The Couple: An unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist

by Sarah Mitchell

  ‘Get inside!’ Mark is leaning across from the driver’s side, his left arm extended along the inside of the passenger door that he pulls sharply shut as soon as I am sitting next to him.

  There is a second when neither of us speak before I blurt out, ‘I’ve just seen one of those Eastern European guys that came to the door. He was in the queue at the Seven Eleven.’ I’m processing the fact it’s one hell of a coincidence that I’ve now run – quite literally – into Mark during the space of the same ten minutes, when the transitory illumination of a passing car reveals the lack of surprise on his features and the penny drops. ‘You knew he was somewhere around here, didn’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on him from time to time. I wanted to see where he went, if he ever went back to the house.’

  ‘The house’ obviously means his house. My house. My stomach lurches. ‘And does he?’

  Mark shrugs. ‘I think so, occasionally, just to see if he can spot me. I don’t suppose he has given up on finding me just yet.’

  I nod, as though this is normal, to be expected, but I also glance out of the window along the night-soaked street. ‘Did you realise he was in the Seven Eleven?’

  ‘No. I lost him tonight. However, luckily for me you’ve filled in the gap nicely.’ Mark’s left hand moves across my thigh and its heat burns into my mac, through my jeans and scores into the skin as if he is branding me. ‘Did he see you?’

  I shake my head. A rabbit snared in headlights. ‘I don’t think so. I left the shop very quickly, without paying in fact’ – I glance guiltily at my plastic bag – ‘but I can’t be sure.’ I swallow, my eyes directed at the place where Mark’s face is lit at periodic intervals before disappearing into the void again. ‘Do you think it matters? Would he follow me?’

  ‘Only if he thought you could lead him to me. What do you think? Would you do that, Claire?’

  I shake my head, although the gesture is probably invisible. I am distracted by Mark’s hand, by the force he is exerting on my leg. I am wondering what will happen next, knowing what I want – but shouldn’t want – to happen next, when he releases his grip and switches on the ignition and the sudden beam of the headlamps destroys the mood. ‘Best not hang about here. We don’t want our little friend to stumble upon us when he returns from his shopping trip.’

  We move off into the traffic, heading further away from the house. I am about to ask where we are going, but decide against it. Mark is staring straight ahead, expression unreadable. His profile could be Daniel’s. I try to remember if we ever drove anywhere together, Daniel and I. The closest I get is a patchy recollection of a taxi journey back to my college. It was the same evening he told me that he didn’t want to go out with me any more, when the air was so toxic with the wine and the whisky we had drunk you could have exploded it with a match. I can just about recall how the cabbie refused to take me without Daniel, because of the state I was in, how I made him kiss me one last time, how I felt him tilting, tempted, on that back seat. How he finally pulled away and bundled me out of the cab on my own.

  I realise Mark has driven around to the parking area on the far side of Walpole Park, an expanse of cultivated lawn with paths for roller skates and buggies, swings and slides, and even a small animal enclosure where small children push fingers full of grass and cabbage leaves through the wire fencing. I have been known to take a book and sit on one of the benches there. I’ve watched the pregnant women and young mothers enjoy their special club, their sense of belonging and identity, seen them take it all for granted. After all nobody ever appreciates what they have until it’s taken away from them. The gates of the park are locked now, the iron struts rising out of the gloom like the bars of a prison.

  Mark cuts both the engine and the lights, engulfing us in a private black cocoon. My heart is skittering with the expectation of his touch, my skin tingling. Instead, he says, ‘So, Claire, how are you enjoying the house?’ It is a banal question, one an acquaintance might ask at a drinks party, but his tone is oddly serious.

  ‘I like it,’ I say. ‘I like it very much.’ The parking area is deserted but across the other side of the road is a traditional-looking pub, clumps of people going in and out, noise and movement obvious through the mullioned window. It is like gazing through a one-way mirror, seeing them yet remaining invisible.

  Mark nods, appearing to digest my answer carefully. Then he says, ‘I was wondering if you could use a cleaner?’

