The Couple: An unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist

by Sarah Mitchell

  ‘Finally,’ he says, and my heart lurches in panic, anticipating, somehow, that he is about to wreck everything. ‘I just want to add that Brenda and I are tremendously pleased Claire has such a wonderful new start with Angus, how delighted we are she can now put everything that has happened behind her.’ He beams at his audience as if expecting an outburst of cheers and whooping. Instead, the temperature of the room plunges by several degrees. Angus’s friends exchange glances; mine, on the other hand, avoid looking at anyone at all. My cheeks ignite while Angus’s face is bright with questions so stark they could be scrawled across his forehead in black marker pen.

  Although it’s obvious my stepfather realises something is wrong, he seems bewildered, as if he doesn’t understand what it is, exactly, that he’s said amiss. Maybe he believes that because my family know about Daniel, all our guests must do as well; maybe he thinks that because of social media we – the young – don’t have secrets from each other any more; maybe he assumes, and this, I suppose, would not be unreasonable, that I must have told Angus – the man I will marry in a few months’ time, the man I surely love – about Daniel. Locked into bringing the thing to its proper end my poor stepfather pushes his spectacles further up the bridge of his nose and swallows so hard I can see the convulsion move his throat. ‘So,’ he says, unhappily, ‘it just remains for me to ask you to raise your glass to toast the happy couple.’ He raises his glass, as does my mother, who has appeared, for the sake of solidarity, at his elbow.

  ‘Claire and Daniel!’

  There is a hesitation before the answering echo, as our confused guests take a moment to adjust to this unexpected detour in the script.

  ‘Claire and Daniel!’

  Angus says it too, tilting his glass in my direction. I copy him, but my own hand stops at shoulder height, paralysed. Although I’ll have to come up with something to tell him later I’m pretty certain I won’t be required to provide an explanation here; Angus couldn’t bear to admit anywhere so visible that he has no idea what my stepfather is talking about.

  The instant the toast is over, my stepfather steps off whatever he has been standing on. There is a disjointed pause before, to my relief, Angus starts to clap, and gradually the rest of the room follows his lead until the applause reaches a respectable level, a level that might, if I’m lucky, bury my stepfather’s faux pas under its hail of bullet-like noise.

  * * *

  I am impressed by the self-restraint that prevents Angus demanding answers the second the taxi door slams. We are halfway home before he swivels towards me, allowing the oncoming traffic to illuminate his strong, regular profile. What was it, is the gist of his questioning, spoken with a hand on my knee and an unhurried, almost kindly curiosity, I had put behind me? And who is Daniel?

  I have had more than an hour to prepare and I am ready.

  ‘A boyfriend. An old boyfriend,’ I tell him. ‘He used to get a bit out of hand, that’s all.’ I laugh, but lightly, gossamer-feather light.

  ‘Out of hand?’

  ‘Unpredictable. Unreliable.’ I turn away from Angus to look out of the window at an altercation happening on the pavement right beside us in front of a restaurant. A man and a woman are screaming at each other. The woman tries to leave but the man grabs her handbag. It falls from her shoulder and he hauls on the leather strap as she strains against it, shouting into her face.

  I could have used another word about Daniel. Angry, I might have said. Daniel sometimes got a bit angry.

  ‘Look! Look what’s happening over there.’ I point towards the scene that resembles a Crimewatch re-enactment rather than real people arguing. People who will have to contend with each other long after our taxi has left them in its wake; who will have to face each other tomorrow, perhaps even the following week or the following year; perhaps when nobody else is there to see how far they can be pushed.

