by Alison James
The Man She Married
A gripping psychological thriller with a heart-pounding twist
Alison James
Books by Alison James
The School Friend
The Man She Married
* * *
The Detective Rachel Prince series
1. Lola is Missing
2. Now She’s Gone
3. Perfect Girls
AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
The School Friend (available in the UK and US)
* * *
The Detective Rachel Prince series
1. Lola is Missing (available in the UK and US)
2. Now She’s Gone (available in the UK and US)
Contents
Prologue
Part I
1. Alice
2. Alice
3. Alice
4. Alice
5. Alice
6. Alice
7. Alice
8. Alice
9. Alice
10. Alice
11. Alice
12. Alice
13. Alice
14. Alice
15. Alice
16. Alice
17. Ben
18. Ben
19. Ben
20. Ben
21. Ben
22. Ben
23. Ben
24. Ben
25. Ben
26. Ben
Part II
27. Alice
28. Alice
29. Alice
30. Alice
31. Alice
32. Alice
33. Alice
34. Alice
35. Alice
36. Alice
37. Alice
38. Alice
39. Alice
Part III
40. Alice
41. Alice
42. Alice
43. Alice
44. Alice
Epilogue
Lola is Missing
Hear More from Alison
Books by Alison James
A Letter from Alison
Now She’s Gone
Perfect Girls
The School Friend
To Clare, Ali and Vanessa.
‘Friendship never ends’
straw man
noun
* * *
a person regarded as having no substance or integrity.
‘It has been suggested that straw widow derives from straw man[…]According to this hypothesis, to the extent that a straw man is not a real man, a straw widow is not a real widow.’
Grass Widows and Straw Men by Anatoly Liberman
Prologue
I approach the open coffin, balanced on trestles at the centre of the silent room. Heavy velvet drapes are drawn discreetly over the window, and in the corner a lamp is lit, next to an arrangement of silk flowers on a tall stand.
As I draw closer, I glimpse the tip of his nose against the pleated white satin of the coffin lining. The sight is so odd and other-worldly, it makes my head swim and the carpeted floor feel unsteady under my feet. My heart is pounding as I get close enough to see him; all of him.
I have no idea who gave the undertaker the suit and tie he’s wearing; I only know it wasn’t me. I take in the curve of his mouth, the sweep of hair from his forehead, the angles of his profile. On his left hand is a wedding ring. I remove my own wedding ring and drop it into the coffin.
The only thought in my mind is how this is like one of those riddles you find inside a Christmas cracker. Because the man lying inside my husband’s coffin is not my husband.
He’s a total stranger.
Part One
One
Alice
Now
‘Of course, you know it’s all a bunch of total bullshit?’
‘What is?’ I ask, although I already know the answer to my question.
‘Valentine’s Day.’ My friend JoJo speaks with the gusto of the true non-believer. ‘It’s just a retail con to make you buy a load of pink and red tat.’ She takes a triumphant slurp of her latte. ‘The original St Valentine was struck off the list of saints by the Vatican anyway.’
‘I don’t think people give a toss about the facts,’ I retort, placing my own coffee cup in its saucer and admiring the gleaming surfaces of my freshly manicured scarlet nails. ‘They just relish the excuse to ramp up the romance.’
‘And is that what you’re doing?’ JoJo gives me a sharp look. ‘Ramping up the romance? Even though you’re an old married lady these days?’
I’m snatching a quick half-hour with my best friend at Bean & Beaker, our favourite coffee shop on Chamberlayne Road. I’ve taken the afternoon off work to shop for and cook a special Valentine’s Day supper for my husband. Since I’m the owner of a company – a rapidly expanding catering business covering corporate events and weddings – I can take time off whenever I like. That’s the theory, at least. In practice, it’s difficult when we’re so busy. The approach of spring means a flurry of weddings, on top of our work for the media awards season.
I smile, aware I must look coy. ‘We’ve been through our ups and downs, but since… you know…’
‘That crazy woman,’ JoJo interjects.
‘Yes. Since then… things have been great. Really great, in fact.’ I can’t stop the flood of colour rising to my cheeks.
JoJo notices. Of course she does. ‘Aliiiiice?’ she draws out my name. ‘Anything you care to share with Auntie JoJo?’
I look down at my vermilion fingertips again, picking up the teaspoon from my saucer and turning it over and over. ‘Don’t say a word. To anyone. Promise.’
‘Of course I promise. Go on – spit it out!’ JoJo’s excited grin makes it obvious she’s guessed what I’m about to say. She knows me only too well.
I glance round the coffee shop, crowded with school-run mummies and their Bugaboos, lowering my voice to a stage whisper. ‘I think I might be pregnant.’
‘You think?’
