Perfect Ten

by Jacqueline Ward

  The dog’s stopped barking now. She opens the letter box again and I duck.

  ‘It’s pointless, Caroline. If you’re in there, you need to listen. And listen good. You’re not a fit mother. You never were. So if all this is about thinking you can win, forget it. Forget. It.’

  She clicks off and I hear a car door slam. The engine takes two attempts to start. I take another swig of the cheap wine and feel her words drill into me, shattering any hope that was developing. I look into the lounge and see the ghosts of my family life – you sitting at the kitchen table playing snakes and ladders with Charlie and Laura. Me cooking and laughing and telling everyone that dinner will be ready in a minute.

  The kids running upstairs to wash their hands, and your hands on my waist, your lips on my neck. I’m slipping back into my deep grief, down into a chasm where it was just you and me between the sheets, back to moonlit nights in foreign countries before the kids, where we talked and kissed and promised our lives to each other.

  I gulp down the bottle of wine and stagger upstairs. I change into a tight black dress and heels, underpinned by tarty underwear. I don’t bother with tights, but I smother myself in cheap perfume and draw on make-up until I hardly recognise my own, admittedly blurry, face in the mirror.

  I’m not too pissed to know that staying in will lead to me falling over the precipice of my own grief, but I am too pissed to consider anything except another night in a Premier Inn with a random stranger. Peter Daubney’s stolen credit card doesn’t seem so threatening now – surely if they thought it was me I would have been arrested?

  Full of bravado I call a cab and, when it arrives, I stumble in. The driver looks at me in his rear-view mirror.

  ‘Where to, love?’

  I think. Maybe the Chadderton Premier Inn. Why not make it a hat-trick? I begin to laugh and the driver starts his engine.

  ‘Chaddy Premier Inn, Please.’ He nods and smiles and I feel I have to qualify myself. ‘Meeting my sister.’

  ‘Whatever you say, love.’

  He flicks on the meter and drives off the estate. I suddenly see the glass house in the park.

  ‘Stop. Here. Stop here. This will do, thanks.’

  He pulls up at the kerb.

  ‘Are you sure, love? Look, I can take you home. It’s remote and—’

  ‘I’m fine. Here’s fine.’

  I am fine. I suddenly feel sober. I need to stay away from the Premier Inn. But I need to be out of my house. The in-between will have to wait.

  So I take off my shoes and pad barefoot through the grass in the fading light. The park gates are still open but the glass house is locked. I hurry around the back and find that the back door is also locked. There’s a key in the door inside so I take off my jacket and wrap it around my fist. I smash the window and wait for the alarm to sound, but it doesn’t and I grab the key and unlock the door.

  Once inside I retrieve the laptop. I sit down breathless and check my phone. No calls yet, but I catch a glimpse of my slutty self in the phone reflection and begin to laugh. Not at the situation, because that’s still tragic, but at the fact that this is the first time I’ve managed to break the cycle. The first time I’ve actually thought that I was getting somewhere.

  The Metrolink is just at the other side of the park and I carry the laptop around to the stop. My fingers are itching to log on to made-up Monica’s profile and I almost feel upbeat. The tram rumbles in and it’s virtually deserted. I quickly buy an all-day ticket and find a seat right at the back.

  I momentarily wonder if the account has been removed. But I haven’t done anything wrong, have I? Although you were clearly having sex with Christine, the picture was hardly pornographic. I’ve seen much worse on Facebook. I click into Monica’s account and see she has fourteen messages. I vaguely wonder if the police can see I’ve logged in, or if they will even be bothered. Someone is robbing cheating fucking husbands in local hotels, so a Facebook post is hardly going to be part of their to-do list, is it?

  So you’ve messaged Monica. I knew you would. All Official and Jack-like, of course.

  Please remove the pictures of me you have posted or you will face legal action.

  So you’re having doubts, are you? Getting a bit confused? Wondering if it really is me doing this? It’s horrible when you don’t trust your own instincts, isn’t it? When you feel sure you know the truth but everyone else tells you that you are wrong. If you thought Monica was definitely me you would have private messaged me. By name. I know you, Jack.

