I had taken to allowing Lola to sleep in my bedroom these days, as it felt safer for both of us. Not that she would ever have made the grade as a guard dog. I pushed my hand under the pillow and felt the comforting handle of the serrated-edge diver’s knife I now kept there permanently. I had bought it as a spare for the boat a while ago. We always kept one strapped to the boom, as all race boats tend to do, to be used as a get out of jail free card and cut ropes if we really got into trouble. It was razor-sharp and more than man enough for the job, should I need to use it in self-defence against my husband.
My wandering thoughts turned to where I would stab him if I had to and I decided it would most probably be in the neck. There would be a lot of blood though. I would be covered in it. Did I really have the stomach for that? The jury was out on that one.
Maybe I should be thinking outside the box. I always seemed to be on the defensive, always reacting to something that might happen to me. Maybe it was time I took charge and got rid of Daniel before he tried to get rid of me. I knew my imagination was running away with me, but I couldn’t stop this new train of thought, which was rapidly gaining momentum. I began to rack my brains for a cleaner way of killing my husband. A way that did not involve a lot of messy blood and, more importantly, a way that would not mean I ended up rotting in prison for murder. Obviously, I couldn’t let that happen.
It was freezing cold outside and I remembered how I had slipped earlier on the ice on our uneven, stone steps. Daniel was not particularly good with steps since the helicopter crash and ours were lethal at the best of times. What if I poured water on the steps in time for it to freeze before he came to visit on one of our special Tuesday dates? The plan was not fool-proof of course, as there was no guarantee he would actually slip and no guarantee he would die from the fall, even if he did slip. It was certainly worth considering though. I could always be lurking in the shadows, ready to give him a helpful shove in the right direction, which would be downwards of course. I smiled to myself as I conjured up an image of him lying at the bottom of the steps, limbs broken and twisted, writhing in agony and pleading with me to help him. I imagined myself bending over him, seeing the look of relief on his face as he thought I was rushing to his aid, and then savouring the moment his look turned to despair as he realised I was no good Samaritan. I saw myself smiling sweetly, as I gently took his mobile out of his pocket to drop it on the floor near his car, well out of his reach, before simply driving away and leaving him to freeze to death overnight. Hopefully slowly. And in excruciating pain. A perfect crime.
I came abruptly to my senses and shuddered at my own callousness.
- What the hell happened to me?
- What sort of a monster had I become?
I woke up the following morning with a splitting headache. Lola was whining to go out, so I was forced to drag myself out of bed and downstairs. Business as usual. I made coffee and downed some painkillers before heading over to the hotel to meet Liam. Today was an important day of espionage and I needed to sharpen my mind.
A quick check of the tracker before I left reassured me that Daniel was not going to be posing a threat to my plans. What I hadn’t banked on was an unforeseen problem with Liam’s pregnant wife, which meant that we had to put off our visit until the following day. I tried not to panic, but I was desperate to get back to the flat as quickly as possible and do what needed to be done, in case Daniel’s US visit proved to be a fleeting one. You never could tell with him.
I had no choice but to wait.
The following day we set off early, having checked the tracker again. Still no movement on Daniel 1, but I made a mental note to keep looking at regular intervals. I could not afford any slip-ups. There was none of the drama of the previous visit and it felt good to be able to turn up at the flat and let myself in with my own keys this time.
Liam laughed as I insisted he removed his shoes and put on the old pair of Daniel’s slippers I had brought with me for him to wear.
‘This is not CSI Miami you know,’ he said, humouring me by putting them on anyway.
‘No harm in being careful,’ I retorted, removing my own shoes and handing him a pair of latex gloves.
The first thing on the agenda to tackle was the alarm. I had not re-set it when I left, having returned the only fob to the letting agent, but I was anxious for Liam to take a look at it. To my immense relief, he seemed confident it was not a problem.
‘Nothing to worry about there as far as I can see. It looks a pretty basic affair, certainly no camera.’
‘Great, I thought so.’
‘Won’t he wonder why the alarm isn’t set though?’
‘Maybe. I’m just banking on there being so much going on in his life at the moment that he will assume he forgot, or think it’s faulty. There’s nothing I can do about it in any case. I searched everywhere and I couldn’t find a spare fob.’
‘Okay, forget it then. Where shall we start?’
Two hours later, Liam was still systematically scanning documents and copying various USB sticks and camera memory cards onto the Maxtor disk drive attached to my laptop. Meanwhile, I busied myself rummaging through more boxes and cupboards, making sure I missed nothing. I was beginning to wonder just how much women’s underwear one man needed in his life. There were dozens of unopened packages around and I noticed to my great indignation that many of them were actually addressed to me. I ripped a few of them open and noticed that the underwear was second hand, probably from eBay sellers. I had heard about people selling used underwear, unwashed even, but would never have imagined in a million years that my husband was buying stuff like that behind my back. Especially not in my bloody name! I shoved the packages back where they belonged. There were so many of them that I was confident Daniel would never know whether he had opened them himself or not.
Liam interrupted my rummaging.
‘Do you want all these photos copied? There’re thousands of them and I’m not sure they’re any real use to you.’
