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

by Charlotte Duckworth

  ‘So what’s the problem? The other woman still won’t agree to it?’

  ‘No . . .’ I say, exasperated. ‘No, I mean, I don’t know. Maybe she would, now. She’s not getting better. But even if she dies, I can’t risk it. I looked into it. If we apply for Esther to officially adopt Riley, someone has to come and assess us as a family, even though I’m her biological father. I temporarily have to relinquish my rights, and make Riley a ward of the state, and then “reclaim” her . . .’

  ‘That just sounds like legalese,’ Nick says. ‘If you’re her biological dad . . . I don’t understand the problem.’

  ‘Think about it,’ I say. ‘Think about the idea of social services poking into our lives. What if they find out what happened with Sarah? There’s no way I’m going to risk them taking Riley away from me, or trying to claim she might not be safe with me.’

  ‘Jesus, bro. I don’t know how you do it, but just when I think you’ve started to sort your life out . . .’

  ‘All right, I know,’ I say. ‘I don’t need a lecture . . . I just thought – I don’t know – maybe you could help. My head . . . it’s a wreck.’

  ‘You don’t have many options,’ he says. ‘You’ll just have to come clean with Esther. Explain about Sarah . . . why the adoption thing is off the table.’

  ‘I . . . I can’t,’ I say. ‘She won’t get it. I’ve been fobbing her off ever since Riley was born. And you know how it sounds . . . the Sarah stuff.’

  ‘Listen, Rob, I don’t know what you want me to say,’ Nick says, sighing. ‘For once in your life, do the right thing, not the easy thing.’

  ‘All right, Mr Moral,’ I say. ‘Thanks for nothing.’

  I hang up. He immediately rings back but I mute my phone.

  As always, I’m alone.

  I think about Esther, the way she was last night. Something’s changed. She knows something . . . or she’s planning something.

  I heard her throwing up the pasta in the downstairs loo after dinner. She thinks if she runs the cold tap hard, I won’t hear her. She thinks I’m so stupid, so useless and disorganised and hopeless that I don’t notice these things. But I notice everything. The fact she still cleans her teeth about forty times a day, the elastic band she wears on her wrist, the little heaps of hair she leaves on the arm of the sofa, after she’s spent the evening pulling them out of her head one by one.

  I don’t know exactly what’s wrong, but I do know something isn’t right.

  I decide to play I Spy. I drop Riley off with Lovely Amanda, who lives next door with her short, but not particularly sweet, husband Martin. They have two children under four. Amanda’s blonde hair is always tied up in a ponytail, her pale skin spotted with freckles. She’s really into yoga, and organic food, and looking after Riley at short notice. She’s literally the neighbour of dreams.

  I head to Esther’s office, and check the ‘Find My Friends’ iPhone tracking. She is in there, as she should be. So far, so normal. I sit outside her office on a metal bench in the freezing cold and watch the world go by. Perhaps I’m getting paranoid in my old age. It’s all Sarah’s fault. She messed with my head all those years ago, and I’ve never got it straight again.

  At a little after twelve, Esther emerges from her office building, squinting into the sunlight. It seems early for her to be going to lunch, but perhaps she has a meeting at lunchtime, so she’s had to go out beforehand and ‘grab’ something. How wonderful it must be to be so important. So busy.

  I’m strangely furious with her. It’s unsettling.

  I follow her, a baseball cap pulled down low over my forehead, like some poor man’s Bond. And what do I find?

  Kim.

  Again.

  It’s all my fault, of course.

  Kim. I underestimated her. I got her all wrong. I thought she’d get over Riley. I sent her photos that first year, I kept her sweet. I met up with her in Tooting and let her hold the baby. I thought she’d be busy with her illness, then find someone else and move on with her life. I thought she’d understand that it was better for Riley if she just stayed with us.

  But no, I should have kept a closer eye on her, it seems. Because here they are, the two of them. Heads together. Thick as thieves.

