The Perfect Father: the most gripping and twisty thriller you'll read in 2020

by Charlotte Duckworth

  I sit on my hands and stare down at my boots. I was freezing cold on the way here, but now I feel suddenly sweaty. But I can’t bring myself to remove my scarf. Because I want to be leaving soon, to go and pick up my daughter from wherever Robin has left her.

  She will be safe. It will be OK.

  He would never hurt her.

  DS Tyler’s phone rings, a shrill sound in the stuffy space. I sit up in my seat as she answers it, turning away from me.

  ‘Yes, OK, great. Yes, I’m with her now . . . of course. I’ll tell her . . .’

  I want to grab the phone from her hand.

  ‘Yes, that’s a relief. Thank you. I’ll let her know.’

  She taps to end the call and turns to look at me.

  ‘A little girl matching her description has been brought in,’ she says, and I see the humanity in her eyes that shows she was almost as worried as I was about Riley. ‘She was in a car, a little further along from where your husband was found. It looks as though he was involved in an accident, but he left the vehicle – probably in order to get help – before collapsing. The car was more than a mile away. I’ll find out where she is so you can go and see her.’

  ‘The car!’ I say. ‘Oh my God!’

  I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid. How could I not have thought of it?

  ‘I forgot, I forgot all about the fucking car! We hardly ever use it! It’s so hard to get a parking space on our road, it’s usually halfway down the street, so I didn’t even notice it wasn’t there. Is she OK?’

  ‘She’s in a stable condition. I don’t know any more details I’m afraid,’ she says, squeezing my hand, but the look in her eyes tells me that she’s trying not to panic me. ‘I’ll get more information when I find out where she is.’

  I think back to all the signs that have been mounting over the recent weeks. All the little hints, all the things that have unsettled me, that I’ve tried to fight away with logic.

  I should have listened. I should have trusted my instincts. And now it’s too late.

  After everything I’ve found out about him recently. Now it all makes sense.

  The car. Of course.

  Of course he was in the car. Driving through Epsom.

  There’s only one reason he would have been doing that.

  He was kidnapping her.

  One Month Earlier

  Robin

  I have to blink three times for my stupid brain to fully process what it’s seeing.

  Sorry, mate, I really tried. But no go. You know they loved it but . . . your reputation precedes you. You know what it’s like at the Beeb. Any whiff of a scandal and they run scared. Stupid, really, the publicity wouldn’t have hurt. We can try some of the networks, but it’s probably too British. As you know, we haven’t had much positive feedback with it elsewhere. Keep writing, and all that. Nothing’s ever wasted, etc.

  Could always rework it for the festival? One-man show?

  Pint soon?

  I slam the lid of my laptop down. It’s becoming a habit. I’ll probably break the fucking thing soon, and then I’ll have to go begging my rich, successful wife for a handout so I can buy a new one.

  This was the closest I’ve come since Stu basically told me to fuck off. Eight months of endless, humiliating submissions to agents who didn’t even get back to me; the decision out of desperation to let Mike, my stand-up manager and general waste-of-space human, try to place it instead; one promising email from one junior exec at BBC3, one agonising wait for a commissioning meeting – during which time, like an idiot, I went and wrote the whole bloody series – and now Mike wants me to shelve the whole thing. Six perfectly crafted episodes of my sitcom, Manchild. Two years of my life. The development executive said it was the funniest thing he’d read in years. But none of that matters; none of that counts. I have to bin the thing. All that work. Just because ten years ago my ex broke my heart and I didn’t handle it very well.

  Fuck you, Sarah Harrison. Fuck you and your BAFTA and your rich American husband with his ridiculous teeth and your house in Maida Vale and your red-carpet appearances and your constant sucking up to every single successful comedy writer and actor on Twitter like some kind of pathetic arse-licking, social-climbing sycophantic embarrassment who’s too blind with ambition to even acknowledge the shame you know you should be feeling.

  Fuck you that you broke my stupid naive heart into a million pieces, and never even looked back.

