by B. A. Paris
I’m surprised how easily we chat on the way to the airport. I was expecting a far more uncomfortable ride, but she seems content to talk about the most ordinary of things. She asks if she and the children can go and see Millie at the weekend, and maybe take her out for tea, and, remembering how well Millie and Aisling got on at the party, I agree gratefully, glad that Millie will have some visitors while I’m away. She asks me to let Janice know that they’ll call by on Sunday and I promise that I will.
We arrive at the airport with fifteen minutes to spare. She drops me off at Departures and leaves me with a cheery wave. I go into the terminal building, find the British Airways counter, check in my case and make my way to the departure lounge. Then I take a seat in the corner and wait for my flight to be called.
PAST
Until the day of Millie’s party, I never really thought I would kill Jack. I’d dreamt about it often enough, but in the cold light of day I baulked at the thought of killing another human being. It was probably why my attempt to stun him with the bottle failed—I’d been too scared to hit him any harder in case I killed him. There was also the fact that if I did kill him, I would almost certainly be sent to prison and be held in custody while I awaited trial, which would be terrible for Millie. So all I wanted was to knock him out long enough for me to be able to escape from him. But the minute he mentioned taking me and Millie to New Zealand, I knew I was going to have to kill him, whatever the consequences, because getting away from him would never be enough.
‘So that’s how you’re going to do it,’ I said bitterly, once we’d waved Millie and Janice off after the party. ‘You’re going to shut up the house, pretend we’ve all gone off to New Zealand, then suddenly reappear on your own and tell everyone that Millie and I have decided to stay over there when, in reality, we’ll be hidden away in the basement.’
‘More or less,’ he confirmed. ‘Except that it’ll be too much trouble to shut up the house and pretend I’m not here so I’ll find an excuse to send the two of you on to New Zealand ahead of me, and in the end I’ll be so delayed it won’t be worth joining you because you’ll be practically on your way back. And then, just as I’m about to leave for the airport to pick you up, I’ll get a tearful call from you saying that Millie refused to get on the plane and that you, torn between loving husband and lunatic sister, didn’t get on the plane either. And loving husband that I am, I’ll tell everybody that because I know how difficult it’s going to be for you to leave Millie behind, I’ve given you permission to stay on a little longer—except the little longer will become a lot longer until one sad day, you tell me you’re never coming back. And because I’m broken-hearted, people won’t dare mention your name to me and, eventually, they’ll forget that you and Millie ever existed.’
‘And my parents?’ I demanded. ‘How will you explain our disappearance to them?’
‘I’ll probably just kill them. Now, get up to your room.’
I turned away from him so that he couldn’t see how much his words had shocked me. Finding a way out—killing Jack—had never seemed more urgent and I knew that if I went back to my room, another opportunity would be lost. It was time to put the next part of my plan into action.
‘Can’t I stay down here for a while?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know very well why.’
‘When was the last time I tried to escape? Look at me, Jack! Do you really think you’re in danger from me? Have I done anything except behave as perfectly as possible for the last six months? Do you honestly think that I want to risk going down to the basement?’
‘It’s true that your trips down there seem to have had the desired effect, but, nonetheless, you’ll be going up to your room.’
‘Then could I move into another room?’
‘Why?’
‘Why do you think? Because I need a change of scene, that’s why! I’m fed up looking at the same four walls, day in, day out!’
‘All right.’
I looked at him in surprise. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. Come on, I’ll take you down to the basement and you can look at the four walls there instead. Or do you think that maybe your room isn’t so bad after all?’
‘I think maybe my room isn’t so bad after all,’ I said dully.
‘That’s a shame. You see, I think the room in the basement has been empty for far too long. Shall I let you into a secret?’ He leant down towards me and lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘It was hard, very hard, to let Millie leave just now, much harder than I thought it would be. In fact, it was so hard that I’m going to suggest she moves in as soon as we get back from Thailand. What do you think, Grace? Won’t it be lovely to be one happy family?’
