The Women: A gripping psychological thriller

by S. E. Lynes

  It is a Sunday evening in October, almost a year to the day since they met.

  ‘So I’ve hopefully lined up a job for you at Richmond College,’ Peter announces over dinner, an organic rabbit casserole he has prepared with the rest of the second bottle of Barolo he opened last night. ‘It’s only two hours a week, but it’ll be good for you to get out of the house and exercise the old grey matter.’

  Immediately, her eyes prickle. She hasn’t had much sleep. Emily is only a month old and Samantha still feels like a leaking bag, like a cow, like a shapeless mess of flesh she no longer understands. But he has only moments ago told her how wonderful she is, how amazing.

  ‘What’s the job?’

  ‘Creative writing course. Beginners. Piece of cake for someone like you.’

  She flounders. ‘But my degree is English lit. I don’t really—’

  ‘Of course you do.’ He reaches out and takes her hands. He is so very tender – he is the man who pressed his palm to her cheek that first night, who wanted nothing more than for her to be brilliant, listened to, understood. ‘You write poetry, don’t you? You only need to be half a page ahead, trust me. It’s all about confidence.’

  She pushes the stew around her plate. It is delicious, like everything he cooks, but her head is mince. ‘I’m not sure my confidence is at an all-time high just at the moment.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Softly he strokes the back of her hand. ‘Trust me, you’ll ace it. It’s only ten weeks’ maternity cover. And it doesn’t start until January. Perfect foot in the door, nothing too strenuous, and I’ll help you.’

  ‘But I want to teach English as a foreign language. Or teach people to read. I want to help people.’

  ‘Exactly.’ He smiles. ‘That’s what I told Harry. It’s a stepping stone, but you need to keep your hand in, not let the grass grow, et cetera. A woman of your intelligence and capabilities can’t be stuck at home. It’ll look bad on your CV.’

  ‘But what about Emily? And who’s Harry? And how do I get from there to helping people?’

  He chuckles. ‘Slow down. Harry’s head of humanities at the college. I went to school with him; he’s a good bloke. And I’ll arrange my schedule so that I can look after Emily. You’ll only be out of the house for three hours, three and a half at most, and she’ll be, what, nearly four months old by then? Trust me, darling, this will be brilliant for you. And it’ll help if you ever want to get your collection published. Editors would take you more seriously.’

  She can’t believe this is true. She would need to be a university lecturer, surely. An academic. But still, Peter looks so pleased with himself, and she is so tired, too tired to argue, and it’s not until after Christmas. She doesn’t have to think about it now.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ he says in his soft, low voice. ‘Don’t worry – you’ll be fine. You can do it for a while and then take a break to do your MA, maybe when we have another child. The contracts will arrive a week or two before.’

  It really is all sorted, she thinks. A little like her pregnancy: no sooner announced than taken over, supervised, organised. Peter is looking after her is what she tells herself. He has everything under control. So why does she feel as if control is the exact thing she has given up?

  Eight

  Lottie

  Lottie watches the Murphy family through the windscreen of her car. They can’t see her, there in the road, wouldn’t notice her if they did, not from this distance. They’re leaving fifteen minutes after they said they would, which is irritating. Their Ford Galaxy follows the A-2-B removal van out of the close and then, after a moment, she pulls forward, turns into their drive and parks her car. The Smiths won’t be here until this evening. They’re driving up from Exeter and it takes at least four hours to get to Lancashire from there, more if the M6 is jammed, unless they pay the rip-off toll, of course. That’s why she always goes early: no traffic, no toll.

  She slides the key in and out – once, slowly. That’s the way with a newly cut key – a bit like heating oil in a new frying pan, then wiping that oil off and starting again with new oil so that the omelette doesn’t stick. She loves omelettes, makes them all the time … but anyway, with new keys you have to be careful or they jam up on you. She slides the key in again, closing her eyes at that lovely scratchy sliding sound … pulling the door hard towards her, the click when the key turns. That’s the knack with this particular door. She opens her eyes to it swinging away into the ample hallway. Open Sesame.

