Eleanor
DECEMBER
Police called to suspicious death.
I heard it on the radio as I drove up the A21, heading to London, the traffic already thickened and snarled. I had spent the night in a Travelodge beside the motorway, planning my next move, having bought a toothbrush and some pants in a large supermarket en route, where no one would remember me. The news was not a surprise, not really, but all the same my hands tightened on the steering wheel, and I had to focus to stay in my lane.
James Conway was dead. The short news item indicated that neighbours had called the police to investigate a seeping smell of gas, and when they broke into the apartment they found ‘Mr’ Conway – he would have hated that – dead from carbon monoxide inhalation. They suspected a very old gas fire in the flat was the culprit.
I didn’t care that he was dead. Before I left the place, I’d made him tell me everything Patrick had cooked up. He was happy to, boasting about his expertise. ‘But first the money.’
With my gloves still on, I’d laid an envelope with a cheque inside on the arm of the filthy sofa. I didn’t have enough in the account to cover it, but that wouldn’t matter. ‘Now please. I need to know.’
He laughed. ‘Not like you’re going to the police, I s’pose. It’s very hard to fake your own death, you see,’ he said. ‘Unless there’s no body, because you’re lost at sea or something. That’s how Canoe Man did it, you know that fella who dreamed it up for life insurance. But there’s no sea around here, is there? Anyway, the police are wise to that play now.’ So they had to come up with something better. Something more creative. They had to wait until someone died in the hospital who was around Patrick’s age.
‘But why did you help him?’ I’d asked, bewildered. I was struggling to take it in, a huge part of me insisting that it wasn’t true. ‘He was the one who owed you money, or so you say. Why risk so much?’
He’d sighed, letting me smell his vile sour breath. Memories surfaced, unwanted memories. My mother, lurching across the room. Eleanor, you stupid slut. Get out of my sight.
‘The thing about your Paddy is, he’s good at holding on to secrets, isn’t he?’ Present tense again. It felt so bizarre to hear that. ‘He knew things about people in the hospital. Surgeries they’d slipped up in. Women they had on the side. He did the expenses, you see, filed the insurance claims. He knew everything.’
Blackmail. He didn’t say the word, but that’s what it was. And so Patrick had been able to lean on people to do what he wanted, and let him escape with his life. The debts that were mounting, the woman who said she was having his child. And me, pressuring him to do IVF, to give me a baby.
Part of me still thought it was insane. And yet. My internet research, carried out long into the night, until my eyeballs frazzled, had shown me there were indeed ways to fake your own death. That Canoe Man had got a fake passport, using the birth certificate of a child who’d been born around the same time as him but died young. Apparently that was quite possible to do. I thought about the sums of money disappearing from our accounts, always just under the threshold of suspicion. He must have been planning this for a while.
The plot sounded so elaborate. Like something you’d read in one of those trashy thrillers I devoured on the long nights when he didn’t come home. The reason for running when he did was that luck had kicked in. A man was admitted to the neurology ward in the hospital he worked at. A man around Patrick’s age, in good health apart from the fact he’d been in a biking accident and hit his head on the tarmac. No one had come to claim him, and from the brands of his cycling wear, the police thought he was a tourist – American maybe. Someone with no family or close ties in the country, no one to look for him, no one who knew where he was. He was unconscious, badly hurt, but they still thought he might recover.
‘You see, we had to have a body,’ Conway had told me, swilling whisky. ‘They do autopsies for any suspicious death, and unless we had the whole morgue on side – well. But they’re busy, aren’t they? Funding’s so tight. They aren’t going to DNA test every single body they get when it’s clear who it is.’
So they had simply swapped the patients. Conway, who was in charge of the induced coma anyway, fiddled with the displays a touch, moved the man’s chart around.
‘You can do that in my role,’ he bragged. ‘A tiny flip of a switch and boom, someone’s dead. The margin of life, it’s so much smaller than we think.’
