I think what I felt was relief. Finally, I had someone to blame. I could not bring myself to blame him, even knowing I’d been right all along, that there was someone else. He was gone, and the loss eclipsed everything else I might feel for him. I would have given my right arm to have him back, even knowing he wasn’t faithful. But now I had an explanation for how he could veer off the road on a cloudless day. Of course – he hadn’t been alone. The woman had been with him, and somehow she’d caused this to happen. I had looked and looked at the stretch of road he died on, staring at it on Google Maps for hours, and there was nothing for miles before it, just a country road with no pavement. Fields. She must have been in the car when it happened. That meant she had likely run from the scene. Maybe if she’d called an ambulance, he could have been saved. Maybe he would still be here with me. She was a criminal, this woman, and she’d betrayed her own husband (I was sure she was married too, much safer that way) and widowed me. I was determined I would find her, and make her suffer like I was suffering.
But how did you find a ghost? I knew nothing. No name, no description, nothing. Just that she owned a sticky tube of cheap lip balm, the kind you could buy in any high-street chemist. There wasn’t even anyone I could ask, apart from Conway, who I certainly wouldn’t. The ‘guys’ from the hospital hadn’t even come to Patrick’s funeral, for all the nights he spent drinking with them.
Then I realised – of course, that had been a lie too. Those were the times he was with her. Even when I thought I knew it all, there were still things I’d deceived myself about.
Something I had learned early on, after what happened in my teens, the fire and Uplands and my escape from it, my reinvention of myself, was that money could fix almost everything. I knew he would have used his phone to contact her. He wouldn’t have had a whole different one – he liked to message her while I was there, in the next room serving up dinner. I remembered the curve of his smile as I watched him, the risk of it all.
This was the beginning of my digital education, and I discovered a whole world my husband had kept from me. I learned that there were ways into even locked phones, hacks and tricks and codes. Patrick’s was tied to his Gmail account, and he had left that logged in on the home computer, which I knew the password to, though I only used it to order shopping online. The Gmail account itself was blameless – nothing but circulars, advertisements and electronic receipts, and it struck me again how impersonal his life had been. Through the account, I was able to reset the lock screen on the phone. It must happen a lot nowadays, when so much of our lives is digital, locked up behind passwords. I also didn’t know the code for the air conditioning, or to adjust the alarm settings or even the smart TV. Never mind wills – this is what we should write down for our loved ones, in case we leave them suddenly.
Inside an hour, I had found the secret app, hidden away in a folder called ‘tools’, with the calculator and the pedometer and all that. It was called AirAse, something that sounded boring and technical. Instead, as another trip to Google told me, it was an app that automatically deleted all the data viewed on it, once it was clicked out of. There was no way to find what my husband had looked at. Gripping the chipped edge of the computer desk, I felt swayed by despair. How would I find this woman?
Then I had a thought. That last day, she had been in the car. That meant he must have picked her up somewhere – and there was a good chance he would have called or texted her, to arrange it. Maybe he hadn’t got round to deleting the phone history before the accident, if he was driving. I went through the list of numbers with trembling hands. What if she answered, and I found myself speaking to her, this woman? I would fake a wrong number, though I didn’t know if I might be overwhelmed by rage. I had to try at least.
The first thing I saw was that he’d made a lot of calls that day – unusual. Like most people, he mainly used his phone for texting or the internet. One of the mobile numbers went dead – abandoned. Another opened with a blare of noise, like it was a warehouse or market stall or something, then went dead when I said hello. The last – made just an hour before the accident – went to voicemail. Hello, this is Suzi Matthews. We’ve no reception at the new place, so please leave a message!
Suzi. Suzi Matthews. An upbeat, husky voice, with a tinge of Midland vowels. This was her, I was sure. The woman who had left you to die.
