by Lucy Dawson
‘Mum!’ Matthew steps in finally.
‘You criticize my son constantly,’ she continues, ignoring him. ‘Nothing is ever good enough for you. You live in a house he works his fingers to the bone to keep you all in, and all you can go on about is how dated it is, how everything has to go. Well, why don’t you go and make the money to pay for it all then?’
‘Mum!’ Matthew says again.
‘No, Matthew!’ she cuts him off, suddenly very angry indeed. ‘She needs to be told! You have no idea how bloody lucky you are!’ She swings around to face me again, furiously. ‘Two healthy children, a husband that loves you, a roof over your head. You don’t deserve any of it. That’s what I really loathe about women like you, Sally: your sense of entitlement. You have the world, but you want more, more, more. And everything is someone else’s fault. I dragged myself up by my bootstraps, and I built a life for me and my child. What have you ever done? Except complain bitterly about your lot? It would have done us all a favour if you had fallen. That was certainly my preferred outcome, and God knows you had enough meds in your system to make it happen.’
I take a step back, unable to believe what she’s just said. ‘You are never to come near us, or our children again,’ I tell her, my voice shaking wildly. ‘We want nothing to do with you.’
‘We? We? So you’re going to make him choose all over again? This is exactly what I’m talking about! You want to go to America, so Matthew has to leave his whole life behind – just like that.’
‘Jesus Christ, Caroline! That was years ago! You’ve been holding onto this all that time?’ I’m appalled. ‘I mean it – if you come near us again, I will ruin you. I will play everyone and anyone this recording,’ I hold up my phone, ‘so they all know exactly what kind of woman you really are.’
‘You do whatever the hell you like, my darling,’ she says.
‘Mum, no!’ Matthew says, his voice breaking. ‘This has gone too far. Stop it. Now.’
‘Shut up, Matthew!’ she warns him.
‘You can’t do this!’
‘It’s already done, Matthew!’
‘But it’s not fair, or right,’ he cries out suddenly. ‘I can’t let you take all of the blame for everything when it wasn’t just you, Mum.’
I gasp as if someone has suddenly grabbed my head from behind and shoved it under water. Unable to breathe, I jerk my head around to look at him.
He has tears in his eyes. He is not angry; his face is full of shame.
He looks like a man who has just confessed.
‘You were part of this?’ I can hardly get the words out. My whole body starts to shake.
He swallows.
‘Don’t say anything more, Matthew!’ Caroline says, now genuinely frightened. ‘I’ve already admitted it was all my doing. There is no need for any of this to happen. Think about what this will mean. Please,’ she begs.
‘Yes, I knew,’ he admits to me. ‘I knew what Mum was going to do. We planned it together.’
‘Oh God!’ Caroline whimpers. ‘Oh shit, Matthew! You stupid, stupid child!’
I hear myself make some sort of weird, guttural moan of pain. ‘You planned it together?’ I repeat, looking at my husband in horror. ‘But seconds ago you looked horrified when you saw the video.’
‘Because she said no one would ever know. We both talked about it – how you wouldn’t get hurt. I promise you, Sally, it wasn’t supposed to go this far. You were only meant to wake up in Cornwall and be a bit confused and frightened, that’s all. I thought you’d believe that perhaps… you weren’t well. Especially given the note I put in your pocket. You were right, I did read it.’ He takes a step towards me. ‘But I swear I didn’t know that you’d had genuine troubles in the past, Sal, and tried to take your own life before, I promise you, or I’d never, ever have agreed to it. You must know that?’ He reaches out and grabs my arms desperately. ‘And I want you to know you were safe. All the time, you were safe. You had money on you, and we knew exactly where you’d gone.’
‘I wasn’t safe at all!’ I cry, pulling away from him. ‘Why have you done this to me?’
He looks at me wildly. ‘I let something really stupid happen.’
‘Matthew, SHUT UP!’ Caroline cries. ‘You will lose everything! Is that what you want?’
‘What have you done?’ I whisper, my heart starting to pound.
