The Other Woman: A gripping debut psychological thriller that will keep you turning the pages

by Sandie Jones

  ‘Is he? Where?’ I interrupted.

  ‘Paris, I believe,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Anyways, if you’re around, I wondered how you’d feel about taking Mum to the hospital.’

  I stared at him blankly. ‘Have you asked her?’

  ‘No. I’m asking you first. See how you feel about it.’

  I smiled inwardly. A good sign.

  ‘It would just be picking her up from the cottage and running her to the hospital. Perhaps you could go into town for a couple of hours before taking her back home again.’ He looked at me hopefully.

  I knew this could be my chance. It would give me the opportunity I needed to expose her deceit, to prove beyond any doubt that she’d cruelly hoodwinked everyone around her, including her two beloved sons. But I also knew the risk I was taking, and the potential consequence of my actions. Was it worth it? I couldn’t save Rebecca, but I could save myself. As soon as that thought entered my head, my mind was made up.

  ‘Sure,’ I said casually, though my heart was beating double-time. ‘It’ll be nice to spend some time with her. Don’t tell her. Let it be a surprise.’

  He looked at me sceptically, knowing just as well as I did that I’d like nothing less.

  I had it all planned, and I felt confident and in control as I drove down to Sevenoaks, my desire to expose her seemingly far greater than the fear I’d been carrying around for the past couple of weeks. But, as I walked up the path to her cottage, all my resolve disappeared, and I felt like a hand was rummaging around in my stomach, pulling my insides out. I fought through it, refusing to let myself down.

  ‘Pamela!’ I exclaimed, as she opened the door.

  She looked around me, expecting to see Adam walking up the path.

  ‘Surprise!’ I said enthusiastically. ‘Bet you weren’t expecting to see me.’

  ‘Where’s Adam? I thought he was taking me today.’ She was still looking past me.

  ‘Nope, he had to work, so you’ve got me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, there’s no need. I can get myself there.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I sang. ‘I’m here now, so let’s get going. We don’t want to be late for your appointment.’

  I watched as she fretted and fussed over the contents of her bag, her mind seemingly distracted by my unexpected arrival. She couldn’t find her keys, or remember which book she was reading. I smiled as I listened to her ramblings.

  She didn’t say another word until we pulled up in the hospital car park and I went to get out.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said. I could hear the panic in her voice. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m just going to take you in. Adam said to make sure you get in okay.’

  ‘I’m perfectly capable of seeing to that myself,’ she sneered. ‘I know where to go.’

  ‘Yes, but you were very shaky on your feet last time,’ I said, loudly and slowly, as if I was talking to someone hard of hearing.

  ‘I’ll not be needing your help,’ she said huffily. ‘I’ll take it from here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘I’d feel happier if I took you in.’

  I smiled as she nimbly jumped out of the car and made her way across the car park.

  ‘I’ll come back for you in a couple of hours, then?’ I called out, but she didn’t even look back. I watched as she walked through the automatic doors and into the main reception.

  I’d downloaded a map of the vast hospital building, and noticed that there were two other exits, both at the rear of the site. I’d estimated that it would take her four or five minutes to navigate her way through the various corridors and departments to either of the other exits. She wouldn’t just come straight back out here, that was too risky. She’d go for one of the others – I’d plump for the one nearest the shopping centre. Once she was in there, she could lose herself for hours, hence the reason why I needed to catch her before she got there. I swung the car round and headed out onto the ring road, through the estate, past Sainsbury’s, and into the pay-and-display car park for the town centre. I’d done it in less than two minutes.

  I parked up so that I could see the hospital exit between the stationary cars, and waited. My mouth was dry, and I was sure I was forgetting to breathe. When I saw a flash of burgundy, the same as her cardigan, my chest caught as I gasped for air.

  I slammed the steering wheel. ‘Shit,’ I said out loud, as if I was surprised to see her, and I suddenly wished that I hadn’t. As much as I knew I was right, the revelation that she had lied about having cancer made everything so much more complicated. How was I going to tell Adam? How would he react? Would he believe me? What would I have to do to prove I was right?