I open my bag wide enough for JoJo to get a glimpse of a pregnancy test box. ‘I’m going to do the test this evening, before Dom gets home.’ I see something cross her face; a look of concern. ‘What?’
‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’
‘Of course! I’m nearly thirty-four.’
‘I mean “you” plural. Is Dom ready to be a dad?’
‘Of course he is.’ I’m aware I sound defensive. ‘He’s the same age as I am.’
‘I don’t mean his age. Look, we both know I’m no expert.’ At thirty-six, JoJo is defiantly single, her longest relationship having not quite made it to the twelve-month mark. ‘But you’ve been married… how many years is it now?’
‘Coming up to three.’
‘Exactly. Not that long. And you’d only just met when you married. Since then there have been some challenges, to put it mildly.’ She reaches across the table for my hand. ‘Sweetie, I’m delighted for you if you are pregnant; of course I am. I’m just saying, having a child places extra stress on a relationship.’
I give her a beatific smile. ‘It will be a fresh start. A joint project. That’s how I’m looking at it. And we did put off having a baby for a while, in the early days of our marriage when Dom wasn’t ready. But with me hitting my mid-thirties… well, we can’t put it off forever, can we?’
We pay for our coffee and JoJo sets off to her flat in Notting Hill Gate to pick up her work as a freelance editor with a cheerful, ‘Back to the grindstone for me, chick!’
I wander over to Kilburn High Road, buying a selection of cheeses, salad and artisan bread from the deli, some sea bass from our favourite fishmonger, a bottle of pink champagne and some overpriced chocolates in a heart-shaped box fr
om the supermarket’s express branch. JoJo would scoff at this last purchase, but I see it as a poignant symbol of the new life in our marriage. A heart, just like the tiny new one that could be beating inside me. And Dom has always been a closet chocoholic. I know the best way to sweeten him up.
I trudge back to Waverley Gardens with my purchases in several carrier bags. As ever, my heart lifts a little when I round the bend in the crescent and see the house. My house.
* * *
Of course, it’s our house now, but for a few years, it was just mine.
People frequently commented on this. ‘That’s weird,’ they’d say to me, ‘a single girl living in a four-bedroom, three-bathroom house with a huge garden, all on her own.’
Depending on my mood at the time, I might or might not have challenged them. I inherited a large sum of money – enough to buy the house mortgage-free and start a business of my own – when my mother died from breast cancer. At the time, I was twenty-five and my brother David was twenty-seven. The money from Mum’s estate came straight to us because we’d already lost our father to congenital heart disease eight years earlier.
‘You’re so lucky,’ was the other thing people would say to me. Again, depending on how I was feeling, I might simply agree or I might point out that I only had the security of this lovely house in one of West London’s leafier inner suburbs because I was an orphan. Did they consider that being lucky? I’d lost both my parents, whom I loved dearly. I’d lost their protection. And being well-off compared to my struggling twenty-something peers was very isolating. People used the word ‘heiress’ about me in the same way you might say ‘werewolf’.
You’d think owning the perfect party pad would put you at the centre of things socially, but the parties I went to back then continued to be thrown in grotty rented flats. I actually lost friends because of my ‘luck’. My financial status created a gulf, socially. I knew my house was too big to live in alone, and I tried renting out a room to someone – a friend of a friend – but it didn’t work out. She treated the place like a squat, so I stopped. I still planned to fill the place, but with a husband and children instead of lodgers. It turned out that was a lot harder to achieve than I had imagined. Potential boyfriends were intimidated by my having more financial clout than them. It hurt their alpha pride.
But not Dominic. He wasn’t bothered about it in the least. He was different to all the others.
* * *
I walk up the tiled pathway, drop the bags in the porch and grope for my key, then kick the door open with my foot, hefting the shopping through the hall and into the kitchen. By the time I’ve made a salad, arranged the cheese on the cheeseboard and prepared the fish, it’s six o’clock. I text Dominic.
When will you be home? X
I head to the bathroom with the pregnancy test kit, having forced myself to wait until I’d prepared supper before using it. As I rip off the cellophane packaging with impatient fingers, Dom replies.
Not long now – maybe 30–40 minutes. X
I position myself over the toilet bowl and pee onto the plastic stick. While I’m waiting the required two minutes, I start running a bath, throwing in a generous amount of scented oil. With the test stick positioned on the edge of the bath, I lower myself into the warm, fragrant water and allow myself a brief, blissful soak, before I reach for the stick.
There’s a single word in the second window: Pregnant.
I stare at it for several minutes with a stupid grin on my face, letting the water cool around me. Then I haul myself out of the bath and go back into the bedroom. I’m about to place the test stick on Dominic’s pillow as the Valentine’s surprise to end all Valentine’s surprises, but my excitement gets the better of me and I send him a photo of the positive test result captioned with just a pregnant woman emoji, a baby bottle emoji and finally a shocked face emoji. We don’t normally engage in text banter during the working day, but today is not normal. Not at all.
