The Women: A gripping psychological thriller

by S. E. Lynes

  Samantha smiles while she writes, refrains from adding that she graduated from the same university – it’s not the right moment to get into a conversation. Aisha’s friend with the red hair goes next.

  ‘Yes, I’m Jenny, like Aisha said. Also a UCL English grad, a few years after Aisha. We met at uni, well, in the pub near the uni.’ She gives a brief laugh. ‘We share a flat and she suggested I come along. I’m looking for work at the moment so I’m pretty much here to enjoy myself and try something new. Er, yeah, that’s it really.’

  Not school mums then, as she had first thought. Samantha scribbles, nods, looks up to encourage the elderly man with the thick glasses, who has taken a seat in the corner.

  ‘Hello, my name’s Reginald Spark. Reggie.’ He speaks in a broad London accent. ‘Used to be a session musician and I’ve worked with some pretty interesting people over the years … Elton John, the Stones in the early days, even did a gig with David Bowie once, so I’m hoping to maybe write a memoir or something in that vein.’

  There is a collective murmur of approval. Reggie has taken off his woolly hat to reveal a bald head, shaved close at the sides, and his navy cardigan opens on a grey T-shirt with a rainbow passing through a prism, a design Samantha thinks might be an album cover, though she doesn’t know which one.

  ‘My name’s Suzanne,’ says the middle-aged woman, looking thin now that she has sat down and only her narrow shoulders are visible. ‘I left school at sixteen and I’ve always regretted it, so I just wanted to see if I could come up with something. Thought it might give me a bit of confidence.’

  ‘I’m sure it will. Thanks, Suzanne.’ Suzanne. Left school 16. Confidence.

  ‘Sean?’

  ‘Yes, hello. Like I said, I’m Sean Worth. I’m writing a futuristic fantasy novel where this guy is basically the last man left on earth, or he thinks he is, but then he goes around the world and one day he discovers this tribe living in the jungle and they’re all women and the only way to save the world is if he gets them all pregnant, so he—’

  ‘Thanks, Sean.’ A giggle bubbles up in her chest. She bows her head and writes, pushing her teeth hard into her bottom lip. The air has thickened. But everyone has to be made to feel safe and she cannot – must not – laugh. Sean, she writes. Sci-fi. Last man on earth. Wait till she tells Peter.

  She looks up, careful not to catch the eye of any of the women in case one of them so much as twitches in amusement. If that happens, she will collapse into hysterics. Not good.

  Pink-haired Daphne saves them all, however, announcing with a cheeky chuckle that she hopes to write erotica to supplement her pension.

  ‘Something saucy to keep the heart beating,’ she adds and giggles, which allows the others to release the laughter that they’ve undoubtedly been stifling for the last few minutes. Thankfully, the tension bleeds out of the room.

  Samantha feels herself lift. People are incredible. They are wonderful, she thinks. Peter was right. He said she would enjoy this, and she thinks, once the nerves die down, she will.

  After the break, Samantha tells them they are going to write some simple poems. A collective groan ensues, which she bats away with a smile.

  ‘We’re going to pull poetry apart like a wind-up radio,’ she says. ‘To see how it works, how it’s put together and how you might build one yourselves.’

  ‘Is that a metaphor, Miss?’ Tommy’s smile looks more like a sneer.

  ‘It is, Tommy. Well spotted.’ She smiles again and presses on. ‘Today we’re going to learn how to write a clerihew,’ she tells them. ‘Does anyone know what a clerihew is?’

  Blank looks all round.

  ‘OK, well, the clerihew is a simple four-line satirical verse. It was invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley in the early twentieth century.’ She reminds herself to stand up straight and to keep her speech slow, loud and clear. ‘If you look at your sheets, we can read his famous example.’ She clears her throat, takes a sip of water and reads the poem aloud:

  ‘Sir Christopher Wren

  Said, ‘I am going to dine with some men.

  If anyone calls

  Say I am designing St Paul’s.’

  The group gives a low harrumph of amusement. Samantha feels her nerves abate a little. The ice is breaking, hopefully.