‘It was a mistake,’ he says. ‘A dreadful mistake. What she wanted would cause so much pain to so many people, all of the children, and… it’s not worth it. It could never be worth it. I don’t want the kids to suffer, and I don’t want to start all over again. I love you, and I changed my mind. I even started to worry you’d found out and you were going to leave me. Then she said she was going to tell you everything, that she could see I was too afraid to leave you, and she’d make the decision for me. I panicked. I took all of our money out, so at the very least you couldn’t leave me with nothing. I knew you’d divorce me if she told you what we’d done.’
‘The money from the flat sale? You said you lent it to her for the refuge?’ I gesture at Caroline, thinking that’s whom he is talking about.
He swallows and shakes his head. ‘None of that was true. I withdrew it, but then Mum had her Cornwall idea, and I needed to put the money back again, but I also needed an excuse for why I’d removed it in the first place, in case you saw it on the bank statement or something. I really believed the money had gone missing on Friday night, by the way. Mum told me it had, so that I looked genuinely worried. She thought I wasn’t going to be able to pull everything off convincingly enough otherwise… But you have to know that when I discovered what had happened to you all those years ago, I was terrified, and I wasn’t acting then either. Every word I said to you about all of that was true.’
‘Wait – what do you mean you’d cause pain to “all” of the children?’ I say slowly. ‘What other children? Who is this “she” you’re talking about?’
‘Perhaps I could be happy with someone else.’
There is a pause.
I stare at him. ‘Matthew, have you been having an affair?’
He closes his eyes in shame, as if somehow that means he won’t have to answer my question with what I now see is the truth.
‘Who is she?’
‘She’s irrelevant,’ he whispers. ‘It’s over, and it’s you I want to be with, you—’
‘It’s relevant to me! Oh my God, Matthew!’ My eyes fill with frightened tears. ‘Everything you told me? You actually asked me if I’d orchestrated this to get your attention… When all the time it happened because of what you’d done? How can you not have been going to say a single thing about any of this – either of you! If I hadn’t been given that video, purely by chance…’
‘It wasn’t meant to turn out this way! When Will told me he was getting engaged, I knew it was going to upset you, and when Mum thought we could use their announcement so that it would look like that was what had triggered you having a breakdown, it seemed perfect. You were supposed to come home focused on getting better; I was going to help you. You were going to realize that you needed me. And everyone else would see how fragile you were, how vital it was that I stayed with you. It was the perfect excuse for me not to leave you. No one could carry on pressurizing me to walk out on you under those circumstances.’
I back away from both of them. ‘But if you hate me so much, Caroline, why not just encourage Matthew to leave me? Wouldn’t that have been easier?’
‘And have you take Chloe and Theo off to the other end of the country where we’d never see them again once you divorced my son? I don’t think so.’ Caroline looks at me scornfully. ‘And while I may not like you, I like this other one even less. I told you, I was simply trying to protect you from hurting the children with an unnecessary divorce. I knew there was no way you’d be prepared to live with Matthew’s mistake – you’re too immature for that – but children shouldn’t be brought up by single parents when it’s avoidable. It’s not
fair on them when it isn’t their fault. I won’t have it happen all over again. I won’t keep my counsel and say nothing this time. I want more for Chloe and Theo than that! Much, much more – and you should too!’
‘Please, Sally.’ Matthew steps forward again. ‘I know what I did was wrong, very wrong. I’ve made some dreadful mistakes. To be honest, I think it’s me who hasn’t been myself recently – I’ve struggled a lot. Maybe I have some sort of post-natal depression!’ He laughs desperately. ‘I know it’s no excuse, but since Theo was born, I—’
‘No! Don’t you dare!’ I yell. ‘Don’t you dare blame him! You’ve been seeing someone else behind my back? We’ve just had a baby?’ I can’t believe the words I’m saying out loud. ‘And as for you,’ I swing around to face Caroline wildly, ‘if I had fallen for real, confused and drugged out of my mind, everyone would have believed I’d killed myself: the children, my parents. You’d have kept that secret for ever? You were really prepared to risk my life?’
