The Marriage

by K. L. Slater

  The Marriage

  An absolutely jaw-dropping psychological thriller

  K.L. Slater

  Books by K.L. Slater

  The Marriage

  The Girl She Wanted

  Little Whispers

  Single

  The Silent Ones

  Finding Grace

  Closer

  The Secret

  The Visitor

  The Mistake

  Liar

  Blink

  Safe With Me

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Blink

  Hear More from K.L. Slater

  Books by K.L. Slater

  A Letter from K.L. Slater

  The Girl She Wanted

  Little Whispers

  Single

  The Silent Ones

  Finding Grace

  Closer

  The Secret

  The Visitor

  The Mistake

  Liar

  Safe With Me

  Acknowledgements

  *

  In memory of Julie Wagg. Much loved mother, wife, mama and friend.

  Prologue

  Bridget

  April 2019

  I stood in front of the full-length mirror in my new ivory silk dress. Simple and classy, it skimmed my curves but crucially remained demure in all the right places.

  I’d had a salon spray tan. My moisturised skin looked smooth and youthful, but when I pinched the top of my hand, the skin did not spring back immediately. I’d curled my hair and pinned it up, adding a tiny sprig of fresh gypsophila here and there to soften my look, and applied a pretty pink lipstick, the latest spring shade according to the sales assistant at the department store make-up counter.

  Peering closer to the mirror, I studied my reflection. Tiny lines fanned out from the corners of my eyes and lips. My cheeks gave way to a soft sagging that spoiled the razor-sharp jawline I’d enjoyed in my thirties.

  In two years’ time I would be fifty years old, but age was just a number. Today, I felt young, vibrant and free. I’d planned this fresh start for what felt like a very long time.

  Today, I would start a new life with a man twenty years younger than me.

  In one hour’s time, I would marry the man I loved.

  The same man who ten years earlier had killed my only son.

  One

  2009

  To the local residents, retired primary school teacher Mavis Threadgold was a familiar sight walking the streets of Mansfield, a large market town that lay in the Maun Valley, twelve miles north of the city of Nottingham.

  Dressed in her honey-coloured mac, tartan scarf and sensible laced walking shoes, she pounded the pavements like clockwork, three times a day, always accompanied by her trusty two-year-old black-and-tan dachshund, Harry. Whatever the weather, the intrepid pair could usually be spotted on one of their favoured routes in and around the town. Not so different to many other dog walkers in the area, apart from the fact that one of Harry’s regular daily outings took place at 2 a.m.

  It was this walk they were on right now. Mavis stood patiently as Harry sniffed around the base of a lamp post. She often reminisced about her teaching days as she walked. Indeed, this was her favourite time to do so, the streets being so quiet.

  Their eye-wateringly early walk had started the year Mavis retired, when she had lost her class of thirty eager, fresh-faced pupils. She’d had a pacemaker fitted for her worsening atrial fibrillation, and with it had gained the most wretched case of insomnia. Every night, after sleeping soundly for three or four hours, her eyes would spring open for no apparent reason. But it wasn’t just the heart condition that kept her awake.

  Retiring early had scuppered Mavis’s plans to live mortgage-free when her annual salary ceased. She’d bought her house late in life and her mortgage was due to be paid off on her sixtieth birthday. Sure, she had a pension, but having never married, and with only one salary to live on, she’d skimped on her contributions over the years and her income wasn’t nearly as robust as it might have been. In the end, she was forced to extend the mortgage for another five years to reduce her payments.

  Walking was the solution to her insomnia. It was one activity she hadn’t had to cut down on to stay within her budget, and even better, following a brisk twenty-five-minute stroll – invariably between the hours of two and three in the morning – she’d take a cuppa back to bed before settling down again for another few hours’ shut-eye.

  Mavis marvelled how every morning the streets were the same: calm, deserted and completely uneventful. Until now. About to cock his leg against yet another lamp post, Harry froze as an explosion of booming music came out of nowhere about fifty feet away from them, in the middle of the almost silent street.

  The rear fire doors of Movers, the only nightclub left in town, were suddenly flung open and two flailing bodies ejected onto the pavement before a muscular doorman slammed the exit closed again.

