The Closer You Get

by Mary Torjussen

  As I moved to get a better view, she looked up into the mirror that was on the hallway wall. She saw my face through the glass and she jerked back.

  I tapped on the window.

  CHAPTER 70

  Ruby

  Let me in,” she said, as though we were friends. As though this was a preplanned visit for a glass of wine or a book group, maybe. This was my lover’s wife and she’d tracked me down!

  I didn’t know what to do. I backed away and flattened myself against the wall, away from Tom and away from her.

  She tapped again.

  “Ruby, it’s me. Emma.”

  I knew who she was, all right. That was why I wasn’t going to let her in.

  “Let me in. I want to help you.”

  I stared at her through the glass. Help me?

  She nodded. “Hurry!”

  I hesitated, then went over to the door. I turned the latch and opened the door wide. She came in and quickly shut the door behind her.

  She looked down at Tom’s body, then back at me. “Is he breathing?” she asked briskly.

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  She took a little cosmetic mirror from her bag and knelt beside him. She held the mirror to his mouth for a few seconds, then looked at it. There was no mist on it.

  “That’s how you check for breathing,” she said. “I read about it in a book.” She spoke as though I might find this information useful another day. Then she pressed her fingers on his neck. She felt again and again, then tried his wrist. She shook her head, but her face gave nothing away.

  She stood with an “Oomph” and took out her phone.

  I stood frozen as she said, “Ambulance, please. It’s an emergency. There’s been an accident.” She gave my address, then said, “My friend’s husband’s just tripped and fallen downstairs. He tripped on his jeans. He’s banged his head and there’s blood coming out of his ear. His back’s all twisted. I think it’s broken. I’ve checked for a pulse but I can’t feel anything.” She gave a gulp as though she was crying, but her eyes were dry. “I think he’s dead.”

  At that I started to cry. Huge choking sobs overcame me. I kept reliving that moment where I could have grabbed his hand. I don’t know what I’d thought would happen but I hadn’t expected this. And yet I knew in that moment I was so furious I probably would have thought, Good! if someone had told me he’d die if I didn’t hold on to him. I went into the kitchen and sat at the table there, sobbing for everything I’d lost. I could hear Emma in the hallway, still on the phone.

  She called to me, “They’re on their way, Ruby. Don’t worry, they won’t be long.” She ended the call and came into the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on. You must be in shock. Tea or coffee?”

  I could still taste the coffee that Tom had made and thought I was going to be sick.

  “I don’t want a drink,” I said.

  “I’ll make one anyway.”

  She passed me a box of tissues and I took a handful, then she moved about the kitchen as though she owned it, finding tea bags and mugs and milk. I edged away, still scared of her. Why was she here? Had she found out about Harry and me?

  While the kettle boiled she pulled out a chair from its place by the dining table and said, “Now I need you to listen to me.”

  I stared at her, terrified.

  “You were in the living room,” she said. “Tom was upstairs. You were waiting for him to come downstairs to talk about whether to reduce the house price or not. And then you heard the crash. The living room door was half-closed. You didn’t see him fall. When you heard the crash you went into the hall, saw him on the floor, and then you saw me through the glass, just as it happened. Exactly as it happened, remember? You had felt his pulse and were crouching down and that’s when you noticed me. But I’d seen everything. I saw him fall downstairs and saw you come out of the living room.”

  I couldn’t make sense of it.

  “Let’s go into the living room now.” She guided me in there. I was shaking so hard it was difficult to walk. “Now sit in your usual place.”

  I collapsed onto the sofa.

  “Look at the door. That’s how it was when he fell. You can’t see the hallway from there. And that’s where you were sitting when you heard him fall.”

  I thought she was trying to trick me. I started to speak, to object, but she interrupted me.

  “And there’s coffee here. Did you have a drink with Tom?”

  I nodded. I actually thought she was crazy at this point. “He was showing some people around the house and then he got changed out of his suit and made me a cup of coffee.”

  “So why had he gone upstairs? Think!” she urged. “What could he have been looking for upstairs?”

  I knew now what she meant but I couldn’t think straight. I pointed to my iPad on the windowsill, behind the curtain. “He was looking for the iPad. We were going to look at other houses online, to compare prices.”

  “That’s great. Perfect. And he couldn’t find it and he was in a hurry and fell downstairs.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “Now listen to me carefully. You and I met in a yoga class in Liverpool.”

  It took a moment for this to register. “What?”

  She repeated it. “We met in a yoga class in Liverpool.”

  I was trying to get my head around Tom lying on the hallway floor and Harry’s wife sitting in my living room, talking about yoga. I snapped, “I don’t do yoga!”

  She sighed. “You don’t get it. Listen to me. We went to yoga in Matthew Street. I can’t remember the name of the studio and neither can you. We used to pay in cash. The instructor went off to India. To Goa, I think.” She spoke so confidently I thought it must have happened. Had I really met her before? “Her name was Janie. I gave you a lift home a couple of times and that’s how I knew where you lived.”