  ‘If you look at the first line,’ she says, ‘you’ll see it’s simply the person’s name. The second line is something whimsical about the person that rhymes with that name, and the last two lines rhyme with each other.’ She looks up, scans their faces. So hard to tell if they are listening or bored rigid. ‘Can anyone name a celebrity?’

  Eight blank looks.

  ‘Mick Jagger,’ Reggie says, a split second before the silence becomes painful. She wants to kiss his bald pate and say cheers mate.

  ‘Very good, Reggie.’ She writes Mick Jagger on the whiteboard. ‘So, can anyone think of a line that rhymes with Jagger?’

  ‘Walked with a swagger?’ Reggie suggests.

  ‘Brilliant, Reggie.’ Her heart fills. Of course. Reggie is a musician. He will have a good ear. She writes it up, hoping the others will have the confidence to join in now. ‘So, the third line can be any length at all and it doesn’t have to rhyme with the first two. Anyone?’

  Nothing. Her heart shrivels.

  ‘How about,’ she says, ‘“But sometimes when he did a dance.”’ Without waiting, she writes it on the board and turns again to face the class. Some of them are almost smiling, though it could, as her mother would say, be wind. ‘Can anyone think of a last line to rhyme with dance?’

  ‘“A million girls were in the mood for romance”?’ It is Aisha, her face eager. She is very pretty, Samantha notices. Huge brown eyes like a doll’s.

  ‘Aisha, thank you, that’s perfect.’ She completes the poem on the whiteboard and reads it aloud:

  ‘Mick Jagger

  Walked with a swagger.

  But sometimes when he did a dance,

  A million girls were in the mood for romance.’

  ‘That’s great! And did you see how easy it was?’ She wonders if the class can hear her heart beating. ‘Once you’ve it written down, of course, you can play with it. You can change one of the words, or a whole sentence … You can say “All the girls in the world”, or “a sexy dance”, whatever, because there’s no limit on line length or the number or syllables like there is in other forms. If you stick to those simple rules, you will nail it, trust me.’

  The students bend their heads and write.

  Samantha’s shoulders straighten. Her chest swells. Even the muscles in her jaw relax. After that, the class passes quickly. She talks to them about rhyme schemes, about comic timing. They attempt a clerihew and seem lost in concentration.

  ‘Thank you so much for a lovely first class,’ she says as the lesson draws to a close, realising that she’s completely forgotten about Emily, about Peter. She’s even forgotten to be nervous. ‘If you can pass your poems along to this end, I’ll take them home and mark them. For homework, I’d like you to have a go at writing something you’ll all know from school: a limerick. Don’t worry if you find it difficult, but have a go, for fun, as we’ll be pulling them apart next week in class. See you then.’

  They file out. All except Lana, who hands her the stack of collected poems with a solemn expression.

  ‘What is limerick?’ she asks.

  Bugger. Her first week and already she’s infringed the guidelines of equality and diversity.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lana, I should have explained that better. Tell you what, just look it up on Google and have a go, but don’t worry about it if you can’t.’ She scribbles her email address on a scrap of paper. ‘If you’re really stuck, drop me an email,’ she says, handing it to Lana – she shouldn’t really, but she can’t see the harm.

  Lana gives a grave nod and makes her way out.

  Samantha leaves the college buoyed up with pride. She has lost so much confidence since the pregnancy, so much energy too. But today, s
he’s managed a class on her own! No one has corrected her, no one has run screaming from the room and no one has pointed at her and yelled, ‘Fraud!’

  It is only when she is on the bus that she takes out her folder to read through the clerihews.

  There were eight students.

  There are nine poems.

  Ten

  Samantha can hear Emily crying before she puts her key in the lock, a sound that amplifies as she pushes the door open. The hallway is dark, even though it’s only quarter to three in the afternoon. The soft tinkle of classical music drifts under the closed door of the living room.

  Peter is on the sofa, listening to Debussy, one hand across his eyes.

  ‘Peter?’ she says. ‘Can’t you hear the baby?’

  ‘I can.’

  She hesitates. ‘But … she’s crying. She’s crying, Peter.’

  ‘I tried everything. I tried the milk; she wouldn’t take it. I tried changing her, I tried burping her.’ He takes his hand from his eyes and peers at her. His hair is too brown, she thinks; it looks like a wig.

