The Couple: An unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist

by Sarah Mitchell

  I consider lying but suspect she has heard too much of my dialogue with Mark for that to be a plausible option. I select the almost-truth, which, as a tactic, has served me well in the past. ‘I’m meeting a friend for lunch. She works in Bermondsey. I’m taking a longer lunch break than normal but I came in early this morning to make up for it.’

  Agatha nods. I am halfway through our open-plan office, heading towards the lifts, before she calls after me, ‘Team meeting at two. Don’t forget, will you?’

  * * *

  La Mezza turns out to be a Lebanese restaurant. I step from the sterile shapes of newly regenerated Bermondsey into a lavish candlelit room that is hung with rugs and smells of garlic, nuts and lemons. The decor comprises reds and ochre with dark wooden furniture and lots of black-and-white photographs of olive trees and mosques. It is the perfect setting for a debauched evening, rowdy laughter and the clatter of cutlery and clinking glasses, but in the middle of the day it is like stumbling into the wrong country or a different time zone.

  When my sight adjusts sufficiently to the gloom to pick out Mark, I see he has chosen a back corner – although his discretion seems unnecessary since none of the other tables are occupied – and also that he has been watching me since the moment I came through the door. As I approach he gets to his feet and I am wondering how to greet him before it is too late to worry because we are so close the leather-like notes of his cologne are a taste on my tongue. He kisses my cheek, prolonging the contact, whispering my name into my ear and murmuring how nice it is to see me again. By the time we sit down my body is craving the touch of his fingers and the press of his mouth. The pretence that I might have come here for food, for conversation, is exposed for the lie I should have known it to be from the instant I agreed to see him again.

  He picks up the menu and looks at me over the top of it. ‘How long do you have?’

  It crosses my mind that his motivation for asking might be because there are bedrooms above the restaurant and I immediately feel heat spread to my cheeks. ‘If I book a cab I can stay until one thirty,’ I say far too quickly, but he only nods and drops his gaze to study the menu.

  ‘What do you want to eat?’ he asks a moment later.

  I force myself to consider the list of dishes, although I have never heard of most of them. As I am reading a middle-aged waiter – or perhaps he is the owner – arrives at our table and hands Mark a wine list. A very erect man, his cropped black hair makes an unbroken line from his scalp to his chin then stretches over his upper lip to form a neat moustache. They obviously know each other because Mark enquires about someone called Marissa, whether she is better now, if the problems have been resolved. I assume Marissa must be the waiter’s wife or daughter but when I glance upwards, to indicate that I am with Mark and I, too, am interested in the answer, the man’s reply is spoken without affection and the gaze of his lamp-black eyes is hostile; it suggests he would rather I kept my eyes on the laminated paper and minded my own business.

  A few minutes later a very young waitress brings a bottle of red wine, pours us both a generous glass, then pulls a notebook from a skirt pocket to take our order. When I tell her I’ll have hummus followed by chicken, Mark shakes his head and laughs, ‘No you won’t, you must try something different, something unknown. Live a little, Claire. Variety is the spice of life. Now you’ve experimented with shoplifting’ – he widens his eyes to emphasise the euphemism – ‘you should have no trouble pushing a few culinary boundaries.’ His voice has acquired the familiar flirtatious shade I remember, and now I know precisely where it leads my stomach clenches with expectation.

  ‘She’ll start with the baba ganoush and I will start with the hindbeh and then we’ll both have the rosto,’ he says, appearing to revel in his mastery of the exotic names. Then he slaps the menu shut in an exaggerated gesture of flamboyance and hands it to the waitress without so much as glancing at her.

  Immediately after she has gone his gaze tightens. ‘Did Victoria call you?’

  ‘Yes – well, no. Actually she just turned up on the step.’ About ten days after my Seven Eleven adventure the doorbell had rung at 7.30 a.m., Angus had already left for work and I was on my way out. The girl who stood there looked like a child wearing an older sibling’s coat: pale skin, fair hair scraped into a listless ponytail and tremulous blue-grey eyes. When she handed me a cluster of references I saw that her name was actually spelt Viktoria, although by that stage it was already obvious that she wasn’t English.