  “How did you know where I lived?”

  “I told you,” she said. “I gave you a lift home from yoga. And today I was out and drove past your house and saw the For Sale sign. I’m having a baby.” She gave me a sidelong glance and I flushed scarlet. “As you know. I’m looking for a new house. And I saw your car outside so I thought I’d pop in and ask for a look around.”

  I stared at her. “You want to live here?”

  “No, of course I don’t!” She sighed as though I was stupid. “That’s what I’ll tell them.”

  I could hear the sound of a siren; it sounded as though it was a way away, but it was hard to tell. Panic was rising in me and I felt like I wanted to run on the spot.

  She said, “Tell me how we know each other.”

  I was terrified; would I have to tell her I’d driven past her house and seen her kissing Harry? “I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “Forget that,” she said urgently. “Tell me what I said.”

  “We went to yoga.”

  “That’s right. Good. It was a beginners’ class. We were useless and stopped going. It was ten pounds an hour. In Matthew Street. Two or three years ago. We didn’t know each other beforehand. We haven’t seen each other since.”

  Finally I got it. I nodded.

  “And tell me where you were when Tom fell downstairs.”

  “I was here,” I said, slowly. I’d stopped crying by now. I knew how vital this was. “He was showing people around the house; they seemed to like it. After they left he popped up to his office to look for his iPad. We wanted to check what other houses in the street had sold for. I was waiting for him to come downstairs. And I also wanted to talk to him about Josh’s eighteenth birthday. I wanted to ask Tom what I could buy him.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks, realizing that Josh had just lost his father. All the breath seemed to leave my body and I could feel my eyes bulging. Emma jumped up and put my head in my lap, telling me to breathe, that everything would be all right. I knew it wouldn’t,
though. Not for Josh.

  “What happened then?” she whispered in my ear. “What are you going to say happened then?”

  It took a huge effort to lift my head up. She was giving me an encouraging look, her face pale but resolute.

  “I heard a crash and a shout,” I said, remembering my lines. “I rushed out into the hallway.”

  “I know,” she said. “I saw you.”

  “He was at the bottom of the stairs.” At last this part was true. I started to cry. “His body was twisted and his eyes were shut and his ear was bleeding.”

  “And then?”

  “I took his pulse. I remembered how to from school.”

  “Actually you didn’t,” she said. “But never mind that.”

  The siren grew louder and I knew it was near my street.

  “It’s just as it happened, but you were in the living room. You and Tom were getting on well. You were in the living room, heard him fall, saw me at the front door. Remember?”

  I could hardly concentrate. I didn’t know what she was doing there. When I saw her I thought she’d hunted me down, intending to hurt me, but now she was helping me. “Why are you doing this for me?” I asked.

  For a moment I saw pity on her face, then her eyes hardened. “Don’t flatter yourself, Ruby. Your husband tried to destroy me. You’ve just done me a huge favor. I’m hardly going to turn you in.”

  “But you don’t even know him!”

  “Oh yes, I do.” She fumbled in her handbag and brought out an envelope. Inside it were two sheets of paper, one scrawled on, one typed. She handed me the typed copy. “Read it.”

  Honestly, I had no idea what was going to be on it. No idea at all. I opened the sheet of paper and stared blankly at it.

  On the paper was a table of figures. I saw DNA and 99.99%. I blinked. I didn’t have a clue what I was looking at. Then I saw the word: Mother. Next to it was: Emma Sheridan. It seemed to take a long time for my eyes to find the words Biological Father. There it said, Harry Sheridan.

  I looked up at her. It was too late to pretend we didn’t know each other.

  “Why do you think I was here?” she said gently.

  Still I didn’t get it. And the ambulance was roaring up the street with its sirens blaring. Blue lights flashed through the window as it parked on the path behind Tom’s car.

  Slowly she put the document and the envelope into her bag and turned to look me straight in the eyes. “You’re not the only one who can sleep with someone’s husband,” she said.

  CHAPTER 71

  Emma

  They bought it. Totally and utterly bought it. After all, I was an independent witness who said Ruby was in the living room at the time Tom accidentally fell downstairs. Why would I lie about that? Even I wasn’t always sure why I had. Not really.

  She stayed in the kitchen while the ambulance crew was there. She was crying so hard by then. Well, we both were. I don’t know whether her tears were from losing him or from the shock of being responsible. Which she was, really.

  For me, it was his T-shirt, I think, that started me off. It was the same one he’d worn the night I’d slept with him. As he lay on the hallway floor I had a sudden memory of him lying on their spare-room bed. I’d pushed his T-shirt up and was kissing his chest. I knew how that T-shirt felt. I knew how his skin felt beneath it. I’d felt his heart beat hard against my mouth and had known he was excited and terrified. It was the same for me. And now I knew it wouldn’t beat again. That’s what made me cry.

