The Other Woman’s House

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘He won’t know,’ Charlie told her. ‘He’s gone for a walk.’

  ‘On his own?’ Olivia’s indignation could be heard all the way from London. ‘Why didn’t he take you with him?’

  ‘What’s your question, Liv?’

  ‘I just asked it: will Simon mind that I phoned? I don’t think he’d mind. Would you mind if he had a very quick phone conversation with…someone, anyone? From home, or…work?’

  Charlie swallowed the scream that was clogging her throat. ‘Sam wants to talk to Simon, does he?’

  ‘Don’t go mad. I haven’t told him where you are, but…could Simon maybe ring him? I don’t know the details, but I think someone might have been murdered.’

  ‘So? That’s like interrupting a postman on his honeymoon because someone wants to send a parcel to their gran. You can tell Sam from me that he’s a gutless fuckhead, using you to pass on his messages.’

  ‘Don’t be mean about Sam – he’s sweet. And he hasn’t asked me to pass on anything – I haven’t spoken to him for months. Look, whoever’s been murdered, I think it might be someone Simon knows. Or knew. Oh, I don’t know!’

  Someone Simon knew? Immediately, Charlie thought of Alice Fancourt. Not her, anyone but her. Charlie didn’t know if Simon ever thought about her these days – the subject, like so many others, was well and truly embargoed – but she knew as surely as she knew her own name that if Alice had been murdered, Simon would start to obsess about her again.

  Charlie could feel her brain struggling to fight off the intense heat and the red wine. Something didn’t add up. Something fairly obvious, once you thought about it. ‘If you haven’t spoken to Sam, how do you…’ She stopped, unable to find the missing words as the answer hit her like a lead ball in the chest. How many men had Liv had time to meet, since Friday? ‘New Sex Man,’ she said, as neutrally as possible. ‘Who is he, Liv?’

  ‘Don’t be angry,’ Liv sounded terrified.

  ‘He’s Chris Gibbs, isn’t he?’

  ‘I didn’t plan it. I didn’t mean for—’

  ‘End it.’

  ‘Oh, God, don’t say that! You’ve no idea how—’

  ‘End. It. That’s not a suggestion, it’s a fucking order. You stupid fuck!’

  Charlie dropped the phone on the table, ran out into the hot night, and collided with Domingo. She’d completely forgotten about him. She might forget him again, one day, but she would never forget his wooden hut, his phone, his splintery picnic-basket chair with its red and blue blanket. She would think of all those things whenever she thought about betrayal, from now on. And she thought about betrayal a lot.

  ‘Sister okay?’ Domingo asked.

  ‘No, she’s not,’ Charlie told him. ‘She’s a stupid cunt.’

  13

  Tuesday 20 July 2010

  ‘Tell them,’ I say to Kit. ‘Forget about my feelings, forget about trying not to hurt me. Say what you really think. How can you stand to sit there and listen to me tell lies about you, if that’s what I’m doing?’

  We’re at Parkside police station in Cambridge, in a room with yellow walls, a blue linoleum floor and one large square window that’s covered with some kind of chicken-wire grid. So that no one can throw themselves out. Sam Kombothekra is sitting on our side of the table, between Kit and me. That surprised me; I thought he’d sit opposite, with DC Grint. Is a detective from Spilling still a detective when he’s in Cambridge? Does Sam have any power in this room, or is he here today only as our chauffeur, our silent chaperone?

  Kit looks at Grint. ‘I’ve never been to Bentley Grove – never walked there, never driven there, never parked there.’ He shrugs. ‘What else can I say? Plenty of people drive black saloon cars.’ There are two red grooves on his neck where he cut himself shaving this morning, and blue-ish shadows under his eyes; neither of us slept last night, knowing we had this ordeal to get through today. Neither of us combed our hair before leaving for Cambridge. What must Grint think of us? He did his best not to react when I explained about my bruises and the lump above my eye, but I can tell he finds me disgusting, and he can’t have much respect for Kit. What kind of idiot would marry a woman who blacks out and bangs her head on library tables? I feel defensive on behalf of us both; I want to tell Grint that we’re better people than he thinks we are.

  I want it to be true.

  You don’t remember knocking your head on that table. What else don’t you remember?

  ‘The pink blur in the black car on Street View isn’t the same pink as Connie’s coat,’ says Kit. ‘It’s deeper – more like red.’

