The Other Woman’s House

by Sophie Hannah

  This time I can’t guess. I have to ask. ‘Then what?’

  ‘The SatNav thing happened. And Jackie decided it was destiny – the solution to all our problems.’

  ‘How? How, Kit?’

  ‘Number 11,’ he whispers, folding his hands into a tight ball. ‘Everything pointed to it. Eleven was what we called this house – you remember the old joke?’

  I bite my lip to stop myself from screaming.

  ‘There were keys in a bowl in the kitchen with a label on that said “Selina, no. 11”, and after the SatNav disaster, you thought I was shacked up with someone at number 11 – nothing I said could persuade you it wasn’t true. One day Jackie asked me if I knew how much bigger number 11’s garden was than the garden here.’ Kit jerks his head in the direction of the window. ‘I didn’t know what she was talking about. She had this strange expression on her face. It scared me. I realised then: she was halfway to being mad.’

  ‘She’d used the keys from the kitchen and let herself into number 11,’ I say.

  He nods. ‘She wanted to check out the house where I was supposedly leading my double life. She thought it was hilarious.’

  I glance down at the sheet of paper on the floor, remembering Jackie’s words: Same house, but much bigger garden, southfacing – more desirable – OBVIOUS AND UNDENIABLE – MEANT TO BE!!

  ‘She thought she’d found the perfect solution.’ Kit shrugs. ‘We could buy a house almost identical to the Gilpatricks’ but better, on the same street. “You’ll be able to lord it over them,” she said. “All we need to do is persuade this Selina woman to sell.” She started talking about putting shit through the letterbox, Nitromosing her car…I didn’t even know what Nitromose was. I told her not to be ridiculous – even if we could drive the owner out of her home, we’d never be able to afford a house on Bentley Grove, this one or number 11. I was seconds away from telling Jackie I couldn’t go on the way we were when…’ He breaks off.

  A heavy sense of calm spreads through me, like a drug. I fight the urge to close my eyes. ‘When she explained to you exactly how it could work,’ I finish Kit’s sentence. ‘If I died at the right time, with the right price on my head, then you could afford it. What was her plan? First, get me out of the way at Nulli. All the stress I was under after finding that address in your SatNav – you were supposed to suggest to me that I stop working for a while, hand everything over to you. And then, what, sell Nulli, with Jackie passing herself off as me to sign the relevant papers? She looked like me, superficially – shoulder length dark hair, slim. With my passport, and a solicitor who’d never met me—’

  ‘I didn’t, though, did I?’ Kit snaps. ‘I never suggested you give up work – everything I did from that moment on was to protect you from this…this madwoman I’d got us involved with. You don’t have to believe that, but it’s the truth.’ He lets out a bitter laugh. ‘Jackie accused me of being the crazy one. To her it was so obvious, so simple – we sell Nulli, buy 11 Bentley Grove with a huge mortgage and a whacking great life insurance policy, with her posing as you, then…’ Kit covers his face with his hands. Groans.

  ‘Then kill me, cash in, and get a house worth 1.2 million for two hundred and fifty to four hundred grand, depending on how low Selina Gane was willing to go to get rid of her house quickly,’ I say, aware of the uselessness of my words, wishing they were knives. ‘The house where she’d been persecuted by someone she didn’t know, for no reason that was anything to do with her. So, what did you say? Did you say, “No, I don’t want Connie dead”? Did you say, “I’m going to the police”?’

  ‘I couldn’t go to the police. I…I did my best to stall her by…’

  I wait.

  Kit changes tack. ‘Anyway, her plan wouldn’t have worked,’ he says defensively. ‘Who’d have given us a mortgage for that amount once we’d sold Nulli and had nothing?’ Is he daring me to call him a liar, or has he forgotten about Melrose Cottage because it suits him to do so? He and Jackie would have got their mortgage – someone would have given it to them, especially if whoever bought Nulli kept Kit on as CEO on some exorbitant salary.

  ‘I had to pretend to go along with it, pretend we’d do it eventually, once we’d got the details right. Jackie enjoyed the planning. We stopped fighting. Completely. Sometimes I thought – I hoped – that working on the details might keep her happy for ever, that she’d never need to…take it any further.’