  ‘A cleaner?’ I can’t believe I’ve heard him properly. I turn away from the pub to look at him, although it is so dark I can smell him better than I can see, the mingled scent of aftershave and skin, musk and animal, intensified by the trapped confines of the car.

  ‘A girl used to come and clean for me two mornings a week. I know she’s looking for work at the moment and it wouldn’t cost you much.’

  I wonder if there is a whole subtext to this exchange I am missing, or whether Mark intends merely to chat about the house and broker an employment contract before he delivers back me home. At the same time, the thought occurs that had such a girl been available this afternoon I would happily have paid her twenty quid or more to sort the mess to which I’ve just devoted a large proportion of my Sunday both making and clearing up.

  ‘I suppose she could be useful,’ I say carefully, guessing that Angus probably wouldn’t object to having a cleaner, given his increasingly barbed comments about our differing attitudes to tidiness and housework.

  ‘Great,’ Mark says. ‘I’ll tell her to call you.’ Then he adds, ‘By the way her name is Victoria.’

  ‘OK.’ I’m not expecting that either; Victoria sounds like somebody with a sharp blond bob who works in advertising.

  A second or two passes before, with a change of register, Mark says lightly, teasingly, ‘Have you missed me?’

  Immediately my pulse quickens; I badly want to reach out and touch him. I grasp my left wrist with my right hand and after a long pause, I manage to ignore the question and say, ‘Why did you stop me on the pavement? You could have let me walk past?’

  Mark hesitates, as if considering his answer. ‘You looked frightened, vulnerable. I wanted to help.’

  ‘You could have got my attention some other way than making me walk into the door.’ I bend forward and flex my knee, more to make the point than because it is actually hurting.

  ‘I didn’t want to draw attention to the car. In case you were being followed. Hey’ – he leans over and pulls me towards him – ‘I don’t think it turned out so badly, do you?’ And then he finds my mouth with his mouth and both my willpower and my annoyance evaporate to nothing. I am conscious only of the sensation of his lips, his tongue, his fingers at the back of my skull working into the roots of my hair, pressing me closer, our kissing a fusion of possession and total surrender. When we draw apart, I am panting.

  ‘Claire?’

  I only murmur a reply, busy with the buttons of his shirt. His hand closes over mine.

  ‘Have you set a date yet, for the wedding?’

  The question shocks me into silence. I have never mentioned my engagement, but I suppose the diamond ring speaks for itself. It is too dark to see Mark’s expression, whether he is angry or jealous, there is only his breath and the bulk of him less than a hair’s width away. I wonder if I want him to be jealous, what I would do if he asked me to break the engagement, and know in that instant I wouldn’t leave Angus. It has taken me so long to throw off the past, get somewhere to be proud of, to reach dry land breathing and alive, that I’m not going to abandon that security anytime soon.

  ‘No date yet,’ I offer, finally. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Mind?’

  ‘About Angus, my fiancé?’

  There is silence and for a second I believe that he does actually care. I am processing this thought with a heady mix of pleasure and concern when I feel a tugging at my waist and realise he is undoing the belt of my mac. He has already pulled the coat open and found the zipper of my
jeans before he bothers to reply. ‘No, Claire,’ he says quietly, ‘I don’t mind at all.’

  * * *

  Later, after we have prised ourselves apart, he pulls up in a side street just around the corner from home. I ask him – I can’t help myself – to come back with me, but Mark refuses. Just in case, he says, the white-haired man is watching the house. When he sees my hand hover on the door handle as this thought sinks in, he tells me he will wait ten minutes and then call; if I don’t answer he will come to check I am OK. Emboldened by his chivalry I get out of the car.

  As I approach our tiny front garden I notice the downstairs lights are glowing behind the sitting room curtains although I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave them switched on. I glance over my shoulder but Mark is parked out of sight. For a moment I hesitate, key poised in the lock, before I tell myself not to be paranoid and march straight inside.