  I watch them, trying to work out what they might be saying. They’re not shouting, not arguing. No uncomfortable body language.

  And then someone else arrives. I almost fall over in shock.

  Sarah.

  She joins them at the table, and they sit listening to her as she undoubtedly tells them what a horrible, horrible man I am. But she won’t tell them that it was all her fault. That she was cheating on me, screwing her writing partner behind my back. Or that she’d abandoned our projects to work on stuff on her own, leaving me sitting around twiddling my thumbs like some trusting loser.

  I’m tired of this. I’m so tired of being the mug, the one who suffers, when all I’ve ever tried to do is be a loving partner, husband, father.

  And there they all are, slagging me off together. Three women. Thinking they can get one over me again.

  Not this time.

  No way.

  I simmer with anger throughout my journey back home, chain-smoking as soon as I get off public transport.

  How can I shake it off before Amanda drops off Riley? I should have joined a boxing club or something. Right now, I wish someone would knock seven bells out of me. Right now, I wish my brain would die and never work again.

  Nick has left me four messages since this morning. I haven’t listened to any of them.

  Seconds after I get home, the doorbell rings. I can hear them babbling away on the step outside. Just metres away. So innocent. So full of life. My toddler daughter and her little friend. My heart lifts. At least she loves me.

  The low winter sunlight seems unbearably bright as I open the door. Riley is holding something out to me.

  ‘Daddy,’ she says, and I lean down and take what she’s offering from her. The fragments of a brown leaf that has been squashed together in her palm. ‘For you. It’s a leaf.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, staring at my little daughter, then back up at Amanda. ‘It’s just what I always wanted,’ I say, breathing out slowly. ‘Everyone needs a dead leaf. Everyone. What shall we call him? Sid? Marguerite? Jamelia?’

  ‘Looks like a Marguerite to me,’ Amanda says and I look at her and she winks. Just winks, like that, as though all is right with the world.

  I manage a smile.

  ‘Well, we’ll be off then,’ Amanda says, and her face suddenly blurs as I struggle to concentrate. ‘Leave you to it. Madeline’s got swimming this afternoon.’

  ‘Yay!’ The little girl jumps up and down on the spot. Riley grins.

  ‘Thanks for having her,’ I say, hoping that the words will mask whatever non-verbal communication I’m clearly leaking all over the place.

  Amanda smiles.

  ‘No problem,’ she says, and she turns away, taking Madeline’s hand as she leads her down our front path.

  I close the door. Riley is sitting on the bottom stair, waiting for me to take off her shoes. That’s what we do. Routine.

  Think!

  But whatever way I look at it, I realise that there’s no way back from this. No way out. Not now Esther knows what I’ve done. Sarah will have told her everything.

  Riley is staring at me with her huge grey eyes.

  I will lose her. That’s for definite now. Five years for breaching the restraining order. They’ll take me to the cleaners. They’ll take her away from me. And then there’s the business with the money.

  I did it all for the best, but it’s all gone wrong. So horribly wrong.

  I will never see her again.

  ‘Don’t take your shoes off, Riles,’ I say, leaning down to her level. I hold her in my arms and pull her towards me. She wriggles
and pushes me away, confused. That same puzzled stare on her face.

  On the radiator cover next to me there’s the little bowl we keep our keys in. It’s not a solution, but it’s something. If we can just get away so that I can get my head straight.

  ‘We’re going out,’ I say, and I grab the car keys. In the kitchen I rummage in the drawer for our passports.

  Then I turn and open the understairs cupboard, groping around in the dark to find the safe. I open it, take out the pile of fifty-pound notes I’ve kept there ever since Esther gave me the money. It was all that was left of it once I’d cleared my debts.

  For once I am grateful to Past Me for his foresight. My emergency funds.

  Well, this is an emergency.

  ‘Where we going, Daddy?’

  The words stick in my throat. Wherever I’m going now, there’s only one thing I’m sure of: I’m going to take her with me, and I’m not coming back.