I knew then that not only would I have to kill Jack, I would have to kill him before we left for Thailand. Terrible though it was to realise how little time I had left, having a deadline helped me focus. As I went up the stairs in front of him, I was already planning my next move.
‘When you bring me up my whisky, will you stay and have one with me?’ I asked, as I got undressed.
‘Now why would I want to do that?’
‘Because I’m tired of being cooped up for twenty-four hours a day with no one to talk to,’ I said listlessly. ‘Have you any idea what it’s like? Sometimes I feel as if I’m going mad. In fact, I wish I would.’ I let my voice rise. ‘What would you do then, Jack? What will you do if I go mad?’
‘Of course you’re not going to go mad,’ he retorted, pushing me into my bedroom and closing the door.
‘I might!’ I called after him. ‘I just might! And I want my whisky in a glass!’
I don’t know whether it was because he’d refused me everything else I’d asked for or if he was worried that I really would go mad, but, whatever the reason, when he came back ten minutes later, he was carrying two glasses.
‘Thank you,’ I said, taking a sip. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘It’s about the Tomasin case. He married an actress, didn’t he? Dena somebody or other? I seem to remember reading something about it, back in the days when I was allowed to read newspapers.’
‘Dena Anderson.’
‘So is she accusing him of beating her up?’
‘I’m not allowed to discuss my cases.’
‘Well, everybody here today seemed to know about it so either you haven’t been very discreet or it’s common knowledge,’ I said reasonably. ‘Doesn’t he give most of his fortune to good causes?’
‘It doesn’t mean he’s not a wife-beater.’
‘What did Adam mean about her having a lover?’
‘Adam was just being provocative.’
‘So there’s no truth in what he said.’
‘None at all. One of the tabloids invented the story to discredit her.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Because Antony Tomasin is one of the shareholders. Now, drink up—I’m not leaving here without the glass.’
Once he’d left, I took the screw of tissue out from under my mattress and opened it. I counted out the pills; there were twenty in all. I had no idea if that would be enough to kill Jack, especially as I was going to have to use some on myself, first of all to find out how strong they were and, secondly, to see if they would dissolve in liquid once they’d been crushed. Going into the bathroom I tore two sheets of toilet paper from the roll and, after a lot of deliberation, put four of the pills between them, hoping it would be enough to knock me out without making me ill. I put the paper on the floor and crushed them as best I could with my foot. I had no cup to put the resulting granules in so I used the top from my shampoo bottle as a receptacle and added some water. They dissolved a little, but not quite enough and, as I drank them down, I knew I’d have to find a way of grinding the rest of the pills into a finer powder.
I started to feel drowsy some fifteen minutes later and fell asleep almost immediately. I slept solidly fo
r fourteen hours and, when I woke, I felt slightly groggy and unbelievably thirsty. As Jack was almost twice my weight, I reckoned that eight of the pills would have more or less the same effect on him but that sixteen wouldn’t be enough to kill him outright. It was a major blow, as it meant that I’d have to find a way, once he was unconscious, of finishing everything myself. But even though I wanted him dead, I wasn’t sure that when it actually came down to it I would be capable of going down to the kitchen, fetching a knife from the drawer, and sticking it into his heart.
I decided not to think that far ahead and concentrated instead on getting Jack to stay a little longer with me when he brought me my whisky in the evenings, reiterating what I’d told him before, that I felt as if I was going mad with no one to talk to all day. I hoped that eventually he would feel comfortable enough to start bringing up a whisky for himself, as he had on the day of Millie’s party, because if he didn’t, I would have no way of drugging him.
