The Women: A gripping psychological thriller

by S. E. Lynes

  Samantha heads down the hill to meet Aisha and Jenny. The more she thinks about the conversation with Christine, the more she is sure that there was a veiled allusion to an underage relationship, possibly abuse. How else could pressing charges backfire? Yes, it was definitely there, lurking in the words not said, not even attributable to a facial tic or gesture. Child abuse is the term that she pushes away, along with paedophile, along with rape. Suzanne – Lottie – may not have entered into a full sexual relationship with Peter until she was legally of age, but he groomed her while still only fifteen from his position of trust.

  As she walks, Samantha remembers a documentary she watched with Marcia when they were living together. The woman in question had been taken to a grubby flat with her friend when they were both fourteen. The two of them had been lured into sleeping with two seedy guys who preyed on schoolgirls, giving them free cigarettes and alcohol. There was a photograph of the girls in their school uniforms, grinning, full of it.

  ‘We thought it was a bit of fun,’ the woman said in the interview. ‘We thought we were rebels. It was dangerous, you know? And secret.’ Twenty years or so later, she could not talk about it without weeping. She had become an alcoholic for a time, had a history of failed relationships. Unhappiness came off her in waves.

  ‘He stole her childhood,’ Marcia said, shaking her head at the screen. ‘Look at her, a wreck all these years later. He deserves to go to prison. I don’t care how long ago it was. Nonce. They’ll murder him in there.’

  He’s the opposite of a predator, the absolute opposite, Samantha told Marcia that first giddy morning, before she found out his not touching her was simply his little trick to bind young, naïve women, women like her, to him. A trick refined over years. Christ, he must have smelled her a mile away, with her social anxiety, her ignorance of recreational drugs and her dislike of the city.

  Is Peter, her partner and the father of her child, really the absolute opposite of those seedy men in the documentary? Or is he absolutely the same – the same but richer, better spoken, better educated, separated from those lecherous bastards by class alone? She, Samantha, is not underage. But she is much, much younger than him. This is not about love at all is the dark thought that hits her. This is about something much less romantic.

  This is about power.

  On she walks, to Richmond, her cheeks aflame. She reaches the bottom of the hill, the mini roundabout, where the town centre begins. Tears are pouring down her face, and only now, at risk of someone seeing her, does she become aware of them. She cannot put the tender, loving, safe man that Peter is in the same frame as some grotty predatory beast, no matter what Aisha and Jenny have said. But nor can she unsee the photograph of him with a bunch of schoolgirls, his arm around the one he was blithely violating. She cannot square away what he has told her about his past with what she feels about it, nor can she reconcile the affectionate partner he is in the evenings with the cold, abrupt semi-stranger of the mornings. In that photograph, Lottie Lewis did not look like an innocent teenager. She looked full to the brim with cheek and a healthy thirst for kicks. But she was wearing a school uniform. She was as dangerous to herself as any ignorant young teenager. Samantha knows how out of control she herself was in the confused and dissociated aftermath of her father. Even though it was with boys her own age, the memory of that time haunts her. It’s possible that, ultimately, it is what sent her into Peter’s arms.

  At that sad, sad thought, her anger dissipates. She feels something reach out from her soul or her heart or wherever empathy is stored, feels it search for this woman who has committed such a terrible crime against her, this woman she has just betrayed. She imagines holding Lottie’s hand and saying, I understand. I believe you. I’m sorry.

  Sobbing uncontrollably now, she pushes the pram into the alleyway that runs alongside the cinema. She stops, finds some baby wipes in Emily’s changing bag and cleans her face, blows her nose, composes herself. One hand against the damp stone wall for support, she takes purposeful deep breaths, gets herself together. Slowly she feels herself settle. It is another fifteen minutes’ walk to the café. She will use every step to calm herself down. Hopefully her face will have returned to normal by the time she meets Aisha and Jenny. Hopefully, like a mask, she will have slapped on a new face: a brave one. Lord knows, she’s going to need it while she figures out what the hell to do.