  ‘Never you mind, sweetheart. Just a little adventure with Daddy.’ I bend down and squeeze her cheeks. ‘Go grab little Lammy, she’ll want to come too.’

  Esther

  Back in the office, I find it impossible to concentrate on anything.

  My head is spinning with what Sarah told us. In a way it’s positive, but it still seems like an uphill battle. There’s so much I need to sort out before I can actually leave him. When Kim dies, he will be the only one who has to give me permission to adopt Riley, and he will never give her up. But if we can persuade Sarah to be involved somehow, to give evidence against him or something – surely there’s a chance the court will let me adopt her? Surely there’s a chance.

  My head is killing me. I sit at my desk and type an email to Jeremy. I hope he can help me. It’s such a complicated mess. Who knows what a court would think if I made a challenge for custody? Would they believe that I had no idea about his past, all this business with Sarah? Would they judge me for handing over twenty thousand pounds, thinking it was going to Kim?

  After I finish the email, I pull out my notebook and start to write down everything I can think of that might be of use. All the times Robin has behaved strangely, or aggressively. For now, I have to stay with him, to protect Riley. And he has to stay with me, because I provide the security, the finances, the cosy family set-up he always wanted.

  When I look at Riley it’s impossible to imagine a world without her in it, and if you gave me a million pounds and the opportunity to turn back time and keep my own baby, I wouldn’t do it. Because it would mean my darling, delightful, unique and surprising Riley would never have been born. And that would have been the greatest tragedy of them all.

  Blood is not thicker than water. Love is thicker than everything.

  I pick up my phone. For now, I have to go back to how things were, before Kim’s revelations threw a bomb into my life of denial. I have to go back there. To pretend that I never found out any of this stuff about his past. Just play my part, until I have everything in order to mount my case.

  Whatever happens, Robin mustn’t suspect that I know anything.

  I open WhatsApp. It’s just gone 3pm. I do what I always do in the afternoon – check in for an update. Robin sometimes sends me a picture – some little snippet of their day together that warms my heart and makes me green with jealousy all at once.

  Hope you two are having a lovely day and keeping warm. Send us a pic? X

  The message is delivered straight away, and then the app tells me Robin is online. I exhale. It’s always a relief.

  One of my more irrational fears is that he’ll have a heart attack while he’s looking after her, and that she’ll be left alone in the house until I come home. He told me a few years ago he had a scare, that his heart was found to be inflamed. A side effect of his past lifestyle, clearly, although he didn’t elaborate at the time.

  The word ‘Typing’ appears at the top of the screen. It seems to last for ages, as though he’s being interrupted, or changing his mind about what to write.

  But eventually, when the message comes through, it’s just a single word. Nothing more.

  Sorry.

  And then he goes offline.

  My hand flies to my mouth. I grab my handbag and race to the door, leaving Sarina and Anna open-mouthed as I ignore their shouts asking me where I’m going.

  Now

  Esther

  Riley is asleep in the bed on the children’s ward, and I stand over her, stroking her soft blonde hair. She looks fine, but the doctor tells me that just to be safe they’ll be keeping her in overnight for observation.

  ‘I’m sorry about the delay in getting the information to you,’ the doctor says. ‘There was some confusion about next of kin as she was brought in in a separate ambulance from your husband.’

  ‘We didn’t find the car straight away,’ DS Tyler says to the doctor, looking down. ‘It had rolled into a ditch.’

  She turns to me.

  ‘Your husband had walked quite some distance to try to get help before he collapsed on the road. We found his mobile phone on him, but it was broken, likely in the accident. Riley was fine. She was just confused, but her car seat protected her well from the impact.’

  ‘Nothing more than a few bruises,’ the doctor says, giving me a smile. ‘She will be absolutely fine.’

  I stare at the doctor as she tells me, trying to take it all in.

  DS Tyler told me they found their passports in the car.

  Clearly Robin was planning on kidnapping Riley, but where was he taking her?