  ‘So your aim was to guarantee Jackie’s everlasting happiness?’

  ‘No! You don’t understand,’ Kit sobs.

  ‘I do,’ I tell him. ‘I wish I didn’t, but I do.’

  I watch as he struggles to compose himself.

  ‘Jackie could and would have ruined my life if I’d said no. I had to give her something to hold on to. I never loved her, Con. She was more like…I don’t know, a colleague I felt I had to be loyal to. She loved me, though – I was in no doubt about that. You know she…she cried for nearly two hours after we…did the filming.’

  Is he talking about the virtual tour?

  ‘She insisted on wearing my wedding ring to do it – she wouldn’t explain why. Just kept saying it would be funny, but that wasn’t the real reason. If it was funny, why did she go to pieces when I asked for it back afterwards? I felt worse taking that ring off her than I did…’ His mouth sets in a line, as if to stop the words escaping: than I did strangling her to death.

  ‘How bad did you feel about butchering an innocent family? Where does that fit in, on your scale of guilt?’

  ‘If it’ll make you feel any better, I’ll tell you something I never told Jackie, not even at the end,’ Kit says, ignoring my question. ‘I thought about telling her, but I didn’t. It would have been vindictive.’

  I wish he’d told her, whatever it is, if it’s something that would have hurt her. I wish he wouldn’t tell me, but I say nothing to stop him.

  ‘The address in my SatNav?’ he raises his voice, as if afraid I might not hear. ‘I programmed it in.’

  ‘I know that,’ I say, starting to cry at the stupidity of it all – him telling me something that I’ve been telling him and that he’s been denying for six months. ‘I’ve known all along.’

  ‘I did it deliberately,’ he says. ‘I knew you’d take my car that day, because of the snow. I wanted you to find out, Con. I wanted you to stop me. Why didn’t you stop me?’

  I didn’t kill the Gilpatricks. I didn’t kill them. It’s not my fault that the Gilpatricks are dead.

  I don’t know how much time has passed since Kit and I last spoke to one another. There’s a hole in my mind and I can’t find where it ends. The flies are still buzzing. The smell is worse.

  Did I imagine it, or did Kit tell me the rest of the story? He wanted it to stop, all of it. I couldn’t stop it for him, so he killed the Gilpatricks – it was their fault he was in the predicament he was in, so they deserved to die. Did Kit say that, or am I imagining what he might have said?

  It was easy for Jackie after that – she had him exactly where she wanted him. She could help him escape the four murders he’d committed, but only if he agreed to a fifth. Only if he accepted that I had to die.

  Jackie copied the key to number 11, let herself into Selina Gane’s house with some prospective buyers, and told a pack of lies about a woman who looked very much like Selina’s strange stalker woman putting the house on the market, pretending to be Selina. Maybe she did other things to drive Selina out too – maybe she Nitromosed her car, whatever that means. Whatever she did, she got the result she wanted: number 11 went on the market.

  Why the next part, though? I don’t have the energy to ask Kit. They must have moved everything out of the lounge at number 12, where the blood was, and replaced it with the contents of number 11’s lounge. Risky; someone could have seen them. They’d have had to move furniture and pictures across the street. But no one did see them, or else they’d have gone to the police. Of course no one saw them; Bentley Grove is the sort of street where pe
ople make a point of not noticing – the kind of street that makes a stalker feel entirely comfortable. No one around during the day apart from one very old man who sleeps most of the time.

  Jackie had access to the right kind of camera, and to the Lancing Damisz website. Jackie lay down in the Gilpatricks’ blood, and she and Kit made an alternative version of the virtual tour for me to see, so that I’d go to the police and talk about blood and murder. I would be hysterical – exactly the sort of person who might, later, suffer an accident that may or may not be suicide. Kit must have done the filming. Was Selina Gane supposed to find out that someone was claiming there had been a murder in her house, the house she was already desperate to get shot of, and lower the price?