  Chapter Two

  All the seats in the waiting area of Ellerton House are occupied. There are adults leaning against walls, and children huddled on the nylon carpet at the feet of women dressed in brightly coloured saris, black and brown abayas and blue denim jeans. Conversations swirl in languages and dialects I don’t recognise, the names of which I probably wouldn’t even be able to place on the right continent. Until I started this job I had no idea there were so many different countries in Africa, places you have to escape from rather than leave, where the opportunity to travel across Europe for weeks in the back of a stinking truck is regarded as a life chance and not a life sentence. One man is curled in a corner, with his head against the wall and his feet drawn up: tucked into a foetal position. His skin is a deep, dense black and his hair a scrub of grey; an ancient Manchester United football shirt with Beckham printed across the back hangs loose over his trousers. By the chair sits a Lidl carrier bag, papers spilling out of the top; some of the groups are talking with lawyers, but he seems to be entirely alone.

  I wonder if his case is one of mine. I have three today, all listed in front of the same judge. My files bulge with clumps of tattered documents held together by elastic bands: interview notes, payslips, telephone records, and most importantly of all the decision of the immigration service that has stopped somebody coming into the country, or required them to leave. I make my way to the special room that is allocated to people like me, the happy band of brothers that represent the Home Office. There’s scarcely more room in here than in the waiting area. Most of my colleagues are reading, bent over the files spread on their laps, or on their mobiles taking last-minute instructions.

  ‘No, that can’t be right!’ one of my co-workers sighs, rolling her eyes at nobody in particular. ‘I’m certain it’s not there. Some of the papers are definitely missing, and the judge won’t adjourn the case again. It’s already been adjourned twice before. The decision being appealed was made in 2016.’

  I find an empty space, park the enormous black wheelie bag that contains my papers and dig out the folders from the third case. I should have looked at it last night, but I didn’t get allocated my list for today until I was leaving work and by the time I got to this file it was so late that the tedious ink of the paragraphs and subparagraphs of immigration rules had begun to swim into an incomprehensible jumble. To my surprise, when I examine it now the case appears quite straightforward. An Indian man is seeking permission to enter the UK to join his wife. His application was refused because the Home Office official thought his wife didn’t earn enough to support him, but now she has provided payslips, and copies of her bank statements to show the money being paid in. It seems to me they satisfy the income rules quite easily.

  Just before ten o’clock I gather my files and head into the court where my cases will be heard. It is exactly the same as all the other nineteen courts in this building; a raised dais at one end for the judge, with a desk that spans the entire width of the room in front of tables and chairs that have designated slots for the person whose appeal is being heard and the home office reps like me. The room is bright and modern with windows high above the thrum of central London. There is no wood panelling, no red-robed judge or wig-adorned barrister, no sense of history – but the present is here in spades, reproachful and urgent, and it presses in on us from every corner of the globe.

  The man in the Beckham shirt springs to his feet as I go in but sinks back down when he realises I’m not the judge. All the applicants in court eighteen are huddled against the back wall. Beside Beckham is a family: a mother, a father and four sons with exactly the same molten-brown eyes, all of which are fixed with desperation on their barrister. The final member of the cast is a young woman from India. I guess that she’s the wife in my just-read file. Dressed in skirt, shirt, heels and tights, she might be interviewing for a secretarial post. She seems determined to catch my eye and smiles so brightly when she does that a sudden splinter of doubt makes me wonder if her case is quite so strong after all.

  While I’m still trying to recall if there was anything at all suspicious in her pap
erwork, the door to the court reverberates with a medieval thumping. ‘Court rise!’ The judge’s clerk enters followed by a female judge I haven’t seen before. The judge makes waves to the assembled crowd to sit, the gesture is vague yet there’s an intensity, a watchfulness, to her manner coupled with a tendency for her gaze to stray towards the clerk, as if checking for a prompt. I guess she must be new. She takes a pen from a pencil case, which is the zipped, transparent kind that students take into exams.

  The judge wants to take the file with the family first, but is told by the barrister an interpreter may be needed and he is busy in another court.

  ‘All right,’ she says, ‘I’ll take your case at 11 o’clock and the asylum matter now. Who is representing Mr Nasimi?’

  The man in the football shirt lifts his gaze from his knees. The judge looks hopefully at the barrister, but he is shuffling out of court with his family and shakes his head apologetically.

