“A few weeks,” she says, grinning again. She’s looking at me a little slyly, as if she’s hugging a secret to herself—all the stored-up words of those conversations that she thinks are only between her and this boy. Maybe she’s remembering the interchange we had a couple of weeks ago, when he started getting a bit frisky and she told him to stop. You’re overexciting me. Didn’t take much. If she really was seeing Jaxon tonight, I’d bet he’d be getting more than a peck on the cheek. Deep down, I don’t think Jade’s that different from me, funnily enough. And of course that only makes her even more dangerous.
“Well,” I say, “I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see you, too.”
“God, I hope so.” She looks unsure again, twiddling a strand of her fair hair in her newly painted fingernails. She did those herself, in the hotel room, her head bent in concentration, and her hands were trembling just a bit too much, so that the varnish has splashed a little onto the skin at the side of her nails. It’s endearing, kind of. “I realize it might not work out,” she says now, “but I just really want it to. It would be so great to have a boyfriend. A guy who puts me first, you know?”
“You’ve already got one of those,” I point out. She looks blank. “Your dad,” I elaborate.
Her expression is half baffled, half amused. “Well, yeah,” she says dismissively. “But it’s not, like, the same, is it.”
I’m silent, turning my attention to the lines of square, flat-roofed buildings whizzing past outside the window. I’ve always known it, but it’s gratifying to have her spell it out so baldly. It’s not, like, the same, is it. That’s what Alex gets for fourteen years of blind devotion. Whatever he does, it’ll never be enough. He’ll never be number one with her, not like he is with me.
“Look,” I say after another couple of minutes. “We’re here.”
Only five or six others get off at Portslade. Just as I’d thought, the platform is deserted within seconds. We’re on the far side of the footbridge that spans the two platforms, sheltered from the eyes of the cameras. There’s a wind picking up, and a blue plastic shopping bag rustles along by our feet, making me jump. I’m on edge. I lean back against the wall, folding my arms and looking out across the tracks. There’s no one there.
“Shit.” Jade is digging in her bag beside me, suddenly frantic. “I can’t find my phone.”
I fake concern, turning to her with eyebrows raised. “Are you sure? It hasn’t just slipped down the lining or something?”
She keeps emptying out the bag, pointlessly going over the same ground. “No . . . oh crap, I must have left it in the hotel room. I don’t get it. I’m sure I put it in here.”
“What a pain.” I congratulate myself on having thought of the phone. I took it from her bag while she was in the toilet, keeping it in my pocket and turning to throw it back into the room at the last minute. I’m not stupid enough to think that Alex won’t find out that Jade left the hospital with me. For this to work, I’m going to have to tell him that she gave me the slip—that I’d brought her back to surprise him, then popped out to get some treats. I’ve got no idea what kind of software or apps she’s got set up on her phone; I can’t risk the possibility that there’d be a tracking device on it, something that Alex might be able to access.
Jade throws the bag aside, on the verge of tears. “What if he’s trying to contact me? If he’s running late or he wants to meet somewhere else instead?”
“Hey, calm down,” I say, putting out my hand to stroke her shoulder briefly. “He said he’d meet you here at the station, didn’t he? So we’ll just wait here. He’ll turn up soon, I bet. It’s . . .” I shoot a look at my watch. “Almost nine o’clock.” It’s taken longer than I thought, getting her out of the hotel room, walking to the station, and then the delayed train. But maybe it’s for the best; the later it gets the more this place seems to clear out.
Jade looks mollified, nodding. “I guess so. OK.” She takes a deep breath and settles down next to me, folding her arms in an unconscious mirror of my pose.
I’m good at regulating my expressions, and I know that if someone took a photo of me right now I’d look serene, unruffled. As if I were just hanging out, doing nothing special. But inside my mind is whirring at top speed, and I’m wondering exactly how and when I should do this. The trouble with premeditating is that you have too much time. Too much time to think things through and overcomplicate them in your own head. This ought to be easy, for me. But for some reason it isn’t.