My lucky break came when the Tomasin case didn’t turn out to be as straightforward as he expected. A week into the court case, as I sat on the bed sipping the whisky he had brought me and listened to him moaning about the number of character witnesses Antony Tomasin had brought in, I told him he looked as if he could use a drink himself and he went down to fetch one. From then on, every evening he brought up two glasses and, when he began to linger longer than before, I understood that he needed to talk about what had happened in court that day. He never discussed the case with me in depth, but from what he said it was obvious that Antony Tomasin was putting up a robust defence, with a string of influential people attesting to his good character. The case began to drag on and, because Jack never mentioned our trip to Thailand, I presumed he had cancelled it, or at least postponed it.
On the evening before we’d been due to leave, Jack came up to my room carrying the usual two glasses of whisky.
‘Drink up,’ he said, handing me a glass. ‘You need to pack.’
‘Pack?’
‘Yes—we’re going to Thailand tomorrow, remember.’
I stared at him in horror. ‘But how can we go away if the case isn’t over yet?’ I stammered.
‘It will be tomorrow,’ he said grimly, swilling his whisky in his glass.
‘I didn’t realise the jury were out.’
‘They’ve been out for two days. They’ve promised the verdict before lunch tomorrow.’
Looking at him closely, I noticed how drawn he looked. ‘You are going to win, aren’t you?’
He knocked back most of his whisky. ‘That stupid bitch lied to me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She did have a lover.’
‘So it was him?’
‘No, it was her husband,’ he said stonily, because he couldn’t bring himself to say anything else, not even to me.
‘Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, have you?’
He finished his glass. ‘You don’t know how glad I am that we’re going to Thailand. If I’ve failed to convince the jury, it’ll be the first case I’ve ever lost and the press are going to have a field day. I can see the headlines already—“Fallen Angel” or something equally trite. Right, have you finished? It’s time to pack.’
As I took clothes out of the wardrobe in the bedroom next door with Jack looking on, I hoped he wouldn’t notice how shaken I was. I threw them into the case without giving any thought to what I was doing, preoccupied by the knowledge that the following day, when he came back from court, I was going to have to kill him, long before I planned to because I’d foolishly counted on our holiday being cancelled. But he too seemed lost in thought and, realising how much winning meant to him, I felt anxious about the sort of mood he’d be in when he came back the next day. If he lost, he might insist on leaving for the airport straight away to get away from the press, even though our flight was in the evening—which meant that I wouldn’t have time to drug him. That night, I prayed as I had never prayed before. I reminded God of all the evil Jack had already done and all the evil he was going to do. I thought about Molly, about how he had locked her up and left her to die of dehydration. I thought about Millie and the fate he planned for her. I thought about the room in the basement. And, suddenly, I had the answer to my problem. I knew exactly how I could make sure that he died. It was perfect, so perfect that if it worked, I would literally get away with murder.
PRESENT
It’s only when the flight takes off that I begin to relax a little. But I know that even when I arrive in Bangkok, I’ll be looking over my shoulder the whole time. I doubt the feeling of menace will ever leave me; even the fact that Millie is safe at school isn’t enough to allay my fears that Jack will somehow get to us. I had thought to bring her with me, I had wanted to tell Janice that Jack had given Millie his place on the plane and ask her to bring her to the airport. But it’s better that she isn’t involved in what is to come. I’m going to have a hard enough time keeping my nerve; to have to watch over Millie at the same time might prove too much for me. After everything I’ve been through in the last few hours, the slightest thing could make me lose the control I’m trying so hard to maintain. But I remind myself that there will be time enough to let my mask slip a little when I arrive in Thailand, once I’m behind closed doors.
Going through passport control in Bangkok is a nightmare, the fear of Jack’s hand on my shoulder never greater, although it would have been impossible for him to have got here before me. Even so, I find myself checking the face of the taxi driver before I get into his car to make sure it isn’t Jack sitting behind the wheel.
At the hotel, I’m warmly greeted by Mr Ho, the manager who wrote the letter about me and, when he expresses surprise that I am alone, I express equal surprise that he hasn’t received Mr Angel’s email asking him to look after me until he arrives. Mr Ho tells me he will be delighted to do so and commiserates when I tell him that work commitments have kept my husband from joining me until Wednesday.
