Free Watched: When Road Rage Follows You Home by Kerry Wilkinson Page A

asked if she was ready to leave but Esther asked for a minute and went upstairs. As he waited in the hall, he could hear her moving from room to room, rattling the window locks and closing the doors. When he thought she was finished, she returned to their bedroom and he could hear the sound of her re-checking everything a second time. He thought about saying something but knew she would be conscious of it anyway, telling herself she’d already checked once.
    When she finally came downstairs, she was peering nervously towards the kitchen, even as she put her coat on.
    ‘Did you lock the back door?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And did you remember to take the key out of the back door and put it in the drawer again?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Esther continued glancing from Charlie to the kitchen and back again. For a moment, he thought she was going to check but she followed him out of the front door, watching carefully as he closed and locked it behind her. For good measure, he pushed the handle up and down, making certain it was definitely secure.
    In the car, Charlie deliberately took a route which meant he didn’t have to pass Dougie’s house. Within minutes, they were on the main road, heading towards the supermarket Charlie passed every day on the way to work.
    ‘Sorry,’ Esther whispered out of the blue.
    ‘What for?’
    ‘Checking everything over and over.’
    ‘It’s better to be safe than sorry.’
    Charlie tried to sound cheerful but it was a stupid cliché and he should have thought of something better. Esther was subdued for much of the journey but did perk up as he parked the car. They held hands on the way to get a trolley and then she started talking about how they should have made a shopping list.
    Inside and it was like being their old selves: before the new house or living with her parents. In their old flat, Charlie had always found food shopping with Esther a secret pleasure. On weekday evenings it was relatively quiet and they would wander around a supermarket together, taking their time, and generally walking around in giant circles, trying to remember what they needed and deciding who was to blame for not putting things on the list.
    For a while, it was as if they were each in their early twenties again, fresh out of university and counting every penny as they ended up in the alcohol aisle, trying to work out what they could afford. Money wasn’t such a problem now, but with the costs of the move, they were still comparing labels and trying to guess if a three-pound bottle of wine would taste the same as a six-pound one.
    Esther giggled at the sight of a couple having a blazing row in the cheese aisle, almost jumped for joy as she reached the bakery counter just as items were being reduced and then helped an elderly woman who had lost control of her trolley and wiped out a display of tinned fruit.
    By the time they were sure they’d remembered everything, including some cat food, she was almost her old self: smiling, joking and linking her arm through his as they walked to the tills.
    It was only as they reached the edges of the estate, minutes from home, when Charlie noticed the change in her again. Esther wedged her head into the area between the passenger’s seat and the door, pulling her legs up onto the chair and hugging them to her. She went from being talkative to saying almost nothing; from responding cheerfully to giving one-word answers.
    Charlie knew there was nothing he could say. ‘It’s going to be all right’ would be a lie they both saw through because he didn’t know that.
    He reversed onto the drive, relieved that he was unable to see anything out of place. Esther was watching through the car’s windows, turning from side to side, but said nothing as he parked and they clambered out together. Before they bothered unloading the car, there was something unspoken between them as they headed through the side gate towards the back of the house.
    The hedges were still bushy, the fences