She’d given me a clue herself in the voicemail message. The new place, she’d said. That meant she had recently moved – and we, she’d said we, so she was likely married, as I’d imagined. Again, by paying a bit of money, it would be an easy matter to look Suzi up on the Land Registry website. So that’s what I did. I wasn’t sure if it was Susie or Suzy or Susan or Suzanne (the latter, as I learned), and I also learned the name of her husband. Nicholas Thomas. When I saw the address, isolated, receptionless, likely to get snowed in, I knew it was meant to be. And there was a cottage for rent right next door. All I had to do was give up my house, the one I’d lived in with him, and since I could no longer afford it anyway, that was not a hard choice.
A few weeks later, after I locked up the house, I drove to the graveyard. The stone was still so clean and fresh, sparkling with granite chips. It was obscene, really. Beloved husband. Not father. He’ll never be that now, I thought. I left a cheap bouquet of flowers, dyed chrysanthemums in plastic wrap – I couldn’t afford the good florist any more, the one with crackling brown paper and twine and fat dewy rosebuds – and then I went.
My plan at that point was to crush Suzi. Hurt her, maybe physically, certainly mentally. To ruin her life in every possible way. Not by telling her husband – that would be too easy. But by forcing her into ruining it herself.
I hadn’t counted on two things. First, that she was pregnant, walking about brazenly with a bump under a jumper I recognised as Patrick’s; I had bought it for him. I assumed it was Patrick’s child, and she had hinted herself that she thought so. The idea of that was dizzying. He was gone, but his child had been left behind, like an unexpected gift. A little girl or boy with his dark hair and blue eyes, just as I had pictured all those years, in the pastel-shaded nursery I had ready and waiting. His baby. If I broke Suzi entirely, blew her life to pieces, I might lose my chance to be near this child when it came. To hold it in my arms. The thought crept in: maybe Suzi wouldn’t even want it. Her dead lover’s baby, an accident. Why would she? When I got to know her, that thought strengthened, came to life. Suzi was not maternal. She was disorganised, chaotic, unhappy. Their house, for all its mod cons, was a terrible place to raise a child. So I kept watching, and the thought kept growing.
The other thing I had not counted on was that I would feel sorry for her. What a mess she’d got herself into, saddled with that controlling, passive-aggressive husband, so worn down that she thought she couldn’t leave. Not even knowing Patrick was dead, so likely she thought she’d been ghosted, as the teenagers said. Dumped, and pregnant. I knew how it was to have someone worry away at you, telling you you’re crazy, you’re no good, you’re defective. So once I was installed as her helpful new neighbour and confidante, I made a new plan. To investigate Nick Thomas and find out what skeletons he had lurking in his past. To encourage Suzi to strike out alone, before the baby came. Then to wait until the child was born, and make sure I kept it with me, for ever.
When someone grabbed my hand in my cottage that night, I screamed. I flailed. ‘Get out of my house! Get out!’
‘Calm down, Elle,’ said a voice close to my ear. ‘Don’t make a fuss. I just want to talk.’
I fumbled the switch, and saw who it was blinking in the harsh light. James Conway. I recognised his smell of stale alcohol. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Suzi
With everything that had happened so far, it shouldn’t have been a shock that I was totally in the dark. But still, I struggled to believe what I’d seen with my own eyes – that Nora, my new friend, the confidante I’d shared everything with, was your wife. Your widow. Eleanor. Nora. The
same person. No, my brain said. It can’t be. It must be a mistake. Why had she come here? To hurt me, clearly. To ruin me. Oh God! What was she planning? She knew I had slept with her husband, that I was maybe pregnant with his child. I couldn’t stop shaking at the thought, like a bucket of cold water over my head. All the times I’d wondered if it would really be so bad if your wife knew, and here I had my answer – yes, it was awful. I was going to lose everything. Nick would find out. She might hurt me, hurt the baby. And worst of all – I would deserve it. I had done this, cold-bloodedly slept with her husband, over and over. But if she knew about the affair, why hadn’t she acted yet? What was her plan? Why were the three of us, me and her and Nick, still living in this limbo?
When I heard someone arriving at Nora’s house, bumbling round the back garden, testing the door, I managed to get out the front and across the road in the dark. I didn’t know who it was, and was too frightened to look. There was no car that I could see. I got inside my house and stood there in darkness for a while, shaking with adrenaline, fear, shock, all of it. Nora. Eleanor. Your wife was my next-door neighbour. It was insane. What did she want?
