Love,
Alexxx
Chapter 8
~
When I hear the front door open, I nearly jump out of my skin. I still haven’t got over the day I found the door unlocked and thought someone had been in the house, although I’ve tried to put the whole incident down to my vivid imagination.
I stand there in the kitchen, frozen. I would look like a statue or a sculpture if it wasn’t for the rubber gloves.
‘Is that you, Alex?’ I call out, sounding braver than I feel, appalled at my own jitteriness. There’s no one else it could be, but I have no idea why he would come home at this time of day.
The voice comes from behind me and makes me jump again. ‘Yes, it’s me.’ He’s leaning on the doorframe, looking at me, an amused expression on his face.
Sexy though he is, I’m still annoyed with him, but I know deep down it will be better for both of us if I can keep that hidden. I don’t want him to get stroppy or sulky with me.
‘Hello, stranger.’ I hear the thinly veiled criticism slip out before my brain-to-mouth filter kicks in.
‘Oh, I know,’ he says. ‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’
I sigh inwardly with relief. He’s in a good mood. I haven’t seen any trace of Alex’s darker side for a couple of weeks. I’ve hardly seen Alex this week at all, which is what I’m miffed about. On the one evening he did come home, it was very late.
‘It’s been a hard week,’ Alex continues. ‘Meetings, as you know, all over the country. And now the weather and the lakes are warming up, and what with the heatwave last week, I’ve had lots of bookings for hiking and water sports. Summer’s on its way.’
Alex runs an activity centre from his sports shop in Keswick. His words put my mind at rest, although I have no reason to suspect that Alex is anywhere other than where he says he is or doing anything he shouldn’t be. He always rings or sends text messages when he’s away on business, and this week has been no exception. I realise now that when I arrived in February, it was off-season and so it’s only to be expected if he has more on at the moment.
It’s rather unexpected, though, for him to come home in the middle of the day.
‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ I ask, waving one of my gloved hands at him.
‘I thought I’d pop home for a quick lunch and surprise you.’
Briefly, I panic. I’ve almost finished cleaning the house. Nearly everything is tidied the way Alex likes it. But I haven’t been out to the grocery shop yet and there’s nothing to make up a lunch.
As if reading my mind, Alex holds up two shopping bags – they look heavy and his biceps flex with the effort. He seems to have come prepared. As I observe him taking out cheese, French bread, pâté and coleslaw, I suddenly become aware of how hungry I am. My eyes follow him as he puts the rest of the food in the fridge and cupboards. I won’t have to go out for groceries after all.
As we eat, sitting side by side at the ridiculously large kitchen table, Alex tells me all about his busy week. I listen with half an ear, but I’m distracted by the dark rings under his eyes. He looks exhausted, not to mention dishevelled, which is very unlike Alex, but he seems happy and energetic.
‘Perhaps you can relax a bit this weekend,’ I suggest. ‘Have you got any plans?’
‘Nothing much,’ he answers, getting up. ‘Need to go for a long cycle ride at some point.’
‘Leave that if you’re in a hurry,’ I say as he picks up his plate. ‘I’ll clear up.’
‘OK. Thanks.’ He kisses me on the cheek. ‘The house is lovely and clean by the way.’
I spot it a few seconds after hearing the front door close. Alex’s mobile. He’s always tapping away on it. He’ll be lost without it. I half-run, half-waddle, after him, but his car is already at the bottom of the drive. I shout and wave my arms around as he gets out to open the gate, but he doesn’t hear or see me, so I go back inside the house.
For a few minutes, I remain seated, looking at the mobile I’ve put down in the middle of the kitchen table. I shouldn’t look through it. I shouldn’t even be sitting here looking at it, thinking about trying to access it in order to snoop on my husband.
But the truth is, I’m still a little preoccupied and a lot paranoid about his absence nearly all week. One quick peep. I slide the phone towards me. It’s on but the screen is locked and I don’t know his passcode. It’s a four-digit passcode. I put in his year of birth. 1977. The mobile buzzes. Nope. Try again. I enter his date of birth. 2207. The twenty-second of July. That doesn’t work either. Probably just as well.