  Chapter Ten

  My head’s banging now and I jump off the tram in the city centre and go into Costa Coffee. I buy a bottle of water and a large cappuccino and find a seat.

  I log onto the Costa free Wi-Fi as Jane Smith with a 123@gmail.com email address. I read through Monica’s messages, which are mainly from mutual friends who think they went to school with me and made-up Monica. Keely Jacobs asks if Monica is Caroline’s friend and if they’re doing this together. Paul Barrett wonders if Monica was there that night Jack slept with his sister as he’s never been able to get him to admit it and he needs a witness. Some very anti-Jack sentiments are being expressed here. Anyone would think you were a serial liar.

  I grab the USB from my bag and connect it to the laptop, scrolling through the pictures. I stop at Julie Carson. Something about her has been bugging me since I saw the diary. She always got on my nerves, in any case. One of your work colleagues, so neat and pristine.

  Julie had cropped blonde hair even then. She was compact in every way and always wore indigo jeans and bright white blouses. She had natural class and married the head architect at Johnson Weaver, Francis Carson. But you had to have her. I remember the Christmas party when I was wearing a deep-cut scarlet ball gown and every man in the room had eyes for me.

  Except you. While they gazed at me, a curvy, come-hither blonde with a hint of Marilyn Monroe, your eyes followed Julie around the dancefloor. I swear I even saw you lick your lips as she passed within feet. And she knew. I could always tell when they knew. It was a self-satisfied smirk and lowering of the eyes around you.

  She was focused on her husband, which made you sit up and beg even more. What was this? A woman who didn’t yield to Jack Atkinson’s charm? Of course, back then I just ignored it; I thought Julie was happy with Francis and that she wouldn’t respond to the side glances and the casual touches at the bar.

  In fact, I hadn’t realised that she was one of your conquests until I saw the journal. Until I saw the pictures of you together in Paris. They were fixed into the journal with Sellotape and I only realised when I was removing them to scan them that some had more pictures taped below. I look at them now, a series of scenes around the Louvre and various cafés, you and Julie kissing – you really got the hang of selfies way before they were invented. Photos of you both at Giverny, gazing at Monet’s garden. Then some blurry shots I can’t make out until I look closely and see that they are of the top of a cropped blonde head and your brown brogues are in the background either side.

  I feel sick. My stomach turns as I realise what I’m looking at. It takes several photographs to understand the full picture, but it’s pretty clear. It’s made all the more difficult because our sexual repertoire narrowed after we married. Before we walked up the aisle we tried everything at least once, but after the honeymoon you tailored our sex life to suit yourself. I’d often plan a sexual adventure, something new, fantasise all day about it, buy new underwear and try it on with you, only to be rebuffed and coerced into the ‘usual routine’.

  I blamed it on you being tired, but now I know you were fucking tired. Very tired. Worn out, in fact, from fucking your girlfriends and engaging in what now appears to be oral sex in public places. I can feel my temper rising again and before I know it I’ve got Julie’s Facebook profile up in front of me.

  I can hardly see through the mist of tears, but there she is, her and Francis and two little white dogs, as neatly coiffured as she is. Smiling, ever smiling,
that perfect mouth that’s been around my husband’s cock.

  Monica isn’t friends with Julie so this is going to be more difficult to rationalise. But you’re still friends with her. I can see from your profile that she’s wished you a happy birthday and that there’s a winking smiley. Of course there is. Monica isn’t friends with you now either. Not to worry, though. Plenty of Monica’s friends are friends with you, so hopefully they’ll see the blurry-at-first picture of Julie’s head posted on Monica’s timeline. Then, when they realise what it is, they’ll alert you, won’t they? Well, the ones who know you are a cheating bastard will, anyway.

  That horrible feeling that everyone knew except me creeps over me. It seems impossible that all your friends were oblivious to your behaviour. Some of them must have known but just didn’t want to get involved. But they will on Facebook. Just to be sure, Monica has also shared the picture with Julie in a private message.