The autopsy had not thrown up anything strange. The dead man had no fillings or previous surgeries – another piece of luck, as fillings could quite easily be traced to their country of origin – and he was in good health apart from the head injury, probably better than Patrick was, with all his secret after-work drinks. His head injury was not inconsistent with a car crash. And so with some tweaking of records – Conway hinted that a few other people at the hospital had been implicated too – this man became Patrick, and he, as the mystery man, made a miraculous recovery and discharged himself.
‘But didn’t anyone notice?’ I could hardly believe this tale. ‘The nurses, the ICU doctors?’
He shrugged. ‘They use so many agency staff now. From all over, they are. Hardly speak English some of them, and they come and go every day. No one asked.’
I thought of that poor man, dying alone in a strange place, buried in someone else’s grave. Surely someone out there was looking for him? And Patrick, slipping out of the country on a fake passport. These loopholes didn’t exist nowadays, surely? But to be caught would have required someone to do their job, someone to be paying attention. And no one was. Not even me. I’d been so poleaxed with grief I hadn’t even thought it might not be him. Why would I?
After he finished telling me the story, I stood up, surreptitiously wiping the glass I’d used on my sleeve. I’d worn a head scarf that day, ostensibly to shield my face from the cold air, but it was also good for stopping hairs falling on to his grotty carpet – though I imagined it hadn’t been hoovered in years, so it wouldn’t be too hard to explain if they did find one of mine. When he left the room to get the water, with my gloves still on I’d subtly turned on the knob on the side of the gas fire, meaning it was already leaking out a small amount of toxic fumes. I’d noticed that the old-fashioned windows were painted shut, the room stuffy and unventilated. If he sat here all night breathing it in, he would die. If he lit the fire, or even a cigarette, the room would go up in flames.
‘Goodbye, James,’ I said when I left, now that he had explained it all and I finally believed him. On my way past, I slipped the cheque out of the envelope, knowing he wouldn’t look that night, not when he was halfway down the whisky bottle already. I meant goodbye for ever. He knew who I was, and who Suzi was and where we both lived. He was an unacceptable risk to us, to the baby. And besides, I felt the world was better off without him.
Now Conway was dead, and Patrick’s crime had gone with him. No one else would ever think to look for my husband, or know he might be alive out there somewhere. But I knew. And wherever he was – he would not have lingered in Spain, surely, not when he could take a ferry from there to North Africa and vanish – I wished there was a way to let him know that I was going to come after him, Lady Vengeance herself, and he was not going to get away with it.
Do you hear me, Patrick-Sean-whatever-you’re-calling yourself now? You will not get away with this.
Among all the lies, his death, his affair, his resurrection, that was the one thing I clung to. He would pay for what he’d done.
In fact, I was already on his trail.
Suzi
At times of stress when I was a kid – exams, getting in trouble with Mum for poor marks at school, being caught shoplifting fruit gums that one time at the age of eight – I would sometimes imagine a sassy friend giving me advice, the kind you saw on American sitcoms. Right now, she was lecturing me, hands on her hips. Heck, girl, what’s the matter with you? Your husband has you locked in a music room! I mean, let’s not even talk ab
out why you have a music room in the first place.
It was so hard to take in. For a long time, after I’d woken up down there, my arm crumpled under me painfully, a bruise on my forehead, I hadn’t been able to believe it. Was it some mistake? Did Nick know I was here? My brain rejected the truth. Of course he did – not only had he put me here, he had planned this. It was all him – the lights, the music, the word in the snow, even the rabbit. He’d admitted the lot. Not Nora at all – I had no idea what she was up to, but it wasn’t her trying to send me insane. It was my husband. Looking back, I was amazed I’d never noticed the signs. My phone, always drained of battery from the spyware he’d put on it. The way he always knew where I’d been, what I’d done. So stupid.