I sense the manager hesitate—is it possible, he asks, that my husband, Mr Jack Angel, is the Mr Angel mentioned in some of the English newspapers recently in relation to the Antony Tomasin case? I admit, in strictest confidence, that he and my husband are indeed one and the same, and that we hope we can count on him to be discreet as we would rather nobody knows where we are staying. He tells me that he heard on the international news yesterday that Mr Tomasin was acquitted and, when I confirm that he heard correctly, he says that Mr Angel must have been disappointed. And I tell him that yes, Mr Angel was very disappointed, especially as it was the first time he had lost a case. As Mr Ho signs me in, he asks me how I’ve been keeping—a delicate nod to my mental state—and if I had a good flight. When I tell him that I found it hard to sleep, he says the least he can do for such a good client as Mr Angel is upgrade us to one of their suites. The relief I feel that I won’t have to go back to the room where I realised I had married a monster is so great I feel like kissing him.
Mr Ho insists on escorting me to my new room himself. It crosses my mind that he might wonder why we always stay in one of the smaller rooms when Jack is such an illustrious lawyer so I make sure to mention that my husband likes to maintain anonymity when we’re on holiday rather than draw attention to himself by throwing money around. I don’t put it quite like that but he gets the gist.
Once Mr Ho has left, I turn the television on and search for Sky News. Even in Asia, the Tomasin verdict is big news and, as they show Antony Tomasin addressing reporters as he came out of court the previous day, Jack appears in the background, besieged by journalists. Unable to watch any longer, I turn the television off quickly. I’m desperate for a shower, but there are two calls I need to make—one to Janice and the other to Jack, to tell them that I’ve arrived safely. Luckily, both are numbers that I know by heart—Jack’s from when I first met him and Janice’s because it’s the most important number in the world. I look at my watch; it’s three in the afternoon local time, which means it’s nine in the morning
in England. As the wife of Jack Angel, I make sure to get my priorities right and call him first. I have a momentary panic when I realise that anytime over the past year, he could have changed his number, so when I get through to his voicemail I feel weak with relief. I take a deep breath to steady myself and leave the sort of message a loving wife would leave, the sort of message I might have left had I been able to carry on living the dream.
‘Hello, darling, it’s me. I know you told me you might not pick up, but I was rather hoping you would—as you can tell, I’m missing you already. But maybe you’re still in bed? Anyway, I’ve arrived safely and guess what? Mr Ho felt so sorry for me being on my own that he’s upgraded us to a better room! Even so, I know I’m going to hate being here without you. Anyway, I hope the press aren’t hounding you too much and that you’re managing to get through all your paperwork. Don’t work too hard and, if you’ve got a minute, please call me back, I’m in room 107, otherwise I’ll try you again later. I love you, bye for now.’
I hang up and dial Janice’s mobile. At this time on a Saturday morning, she and Millie should have finished breakfast and be on their way to the stables for Millie’s riding lesson. When Janice doesn’t answer immediately my heart pounds with fear, in case Jack has somehow managed to get to Millie after all. But eventually she does and, while I speak to her, I remember to mention that Esther and her children will be calling in to see Millie the next day. Then I speak to Millie and just knowing she is safe, at least for the time being, makes me feel better.
I walk into the bathroom. The shower stands in the corner, concealed behind opaque doors, which means I can’t use it as there is always the possibility, however slight, that I may come out and find Jack standing on the other side of them. I look at the bath and work out that if I leave the door open, as well as that of the bedroom, I’ll be able to see through to the sitting room and, so, the main door. Reassured, I fill the bath, strip off my clothes and lower myself tentatively into the hot water. As it rises up around my shoulders, the tension that engulfed me the moment I heard Jack step into the house at three o’clock the previous afternoon melts away and I begin to cry in huge racking sobs, which tear from my body at an alarming rate.