‘That’s a shame. I wanted to see what she’s like – and get an eyeful of that house. Don’t suppose you still have your key, do you?’ Jade said.
‘I do, actually,’ Maddie said without thinking.
‘Great, show me around!’
‘We can’t just let ourselves in!’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t live here anymore! We can’t snoop around someone else’s house. It’s illegal.’
‘But it used to be your house. Your name is probably still on the mortgage. And you have a key, so we’re not breaking in.’
‘No, we shouldn’t.’
‘Yes, we should. We could mess with her a bit. Move some things around or something. A little bit of quiet revenge. Come on, it’ll be funny!’
‘But she would surely know it was me.’
‘Trust me, if she thought you still had a key, she would’ve asked for it back by now.’
Jade was right. There was no way Gemma would let Maddie keep a key to her palace. And it would be cathartic to mess with her just a little bit.
‘Ok, go on then. The spare keys are in my car. I’ll get them.’
Maddie unlocked the car and rummaged in the glove compartment for the set of keys. As she went to put the key in the front door, she paused with a sudden attack of conscience. ‘What if they’ve had an alarm fitted since I moved out?’
‘Well, it’ll go off and we’ll leg it. We’ll say it went off when we knocked on the door or something.’
‘We should probably knock anyway, just in case.’
Jade giggled. ‘She’s probably watching us right now, wondering what the hell we’re doing.’
Maddie knocked on the door, her heart thudding hard in her chest, adrenalin spitting into her veins over something she hadn’t yet done. The perfume from the magnolia tree next to the front door was sickly sweet and cloying at the air, making it difficult for Maddie to breathe.
‘She’s not in,’ Jade said impatiently, bouncing from foot to foot. ‘Open the door.’
The key wavered in Maddie’s hand with nerves. She felt like a criminal, albeit the most middle-class burglar anyone had ever seen with her white Superga trainers and lightning bolt jumper. Maddie looked over her shoulder, almost expecting the police to pull up, sirens blaring.
The key turned and she pushed the door open slowly. Jade shoved past her.
It felt different being there today compared to yesterday when she was invited. It felt deliciously wicked. Jade immediately started to pick things up, examining photo frames and opening the drawers in the console table in the front hallway, like she was looking for something, casing the joint.
‘Wow, quite a place,’ she said, her head swivelling.
‘Yeah, it is,’ Maddie said wistfully. She followed Jade as she headed into the lounge. ‘We’re not going to stay long though. I don’t want her to catch us here. She could be back at any moment.’
‘Yeah, ok, I’m just looking around.’
The lounge walls were now painted a dark, solemn green against the white woodwork, making it a dramatic but admittedly cosy room. It had been a warm honey colour when Maddie had lived there.
Maddie wanted to trash the place, throw the cushions around, leave marks on the paintwork and scratches in the wood, but instead she trailed behind Jade like a well-trained puppy.
*
Jade sat on the cream couch, then rubbed herself against the cushions, like she was leaving her scent on the cool leather. This place was off the charts – a dream house by anyone’s standards. She looked over at Maddie, who seemed to be lost in a bit of a daze still in the doorway to the lounge, immobile.
‘Hey, you ok?’
Maddie nodded. ‘Yes, it’s just strange being here like this.’
‘Do something, it’ll make you feel better.’ She looked around her at the neat bookcases organised by colour and the alphabetised rows of CDs. Who the hell listened to CDs these days?
‘I know, mix up the CDs a bit – that will mess with her mind,’ Jade suggested.
Maddie looked at her for a moment, then went over to the CD shelf and pulled a Celine Dion CD out. ‘This was Greg’s – he always had an eclectic musical taste,’ Maddie said. The CD next to it was Deacon Blue. ‘This one was mine.’
Jade sighed and pulled a random selection from the shelf, laid them out on the coffee table and opened them up. ‘There, mix them up and put them back out of order. Let yourself go mad.’
Maddie woodenly started to put the wrong CD in each box. The more she did, the faster her fingers worked until Jade could hear her giggling madly.
‘See! I told you you’d feel better.’
Jade jumped to her feet and headed through a double doorway into an enormous kitchen that could quite easily fit her entire flat in it.
The room was immaculate. No dishes out, everything packed away, shelves neat. Every countertop was bare and glistening. All mess contained behind a cupboard door. ‘Does she do any cooking in here?’ Jade said with a curled lip.
‘She’s not the best cook, so probably not,’ Maddie said over her shoulder.
Jade spied a cardboard box by the bin in the utility room. ‘There you go – she uses one of those meal delivery services. Spoiled cow,’ Jade said. ‘I use one of those delivery services too.’ Maddie looked at Jade in surprise. ‘It’s called fish fingers from Iceland!’ she added with a snort.
Maddie giggled. ‘Gemma is vegan at the moment. It must be killing Greg, although she did serve beef yesterday. She didn’t have any of it though. She just ate the potatoes and vegetables.’
‘What a waste,’ Jade said. Maddie was starting to freak her out. She was all jumpy and anxious, like she thought Gemma would appear with a baseball bat or something. Jade found it amusing and was messing with Maddie as much as anything else.
She wandered out of the kitchen and headed for the cream-carpeted staircase. It was like something out of a movie, all sweeping and grand up the centre of the room. She padded up the stairs, the thick carpet swallowing her feet. Maddie followed behind her, twitching nervously. ‘Maybe we should go. Gemma could be back any minute,’ Maddie said behind her.
‘Chill, would you?’ Jade bit back. Now Maddie was starting to get on her nerves. She was following her like a puppy dog and Jade wished she’d leave her alone for a minute. Jade had seen a lovely silver necklace with a lightning bolt charm lying on the hallway console table downstairs, tossed there absent-mindedly. She could swipe that and the stuck-up cow that lived here probably wouldn’t even notice. She probably had loads of them.
Jade went into the main bedroom and threw herself on the perfectly made bed, among the many throw pillows, her feet sinking into the fluffy blanket draped stylishly across the foot of the super king bed. ‘Well, this is comfy.’ But who the hell needed this many pillows on a bed, just to be tossed on the floor when you got into bed every night? A stupid concept.
Maddie was looking around what Jade assumed used to be her bedroom. Her face was blank, not showing any hurt, anger or anything at all.
‘This looks so different now,’ was all she said.
Jade wasn’t surprised; she’d have found it weird if Gemma hadn’t redecorated, to be honest. It certainly wasn’t Jade’s taste, all these sterile shades of grey and white. There were photo frames everywhere, smiling faces and sparkling eyes, posing and preening for the unseen camera. Jade rolled around on the bed some more. Gemma had a small pile of novels on her bedside table, mostly romances from the looks of the covers. The top one had a bookmark sticking from halfway between the pages. She opened the book, removed the bookmark and slid it back in three quarters of the way through. Then she turned to the back and carefully tore the last few pages out, before folding them neatly into a square and putting them in her pocket.