  She stomps up the stairs without taking off her shoes. Sod him. Emily is wailing like a professional mourner: deep sorrow, oceans of pain. From the wall of the staircase, Peter’s parents stare out from a photo taken here, in this house; her own parents squint against the sun, stiff as convicts outside the farm, a picture taken before the divorce. There is one of her, aged ten, with a home-cut fringe, a real knife and fork job; and herself and Peter with Emily when she was first born, the one she posted on Facebook to announce her baby’s arrival into the world. It is Samantha who has framed and hung these pictures, to give the house a bit of soul.

  Emily is crying hard now: great howls, trembling aftermaths, shocked silences as she sucks in another lungful of air. She is in her cot, her face crimson, almost purple. Samantha picks her up, holds her fraught and furious body close. Almost instantly, she calms. Sh-sh-shushing, Samantha sits on the armchair in the corner of the nursery and unbuttons her blouse. Her left breast is the fullest, firm as a rubber ball, and when Emily closes her mouth around it, she almost yelps with that still strange yet familiar blend of pain and near ecstasy as the baby draws the milk down.

  Hush descends. The soft smacking sound, Emily’s eyelashes, her tiny soft head. Samantha tries to contain her fury at Peter. Illogically, she fears it might transfer, might sour the milk.

  Peter appears at the nursery door.

  ‘That’s what she needed,’ he says, smiling.

  She glances at him, but only briefly, before looking away. She cannot look at him, not right now.

  ‘I left a bottle,’ she says.

  ‘I tried, but she wasn’t interested.’

  She glances at him. He is not upset. He is not mortified. He is not ashamed to have been caught lying on the sofa while their baby—

  ‘I’ve been out of the house for a few hours,’ she says. ‘A few hours. This is the first time I’ve been out on my own. You could have comforted her, Peter. She’s a baby. They need comfort. And instead you comforted yourself with a little lie-down and some nice music.’

  ‘I couldn’t do anything for her, Sam. I thought the best thing to do was leave her to cry it out. There’s no point me draining my battery, is there? I have a lecture at five.’

  She closes her eyes to the rage that boils within her. ‘I won’t leave her with you if you’re not going to look after her. I’m not going to go and teach if you can’t even—’

  ‘She was perfectly safe. She hadn’t been crying that long. I just needed a break.’

  ‘You just needed?’ She has raised her voice, damn him. He doesn’t like it when she raises her voice. Well, tough. ‘What about her needs, Peter? You’re missing something, some vital piece. It’s about her needs now, not yours. Don’t you see that?’

  ‘I’m not going to talk to you if you’re going to shout.’

  ‘I’m not shouting. But you can’t have tried very hard. I would have tried for the whole time. I would have sat there for hours and got her to take her bottle if it killed me. It’s bound to be difficult, but you have to persevere, otherwise, I can’t go out to work.’ She looks up. The doorway is empty. From downstairs music amplifies, dies away.

  ‘Twat,’ she mutters, relishing the illicit swear word. ‘Bastard. Stupid wiggy twat bastard fuckface.’

  She has made herself laugh at least. But it is not the first time he’s left her muttering and swearing like a madwoman. And as often happens since she had Emily, in these moments, when she finds herself so utterly alone, the memory of giving birth comes to her, followed always by the first time she pulled a calf with her father, over and over, like a dream: the hay and the heat, the smell of iron and dung, the mother licking the calf with her pink speckled tongue. Herself, no more than ten, crouched by her father’s side, listening to his soft whispered words … She’ll take it from here. The day she gave birth to Emily, Samantha put her trust in the midwives as the cows put their trust in her father. Maybe that’s why the memory comes to her when she’s cross and confused. Maybe it’s to do with her father, her father who, in the end, couldn’t be trusted.

  ‘Hey, my little baby calf,’ she whispers, lips pressed to her daughter’s soft head.

  But now she’s made herself cry when what she wants is to be furious. As furious as her beloved baby girl when she came slithering out, livid as a bruise, outraged. This part of her own body, this hot blood shared. How could Peter leave their child to cry when she is part of his flesh too? His emotionless response is so at odds with the way he can be at other times: so affectionate, so understanding, so beautifully civilised. Day and night. It is as if he is two people.