  I think about the road where he was found. Epsom. I have a vague recollection of it being the home of a racecourse, but other than that, I know nothing about it. I take my phone out and search for the name of the road on the maps app. It’s one of the main roads out of London. But it doesn’t help – it doesn’t provide any context, or tell me where he might have been going.

  ‘Why did he crash?’ I ask. I think about what Sarah told me; about him ranting and raving and terrifying her with his erratic driving, and can’t bear to imagine how frightened Riley must have been if she had to experience the same.

  ‘We’re not entirely sure yet,’ DS Tyler says. ‘But there will be a thorough investigation. You’ll get all the answers you need, I promise you.’

  I’m burning with anger that he put our little girl’s life at risk like that.

  Vivienne holds me for what feels like hours as we sit by Riley’s bedside. I can’t face going home, back to that empty house, so eventually I go to Viv’s flat and she makes up the spare bed for me. She hands me a cup of tea and a piece of pizza, and we sit together on the sofa, and I think about how close I came to losing Riley.

  ‘I can’t believe he would just take her like that,’ I say, staring out at the patio beyond Viv’s huge folding doors. The patio where I first saw Robin kiss Kim. The patio where it all began. It seems ironic that I have ended up here. ‘Where was he going to go? Did he even have a plan?’

  ‘I guess if he wakes up you can ask him,’ Viv says, rolling her eyes. ‘Sorry. I don’t know, Esty, I don’t know what to make of that man. I just . . . I just wish you’d never met him.’

  At 10.30pm I make my excuses and go into Viv’s spare bedroom. Whatever happens now, I have to protect Riley. She’s the only thing that matters. And I need to get hold of Kim, to tell her what’s happened.

  I pick up the phone and wait for her to answer, but it goes straight to voicemail, as it has done every other time I’ve tried to ring her. I leave her a message, telling her she needs to call me urgently.

  Eventually, I fall into an unsatisfactory sleep, punctuated with dreams of Riley’s wide eyes and tear-stained face, trapped alone inside that car, and Robin collapsing on the roadside, leaving a pool of blood around him.

  I wake the next morning to the sound of my mobile ringing. It’s the hospital.

  ‘They’re letting
her come home,’ I tearfully tell Viv after I hang up.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ she says. ‘Then we can go back to the house together.’

  Rob’s parents and Nick were with him last night. They arrived just after I left. I’m dreading seeing them, trying to explain it all.

  Before we collect Riley, we go to visit Rob. He’s lying immobile on his hospital bed, surrounded by machines. It’s surreal to see him so still. He was always jumping about, fizzing with energy.

  There’s been no change in his condition. The doctor didn’t sound hopeful. I wonder if this will be my new existence? Suspended in limbo, waiting to see if my husband will live or die. And if he lives, what then? Will he be arrested? Is it possible to kidnap your own child? I’m too frightened of the answers to ask the questions.

  ‘His head is so swollen,’ I whisper to Viv. ‘And look at all the grazes on his cheek.’

  ‘I guess from where he fell on the tarmac,’ Viv says, shrugging. Her voice is flat but when I look up at her, her eyes are bloodshot.

  ‘I suppose I should tell Sarah,’ I say, softly. ‘But I need to get hold of Kim first.’

  ‘I’ll try calling her when we leave,’ Viv says, wrapping her arm around me. ‘Come on, there’s not much point in us sitting here staring at him. I’m so sorry, chicken, what a bloody mess.’

  I give a half-hearted smile and we make our way to the children’s ward.

  Thank God for Riley. When she’s around it’s impossible to focus on anything but her. She’s her usual cheerful, cheeky self, fascinated by the nurses’ uniforms and the fact that the bed she slept in is on wheels.

  I hold her so tightly that she pushes me away, telling me I’m squashing her. I smile and kiss the top of her head.

  On the way home Viv makes her laugh singing songs from Frozen in that impressive belt of hers. Once we’re back at the house, we all spend a few hours getting things straight, and then we go for a long walk round Wimbledon, waving Viv off at the bus stop.