  Aisha and Jenny are already in Butterbeans, at the table by the window. The café is small, packed with mismatched wooden chairs and tables. The smell of coffee is nutty, sweet, delicious. A plate of eggs and slick green spinach sails past in the hands of a hip, bearded guy no older than eighteen. He smiles at Samantha, winks at the baby. She blinks back the new threat of tears. He is so beautiful. He is exactly as young as he should be.

  ‘Sam.’ Aisha is out of her chair, digging into the back pocket of her jeans, pulling out a cash card. ‘Peppermint tea?’

  She doesn’t argue. The prospect of sitting down is too tempting; pulling her coat from her overheated body and cooling down.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says, touching her hand against her breast. ‘Bit late for caffeine.’

  Jenny has moved a chair to make room for the pram. She budges along the bench and pats the space beside her. Gratefully, Samantha parks Emily, sits down and sighs.

  ‘You sound like you’ve been through it,’ Jenny says.

  ‘Just a long walk. Did you get your job, by the way?’

  Jenny sucks her teeth. ‘Nah. Sexist bastard asked me if I was married. Men are twats. Did you hear from the police?’

  Samantha nods, and when Aisha returns, she fills them in on what Christine told her – on the surface.

  ‘We’re not pressing charges,’ she says as briskly as she can. ‘I think we’ve all been through enough. We need to move on and recover.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Aisha sips her coffee. It is only a second, but Samantha catches the look that passes between her and Jenny. Enough.

  ‘So, you two keep glancing at one another,’ she says. ‘I have to say, it’s beginning to piss me right off. You said we should talk, so I presume there’s more I should know.’

  ‘Aisha said you were asking about Ecstasy,’ Jenny says, meeting Samantha’s indignation with a sober expression.

  Samantha nods.

  ‘Have you found some in the house? Is that why?’

  ‘I …’ She hesitates. This is all so private. She doesn’t even know these women, not really. But she needs the information they clearly have.

  ‘Did he offer it to you?’ Aisha asks before Samantha has time to speak.

  Samantha looks about her, to gauge if anyone is listening in. They’re not, it seems. ‘That first night at his house. What you said about … about the way he seduces women by not seducing them. And the drugs. That was … it was very familiar.’ And oh, she told herself she would keep it together, but now here she is, crying in a café with two women who weeks ago were strangers. Her best friend, meanwhile, the person she should be telling, knows nothing. Everything is upside down. Everything is wrong.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She sniffs. ‘I’m just so embarrassed.’

  Jenny passes her a tissue. ‘Don’t be sorry. Or embarrassed. That’s how they get us. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for and nothing to be embarrassed about. And like you say, it could be that he’s finally changed. What do we know? He asked you to move in and he didn’t freak when you told him you were pregnant.’

  ‘The reverse,’ Samantha says. ‘It was me who freaked. He was delighted.’

  ‘Well, that’s better than I got.’ It is Aisha who has spoken, Aisha whose turn it is to well up.

  Samantha meets her eye, sees pain. ‘You were pregnant?’

  She nods. ‘We’d been together five years. I was in my mid twenties. I was surprised, but then when I thought about it, I realised I’d had an upset stomach and … whatever, there I was. But I was pleased. I thought we’d move in together. He was older than me, but … no. He wasn�
�t pleased. To say the least.’

  There is no child, so far as Samantha knows. She wonders what Aisha will say next.

  ‘He said I was stupid,’ is what she says. ‘Irresponsible was the word he used. He was very … matter-of-fact. He did that low, calm talking thing he does, you know, as he told me that he’d booked me an appointment at a private clinic and that he would pay for the procedure.’

  ‘An abortion?’

  At the next table, a teenage girl looks over. She is wearing headphones, but even so, Samantha leans forward and repeats the question in a whisper.

  Aisha gives a grim nod. ‘Cleaning up my mess was how he put it. Soon after that, I found out he was sha— sleeping with Jenny and we broke up.’

  ‘It’s OK, you can say shagging.’ Jenny gives a brief, mirthless laugh.

  ‘I like to think I would’ve had the strength to end it even without that.’ Aisha rolls her eyes, snorts a little, though her amusement is clearly fake.

