The Couple: An unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist

by Sarah Mitchell

  The following afternoon a bunch of red roses arrived, lustrous and velvet to the touch. Since the delivery guy refused to return them to his van I carted the bouquet into the back yard where the dustbins are kept and abandoned the long, elegant stems to rot amongst the stinking bin bags.

  The next day, roses again, these ones yellow as Spanish lemons. Although I took them straight outside, this time I had a better idea than simply dumping them with the rubbish. Once it became dark I carried them to the house with the swimming pool and propped them by the front door. An apology to the owners, if you like, or maybe the gesture was more akin to a memorial wreath, marking the spot of the last evening that Daniel and I had spent together. Before leaving the flowers on the step, I removed the notecard, reckoning that whoever found them would be confused enough without the added complication of his contrite, concise message:

  Please forgive me, I can’t bear to lose you.

  On Wednesday, it was sunflowers. That’s when I started to crack. The armful of bobbing blooms made it over the threshold into my room and after watching the golden petals wilting on the table for an hour or so, I finally succumbed and stuck them into a jug of water. Thursday brought a posy of wildflowers, and Friday some large, rather posh-looking buttercups. Without a vase (no student I know owns anything quite so mumsy), my only option was to use a couple of pint mugs that were too small for the job and made the arrangements top-heavy and precarious.

  Now I am holding Daniel’s latest offering, delivered only a few minutes ago – a cellophane-encased spray of peonies with heavy lilac heads that are just on the point of blossoming. Since there are no more suitable receptacles I half-fill the washbasin and shove them in there.

  Apart from the floral embellishments, it has to be said that my room is looking pretty rank. I guess that’s what comes of spending 168 consecutive hours crying, drinking and eating crap. In addition to the unmade bed, the undrawn curtains and the distribution of clothes across the room, I can count four drained wine bottles – although there may be more – two tubs of Ben and Jerry’s – again, possibly the tip of the iceberg – and God knows how many empty crisp and biscuit packets.

  I open the window to let in air and sunlight and then I go in search of a bin liner. This new sense of purpose, of capability, is possible only because I am on the verge of forgiving Daniel. I have rationalised my thinking; I’ve convinced myself that I am acting out of compassion not weakness; understanding, not insecurity. I tell myself the constant texts and calls, the hounding, must have driven him to the edge of madness. Maybe she persuaded him that one last time would be all it took to make her disappear. Last night, as I lay wretched and sleepless in the pre-dawn gloom, I could almost hear her begging him to sleep with her, ‘Say goodbye to me properly, Daniel, and then I’ll let you go.’ He would have been horrified of course, but desperate as well – anything to get rid of her and keep us together. How could he possibly know the little witch would take the chance to accuse him of rape? The longer the scenario plays in my mind, the more certain I become that Daniel has actually been the victim in this, a foolish dupe who loves me, and needs my support now more than ever.

  The small white envelope that accompanied the peonies is still sitting on my desk. After a moment’s hesitation I tear it open and extract the card from inside which has written on it, simply:

  Missing you

  There is something else too. A note has also been stuffed in the envelope as if by way of breaking news, an update after the card had been penned. Unfolding the scrap of paper, I read:

  Police investigation dropped. Please come back!!

  It is enough. The creaking camel’s back of my self-control shatters under the weight of this final straw. I grab an old sweatshirt and some trainers. I am already wearing jeans and a T-shirt, the same clothes I have been pulling on and off all week. There is a stain on the thigh of the jeans, which is probably wine – hopefully nothing more gross – and when I take a quick peek in the mirror above the basin I’m rather taken aback at the sight that greets me. Without make-up there’s nothing to disguise the effects of a week of too much booze and sugar. My face is bloated and pasty and framed by what resembles a lank and greasy floor mop. With a twinge of disgust, I realise that I haven’t bothered to wash my hair since I was in Daniel’s room last Saturday morning.