  ‘Connie says it’s the same pink,’ Grint counters.

  Kit nods. He heard me say it.

  ‘Why are you nodding?’ I snap at him. ‘You don’t think it’s the same pink. Why don’t you argue?’

  ‘What’s the point?’ Kit keeps his eyes on Grint. ‘Aren’t there things you can do to the Street View picture to unblur the car registration? That’s the only way to prove if it’s my car or not. Maybe you could see who’s driving it.’

  ‘He means me,’ I say.

  ‘Time and money,’ says Grint. ‘If you were a suspect in a serious crime, if we needed to prove your car had been parked on Bentley Grove, we’d look into enhancing the image. Has a crime been committed, Mr Bowskill? To your knowledge?’

  ‘Not…No.’ Kit lowers his eyes.

  I can’t stand this any more. ‘He was going to say, “Not by me.” Weren’t you? I don’t know why you won’t admit it! I know what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Mr Bowskill? Mrs Bowskill seems to think you have something to tell us.’

  Kit presses his fingers into his eyes. I realise I’ve never seen him cry, not once since we first met. Is that unusual? Do most men cry?

  ‘Just because it’s crossed my mind doesn’t mean I believe it! I don’t believe it.’

  ‘He thinks I may have murdered a woman,’ I translate, for the benefit of Grint and Sam. ‘In the lounge at 11 Bentley Grove.’

  ‘Is she right?’ Grint asks Kit. ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘Something’s changed, that’s all I know.’ Kit stares down at his hands. ‘Yesterday morning, DS Kombothekra told us there was no reason to worry about anything. Then suddenly we’re summoned here. Suddenly you’re interested in us – in the colour of Connie’s coat, in where I did or didn’t park my car…Doesn’t take a genius to work out what’s going on.’

  ‘What conclusion would that genius draw?’ Grint asks, rubbing his index finger along his silver tie-pin. He’s tall and lanky, with bad scars on his chin from years-old acne. His voice doesn’t suit him. It’s too heavy and deep, the wrong sound for a skinny man to make.

  ‘You believe in Connie’s dead woman,’ Kit says. ‘Something’s happened to make you believe she’s real. You wouldn’t waste all this time on us otherwise.’

  ‘And how does that change things for you? If she’s real.’

  ‘How did my wife know she was dead?’ Kit asks Grint angrily, as if all this is his fault. ‘There was no body on that virtual tour, I can promise you that. I looked at it seconds after Connie did, and there was nothing: an ordinary lounge, nothing more, nothing less. No dead woman, no blood. At the time I thought Con must have been seeing things – she was tired, stressed…’

  ‘She was stressed as a result of having found 11 Bentley Grove programmed into your SatNav as your home address? Correct?’

  ‘That’s what I thought at the time, yes.’

  Grint leans across the table. ‘And now you think?’

  Kit groans. ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me. I don’t know anything.’

  ‘But you suspect.’

  ‘He suspects I’m a killer,’ I say helpfully.

  ‘Connie could have programmed the address in herself,’ says Kit, refusing to look at me. He must be grateful Sam’s sitting between us, even if Sam himself looks anything but glad to be where he is. Who can blame him? I wonder if ours is the worst marriage he’s ever s
een in action.

  ‘I didn’t programme it in,’ Kit says. ‘Connie must have done it. I’ve been kidding myself that it might have been someone else – someone in the shop that sold me the SatNav.’ He laughs bitterly. ‘I suppose we believe what we want to believe, don’t we?’

  Some of us do. Others fail, however hard we try.

  ‘Connie’s been a mess. For months,’ Kit mutters.

  Go on. Don’t stop now. In a way, it will be a relief to hear him say it. At least then I’ll have something concrete to fight against.

  ‘There was no dead woman on the Roundthehouses website. Maybe Connie saw her in the flesh. In that house, in the lounge. Connie could have parked my car on Bentley Grove. She often drives my car, she’s in Cambridge all the time…’

  ‘I’ve never driven there in your car,’ I tell him. ‘Not once.’

  ‘Ask her,’ Kit urges Grint. ‘Make her tell you the truth – she won’t tell me.’

  Ask away, DC Grint. As many questions as you want, and I’ll tell you no lies.