Among the guitars and amps and leads, there was a camp bed neatly made up with fresh bedding, a small rug on soundproofed floor. A stack of improving non-fiction books, mostly about pregnancy. Around me the empty shelves, intended one day for a wine collection, breathed dust, and I was sure there were spiders in the dark corners. Nick had left water for me, even a sandwich on a plate. He didn’t want to hurt me, at least, not until I’d had the baby. He just wanted to know where I was. That was all he’d wanted! And what better way to do that than to lock me up in the dungeon I hadn’t even noticed him building. It had been a while since I could climb the steps down here, and anyway, the music room was just another project I had no interest in. I’d let him build this prison around me, while I sat and brooded for another man.
I’m not stupid, he had said, before knocking me out, and he was right. I had treated him like he was blind, as if he didn’t see my red swollen eyes, the repeated checking of my phone, the way I jumped when the doorbell rang or hid my face when a car crashed on television. I had assumed that, because he hadn’t mentioned it, he hadn’t noticed. I had forgotten that Nick didn’t do mentioning. I had forgotten my earlier punishment, of being moved down here to the countryside, and now a smaller, less open prison was required to shock me into repentance.
And I did repent, really I did. If I could have, I would have gone back to the year before, never looked near Damian, never attended that stupid conference, walked right past you in the bar and gone to sleep alone in my room. I would have accepted my lot, a husband who loved me, a job I was good at, instead of always asking for more. I would never have given up work, never moved to the countryside, never met you. I would, perhaps, not be pregnant. Would I really give that up along with everything else? I didn’t know.
I knew I had to get out of here – that I would not be able to stand more than a day or two alone in the dark – and that I would say whatever it took to make that happen. I knew that Nick and I were done now, done for good, that keeping me here must be a crime of some kind, a terrible violation, and that I would call the police on him if and when I got out. But all the same, when I thought about it from his point of view, it made a kind of horrible sense.
Eleanor
There were things I was good at, it turned out. Finding information. Watching. Searching for people, tracking them down. I had not known I had these skills before, and so had never thought to turn them on my own husband. Why would I? He loved me, we were happy, or so I thought. Until I learned that he was lying and controlling and keeping me prisoner with my own fears. But now I wondered, what about his past? What had he done before me? Men like my husband – liars to the bone, stamped through with deception like a stick of rock – did not change. There would be something to find. And perhaps that something would lead me to him now, wherever he was in the world.
When we first met, after that concert in the Royal Albert Hall, Patrick Sullivan had told me the facts of his life. He was a doctor, an obstetrician (not true, he was a finance clerk, hence why he lived in a house-share with three other men. I had not found that out for some time, since he never took me there, insisting he was a gentleman, and by the time it occurred to me to wonder, I just assumed he owed money on student loans). His family were dead, he said, and he had been an only child with much older parents (I didn’t know if this was true or not). At university, there had been one serious girlfriend, but they split after a pregnancy scare ended in a termination. He’d told me this with a catch in his throat. ‘I know it was her choice, but I didn’t agree with it. It was still my baby.’ How my heart had swelled at that, thinking we’d have our own soon, that I would give him a child to make up for the lost one.
It turned out the girlfriend was real, at least as far as I could see. The ex, Kathy Gilsenan, had attended Essex University at the same time as Patrick, before he failed his first year and dropped out. He had been studying medicine, hence the photos I’d seen. It was sad. If I’d known him back then, perhaps I could have helped him pass, become a real doctor, and maybe there would have been no need to lie, to cheat, to take money that wasn’t his. Such a waste.
My research had led me to the fact that Kathy, still Gilsenan, now lived on the Isle of Dogs in London. So, my car eating up the miles between us, I was headed there to see her. It was a long shot that she’d know where he was, but I could think of no one else he’d ever been close to. And that was tragic in itself.
I found the address – a narrow street of terraced houses within yards of the Thames, the DLR rattling overhead. Parking was less easy – another hefty charge, I should have taken the train – but soon I was sorted and ringing her doorbell. It hadn’t occurred to me she might not be in. I knew with such conviction that I had to see her, had to talk to her, that she must be there. And she was.
‘Yes?’ A tall black woman with braids piled into a bun, Kathy was beautiful. She must have been my age, but didn’t look it. For a moment my resolve faltered.