  I consider stopping to take a shower. However, now I have decided to go back to him, now I can see how selfish and thoughtless I’ve been, I literally can’t wait a single moment longer. The rape complaint is not being pursued, surely that is a signal that everything will – must – return to normal? My hands are shaking as I find my bag and key, and my pulse is galloping. I am practically bursting out of my skin with excitement and euphoria. How could I have been stupid enough to put us both through this long and dreadful week? I very nearly let Daniel’s insane ex ruin his amazing relationship with me, his actual girlfriend.

  I am so beside myself with impatience that I drag my bicycle from the store at the back of the halls. Everyone in Cambridge has a bike, but I’ve barely cycled anywhere since I started going out with Daniel, my slightly rusty second-hand contraption isn’t remotely compatible with his sleek racer, and besides, I much prefer walking, particularly beside him, hand in hand, able to chat and joke and kiss. Remembering that now, I laugh out loud at the thought that we’ll soon be doing that again. Probably this afternoon. Then I brush a coating of grime from the seat and clamber aboard.

  My route takes me the length of never-ending Hills Road, past the Botanic Garden on my left, and eventually to Gonville Place which runs alongside the open space of Parker’s Piece. Daniel lives on a side road between the edge of the park and the nearby sports ground. The traffic is heavy with afternoon commuters and school-run mummies, but today I barely notice the four-by-fours crowding inches from my leg or smell the soup of diesel fumes because my head is so full of him. I wonder how he will react when he sees me. I picture his face breaking into sunshine, his arms held wide. I imagine stepping into his embrace, the whispered sorries that will quickly turn to kisses, the warmth and wetness of his mouth.

  I reach the corner of Hills Road and stop at the junction. As I’m waiting for the lights to change a man on a road bike crosses the intersection ahead of me, moving fast towards the cycle path that heads through the middle of Parker’s Piece. It takes a second for my brain to process the image, to assess the outline of the figure bent low over the handlebars, the rigid set of mouth and eyes, the starkly shorn skull, and to identify the vision as none other than my darling love himself.

  With disbelief I watch Daniel’s retreating rear wheel until a horn hoots from behind and I have to scramble across the road and onto the side of the park to allow the cars to flow past. Where on earth can Daniel be going? Not the railway station, which is in the opposite direction, or my halls, which are behind me. And he wasn’t wearing his normal cycling gear, the uniform of Lycra shorts and top that denotes one of his training sessions. Rather his lack of helmet and breakneck speed suggest some kind of emergency. I gaze pointlessly at the path he took towards the north of the city, but all I can see are shoppers, dog-walkers and groups of carefree teenagers settled on the grass with beer bottles and music.

  North. A note chimes in my head, something that Daniel said after we heard his fucked-up ex had actually dropped out of university, that she wasn’t even going to take her final exams. When I asked him whether she was going home – willing him to say yes, that he would probably never see her again – he actually replied, no, that she had moved to into a room north of the centre, close to Midsummer Common. If past history is anything to go by then the most likely explanation for Daniel’s wretched expression, the most glaringly obvious candidate for some new calamity, is her. Fear soaks through me like ink on blotting paper. Slowly, I swing my handlebars onto the same cycle track Daniel took a moment ago and follow in his wake.

  The river hugs the farthest, most northerly border of the common, while a number of resi
dential streets snake around the southern edge, so it is here that I concentrate my search. The houses are mainly fashionable terraces, and with a location so close to such a lovely, grassy expanse I dread to think what they might cost. It seems quite likely that some of these homeowners would be only too glad to offset their enormous mortgage costs by renting out a spare room. While a tiny part of me is clinging to the hope I am wrong, that Daniel was going somewhere else entirely, I know with the certainty of basic arithmetic that I am not wrong at all.

  Barely containing my mounting anger I trawl up and down the tarmac, my eyes peeled for any sign of him. I can’t believe she has ruined this moment as well, changed what would have been a sweet reunion into another ex-infused drama.

  I almost don’t see his bike at all. At first I pass straight by the wooden fence, it is only as I am looping back along the same stretch of road that I spot in the panelling the gate that is standing slightly ajar and, through the opening, Daniel’s smart silver frame propped against the back of the house.