  ‘Why do you think Connie goes to Cambridge?’ Grint stays focused on Kit.

  ‘She told you why. Don’t you listen? Why don’t you tell us what’s happened, what you know about this dead woman? Is there a dead woman?’

  ‘Why does Connie go to Cambridge so often? She doesn’t live there, she doesn’t work there…’

  Kit slumps in his chair. ‘Like she said before: she’s looking for me.’

  ‘She said that, yes, but what do you say? She claims she’s trying to catch you out in an adulterous relationship. She claims she found 11 Bentley Grove as the home address in your SatNav – she says you programmed it in. If she programmed it in, as you’re suggesting, then surely she would know you didn’t. Why, then, would she hang around 11 Bentley Grove waiting for you to emerge on the arm of your bit on the side? Does that make any sense to you, Mr Bowskill?’

  Kit says nothing.

  ‘Or did she put the address into your SatNav because she suspected you were having an affair with the woman that lived there? Was it her way of saying, “The game’s up”?’

  ‘Kit?’ Sam prompts.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know why! I don’t know anything.’ Kit makes a choking sound, covers his mouth with his fist. ‘Look, Connie’s not evil, she’s…I love her.’

  I can’t help jumping slightly, as the word ‘evil’ joins us in the room. Like a gust of cold air.

  ‘Shall I take over?’ I say briskly, trying to sound as impartial as I can. The only way to get through this is to be objective. Grint needs to know what Kit and I both think. Then maybe we can make some progress. ‘Kit thinks I murdered a woman. Or maybe I didn’t murder her – maybe it was manslaughter or self-defence, since I’m not evil. Either way, I’m so guilty and traumatised, I try to block it out. I succeed in banishing 11 Bentley Grove and the dead woman from my conscious mind, but my subconscious isn’t so compliant. The guilt erupts, and causes trouble for me. Like Kit says, I’m a mess – that’s definitely true, that’s the one thing we agree on. I programme the address of the house where the murder took place into his SatNav. Maybe, deep down, I want to be caught and punished.’

  ‘Connie, stop,’ Sam mutters, shifting in his seat. He really shouldn’t work for the police if he can’t cope with tense, unpleasant situations.

  I ignore him and continue with my story. ‘When the house comes up for sale, the part of me that knows the truth is terrified that whoever buys it will find evidence of my crime. That’s why I stay up all night looking at it on Roundthehouses, staring at the pictures of every room. The dead woman and the blood are long gone – I’d have made sure to remove all traces – but I’m paranoid, and, in my panic, I imagine I can see the crime scene exactly as it was: the body, the blood—’

  ‘Hold on a second,’ Grint interrupts. ‘If you’re looking at the house to check there are no traces of the murder you committed, then you haven’t repressed the memory, have you? You know what you’ve done.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I say, impatient because he’s missing the point and it’s so obvious. ‘I only know it subliminally. I’ve blocked it out: the murder, putting the address into the SatNav – everything. As far as I’m aware, Kit must have programmed in the address. But he denies it, so, understandably, I’m suspicious. I start going to Cambridge nearly every Friday, trying to catch him red-handed.’ I flinch as an image of bloodstained hands fills my head. Streaked with red past the wrists, down to the elbows.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Sam asks me. ‘Would you like some water?’

  ‘No. I’m fine,’ I lie. ‘One day – the Friday just gone – I see that 11 Bentley Grove has sprouted a “For Sale” sign in its garden. That night, I’m determined to have a nosy at the pictures on a property website, to see if I can spot anything that belongs to Kit in any of the rooms. I find nothing – not a scrap of proof. I almost go to bed feeling reassured: everything’s under control. Up until this point, I’ve successfully repressed my awareness of what I’ve done, but having the pictures of the house there on the screen in front of me is too much – the memory flares up, and I see the…’ I stop, swallow. ‘I see the death scene, as clearly as if it were on the website. I don’t realise it’s a mental projection; I believe I’ve seen it on my computer.’

  Kit is openly crying now.

  ‘I’m only saying what I know you’re thinking,’ I tell him.

  ‘Let me see if I’ve got this right,’ says Grint. ‘You kill a woman, and manage to conceal the memory from yourself, so that most of the time you have no idea you’ve done it. There are only two occasions when your guilty subconscious breaks the surface: once when you programme the address into the SatNav, and then again when you see a dead body that isn’t there on the Roundthehouses website.’

