The Happy Couple: An absolutely unputdownable and gripping psychological thriller

by Samantha Hayes

  Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Definitely do not cry.

  ‘Lou?’ Jo says, concerned when there’s silence.

  ‘Oww,’ Louise finally says, sucking in air and making a pained sound. ‘Hang on, Jo… oh God, oww.’ Then there’s more noise, some kind of shuffling and banging.

  ‘Lou? Are you OK? Please, say something.’

  No reply. The line is dead. Nothing. Jo holds the phone away from her, staring at the screen. Call ended.

  ‘Oh no, Lou,’ she says, quickly calling back, wishing she hadn’t gone on about herself so much.

  Hi, this is Louise Ward… I can’t take your call right now but please leave a message and—

  Jo hits redial three more times and it still doesn’t connect. ‘Lou, please be OK. Please connect.’

  What if she’s gone into labour? What if the shock of what you just told her sent her blood pressure soaring and she’s haemorrhaging – or worse?

  ‘Landline,’ Jo thinks, pulling up Louise’s contact on her phone. ‘Maybe her phone ran out of battery.’

  It answers on the fourth ring. Relief.

  ‘Hey, Archie, it’s Jo here. How are you…? Yes, yes, I’m not too bad, thanks. I was just talking to Lou but we got cut off. I think her phone must have died. Can I have a quick word to finish up?’

  Because I need to make her think I’m not mad. And I don’t want her going to the police behind my back, thinking she’s helping…

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Jo, she’s not here right now. She should be back soon though. Let me see, what time is it now?’ A pause as Archie checks. Jo hears Radio 4 on in the background. She imagines him in the kitchen, chopping up vegetables for his famous pork meatball soup. ‘She’s a bit late home, actually. Probably got held up at work. I know there’s a big case on at the moment.’

  Jo is silent. Tries to swallow but her mouth is dry. Does she tell him that Louise has lied? That she told her she was with him right now, that wherever she is, she isn’t feeling at all well? Does she betray her confidence – that she’s clearly fibbing about her health to Archie, making out everything is fine, that she’s working and feeling great, when she isn’t? After all, as an obstetrician, Archie knows the dangers of pre-eclampsia, would insist on bed rest if he knew what she was doing. Perhaps even have her admitted to hospital. And yet, Louise is lying to Jo as well – telling her that she’s resting, taking it easy. But she’s not. She’s still at work. Conning them both that everything is fine.

  Christ, Louise could be lying on the floor in her office right now, writhing in pain, bleeding, her phone dead and no one hearing her call for help.

  ‘She’s not there?’ Jo says, her voice wavering. She doesn’t know what to say, especially since Louise told her about the argument they’d had. She hopes they’ve made up by now. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No, she’s not, and I’m sure. But I’ll tell her you called when she gets back. How’s the house-sitting going, anyway? Lou has told me all about it.’

  ‘Yes, fine, thanks,’ Jo replies as the photograph slips from her grip again. And when she refocuses on the room, Will is gone.

  Twenty-Nine

  You OK? Jo had texted again, before everything had gone black and she’d shut out the world.

  Unintentionally.

  It was as if something had swept over her – a thick, dark blanket hiding her. She wasn’t even aware of it happening.

  Sleep.

  She was exhausted, and had woken on the sofa. But she hadn’t rested well – she’d been agitated, sweaty and filled with dreams she didn’t want to be a part of. She was concerned about Louise, of course – though not in a way that had her panicking or phoning hospitals or interfering by telling Archie what had happened. Besides, if Louise hadn’t actually arrived home last night, Archie would have called her, asked her what she knew.

  And while Louise might be heavily pregnant, and not without medical complications, she wasn’t stupid. Far from it. She was a high-achieving woman who knew how to look after herself. If Jo had had to be concerned about either Louise or Archie, she’d have chosen Archie every time. He might bring new life into the world virtually every day, his big hands cradling tiny newborns, but he didn’t come without his own Venn diagram of complicated emotions. Past hurt caught up with vulnerability, crossing the line with pride. He seemed to move from one intersection to another – and he’d often chatted it out with Will. Jo wondered if he confided as much in his other male friends, if he had anyone to talk to now – apart from Louise, of course.

  Similarly, Louise had Archie for support. A good man in her life. Someone to notice if she wasn’t back home from work or was upset or struggling or simply in need of a hug. Someone who could read the little signals, decipher the tiniest of expression changes or the way she moved, the lightest of sighs. Plus she had her colleagues to watch out for her while she was in the office. People who would notice if she was ill or in trouble or if she didn’t show up when she was meant to. Louise was ensconced in life. Wrapped up in it. She will be fine. The baby will be fine.

  ‘But will I be fine?’ Jo whispers, stretching out, wishing she’d made it upstairs to bed.

  And that’s what hurts the most, she’d thought as she’d tossed and turned through the night. Jo didn’t have that any more. She’d been stripped of her cheerleader. The one who understood her the best. Her go-to person when her feelings got the better of her. Happy or sad, or anything in between, the one person she’d always want to tell first about anything that happened to her was Will.

  And he didn’t even have the decency to take his bloody phone so I could call, keep sending him messages even if they weren’t being read.