  ‘So what arrangement did you make?’

  ‘She comes round twice a week. At first it was just Mondays but she did such a good job I asked her to do Fridays as well.’ Thirty quid for two mornings is a bargain, the place is now immaculate and she’s also willing to run small errands like picking up milk or collecting our dry cleaning. Now I can’t imagine how we managed without her.

  ‘Great.’ Mark nods as if ticking an item off a list. ‘I’m glad to hear you’re taking such good care of my house.’ He reaches for my fingers, pins them flat against the tablecloth and begins to stroke the back of my hand with his thumb.

  ‘Your house?’ I raise my eyebrows at his presumptiveness.

  He shrugs. ‘Not legally, perhaps, not any more, but it’s still mine in spirit. I did all the renovations, designed the layout, picked the colour schemes.’ His tone harbours a surprising intensity and sense of grievance.

  I remember the pride with which he regaled me with his choice of fabrics and brands of furniture and it crosses my mind whether sleeping with me had something to do with possession, asserting control over a space he thinks of as his own. The thought, however, dissolves before I can engage with it properly, the notion rubbed to nothing by the constant rhythmic pressure of his thumb on my skin.

  ‘Why did you sell?’ I ask instead, ‘If you loved it so much.’

  ‘Because I had to.’ He scowls. ‘Besides’ – he lifts his palm away from mine in a sudden, deliberate gesture – ‘we can’t always have what we want, can we, Claire?’

  The flagrant innuendo sends my gaze plummeting to the swirls of embroidery adorning the white damask tablecloth. I am about to return my hand to my lap but before I can move Mark traps it again with his own, as if he is cupping a spider or a fly.

  ‘You look extremely attractive when you blush. Unbelievably sexy; however, you probably know that already.’ He dips close and brushes a piece of hair away from my face.

  I realise he is playing with me, manipulating me like a puppet vulnerable to every tweak and jerk of its strings, nevertheless I can’t help but smile and lift my eyes to meet the potent brown of his own. I attempt to turn the conversation towards a different subject.

  ‘Have you seen the guy with the ponytail again? Or the other man?’

  Mark settles back in his chair and looks at me. ‘No,’ he says slowly, ‘but I’ve been away, remember.’ Then he adds, ‘Does it worry you? The thought they might come back?’

  I shrug, make an attempt at nonchalance. ‘A little perhaps, not much. It’s not as if I could help them since I don’t know where you live.’ My last sentence dangles like a loose thread, but Mark ignores the blatant hint. After a second or two I give up and ask, ‘Is that why you had to sell the house, because you owed those men money?’

  ‘No. They had nothing to do with the sale of the house. There was a misunderstanding between us, that’s all.’

  ‘Misunderstanding?’

  ‘About a business deal. They were too greedy. They misunderstood how much money they would make.’ His voice drops as if he is closing a lid. He drinks a large draught of the red wine and I follow his example. A moment later the young waitress arrives with our food, the dishes vying for space on an ornate silver platter beneath a pungent hood of spices.

  As we eat we talk about my work. Whenever I try to explain my job to my mother and Andy I find myself giving them the barest, most basic description – the struggle required to convey the nuances of the immigration rules and the peculi
ar brand of everyday desperation that fills the tribunal is too much effort on a weekday evening when tomorrow’s files are stacked in the hall. Besides, despite the stream of well-intentioned questions, my family don’t really care about the details of my work; the purpose of their calls is for reassurance I am fine, that there is no new cause for worry, and to refresh their sense of pride in their government-worthy daughter. Yet with Mark the facts of the cases slip out of me as easily as if I am recounting the plot of a favourite film or book, just like the first time I met him, when I went to view the house, and I poured out the minutiae of my job from the comfort of his sofa. I scoop up the creamy paste of the baba ganoush with chunks of bread and devour the tender meat of the rosto while I tell him about the woman with the fraudulent records.

  ‘Are you certain the documents were fake?’ Mark asks.