‘Sally, please! Of course no one intended you to actually fall.’ Matthew reaches out and grabs my arm. ‘Mum was just trying to pull the attention from me when she said that. I told you – it wasn’t supposed to go to these extremes. I would never have done it if I’d known about your previous struggles. I have been genuinely frightened for you this week, after you broke into Will’s flat and—’
‘Did you know she was bringing those men from Abbey Oaks with her, just now?’ I nod across at the stationary Audi. ‘Oh my God, you did, didn’t you?’
‘But we stood them down again – you saw us do it!’ he says eagerly.
‘That’s hardly the point, and they’re still right there. Just let me go!’ My only thought is to get away, back to Chloe and Theo. The man I love allowed this to happen to me? ‘You’re never coming near me or the children again!’
He pales. ‘Don’t say that. It’s you and the kids I want, not her. I made a mistake.’
I break free and stumble backwards, turning away from them, terrified.
‘No!’ I hear him shout. ‘I won’t let you do this, Sally!’
I start to run, blindly.
I don’t see the car driven by the eighty-six-year-old man, who will fail to react properly to the person suddenly appearing in front of his bonnet, as if from nowhere. In fact, in his panic, he will accidentally slam on his accelerator by mistake, rather than his brakes, dramatically increasing the force of impact.
All I hear is Caroline scream, ‘NO!’ at the top of her voice.
And then the whole world falls silent.
FIVE MONTHS LATER
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
We sit in silence on the clifftop, staring out at the tide coming in on the beach beneath us. The evening sun is still warm on my face and it’s a balmy evening for the first weekend in September, but I shiver suddenly.
He looks across at me. ‘Want my coat?’
I shake my head, and we lapse back into silence again until he breaks it. ‘Penny for them?’
I exhale. ‘I was just thinking about Chloe. I’m struggling more than I thought I would with her starting school on Monday. It’s come around so fast, and she seems so small. I just worry about… how she’s going to cope.’ I turn away because I know he can hear the sudden tremble in my voice.
He reaches out and takes my hand for a moment, squeezing it briefly before letting go. ‘Of course you do. Has she talked any more about it all?’
I shake my head. ‘No. But today Theo bowled over into a tower she’d been making from the blocks in his little push-along trolley, and she was just furious. She screamed, and then burst into floods and floods of tears. She didn’t know where to put herself, and all I could do was hold her. I could feel her missing him, and it was so desperately sad, Joe.’ My voice breaks. ‘I can’t explain what it’s like to watch her hurt so much, and to not be able to make it OK for her. Sorry,’ I whisper, and wipe my eyes.
‘It’s OK,’ he says, and passes me a tissue from his jeans pocket. ‘It’s been a horrendous week for you.’ He pauses. ‘Do you want to talk about what happened at the inquest?’
I look down at my hands as I start to twist the tissue into a point. ‘Not really, but thank you.’
He nods, understandingly.
‘The coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death,’ I say, however, moments later, discovering that actually I do want to talk about it.
Joe looks confused. ‘That was a given, though, surely?’
‘Well, not exactly.’ I squint out to sea. ‘The police had done quite a lot of investigating, and all of that information is passed to a coroner once they’re happy there isn’t a criminal case to answer.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Matthew wasn’t hitting his targets at work, just before he died, and things like that were mentioned. He also withdrew a very large sum of money from our savings two weeks before it all happened.’
‘Shit!’ Joe is appalled. ‘They thought he might have stepped in front of the car deliberately?’
‘It was a possibility that had to be ruled out, yes. But I was able to confirm I knew about the cash,’ I say carefully. ‘He was making some investments on behalf of his mother. A loan, really, which she repaid. It wasn’t suspicious in any way. Ultimately the coroner concluded, from the supermarket’s CCTV and some witness statements, that Matthew didn’t appear to see the car coming because he was concentrating on trying to catch up with me; although we were right at the back of the car park, and the film isn’t particularly clear because the camera was almost side on to Matthew. You see him step out, but you can’t really see his face.’
