Surrogate – a psychological thriller

by Tim Adler

  "What the fook are you doing in my room?" she said behind me.

  I turned around. "Alice, these photographs–" I realised I was dealing with somebody who was not quite right in the head. My instinct was to scream and shout, but I needed to tread softly. Be cautious. You never knew what might set her off. "These photos, you had no right–"

  "It were just a bit of fun," Alice said, reaching for the laptop. Unthinkingly, I grabbed her wrist.

  "You've stolen these photographs. My memories. It's my life you're stealing. Do you really think that you and I have some future together? This is all in your head." Careful, Hugo, you're losing your temper.

  "What's wrong with you? Why are you acting like a stranger?"

  "That's exactly what I am to you. A stranger."

  "I were just messing about on the computer," she said.

  "I want you to move out." Beat. "Now."

  "Don't you put this all on me, Hugo. We knew exactly what were getting into."

  "Alice. Stop this. I don't know what you think is going on, but I'm not going to jeopardise my marriage again."

  "What are you saying? That making love to me was a mistake?"

  "Stop using that word. It wasn't love, it was lust." I released her wrist. "Yes, I suppose I am. I'm sorry."

  Alice said quietly, "If you make me leave, I'll tell your wife everything."

  "Fine, you do that. I'm not afraid of you." Then exasperated, waving my hands in the air. "You know what? I don't care. You need help. You need therapy. It doesn't matter what you do or say, because there's never going to be anything between us."

  "I'll tell her that you raped me," Alice said.

  That was the moment I saw red. I suddenly felt overwhelmingly angry. How dare she threaten me like this? I brought my face right up close to hers. "Do you really think that I am going to imperil my marriage for the sake of a one-night stand with somebody like you? Well, do you? Do you? DO YOU?"

  Alice looked at me dumbly, tears welling. She was obviously crazy. "Look, I just want you out of my flat. Please. Just leave."

  Alice reached out, trying to stop me leaving. "I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean it. Hugo, stop – I fookin’ love you. The moment I saw you it were like we were meant for each other. You do feel it, don't you? You do feel it, Hugo?"

  I wrenched myself free. "Love me? You hardly know me. Look, get this through your head. I don't love you. I never have."

  She put her hands on her tummy. "All in my head? I'm carrying your baby, Hugo. You fucked me, and now I'm having your baby."

  "This is totally insane. I don't love you. I just want you gone."

  With that I slammed the door shut, panting heavily. I wanted to cry and vomit at the same time. Alice was still shouting on the other side of the door: "I never went through with the egg transfer. You can call the clinic. This is your baby for real."

  She was really having my baby?

  My mind reeled at what she had just told me. If she was having my baby, then this would change everything. I would have no option but to tell Mole the truth, because once she found out, my marriage would be over.

  Chapter Twelve

  The autumn evening deepened outside my office window. I was in no hurry to go back home. Indeed, I wanted to stay away for as long as possible. I waved goodbye to the last of my staff going home for the night. A Brazilian cleaner started pushing her vacuum around the carpet, and I wondered whether Alice would still be there when I got home or had done the decent thing and left. Either way, I would not know until I went back. And if she was in the flat, what state would she be in? I dreaded another scene. I pictured myself clanking down the road in a suit of armour towards our apartment building, ready for her to throw anything at me. But if she had gone, what was I going to say to Mole? How could I tell her that Alice had moved out?

  I didn't think Mole would forgive me if I had done something to wreck our best chance of having a baby. Hang on, what if Alice was telling the truth and she was having my baby for real? After all, Mole was the one who was infertile, not me. Panicked, I had left a couple of messages for Trevor Wallace-Jones at the clinic, but he hadn’t returned my calls. God, what a situation. There were too many imponderables to think about, and it was with some relief that I turned back to the profit-and-loss account. I didn't want to think about what-ifs right now. At least with figures there weren't any grey areas, just black-and-white numbers cascading down an Excel spreadsheet. It was the real world that was difficult to interpret.