  From somewhere deep inside, I feel the rumblings of an eruption, and before long I am heaving with sobs, my entire body convulsing and shaking with the absolute, abject failure of my life, my talent, my purpose, my everything. I am nothing. I am less than nothing. I am invisible.

  And it’s all because of her. All because I fell in love. All because I was tricked into thinking for one tiny second that I might matter to someone, that I might be important, that I might have some value.

  My sobs are interrupted by the sound of my phone ringing. I pull it out of my pocket, wiping the stupid tears away with the sleeve of my hoodie.

  Kim.

  Of course it’s her. The only woman who ever calls me. The only person I don’t want to hear from. Now threatening me with legal action. Why can’t she just fuck off and die?

  How did I get myself into this mess?

  I think back to the night that started all this, the last time I felt this wretched. The day that everything went wrong. I had got back from helping Nick move house to find Esther sobbing on the bathroom floor.

  ‘The baby’s heart has stopped beating,’ she said, in a voice devoid of emotion. ‘I’m already bleeding a little bit. There’s nothing we can do but wait.’

  She wouldn’t meet my eye.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ I shouted at her crumpled figure. ‘Why the hell didn’t you call me?’

  But she didn’t explain. She just shook her head and pushed me away, locking the bathroom door.

  ‘Just leave me alone. Please.’ She was begging through her sobs. ‘Just leave me alone. For once, just let me be.’

  It made no sense. I hammered and hammered on the door but she wouldn’t let me in; didn’t want me near her. It was the first time she truly rejected me. It felt like part of her had fallen out of love with me. Did she blame me? I couldn’t tell. I was so upset myself, but she didn’t seem to acknowledge it. She didn’t seem to realise how devastating it was for me as well.

  It wasn’t fair. I was losing my baby too.

  I sat outside the bathroom door begging for over an hour. Eventually she unlocked it and came out. I tried to hold her, but she pushed me off.

  ‘I need to go for a lie-down,’ she said. She was still crying, but there was no energy in her tears. ‘Please, please, just let me sleep. I’ll . . . I’ll be better if I sleep.’

  What choice did I have? She went to bed. Worn out from the bleeding, malnourished and dehydrated from weeks of not eating.

  She left her phone on the kitchen table. When it rang twenty minutes later, I answered it. The helpful caller ID function told me that it ‘might be’ the Miller Clinic ringing, and I had no idea who they were or why they were calling her.

  I told them I was her husband, that she was asleep. They told me they would call back later. No, they didn’t want to leave a message. I hung up. And then I sat down and Googled the Miller Clinic.

  She hadn’t mentioned a clinic, or anything about any follow-up appointments. I was so stupid that when I Googled the name of the clinic I expected it to be something to do with her miscarriage.

  But no, it was clear as day on the website in front of me. Private abortion clinic. There was no doubt about what she’d done.

  The rage was immense. My wife was a stranger to me. The Esther I had picked specifically because I thought she would never hurt me had done something so unthinkably not-Esther. The only explanation seeme
d to be that all women were witches, that none of them could be trusted.

  She didn’t love me.

  I left the flat, without thinking. She was still asleep. I walked for ages trying to make sense of the shouting in my head – all the way to Wimbledon. And then I went into the nearest pub and began to drink. There was so much noise in my head. I had to drown it. We knew the baby was a girl. Esther had had a private blood test when she was only a few months pregnant, to find out whether or not there were any chromosomal issues with the baby. Through that test we were able to find out the gender.

  But without even consulting me, Esther had killed her. My child. The one I was put on earth to protect. The woman I had taken care of for all those years had murdered her, without even thinking to ask me. In fact she had done it specifically, deliberately, without asking me. Six pints in, it felt like my stomach had been hollowed out with a shovel, before someone set fire to my heart.

  I found out later that this wasn’t the case, of course. That it was one of life’s cruellest coincidences – she really had had a miscarriage. But it wasn’t my fault. How could I have done anything but jumped to those conclusions?