  I sat there dumbly. I hadn’t thought much past this point. She was getting close to the entrance of the precinct and, if I didn’t move fast, I was going to lose her.

  ‘Shit,’ I said again, as I grabbed the keys from the ignition and pushed the door open. I’d have to take my chances on the pay-and-display. I didn’t have time to get a ticket.

  I kept a fair distance behind her, shadowing her movements. I didn’t know what I was doing, but an impending sense of dread began to engulf me as I realized that I was going to have to confront her. There was no point in doing all this if I didn’t. I tried to reason with myself that I could just take the information home with me and deal with it from there, but I knew, even as I was thinking it, that that course of action wouldn’t achieve anything. This had to be dealt with here and now.

  I followed her for twenty minutes, darting in and out of shops, hiding behind pillars. My chest tightened as I watched her disappear into a Costa Coffee.

  ‘Just sit back and watch it unravel,’ I said to myself, as I followed her in five minutes later.

  Relief flooded through me as I saw her sitting with her back to the front of the shop, giving me another chance to back out, another ten seconds to change my mind.

  ‘What can I get you?’ asked the perky barista.

  Too late. ‘A cappuccino to go, please.’

  I looked over at Pammie, imagining that she must have heard my voice, yet knowing it was nigh on impossible to hear anything over the din of the milk-frother.

  I don’t take sugar, but I took myself over to the stirring station, so that I came at Pammie head on as I walked out. It needed to look like a happy coincidence.

  ‘P . . . Pamela?’ I pretended to stutter, as I drew level with her table.

  She looked up, and the colour instantly drained from her face.

  ‘Emily?’ she questioned, as if hoping that I’d somehow say ‘no’.

  ‘My goodness, what a surprise,’ I said, feigning astonishment. ‘Finished at the hospital so soon?’

  I watched as her head and mouth battled for control, searching for the right thing to say. ‘I’m too late,’ she said. ‘Apparently my appointment was this morning.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ I said. ‘That’s odd.’

  ‘Yes, I’m to come back tomorrow.’

  ‘Did they not let you know in advance that your time had changed?’ I asked.

  ‘Apparently, they sent a letter . . . in the post,’ she faltered. I was getting a sick satisfaction from her obvious discomfort. I thought she’d be more prepared than this. Ready for this eventuality, should it ever occur.

  ‘Really? How strange that you didn’t receive it.’

  How long was I going to keep up this charade? I pulled out the chair opposite her and sat down. ‘Shall I tell you what’s really going on here?’

  She looked at me, her eyes like steel, daring me to call it.

  I leant across the table. ‘What’s going on, is that you never had cancer in the first place, did you?’

  She looked like she’d been slapped in the face. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What a wicked thing to say.’

  I ignored the tears welling up in her eyes. I was used to the waterworks. She could bring them on at will.

  ‘Are you really going to keep going with this?’ I asked
incredulously.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re suggesting,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I think you do,’ I said. ‘You never even went to the chemotherapy ward, did you?’

  ‘Of course I did,’ she said. Her voice was getting higher. ‘I’m to go back tomorrow.’

  ‘No, you didn’t, and do you know how I know?’ I said, calling her bluff. ‘Because I’ve just been up there and they’ve never heard of you.’

  She wiped a tear away and laughed wryly. ‘You can believe what you like.’

  ‘Oh, I know what I believe,’ I said, feeling slightly wrong-footed. This wasn’t going how I’d imagined. ‘I wonder what Adam is going to make of all this?’

  Tears fell down her cheeks. ‘He doesn’t need to know,’ she said quietly.

  This was more like it. ‘You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this. How long I’ve waited to expose you for who you really are.’

  ‘You can’t tell him,’ she said, as she closed her eyes. Her wet lashes stuck together in clumps. ‘It’ll be the end of—’

  ‘It’ll be the end of your lies and deceit. He’ll know you for the person you really are, not the perfect mother you pretend to be.’

  ‘You can’t tell him,’ she repeated.

  ‘Just you watch me,’ I said, pushing the chair out from under me and standing up. ‘Just you watch.’

