Fire Damage (A Jessie Flynn Investigation, Book 1) by Kate Medina Page B

wondered if you’d …’ she broke off. ‘Don’t worry, darling. You carry on playing. I’ll be up in five minutes to put you to bed.’
Stupid woman.
Of course he hadn’t gone outside. He couldn’t reach the lock and the Yale was far too stiff for him, even if he could. She stuck her head into the sitting room. Major Scott was in the leather chair, asleep he looked to be, breathing heavily, mouth open, a globule of saliva gathered on his bottom lip. Wendy glanced at her watch. Nooria’s train wasn’t due into Aldershot for another half-hour.
    Back in the kitchen, she hung by the door, not wanting to approach the window, feeling ridiculous at the tight knot of fear in her stomach. Stepping firmly across the kitchen, she pressed her face to the glass.
    No lights. Nobody out there. Just the soupy darkness, wind moving the trees, black outlines shifting and twitching, but purely due to the wind. And transposed over it all, the pale, frightened moon of her own face.

15
     
    Back in her own cottage, Jessie took off her shoes, lined them up in the shoe rack by the door, removed her coat and hung it on the hook, straightening the sleeves. Taking a step back, she checked their alignment, straightened again, millimetre by millimetre, until they were exactly level.
    She was hungry, in need of something more than biscuits to eat. Padding into the kitchen in her socks, she tugged open the fridge. Rows of clear plastic Klip-It boxes faced her on the shelves, each one labelled with its contents, the labels hand-printed in neat, black capitals. Cheese, salad, eggs, beans, apples, red peppers … The product of her weekly shop debagged and decanted, nothing entering the fridge in its original packaging. No foreign dirt, no mess, no uneven shapes to knock her sense of order off kilter. Everything organized and in its place.
    Her gaze ranged along the uniform black capitals, nothing taking her fancy, her heart sagging under the weight of the disorder spelled out by the codified containers. Reaching out, she picked one up and reversed it, grabbed the bottle of Sauvignon and poured herself a glass. Returning the bottle without bothering to line up the label, she slammed the fridge door.
    She was halfway across the kitchen when she stopped. She could feel the electric suit hiss. Ignoring the rising tension, she forced herself to keep walking, into the lounge. Jamie’s photo caught her eye – that chocolate-ringed smile. Her limbs felt on fire, her throat so constricted that breathing was a struggle. She felt as if she would explode with the tension building inside her.
    Fighting back tears, she retraced her steps to the fridge. Hauling the door open, shivering at the blast of cold air that enveloped her, she realigned the box, turned the wine bottle until the label faced exactly outwards, exactly – to the millimetre – and pushed the door closed. Sliding down the fridge, she folded herself into a ball on the kitchen floor and burst into tears.
    OCD. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. She knew all about it. Had studied it at university, read case after case in her spare time. She knew everything there was to know and still she was helpless to fight the disorder in herself. A disorder that was now as much a part of who she was as her black hair or blue eyes, it had inhabited her for so long. She was a character in a sick and twisted play. Knew exactly how the performance would play out and wanted no part of it, but had no ability to resist. She was consumed by the need for order, for control, even as she had no control over her own mind.
    When she was all cried out, she pushed herself up from the floor and went over to the sink. Letting the cold tap gush until the water was freezing, she doused her face, let the water run down her neck and chest. As the water numbed her skin, her brain spun with thoughts, memories, memories on memories. Love. Guilt. Helplessness. Self-hatred.
    She had never realized that so much love could exist for