  The impact is almost immediate. The photo is shared five times and I receive a message from Julie.

  I know this is you, Caroline. I’m calling the police. Jack’s right. You’re completely crazy.

  I close the laptop and finish my coffee. Then I hop back onto a tram and travel around the Metrolink for the rest of the evening, watching the carnage as all your friends realise what the picture is and share it far and wide. I think some people are really enjoying this. Some fickle friends who were never sure if you were fucking their wives and girlfriends or not.

  I can sense a tone of retribution in some of the comments, as if people have been waiting for you to be found out. I did know somewhere deep inside that not everyone could have the same low morals as you. That some people wouldn’t approve. The sad thing is, though, that they’d feel it was none of their business and keep quiet. But Facebook has a habit of bringing out the worst in people, and from behind a keyboard, where you can’t overpower with your strong reasoned, almost threatening arguments, it will be easier to join in the finger-pointing and sharing.

  I am a little bit worried about Julie calling the police, if I’m honest. I wonder if it’s struck her that she’s going to have to admit to giving a married man a blow job while he photographs her, in public, while she’s on a secret trip that her husband doesn’t know about. I know you, Jack; you’ll be telling people that it isn’t you in the picture. That it could be anyone. That everyone’s just jumped to conclusions because of the Christine pictures.

  But right now you will know that it’s definitely me who has the journal and that I’m Monica. You know it’s you in the pictures and you’ll go to any lengths to convince people it isn’t. The fact that my phone isn’t ringing out with DS Percy’s number tells me that Julie hasn’t made a complaint. I wait and wait and eventually she posts a comment on the picture that has been shared on her friend’s timeline that this isn’t her and Jack Atkinson like everyone’s saying and that she’s going to sue anyone who suggests it is.

  Which is almost laugh-out-loud funny because no one has actually mentioned your name and you’re not in the picture, just as she isn’t. It could be anyone, but Julie has just filled in the schema gaps for everyone and completed the puzzle.

  You’ll be complaining right now, though, arguing that both those pictures are from your missing journal – and DS Percy, who is, as far as I could see from my comments about my Premier Inn activity, fairly strait-laced, will be wondering what exactly is in this journal – and blaming me. Who keeps a journal full of sexual mementoes of their infidelity? What kind of person does that?

  It won’t just be DS Percy wondering what kind of person you are. If you’re shouting loudly that these pictures that are oh-so obviously of you aren’t, your Facebook friends who, let’s face it, are more hangers-on who are interested in the dramas of our divorce which you were very public about on social media – poor misunderstood Jack, boo-hoo – will be wondering why there are so many pictures of Jack Atkinson having sex in circulation. After all, someone would have had to take them and you’re the common denominator in all of them.

  I look at your profile now and all this has certainly boosted your number of friends: more than a hundred new friends since this morning. Naturally, you’ll think that they are all sympathisers, swelling behind the Caroline-hating ranks like before, all ready to defend you.

  But I know that they’re ghoulish voyeurs, hooked on the drama already. They love it. Tonight they’ll be huddled around the laptop, watching you and Christine and Julie wriggle and squirm your way out of this. Or not. Fair-weather friends, waiting to pounce when you show a weakness.

  The same people have sent me friend requests. It’s been hard for me, not least because these are some of our mutual friends who dropped me like a brick when it looked like I was crazy. There were a few who believed me, stood by me, but a year later and a houseful of crap means that they don’t call round too often. You can only tell your story of heartbreak so many times before their eyes glass over and they check their Facebook. Which is good for me now as they’ll all be watching this. I haven’t accepted a single friend request. It will just look like I’m not looking at Facebook and I’m not engaged with this at all.

  I log on to Twitter and make a profile for made-up Monica and connect it to her Facebook account. Kill two birds with one stone. I post a series of tweets and pictures and within minutes someone has made a #teamCaro hashtag, which is slightly worrying as it connects me, but, on the other hand, it’s just support. I didn’t post it. Good. Someone comes back with a #teamJack, some guy defending you with a pointless argument about open marriages that only fuels the fire. Even better.