  Angus’s suit carrier is sitting by the bottom of the stairs. The shock is worse, somehow, for being a completely different threat to the one I had anticipated. It is not simply guilt but the awareness of how close I came to being discovered, saved only by the spectre of a long white ponytail spying from the bushes. The scenario that so nearly was, of Angus walking in and finding me with Mark, begins to unspool inside my mind like a third-rate movie. The track gets as far as Angus filling the frame of the bedroom door, roaring with fury, before my brain fuses with horror and the story derails completely. It would have been an end to the relationship, to the engagement, to living in the house, and where would that have left me, the reformed black sheep? Instead of planning a happy summer wedding I would have been everyone’s fool again, pretending not to notice the shame and pity in their voices.

  I look at myself in the walnut-framed mirror. My cheeks are bright, my hair tousled, my eyes gleaming green. Although I am shaking there is nothing in my appearance incompatible with a fast walk to the supermarket and back. Plus I have all the evidence I need. I take a deep breath, ‘Hello!’ I call up the stairs. ‘How nice you’re back so early!’

  Overhead I hear the creak of footsteps on the landing and then Angus appears at the top of the steps. ‘Where have you been?’

  I hold up my environmentally friendly, reusable plastic bag, as if it is a trophy or a prize fish. ‘We’d run out of a few basics. I thought I’d stock up in case you came home before going into work tomorrow. Lucky really, since you’re back now.’ As I don’t know when Angus arrived, I realise I am taking a risk. If he returned shortly after I left for the Seven Eleven then the fruits of my unintended shoplifting are hardly going to account for an absence of well over an hour. To my relief, however, he smiles.

  ‘That’s great, Claire. I noticed we were out of coffee when I came in. Shall I make us some now?’

  ‘Yes, do.’ I run up the stairs and kiss him lightly on the mouth as I hurry by. I’d forgotten how good-looking he is – and how different from Daniel. I am jittery with the luck of my undeserved escape and I need to learn my lesson fast. The only possible place for Daniel is the past, and from now on that has to be where Mark stays too. ‘I’m just going to take a shower, to freshen up, and then I’ll be right with you.’ Dipping into our bedroom I open the window to blast away the last trace of smoke, before selecting my prettiest, sexiest nightie and heading to the bathroom. The best form of defence is surely distraction.

  As I drop my clothes on the bathroom floor my mobile begins to ring from my jeans pocket. I answer it quickly. I’m about to say to Mark, I’m fine. I’m about to say, Angus is back. I’m honestly about to say, stay away from me. My fingers are so close to my face I can smell Mark on my skin, but as I open my mouth to speak I see the call is actually from Vodafone.

  Chapter Eight

  A week later I am sitting in the foyer of a hotel in central London. The young woman sitting opposite me and Angus pushes a square of card across the polished surface of the coffee table. She’s wearing a navy trouser suit with a badge pinned on the jacket label that reads Kerry. Events Manager is written underneath her name.

  ‘The finger buffet is one of our most popular choices,’ she says, her eyes darting between us as she tries to gauge our reaction to her sell of the hotel’s wedding reception packages. Whatever expression she finds in our faces causes a faint trace of uncertainty to wash across her features before she ploughs gamely onwards.

  ‘Now with this option we provide three different types of bruschetta, three additional savoury options, such as watermelon, feta and mint skewers, chicken salad tartlets, and honey-drizzled chipolatas’ – she ticks off her fingers as she speaks, presumably to be sure not to leave out the chipolatas – ‘followed by our signature finger desserts, miniature chocolate éclairs and strawberry tarts. It’s ideal if you intend to have more than sixty guests because it avoids the cost of a sit-down meal, which would also mean having to use one of our bigger, more expensive function rooms.’

  This little speech has obviously been rehearsed many times before and she delivers it faultlessly. Kerry is about my age and she has a wide, uncomplicated face that is enhanced by a pepper-shake of freckles over the bridge of her nose and pair of rather trendy, black-rimmed glasses.

  I dutifully pick up the proffered card on which is printed a suggested menu. Several similar ones litter the tabletop, as if we have all been playing a children’s game of some kind. Snap, perhaps, or Go Fish. The latest recommendation comes with the title: Finger buffet: Option A. Kerry is still gripping a number of others in a fan arrangement, like an alternative hand she has yet to play.