‘Hi. I’m sorry to barge in on you like this but can I ask, do you – did you know a Patrick Sullivan?’
She frowned, and for a terrible moment I thought I’d got the wrong person. Then she said, ‘Do you mean Sean?’
‘You’re married to him.’
‘I was. He – he passed away a few months back.’ I wasn’t about to tell her the whole ridiculous saga. I didn’t want her to think I was crazy.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Her face was impassive – I didn’t think she was that sorry. ‘Are you here about Jack?’
Jack? Who did she mean? ‘No, I . . . I’m here because I think . . .’ Oh, just say it. ‘Kathy, I think he was lying to me. About a lot of things. Maybe everything. And I wondered if you – if you’d spoken to him in the last few years.’ I had to build up to asking: Is he still alive? Do you know where he is?
She sat forward, toying with a mug of tea that had the West Ham logo on it. I had said no to one. Her house was spotless, but I didn’t want to feel I couldn’t leave in a rush if things went badly. ‘It’s Eleanor, yes? Sean – that’s how I knew him – he did nothing but lie. The whole time. Where he was, how old he was, who he was seeing . . . He was a fantasist, I suppose you’d call it. So no, I haven’t spoken to him in years, and I’m glad.’
I closed my eyes briefly. So it wasn’t just me. ‘I see. His parents, are they dead?’
She snorted. ‘They’re fine, they live in Southend.’ Of course, Essex, where he’d gone to university. He’d told me he was from Somerset, a middle-class family, an orphan. But he had parents, living! What a lie to tell! Although, of course, I had also told him my entire family was dead, which wasn’t strictly speaking true either. ‘Far as I know, they’ve not heard from Sean in years, and Denise hasn’t either.’ She saw my blank look. ‘That’s his sister. She’s got four kids now, Sean’s never seen a one of them. Reinvented himself after uni, didn’t he? I guess a working-class family weren’t part of the plan.’
Nephews. Nieces. He wasn’t alone in the world at all.
‘And, Kathy, did you really split up because you were pregnant? I’m sorry to ask.’
She set her cup down. She seemed calm, accepting of his lies, and I envied that. ‘No, that’s true enough.’
‘He wanted to . . . have the baby?’
She gaped at me. ‘What? No, it was me pushed to keep it. He wanted me to have an abortion. Said he wouldn’t give me a penny in child support. My parents are religious, and anyway, I wanted it. That’s why we split. Nasty about it, he was. Tried to say it wasn’t even his.’
I wasn’t understanding her. ‘But you – I’m sorry, you lost the baby?’
Another strange long look. She got to her feet and picked up a framed photo from the mantelpiece. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before. She thrust it into my hands. It showed Kathy in a floral dress, beaming, her arm around a tall, mixed-race boy in graduate robes. He was a handsome lad. His eyes, in a lean, smiling face, were startling blue. ‘The Sullivans are good enough to Jack. He sees them once a year or so.’
I set the picture down carefully, afraid I would smash it, my hands were so convulsed. ‘He has a son.’
‘Oh yes, Jack’s his alright.’ A shade defensive. ‘He’s in his twenties now – got a good job as a paramedic.’
Medicine again. His son. Patrick had a son, tall and handsome.
‘And he – he knew?’
My mind was rejecting it still. He couldn’t have had a son all this time, who he’d known about but never saw. He wouldn’t have done that, not to an innocent child.
Kathy was contemptuous. ‘Course he knew. Never gave me a penny for him, mind you. I could have got Child Support on to him, but what’s the use? We didn’t need him.’
‘Right. I – I see.’ Oh my God. All this while I had been dreaming of the child Suzi was having, a baby that was maybe his, and he already had a son. A son in his twenties.
She replaced the photo, wiping some dust off it with her sleeve. ‘Did he have any more kiddies? It’d be nice for Jack, if there were. I never had another.’
‘No. No, we didn’t – we didn’t have any.’ So the problem must have been me after all, if he had fathered a child. As I’d always feared, there was something wrong with me, and no surprise, given where I’d come from.
The Other Wife Page 22