I didn’t know what to do. Nick would be back from work soon, and I couldn’t explain why I was pacing up and down in the dark. Perhaps about ten minutes had gone by when I saw Nora’s car draw up – so it wasn’t her who’d interrupted me. I wondered who – ridiculous if it really had been a burglar, given the excuse I’d planned to use if she caught me in her house. I saw her glance towards my windows and I ducked, absurdly, though she couldn’t have seen me without lights. Nora, who’d been in my house, whose house I had been in, who I’d walked with in the deserted countryside, was now a figure of terror. I found myself thinking of the dead rabbit. The words in the snow, the moment I’d fallen and seen her hesitate before helping me up. But then the strange music in my house – how could she be doing that?
I didn’t know who to turn to. Claudia had been clear she couldn’t or wouldn’t help, and I couldn’t face telling my mother. I could only think of one person to turn to, a virtual stranger, but one who had been kind. One who had also been a victim of yours, in a way. Maybe he would be able to help.
The phone kept ringing. Words ran through my head. This will sound mad . . . Sorry to bother you but . . . I think someone’s stalking me.
‘Hello?’ My voice was too high. ‘Dr Holt?’
‘Speaking.’ His tone was warm but harried. I was amazed he answered his own phone; my usual experience of trying to contact anyone in the NHS was a Kafkaesque labyrinth of ringing-out extensions.
‘I came to see you the other day. I – I said my name was Nora.’
He seemed to remember right away. ‘Oh yes, the friend of Patrick Sullivan’s, my alter ego.’
It was so strange, that. Why would you, a finance clerk, even have been at a medical conference? It made no sense. Had you been trolling for sex? Or something else? ‘I was thinking . . . it just seemed weird, that he said he was you.’
‘I know. That’s the thing, he’d have been the one to make the bookings for the conference in the first place. And I never said I was going, I’m sure of that. Also, there’s – well, I don’t quite know what’s going on, but there’s some kind of departmental inquiry going on right now. Missing chunks of budget, that sort of thing, which he would have been in charge of. Nora—’
I interrupted him. ‘I’m sorry, that’s not my real name. It’s Suzi.’
He paused. ‘OK.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said miserably. ‘I can explain. Do you think you could meet me for a coffee, maybe?’ It was dangerous, of course. But I had to. You had lied to me, obviously, about a lot of things. This man was a link to your real life, and to Dr Conway, who clearly knew something of what had happened between us. You had once said that affair management was like filling a condom with water and looking for leaks. Dr Conway was a potential leak, perhaps the only person who could link me to a dead man in Surrey. I could at least find out how much he knew – perhaps even learn what the hell was going on in my life.
‘Alright,’ he said. He had a nice voice, Dr Andrew Holt. Warm and guileless, the way yours had never been. We made an arrangement to meet in Guildford the next day – I’d just have to figure out a way to get there again. I hung up, testing myself for guilt, finding less than I would have thought. Perhaps everyone has a limit. Or maybe emotions have a hierarchy, and right now I was filled with fear – jittery, mind-numbing fear.
The noise of a car outside. Nick? I ran to the window but saw nothing, just the sound of an engine fading into the distance. Perhaps Nora’s visitor had parked down the road, where I used to wait for you. There was a light on in her house now, burning behind pulled curtains. I wondered if she was standing behind it, watching me as I was watching her.
Eleanor
‘What are you doing here?’ I said again, wrenching myself free of Conway.
I saw he had helped himself to the small bottle of brandy I kept in the kitchen cupboard for shock, and my disgust for him rose. Imagine having so little self-control. But how had he found me out here?
‘You skedaddled,’ he said, face twisting in a horrible smile. ‘One minute it was the funeral, next you were selling up and shipping out. No forwarding address for friends. Lucky for me you gave it to the hospital.’