  I went to walk away, to walk away to a new life without her in it. I dared to imagine my world as it was about to become: free of stress and full of love. I hadn’t even got past her when she said, ‘And how are you going to explain away James?’

  I stopped dead in my tracks. ‘What?’

  She fixed me with her eyes. ‘How are you going to explain to your fiancé that you’ve been seeing his brother behind his back?’

  My blood ran cold as my brain back-tracked to James: where we’d met, what we’d said. No one could have seen us, could they? What did she know? I wondered if she’d noticed that every look was just that second too long, or that every time we met, the kiss on the cheek was just that little bit softer. It was nothing, yet everything.

  She was double bluffing me, clutching at straws. I looked at her and, despite the white rush of images that were bombarding my vision, I kept my gaze firm.

  ‘Are you honestly suggesting there’s something going on between me and James?’ I questioned, half laughing.

  She nodded. ‘Oh, I’m sure of it. And do you know how I know?’ she said, turning the tables on me. ‘Because I told him to do it.’

  37

  I was up all night, alternating between crying on the sofa and being sick in the toilet. How had it got to this? I’d finally found a way of destroying her, taking her down once and for all, yet it would be at my own cost. I couldn’t win this one, and she knew it.

  Aside from the intoxicating rage and sickening revulsion I felt towards Pammie for what she’d done to Rebecca, I was also deeply saddened at the thought of James’s ill-fated attempts to seduce me, in an effort to catch me out and appease his psychotic mother. How had she kept him at her beck and call? Why would he have been prepared to do it? It was as if she had some kind of hold over her two sons, one that neither of them was prepared to break.

  I felt violated. The very thought of James coming to me under his mother’s instruction made me feel dirty and invaded. There was nothing she wouldn’t do to dispense me from their lives.

  Adam had slept soundly all night and, when he woke up, he came into the living room, took one look at me and said, ‘You look like shit.’

  I didn’t have the energy to answer.

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t think of anything worse.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said, filling his cup with hot water. ‘Do you think it’s flu or something?’

  I rubbed at my eyes; yesterday’s mascara was still coming off even after all the tears I’d cried. ‘I really don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just feel poisoned.’

  ‘What did you eat yesterday? Did you eat anything with Mum?’

  I shook my head.

  He came and sat down next to me on the sofa, sipping noisily from his mug. The stench of coffee permeated my nostrils and I clamped a hand over my mouth in a futile attempt to catch the vomit that projected across the coffee table.

  ‘Jesus!’ shouted Adam, jumping up from the sofa, spilling the offending liquid onto the carpet.

  ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry,’ I said, though even as I was saying it, I wondered why my first thought was to apologize. ‘Give me a minute. I’ll go to the bathroom and then sort this out.’

  My throat was burning from the hot bile spewing up from my intestines, and my eyes streamed as I battled to stop the retching. How had a sixty-three-year-old woman caused my mind and body to fail me like this? I was a strong woman who had never suffered fools gladly, who could carry her own in any situation. How had this happened to me? It defied logic.

  I was still hugging the porcelain when it occurred to me that maybe the root cause of my physical state was indeed something more logical. My brain banged against the sides of my skull at the very idea of it.

  It had taken all my resolve to drag myself into town, not least because I felt like death warmed up, but because a very real possibility was raging in my head. I bought an exorbitantly priced test at the chemist’s in Charing Cross station and spent a further 50p for a toilet cubicle to wee onto a stick in. I’d envisaged walking to work whilst the chemicals did their stuff, but I hadn’t even pulled my knickers up when a prominent blue line appeared in the window. My vision blurred as I tried to read the instructions again, begging the question, ‘Does a line mean I’m pregnant or not pregnant?’ hoping against hope that it was the latter.

  I called Pippa as I repeatedly banged into the turnstile to get out of the basement convenience. A girl with blue hair and chewing gum in her mouth watched me gormlessly as I did it four times, my temper fraying with each attempt.

  ‘That’s the in turnstile.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ I said sarcastically.