  It would have been some kind of connection, at least, until perhaps, one day, he found the courage to reply. Part of her wanted the chance to make him annoyed and switch off his phone or let his battery run out on purpose. She wanted to be a nuisance. Wanted some kind of reaction from him. But she didn’t even have that as an option. Will had made sure of it by leaving his phone behind.

  Meantime, Jo had it permanently on charge in her bedroom, watching and waiting – random and expected messages coming in, of course, but getting fewer and further between as the weeks went by, as his contacts learnt what had happened. And there was certainly nothing received that gave any clue to his whereabouts or what had happened.

  It had been left on his desk at work that day. D-Day. Along with his keys and his wallet. His jacket, too. And his car was in the car park.

  ‘I saw him park in his usual spot this morning,’ Dean, head of history and one of Will’s favourite colleagues, had said as she’d ventured into the school tentatively that afternoon. As arranged earlier in the morning, she’d been waiting outside the school gates and they were going to go home together via the supermarket. But she’d been there ages and Jo had guessed Will had been caught up with a meeting that had run on, or perhaps had to cover an after-school activity at short notice. He could have at least texted to let me know, she’d thought, deciding to go inside, fed up of waiting.

  Security was strict, but she managed to slip inside the passcoded door as a pupil was coming out. The woman at reception turned her back just as Jo walked past. Then Dean had found her, looking lost in a corridor, asking if he could help. He recognised her as Will’s wife. Jo explained what had happened.

  ‘Oh, well, I’ve not seen him at all this afternoon, I’m afraid, but that’s not unusual. This place is huge. Let’s check the staffroom and his other various haunts. You’ve tried calling him, I assume?’

  Jo had nodded, following Dean as they briskly walked the corridors. No sign of him. Then, on the way to Will’s office, they’d ducked out of a side door into the car park at the back of the main building to check if his car was there. The easiest indicator if he was still in the building, as it was much closer than trekking all the way to the staffroom to see if he’d logged out yet.

  ‘He’s probably forgotten our arrangement and gone home already,’ Jo said, adding
a laugh to indicate she wasn’t bothered. Even though she was.

  And they’d found it – Will’s Renault sitting there, with Dean confirming that’s where he always parked, only a couple of spots along from him. She knew Will got on with Dean, that he was one of the good guys who refused to be tied up in the red tape and policies the system enforced, treating the pupils as individuals rather than part of an anonymous whole. They often went to the pub together after work on a Friday, Will getting back late, the cobwebs from a stressful week having been blown away.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll turn up soon enough, Jo,’ Dean had said as they stood in Will’s empty office – a small space he shared with the other drama department staff. ‘And if I run into him, I’ll let him know you’re waiting.’ Dean had smiled then, Jo waving a breezy goodbye as he left her to it. She stood there, wondering if she should gather up Will’s phone, keys and wallet that were left on his desk and keep them safe, or leave them where they were. The very fact that he’d left them there indicated he was coming back, that he’d be stranded without them, that he trusted his colleagues. So she decided against it.

  And, as she’d headed out of Wroxdown High School that afternoon, she hadn’t been particularly worried or concerned about Will, not in that way. More annoyed than anything. It had only been forty-five minutes since he wasn’t where he should be at that point. But as the hours had gone on, as the afternoon had turned into evening, as the school had closed and Jo couldn’t reach the office any more to see if they had news, as Will’s phone repeatedly kept going to voicemail when she rang it and the WhatsApp messages she sent were left unread and unanswered, Jo was the only one overthinking Will’s absence. No one else seemed to care. Everyone was just getting on with their lives.

  Jo stretches again, her muscles aching and sore as she remembers last night, how Louise had lied to her and Archie, that she hadn’t been resting at all. She hopes she’s OK, wondering if Archie gave her a talking-to when she got home. She’s known Louise long enough to figure that she’d have got caught up in an important case, was stringing them both along for the sake of a client. She knows how stubborn her friend is. Though she’s hardly been Miss Squeaky Clean herself when it’s come to divulging her deepest and darkest feelings. She’d tried not to spew certain things out last night, but now wishes she’d kept quiet about what she’d found upstairs. She must have sounded like a crazy woman.

  Something warm and heavy weighs down on her hip as she sits up.

  ‘Oh, Bonnie,’ she says, stroking the cat. Jo fumbles around for her phone, wanting to check the time. But the battery is dead. She goes through to the kitchen, rubbing her stiff neck. ‘Five twenty. Really?’ She groans, glancing at the clock, knowing if she goes up to bed now, she won’t sleep anyway.

  She plugs in her phone just as Spangle heaves himself out of his bed, trotting across the room, letting out a cross between a yap and a whine, his tail wagging furiously. He gives the cat something between a nuzzle and a nudge with his nose as Bonnie slinks around her legs. They’re both hungry.

  ‘Hey, boy,’ she says, reaching out a hand. Then she shudders, spotting the photograph of Will staring up at her from the kitchen table. One of many that she’d spread out and arranged from her findings upstairs.

  ‘It’s real then, Spangle,’ she whispers, picking it up. ‘I actually stole keys, went into a private room and snooped through someone’s personal belongings. And I found what I didn’t want to find. My missing husband. Many, many times over. But why?’