  Inside, the house feels empty already. Weird how quickly that happens. When she showed the Smiths round, you could hear the kids’ music upstairs. You could just feel that there were people in. But now that they’ve gone, the house has that echo to it when she shouts, ‘Hello? Is anybody home?’

  The word home bounces off the polished floor tiles – home, home, home, like that. There are pale rectangles on the staircase walls. A wedding photo; a boy of about ten with his arms around his younger sister, both in school uniform; a grinning man holding a salmon. These photos are not there now; the empty rectangles are their ghosts. The actual pictures have been packed into boxes along with the rest of the family’s things, on the way to the coast to be hung in another happy family home.

  In the kitchen, the white goods have been left as agreed. The curtains and blinds are all here, which she always likes. In the dining room, the carpet’s got those funny flat patches where the table and chairs and the sideboard were, and when she presses her hand to the dining-room radiator it’s still warm. The boiler is in the downstairs utility, so it’s easy enough to pop the heating back on. Back in the kitchen, she pulls her dirty linen from her holdall and puts it in the washing machine. They haven’t left any detergent, but that’s all right; she always brings her own. She measures out 35 ml because it’s a small load, and selects the mixed wash quick option. Hopefully she’ll have time to take advantage of the dryer too while she’s here. She has another viewing at one, so she’ll have to get a move on obviously.

  The slosh of the washing in the drum is a cosy, homely noise. Already the place feels like it’s got a family in it again, which is what a house should have. Her little portable radio adds some music to the mix. She’s extra lucky today because the Murphys’ leather three-piece suite and their beautiful pine super-king-size bed are too big for the cottage they’re moving into, and the Smiths are coming from a smaller place, so they did a deal on the suite and the bed and the matching units. She doesn’t know how much the Smiths paid, but she bets they got a right bargain. She doesn’t have any super-king bedding, which is a shame, and it wouldn’t have been her place to suggest the Murphys leave theirs. She’s way too professional for that, and some people are weird about that kind of stuff. Some people are weird full stop. You see all kinds if you work for an estate agent. Beggars belief, some of it.

  It’s getting on for eleven, so she puts the kettle on. From her handbag she pulls coffee, powdered milk and a couple of mugs, both with Coffee Time on the front in a red handwriting-style font. A nice cup of coffee each, that’s what they need. It’s instant, but it gives that barista taste. It doesn’t, actually; it just tastes like any old coffee, but that’s what it says on the tin. To be honest, it’s nowhere near as good as Costa. Costa’s her favourite, but only for a Friday treat. Too expensive to have it every day like some do. She always nicks a few sugar sachets while she’s in there, keeps some in her bag in case Joanne fancies some. She likes hers sweet, especially if there’s no biccies on the go.

  The Murphys’ sofa is as soft as it looked when Lottie was showing the house. She didn’t sit on it then, obviously – that would be totally unprofessional – but she sits on it now all right. It’s so soft she sinks right down into the cushion and the coffee almost spills into her lap. She has to put the mugs on the floor while she rights herself because there’s no coffee table. It’s OK because there’s no rug either, so there’s no danger of spoiling anything, although she’d move pretty quick if she knocked a cup over, obviously
, because liquids stain wooden floors if you leave them to soak in. Cripes, that would give the game away, wouldn’t it? Talk about red-handed – it’d be someone else’s name engraved on the Nash and Watson shield this year before you could say show home. Not that she’s doing anything wrong as such. Not really. It’s unprofessional, obviously, but what the eye don’t see …

  The coffee is too hot to drink but it’ll soon cool down, so she wanders to the foot of the staircase.

  ‘Joanne!’ she shouts up. ‘Your coffee’s ready, love. Don’t let it get cold.’

  She knows what she’s doing isn’t, strictly speaking, on the level, but this house is going to be lying empty for the next few hours, and she’s not hurting anybody or damaging anything, so as far as she’s concerned there’s no harm in it. There’s plenty of people doing much worse than her in this world – blowing up buildings and sending bugs through the post. She’d never do anything like that. All she wants is an hour with her best girl.

