‘Maybe Maggie . . .’ She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe she thought she had her reasons.’
He stopped mid-chew. Swallowed. Raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’
Lulu backtracked hurriedly: ‘Just that she was a new mum. Any threat – any perceived threat to her baby would have sent her into protective overdrive.’
‘The bitch was paranoid! She was the nutter, not me! I know, I know.’ His mouth quirked in a smile. ‘There’s no such thing as a nutter. But once you get to know Maggie – because unfortunately she and Dad come as a package – you might find you change your mind on that one. Christ, she was furious, wasn’t she, when Dad and I were hugging? This must be her worst nightmare, the two of us being reconciled.’ He nodded. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her to try something. We need to get that window fixed. Pity there’s no alarm system. Maybe we should leave in the morning, book into a hotel, somewhere safer . . .’
After dinner, Nick made them both cocoa and rooted out a packet of chocolate ginger biscuits from the larder. ‘Shall we adjourn to the drawing room?’
As they sat side by side on the sofa, Lulu’s first sip of the cocoa told her it was drugged. It had a strange taint which the stronger taste of the hot chocolate last night must have masked.
She should challenge him. Tell him she knew he’d put zolpidem in the drink.
Again.
But somehow the words wouldn’t come.
It wasn’t the right time. He had been through too much today. Tomorrow morning, she would tackle him about it. Wouldn’t she?
Suddenly, sickeningly, all her fears from last night, this morning, about Nick came flooding back.
Why was he drugging her? Was he just worried about her not sleeping, or –
Or what?
She knew he couldn’t be intending to harm her in any way. Why would he? Nick loved her. She should never have doubted that, not even for a second. Tomorrow, she would tell him she knew he had tried to drug her.
She made herself keep sipping the cocoa.
‘I’m beat,’ she yawned, after she had drunk less than half the mugful. ‘I think I’ll have a shower and go to bed.’
‘You haven’t finished your cocoa.’
So she smiled, and drank the rest of it down.
‘Goodnight, darling.’ She kissed his mouth. ‘It’s been quite a day, as you say. A wonderful day, but I feel like I could sleep for a week!’
‘Me too. I’ll be up soon. Goodnight, my darling Lu.’ He kissed her again, more lingeringly.
She would have to be quick.
But she made herself not run up the stairs. She trudged wearily, and only when she was safely locked in the bathroom did she step it up a gear, rushing to the shower and turning it on to provide a covering wall of noise as she stuck her fingers down her throat and vomited into the toilet bowl.
After a sketchy shower, she undressed and got into bed. Had she got the zolpidem out of her system soon enough? She felt so tired, so drained of energy. She wanted to close her eyes and sink down into sleep.
But the question Why is he drugging me? kept going round in her head, effectively keeping her awake until the bedroom door opened quietly. She closed her eyes and made herself breathe slowly and deeply. She heard his footsteps approach the bed and then stop. She couldn’t help her breath catching for a second. To disguise it, she moved a little, as if in her sleep, and gave a tiny snort.
It seemed like forever before the footsteps moved away again and the door clicked softly shut. She heard his steps receding down the corridor and got quickly out of bed and went to the door. Very gently, she opened it, just a crack, in time to see him disappear from view on the landing. She heard him jog downstairs, and then his steps on the tiles, crossing the hall. The front door opened and shut, and there was a scraping noise – the key turning in the lock.
She was standing irresolute when she heard the car engine. Going to the window, she watched the Audi coming round the side of the house. In the long summer twilight, she could make Nick out clearly in the driver’s seat.
Where was he going, at eleven o’clock at night?
A sudden image of Maggie’s face came into her head – the way she’d looked at Nick with naked terror. Lulu had seen that look before, on the faces of clients who had been victims of domestic abuse.
Maggie was genuinely scared of Nick.
She thought back over what everyone – Yvonne, Andy, Michael, even Harry – had told her. She thought of how she’d felt this morning, breaking a window to get out of the house. His controlling behaviour in the days and weeks and months before that. She heard Ruth and Jenny chorusing in her head: Typical Lulu.