  ‘I can’t laugh,’ Samantha almost whispers. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Stop apologising.’ Jenny’s tone is light, kind. ‘I’m guessing that’s a habit you’ve got into in the last couple of years?’

  ‘I …’

  ‘Don’t worry. Just tell us, why did you want to know about Ecstasy?’

  Their faces are open. But still. It’s hard to admit to what an idiot you’ve been. That you thought yourself sophisticated, maybe a little superior. Chosen. And now you’re in too deep to know what to do.

  Aisha leans forward, takes Samantha’s hand in hers. ‘I know you don’t know us well, and I know we’ve been a bit … you know, pushy. But we’re on your side. And at a certain point, women have to trust each other, don’t we? We have to believe each other and we have to look after each other. God knows, the world is against us as it is without us being against each other.’

  ‘Aisha’s right,’ Jenny says. ‘We have to believe each other. We have to be on each other’s side.’

  Samantha thinks of Lottie. Of all that she hasn’t told the police, of the reasons for that. She thinks of her own silent conspiracy.

  ‘I knew that Peter took Ecstasy,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know how often.’ She glances up; they smile their encouragement. ‘When I first moved in, he offered it to me a few times but I said no. He was insistent, but I said I was happier with a glass of wine or a beer.’

  ‘Oh, he loves his red wine.’ Jenny’s tone is cynical, hard.

  Samantha winces but goes on. ‘And then he stopped. I guess I thought he’d got the message. And then I fell pregnant and there were other reasons for not wanting to take anything stronger. Emily was born. We were happy. He was happy. I mean, he was a little controlling. I suppose I’m beginning to see that now. He loves Emily, but I guess, if I’m honest, he doesn’t like any evidence of her, if that makes sense. He doesn’t like to see dirty nappies even by the back door. He doesn’t like it if her toys are out when he gets in.

  ‘Sorry, I’m rambling. What I mean is, he has his fixed ideas, you know? But he lived alone for so long, and he’s older, and I understand that. I guess I thought he’d forgotten about the drugs. I thought he’d … I thought we’d moved on. And then when I got home from teaching my first class, he was lying on the sofa and Emily was upstairs crying. And later, when he’d gone to work, I found a bag of pills behind the sofa cushions.’

  ‘Did you confront him?’ It’s Jenny who has spoken.

  Samantha shakes her head. ‘I left it. I thought maybe they’d been there a while, that he’d not realised. I didn’t for one second think he might have taken one during the day, not while he was looking after Emily. Why would I think that? And then, a couple of weeks later, they were gone.’

  Jenny sips her coffee, slides the cup back into its saucer. ‘Have you thought about why you didn’t confront him?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘We’re not attacking you,’ Aisha chips in. ‘We’re not suggesting there’s anything you should or shouldn’t have done. It’s just, having been there, I can tell you it took me until that termination to realise what I’d become. I was pretty much doing everything he told me by then. Including that last thing. It was Jenny who gave me the strength to kick him into touch. Even afterwards, when I’d ended things, I kept wondering if I was to blame.’

  Samantha nods. She is thinking about these two women, that straight after they dumped him, Peter asked her to move in with him, got her pregnant barely two months later. Because that’s what happened, she knows that now. He was not too drunk to fetch protection from the bathroom; he simply didn’t want to protect her, against anything, and certainly not against carrying his child, against being bound to him for ever. She, Samantha, is not unique or special at all, but a reaction. The panic reaction of a man no longer at the height of his powers. There is so much she doesn’t know for sure. But there is so much she feels.

  ‘Sometimes he’s so tender,’ she says. ‘Like in the evenings. Then other times he’s so distant, you know? Usually in the mornings. And sometimes I wonder …’

  ‘It’s OK.’ Jenny places her hand over Samantha’s. ‘You’re safe. You can say it, and besides, I think I know what you’re going to say.’

  But what can she say? That she’s realised she’s not the love of his life after all but some sort of talisman against loneliness? That he chose her only because she was easily overpowered? She can’t say that. It is too private. It is too embarrassing.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she says. ‘I’m just really tired after yesterday. The whole thing was so awful.’