  Mavis bent down to scoop up a startled Harry into her arms and stepped back into the shadows, out of sight of what she assumed would be local thugs intent on causing trouble. But when her eyes adjusted, she realised she actually knew the two boys who were currently dusting off their clothes.

  It was none other than Thomas Billinghurst and Jesse Wilson.

  She’d taught Tom and Jesse twice, first in her Year 4 class and later, when they were both aged eleven in their final year before they went on to Mansfield Academy.

  The boys had been as close as brothers, inseparable from nursery, and yet very different personalities. Mavis didn’t mind admitting they had been two of her favourites, largely because of what she affectionately called their double act. Tom would step in as a calming influence when one of Jesse’s hyper moments struck, and Jesse happily coaxed Tom to join in activities when his nature was to shrink back. They naturally complemented each other without thinking about it, and both were all the stronger for it.

  She did a quick calculation in her head. They’d both be eighteen years old now. That made her feel ancient, although she was only sixty-five.

  As they’d grown older, Jesse remained the wild one and the frequent subject of gos
sip in the town. Often in trouble, and when he wasn’t, it would never be very long until trouble found him. Poor Bridget certainly had her hands full with that one, Mavis reflected, especially given that she was a single mother.

  Tom, on the other hand, had grown into a bright, sporty type. He came from a good family. Back in his schooldays, Jill and Robert Billinghurst were always first in line at the school’s annual parents’ evening. Over the years, Tom had developed into the sort of boy who excelled at whatever he turned his attention to. That was currently boxing, if Mavis remembered correctly. There had been a small report of a recent win in the local newspaper a few weeks earlier.

  She was about to step forward to say hello to the boys when the two of them, clearly the worse for wear, suddenly squared up to each other. Mavis was accustomed to dealing with this kind of thing in the school playground. It was surprising how much grown men had in common with warring five-year-olds. But here in this quiet, dim street with just the faintest glow of orange sodium light, there was no trace of the two mischievous but likeable boys she’d once known so well, and an icy prickle crept around the back of her neck.

  She opened her mouth, anxious to intervene before things got really nasty, but she hesitated as voices were raised, the harsh tones amplified. Then the pushing and shoving started. The look in their eyes, and such terrible accusations flying around. Things Mavis wished she wasn’t around to hear.

  But she couldn’t just stand by. This had to stop right now.

  As she moved out of the shadows, the altercation escalated. Their movements quickened, raw fury burning in their eyes and vicious words still spilling from between bared teeth.

  Mavis gasped at a flash of something sharp and metallic. Holding a shivering Harry close, she tucked herself behind a large green recycling bin at the back of the greengrocer’s, watching with dread from amid the stench of rotten vegetables. What she saw and heard next caused the breath to catch in her throat. Her grip tightened around Harry’s soft, warm girth as she backed away into the safety of the shadows behind, her soft-soled shoes scattering loose gravel underfoot.

  The boys turned for a split second, as if they’d seen or heard her, but the interruption was forgotten as one lurched towards the other.

  Mavis scurried through a concealed alleyway that served as a shortcut to the back of a short row of shops, before emerging on the next street, where she put the dachshund down again and caught her breath. She fished in her pocket for her pay-as-you-go mobile phone and rang for an ambulance, covering the mouthpiece with her hand to muffle her voice.

  ‘There’s some kind of incident at the rear entrance of Movers nightclub in Mansfield,’ she said breathlessly. ‘It looks pretty nasty. There are two men fighting and I think someone might be about to get hurt.’

  She ended the call amid a flurry of questions from the emergency operator.

  When she reached the top of the hill, she stopped, tipped her head and listened, her heart quickening as the urgent drone of emergency sirens fractured the silence of the usually peaceful early hours. She turned and looked back down the hill over the town and saw several vehicles with blue flashing lights turn into the high street below.

  Her heart squeezed, and for a moment she considered turning around and going back to see if everything was all right. She wondered if she’d imagined the flash of metal – her eyesight wasn’t what it used to be. Her hearing was temperamental too, and their words had seemed slurred; perhaps she’d misheard the terrible things they’d said, the awful accusations. Just the thought of dealing with the police, enduring the curiosity of the locals and, as a worst-case scenario, ending up as a witness in court … well, she couldn’t cope with that. Not after her heart operation. The doctor had told her she must avoid stress at all costs.

