‘But . . . I didn’t take it.’ She was still clutching at hope. ‘Some mistake? Fraud, maybe?’ Didn’t the government protect you against that? ‘Identity theft?’
He looked wretched. ‘Elle, dear . . . your husband had full control over all the accounts too.’ Then, she finally understood.
Carefully, she said, ‘What was it spent on?’
He fumbled pages out in front of her, seeming grateful for the support of something concrete. She glanced over the tiny figures, crawling like ants. Holidays. The Jaguar, replaced every two years. Haircuts, clothes, massages. Meals out that she knew nothing about, bars, even hotel stays. He’d been spending money on her, perhaps. The woman. Elle’s money. ‘But . . . I don’t understand. He was a doctor, he earned a lot.’ That was her last straw to cling to. Even though he clearly spent more than she knew, much much more, he must have had his own money coming in too. She’d seen his payslips, though it had been for less than she thought. Maybe he got paid in different instalments, or it was weekly instead of monthly?
The lawyer hesitated. ‘I contacted his workplace, to ask about final pensions and so on. Elle – he did work at Surrey General, yes, but he wasn’t a doctor. I’m afraid, my dear, you have been rather . . . misled.’
Suzi
‘No one’s here then?’ Of course not, the agent would have knocked otherwise. The house was empty, walls trailing TV and internet cables. My voice echoed in the void.
‘It’s been vacated already, yes. Ready to move in, and there’s no chain obviously.’
‘Great, great.’ Pretending to care about the boiler and car parking, I moved around your house. I was inside your house. Of course, you weren’t here any more, but you had been. You had maybe stood by the patio doors on the phone, looking out on the garden. That was painfully neat, trees and grass clipped into right angles, so your wife must have left quite recently. I moved into the kitchen, which was large, with a marbled island. The same floor tiles Nick and I had looked at, from Baked Earth. I opened a cupboard, spotted a stray grain of dry rice in the corner. I wanted to take it with me, if I could have done it without looking crazy. Upstairs, three bedrooms with cream carpet, streaming with light. ‘Did they have any kids, the owners?’ I asked innocently. ‘Just wondering about those stairs.’ You could have lied to me about that too. Perhaps you had several children, half-siblings to my baby. I would have believed anything at this point.
‘No, they didn’t. Just a couple on their own.’ She didn’t mention the accident, or your death. Perhaps she thought it would put me off.
I probed a little. ‘Any reason for the sale? You know, just wondering about neighbours, or any issues.’
‘As far as I know they were downsizing. It’s a big place when there’s no little ones.’ She smiled at me as she lied, her lips moving and leaving her eyes untouched. ‘This is your first?’ Nodding to my bump.
‘Third!’ I said, inventing some random children. ‘That’s why we need a bigger place. This is lovely.’
‘Yes – a wonderful property. The owners were very house-proud, maintained it all beautifully, as you can see.’
‘Cream carpets, though. My lot would have this trashed in seconds!’ I was quite enjoying my alternate persona, a cheerful mother of almost-three. Probably she baked and rolled her eyes, laughing, when the kids drew on the walls.
I moved into what I could tell had been your bedroom. Built-in wardrobes slid aside to reveal nothing. I didn’t know what I was expecting, suits or shoes or something.
‘Lovely.’
She burbled on about storage and hot water pressure while I breathed in. You had been here. Your essence was still in the air. In the bathroom, she turned her back to check her phone, and that was when I spotted it. Something had been left behind in the mirrored wall cabinet. It was built around a corner, so that the inner space was hidden unless you put your hand in. Probably your wife had had cleaners in, and they hadn’t been too thorough.
I pretended to check the light fitting; the agent wasn’t looking. In a flash I stuck my fingers into the cabinet and pulled out the thing, shoved it into my bag. She looked at me. I moved the mirrored door between us, hiding my face.
‘Well, it’s certainly something to think about. Maybe I’ll come back with my husband.’ I wondered what his name was. Gary, perhaps.
‘Let me take your details, so we can keep in touch. I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Oh, it’s Lydia,’ I said, thinking of a girl I’d been to school with, a fearless chancer who once broke into the teachers’ lounge and stole a tin of biscuits. ‘Lydia Hutton.’