  She hears the oiled click of the latch, the profound roar of the Porsche pulling out onto the street. She carries Emily to the front window and watches Peter drive away. Her anger is already beginning to confuse her now, after the event, as it so often does. Peter has a way of making her out to be the unreasonable one. He does it so eloquently, so rationally, that she is left no longer sure if she is entitled to feel what she undeniably does feel, whether she is being too demanding, too sensitive, too … whatever. And she always ends up being the one to say sorry. Peter doesn’t say sorry. Ever.

  ‘Never argue with a professor,’ she said to Marcia last time they met for coffee, before Emily was born. ‘Even when they’re wrong, they’re right.’

  Seven o’clock. Emily is in bed and Samantha is starving. Peter should be home by eight, but she is too hungry and, frankly, not in the mood to wait for him. In the living room, she finds a low bank of glowing coals in the grate and tops them up from the bucket. The house is cosy, at least.

  In the larder there’s some dried pasta and half a carton of fresh pesto in the fridge. While the pasta boils, she calls her mother, whose village gossip always straightens her out.

  Sure enough, her mother regales her with the story of the stranger who, on Tuesday evening, sat in Charlie West’s chair in the Dancing Drake, the pub where her mother works, the silent scandal that followed; Fiona Kelly, who organised the maypole dance for the last spring fete, is in hospital again with her nerves; Tara Munday’s lad broke his wrist coming off his quad bike and had to be taken to York to have it reset.

  Last of the stoics, her mother never once mentions the farm, the life that was sold from under her.

  Samantha eats two rounds of toast while she listens, several slices of Cheshire cheese, a lone leftover falafel and a handful of walnut halves. Peter has never, in all the time she’s lived with him, stocked crappy foods. Which is a shame. Right now, as she tells her mother about her first ever class, she longs for a treat from the packed lunches Mum used to make: prawn cocktail crisps or cheese strings or a greasy, salt-saturated Peperami.

  ‘How’s Dad?’ The inevitable question, always asked at the end. She drains the pasta, phone in the crook of her neck.

  ‘All right,’ her mother replies. The tiniest inhalation.

  ‘What?’

 
; ‘Rhianna is pregnant.’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Hey! Swearing.’

  ‘No but really.’

  ‘I know,’ her mum sighs. ‘He’s a fucking arse.’

  They both laugh. Samantha eats the pasta standing at the kitchen counter while her mother fills her in on her father’s embryonic new family. Rhianna, Dad’s new girlfriend, is five years older than Samantha. Her pregnancy means that Samantha’s new half-sibling will be a year younger than her own daughter. But then, at forty-one, her father is only two years older than Peter.

  ‘Let’s hope that by the time the silly bitch hits forty, he’ll be too old to muck about where he shouldn’t,’ her mother says, by way of a wrap-up. ‘For the baby’s sake.’ She gives a dark laugh. ‘You should go and see him, you know. You have to forgive him sooner or later.’

  It is only once Samantha puts the phone down that she remembers the extra poem. The argument with Peter, the baby’s constant demands and the rather depressing talk with her mother have conspired to flush it from her mind. She read Tommy’s, Lana’s and Jenny’s clerihews on the bus before she reached her stop, but now she settles with her folder and a cup of decaf coffee on the sofa. She is calmer than she was; she has rationalised it. Quite simply, in a fit of enthusiasm, one of them has written two poems and wants her to look at both. No big deal.

  Lovely Daphne’s is top of the pile:

  Michael Jones

  Had good bones.

  His smile she trusted.

  After his Greek-god bod she lusted.

  ‘Brilliant,’ she says aloud, laughing softly, and flicks to the next one:

  Sean Worth,

  Last man on earth.

  Everyone’s disappeared without a trace

  So now it’s down to him to save the whole human race.

  ‘Bravo, Sean!’ She jots some encouragement before leafing through the rest. Aisha’s is a political verse about Boris Johnson, which ends on a clever rhyme concerning VAT and Macavity the cat. Trust an English graduate to throw in a reference to T. S. Eliot. Suzanne has written about Kylie Jenner, who borrowed a tenner – she spent it on an exotic pet, apparently, and is now in debt, ha!