungers and opened her tote bag to pull out her headphones. She was just about to put them on when she seemed to have a change of mind and, crossing her arms, pulled her skimpy top over her head, quickly followed by her red bikini: one from the shoot, Amy noted. Fascinated, she stared at Josie’s topless form. Even from this distance, she could see the tight mounds of her breasts and her small, perfectly round nipples.

An image came into her head. Was this what David wanted? Was this what he saw as Josie lay back on their bed, naked and covered in a light sheen of sweat? She imagined her husband’s head lowering to the girl’s nipples, sucking at them like warm cherries; hungry hands parting Josie’s thighs, easing himself into her as she moaned his name over and over. Telling him that this was what she had wanted from the first moment she had seen him. Yes, David, yes.

Amy would have had to be blind not to notice the chemistry between them at the pool that day. It had always been there, she just hadn’t wanted to see it.