  In the utility room, she opens up a sachet of cat food for Bonnie and mixes up some meat and biscuits for Spangle, putting the bowls down in their separate spots.

  ‘There’s more stuff up there,’ Jo whispers as she washes her hands. ‘Though I’m not sure I can bring myself to look. Surely I’ve seen enough…’ she says, staring at her ghostly reflection in the window above the sink. Her eyes appear sunken, ringed with grey, her hair a ratty frizz around her shoulders, the darkness outside making her look even more wan. She’s still in yesterday’s sweat top, although she’d slipped off her uncomfortable jeans to sleep. ‘Surely finding a shrine to my missing husband is all I need to know?’

  Then PC Janine Daniels is on her mind. ‘If you have any news or think of anything that could help us trace your husband, however seemingly trivial, then do pick up the phone, OK?’ She’d placed a hand on her arm then, given a comforting smile – which was no comfort at all in reality. But Jo had appreciated the gesture.

  So you think that discovering a dozen or more photographs of Will printed out from his social media found in an unknown woman’s home isn’t worth calling PC Daniels about?

  Jo shakes her head, knowing she can’t phone the police. Not yet. Not until she’s worked things out, had time to think.

  Her thoughts are interrupted by her phone lighting up and a text coming in.

  ‘Louise,’ she says, sighing out in relief as she opens the message.

  All fine here. Feeling better today. It’s you I’m more worried about, Jo. Call me when you can xx

  Thirty

  After she’s made coffee and the animals have eaten, Jo takes Spangle for an early walk around the village. She plans on taking him for a longer run later, perhaps down to the beach again, but for now her mind is preoccupied with other things. She lets the dog off the lead when they reach the edge of the village and they’re safely surrounded by countryside. Spangle immediately pushes through a five-bar gate and bounds off through an empty field. Jo waits, leaning on the gate, letting him have ten minutes to burn off at least some of his energy and do what he needs to do. As soon as Jo calls him back, he obeys and runs towards her, tongue lolling, ears flapping – only a slight look of disappointment in his eyes as Jo clips on the lead.

  Fifteen minutes later, Jo unlocks the front door, holding Spangle back as he’s about to charge in. ‘Wait, boy,’ she says, reaching for the dog towel she left just inside the door. She’s standing on the drive, rubbing him down, cleaning up his muddy paws, when she becomes aware of a noise coming from next door – a car – either Simon leaving or arriving home. Jo glances at her watch: 6.38 a.m.

  ‘He’s been out early,’ she whispers to Spangle, allowing him inside now he’s clean. A quick glance over her shoulder, and through the thicket of shrubs and trees separating the properties, the bang of the front door tells Jo that Simon has just arrived back from somewhere. She has no idea from where at this hour. ‘Perhaps he went to get milk,’ she says to herself, shrugging, closing the door.

  Jo settles the dog and makes herself another hot drink, grabbing some toast and butter, even though she doesn’t feel in the least hungry. Food has been low down her list lately, but she needs energy – mental energy more than physical, she thinks, as she spreads jam on her toast, knowing she has to put everything in the locked room back exactly as she found it.

  She only manages to eat one of the two pieces of toast as she looks at the photographs of Will that she brought downstairs last night. She counts thirteen in total; most are fairly recent, from just before he disappeared, but one or two are from about eight years ago. Jo checks Will’s Facebook page yet again. She virtually knows the order of his pictures and posts off by heart anyway, the various photos and cover pictures he has in his collection. She’s on his friends list, naturally, and knows not all of his photos are visible publicly. As Jo checks them off, it turns out that all apart from three of the photographs on the table have come from Facebook, and all are available to view by anyone. Will has had most of them as profile pictures at one time or another. The others were from posts he was tagged in by someone else; several he’d shared widely about theatre productions he’d been in.

  ‘Safe to say that whoever has printed these, presumably Suzanne, isn’t his Facebook friend,’ Jo says, looking at Spangle to make her feel a fraction less crazy for talking to herself.

  Of course, since seeing the photos of him on the house-sitting website, Jo has already trawled through Will’s friends li
st. Twelve hundred friends, and a search for one called Suzanne didn’t yield likely results. There were five Susans, three Susis and one Susanne, but without the ‘z’. And while Jo was familiar with a couple of the names, none of them seemed to come from the South Coast – or looked anything like this Suzanne. It was safe to say the owner of Hawthorn Lodge was not on Will’s social media.

  After she’s snapped photos on her phone of all the pictures laid out on the table, Jo gathers them up and takes them back upstairs to the locked room – the room that’s not locked any more. She stares at the mess she made, feeling guilty about the pretty perfume bottle that got broken – vintage-looking and made from pale green glass. The room now smells of sweet roses, reminding her of the scent her grandmother used to wear.

  She’s just tidying the final few things, eyeing up the couple of shoeboxes under the bed with various papers poking out from beneath the lids, when she freezes, holding one of the scented candles in her hand. She could swear she heard something – a bang from outside, perhaps. As she listens, she hears herself breathing, her pulse whooshing in her ears.