Woman with a Secret

by Sophie Hannah

  Why does everybody prize honesty so highly? Does anyone ever stop to ask themselves why lying is wrong, or do they just assume it is? What are we supposed to do when the world requires us to be a particular way and we can’t manage it?

  Someone should invent a new word that means the same thing as lying except with positive connotations. Deceit needs a fresher, more upbeat image.

  Waterhouse and Sam are staring at me. I realize I’ve neglected a crucial aspect of my deception. I need to demonstrate that I’m worried about side-mirror repercussions, as no doubt I would be if that were all I had to fear. “Listen, the last thing I need right now is to be done for a driving offense,” I say solemnly. “Is there any way you could let me off if I promise not to drive the car again until it’s fixed?”

  “How did you lose the mirror?” Waterhouse asks.

  “A teenage boy racer drove too close to me and smashed it off. He was so desperate to get ahead of me he overtook me on the wrong side, on the left.”

  “Did you report it?”

  “No. He didn’t stop; I didn’t get his registration—he got away too quickly, just . . . whizzed off into the sunset.”

  “When did this happen, exactly?”

  “Why does it matter? It’s got nothing to do with—”

  “When was the accident?”

  “Not last Wednesday but the one before.”

  “Is there anyone who can verify that you’ve not had a passenger-side mirror since a week last Wednesday?” asks Waterhouse. “Your husband, maybe?”

  “No. Please leave him out of this.”

  “Anyone else, then?”

  “No!” I clutch the disintegrating tissue in my right hand. “Look, my husband doesn’t know, OK? I park my car in the garage. He parks his in the drive, and he’s always out before me in the mornings and back later than me at the end of the day. He hasn’t seen my car since the mirror’s been missing.”

  “You didn’t mention it to him?” Sergeant Sam asks.

  “No, I didn’t! You know why? Because he’d have made a big holier-than-thou thing of it—insisted I get it fixed before I drove the car again, and that just wasn’t . . . practical! I didn’t want him to give me a hard time, so I kept quiet about it.”

  Sorry, Adam. It’s kind of true, though.

  “Did your children notice your car had lost a mirror?” Waterhouse asks.

  I shake my head. “Not the kind of thing they’d spot.”

  “So you can’t prove that what you’re saying’s true?”

  “Yes, I can!” I hate this man. More than I would if I had nothing to hide. I hate him for seeing through me. The only person allowed to know how flawed and desperate I am is me. “Come to my house anytime you want—right now, if you like, and I’ll show you my car!”

  What the fuck are you doing, Nicki? What if he says, “All right, let’s go”? What’s the plan then?

  “So you’ve not driven anyone anywhere for a week and a half? No one’s sat in your passenger seat and noticed a gap where a mirror should be? A friend, maybe? A family member?”

  My heart starts to pound like the hooves of a frightened horse.

  A friend and a family member. Melissa, the Sunday before last.

  How can he know? He does, though, I’m sure of it. What other CCTV footage has he looked at, apart from today’s? His eyes are drilling into mine, challenging me.

  I’m going to have to tell the truth and worry about Mel later.

  I clear my throat. “My sister-in-law, Melissa. Last Sunday—not this one just gone, the one before. She . . .” I can’t finish the sentence.

  “She was in your car?” Sergeant Sam helps me out. “She noticed the mirror wasn’t there?”

  Shit. Shit. What do I say?

  “Yes. I drove to her house to pick her up so that we could go to an auction together. She likes auctions,” I add pointlessly. And I don’t. I go to keep Melissa happy, and I never buy anything because I hate the principle: see something, love it, bid for it, possibly go home empty-handed. No, thanks. “Then, afterward, I gave her a lift home.”

  “Where does Melissa live?” asks Waterhouse.

  “What’s that got to do with anything, for God’s sake?” I snap.

  “If we check out your story and it holds water, that counts toward credibility,” Sergeant Sam explains.

  “She lives in Highgate,” I tell him rather than Waterhouse, rooting around in my handbag. I pull out a crumpled leaflet and hand it over. “There you go. Proof that an auction took place in Grantham a week last Sunday. Satisfied?”

  “Grantham,” says Waterhouse, as if it’s a bad word. “That’s, what, half an hour’s drive from Spilling?”

  “Yes. Why don’t you email the auction people? I’m sure they’ll happily add you to their mailing list. I picked up a fantastic grandfather clock once—it was an absolute steal.”

  “Sister-in-law’s name and phone number?” Waterhouse is ready to write it down.

  “Melissa Redgate.” I recite a number that is almost hers, but with the six and the four in the wrong order. That should give me time to get to Melissa before the police do. I’ll have to throw myself on her dubious mercy.

  Waterhouse doesn’t bother to thank me. One of the advantages of deliberately misleading people: when they turn out to be rude and ungrateful, you’re pleased you didn’t make the mistake of treating them well. Retribution in advance.

  “Where were you between eight thirty A.M. and ten thirty A.M. yesterday?” Sergeant Sam asks me.

  “At home. I think I set off around about ten thirty to take Ethan’s gym bag to school. Before then I was in my kitchen, calling or being called by the school secretary, about five hundred times.”

