The Couple: An unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist

by Sarah Mitchell

  After barely a second’s hesitation I rip open the envelope.

  The prose is courteous yet quietly venomous. After ‘a recent review’ HSBC has apparently decided that it no longer wishes to provide Mark with banking facilities and is giving him thirty days’ notice of its intention to close his accounts. Not only will the debit balance require immediate repayment on the date of closure, but also Mark’s credit-card limit has been reduced to a derisory £300 with immediate effect.

  Jesus.

  I perch on the edge of the sofa, the sheet of paper in my hand. Somewhere or other I still have the redirection confirmation from the Post Office, so it would be perfectly possible for me to forward the bank’s bombshell to Mark myself. However, it occurs to me that there is a more attractive alternative: I have four whole hours to kill before Angus is due home; what better way to spend it than delivering the letter by hand and checking out the candidacy of Mark’s girlfriend for the role of my mystery message sender?

  Before I leave the house I swap the tracksuit bottoms for a pair of leather leggings, add an oversized jumper and a gilet, and pile my hair into a sexy mess on top of my head. Adding, naturally, the obligatory coat of red lipstick – from my previous experience of encounters with the official girlfriend I have learned not to underestimate the benefit of proper preparation.

  * * *

  As Mark’s flat is located in Newham I have to take the Central line all the way from Ealing to Stratford and then switch on to the Docklands Light Railway. However, at least the long journey is an opportunity to decide how to play the situation. The girlfriend may deny all knowledge of the message, of course, but I think that’s unlikely, given the pugnacious overtones. More likely she will go on the attack. Actually, I have no problem with that. I have no intention of fighting my corner for Mark; for once – believe it or not – I am content to play the role of the magnanimous loser. My sole objective is to find out what she has guessed about me, about my past – and to persuade her to keep those suspicions to herself.

  The train breathes in as it moves across London, sucking up a human soup of race and language into its small, dense space and spilling most of it out at familiar landmarks such as Oxford Circus and St Paul’s, so that by the time I reach Stratford, just beyond Liverpool Street, the carriage is practically empty again. When I get off at Canning Town the only person who alights is a thin bearded guy wearing a beanie and accompanied by a greyhound.

  The station is open-air with automatic, unstaffed ticket machines and now the train has borne away the beanie guy the platform is entirely empty. If the sun were shining, it is just possible the vista might possess some kind of bleak, post-apocalyptic beauty. However, today the sky is the same shade as the cement infrastructure, only without the beautification of the graffiti that has been sprayed in red-and-black paint above the plastic seats: the most attention-grabbing example of which informs a waiting world that Callum has herpes.

  Google Maps tells me it’s a ten-minute walk to Mark’s abode. The roads appear to be identical, long and straight and bordered on both sides by terraced houses that look as though a builder has simply pressed copy and paste down the entire length: a door, an adjacent window, two windows upstairs and nowhere for the bins to sit other than the sliver of space between the pavement and the front wall. Mark’s house is distinguishable from its neighbours only because of a ‘To Let’ sign, which judging by the pristine state of the board appears to be a recent addition.

  Since the front door doesn’t have a bell, or actually any kind of knocker at all, the only option is to rap the shabby paintwork with my knuckles, which I do, perhaps more loudly than I intend.

  There is no response.

  It is probable, of course, nobody is home but just as I am adjusting to this outcome I hear a telltale scratching on the other side of the lock. There is barely enough time to adopt my best scarlet smile before I find myself gazing straight into the pupils of a girl. She appears to be Thai or Vietnamese and it takes me a moment to realise that she is not, as was my first impression, a child, but is actually a young woman of around nineteen or twenty.

  ‘Can I help you?’ She is regarding me with curiosity that borders on fear, the surprise in her voice is submissive, the inflection of somebody who has learned to be wary of strangers.

  ‘Mark lives here, doesn’t he?’ I say, with more confidence than I am feeling. ‘Are you his girlfriend?’

  She blinks twice in quick succession and looks at the floor. ‘No.’

  I note the tatty jumper under her dungarees, the belt cinched tight around a tiny frame. Long dark hair hangs limply either side of cheeks that are sallow from lack of sleep. Or sunshine. Or joy. Or very possibly all three. It is similar to gazing at a photograph of somebody who might be beautiful but the picture is now too faded to tell one way or the other.

  ‘I’m guessing you are his girlfriend.’

  Behind her, at the back of the hallway, I spot two packing cases that have been stacked one on top of the other, presumably to minimise their footprint in the narrow space.

  ‘Mark moved out. He doesn’t live here any more.’

  I remember saying that too. Perhaps we should start a club.

  ‘I think he does.’ I take a small step towards the door and the woman shrinks backwards.

  Before I can say anything else, a child arrives – a boy, only three or four years old, with dirty bare feet and rich sooty curls. The woman grabs his hand and either the simple fact of his presence or the pressure of his small fist seems to embolden her. ‘There is nobody here called Mark,’ she says more firmly. ‘You must have the wrong house.’

  I try switching tacks. ‘Did you send me a message?’ I ask. ‘A nasty WhatsApp message?’