  When was I supposed to have my accident? Not before Kit and Jackie, posing as me, had bought 11 Bentley Grove. The police wouldn’t have had too much trouble working out the chain of events: I’d been obsessed with the Gilpatricks since 2003, when they had bought the house I’d set my heart on. I was so obsessed that I’d persuaded Kit to buy 11 Bentley Grove, directly opposite the Gilpatricks’ new house, so that I could spy on them, but it turned out that spying wasn’t enough for me – one day I cracked and killed them, all of them. I was so deranged that I killed two young children.

  She kept hassling the police with some made-up story about a dead body on a website – everyone knew it was a lie. There was no evidence of any blood on the carpet – the police checked.

  The guilt had driven her mad.

  They found her DNA all over number 12, you know. All over the bodies.

  ‘What?’ says Kit, making me jump.

  Did I say something?

  ‘I made it easy for her,’ I tell him. ‘Jackie. She didn’t have to pretend to be me so that the two of you could buy 11 Bentley Grove – I came up with a plan of my own to buy it.’ A chill seeps into my bones as I realise what this means. ‘That’s why you killed her, isn’t it? Once I’d…Once we’d bought the house, she’d have wanted to move on to the next stage.’

  I think of what Kit said before: I killed her to save you. By insisting on buying 11 Bentley Grove, I was bringing forward my execution date. And signing Jackie’s death warrant.

  ‘When you said you wanted to buy it, you know what went through my mind?’ Kit says. ‘“This can’t be happening,” I thought. “Jackie never said this would happen.” How pathetic is that?’

  ‘No one can predict everything, not even Jackie.’

  ‘No,’ he agrees. Listening to us having this conversation, I can’t believe we are about to die. Maybe we’re not. Kit hasn’t touched the knife for a long time. Or at least, I think it’s a long time. Perhaps it isn’t; perhaps it’s just a few minutes.

  ‘No way she could have known about Mr and Mrs Beater and their Christmas tree,’ he says. ‘She got a massive kick out of going to the police and treating them like idiots, saying she’d seen what you’d seen, but it wasn’t part of the original plan.’

  I don’t know what he means.

  Kit must be able to see that I’m confused, because he says, ‘The police didn’t check out your story like they were supposed to – they didn’t see any reason to mention to Selina Gane that someone was claiming to have seen a picture of a slaughtered woman in her house.’

  And so there was no reason for her to lower her asking price from 1.2 million to the nine hundred thousand that Jackie had in mind.

  ‘Jackie’s colleague Lorraine explained to them that the carpet in number 11’s lounge was the same one that had been in when she’d last sold the house – and there was the stain to prove it. That was it, end of story – Grint wasn’t going to take it further on your word alone. Once Jackie threw her hat into the ring, he thought again – Christmas tree stain notwithstanding. If two people, entirely unconnected to one another, see the same dead woman on the same website at the same time—’

  A shrill ringing sound cuts across Kit’s voice. We both jump. I start to shake uncontrollably. The doorbell. The police. ‘Hello? Kit? Connie? Are you in there? Open up.’

  Not DS Laskey. Simon Waterhouse.

  Kit picks up the knife and points it at my throat. The tip presses against my skin. ‘Don’t say anything,’ he whispers.

  ‘Mr Bowskill, can you open the door, please?’ That’s Sam Kombothekra.

  ‘We’re coming in anyway,’ Simon Waterhouse yells. ‘You might as well let us in yourself.’

  Hearing their voices sharpens my mind. There are still things I don’t understand, things I want to understand while Kit and I are alone together. I don’t know what’s going to happen to either of us, but I know for certain that we won’t be in a room together, just the two of us, ever again.

  ‘Grint asked Jackie if I was the one who pretended to be Selina Gane and put 11 Bentley Grove up for sale.’ My words tumble out too fast. ‘She said no.’

  ‘If she’d said yes, you’d have known she was lying. Grint had no reason to doubt Jackie when she came forward to say she’d seen the body, but if you’d told him she was a liar, he might have taken a closer look at her.’

  ‘And found the connection to you.’ Yes. That makes sense.

  ‘Bowskill! Open up! Don’t do anything stupid. Connie, are you all right in there?’

  The knife cuts the bottom of my neck. It makes me realise my lips are still bleeding. I wonder how much blood I’ve lost. Thinking about it makes me feel weak.

  ‘What about the dress?’ I ask Kit.