  Brian Sibley had asked me to sign off the company accounts, which normally I would do without a second thought. This year, however, with all the losses incurred by the Dutch Marquez, I thought I ought to go over them in detail. Pages and pages of figures. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. Cash in hand. Creditors. Debtors. Warranties. I kept flicking backwards and forwards between the simple-to-understand profit-and-loss page and the reams of notes at the back. It was almost as if the figures were designed to stop anybody realising the true worth of the company. As Sibley had warned, last year we had plunged deeply into the red. Hence the call on private investors. What I did not understand, though, was that there seemed to be a hole in the accounts. I kept scribbling down numbers on a scratch pad but still couldn't get them to add up. I tapped my pencil against my teeth and sat there pondering. I was no forensic accountant, but even I knew something wasn’t quite right.

  The ring of my mobile was startling. I picked up my BlackBerry and saw it was Mole calling. This was the conversation I had been dreading.

  "Hugo Cox," I said, even though I knew perfectly well who was calling.

  "Darling, it's me. How are you? How are you getting on? Is everything all right?"

  "I'm all right. How are you? What's the weather like out there?"

  "Rainy and cold. The show's been a smash, though. Reinhardt has been really pleased. I'm just changing for dinner, and I can see fireworks over the Duomo. I miss you. Darling, I wish you were here."

  "I miss you more than I can say. When are you coming home?"

  "Tomorrow morning. My flight gets in to Gatwick at lunchtime. How's Alice? Everything all right?"

  I didn’t know what to say. "We had a bit of a fight last night. Nothing serious, but I don't know if she's going to be there when I get back. Has she called you?" My voice sounded oddly high.

  Silence. "What do you mean, she won't be there?" I could hear the worry in Mole's voice. "What's happened? I know you; what have you said to her?"

  I tried to sound casual. "It was nothing. Really. We just had a bit of an argument, that's all. She threatened to move out."

  "It must have been one big argument for her to leave without telling me. Where's she gone to? What did you argue about?"

  That she's pregnant for real and she's carrying my baby. Oh, and she says she's in love with me.

  "I told her that she needed to clean her room up."

  "Needed to clean her room up?"

  "That's right. It was a squalid mess. Food everywhere, dirty plates. It's not hygienic." Even as I said this, I realised how implausible this sounded.

  "And she moved out because of a row about how dirty her room was?" Alice spoke slowly, as if giving a recalcitrant child one last chance to tell the truth. Then, quickly, "I'll call her and smooth things over."

  "She hasn't returned any of my messages."

  "Sometimes it needs a woman's touch."

  "You just concentrate on work and having a good time. We'll both be at home when you get back. I'll see you tomorrow night." I did my best to sound confident.

  Florence was where we had gone on our honeymoon. We had mostly stayed in our hotel room making love. When we did venture out, we met for lunch every day in a corner café while Mole toured the Uffizi. Renaissance art didn't interest me much. I remembered those packed tramezzini sandwiches, the strong bitterness of a Negroni and the best coffee I had ever tasted. None of that chocolate-sprinklings rubbish you get in Starbucks. Somebody had taken our
photograph sitting at the café table: Mole in her pretty white-lace Ghost dress and me looking dapper in a white suit. It was one of the photographs that Alice had stolen and posted online with her face superimposed on Mole's. My thoughts shifted back to Alice. First I had wanted Alice to move out, and now I needed her to stay. How ironic. Picking up my mobile, I pressed redial, but once again it went straight to voicemail. "I can't come to the phone right now, but please leave a message," Alice said in her northern accent.

  I turned back to the figures, but my concentration had been broken. There was still this nagging doubt about them in my mind. Picking up the ring-bound folder, I set off for Brian Sibley's office, walking past rows of empty desks. I knocked on his office door and entered. Brian, too, was working late. The Americans kept coming back with more questions about the accounts. Perhaps they had also spotted that something wasn't quite right.

  "Brian, about these figures ... there's something I don't understand."