  The shock of this suggestion makes her lift her head. She meets my gaze with big dark eyes and her irises glimmer with incredulity – and honesty. ‘I’ve never met you before,’ she stammers. ‘Why would I send…?’

  ‘… It’s all right, Malee. I’ll deal with this.’

  Mark is standing at the top of the staircase. Although he’s dressed in jeans the usual flawless white shirt has been supplanted by a plain fawn T-shirt, which is splattered with something red – presumably ketchup rather than blood, given the domesticity of the scene before me. When he starts to descend the steps I see that his stay-at-home outfit is completed by a pair of old-man tartan slippers. It’s as much as I can do not to point at them and laugh.

  The woman’s glance switches rapidly between Mark and me. She must see something revealing, read, perhaps, the distant echo of attraction, of sex, on our faces, because all at once her posture sags slightly. I recognise that feeling, the desperation to avoid what is right in front of your nose. I remember myself five years ago, when I too was ignorant of my beloved’s infidelity, the depths of his deception. I wonder how she would respond if push should come to shove. If she would react the same way that I did.

  ‘So you know her, do you Mark?’ Her tone is ripe with fear and suspicion. Another emotion too – scorn, I think. Perhaps this is not a novel situation for either of them. I suppose there’s no ex-wife.

  ‘Go and wait in the kitchen.’

  The woman hesitates for several seconds before moving away, tugging the child with her.

  Mark steps in front of both of them. ‘What do you want?’ he asks me.

  The alarm in his eyes is plain. The way his gaze flicks, instinctively or deliberately perhaps, towards the head of his departing child and the tangle of his soft ebony curls.

  How quickly, how surreptitiously, the tables can turn and the pendulum can swing. I like power, I understand the pull of it, the desire we have for control, the way we strive for it, consciously or subconsciously, and the way we never quite know what we will do with it – what it will do with us – until we have it within our grasp.

  ‘I’ve brought you this.’ I take the bank letter from my coat pocket and hold it out as if presenting a carrot to a pony. ‘I’m sorry I opened it. I di
dn’t realise it was addressed to you until it was too late.’ I don’t bother to try to sound convincing.

  After a moment Mark comes forward and takes the torn envelope. I can tell that he badly wants to know if I have anything else for him, something more useful, while at the same time he is willing me not to say more in earshot of the kitchen.

  I shake my head very slowly. When – if – I give him those names and addresses, it will be on my terms – and once I am more confident of the return part of the bargain.

  He is starting to close the door when I say rather loudly, ‘Actually I really came here because I was looking for someone else, not you at all. I wanted somebody called Daniel.’

  Mark freezes, staring at me in astonishment.

  I am directing my voice through the open gap, letting it float towards the kitchen – a belated, pathetic offering to Malee. ‘I thought you could help me find him but I must have been mistaken. I was probably wrong about that right from the beginning.’

  * * *

  On the way home, I sense the approach of one of my migraines. Like noticing storm clouds bunched on the horizon, or the air acquire that greenish, pre-thunder hue, I feel the tension mounting at the base of my skull. When the headaches have happened before, I’ve always thought of them as an echo of the past, the wash of pain as the lap of waves still spreading outwards from that shock point five years earlier. Now, I’m not so certain. Today, the gentle throbbing seems closer to a premonition, a warning of what is to come, a church bell tolling in a distant valley.

  An alarm.

  I break my journey, disembarking the Central line at Chancery Lane in order to get some air and quell the nausea that is stirring, animal-like, in the pit of my stomach. For twenty minutes or so I sit on a bench in the gardens of Lincoln’s Inn and let the facts buzz loosely around my brain. I think about the lists of names in Mark’s briefcase and the information that he wants from me concerning the tribunal. I consider how odd it is – how lucky for him – that someone like me, working in the immigration service, happened to buy his house. I recall how confident Angus was that our offer would be accepted, how familiar he seemed with the financial affairs of our prospective seller. I think about meeting Angus at the immigration conference, his interest in my work. And then I think about Angus’s business, how I’ve never visited any of his hotels; I’ve never even seen a picture of one.

  The trees are winter-bare and the flower beds are dormant, yet nevertheless the bookish quiet is calming. While I sit there an earnest-looking young woman hurries past and disappears into one of the lamp-lit barristers’ chambers. I imagine her bent over a desk, trying to shoehorn the details of her case into a structure for the courtroom, a narrative that allows for a binary outcome, a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, a ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’, rather than facts that splinter into a labyrinth of possibilities, a thousand different nuances of blame.

  By the time I get home it is close to half-past six and my head is lighter, my vision clearer. I have about an hour before Angus is expected back. I fetch myself a large tumbler of water and sip it while I consider the contents of the fridge; the half-eaten carcass of a roast chicken, a block of dried-out cheese and components for a salad that are limp and soft and already beginning to rot. More temptingly, there is also an open bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

  Flouting the threatened migraine, I abandon the water, pour myself a glass of wine and sit down with my laptop. The company that Angus runs, his chain of boutique B & B’s, is called MPC Hotels, which, if you think about it – and until this afternoon I hadn’t considered it at all – is not the most evocative label for a destination business, a provider of escapes.