I almost feel glad. I don’t want to turn into one of those women who has to check up on her husband every second of every day. Especially when there’s no tangible sign that there’s anything amiss. I get up and flick the kettle on. I’m going to make myself a proper cup of tea, not that disgusting decaffeinated rubbish Alex insists I drink out of consideration for the baby.
As I sit down again, I sip my tea, staring at the mobile. It seems to be beckoning to me. What could his passcode be? I know I only get one more attempt. And if I get it wrong, Alex will suspect I’ve been messing around with his phone.
Then it comes to me. Of course! The four numbers after his name in his email address: 9987. I have no idea what they denote. They’re probably just random digits. I once asked jokingly if there were nearly ten thousand Alexander Rileys. He didn’t answer the question. That must be it!
This isn’t a good idea, I argue with myself, drumming my fingers on the table. I really don’t want to risk unleashing Alex’s demons. But then I think: if I do disable the phone, surely there’s a way of restoring it? I put down my mug.
I’m sorely tempted to have another go. I’m convinced I’ve guessed the correct passcode this time, but if I am mistaken, I could always hide his phone and let him believe he left it somewhere else. That would be lying, but something tells me I’ve been lied to.
Just as I’ve made up my mind to give it another shot, the phone rings and startles me. Not Alex’s mobile, the landline. It hardly ever rings so it takes me a second to recognise the sound. I wonder if it could be Alex ringing me from work. He probably doesn’t know my mobile number by heart but he would know his own home number. I dash out to the hall, supporting my bump with my hands, and snatch up the handset.
‘Hello?’
There’s no answer. It’s the second time this has happened.
‘Hello?’ I repeat more loudly. ‘Alex?’
I slam the phone down, exasperated. Who can it be? The caller ID was hidden so I have no way of telling. I’m assuming, though, it’s the same caller as last time. Now I come to think of it, Alex wasn’t in on that occasion, either. It must be someone who wants to speak to Alex and won’t talk to me.
Feeling more determined than ever to get into Alex’s mobile, I go back into the kitchen and pick up his smartphone. I type in the digits with my index finger. Nine. Nine. Eight. Seven. The screen unlocks. Result!
Now what? I go into Mail. He has two inboxes and I scroll down the emails in one and then the other. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but nothing strikes me as particularly suspicious. Then I see he has a mailbox sent up for a VIP. My finger hovers over the screen. I’m not sure if I want to see what I’m going see. In the end, I have a look. I smile and sigh at the same time. The VIP sender is me. Lots of the emails we exchanged while I was living in Minehead are still stored in the memory of his phone. And in my own memory, too.
I feel remorseful. But I’m not going to stop there. I may as well go all the way now. I’ll only be satisfied once I’ve checked everything and found nothing. So I look through his contacts. There are businesses that are evidently related to Alex’s work, and lots of people whose names I don’t recognise. Not for the first time, I’m disappointed by how few of Alex’s friends and acquaintances I’ve met.
Finally, I check the text messages. The most recent text has been sent by Rebecca Brown. Rebecca Brown. I say the name aloud. It doesn’t sound familiar. She se
nt a message this morning at 8.30 a.m. I open it. And read it.
Thank you so much, Alex, for going to all that trouble last night. You were amazing.
Bexxx.
I sink down slowly onto the kitchen chair. My mind goes into overdrive. Is this what I was looking for? What happened last night? Does this mean that Alex and Bex – God, even their names go together – are having an affair?
My head suddenly starts to pound. I try to reason with myself, calm myself down. Does the text actually prove anything? All it proves is that Alex must have written to Rebecca, aka “Bex”, at some point because she signed off with two kisses, just like he does.
The front door bangs and I want to leap up and put the mobile back on the worktop where I found it, but it’s as if I’m glued to the chair.
‘Think I forgot my mobile,’ Alex says, coming into the kitchen. He stops mid-stride as he sees it in my hands.