  Leaving my own set of wheels on the pavement, I slip through the gap. The narrow yard beyond the gate seems to have been partitioned off from the main part of the house, containing only paving stones riddled with hungry-looking weeds and a rotary washing line pegged with a shirt and a couple of pairs of female pants. At the far end, there is door with a dirty, opaque windowpane. With my ear to the glass I can pick out the lilt of conversation inside, but I can’t make out what is being said, I can’t even be sure who is speaking.

  After a moment I ease the handle very gently and step inside. Straight ahead of me the wall is blank, but on my right a staircase rises steeply to the floor above. For a moment or two there is silence and I am beginning to think I was mistaken, that nobody is here after all, when all at once I hear, very clearly, ‘I’m not lying, Daniel. I’m telling you the truth.’

  The tone is so strong and calm that for a bewildering instant I wonder if the person talking is Daniel’s ex after all.

  ‘You still don’t believe me, do you?’ she says in her new voice. ‘Come into the bathroom, if you like. You can watch me pee on the stick. And don’t’ – there is instant venom, as if she is holding up a hand to silence Daniel’s open mouth – ‘don’t you dare to suggest that it might not be yours!’

  As I realise what she’s saying I slip momentarily out of time, falling between the seconds, and then the world lurches sideways and my gut spasms with the suddenness of a running stitch. I double over with my arms wrapped around my stomach. I want to yell, to shout out, but I have no breath and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, I can think of to say.

  ‘Why do you think’ – she continues – ‘I dropped the charges? I have the baby now – a part of you. Whatever you do, wherever you go, a part of you will always be with me.’

  I am staring at the floor, at the unswept, unwashed terracotta tiles. If Daniel slept with her last Saturday how can she know? How can she possibly be certain so soon? The question pounds urgently and the answer, the all-too-obvious response, rises immediately in my throat, sour and gagging.

  Daniel’s voice now. ‘The rape allegation was blackmail, was it? Come back to me, darling, and I’ll stop the prosecution? You’re sick! A complete bloody psycho.’

  As I straighten up and make myself look to the top of the stairs, Daniel appears, stepping backwards out of a room, right hand scrabbling frantically at his non-existent hair.

  ‘But you did come back to me. Whenever it suited you. Which actually seemed to be pretty bloody often! You even spoke about us going away together, taking a holiday, to make a fresh start once and for all.’

  She emerges from the doorway, following Daniel, both of them oblivious to their audience below. To my astonishment she is transformed. Dressed in a long, floaty summer dress, with tresses piled into a gleaming, sexy heap and red lipstick, she looks magnificent, practically regal.

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ she says. ‘What you used to say to me?’ She pauses before her voice becomes the parody of a whiney little boy. ‘I’m so confused. I don’t know what I want. I miss you so much. I miss’ – stepping into his chest, she grasps his T-shirt – ‘the sex. And then’ – her inflection snaps back to normal – ‘last Saturday, suddenly you weren’t quite so confused any more. You decided I should fuck off nice and quietly, so you could carry on the perfect life with your new girlfriend, without her being any the wiser. Well, I had a different idea, Daniel,’ she tips back her face, scarlet lips hovering just below his own, ‘I reckoned she needed to know how indecisive you are. And that given the right circumstances you might even tell her yourself.’

  Daniel doesn’t speak, he is gaping at her transfixed.

  She watches him carefully. ‘I’m right, aren’t I? You did tell her? And I’m guessing she ditched you. Well, that’s OK, because, here’s the thing’ – suddenly her voice cracks, she swallows, and when she speaks the words are rent with emotion – ‘nobody else will ever love you nearly as much as I do.’