  If she had only talked to me, if she’d only let me in . . .

  I don’t remember much more about that evening. At some point, I was asked to leave the pub. I sat outside on a bench, in the freezing February wind, and thought of Sarah, as I always did when I was drunk, and I found myself so consumed with anger that I thought I might kill the next person who looked at me. Esther had called me by then – clearly she’d seen the answered call on her phone history, and was desperate to explain. Perhaps I should have answered, but it was too little, too late. She’d had her chance to confide in me earlier, and she’d refused.

  A tragic misunderstanding, but an entirely preventable one.

  I needed somewhere to go, somewhere to take my anger.

  Eventually, I got on the District Line and stumbled towards Vivienne and Sean’s. I felt sure that Vivienne would have had something to do with it. She would have been Esther’s co-conspirator. The two of them shared everything. It had always bugged the hell out of me, that she trusted Vivienne just that little bit more than she trusted me.

  I must have been a right state when I rang her doorbell. Even though I’d stopped drinking more than an hour earlier, I was still so drunk I could barely speak. I relieved myself in the bushes outside the entrance to Vivienne’s flat. It wasn’t even a childish idea of revenge, I was just drunk and needed a piss.

  But when the door opened it wasn’t Vivienne behind it. It was someone else. House-sitting for them while they were on holiday, as it turned out. Kim.

  Kim didn’t care that I was drunk. I don’t think she even noticed.

  ‘Blimey, you’re blue,’ she said, pulling me off the doorstep into the house. ‘What the hell happened to you?’

  I grunted at her, I think.

  ‘Vivienne . . . Where is she?’

  ‘Not here, I’m afraid. You’re stuck with me, instead. Soz.’

  She dragged me to the open-plan kitchen at the back of the flat. The garden was lit up with fairy lights, even though the bifold doors that ran across the back were closed. I collapsed on to the leather chesterfield in one corner of the kitchen and let Kim make me a cup of coffee. My head was ringing, and then I remembered that I’d deliberately banged it on the brick wall when I’d left the pub. Hard.

  My phone kept vibrating in my pocket. I barely noticed it now, but Kim did.

  ‘Why don’t you get that?’ she said, pointing at my crotch. I pulled the phone out. Esther’s face filled the screen. I pushed my thumb down on the glass so hard that it went white.

  ‘What happened to your head?’ she said, sitting cross-legged next to me on the sofa.

  I touched it, the crusts of dried blood flaking away against my fingertips.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Let me guess, you’ve had a row? Did she throw something at you? Little Miss Buttoned-Up?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I grunted, still staring at my phone as it eventually switched itself off, the battery dead. To my addled brain, it felt like the universe’s way of telling me that I was right to be here. I looked back over at Kim. I had barely noticed her up until now, but suddenly I could smell her perfume – something coconutty and cheap – and I took in what she was wearing.

  ‘I was literally just about to have a bath,’ she said, as she noticed me looking. She was in a dark grey silk nightdress, with a long woollen cardigan wrapped around her. Her thighs, tanned and smooth, seemed to go on forever. As she leant forward her nightdress gaped, giving me a clear view. I closed my eyes, turned my head away.

  There were voices in my head that I didn’t recognise. Had Esther been laughing at me all this time?

  Kim unwound her legs and lay them across my lap. There was nothing that sexual about the gesture, I supposed. This was the way Vivienne’s friends all behaved. Tactile. Luvvies.

  Fucking luvvies.

  I placed my hands on her legs. I don’t know if she noticed, if it was all deliberate. Probably. It was all a game to her. All she wanted was the attention.

  I pulled off her socks. Her toenails were a deep ruby red, with a little diamond buried in each big toe.

  ‘Some pedicure,’ I said.

  Kim squirmed a little, smiling, flexing her toes. Even they were tanned.

  ‘Thanks,’ she replied. ‘My mate’s training to be a nail technician; I’m her grateful guinea pig.’