  She turns back to Beckham, ‘Do you know where your solicitor is?’ There is no reply. The judge consults the papers. ‘An interpreter is needed in this case too,’ she says, although it’s not clear whom she’s informing of this fact. I can see her wondering what the hell she is supposed to do. ‘I’ll take the third matter first,’ she decides, indicates for the Indian woman to come forward and is rewarded with a beaming smile.

  I question the woman in the normal way; I ask her about her husband briefly and then about her job. She tells me she works in a new digital marketing firm as an administrator, she answers the phone and books the client companies into meetings. Her answers are clear and convincing and soon I nod to the judge to tell her that I’ve finished my cross-examination. The woman begins to rise from the witness table, but the judge intervenes. ‘Wait,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a few queries of my own.’

  Twenty minutes later the judge is still interrogating, rooting amongst the papers like a bloodhound. ‘So these are your payslips?’

  The woman nods and smiles the same bright, brittle smile, although this is the second time the judge has returned to the stack of standard-form payslips.

  ‘And these are your bank account details?’

  The woman nods again.

  The judge flicks between the two clips of documents, saying nothing.

  I am beginning to feel impatient. I’m certain now that there is nothing suspicious about this case, and I want to move on to the next. Otherwise we won’t finish the list until late this afternoon and I’ll have to spend yet another evening preparing the case papers for tomorrow. I look up as the barrister comes back into court with the family; he glances at the clock on the wall and then at me. I shrug.

  ‘Where is your employment contract?’ the judge asks.

  ‘It’s here, Madam, on page 32.’ The Indian woman points to a document in front of her and the judge turns the pages of her bundle.

  ‘And where is the covering letter?’

  The Indian woman doesn’t reply. I think that she can’t have heard the question.

  ‘Where is the covering letter?’ the judge repeats.

  Fractionally, the air in the room tightens.

  ‘What do you mean, covering letter?’

  ‘An employer wouldn’t send you an employment contract, without a covering letter.’ The judge’s voice is steady and focused.

  For some reason I, the barrister, the family with the four children, even the asylum man, appear to be listening intently now, but I don’t really understand why the exchange is so enthralling. The Indian woman probably didn’t bother to keep the letter and I can’t see why that matters. To my surprise that’s not what she says.

  ‘The contract wasn’t sent to me by post. It was sent as an attachment to a message on my mobile.’

  ‘Do you have your phone with you? Can you find the message?’

  The woman takes it from her bag with the air of someone hypnotised and begins to search; her fingers stumble over the screen while we all sit, waiting. Eventually she finds what she was looking for and holds out her hand; she’s not nearly close enough to the judge to pass her the phone but she can’t seem to move. After a moment the barrister clears his throat, stands up, slips the mobile from the woman’s grasp and takes it to the judge, careful not to look at it himself.

  Seconds pass, and nobody says a word. The Indian woman is staring straight ahead, handbag on lap, immobile. There’s a baby crying somewhere in the building, but none of us in court eighteen are the least bit interested in the baby. We are all concentrating on the judge. Eventually she lifts her head.

  ‘I’m going to read out the message,’ she says pleasantly, far too pleasantly, ‘and then I’m going to ask you some questions about it.’

  The woman nods. In fact we all nod, like children spellbound by the prospect of a story.

  ‘Your job,’ the judge begins, eyes back on the mobile, ‘is an administrative assistant in a digital marketing firm. There are four people in the office apart from you, and your boss is called Maria. Your duties are to arrange meetings between potential clients and the website designers, and deal with the paperwork. The address where you work is on your employment contract, which you must memorise because you will probably be asked about it at the hearing.’

  ‘You see’ – the judge is speaking directly to the woman now, her voice fraying with anger – ‘what this message suggests is that somebody is telling you about a job, a job that you don’t really do, so that you can pretend to this tribunal you earn enough money to bring your husband into this country!’

  ‘No…’ The single word is barely audible.

  The judge’s attention is directed back at the screen. She appears to have scrolled further through the messages. A moment later she starts to read again, ‘If you need further details say the client base is within the M25. The contract states you work an eight-hour day Monday to Friday and alternate Saturdays.’ She pauses, ‘You have replied to this message with a smiley face and some text which says, “thank you so much”.’