  Sibley made a peculiar thnnng sound through his nose and said, "I am sure you'll find the accounts are all in order."

  I pointed to a footnote at the back of the book. "It's here. What were these payments to Twyford Limited? When you tot them up, it's nearly a million pounds in one year. Just dribs and drabs. What is Twyford Limited? I've never heard of it."

  Sibley blinked behind his glasses. Then he said quietly, "Shut the door, Hugo." He rose from his desk and motioned for me to sit down at the corner conference table. "It's your father's company. He created a service company for tax purposes. I can assure you it's all legal and above board."

  "Yes, but you're not too keen to draw attention to it, are you? And this payment – I guess it's on top of his regular dividends?"

  "That is correct. Please understand my position, Hugo. Berkshire RE is your father's company. He founded it. Sir Ronald can do anything he wants with it. He pays me and tells me what to do. I may be a director on paper, but the reality is that your father treats this company like a piggy bank."

  There was rising exasperation in his voice. "While you and your father enjoy yourselves, I'm the one who has to deal with the shrinking investor pool. I told you the accounts were a muddy hole in the ground. How do you think he affords the big country house and the expensive second wife? Not on the amount of premiums Berkshire RE took last year, I can tell you. In actual fact, you could say that he–"

  "–steals money from the company," I interrupted, finishing his sentence for him. We both sat there for a moment, allowing the ramifications of what he had told me to sink in. In my heart, I had always known what he was doing, I had just never wanted to question it. Well, I couldn't ignore it any longer now that it was staring me in the face. "This money he's taken," I continued, "could it have gone towards paying out on the Dutch Marquez?"

  Sibley nodded glumly. "Of course. I told him I didn't agree with what he was doing, but he overruled me."

  "You mean he bullied you into it." The image of that poor man I had read about in the paper came back to me. Were we responsible for his death after all? "Listen, Brian, I'm no accountant, but even I can detect there's something wrong."

  "You still need to sign off the accounts."

  "But I could be barred as a company director if I knowingly sign off fraudulent accounts and somebody calls out Dad on what he's done."

  "It doesn't matter. The Americans are talking about buying us for a multiple of ten over last year's earnings."

  I understood what he was saying. Our losses would be meaningless if Continual bought the company. The Yankee dollar would fill in our muddy hole, and Dad's embezzlement would pass unnoticed. "So what you're saying is, the deal will go through only if I break the law?"

  "Yes, but nobody will realise what your father did if the deal does close. Not only that, but we could repay the investors a dividend, making good the money they lost. Please understand, it's a virtuous circle."

  "And these payments to Dad ... would be wiped out. Forgotten. Is that what you're saying?"

  Sibley nodded again.

  "Does Nigel Rosenthal know about this, or any of the other directors?"

  "Let's just say he's prepared to hold his nose and look the other way. For the good of the company. Congratulations, Hugo, you're going to be a rich man."

  I sat there staring at the conference table. The penalties would be enormous if we got caught. After all, Hitler's generals were hanged, weren't they?

  "Goddammit, Brian, what Dad has done is theft, pure and simple. Either I go along with it, or I blow the whistle. Some people lost their life savings because of what Ronnie did."

  "I am aware of my responsibilities as a company director," Sibley said somewhat huffily. He paused. "Hugo, I don't like this either, but my hands were tied. Ronnie put a gun to my head. He told me he would tell my wife–"

  Sibley left his words hang in the air. We both knew what he was talking about. Dad had found Sibley fumbling with one of his junior staff one night when they had stayed late. Ronnie walked in to find him against a filing cabinet with his hand up the woman’s blouse. Ronnie had a good laugh about that, saying that now he had something over our finance director. Well, I realised now that I had some leverage, too. Perhaps at the back of my mind was the thought of some payback for the way Dad had treated Mum. Either way, this was a card I was going to have to play very carefully.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Walking back home from the Tube, I looked up at our apartment building to see if Alice's bedroom light was on. Thank goodness she was still at home. So she hadn't moved out after all. I walked through the communal garden and wondered about having a late-night swim, only I couldn't remember what time the fitness centre closed. Stop prevaricating, I thought. You have got to confront her about what happened. You must find out whether she really is carrying your child.