  Nine

  Standing on the front step, Samantha nuzzles Emily on the head before stretching up to kiss Peter goodbye.

  ‘Sure you’ll be OK?’ She pushes her folder of teaching notes into the new Hermès leather satchel that Peter bought her for her first day.

  ‘Don’t you worry about us,’ he replies, Emily in his arms, the burp cloth that Samantha handed to him moments ago draped over his left shoulder. He looks a little like he does when he cooks dinner – the tea towel replaced by a milk-infused piece of muslin.

  ‘I should be back by half two, three at the latest.’

  ‘As long as you’re back by four. Go on, off you go. You’ll be brilliant. They’ll love you almost as much as I do.’

  She walks. It’s strange, walking without first having to load the car seat into the pram chassis, make sure she has her rucksack with nappies, nappy bags, wipes. All she has is the lesson plan, the handouts and her purse, packed into an elegant burgundy leather satchel, as if her professional self is a change of identity made possible by a change of bag. Her limbs bounce, almost, as she strides down the hill, their lightness astonishing, new. By the time she reaches the roundabout – Bill’s Restaurant on the corner, the Odeon standing guard over the bridge – she has got used to her single status. But still when she passes herself in a shop window, she looks to see who she is. The woman who stares back at her is different from the one she was a year ago, but not noticeably a mother, not without Emily. She looks tired, a little puffy. More than anything, she looks young, too young for what she is, as if her life is a garment that doesn’t really suit her and doesn’t yet fit.

  She arrives at the college fifteen minutes early. Taking advantage of the silent solitude of the empty classroom, she keys the password she’s been given into the computer and is relieved when it lets her in. She brings up the register and skims down the list of names, amused to see that one of the students is called C. S. Lewis. There is a Daphne, who makes her think of du Maurier, a Reggie, who makes her think of an East End gangster, a Jenny, a Thomas, a Svetlana, an Aisha and a Sean. Eight students in total.

  A flash of nerves. Ten minutes to go. She has planned her lesson, her first ever lesson, sounded it out with Peter last night. She showed him her notes, told him she was planning to do limericks to warm the students up, have a few laughs and build their confidence, but taking the notes from her, he frowned.

  ‘Limericks? No, hon. Too basic, even for beginners. Anyone can write a limerick. If you want to break the ice, use the clerihew.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Peter explained what a clerihew was and why it was better. He helped her to change her notes – so generous; he was working on her handout until eleven last night. Once he was happy with it, he hugged her and told her she would be brilliant, that he couldn’t wait to hear how she got on.

  Samantha yawns, wonders how he’s coping on his own with the baby – he’s not very hands-on, which she’s put down to the fact that he does all the cooking while she feeds Emily. At that thought, her breasts tingle and harden. Keeping one eye on the door, she checks her breast pads are in place. Teaching elementary poem forms with rivulets of milk staining your blouse is not a good look. A flutter of butterflies. They will be here soon, expecting an expert. She is not an expert. They will be expecting someone mature. She looks like a girl, a haggard girl but still a girl. She feels like a girl. They’ll see straight off that she’s a fraud. She is a fraud … oh God, for a penny, for nothing at all, in fact, she would run out of this room and take the first bus—

  The door opens and an elderly woman with spiky fuchsia hair enters. She is wearing a loose pale pink smock dress, black leggings and black Doc Marten boots tied with bright stripy ribbons, and she is smiling. Samantha loves her instantly.

  ‘Is this creative writing?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes.’ Samantha smiles back in what she hopes is a confident way. ‘Please take a seat.’ Unsure of what to say next, she sits at her desk and shuffles through her notes, pretends to read something, picks up her pen, puts it down again.

  The woman sits. Out of the corner of her eye, Samantha watches her. Outside, the sky is a pinky yellow over the office buildings next door. On the opposite side of the classroom, internal windows give on to the corridor, where another classroom spews noisy students out of the door. Pink-hair woman pulls out a notepad and pencil case from a canvas bag decorated with a modern art design. Samantha sorts the handouts into piles, fighting off those annoying butterflies. She should chat to this woman, she knows, but she can’t think of anything to say.