‘Yes, I want everything. I’ll go through it all in my own time at home and decide for myself what I need to keep.’
‘I’m just not sure it will do you any good looking at some of these. There are a lot of family photos that I think will be hurtful,’ he persisted.
It was sweet that he was trying to protect me, but it was far too late for that.
‘Liam, I’m tougher than I look and I promise you I want to see it all. I need to see it all.’
I walked over to where he was sitting, hunched over my laptop. I understood what he meant as I looked at the thumbnails on the screen. Photos of a Christening, with Daniel holding a baby and smiling proudly. Family holiday snaps. Eating ice cream on a beach. Children’s parties. Disney World….
I looked away. My husband. The one who never wanted children. The one who always insisted he would be a terrible father. That was not what it looked like to me. It looked to me like he was going for the Daddy of the Year title.
‘Please Liam, just do it. I don’t need protection from this. I need to know who my husband really is,’ I said firmly.
It was another hour at least before he finished. I knew he would be curious about the other stuff Sylvie and I had found and I was keen to give him the full tour. In fact, I could hardly contain myself.
‘Do you want to see in the bedroom then?’
Of course he did.
I led the way, showing him the highlights and building up to the glorious finale with a certain amount of dramatic effect. I pointed to the third drawer in the chest.
‘Open that.’
I folded my arms and stood back, waiting in silence for his reaction. Liam’s face remained impassive, eyebrows raised.
‘Well, there’s something you don’t see every day,’ he announced, candidly.
His voice was so calm and matter of fact, I burst out laughing.
‘Talk about stating the obvious! I can always count on you to lighten the mood.’
‘Always glad to be of
service. What’s in the bag there?’
He gestured towards the holdall on the bed.
‘Don’t know. I got distracted with the ‘body in the bed’ situation last night.’
I laughed again and opened the sailing bag I had painstakingly made for Daniel, remembering how much effort it had taken and how I had persevered time and again when the needle kept breaking, all because I wanted to do something special for him. Inside was a random selection of underwear, including a couple of the beaded G-strings, a pair of false ‘travel boobs’ and a pair of black patent court shoes. I picked up one of the shoes and looked at the sole. Size 11.
I found myself feeling ridiculously insulted by what he was using the bag for. As if that were the biggest thing to worry about here.
I closed the zip and looked more carefully around the bed. On the floor, I could see another pair of shoes. These were peep toe, with a medium heel and covered in a bronze sparkly material. Also size 11. Daniel’s shoe size. I was no longer shocked by anything I found. This was my new normal.
I suddenly realised we had been there over four hours and felt instantly unnerved.
‘I need to check the tracker.’
My heart was racing as I ran downstairs and opened my laptop. I typed in the password and waited for the GPS to update. To my utter horror and disbelief, Daniel 1 was flashing green, which meant it was on the move. I began to panic.
‘Shit Liam, we need to get out of here, fast.’
Liam looked over my shoulder at the map on the screen and the little green cursor.
‘Right, well first of all stop panicking. He is obviously back in the country and it looks like he’s driving towards here, but looking at where he is on the road it will take him an hour to get here, at least. We’ve got plenty of time.’
‘You’ve copied everything, right?’
‘Everything I could, yes.’
‘And I’ve still got my keys if I need to come back.’
‘You don’t need to come back, trust me. You need to stay well away from here now. It’s far too risky to come back. Remember we can’t be one hundred percent sure he won’t know you’ve been here.’
I knew he was right, but in my own mind I did not rule out the possibility of a return visit. We took one last look around in each room to make sure we had left no trace of our presence, before going down the stairs, stepping carefully over the bin bags still piled in the doorway and locking the front door. I hoped no nosey neighbours were watching our comings and goings, but I was also pretty sure this was the sort of area where people kept themselves to themselves and didn’t ask questions.
Outside the sun was shining and it felt strangely normal to be there. I smiled to myself and felt happy that at least I had something to work with now. I had a lot more pieces of the jigsaw in my possession and hopefully, some of them would turn out to be key pieces.
A couple of hours later, Liam dropped me off at the house and I sat down at the kitchen table with Lola watching me curiously from her basket. I opened my laptop, keen to begin the mammoth task of sifting through all the material Liam had saved for me.
I began with the photo albums. It was like picking at a scab. I knew it would hurt me, but I still did it. The worst ones were obviously the pictures of Daniel with his children. There were just so many of them. I recognised The Whale as she stood by his side in church for Aaron’s christening, Daniel smiling and cradling the baby in a white lacy blanket. Birthday parties with Daniel helping Aaron to blow out the candles on the cake. A whole album of a holiday in Disney World, when Aaron must have been about six.
- Just two or three years ago. What was I doing, I wonder?
Typical family photos of the three of them. I sniggered, in spite of myself, at one of them in front of a giant model of a killer whale and considered framing it with a ‘spot the difference’ caption.