  Something delicious was wafting through the flat. I called out Alice's name. "In here," she answered from the kitchen. I walked in to find her bending down, checking something in the oven. She was wearing Emily's pinny and her hair was done differently – back-combed and put up. She looked like the perfect sixties’ housewife waiting for her man to come home. The scene was at the same time perfect and yet unsettling. Typing one key to the left again. The kitchen table was laid for a romantic candlelit supper: cutlery, plates and glasses arranged just so. Did she really think that I was going to walk in and we were going to have an intimate dinner for two as if last night had never happened? Whatever, I had to proceed cautiously. I was dealing with something unstable. It was like having a suicide bomber strapped with explosives in the flat; any sudden move might set her off.

  "Alice," I began, "I want to apologise for last night."

  "There's nothing to be sorry about. It were my fault. I were just having a laff."

  "I know, but I said some things, things I didn't mean–"

  "I've deleted my Facebook account, if that's what you're worried about."

  "Emily comes back tomorrow morning, and I don't want–"

  "You don't want her to know what's going on between us. I understand." She opened the oven door and pulled out a sizzling joint of lamb. It smelled absolutely delicious.

  "Alice, wait, that's not what I meant." I reached out and touched her arm. Gently. "That's just it. There isn't anything going on between us, is there? I thought we'd settled everything last night."

  Alice looked at me with what almost felt like compassion. She put the lamb on a serving plate and asked me how hungry I was. Quite, I said, noticing a good bottle of red wine on the table. She really had thought of everything.

  "So, how was your day?" she asked, tapping a spoonful of potato gratin onto the plate. Did she really think we were going to have a normal conversation given everything that had happened? I decided to play along.

  "My company is being bought by an American firm. It’s going to be a big deal. You might even read about it in the papers, the business pages anyway."

  "They might make you boss," she said, carrying my p
late over to the table.

  "I doubt that. They do things differently." Alice was serving herself now, carving thin slices of meat off the roast. She must have watched Mole to be able to cook like this. "I think they'll offer me what's called a golden parachute. A few years of working for them and then they'll elbow me out."

  "Will you have to go to America a lot?"

  "Some of the time, yes. Their headquarters is in New York." All the time we were tiptoeing around the real subject, which was, was she carrying my baby?

  "Is that where those skyscrapers are?"

  "Listen, Alice, about what you said last night, that business about the baby not being Emily's. That's not true, is it?" I needed her to tell me the truth.

  Alice started unfastening her pinny. "I know you don't want to hurt her, and it's one of the reasons I love you. You must tell her when you're ready. Poor Hugo. Trapped in a marriage with somebody who doesn't love him. But that doesn't matter now. I'm here for you."

  "No, that's not true. Alice, I–"

  "I've got so much love for you, Hugo." She stroked my face and came forward to be kissed.

  I took her wrist and pushed her away. "Alice, please understand that this is all in your head. Why can't you get it? I don't love you."

  Alice continued as if she hadn't heard me. "Let's stop pretending. Me pretending to be your wife's best friend. You pretending to be the perfect husband. Well, I can't pretend anymore."

  "Alice, there's only one woman in my life."

  Our surrogate looked at me yearningly. "That's all you need."

  "I meant my wife."

  Alice's voice became hard. "Emily don't love you, Hugo. She never has. She's only after you for your money. Why can't you wake up and see what's happening?"

  This time I grasped her by the shoulders and looked into her face. It was Alice who needed to wake up, not me. "Get it through your head. I. Don't. Love. You."

  She carried on talking, almost as if I wasn’t there or she was under hypnosis. "Of course, I know it will be hard at first. We'll have to find somewhere to live, not here. But won't it be wonderful when we can be together and show the world our love?"