  ‘You’re good at that, aren’t you?’ I said, aggressively. ‘Borrowing things from other people. Flats . . . pedicures . . .’

  ‘Husbands?’ she said, winking.

  ‘I don’t think I should be here,’ I said, and then she laughed. She was ridiculously attractive, more attractive than any girl I had ever slept with before.

  ‘Probably not,’ she said.

  ‘I’m breaking all my promises.’ I reached across and took her hand, turning it over, running my fingers over her palm. ‘This is definitely not allowed, is it?’

  ‘Oh, chill your boots,’ she said, shifting her weight on the sofa beside me.

  ‘Don’t you think I should go?’ I asked, leaning towards her. She smelt of coconuts and vodka. ‘Do you want me to go?’

  ‘Up to you,’ she said, shrugging, but she wouldn’t meet my eye.

  I pictured Esther’s treacherous face in my mind, and before I knew it, it was game over.

  Esther

  Kim’s back. I saw it on her Facebook page. ‘Prosecco o’clock with my ladeez’ as she captioned the picture of her with two of her friends. She’s wearing a skin-tight purple dress in the photo, her arms and legs bare but bronzed, her long black hair curling suggestively across her shoulders. She looks amazing.

  I can’t tell where they are in the picture – she has unhelpfully forgotten to tag their location – but it looks like the sort of place in Soho I might have gone to with Rob when we first met, before he went on stage at some run-down club nearby.

  The picture has eighty-seven likes. She’s so popular. I scroll to look at her friends list. More than a thousand people on there – how is it possible to have a thousand friends? It isn’t. I remember reading an article about it once – how it was only possible for the human brain to manage 150 true friendships, at most.

  A thousand friends. What was the point of them all? These acolytes?

  I scroll down to see the comments left by the handful of her ‘friends’ who’ve taken time to actually look at her picture. Someone called Jae Worth is first up.

  Hey beautiful! Looking stunning, hun! Hope all is well? When can we catch up? XOXO

  I imagine her uploading the photo then staring at her phone waiting for someone to reply and tell her how fantastic she looked.

  What about us, Kim? What about the promise you made us?<
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  I sit back in my office chair, and realise my heart is racing. I am furious. I can’t remember another time I felt this angry.

  How can she just carry on like this? How dare she?

  I shouldn’t be looking at her Facebook page at all, I know that. Claudia told me that it was borderline masochistic behaviour, but I had a five-minute break in a day of back-to-back meetings and I couldn’t resist.

  I hate Facebook. I hate the voyeurism and the narcissism and the pointlessness of it all. I rarely upload anything to my own page. But perhaps that’s because I have nothing much to say. After all, what do I do? I go to work, I come home and I see my daughter for maybe an hour before bed and then I go to sleep.

  Not so with Kim. She’s always so busy. Her life is non-stop action – just following it all exhausts me. And she does always look incredible, if dressing like a lap dancer is your aspiration in life.

  She’s a show-woman, I suppose. Just like Viv. They’ve both created their characters, the fronts they display to the rest of the world, keeping their real selves safely hidden. We all do it to some degree, but their personas are so much more interesting, so beautifully detailed and realised. Viv’s is boho thespian child, with her crazy curly hair, freckles and youthfully clear skin. Kim’s is glamour puss, someone who would never be seen without ‘her face on’. Easy, but charming with it, and won’t take any of your nonsense.

  Then what am I?

  I’m Esther, what you see is what you get. I’m not trying to hide anything. Or am I? I’m a hard-working woman who loves her daughter but has no confidence in her mothering skills. And Robin doesn’t make it easy for me. They have so many little inside jokes and ways, the two of them. Mummy is always the outsider. ‘Poor Mummy,’ he will often say. ‘She does want to play with you, Riles, she’s just had a very busy day at work.’

  I can never tell whether he’s being patronising or trying to let me off the hook. Or if there’s something more sinister going on. His chance at a little power, after years of emasculation.