She asked for my email but I said I didn’t really have one, ‘Bit of a Luddite, ha ha’, and I reeled off a fake mobile number. Whoever it belonged to would be getting all those spam texts estate agents send you. Houses that cost four times what you said your budget was, totally different to what you’d asked for.
‘I’d make an offer soon, the couple who were just here are very interested,’ she said. I wondered how they were able to lie so convincingly, estate agents, if they trained them or recruited people who were already good at it. But then, I was learning that lying was not so very difficult after all, if you had a lot to lose by telling the truth.
When I stepped outside I felt hot and flushed, as if I’d just gotten away with something. As soon as the agent – I’d already forgotten her name – drove off, I stopped on the pavement and rooted in my bag for the thing from the cabinet. I saw it was an empty box of pills, in the name of Mrs Eleanor Sullivan.
I felt like I was going mad. You weren’t a doctor, you weren’t even called what you said you were called, you didn’t live where you said. Your wife was named Eleanor. I had her pill prescription in my bag.
When I arrived home in yet another taxi, the money Nick had left all but gone, I was relieved to see the house in darkness. Before leaving, I’d made sure to check I hadn’t turned anything on, no longer trusting myself. Nora’s house was also in darkness, and I didn’t see her familiar shape at the window, eyes shaded. Perhaps she was in the garden, though it was late. No strange music played this time, and I got the alarm code right. But the house was boiling, so much that I gasped for air. I went to the control dial, but it read nineteen. Nineteen! It should have felt cold. Maybe it was pregnancy, affecting my hormones. I stripped off my coat and jumper and T-shirt, leaving just a vest top that strained over my bump. I went to the studio and turned on the big Mac. The screen was so bright I had to shield my eyes. Then I started googling the name of the drugs your wife was taking. Quickly, I found what it was. A high-dose therapy for forms of psychosis. When I read that, I started to shake, although it was so hot. Oh God. Oh my God.
I needed to talk to someone, to say out loud what I had found, what I feared. Without really thinking it through, I was grabbing my jumper and moving to the front door. Ignoring Nick’s rules for once, I didn’t put my coat on or set the alarm – it was so close – but as soon as I stepped out, just the key jammed in my pocket, I felt the cold air bite into me. I dashed across the narrow road, looking left and right like Nick always nagged me to do, and for a split second I teetered on an icy patch, righting myself. I could just imagine what Nick would say if I had another fall.
As I put my hand up to Nora’s door, I heard a noise nearby, further down the lane near the ruins of Holly Cottage. A growl or a howl, some kind of animal maybe. Very conscious of the darkness closing around me, I knocked. Nothing. A shiver ran through me, and I felt madness rise inside me. This was crazy. I had to speak to another human, and it couldn’t be Nick. Where was she? I’d never known her to go out, except on our walks. Terrible doubts spiralled in my head. Eleanor. No, no, it couldn’t be.
I remembered our discussion one day before setting out on a walk. Nora slipping her key under a plant pot, querying why I always set the alarm. People didn’t lock their doors here, that was what Gavin the estate agent had said when we first saw the place. But Nick hadn’t subscribed to that; instead he�
��d installed the most expensive lock system money could buy. I hadn’t wondered why at the time. To keep people out, or to keep me in? Telling myself I was just checking something, I felt around under the pot, my fingers scrabbling in soil until I found the solid shape of the key. Then I turned it in the lock and I was inside Nora’s house. Once in there in the quiet, I could hear my own breath panting, the beat of my heart.
‘Nora?’
No answer, and all her lights were off. I should have left right then, I knew. But something made me stay. Maybe it was because I knew so little about my friend, when my life was an open book to her. She’d never shown me a picture of her husband, or told me anything about her own family, where she’d grown up. What if she came home and found me? I’d make up some excuse about thinking I’d seen a light in the house, I’d been worried about burglars. It was dark, and I realised what a musty smell this cottage had. Not like ours, which had been gutted to a shell. Maybe there was something indecent about that, buying up what had been a damp labourer’s cottage, full of TB and mould, and making it into a gleaming middle-class palace. What had we done? Why had we ever come here?