My heart sank. He was right. Eddie had contacted them and updated the records for Patrick’s pension; meagre as it was, I needed the small amount of money it would bring in. Conway must have got into the system. I stepped away from him, sickened by the touch of his hand on my skin. ‘Well, you found me. What do you want?’
‘What do I want? Let’s see. The money your husband borrowed from me?’
‘You’ve no proof of that.’ I took off my coat and boots, trying to show that this was my place, my home. He had no business being here.
‘Don’t I?’ He came closer again. A man with no concept of physical space, and the idea that he had access to anaesthesia made me want to vomit. ‘We can sort this out nicely. All you have to do is pay me and I’ll disappear.’
‘Why would I do that? You can’t do anything to us now. Patrick is dead. He’s dead and there’s not much more I care to lose.’
‘What if I tell Missy across the road who you are?’
I blinked. I hadn’t even imagined he knew about Suzi.
‘That Paddy’s baby in her belly, is it?’ Another hit for him. He knew much more than I could have thought. Perhaps Patrick had told him? I imagined him speaking tenderly of Suzi, and my heart spasmed.
‘Of course not. Look, blackmail is a crime. If you leave now I won’t tell the police.’
He laughed. ‘You, go to the police? Tell ’em who you really are? I don’t think so, Nora.’
I paused for a moment, working out my next move like a chess player. ‘How much did he owe you?’
‘Twenty k.’ I highly doubted it would be that much, even if he had borrowed some. But Conway had me at a disadvantage. One word to Suzi about who I was and she’d bolt, taking her baby with her. Patrick’s baby.
‘You’ll have to give me time to get it,’ I said, as calmly as I could. ‘Patrick left me almost nothing, you know.’
‘Cleared you out, I hear. But there must be some. After your family died in that fire, so sad, poor little Eleanor! What a coincidence, she’s alive and safe and the rest are – poof! And your swanky piano career. There must be cash.’
Ellie. Ellie, I’m scared! A white face at a window.
I had to stay calm. He couldn’t know about that. No one did. ‘He spent it all,’ I said, the truth making me savage. ‘He ruined me, James. I’m sorry if he did the same to you, but what can I do about it? The money is gone. And he’s dead, he hit a tree and died, so I can hardly make him give it back.’
Conway gave me a horrible, sly smile. I hated him in that moment. If I’d had something heavy to hand I would have bashed him over the head with it. ‘You really believe that, do you?’
�
��W-what?’ I stammered.
‘Think about it. He’s a good driver, right?’ The present tense again. I wanted to kill him for it. ‘Got a good, strong car, costs a bloody fortune. But he drives into a tree on a quiet road? And you thought it was an accident? Wake up, love.’
I felt sick, the room lurching. ‘What do you mean? Tell me. Tell me what you know!’
‘Money first.’ He drained his glass of my brandy, and I knew I would throw it away after he left. ‘Get it and I’ll tell you the truth about your husband. Paddy-Sean-Andrew, whatever his name is. You don’t know the half of it, love.’ Andrew? What did he mean?
‘Tell me right this minute what you mean, or I’ll go to the police.’ I tried to hold it together. I needed to know what he knew. My head was spinning, and I could feel it leaking away, all the control I’d carefully taken back, all the pressure I brought down on my memories, squashing them flat. My husband, with another woman. A house, roaring up in flames.
‘Nah, you won’t. Come to mine – I’ll give you till Friday. Flat 7, Hereford Gardens, in Guildford. I’ll be there after eight.’ And he gave me a horrible pointy-finger sign, like he was shooting a gun, and stepped back towards the door. ‘Bloody nightmare finding this place, isn’t it? Bit more snow and you’ll be stuck down here.’ I wondered why I hadn’t seen his car. He must have parked it up the road, around the bend. And I had walked right into his trap.
At the sound of the door shutting, relief flowed through me. That awful man was gone. I was alone. I could think, breathe, get a hold of myself. But what did he mean? Was he saying there was more to Patrick’s accident than I thought? I had wondered the same. How could he crash like that, on an empty road? It made no sense. What did Conway know?
The Other Wife Page 15