  Harry pulled on his lead, eager to get home out of the chilly November air.

  ‘Perhaps there’s been a traffic accident, Harry,’ she wondered aloud, as if acting a part. It was good practice, because that was what she intended telling the police if they came knocking at her door. That she didn’t see what had happened because she’d almost been back home when she’d heard the sirens.

  Sometimes the truth was hard to bear but even harder to speak, and although as a God-fearing woman she struggled with this approach, Mavis had always recognised the value of keeping silent and letting other people resolve their own troubles.

  She knew both boys, she knew their families. Getting in the middle of those two sides – both of which contained rather volatile personalities, if she remembered correctly –wouldn’t end well.

  Mavis had spent thirty years helping the young charges in her care to recognise the difference between right and wrong. She was a big believer in doing the right thing when one was able, but sometimes the truth was so shocking it was kinder and wiser to say nothing at all.

  Hopefully it would prove to be only a scuffle, an alcohol-induced disagreement between two friends.

  In Mavis’s experience, these nasty little incidents usually blew over in no time at all.

  Two

  The Mansfield Guardian

  * * *

  15 October 2009

  * * *

  Man dies after one-punch assault in town centre

  * * *

  An eighteen-year-old man has died after being taken to hospital in the early hours of this morning in a critical condition following an assault outside a nightclub that led to a bleed on the brain.

  * * *

  The incident happened just after 2 a.m. outside Movers nightclub and late bar on White Hart Street in Mansfield. The two men were ejected by security staff after a disagreement escalated between them inside the venue. The fatal assault then took place outside the rear entrance.

  * * *

  The Guardian understands that Jesse Wilson was hit by a man known to him. Police have arrested another eighteen-year-old local man, a middleweight professional boxer who recently qualified for the East Midlands Boxing Championships due to be held in February next year.

  * * *

  Police are appealing for witnesses.

  Three

  Tom

  April 2019

  The prison staff had done a good job, Tom thought. They had made a sterling effort.

  The officers had prettied up the small, drab inmates’ chapel with a swathe of white satin draped artfully around the door. Small vases of freesias and pink roses adorned the windowsills and scattered red hearts brightened the small table where he and his new bride would soon sign the register.

  Tom had surprised the prison governor when he’d applied for the marriage licence. ‘There hasn’t been a wedding here for over ten years,’ he’d told him. ‘But if that’s what you want, it is your right and we’ll do our best for you.’

  He’d proposed to Bridget six months earlier. Put in a special request for a private visit. As he was almost at release date, he was granted use of the small visiting room for one hour. It was a space usually reserved for sensitive visits from family – to notify a prisoner of a death or news of a birth, that kind of thing.

  Painted in an awful glossy green, artificial plants dotted the corners. A low coffee table with peeling veneer sat in the middle of a few scratched chairs. But there was a window overlooking the fields at the rear of the prison. While he waited for Bridget, he’d stood staring out at the grass, the sky, a scattering of gulls that swept through the expanse of grey cotton clouds as if to remind him of the size of the world out there. A world he’d soon be part of again.

  ‘Why a private room?’ had been Bridget’s first words when the officer escorted her in. Her beautiful face looked taut and concerned. ‘Tom? Is everything OK?’

  ‘Everything is perfect.’ He’d smiled, and they’d taken their seats.

  ‘I’ll be just outside the door,’ the officer, Barry, said meaningfully. It was against the rules for him to leave Tom and his visitor unattended, but he had been around for Tom’s entire sentence and he knew the reason for the vis
it. He left the door slightly ajar.

  Bridget looked back over her shoulder, concerned. ‘You’re scaring me now, Tom,’ she whispered. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong, Brid. I’ve asked you here because …’ He stood up and moved to her side, falling to one knee. ‘I want to ask you: will you marry me?’

  A small sound escaped her mouth and her hand flew up to cover the bottom half of her face as her eyes glistened. ‘Oh Tom … yes! The answer is yes, of course I’ll marry you!’

  They both stood and he embraced her, for the first time in the two years she’d been visiting. He buried his face in her clean, shining hair, inhaled the shampoo smell of almonds and vanilla. She pressed against him and his entire body responded, seeming to fill with raging desire as he held her closer, feeling her warm, firm thighs against his.