  So, Jack, who has the edge now? I look at my watch. It’s miraculous. A personal breakthrough. I’ve managed to survive what started out as a desperate evening without sinking into the in-between. Admittedly, I bottomed a bottle of wine but I managed to pull myself out of the mire and I’ve done something productive. Unfortunately, my good feeling about tonight is spoiled when I pass a Premier Inn and remember that I’m a suspect in a robbery case and someone has pissed-up pictures of me.

  Time to go home. No doubt tomorrow I’ll have to face the music. I glance at the laptop screen and see that the pictures have been shared more and more widely. Comments are appearing and there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that it was you in the picture with Julie. Francis doesn’t appear to have a Facebook account so perhaps she’s got away with it, but just imagine the stress she will go through, wondering if someone has shown him.

  Just in case they haven’t, I make a Hotmail account in Monica’s name and check the Johnson Weaver website. Francis still works there and I click on his email address. I attach the most obvious picture and a message telling him to look on his wife’s Facebook account and press send. That should cover everything. Like Christine’s husband, he has the right to know about his wife’s fucking around.

  I can see a pattern forming. The human brain likes patterns and thrives on making order out of chaos. Kind of arranging similar things into groups. Like cheating husbands and unfaithful wives. Before long people will really start to realise just what a liar you were, and still are.

  Chapter Eleven

  Someone’s banging on the front door and I open one eye and see it’s light. My phone tells me it’s three minutes to eight, so I’ve overslept. When I pull back the curtain I see DS Percy talking to the delivery man who is trying to leave a large box in my garden.

  I pull my dressing gown on and hurry to the front door.

  ‘It’s OK. I’m here. Bring it in.’

  I realise I’m shaking. This is it. She’s going to arrest me. I stand back and the delivery man pushes the box into the already overcrowded lounge. He stands with his hands on his hips.

  ‘You can get your money back on stuff, you know, love. You don’t have to keep them. You just ask for a return label and I come and …’ I stare at him and he stares past me into the kitchen, where the towers of crap provide their own landscape. I know he wants to help but, right now, it’s not helpin
g at all. He shakes his head, turns and walks away. ‘Or you could give them to charity.’

  I could. But I’m not going to. Not at the moment, anyway. Not until I’m in a position to get my kids back. I feel a little bit of bile rise as DS Percy and two colleagues walk up the path. I try to breathe deeply and feel a little calmer when I remember that I stored Monica’s laptop in a carrier bag in the hole last night before I went to bed. Just thinking about it makes me want to check the carnage caused by posting Julie’s blow-job, but I can’t.

  DC Percy approaches me. I can’t see any handcuffs or anything. I resist the urge to step backwards and cower amongst the boxes.

  ‘Morning, Caroline. I wonder if you could come to the station with us to help us with our inquiries?’

  I fold my arms and unfold them. I don’t want to look defensive.

  ‘Am I under arrest?’

  She looks around and pauses. Then she moves closer to me.

  ‘Look, I know you have a number of problems.’ She gazes past me into the house. ‘And I understand where you are coming from regarding your ex-husband’s accusations, which we need to look into further. But my priority now is to find out what happened at the Premier Inn. And the other man two weeks ago. And if they’re linked.’

  I just nod. Did I tell her I’d slept with him as well? I can’t remember. Her mobile starts to ring and I see her glance at the screen. She’s so close that I can see your name flashing. Jack Atkinson. She cancels the call and continues in a very controlled voice.

  ‘We’ll need to take a statement and it’s best that you tell us everything you know.’

  I get dressed and we travel to the police station. I’m left in an interview room. I call the university and tell Eileen that I have to deal with the accusations Jack made. She makes all the right noises and tells me to take as much time as I need.

  Then I check my Facebook profile on my phone. I read the messages and all but the one from Julie say things like, ‘God, Caroline, we didn’t know Jack was such a bastard,’ or, ‘Did you know about this before, Caroline?’ One person has even come out and said it. ‘So it was all lies then, about you being a fruitcake? He really is a philandering prick? So sorry, Caroline.’