My heart is pounding now, too, so frantically that I think Alex must be able to hear it, or even see it through my T-shirt. ‘Someone called Rebecca said you were amazing last night,’ I say. I mean to confront Alex but it comes out as a question.
‘Did she? She sent a text to thank me earlier,’ Alex says. ‘I pulled a few strings, made a few calls, got her a late entry into a competition.’ He takes the mobile from me. ‘Cheers. See you later. I’m going training after work, but I won’t be home too late tonight, OK?’
Not trusting myself to speak, I nod. He kisses me on the lips and strolls back out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I realise Alex must have assumed that Rebecca rang and I answered his phone. He didn’t seem at all thrown when I mentioned her. I obviously jumped to completely the wrong conclusion. My suspicions were unfounded and now I feel stupid and deeply ashamed of myself.
I grab my own mobile and ring Hannah. Predictably, there’s no answer. I could ring Julie, but we’ve never had the sort of relationship where we unburden ourselves to each other or tell one another secrets, even as kids. I had Louisa for that. Now I have no one. I’m not really alone, but I am really lonely.
Without warning, the kitchen walls start to close in on me and an intense wave of fear consumes me. I can’t catch my breath. My heart is now beating so hard and fast that it hurts. I remember a student having a panic attack during one of my lectures once. She was a bit of a drama queen and I showed her very little compassion. Am I having a panic attack? I feel as if I’m drowning. I sink down onto the chair and grip the edge of the table, as though my life depends on me not letting go.
Eventually the kitchen stops pitching and tossing, and my pulse slows to a normal rhythm. I’m left feeling a little nauseous and disorientated, with an overwhelming need to get out of the house. So I call the only other person I can call. Vicky.
She meets me in the swimming pool car park. As I hoist my bulky frame out of the car, she perches her sunglasses on top of her head and flashes her pearly white smile at me. She is elegantly dressed in a flowery vintage summer dress and she towers over me in her chunky lime-green platform sandals. She looks like she has just stepped out of the Seventies.
The swim does me a lot of good. I sing songs in my head as I plough up and down the pool. The coffee afterwards in the leisure centre café is even more beneficial, even though this time I’ve respected what Alex would have wanted and ordered a decaf. At first, Vicky seems unwilling to talk about herself, but once she gets going, she tells me about her family – her father died of lung cancer a few years ago and her brother died in a car accident when they were teenagers. We seem to have a lot in common and I get the impression she is a mirror image of me. She lost her brother and her father; I lost my sister and my mother.
‘My parents put a lot of pressure on me to make something of myself to compensate for losing their son, I suppose,’ she confides.
‘I know what that’s like,’ I say, and I tell her about how when I lost Louisa – my other half – my mum seemed to expect me to become twice the person I’d been until then. It didn’t help, of course, that Julie had just moved in with Daniel. My mum lost two daughters in one go and was left with me.
‘What happened to your sister?’ Vicky asks. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’
I do, really. I don’t like to talk about what happened to Louisa, so I keep it short. ‘She was attacked.’
‘Oh, how awful.’ Vicky seems to sense my reluctance to go into detail, so she just asks, ‘Did they catch the person responsible?’
‘Yes. It was a local man. A known sex offender. He was arrested. He died while he was in police custody.’
‘Suicide?’
‘So they said.’
‘Perhaps that’s just as well,’ Vicky says.
‘Mmm,’ I say noncommittally. We didn’t think so at the time. We wanted justice. I keep that thought to myself. Instead, I try to steer the conversation back to where we were. ‘So, did you make something of yourself?’ Vicky throws me a blank look. ‘You said your parents put a lot of pressure on you to succeed.’
‘Ah, I see. Well, no, not really!’ She gives a self-deprecating laugh. ‘I’m an estate agent.’ She chuckles again. She has this wonderful laugh. It’s musical and infectious at the same time. ‘So I should be able to find a place to live one of these days, at least.’
‘Where are you living now?’ I wonder if I’m being nosy, but if Vicky minds, she doesn’t show it.