I peel myself away slowly from the wall and walk toward the tracks. I glance at the departure board. I’ve got about two minutes until the next train comes in. I stand close to the edge, just by the yellow line, looking out across the tracks again. “Come here,” I say.
She trots up obediently, peering out, trying to see whatever it is I’m seeing. “What?”
“I thought I saw a man. A boy.” I squint into the darkness, as if I’m looking through the gap in the wall that leads to the exit. “Maybe not.”
She’s still at my side. I can smell the lime shampoo she washed her hair with before we left the hotel, the scent of it sharp and strange on the night air. When I turn my face toward her, she is so close to me that her features are barely in focus. She’s all big dark blue eyes and bright red lips, an innocent little teenage fantasy. I take in a breath, and with the rush of cold air into my lungs I feel stronger. I open my mouth to speak again, but as I do so, I realize that my lie has turned into reality. There is a man opposite, walking quickly toward the footbridge, ascending the stairs. It’s so dark, the one lamp on the far platform barely shedding any light, that I can’t see his face, but he’s definitely heading our way. I breathe out again, talking myself down. I’ll just wait for the next train. He won’t be sticking around. It’s fine. I hear his footsteps down the steps, deliberate and slow. I twist my head to see, and then I realize that it’s Dominic.
My face breaks into a smile. Relief is flooding me like oxygen, swift and pure. He’s changed his mind. He’s come through for me after all. I won’t have to do this. I won’t have to get my hands dirty, not this time.
My eyes meet his across the twenty feet or so between us. They’re blank and steady, two marbles set deep in his face. And at the same moment, Jade turns round, too. She’s clutching my arm, whispering nervously. “Who’s that?”
“It’s OK,” I say.
She looks closer, and I can tell exactly when she recognizes him. Her body goes rigid for an instant, and then she’s plucking at my sleeve again, her hand shaking. “It’s him,” she hisses. “It’s the man, the man I’ve been seeing. The one who was in our house.” Her voice is cracking with hysteria now, her hands getting more insistent, trying to pull me away. “Please, Natalie. We need to go.”
“No,” I say.
Dominic is walking toward us now, slowly but surely. His mouth is set grimly in a line, and he’s avoiding looking at either of us now, his gaze set somewhere in the middle distance.
I look at Jade. Tears are streaming down her face, wrecking her mascara and sending it running in rivers over her cheeks. “I’m scared,” she whispers. “Please, please, let’s go.”
I hold her steady, propping her up, and Dominic is only yards away from us, his steps slowing to a halt. His hand goes to his coat pocket. The gun is small, gleaming silver. It looks harmless, like a child’s toy.
He raises it, level with his shoulder. I have the strange, hallucinatory sense that there’s something not right here. But my mind can’t quite comprehend what it can be. Everything has slowed down. The world is falling away, leaving me as light as air. And the funny thing is that I don’t feel anything at all, nothing but an immense, spreading sense of calm.
ALEX
SEPTEMBER 2017
I’ve never heard a gunshot in real life before but it’s unmistakable. In the few seconds it takes me to cover the ground between the station’s entrance and t
he platform, the only thing in my head is its reverberation, shuddering through me again and again like an aftershock. I can’t think—can’t even begin to shape the horror of what this might mean.
The platform is almost pitch black, lit only by a small sphere of light at the far end, but I can tell instantly there’s no one here. The air is empty. But I can see a ripple of movement through the blackness on the far platform: what looks like the shape of a man, walking fast and fluid, disappearing into the night. And I can hear someone screaming over and over again—a voice I’d recognize anywhere.
“Jade!” I shout, and I’m running toward the stairs that lead to the footbridge, taking them two at a time, pounding over the bridge and down the other side—and as soon as I reach the bottom she’s there, rushing full tilt at me and wrapping herself around my body. It’s her—the familiar smell of her hair and her skin, the long slim lines of her arms and legs. I say her name again, but it’s choked by the tears rising relentlessly—through my throat, flooding my nose and eyes, the violence of pure relief.