  ‘Dress?’ He enunciates the word oddly, as if it doesn’t belong in our conversation. He’s beyond lying now; I don’t think he knows what I’m talking about.

  ‘My birthday present.’

  ‘That was nothing. I told you it was nothing,’ he says impatiently. ‘I had to buy you a birthday present, and I bought Jackie a present at the same time – I liked that dress, that’s all. I bought one for you and one for her.’ He sniffs, wipes his nose with the back of his hand. ‘All I wanted was for all this…shit to end well – for all three of us. All the shit that wasn’t my fault, or yours, or Jackie’s. None of us deserved any of this – they’re the ones who deserve it.’ He jerks his head towards the bed. ‘Do you want to see them? Do you want to see their smug faces?’ He takes hold of me, pulls me to my feet.

  ‘No!’ I scream, thinking he’s going to show me the bodies. Instead, he drags me down the stairs and into the lounge. There’s a lock on the door. Kit slides it across. He puts down the knife, walks over to a cupboard and opens it. He pulls out a photograph, throws it at me. It lands on Jackie, face up. It lands on Jackie, dead. Dead Jackie. A man, a woman, a boy and a girl. On a bridge, eating ice creams. Laughing.

  I know the woman’s face. Elise Gilpatrick’s face. How can I know it? It makes no sense.

  What makes sense? Jackie’s body lying here like rubbish – does that make sense?

  Kit walks slowly towards me, holding the knife in front of him. Where’s Simon Waterhouse? Where’s Sam? Why can’t I hear them any more? I try to send a message to them, knowing it’s useless: Please come. Please. There’s nowhere for me to go, no way of getting away from Kit. He’s fire, a tidal wave, a cloud of toxic air – he’s everything bad there’s ever been, coming for me. He’s not looking at me any more; his eyes are on the photograph, on his victims’ faces. Nothing is their fault – I know that perfectly well – but they are the reason.

  I’m going to be killed because of a family called the Gilpatricks.

  There are four of them: mother, father, son and daughter. ‘Elise, Donal, Riordan and Tilly.’ Kit tells me their first names, as if I’m keen to dispense with the formalities and get to know them better, when all I want is to run screaming from the room. ‘Riordan’s seven,’ he says. ‘Tilly’s five.’

  Shut up, I want to yell in his face, but I’m too scared to open my mouth. It’s as if someone’s clamped and locked it; no more words will come out, not ever.

  This is it. This is where and how and when and why I’m going to die. At least I unde
rstand the why, finally.

  Kit’s as frightened as I am. More. That’s why he keeps talking, because he knows, as all those who wait in terror know, that when silence and fear combine, they form a compound a thousand times more horrifying than the sum of its parts.

  ‘The Gilpatricks,’ he says, tears streaking his face.

  I watch the door in the mirror above the fireplace. It looks smaller and further away than it would if I turned and looked at it directly. The mirror is shaped like a fat gravestone: three straight sides and an arch at the top.

  ‘I didn’t believe in them. The name sounded made up.’ Kit laughs, chokes on a sob. All of him is shaking, even his voice. ‘Gilpatrick’s the sort of name you’d make up if you were inventing a person. Mr Gilpatrick. If only I’d believed in him, none of this would have happened. We’d have been safe. If I’d only…’

  He stops, backs away from the locked door. He hears the same footsteps I hear – rushing, a stampede. They’re here. The police are finally here. Holding the handle of the knife with both hands, Kit drives it into his chest. The last thing he says is, ‘Sorry’.

  POLICE EXHIBIT REF: CB13345/432/29IG

  Caroline Capps 24/12/93

  43 Stover Street

  Birmingham

  Dear Caroline

  Sorry if this letter is blunt, but some of us prefer to be straightforward than two-faced – not you, obviously. You told me you believed me, but now Vicki and Laura are telling me you don’t – apparently you only said you did to be polite, and because you feel sorry for me.

  Luckily, I don’t need your sympathy. In my eyes, you’re the one who needs pity, if not full-blown psychotherapy. I have been dumped several times in my life, and have never had a problem admitting to it. And I have NEVER sent dozens of photos of myself to an ex-boyfriend either – why would I? Do I seem that insane to you?