  I gaze at the list of suggested sandwich fillings; the references to additional extras such as coffee and truffle chocolates; the text that informs me the wedding cake can be cut and served as part of the buffet, if the bride and groom so desire. My head is spinning, though in a useless, non-engaged way, like the pedals on a bike set in a gear that is too high to achieve any proper traction. It’s not yet nine o’clock in the morning, and already we have been sat here in the bar area of the hotel discussing menus with Kerry for over an hour.

  Although this is supposed to be a breakfast meeting – we have drunk coffee and sipped freshly squeezed orange juice – the basket of croissants remains untouched. I have no appetite, only a queasiness that is a messy combination of chronic guilt and lack of sleep, and Angus never eats anything in the morning. He timed this appointment because the hotel is very close to the Immigration Tribunal, which is where I need to be in thirty minutes’ time. To tell the truth, I would rather be there now, concentrating on somebody else’s problems. I am exhausted with the effort of maintaining the pretence – as much to myself as to Angus – that nothing has changed; that what happened with Mark was no more than a blip, like snow in July, or rain in the Sahara; that I am excited to be sitting here in this handsome hotel with my handsome fiancé planning our wedding when actually thinking about anyone other than Mark is a struggle that most of the time I seem to be losing.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ Angus’s voice is tense with impatience and I realise I have no idea how long I’ve been studying the details of Finger Buffet: Option A.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I put the menu back down on the table, careful not to look at him or at Kerry. ‘There’s lot to think about. We don’t need to make a decision this morning, do we?’

  ‘No, we don’t have to make a decision’ – Angus picks up the card himself, although he only holds it at a distance, not bothering to read it – ‘but I imagine the hotel gets very booked up for wedding receptions.’

  ‘Absolutely’ – Kerry leans forward to emphasise her approval – ‘and the availability of the rose garden makes us a very popular choice in the summer.’

  We were given a tour of the rose garden before we sat down, ‘tour’ being Kerry’s word, not mine, since Angus and I were merely required to step outside into a modest, rectangular piece of lawn surrounded on all sides by cliffs of concrete the eight o’clock sun stood no earthly chance of scaling. It’s true a bed of rose bushes occupied th
e very centre of the grass but most of them were bare and the few blooms that remained were dead, speckled with sparse, limp petals nobody had bothered to remove.

  ‘Well, perhaps we should make a provisional decision now. I’m sure if we changed our minds in a few weeks’ time the hotel wouldn’t object. Isn’t that right, Kerry?’ Angus also leans forward, closing the distance between his charcoal jacket and Kerry’s name badge, and she flushes so suddenly, so prettily, it occurs to me that she probably fancies him. Instinctively I slide my hand on to Angus’s thigh. This surge of possessiveness feels odd yet at the same time pleasantly familiar, like an almost-forgotten friend making an unexpected reappearance. If I feel jealous, I wonder, does that make my infidelity worse or better?

  ‘The hotel certainly wouldn’t object’ – Kerry continues, obviously anxious to nail a booking – ‘once an event is reserved in the diary we can accommodate menu variations up until four weeks beforehand. So long as the change doesn’t require a room alteration.’ Her eyelids bat behind her glasses as she returns Angus’s TV presenter smile.

  ‘I don’t think that’s what Angus was saying,’ I tell her. ‘If we make a provisional commitment now and change our minds later we would want to be able to cancel the reservation completely, not just the menu.’

  Angus frowns and shifts fractionally further away from me. The movement is enough to dislodge my hand. ‘No, Claire, that’s not what I meant. I realise if we pay a deposit we wouldn’t be able to cancel the whole thing.’

  There is a tricky silence during which Kerry’s gaze resumes its uncertain flicking between us. After a second she says, ‘Why don’t I leave you to chat for a few minutes? While you’re doing that I’ll go and fetch the events diary, just in case we need to put you in it!’

  As she sidles away, Angus’s jaw stiffens. ‘I don’t see any reason not to make a provisional booking today. A hotel in central London would be ideal, and these reception packages are very reasonable.’