We sink to our knees and crouch there together at the foot of the stairs, her arms pressing tight around my neck. I can feel that she’s trembling, her whole body rocked by trauma. I draw away a little, my eyes roaming over her frantically and checking that she isn’t hurt. She looks unmarked, just the same as always, apart from the burns at her hairline and the tops of her arms. The only thing that is different is the way she is dressed. She’s wearing a short, tight dress that I’ve never seen before, and her cheeks are streaked with mascara, her lips painted bright red.
“Jade, what happened?” I whisper.
She shakes her head, staring at me in pure terror. And there’s something else in her eyes, something I can’t quite understand, something that looks like pity. She tries to speak, but she can’t get the words out, her sobs rising and falling unevenly. She closes her eyes, struggles to calm herself. “The man,” she says at last. “The blond man, the man in the house. He was here.”
For a moment I start to my feet, looking wildly up and down the platform, although I already know he’s gone. I drop back down again, take my daughter’s hands in mine. “What did he do?” I ask, my voice rough with foreboding. “What did he do to you?”
Another shake of the head, and now the tears are falling again and she’s pressing her fists into her eyes, her bare forearms prickled with goose bumps, her head bowed. “I’m sorry,” I think I hear her say. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“What?” I say urgently, gently taking her fists away, peering close into her haunted eyes. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Jade. What do you mean?”
She draws a deep, shuddering breath, and I can see the dread in her face. She doesn’t want to tell me what she has to say, and in the split second before her lips part I have a vague, fluttering sense of premonition and I know what it must be.
“It’s Natalie,” she whispers, and then she chokes, pressing a fist to her mouth.
“I know,” I say quietly.
“The man—the man had a gun. He shot her, Dad, and then he left. I think she’s—I think she’s . . .” She turns her head, and she’s looking behind us, down the length of the platform, into the darkness.
I stand up, keeping Jade in my sights. I take a few paces forward, holding my phone out to shed a small light ahead of me. And there it is. A body lying slumped against the back wall, completely still, a dark stain spreading across the ground. And as I take a step closer, the smell of blood that I can taste in my mouth, acrid and sour.
My head reels, and I’m dragged forward by some nameless force. I don’t want to look but I can’t help it, my eyes hungrily seeking out these sights that I will never be able to unsee—the brutal demolition of this beautiful face that I’ve gazed at hundreds of times, the inscrutable smile I used to love smashed into pulp, the white linen jacket smeared with so much blood I can barely believe it has spilled out of one body. Her eyes are untouched, and wide open. There’s no nameable expression in them, but I have the strangest feeling that she sees me.
Rachel hasn’t followed me. I turn my head and I see her, standing motionless on the opposite platform, staring across at where I am standing. She’s illuminated by the dim streetlamp above her, the light shining around her head like a halo. Her expression is watchful, grave. I stare back at her. She folds her arms in front of her chest, and she starts walking, toward the footbridge, toward us. And I can’t think of anything to do or say that could make this moment any more bearable than it is, so I just go back to the steps and I hold my daughter, dipping my face to her cold, scented hair, my arms tightening around her for what feels like days until, finally, she stops trembling.
EPILOGUE
ALEX
DECEMBER 2018
I’m sitting at the kitchen table, cutting shapes carefully out of silver foil. I’m doing it the way Jade showed me, folding the foil into diamonds, then digging the points of the scissors into the center to cut an intricate pattern that, when I fan it out, should form a symmetrical snowflake. Next will be the lights, which I’ll string up around the window frames; then the finishing touches to the tree and the arrangement of cards. I’ve taken the afternoon off work to get this right. I know I’m being obsessive, but I want this Christmas to be perfect.