  I nod, cradling my wine glass. It is full-bodied with a velvety blackberry taste and it complements the oily aromas of the food and the autumnal chill outside perfectly. ‘You would never have known it from the papers themselves, but it was obvious from the answers she gave to the judge and the message on her phone.’ I think of that splintery smile, the flash of distress in the woman’s face as the hearing finished and I feel a twinge of guilt for exploiting her story like this, turning her shame into lunchtime entertainment.

  ‘Can you remember her name?’

  ‘Her name? No, why does that matter?’

  Mark ignores the question. ‘But it would be on the court records?’

  ‘Yes, she gave a witness statement which means her name and address would be in the file.’

  ‘So the police could look if they wanted? They could bring criminal proceedings against her for lying to the tribunal?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ I blink at him, perplexed at the level of his interest. ‘But I don’t think they would do that. They don’t have the time to trawl through cases searching for people to prosecute. An awful lot of witnesses lie in court. They must do when you think about it because they frequently contradict each other.’ I drain my glass, tipping back my head to catch the last silky drips. Then I sit up again suddenly. ‘Oh my God, what is the time?’

  Mark consults his watch. ‘Ten to two.’

  ‘Shit! I have to go.’ I begin to push back my chair, but once the initial adrenaline shot subsides my movements slow as my brain begins to process the fact that it’s already too late to get back to the office in time for the team meeting, even if I’m lucky enough to find a cab out in the wilds of SE16 immediately. It’s probably better to miss the briefing altogether and invent an excuse – another headache, bad news from home, a dentist’s appointment – then arrive thirty minutes late, breathless and smelling of blackberry wine. Besides, I don’t want to leave. I have no objection to leaving the restaurant, but I don’t want to leave Mark. What I want is for us to go somewhere else, a place he can undo my shirt, button by button, slide my bra straps over my shoulders and bury his lips in the curve of my neck. Slowly, I sit down again. ‘It’s only a meeting. It’s not very important.’ I smile to make it clear I am choosing him over my work – and over my fiancé.

  Mark raises his eyebrows. ‘Dear me, you’re becoming quite the rebel.’ But I can tell he is pleased because the honey-like glaze has returned to his voice. ‘Since you’re not in a rush,’ he says, catching my gaze and holding it still, ‘we must have some arak.’

  He signals to the waitress and a couple of minutes later she brings across a tray containing a magnificent long-spouted brass jug and two cups filled with ice. The liquid pours from the spout in a lofty, transparent arc but the moment it hits the ice becomes milky and opaque, like something in a chemistry experiment or a magic show. Mark hands me a drink and takes one himself. ‘Don’t sip. It tastes better if you gulp it straight. Now…’ He clinks his cup against mine and tips the contents down his throat.

  After a second I follow suit. It’s like swallowing liquid fire. At first I can’t taste anything at all, only the rush of heat swan-diving down my throat and engulfing my stomach. Gagging, I stretch for the carafe of water that has been sitting on our table all through the meal, but which neither of us has yet bothered to touch. Mark moves it out of my reach, laughing, and I begin to laugh too. The flames recede and I taste aniseed, a curled, warm ball of it lodged in my gut.

  I don’t remember exactly how many more times the waitress performs the water-to-milk trick, but by the time Mark stands up and says, ‘Time to go, Claire,’ I’m drunk enough to have lost my sense of time, to assume we are heading together somewhere upstairs, or even outside; I wouldn’t care if it happened down an alley or in a park. I have forgotten work, abandoned Angus, my thoughts can only process what I desire, and what I desire is Mark.

  As we leave the restaurant the cold air feels shocking, almost hostile, and I lean against him, trying to sustain the sense of intimacy. A section of his shirt has become untucked from the waistband of his jeans. I slide my right hand within the folds of his coat and slip it beneath the cotton, electrified by the roasting surface of his skin. It is then, I think, something in that moment, a stiffening of his back, a slight increase in his walking pace, which alerts to me to the possibility that our minds are following different tracks, he wants something from me again, but today it is not sex.