  ‘What is?’ said Pippa’s voice from my mobile, as she finally picked up.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I replied feebly.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said, ‘and that’s brilliant, how?’

  ‘No, that’s not brilliant, I was talking to . . . oh, never mind. Shit, Pippa, I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Well, that’s something of a surprise,’ she offered slowly.

  ‘I mean, what the hell?’ My head was unable to compute what was going on.

  Pippa remained silent on the other end of the line until I reached the Strand.

  ‘How did that happen? Was it supposed to?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ I snapped, though why I was taking it out on her, I don’t know.

  ‘I thought you were on the pill,’ she said.

  ‘I was. I am. But I forgot to take it for a while, when all the wedding stuff kicked off. I probably missed, I don’t know, maybe a week’s worth, maybe more. Adam wasn’t at home, and I wasn’t intending to sleep with him anytime soon, so . . .’

  ‘So, what was it?’ she said. ‘Immaculate conception?’

  ‘Things just took us a bit by surprise one night, the first night we . . . you know . . .’

  I groaned at the memory of telling Pammie how I might be pregnant from all the make-up sex we’d had. Jesus.

  ‘But I thought you wanted to reschedule the wedding for as soon as possible,’ she said.

  ‘I do, but I can’t now, can I? I’ll never be able to reorganize everything before I start showing. I don’t want to waddle down the aisle seven months pregnant. Oh God, Pippa, I can’t believe this. It’s just all too much.’ I started to cry, and the delivery driver pulling up outside the post office asked if I was all right. I smiled weakly at him.

  ‘What did Adam say?’ she asked.

  ‘He doesn’t know. I’ve just done the test in Charing Cross. Wait. I’l
l call you back.’ I raced to the nearest bin and hurled my head into it. Seeing an upended KFC box with gnawed-at chicken bones made it ten times worse. Commuters were going past me, not knowing whether to rush by, or slow down to gawp, but they all looked disgusted.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asked Pippa, as I answered the phone.

  I grunted. ‘That was just me throwing up into a street bin.’

  ‘Oh, classy,’ she joked. ‘But seriously, what are you going to do about this?’

  ‘I’ll tell Adam tonight and we’ll talk it through. Honestly, Pippa, I can’t tell you how messed up this all is.’

  ‘It’s not messed up, it’s a blessing,’ she said.

  ‘I mean everything,’ I said. ‘Everything around me is so screwed up. How can I contemplate having a baby, when Adam and I still have our own issues to deal with? What’s he going to think? Oh, God.’

  ‘Calm down,’ she said. ‘This might be what you both actually need. It’ll certainly show her that she can’t play around with you anymore. This is sticking two fingers right up.’ She gave a little snigger.

  I understood the sentiment, but knew that the reality of having Pammie’s grandchild would mean that we were bound together for evermore. The thought terrified me.

  ‘I honestly can’t believe it, Pip,’ I said. ‘What am I going to do?’

  ‘Right, one step at a time. Talk to Adam tonight and, once we know his reaction, we can work it out from there. Okay?’

  I nodded mutely.

  ‘Okay, Em?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll try and call you later if I can, otherwise it’ll be tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Cool,’ she said. ‘Ring me when you can.’

  I ended the call and realized that I wasn’t even walking in the direction of the office. I’d missed Old Compton Street and walked straight on.

  I made so many mistakes at work when I finally got there that my boss, Nathan, asked if I’d like to go home early. It struck me then, as he was talking to me, that I hadn’t taken any time off since the fall-out from the wedding. I’d had my usual two days a week off, but I’d declined Nathan’s offer to take a week’s holiday, which should have been the second half of my honeymoon, proclaiming that I was fine and just wanted to get on with it. I busied myself like never before, brushing off the drama of the wedding, and everything else that went with it, as an inconvenient blip. But in that moment, as he looked at me sympathetically, his head tilted to one side, it finally hit me. I needed a break, a rest from the monotony of commuting, from my demanding clients who each thought they were more important than the other thirty I had to deal with, even from the mundane chit-chat with colleagues, and having to keep up the pretence that all was good in my world. It wasn’t, and now I had an added problem. A big one.