  A man of no more than twenty enters: black curly hair and dark shadows under his eyes. He nods at her, sits in the chair nearest the door. Two women who clearly know one another follow, chatting comfortably. Friends. Mums, she guesses, here to catch a class that will allow them to get back to the school gates in time. They both smile and say hi. Another woman strides in, her hair undercut on one side, several ear piercings and the hint of a tattoo on her neck; an old man – woolly hat, blinking behind thick spectacles; a middle-aged woman – thin, almost birdlike at the top, voluptuous at the bottom, as if her body belongs to two different people.

  Samantha waits, keeping her face in a neutral but, she hopes, pleasant smile, a smile that says welcome, that says I know what I’m doing, that also says please be kind. The door closes. Rustles and murmurs, takeaway cups planted on the corners of desks. Notebooks, laptops, pens, tissues, a half-eaten flapjack, a packet of liquorice allsorts – people are funny. She waits for the shuffling to subside.

  ‘Hello, everyone,’ she begins when silence comes, cursing the giveaway tremor in her voice, the heat now creeping up her neck. ‘I’d like to start by—’

  The door opens. A man of about thirty-five pokes his head into the classroom. ‘Creative writing?’

  ‘Yes. Come in. We’re just starting.’

  He nods. ‘Sorry I’m late. Roadworks on the A316 and I got caught in the traffic jam. It was a bad idea to drive. I’ll check before I leave next week and probably take public transport. I can get a bus and a train. I’m Sean Worth.’

  ‘Hi, Sean.’ Samantha seizes the moment to interrupt. ‘Take a seat. We were about to introduce ourselves, so you’ve got the ball rolling nicely there, thank you.’

  The other students shunt their chairs as far as they can under the desks. Sean sidles around, apologising as he goes. His hair is greasy. His anorak is stained and zipped up to the top.

  ‘Hello, everyone,’ she says again and introduces herself before running through her background. She tells them that she writes poetry, that she’s hoping to publish a collection next year. This was Peter’s idea, another correction from last night. She’d argued, said it sounded pompous and that it was untrue.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It is the truth, if you think about it.’

  ‘But it implies there’s something in the pipeline, like it’s only the timings that are yet to be finalised.’

  He wa
ved his hand, frowned. ‘That’s for them to interpret. All you’re saying is that you hope to be published next year, and you do, so that’s not a lie at all. It’s not about what you’ve done or what you do, it’s about what you can get away with. Everyone does it. If you want to be successful, you have to be realistic.’

  And so she’s said it, feels horrible, but breezes onwards now to her recent graduation in English literature and her teaching qualification. She does not tell them that her partner pulled some strings to get her this maternity cover but instead suggests they go around the room, taking turns to introduce themselves. The young man with the black curly hair is on her left, by the door. She nods to him to go first.

  He cocks his head to one side, which makes him look coy, though his eyes are bloodshot. He takes his pen and holds it horizontally between the tips of both forefingers.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘So, I’m Tommy. I’m a musician? Keyboards mainly. Recovering addict. Done a lot of rehab, but I’m getting back on track now.’ He pauses, glances up at her. ‘I signed up to get some tips on songwriting. I write songs.’

  ‘Lovely. Thanks, Tommy.’ On a sheet of paper Samantha writes: Tommy. Drugs. Musician. She looks up, catches the eye of the woman sitting next to him, the one with the undercut and the neck tattoo.

  The woman glances about her, as if to meet the gaze of every other student individually. ‘My name is Lana.’ Her accent is Eastern European. ‘I’m from Poland. I’m living in UK for five years. I have bad experience with boyfriend so I want to write about that.’

  Samantha nods, scribbles on her aide-memoire: Lana. Polish. Bad boyfriend.

  ‘I’m Aisha,’ says the woman next to Lana, one of the mum friends. ‘Like you, Samantha, I’m an English literature graduate. UCL, a few years ago now. I’ve come with my friend Jenny. I’m here because I’ve loved literature all my life and I’d like to create some, if I can.’