  I tap the name into Google, wishing I had done this months ago. Still, despite my wriggly little misgivings, I am hoping to find a reasonably sophisticated website; images of European cities, iconic landmarks of towers, castles and ancient forums, or at the very least couples strolling hand-in-hand or sipping drinks in charming, flower-bedecked town squares. Instead the results appear to be links to composite sites such as Booking.com, TravelRepublic and TripAdvisor, all of which suggest at first glance that the average rating for a stay in an MPC boutique hotel is a desultory one – or, if the reviewer is particularly generous of heart, two – stars.

  At random I pick out MPC’s offering at a place called Greenaways in Nottingham for consideration. Booking.com describes the hotel as being less than a ten-minute walk from the city’s sights, situated in two acres of Victorian gardens and with compact but well-designed accommodation, a reception and a vending machine for drinks and snacks. Although the place sounds quite pleasant and is a steal for such a central location, the customer feedback is less than pleasing. Put it this way, the quotes are not the kind to plaster across any promotional material, unless you happened to be experimenting with a weirdly perverse type of marketing strategy:

  Filthy stains on carpet… Hair on sheets… Light hanging off wall… When I telephoned to ask for a refund the MPC representative hung up.

  I try The Grange instead, depicted as being a stone’s throw from Marble Arch and the perfect budget option for a break in the nation’s capital. Gheorghe from Romania, however, does not share this opinion, with an impressively evocative turn of phrase he calls it ‘a dirty horse stable that smelled of drugs.’

  I take a slug of wine, determined to find more flattering feedback, different comments that will stop the escalation of mathematics happening inside my head, the two plus twos that are snowballing down the side of the hill, making four, then six, then eight…

  ‘They all expect too much.’

  The sentence, low and toneless is delivered close to my left ear. My posture snaps upright.

  Angus is beside me, his head hovering near my own. He is positioned so close that the breath of his voice is warm on my neck. I can smell coffee and a warm hint of peat from something like brandy or whisky. I suppose I must have been lost in concentration, but I am surprised nonetheless that I didn’t notice him come in, that I didn’t hear the scrape of his key, the thunk of the shutting door. Unless, of course, he got home earlier and has been upstairs all the time.

  Angus leans forward, puts his finger on the mouse and scrolls quickly down the stack of reviews. ‘Thirty quid a night, the middle of London, and they want a room like the Ritz.’ His lips curl down with distaste, or maybe his reaction is just plain disappointment. ‘Here’ – he stops abruptly at an unexpected four-star review – ‘Good value as a place to crash after a piss-up,’ he reads out loud. ‘Finally, somebody who understands that in this world you get what you pay for. There’s nowhere else as cheap to stay in London. It’s a fucking bargain.’

  ‘I thought you said they were boutique hotels,’ I say quietly.

  ‘Boutique was your word, Claire, not mine.’ Angus lifts his hand from the keyboard, returns it to his side as if he is standing sentry. ‘I simply told you the hotels were small and located in city centres. You called them boutique, you added the gloss.’

  I can’t now remember if this is true or not. Even if Angus is right I could point out that he has never once corrected my impression; informed me that the real nature of his business is running a string of inner-city shitholes.

  ‘Besides,’ Angus says, with a kind of belligerence that is almost pride, ‘what does it matter as long as they make money? I found a gap in the market, and I filled it. The big hotels might provide posh sheets and room service, but it doesn’t stop them paying their workers a fucking pittance. Why is that any better than what I do?’

  As if this is the final word on the issue he moves away from me, heading towards the kitchen and as he leaves I feel myself expanding, relaxing into the space he just vacated, although I wasn’t actually aware of how tense I had become. I hear the sound of the fridge being opened, then a cupboard, the clink of moving bottles. A few moments later, Angus emerges from the archway that separates the kitchen from the sitting room. He is holding a glass of the Sauvignon, knuckles bleached from th
e intensity of his grip.

  He watches me watching the screen, although I’m only pretending to look at it now, regarding him from the corner of my eye instead. I’m certain Google has more secrets to spill but I’m not going to unpack the clues in front of Angus, lay them out as if I am emptying the contents of a picnic basket onto a rug.

  ‘Shall we go out, now you’re home?’ he says. The rapid change of subject is clearly deliberate, while his turn of phrase increases my suspicion that he might already have been waiting upstairs when I returned from my adventures in Newham.

  Before I can reply my mobile begins to buzz. It is resting, face-up, beside my computer. I must have switched off the ringtone on my way to visit Mark, not wanting to be interrupted by Pink’s jaunty lyrics while encountering his girlfriend. Now my mobile is flailing on the table top, the collision of the soundwaves against the polished wood causing it to spin and buck like an insect stranded on its back.

  I stare at the screen. I am sure the number plastered across it belongs to Mark. Angus follows my gaze. In my head the noise of the phone becomes louder, more desperate. In other circumstances I might have taken a perverse pleasure in ignoring Mark’s summons, the discovery of new will-power, the flexing of recently acquired muscle. Although, of course, my restraint is not actually will-power at all, just the benefit of more facts. And the presence of my fiancé.