I dry myself and moisturise my skin all over, lingering to cradle the slight curve of my stomach. Then I put on some pretty lace underwear and choose a dress from the rail in the dressing room. I decide against pink – too much of a cliché, despite the evening’s clichéd theme – and opt instead for a wine-red wrap dress and nude heels. I carefully straighten my shock of mouse-brown hair, then twist it into a messy updo and create what women’s magazines would call ‘an evening look’ with my make-up. Will Dominic notice? I wonder. Probably. He’s never liked me looking what he calls ‘tarted up’. But lately he’s been making more of an effort with the compliments and positive reinforcement.
I glance over at my phone screen for a response to the test stick picture, but there are no new notifications. He must be behind the wheel of his car and not looking at his messages.
Downstairs, the house feels chilly, so I light the fire in the sitting room, adding a few candles for good measure. There isn’t any food preparation left to do, so I toss some crisps into a bowl and get out the champagne flutes.
But then I hesitate. The problem with opening champagne – especially pink champagne on Valentine’s night – is that it requires an audience. It would look a little odd if I started drinking it before Dominic gets home, and besides, I need to watch my alcohol intake now. Instead, I pull a half-empty bottle of white wine from the door of the fridge and pour just an inch into a glass, topping it up with fizzy water. Not enough to do any harm to the baby, I reason, just a taster. I take the glass through to drink in front of the fire, curling my feet under me on the sofa and flicking through a copy of Elle Decoration.
When I look up again, it’s after seven o’clock. Dominic is now officially late, which is by no means unusual. As finance director of a multinational construction firm, his hours are long and irregular and there’s a good chance someone grabbed him for an informal meeting just as he planned to leave. So I’m not worried, but I am a little irritated. Especially since I’ve let the pregnancy cat out of the bag without waiting for him to get home. And because the option of refilling my wine glass and blocking out the irritation is no longer open to me.
I glance at my phone, but there are no new calls or messages. Sighing, I go into the kitchen, and turn on the oven in readiness for baking the fish. Once the fish is neatly parcelled up, I top up my wine glass with more sparkling water, mix a salad dressing and check my phone again. It’s almost seven thirty. Dominic was supposed to be home around an hour ago. My pregnancy announcement WhatsApp has two blue ticks, but my call to his mobile rings out, then eventually goes to voicemail. Instead of leaving him a message, I cut the call and FaceTime JoJo.
‘Wow – you look great,’ JoJo says as soon as she answers. ‘Pretty dress.’ She indicates her own sweater and leggings combo, ‘Bet you’re glad I made the effort.’
‘I did the test.’
Her eyes widen. ‘And?’
‘It was positive.’
‘Oh my God, that’s amazing! Have you told Dom yet?’
I force a small smile. ‘I messaged him, but I haven’t heard back. He said he’d be home an hour ago.’
‘Have you tried calling him?’
‘He’s not picking up.’
JoJo scowls into the screen. ‘Bloody idiot. Tell you what, I’ll come over and celebrate with you. I’ll eat his share of the meal, too. What are we having?’
‘Sea bass. And pink champagne. Which I can’t really have now, obviously.’
‘Even better: more for me. I’ll get m’coat.’
We both know she’s joking, but I almost wish she wasn’t. ‘It would probably be more fun, to be honest,’ I sigh. ‘I expect he’ll be home soon, but I’ve lost my nerve a bit when it comes to the whole Valentine’s pregnancy announcement thing.’
‘Where do you think he is?’
I shrug. ‘Something’s probably held him up at work. It just would have been nice if he could have told me. It is Valentine’s night, after all.’
‘Are you sure that’s all it is? It’s not like Dom hasn’
t got form.’
This can’t be anything to do with her, I think. That’s all over: Dominic dealt with it. I know for a fact he did, because at the time I was standing right next to him at the front desk of the police station.
‘I’m sure,’ I say firmly. ‘We’re fine now. Better than ever. But this is a bit slack, even for him.’
‘Why don’t you call his office? Just to be sure.’
After pacing and fretting for a further half an hour, I take her advice and dial the number for Dominic’s PA. Predictably, she has gone home. Eventually, after trying a few numbers, I manage to get hold of someone on the reception desk, who says that Mr Gill definitely left the building around six fifteen. He drove to work today because of a tube strike, so I ask them to check the car park. Sure enough, his car has gone. It’s now eight fifteen. The drive home from Silvertown doesn’t usually take longer than twenty minutes, thirty if the traffic is particularly bad. I put the fish back in the fridge and go upstairs to the bedroom, where I take off my dress and heels and put on jeans and a hoodie. I return to the sofa and sit there, dejected, no longer wanting to think about the fact that I’m carrying a child.