Free Killing Me Softly by Nicci French Page A

his face. ‘But it doesn’t make sense. We’ve been so happy recently. This weekend, I mean…’ I nodded at him. This was more awful than I could have imagined. ‘I thought – I – how did you meet him? When?’
    This time I couldn’t meet his gaze. ‘It doesn’t matter, that’s not the point.’
    ‘Is the sex so good? No, sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to say that, Alice. I can’t understand it. You’re leaving everything? Just like that?’ He looked around the room at all our things, the whole weight of the world we had built up together. ‘Why?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘It’s that bad, is it?’
    His whole body was slack on the sofa. I wanted him to shout at me, get angry or something, and instead he smiled across at me. ‘Do you know what I was going to say?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I was going to say I thought we should have a baby together.’
    ‘Oh, Jake.’
    ‘I was happy.’ His voice had a muffled quality. ‘And all the time, you were, you were…’
    ‘No, Jake,’ I pleaded. ‘I was happy too. You made me happy.’
    ‘How long has it been going on for?’
    ‘A few weeks.’
    I watched him considering, revisiting the recent past. His face puckered. He stared away from me, towards the curtained window, and said, very formally: ‘Will it make any difference if I ask you to stay, Alice? Give us another chance? Please.’
    He didn’t look at me. We both stared ahead, hand in hand. There was a great boulder in my chest.
    ‘Please, Alice,’ he said again.
    ‘No.’
    He took his hand out of mine. We sat in silence, and I wondered what came next. Should I say anything about sorting out my things later? Tears were rolling down his cheeks, into his mouth, but he sat quite still and made no move to wipe them. I had never seen him cry before. I put up a hand to wipe his tears away but he turned away sharply, angry at last. ‘God, Alice, what do you want? Do you want to comfort me or something? Do you want to see me howl? If you’re going to go, just go.’
    I left everything. I left all my clothes and my CDs and my makeup and my jewellery. My books and magazines. My photographs. My briefcase full of documents from work. My address book and diary. My alarm clock. My bunch of keys. My French tapes. I took my purse, my toothbrush, my supply of contraceptives and the thick black coat Jake had given me for Christmas and went out into the slush in the wrong shoes.

Eight
    It’s at a time like this when you’re meant to need your friends. I didn’t want to see anybody. I didn’t want family. I had wild thoughts of sleeping in the street, under arches somewhere, but even self-punishment had its limits. Where could I find somewhere cheap to stay? I had never stayed in a hotel in London before. I remembered a street of hotels that I’d glimpsed out of the window of a taxi the other day. South of Baker Street. It would do. I took a tube and walked past the Planetarium, across the road and a block along. There it was, a long street of white stuccoed houses, all converted into hotels. I chose one at random, the Devonshire, and walked in.
    Sitting at the desk was a very fat woman, who said something urgently to me that I couldn’t understand because of her accent. But I could see plenty of keys on the board behind her. This was not the tourist season. I pointed at the keys. ‘I want a room.’
    She shook her head and carried on talking. I wasn’t even sure if she was talking to me or shouting at somebody in the room behind. I wondered if she thought I was a prostitute, but no prostitute could have been as badly, or at least as dully, dressed as I was. Yet I had no luggage. A little corner of my mind was amused by the thought of what kind of person she took me for. I extracted a credit card from my purse and put it on the desk. She took it and scanned it. I signed a piece of paper without looking at it. She handed me a key.
    ‘Can I get a drink?’ I asked. ‘Tea or something?’
    ‘No drink,’ she