  ‘It was about a different job.’ The woman swallows. ‘A job I thought I might apply for within the same company, which is why I had to be told everything about it.’

  ‘Then why was the employment contact for the job you are doing now – the job you have told this tribunal you are doing now – attached to these messages?’

  There is no reply.

  ‘Well?’ The judge is writing now, the efficient glint of her ballpoint skims over the paper.

  As though she can’t bear the interrogation a second longer the woman’s head drops as suddenly as if her neck had snapped. She is gazing at the handbag on her lap with wide, defeated eyes. I remind myself she has lied to the court, attempted to defraud my employer, the Home Office, but I can no longer hold her in my sight. I think it is her shame I cannot bear, but at this very second I am not entirely certain.

  ‘I will reserve my decision and my judgment will be sent to you in two or three weeks’ time.’ The judge is going through the formalities although there is no doubt what the outcome will be. She picks up a different file. ‘Now, do we have an interpreter for the asylum matter yet?’

  ‘Excuse me.’ The Indian woman hasn’t yet stood up, although the man in the Beckham shirt is hovering just behind her shoulder. ‘What will happen now?’

  The judge takes a short, impatient breath. ‘As I said a moment ago, you will get my judgment in about three weeks.’

  The woman still doesn’t move, although her right hand is fiddling with the clasp of her handbag, opening and shutting it over again. ‘But the people who gave me these papers, who sent the messages, what will happen to them?’

  The judge blinks at her in naked astonishment. ‘I really couldn’t say. Why?’ she adds. ‘Is it any concern of yours?’

  The woman doesn’t answer, but the raw flick of panic in her eyes as she leaves the room makes me wonder if it might be.

  Chapter Three

  After the hearings finish I head straight for West London, but I misread the directions t
hat Angus sent me, get off at Acton Town instead of East Acton, and then spend a fruitless ten minutes trying to work out where I am on Google Maps before I notice my mistake. By the time I arrive at the property Angus wants me to view in Ealing, the heels I bought on Oxford Street at the weekend have rubbed a blister into my left ankle and I feel like shoving my hideous wheelie bag straight into the path of an oncoming lorry.

  The house, however, stops me in my tracks. For a start, it’s an actual house, rather than a flat, and it’s end of terrace too, boasting wide sash windows and woodwork that has been painted recently and with care. In this sort of location, close to the tube, close to shops, with a nice leafy park just around the corner, the parking slots are full of Audis and BMWs and properties like this normally cost close to a million.

  I double-check the address, which I noted on my phone. I am still adjusting to life with Angus, more precisely to life with Angus’s money. When my father exited our family to shack up with an American wannabe actress, my mother, Rob and seven-year-old me swiftly plummeted from a four-bed house in a cul-de-sac boasting child-friendly road bumps to a hovel above a newsagent. The arrival on to the scene of Andy, my kindly stepfather, saved us from complete penury but our circumstances remained modest to say the least – for ages I kept an old Boden catalogue under my pillow to let me pretend I still belonged with those shiny little girls playing on a beach in a pretty dress and matching cardigan.

  It goes without saying that when I moved to London neither my mother nor stepfather was able to write me a big fat cheque, ‘just to get you started on the housing ladder, darling,’ and without a job in banking I assumed I was destined to the non-existent joys of the long-term rental market: a dodgy shared house in a dodgy neighbourhood an equally dodgy bus ride from the nearest train station. Angus, however, changed all that when his arm locked on to mine at the immigration conference. As soon as we began to house-hunt it became clear that he had in mind a quick purchase of the kind of place – a two-bedroom apartment, in a nice, privately owned block – which previously I could only have dreamed of. And if ever I wonder about Angus, about the speed of the relationship, the depth of the romance – if doubt ever sidles in – a two-minute conversation with my mother, her blatant delight that at least one of her children has not been held back by her inability to hang on to their father, can dispel those qualms pretty quickly.