  Beyond the restaurant Mark turns left. The street is a cul-de-sac with terraced houses on either side interspersed by occasional shards of commercial life. I spot a shabby newsagent, and then a launderette that has a fruit machine in the window where a woman is standing with a rucksack full of clothes at her feet. We appear to be heading towards the end of the road and a low-rise office block, which by my calculation blocks a view of the river. In my befuddled state I assume Mark must have some kind of appointment but at the last moment he veers to one side, guiding me down a narrow passage that snakes between the grey stone of the offices and the dirty brick of the houses. A short distance ahead I can see a patch of grass littered with a bottles and plastic carrier bags.

  I stop. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Somewhere private, that’s all.’ Mark takes a step forward and when I stay motionless he tugs at my arm. ‘Come on.’

  I don’t move. A primal, animal instinct is waking up somewhere deep beneath the chalky surface of the arak.

  ‘Really, Claire! You’re not scared of me, surely?’ Although his voice is infused with joking sarcasm, his tone is strained. I am not scared exactly, I am wary rather than frightened and I don’t understand the reasons for my feelings, but I sense that Mark does and that he is doing his best to disguise them. He makes another effort. ‘I want to do you a favour. I’ve got something you might find useful, but we need to be somewhere private before I can tell you what it is.’ His grasp moves from my arm to my hand, his fingers play with mine, lightly and without force. I watch the pale light catching the silver of his signet ring. Even now, when all my ancient genes are focused on self-preservation, the binary choice of fight or flight, his fluctuating touch is like an electric current, a pulsing strobe of distraction. ‘Please, Claire. I’m trying to help you. Don’t make it so difficult.’ That final descent to entreaty, that hint of vulnerability is enough to unfreeze my feet, and I allow myself to be led slowly through the alley and into the open space beyond.

  The area in which we arrive is not much bigger than a couple of tennis courts. The river borders one side. It stretches, lank and grey, behind concrete and railings towards a bank of city infrastructure that is too distant to decipher in any detail. High walls surround the other three sides although none of them have windows, only an expanse of blank, implacable masonry. It appears that the focus of the buildings is elsewhere, some place much more pleasant; they have all turned their backs on this patch of scrubby green.

  I see the grass is actually struggling to grow between slabs of cement and guess that perhaps some kind of waste plant or electrical generator used to be located here: an eyesore that nobody wanted to look at. Close up the ground is peppered with
grot – needles, cigarette butts, condoms and the kind of tiny plastic tubes that are used for snorting. I touch one of the bottles with my toe and it rolls away to expose a scrap of blackened aluminium foil.

  The grimness of the place makes me shiver. That and the pigeon-grey canopy of sky, which seems to have drained the colour from our surroundings. Mark misinterprets. ‘Are you cold?’

  I shake my head and the arak sloshes around my skull. I feel both drunk and sober at the same time. I am fully aware of our strange location; I assume something is about to be required of me, yet nevertheless I have a sense of liberation, of stepping outside myself. The weak afternoon light makes Mark look older; it saps the tan from his skin and whitens the silver veins in his hair. Despite this, I know that if he began to touch me, pressed me up against a wall and reached under my skirt, I wouldn’t possess the willpower to object.

  Instead, he swings on to the front of his stomach a soft black briefcase he has been carrying on his shoulder. I noticed the bag while we were eating and thought nothing of it, now I remember the care he took to move it out of the way of the waitress’s feet, the precious, pernickety way he settled the carrying strap across his chest as we left the restaurant.

  ‘I’m going to give you something,’ he says. ‘You need to look after it carefully.’ I have an instantaneous, laughable notion he is about to produce a living thing, a rabbit or a guinea pig perhaps, but the thought vanishes abruptly. I realise that whatever he has in mind is nothing like that. His hand hovers on the zip. I think he’s expecting me to ask him what’s inside, hoping I will play along and add to the drama.

  I stay silent and wait.

  He reaches into the inner pocket and begins to draw something out. The afternoon light snags a black, metallic, betraying glint, but he stops before the object is fully visible. ‘I want you to take this, Claire, and keep it at the house.’