  The police were so nice to us. Much nicer than we deserved. The ambulance crew disappeared as soon as the police arrived. They’d established Tom was dead; he’d died immediately when his head had hit the tiled floor. They told us over a thousand people in the UK die from falling downstairs every year. Many of them are drunk, and they said they could smell alcohol on Tom’s breath. Ruby told them that she thought she’d heard him in the kitchen, having a sneaky drink while he made some coffee, and the police officer found vodka in a glass in the dishwasher.

  The police called the duty undertaker and then called in a crime scene manager, who secured the house. A photographer arrived to take photos of the scene before Tom was taken away, but I was in the living room and Ruby in the kitchen by then, giving brief statements. I told the officer I was pregnant and he hurried to make me some hot, sweet tea. I had to force myself to drink it and when I was sick they thought it was because Tom had died.

  Ruby looked to be in shock when she came back into the living room; her face was so pale I thought she’d faint. She looked at me as though she hardly recognized me, which wasn’t surprising, really, but while we waited for the undertaker to arrive she let me sit next to her and hold her. After Tom was taken away, the police locked up the house and kept the keys. They said she could have them back in a few days and she seemed too stunned to respond. We stood outside the house afterward. Our cars were parked next to each other and we sat in her car for a while, neither of us knowing what to do. We swapped numbers, just as though we were normal people, as though we didn’t have this history between us. As though we hadn’t slept with each other’s husbands and covered up the death of hers. She was going back to her flat, she said. It seemed like she had no one she could call on. Nobody she could talk to. It was exactly the same for me.

  It was two weeks before I heard from her again.

  * * *

  • • •

  She sent me a message early one Friday morning, two weeks after Tom died. I was taking a long weekend so I was at home on my own; Harry had gone in to work. Had she known that? I was just trying on my new yoga pants; there was a pregnancy yoga session on at the gym in town that morning and I thought I’d give it a go. I had every intention of being one of those lithe and relaxed yummy mummies that you see on adverts. And yes, when I put them on I thought of Ruby and me in our fictional yoga class, but then she was always on my mind.

  When I saw the message: Hi, it’s me. Are you free for a chat? my knees were suddenly so weak I had to sit down on the bed. Had something happened? Was she going to warn me that the police would call?

  I took a deep breath. If they were going to contact me, I needed to know. I started to type Has anyone suspected anything? and realized how that might look if our messages were ever seen, so changed it to a chatty, Hi, how are you?

  She must have assumed I was being friendly. Immediately she replied: Fine, thanks. Just thought a coffee would be good.

  Oh, decisions, decisions. I could bend my tired body into downward dog while awaiting the treat of a wheatgrass smoothie. On the other hand I could face my husband’s mistress—or was that my lover’s widow?—and talk about how we’d collaborated in concealing the way he died. It was a hard choice but eventually I replied:

  I’ll be at the Oval Café at 11.

  CHAPTER 72

  Emma

  I got there early and sat with a glass of water in the corner at the back of the café. There were just enough people there so that we wouldn’t be noticed, but not enough that anyone would have to sit near us. The French windows were open and most people had spilled outside onto the small terrace. At the counter there was a wide array of cakes and normally I would’ve made the most of them, but that day my stomach was clenched and I couldn’t have eaten a thing. I saw a little black car drive up the street, then slow down and park. I recognized it immediately. It had been parked outside their house that afternoon, two weeks ago.

  My stomach tightened further as she climbed out of the car. It was as though I was seeing her for the first time. My competitor. The woman who’d been having an affair with my husband. She looked younger than I remembered, more like the old photo I’d seen on their mantelpiece, the one where Tom’s son was young. Her hair was wavy now and I could see highlights there, glinting as she walked across the road.

  She walked into the café and looked around. I waved halfheartedly,
wondering why on earth I was there.

  “Hi,” she said. She blushed bright red and I thought, Good, so you should. I had to quell the thought that I wasn’t exactly an innocent here. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

  She ordered coffee at the counter and waited for it before coming back to my table. She sat down next to me; I knew she’d sat there so that we could both check out the room that way, see if we were noticed together. Nobody was looking at us, though. We just seemed like a couple of friends having a drink together. Appearances can be so deceptive.

  Ruby stirred her coffee until I wanted to grab the spoon from her. She looked up and saw my expression and put the spoon down swiftly. “I’ve got something to tell you,” she said.

  My heart thumped hard in my chest. “Did they look at his phone?”

  She looked confused. “No, why?”

  “Are you sure? Absolutely certain?”

  Every night since Tom died I’d woken at about three o’clock and lain in bed worrying about his phone. I hadn’t thought about it on the day itself, there was too much to think about, but I’d thought of little else since. I knew it would be password protected, but the police could get beyond that, couldn’t they? And once they’d examined it, they’d say, Hold on, isn’t this person he’s sending threatening messages to the same woman who said she’d witnessed his accident? Then they’d arrest me. Each night I panicked at the thought that I’d have my baby in prison and Harry would have to take care of it. We’d never get past that, and when I left prison the baby would stay with him.