  ‘That’s what Kit thinks, yes.’

  Grint pushes his chair away from the table, leans back. He kicks the heel of one shoe against the toe of the other. ‘So, when you look at 11 Bentley Grove on Roundthehouses, on a superficial level you’re looking for evidence of your husband’s presence in the house. Simultaneously, without allowing yourself to acknowledge it, you’re actually looking for any evidence you might have left behind that could link you to the murder you committed.’

  I force a smile. ‘Absurd, isn’t it?’

  ‘Who is she, then, this dead lady? Why did you kill her?’

  ‘I didn’t. Kit thinks I did. I’m hoping you’re going to tell him that the scenario I’ve just described is the biggest load of rubbish you’ve ever heard.’

  Grint drums his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘Posttraumatic memory loss is a handy fictional device, but I’ve never come across it in real life,’ he says, after a short pause. ‘Though I’ve met a fair few low-lifes pretending to be afflicted with it.’

  ‘What do you think?’ I ask Sam.

  ‘You keep saying all this is what Kit believes…’

  ‘Oh, he believes it – look at him! Have you heard him deny it? Or rather, it’s what he wants us all to think he believes. Most of all, he wants me to think he believes it – don’t you? You want me to be terrified that I’ve lost control of my own mind – that I might have killed someone and buried the memory so deep that I don’t know I’ve done it!’

  Kit covers his face with his hands. ‘Can somebody make this stop?’ he murmurs.

  ‘I think we should…’ Sam tries to come to Kit’s rescue, but Grint raises a finger to silence him. So it’s Grint and me versus Sam and Kit, is it? Two of us want to hear the worst; two of us don’t.

  ‘Course, Kit would tell you I’ve got a powerful subconscious,’ I say with false brightness. As concisely as possible, but omitting none of the gory details, I tell Grint about my hair loss, the vomiting, the facial paralysis – how my assorted symptoms sabotaged our escape to Cambridge in 2003. ‘I’ve regretted not moving ever since. I’ve got a bit of a thing about Cambridge. I’ve built it up in my mind to be this…civilised beautiful paradise, unreachable
for the likes of me. Even being here, in a police station – I can’t say I’m enjoying it, but I’d rather be under suspicion of murder here than anywhere else.’ Silently, I congratulate myself on a fine performance; the person I’m pretending to be is shielding me from the pain I would otherwise be feeling. If Grint’s a competent detective, he should be able to distinguish between insanity, eccentricity and a sense of humour.

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ he says.

  ‘Cambridge, for me, it’s like…the one that got away, if that makes sense. Kit calls it my “land of lost content”. It’s a quote from a poem.’

  ‘A E Housman,’ Grint smiles. ‘“Into my heart an air that kills/From yon far country blows:/What are those blue remembered hills,/What spires, what farms are those?/That is the land of lost content,/I see it shining plain/The happy highways where I went/And cannot come again.”’

  I start to laugh. I can’t stop.

  ‘Connie.’ Sam puts his hand on my arm.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Grint asks me.

  ‘Only in Cambridge would the cops quote poetry at you. You’re reinforcing all my preconceived ideas.’

  ‘Will you shut up?’ Kit snaps at me, looking at me for the first time since we got here. ‘You’re embarrassing yourself.’

  I turn on him. ‘I’m scaring you, you mean. I’ve seen through you, and you hate me for it. Look at you – you can barely be bothered to keep up the pretence any more! You’ve told so many lies, you’re running out of energy. Little inconsistencies are creeping in – if I drove to Bentley Grove in your car, then that’s my pink coat in the back window, isn’t it? Why say it’s a different pink?’

  ‘Mrs Bowskill—’ Grint tries to cut in.

  I raise my voice to block him, wanting only to hurt Kit, to inflict the deepest wound that I can. ‘Do you honestly think you can make me believe I’m suffering from some kind of multiple personality disorder, that Subconscious Me might have committed a crime that Conscious Me knows nothing about? It’s fucking ludicrous! How stupid do you think I am, exactly? You’re the one who should be embarrassed! Even on its own terms, it doesn’t work. If I was suppressing the memory of having killed a woman, surely it’d come back to me now, when we’re all discussing the possibility in great detail?’