  ‘I know, babe,’ Aisha says, squeezing her hand. ‘I know.’

  After a moment Jenny asks, ‘And the reason you’re asking about the drugs now is because …?’

  Samantha sips her peppermint tea. It is hot and sweet. She feels it trickle down. ‘I found some pills in the glove compartment of his car last night, that’s all. And this morning I found some powder in the bathroom.’ She doesn’t specify where. She doesn’t tell them about the silk scarf or the hair dye or the sodding latex gloves. It already feels like she’s beyond naked, like she’s opened up her very guts for surgery. But at the same time, there is relief in voicing it, as if she has taken a hazy whiff of anaesthetic.

  Jenny fixes her with her green eyes. ‘OK, so there’s another reason I finished with Peter.’ She inhales deeply, blows out, making her cheeks round. ‘I think we both found, like you did, that he was more loving at night. And then, like you said, the cold snaps, the indifference. And then I met Aisha and found out he was a cheat, so I thought maybe that was why his moods changed so much. Anyway, the next night, I went up to the house and I told him I’d found out about Aisha. It’s over, I said. You’re a shit, basically, is what I said.’

  Samantha feels her eyes widen. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  Jenny scoffs. ‘He was all hand-wringing and apologies, told me he loved me, that he’d meant to finish it with Aisha but she was very needy, very anxious, but the good news was he’d found a way to let her down gently. Of course, I knew she’d finished with him the night before. Anyway, he was the soul of compassion, claimed he was worried about her, she’d been through a tough time. All this bullshit. He told me to sit down, that we should talk about it at least, would I let him pour us a glass of wine, said I owed him that much, then if he couldn’t make me stay we could at least part as friends.’ She sighs, rolls her eyes. ‘I didn’t want a scene. I thought I’d drink his wine, hear his BS, then make my exit as gracefully as I could. I was in the living room. And for some reason, I don’t know why, I decided to spy on him. It sounds ridiculous, but I’d had the blow of finding out he’d had a serious girlfriend the whole time we’d been seeing each other, plus, like you said, Sam, there were all these other things I couldn’t put my finger on but that were adding up. I didn’t trust him anymore; I suppose that’s all it was. So I crept out into the hallway and I watched him from the kitchen door.’

 
; ‘And?’ Samantha cannot take her eyes from Jenny’s pale, freckled face.

  ‘I watched him pour two large glasses of red. And I saw him sprinkle his magic powder into both of them. And I knew two things. I knew that one, he was spiking my drink. And two.’ She hits her forefingers together, her eyes not leaving Samantha’s. ‘Two, I knew the bastard had been doing it the whole time.’

  Twenty-Nine

  ‘He was basically medicating both of us,’ Jenny continues, shaking her head with the weary disbelief of a much older woman. ‘My theory is that Peter Bridges is a narcissist who knows he’s a narcissist. He takes E because it manufactures empathy, because there’s no other way he can feel it. So don’t bother trying to work it out or find it, my darling, because it isn’t there. The drugs put it there, end of. That’s why he likes the way they make him feel, the way they make him behave. He’s intelligent enough to know he’s nicer when he’s on them, that he appeals to women when he’s on them. Sick bastard. That’s my amateur theory, and I’m sticking to it. And for the women, myself included, the drugs produced feelings of affection and euphoria.’ She gives a flick of her hand. ‘I thought I was falling for him when in fact I was loved up, as they say.’

  Samantha lets Jenny talk. But as she vents her obviously still fresh anger, she leaves the subject of Peter behind and moves on to the entire world and all its ills. Everything is the fault of men, including her lack of career, Brexit and the state of the planet. Jenny hates men. She has put all of them together and has no faith in any of them anymore.

  This is what I will become if I don’t get out, Samantha thinks, watching Jenny’s mouth curl itself around its venomous topic: not yet thirty, a lava of hate bubbling always beneath the surface of me, informing almost everything I do.

  ‘I mean, who does that?’ Jenny is saying, and, ‘I mean, men just think they have the right … objectifying … bullshit … so much porn they can’t even get it up with a normal woman …’