  Mouths inches apart, neither of them moves. She is panting, her ribs are swelling and falling. I see the candy-floss tip of her tongue graze her upper lip. Daniel closes his eyes. He places his hands on her shoulders. They’re about to kiss, I know he’s going to kiss her. My heart is crumbling, disintegrating into ruined, useless fragments, yet I can’t tear away my eyes. This is the end of the show. Daniel loves her. He doesn’t love me. The curtain swoops across the stage in one tumultuous avalanche. Perhaps I should applaud? From my position in the stalls I am perfectly placed to give them a standing ovation; me, Julia, Daniel’s throwaway, temporary girlfriend bowing to the victory of his triumphant, twisted ex – Claire.

  From everywhere at once there is a scream. For a tick of the second hand, the thud of a pulse, I think it is my voice that is being ripped from my throat and is shredding the walls. Until, that is, the moment I see Claire fall. No matter how often I replay the scene, willing the frame to freeze at the moment of impact, I can never be certain how hard he pushed. All I know is she staggers to one side, stumbles, and the gauze of her beautiful dress entraps her foot, sending her crashing and rolling the entire length of the staircase.

  She finally comes to rest in twisted heap at the foot of the bannister. For an instant I am stone, immobile and petrified, and then her low wail of pain breaks the spell.

  ‘Claire! Claire! Oh my God! Are you all right?’ I rush to where my nemesis, the person who has caused me and Daniel so much grief, is sprawled, arms and legs bent like a puppet. I kneel beside her and to my relief, she raises her head a little, propping herself onto one elbow.

  ‘Julia?’ She sounds groggy with shock. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Don’t move,’ I tell her. ‘Not until we can be sure you’re OK.’ I lift my gaze to the landing where Daniel is surveying the scene, his face is waxen and unreadable. Eventually he begins to descend the stairs, moving slowly as if to check that every tread will bear his weight.

  ‘She tripped,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t my fault. And anyway, she’s obviously fine.’

  I can’t tell if he means to speak to me or merely to himself.

  At the bottom of the steps he stops, but rather than Claire, rather than the woman lying injured on the floor, his attention appears to be entirely focused on me. As he stares at me intently, his brow furrows while his features distort with revulsion. All at once I realise I how angry he is. How angry he has been for some time.

  I touch my hair, the matted, greasy crow’s nest.

  ‘Julia! Christ – what the hell happened to you?’ he says.

  Absurdly I feel my cheeks starting to burn. I open my mouth, but the words have all vanished.

  Daniel looks across at Claire and back at me and then he walks past us both and out of the door. Within moments I hear the ratcheting clink of his bike being wheeled away followed by the loud bang of the gate.

  I glance at Claire. Her eyes are fixed on the space Daniel has just vacated; she has the appearance of somebody w
ho can’t believe what she’s witnessed.

  ‘We were meant to be together,’ she whispers.

  She means Daniel of course, her and Daniel. Her features are knotted with bewilderment. Bewilderment and also, unbelievably, determination. She hasn’t given up, I realise, she hasn’t finished with him just yet. It hits me that Daniel was never mine, even when I believed he loved me. He was always hers and somehow, I know, he always will be. My chest begins to quiver with pitiful little sobs.

  After a while Claire’s fingers press my arm. ‘Julia?’

  Gazing down, I notice with a shock how white she is and then I feel the wetness soaking through the knees of my jeans. I sit back on my heels. A sticky red puddle is forming beneath her crumpled body. The fabric at the top of her legs is filling with blood, crimson waves saturating the flimsy, pretty cotton.

  ‘Do something, Julia,’ she whispers. ‘Make it stop. Please make it stop. I’m going to lose the baby.’

  I consider how much I hated her because of Daniel, how much we hated each other and how, for this moment at least, we are the ones together instead. I take off my sweatshirt and roll it into a ball. I am about to place it between her thighs but I don’t because it is pointless. Anyone can see from the sopping floor how utterly pointless it is. ‘I can’t stop the bleeding,’ I say, shakily. ‘I don’t know how. I don’t know what to do.’ I wrap the sweatshirt over her shoulders, her skin is cold and little beads of dew are appearing on her forehead. ‘Help!’ I shout into the empty stairwell. ‘Somebody help us! Please!’