I stepped into Nora’s living room. It all screamed widow, as if she was forty years older than she was. Reading glasses folded on top of a book. A single mug rinsed and laid neatly on the draining rack. And the smell – damp. Hopelessness. In the living room I spun around in a circle, not sure what I was looking for. Holding a breath in my mouth, I moved up the stairs with their old worn carpet, and turned the handle of her bedroom door, thinking too late about fingerprints. Ridiculous. She’d never even know I’d been here, and even if she did find out, I could easily explain. Inside there was a single bed, like a nun’s, the plain white bedspread pulled tight. A few toiletries and a hairbrush full of grey hairs on the dressing table. It made me shudder. Nora wasn’t so much older than me, and I still thought of myself as young.
In the drawer of the bedside table was another book, hand cream – I recognised the brand name as an expensive one Claudia had once bought me for my birthday, which I’d promptly lost on the Tube while coming home drunk. The only other thing was a framed photo, in a heavy old-fashioned silver frame. I picked it up, held it to the meagre light from the window. Out in the country, we didn’t get much artificial illumination. I hadn’t understood what true darkness was until we came here. As the moon passed over the window, I saw what the picture was. A younger Nora, with long black shiny hair, bare shoulders in a white lace dress. A wedding-day shot. Her face blazing with love and joy. And the man behind her, in the black suit and white shirt, his hands sliding along her bare arms – well, that was you.
I heard a noise outside, and stumbled back, jarring my wrist against the door frame. Someone was coming.
Nora
I had learned a lot about Nick Thomas over the last few days of stalking him, and I drove home feeling invigorated. I had even bought myself a little present, so much was I enjoying my new hobby. It had been a surprising thrill, to watch him from so close and not get caught, follow him on his daily trips to the same café, and to a loud, techno-filled gym on the high street after work, and even as he walked around the nearby deer park with the trench-coat woman, coffees in hands. He had a new phone already; I saw him checking it as he waited for a turmeric latte, whatever that was. From the phone I’d taken, I’d learned that he spied on Suzi, watched her every move via cameras and Find My Friends. That he had some kind of spyware on her phone and laptop, noting every keystroke she made – the internet told me this was easy to buy, not even expensive, and I wondered if things would have been different had I known that sooner, had I used it on my husband. I learned that Nick could also control the temperature of the house, the music that played, the code to the door lock. He could leave her out on the road if he wanted to, freezing on the desolate highway, and he was notified every time the door was set or disarmed, so he knew exactly when she entered and left the house. As I drove home, avoiding the piles of slush on the roads, I turned it over in my head like an enjoyable challenge. How could I use this new-found knowledge to get what I wanted most of all? I should warn Suzi that Nick would find out whatever she was up to. But how to explain how I knew that?
When I got home that night, Ivy Cottage looked dark and uninviting. Willow Cottage was similarly unlit, and I wondered if she was out, and if so where she was. Up to no good, most likely. I bent down to the plant pot where I hid my key and felt a press of depression all over me – despite myself, I had enjoyed being in town, among people and lights and music. Perhaps it had been a mistake to come out here to live, to the silence, the smell of damp that always greeted me in the cheerless cottage. The key was not there. My fingers scrabbled in soil. To my confusion, I saw that it was in the door already, which was unlocked. Had I left it like this, distracted by my new project? Inside was dark and sad, no one home waiting for me, no lights turned on or food in the oven.
But it wasn’t true that no one was there. As I reached for the light switch, a hand closed over my wrist. And a voice said my name.
‘Elle.’
PART THREE
Alison
FEBRUARY – TWO MONTHS LATER
The woman who opened the door of Ivy Cottage looked tired and lined, though Alison thought she was only about forty. She resolved to start using that night cream her mum had got her for Christmas. A pointed gift if ever there was one.
When Alison asked to come in, the woman – a Nora Halscombe – stepped back. ‘Of course. I saw the vans going up and down the road. Has something happened?’