‘I split up with my boyfriend about five months ago,’ she says, ‘so I’m at my mum’s for the moment. It’s not easy, living under the same roof as my mother, I can tell you.’ She pauses and then concedes, ‘Although she does cook great food and she puts up with all my canine friends.’
‘Canine friends?’
‘Yes. I have a cocker spaniel called Lady, Scooby who’s a Great Dane, obviously, and Shadow an old golden retriever.’ She counts them off on her fingers as she introduces them. ‘And the latest addition to the family arrived in February. That’s Bestie, the Westie – the dog you saw me walking – it might even have been his first walk.’ She holds up the fingers of her right hand, her thumb bent into her palm. ‘Four altogether.’
‘How come you have so many?’
‘Well, I adopted Shadow from an animal shelter years ago and they call me every now and then when they have a dog they haven’t found a home for. I can’t seem to say no. I hate the thought of them being put down. I take them in and rename them, give them a new life.’
In turn, I tell Vicky all about myself, my family, the job I used to do and about Alex and the baby. She’s a good listener and when we’ve drained our mugs of coffee, I feel like I’ve known her for a while. We’re still chatting as we push open the doors to leave the café.
I hear him before I see him. His voice hits me like a well-aimed blow to my stomach just as Vicky and I are coming out of the café into the foyer. Quickly, I turn around and push Vicky back into the café. She’s looking over my shoulder and has spotted them, too.
The double doors swing closed, shielding us from their view, and I peer out of the round porthole window, feeling seasick. Vicky remains silent as I watch Alex show the receptionist something – a membership card, maybe – and chat with her. There are four other people with him – two women and two men. I recognise Mike and his girlfriend, who danced with Alex at our wedding. I don’t know the others.
‘When he said he was going training, I thought he meant cycling or running,’ I hiss over my shoulder. Vicky arches what’s left of her eyebrows at me. She steps forward and looks out of the window of the other door.
‘Who’s he?’ She asks this in a stage whisper. She’s poking fun at me, I realise, and it highlights the absurdity of this situation.
‘Alex.’
‘Your husband?’
‘Yes.’
‘And we’re hiding from him because …?’
‘He disapproves of me swimming. He thinks the baby needs me to rest.’
‘I see. I take it he doesn’t know about me then?’
/> ‘Er … no.’
I expect Vicky to be put out by this, but she grins. I get the impression she likes the idea of being complicit in my deceit, but perhaps she’s just amused.
They’ve gone. I feel my shoulders relax. I push the door open and Vicky follows me into the reception area.
‘He’s handsome, your husband,’ she comments.
It’s not until we’re in the car park that I wonder how she knew which one was Alex. Vicky asks me something but I’m lost in my thoughts and I don’t catch what she says.
‘Sorry?’
‘When’s your due date?’ she repeats.
‘The eighth of July. A week tomorrow.’
‘You’re brave, coming swimming today.’ Vicky fishes her sunglasses out of her handbag and puts them on.
‘Not really. If I’d known Alex was going to be here, though, I wouldn’t have come! But I felt like a swim. By the way, how did you know which one was him?’
‘One of the men was groping the backside of one of the women, so I assumed that wasn’t him.’ It’s a joke, I think, so I laugh politely. ‘And the other two looked to be a couple as well. Plus, Alex’s face looked familiar,’ she continues. ‘I think I vaguely remember him from the day I was out walking my dog after all.’
As I pull down the boot of my car, I promise to text Vicky early next week to meet up for another swim.
‘Next time could well be your last session before the baby comes along,’ she says, voicing my own thoughts.
When I get home, I have time to put on a load of washing and read some of my book before Alex gets home a couple of hours after me. I’m curled up on the sofa in the sitting room and he sees me through the doorway, but marches straight through to the kitchen.
‘Kay-tie!’ His voice is imperious and I feel like I’m being summonsed. A little voice in my head begs me not to go to him, not to give in to him, but I ignore it and get up to join him in the kitchen.
He’s standing in front of the open fridge with his hands on his hips, his face stormy.
Oh no, what have I done now? ‘Is everything all right?’ I ask. Stupid question. Clearly something is wrong.
He Will Find You Page 9