At any rate, it won’t be like the last one. Both of us shell-shocked, barely functioning; still trying to process things that couldn’t be processed. I had tried to gather together some semblance of celebration at the eleventh hour, but it was futile, and we’d spent the day staring at the television, watching characters from soap operas hurling insults at each other over the crackers and turkey, and even that I’d envied. At any rate it had to be better than this emptiness. We’d gritted our teeth and got through that hideous week, right up to New Year, and as the bells tolled I’d looked out of the window at the driving sleet and felt it was less than auspicious.
Slowly, though, we started to sift through the wreckage to find something salvageable. The counseling was the start of it for Jade—long hours gently teasing out the complicated, knotted web of trauma and grief and guilt. I was shocked by the violence with which it all came out—the storms of tears, the shouting in the middle of the night, the digging up of old wounds, right back to Heather’s death. But I could see my daughter resurfacing. As the months passed, she began to find pleasure in small things, and to be able to talk about the past without pain, or at any rate without that pain soaking through everything. I’ve clung to these slowly accumulating signs, and at times I could almost think that she’s better. Healed.
Of course it’s not as simple as that. There are still nights—albeit less frequent now—when she wakes drenched in sweat, screaming for me, her damp fingers clinging to my body. And there are times, too, when she sits mute and unresponsive, her face shuttered, her thoughts taking her beyond the normal teenage angst. She was only five when Heather died, and she barely remembers her. But she knows that to lose two mothers is almost uniquely tragic, uniquely painful. It’s the same for me in a way. There’s something darkly comic about it: to lose one wife is unlucky, to lose two looks like carelessness. I was married twice. I had two wives. All these words do is underline the transience of such relationships. They imply desertion, divorce; they don’t have that terminal stamp. I had a mother. I had two.
Counseling has been less helpful for me. There is so much I don’t know, and can never know. I’ve tried to take it piece by piece, cling to the facts I do have, but I keep coming back to that central hub; the possibility of my wife having meant some harm to Jade, and why this could possibly be. Hours spent trying to make some sense out of what seemed so senseless and unforgivable. At times I’ve felt white-hot fury toward her, primal and intense, and I wished that she would spring back to life so that I could put my hands around her slim neck and squeeze it out of her again myself. It’s a fine line, this tightrope between love and hate. I learned not to questi
on it, and to let myself blow from one side to the other as my mood took me. These days, I try not to allow myself too much of this sort of contemplation. But in a way that’s the hardest thing, with Jade: witnessing her grief for a woman who doesn’t deserve her tears. There is no way I can rock her fragile equilibrium any further. And yet sometimes it’s right there on the tip of my tongue, and I want to destroy this image she’s created of a tragic martyr, a woman who died protecting her.
I can’t talk to Jade about this, but I talk to Rachel. Or Caitlin, as everyone else knows her these days. I found it quite amusing when she told me that—the way she’d picked a few letters out of that new name to create Cali, her online identity. Creating falsehood out of falsehood. Strangely though, I struggle to think of her as anything but Rachel, and it’s become our private name, one she only uses with me. I think she likes it, that it reminds her of who she once was, and maybe still is.
We’ve seen a lot of each other these past fifteen months, she and I. At first our time together felt like a necessity. We were immediately close, unthinkingly so. It was the sort of intimacy that transcended convention. We would talk for hours about Natalie—Sadie—trying to make sense of our own pain. She told me about the past, in as much detail as she could remember, or was willing to reveal to me. Occasionally, even now, I push her too hard, and she isn’t afraid to stop me. I don’t think this is helping you, Alex. It’s strange, but I trust her judgment, in a way that I’m not sure I’ve ever trusted anyone’s before.
As the dust settled we became more cautious. This closeness felt more loaded. I introduced her to Jade, explained gently that she was Natalie’s sister and that they had been out of touch for a long time. My daughter instantly took to Rachel, and that in itself worried me. It felt as if I were introducing a new partner, setting up a new crutch, when that wasn’t what this was. I didn’t think I would ever want a woman near me again. I’m still not sure. In my darker moments, even the idea of love feels like more trouble than it’s worth—but sometimes, as Rachel said to me once, trouble just finds you.
The Second Wife Page 29