Then there were the photos of another woman with a girl who looked about twelve, at what appeared to be her First Communion. Proud Daddy had clearly enjoyed taking dozens of snaps. The woman was thin and blonde with sharp angular features and my first impression was that she looked like the child’s grandmother. It was the first time I had seen her, but I knew immediately she had to be the American woman. Daniel had deviated from his usual type with her, I noted. There was another album of the American family on holiday in Wales. I recognised Caernarfon Castle, wondering for a horrible moment whether he had actually dared to take them to stay at my house in Conway. I forced myself to look at every photo, despite the pain they caused me. Every twist of the knife only served to strengthen my resolve.
When I had eventually finished, I closed the laptop and stared into space. An overwhelming sense of sadness flooded into my soul and I was powerless to keep out the thoughts that it should have been me in those photos with Daniel and the children.
Not for the first time, or the last, I told myself that those women had stolen my life.
The First Born
Anita
Tara was upstairs in her room when she heard the car on the drive outside. She had a quick look out of the window to check it was him and then raced down the stairs to open the front door. She ran to the car as he got out and flung her arms around his neck.
‘Dad, you made it, you made it!’ she shouted excitedly.
It was her fifteenth birthday and he noticed how much she had grown. She was going to be tall like him. He laughed and disentangled himself from her embrace. He wasn’t particularly fond of physical displays of emotion at the best of times.
‘Of course I made it. I promised you didn’t I? When have I ever let you down?’
He looked towards the house and saw Anita, mother of his daughter, standing in the doorway of the porch with her eyebrows raised at that last comment. She had a strained half-smile on her face. She was clearly not going to make this easy. He laughed and tried to appear relaxed, for Tara’s sake.
‘Let me get in the house at least,’ he said to the girl, who was tugging at his arm.
‘Wait to you see what Mom got me!’
She was already racing back upstairs. Daniel walked up to Anita and bent to kiss her. She turned her head and frostily presented him with her cheek.
‘Have you told her?’ he whispered before Tara came back down.
‘No. I most certainly have not. I thought I’d leave that pleasure for you.’
‘Great. I thought you would have found a way to explain the situation to her by now. You’re her mother after all.’
‘And you’re her father. Or had you forgotten that with all your other families in England now?’ she snapped.
Tara came in before the argument could escalate, proudly brandishing the latest iPhone.
‘It’s the best present ever. No one else I know has this one yet.’
Daniel smiled at her. He had paid for the phone of course and in his bag were the new iPad mini and a Bluetooth portable speaker to go with it. He had decided it was only fair to spoil her a bit before delivering the blow that would shatter her world.
The house in Jamestown, Rhode Island, was built in the traditional clapboard style, painted pale green with a white picket fence and in an enviable location, overlooking the water. Anita had inherited the house when her parents died some years ago and Daniel liked living there. He thought to himself that, if things did not improve in the UK, he would maybe go and live there full time, at least for a while. He had to admit, the thought of just walking away and leaving all that shit behind had a certain appeal.
Later that evening, when Tara had gone to bed after a meal at The Lobster Pot, her favourite seafood restaurant in the busy little town, Daniel sat down with Anita.
‘I’ll talk to her tomorrow. I wasn’t going to ruin her birthday,’ he stated, in a matter of fact way.
‘Make sure you do, first thing. I don’t want any more secrets and lies.’
Daniel really couldn’t be bothered with her hurt face and reprimands. He looked at her skinny body and lined face and wonder
ed yet again how he had got himself into all this. She wasn’t even his type, for fuck’s sake.
‘Seriously Anita, what did you think was going on here? You knew I had a life in England. I never lied about that. You always knew I was married.’
‘Married, yes, but you didn’t exactly tell me the whole truth, did you?’ she hissed, pointedly. ‘In fact, you told me your wife had terminal brain cancer. You told me it was all over between the two of you years ago, but you couldn’t leave a dying woman, because you would never be able to forgive yourself. How could you tell such a wicked lie?’
‘Oh, don’t be so fucking dramatic. She got better. What can I say? The treatments worked, despite what the doctors said. She’s now in remission. Would you have preferred she died?’ Daniel goaded her, lies dripping from his tongue with alarming ease.
‘I don’t believe your wife even has cancer. There was no mention of that in the email I got from that other woman. Lorraine,’ she drawled.
‘Well, I suppose what it comes down to is whether you believe what I tell you or what some deranged woman you have never met tells you in a random email.’
His tone was sharp and he appeared detached and cold. Anita was close to tears but had learned over the years that he despised women crying. She had lived for years under the illusion that one day, when his poor sick wife died, Daniel would come and live permanently with her and Tara in Jamestown and they would be a proper family. Now here she was, suddenly having to try and come to terms with his latest suggestion that she should travel to England so that Tara could meet her younger half-brother. The one she didn’t even know existed yet.
Anita felt as though she was trapped in some horrendous nightmare, unable to wake up. Daniel was further irritated to find himself consigned to the uncomfortable sofa bed in the spare room, but Anita refused to budge on that one.
The following morning, when Tara came down to breakfast, the teenager learned about her brother from her Dad, whom she idolised. He made little attempt to sugar coat the news.
Twenty Years a Stranger (The Stranger Series Book 1) Page 23