Inside was dank and not very warm; Alison could feel a draught from the badly fitting window pane. ‘I’m afraid a body’s been found in the snow, just up the road.’
‘Oh? How terrible. Would you like tea?’
‘Oh, no—’
‘Milk, two sugars, thanks.’
Alison glared at Tom for cutting her off. He shrugged. He’d be gagging for his afternoon caffeine fix – usually he downed at least four coffees and no fewer than two chocolate bars from the station vending machine. Alison declined a tea herself. Something about this place gave her the creeps.
Nora twittered about, setting down a bottle of milk with bits floating in it. Alison smirked at Tom.
‘Mrs Halscombe – is it Mrs?’
‘Ms,’ she said, with surprising firmness.
‘Sorry. Ms. I need to ask if you’ve seen anything suspicious. A vehicle behaving strangely, perhaps.’ They were working on the assumption that the body might have been flung from a van or car, or perhaps a pedestrian had been hit while walking. How else would it end up here, on this little-used stretch of country lane?
‘No, nothing like that. Poor thing. Was it a man or woman?’
Alison glanced at Tom. Was that a telling question?
‘I can’t say right now. Ms Halscombe – can I ask about your neighbours? Nicholas and Suzanne Thomas, is that right?’
‘He’s Thomas. She’s Matthews. They’re married, but – you know how some people are.’
‘I see.’ Alison made a note, as Tom slurped his tea, apparently unperturbed by the on-the-turn milk. ‘Do you know if they’re away? It doesn’t look like anyone’s at home. There’s post piled up in the doorway. On holiday, perhaps?’
Nora frowned. She hadn’t made tea for herself, and her cracked hands rubbed over each other anxiously. ‘I wouldn’t know, I’m afraid. We’re not very close.’
‘Really? Only the three of you out here?’
‘He works a lot. I see Suzi sometimes, to say hello.’
It was frustrating. They already knew that Nick Thomas had not returned to work at the local council after the Christmas holidays, that he had taken a considerable chunk of sick leave in the weeks leading up to it, and that colleagues believed him to be still ill with a serious flu, then post-viral fatigue.
As for the wife, she seemed to go nowhere and see no one. They were following up leads with her mother, who appeared to be on a round-the-world cr
uise and not contactable.
‘I’m sorry I can’t help more. I do hope you find who it is,’ said Nora, seeing them to the door. As they did, Alison jumped at a sudden noise. A baby. It sounded like a baby crying.
‘Oh, sorry.’ Nora smiled, her face softening. ‘Excuse me, I have to get her.’
The cold air hit Alison as they stepped outside, like a bucket of freezing water being chucked at her.
‘Didn’t look the type to have a baby,’ Tom remarked. ‘Isn’t she too old, like?’
‘You can have them at fifty these days,’ Alison scolded. ‘Come on. Let’s go back to the station, we’re not getting anywhere here.’
Eleanor
DECEMBER
We always think of names as fixed, immutable. I remember that man in The Crucible, shouting about his name being all he has, going to his death for it. But it’s not true. We can all wear many names throughout our lives. For a woman, it’s easy – just get married, subsume your old self, then start using a nickname, and before you know it you’re a different person entirely.
I’d been called by different labels in my life. My mother named me Eleanor, a stark cool name, like the woman she wanted me to be. When I escaped – when I lost her – I became Elle, a light-hearted fun name. For concerts, I was Elena Vetriano, a made-up name I’d taken from an Italian street, fitting for the dark-haired beauty I’d become, pretending I was from somewhere more exotic than the English countryside. Artists, writers, they get away with having aliases, whereas for other people it’s seen as shifty. My husband called me Elle too. Elle-belle. These days, I called myself Nora Halscombe. My mother’s surname. Not the one I was born with, but yet another incarnation of me. I was still figuring out who Nora was, what she was capable of. How far she would go.
When I first found that lip balm in the remnants from my husband’s car, followed by the double whammy of learning that not only had he spent all my money over the years, he was also not a doctor, indeed had never been a doctor, I felt hot and cold all over. I was shaking. For a long time I couldn’t figure out what emotion I was feeling – rage? Shock? Jealousy?
The Other Wife Page 14