‘But no one suggested it was your fault in any way?’ Joe says quickly.
‘No, no. I explained that I had felt very violently sick, very suddenly – and I was running to the loos in the shop. My father and Chloe had the same bug. Matthew was worried and was following after me. His mother confirmed that was what had happened too.’
‘Was it hard to see her again?’
‘Very. We’ve not had any contact since the funeral, as you know. His dad wasn’t there. He said it was too far to travel from Sydney.’
‘Incredible.’ Joe shakes his head in disbelief. ‘And I find it just as weird that his mother doesn’t want to see Chloe and Theo now, when they’re her only link to her son.’
‘I think that’s probably why; she finds it very hard to be reminded of Matthew,’ I say slowly.
‘Maybe, given time, they will become a comfort instead?’ Joe suggests.
‘I don’t think so. It’s incredibly sad, but I know it’s a situation that won’t change. She’s never going to see them again.’
There’s a silence, and then Joe says, ‘I’m sorry, Sally. That must be really hard for you. Especially when you could have supported each other through this. And you must miss her.’
I pause. ‘I miss what she used to be to me.’
Before I discovered that she’d never liked me. I don’t think Caroline was making that up, just to cover for Matthew. I’ve thought quite a lot about the advice she gave me when I was upset about Will marrying Kelly – keep quiet and smile, because he’ll do it anyway. Is that how she felt about me marrying her son? She certainly risked my safety – I’m sure it was all her idea – because she wanted to. I don’t doubt for one moment that she privately hoped I would end my life that night.
And I still don’t know what to do with that horrifying knowledge. Despite what Matthew said, just before he died, did he mean me to fall too, or was he telling me the truth: he’d changed his mind, and didn’t want to leave us after all?
‘I’m so sorry,’ I can hear him saying to her, ‘but Sally tried to kill herself. My kids need me. I have to stay.’ Who could have argued with that? Liv certainly wouldn’t have – being a mother herself…
Because the identity of the woman Matthew was sleeping with turned out to be very relevant indeed, of course.
It never occurred to me in the heat of the moment in the car park, to wonder how Matthew had appeared
to know about the film before I’d had a chance to tell him. Almost as if someone else had warned him.
The only other person I’d shown the film to, in fact.
Ironically, had Liv not warned Matthew, perhaps I’d now be sitting in Abbey Oaks, having been involuntarily sectioned in that very same car park. Nonetheless, I find it a challenge to feel grateful for her intervention.
I considered playing Liv the recording of Caroline and Matthew’s confession, after the event, deciding that it was important she knew what actually happened, so Matthew’s death didn’t hold a resonance for her that it didn’t deserve; but really it was because I wanted her to hear my husband say that she was irrelevant, and a mistake. Instead I sent her a text message that she was not to come to his funeral, and that she wasn’t to contact me again. I finished with:
You were my friend. How could you?
I think that was pretty unequivocal, and I haven’t heard from her since. I have no idea what made Matthew choose one of my closest friends, of all people, to have an affair with – perhaps she made the first move. I don’t want just her side of the story when Matthew won’t ever be able to give me his, and I have kept the extraordinary and horrific truths I do know to myself.
I’ve also, however, been forced to consider Caroline’s stinging accusation – that women these days are far too quick to turn on each other – at great length. For my part, I’m ashamed to admit she was probably right, although I genuinely believe I was driven by a desire to protect Chloe and Theo from the threat I thought Kelly posed, rather than simply wanting to be rid of her.
Even now I can’t imagine how on earth that first conversation between Caroline and Matthew began. ‘Darling, I’ve been thinking, Will and Kelly are getting engaged, let’s use it to make Sally think she’s having a nervous breakdown, shall we?’ It has to have been Caroline’s idea. The alternative is unbearable. I look down at my hands, and, more specifically, at my wedding ring.