  “Why so many times?”

  “First, Ethan thought he’d be OK without his bag; then he got upset; then they thought they’d found him a spare shirt; then it didn’t fit properly; then he thought he could manage; then he changed his mind . . .”

  “These calls were on your landline or your mobile?” asks Waterhouse.

  “Landline.”

  “And what about at eight minutes past eleven A.M.? Where were you then?”

  “Eight minutes past eleven? That’s very specific.” Is that when Damon Blundy was murdered? The idea makes me shudder. No, it can’t be: no time-of-death estimate could be that specific. “I would have been . . . Oh, I know!” This is amazing; I know exactly where I was at eight minutes past eleven. “I was in the parking lot at Spilling Library, arguing with a woman who appeared out of nowhere and gave me a hard time for parking in a mother-and-child space.”

  Sam and Waterhouse exchange a look that I can’t read.

  “What did she look like, this woman?” Waterhouse asks eventually.

  Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit. Are they going to try and track her down, ask her if she noticed my missing side mirror?

  I can’t believe they’d go to such absurd lengths, but I can’t take the risk. “She was about sixty,” I lie. “Fat, frumpily dressed. Gray curly hair. Kind of like a . . . strict-grandma type.”

  “What were you doing parked outside Spilling Library?” Sam asks. “Weren’t you on your way to your son’s school?”

  “I pulled into the library parking lot to look at my map, plan an alternative route.”

  Waterhouse stands. “I’ll give you a lift home,” he says. “Have a look at your car.”

  No. No, no, fuck, no.

  “I’m not going home straightaway,” I say as calmly as I can. “Since you’ve dragged me into town, I’m going to do some shopping. I’d say go and help yourself to a look, but the car’s in the garage, which is locked. Can you come around later?”

  “No. Do your shopping, come back here and I’ll take you home then. I can wait.”

  Somehow, I manage to assert myself. “Look, I’ve done nothing wrong. I haven’t murdered anyone. I’m not being bundled into a police car like a criminal. Once was bad enough. If you really care that much, drive to my house now an
d wait for me there. I’ll be back in an hour or so—that ought to be good enough for you.”

  “It’s fine,” says Sam. “We’ll pop around later. When would be good for you?”

  I don’t know. Can’t think straight anymore. “Between two and three,” I say eventually.

  “It’s not that we don’t believe you, Nicki. We have to check, that’s all.” He smiles.

  Waterhouse turns away. He doesn’t believe me. He’s the cleverer of the two.

  IT TAKES ME FORTY minutes to get home, running most of the way. By the time I arrive, dripping sweat and panting, it’s one o’clock. For the first time since we moved here, I’m grateful for the wooden bench Adam bought for our small front garden—to make it more than simply a patch of grass between the house and the road, he said when I asked what the point was. I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to spend time sitting in front of my house when I had a lovely back garden to sit in that was completely private.

  I’d like some privacy now, but not as much as I’d like to put an end to the pain in my aching legs. I stagger toward the bench, unable to stay on my feet for the last three or four meters to my front door.

  What kind of idiot am I, thinking I can lie to the police and get away with it? They could turn up any second, and my car still has two side mirrors.

  I land in an awkward position on the bench and have no energy to improve upon it. Several of my neighbors will be watching me, for sure—standing well back from their windows to remain out of sight. They’ll wonder why I’m wearing a smart summer dress and strappy sandals if I’ve been for a run, and why I took a large handbag with me.

  Fortunately, I’ll never have to explain because no one will ask. That’s the kind of place Bartholomew Gardens is. Its inhabitants see everything, but pretend to see nothing.

  I look around at the still, silent cul-de-sac, shaped like a perfect question mark: sixteen square, beige-brick detached houses, all with shiny black front doors and double garages built on. It still doesn’t feel like home: the street, the house, Spilling, the Culver Valley. I’m starting to think it can’t and never will: part of my punishment.

  I wish we’d never come here. I wish we could move back to London, but I daren’t suggest it to Adam. What reason would I give? He’d have to ask work for another transfer—a return trip—or look for a new job . . .

  No.

  Other people, when they realize things they want are impossible, stop yearning for them. Why can’t I be like them? Why can’t I ever give up on anything?

  Hearing a car, I stiffen, but the noise soon dies away. Whoever’s driving, their destination is not my house; their mission is not to catch me out.

  OK. The police aren’t here yet. This means I have a chance to make my lie true. I need to sort that out before I check my Hushmail. There’s a clear order of priorities that even I’m not stupid enough to ignore.

  I unzip my handbag, reach for my phone. Look, I can see it in my bag—touch it, even—and still put it down. I have willpower when it matters.

  My eyes fill with tears. I badly want to check my secret email account.

  No. Not enough time.

  Gavin will have apologized by now, surely. He’ll have realized that what he said about Damon Blundy was out of order.

  What do you care if he hates Damon Blundy? You never knew him. He’s nothing to you.

  I told Sergeant Sam to come between two and three. That gives me an hour.

  I haul myself up off the bench, hobble to the front door and let myself in. Dropping my bag in the hall, I run to the kitchen and drink as much water as I can, refilling the pint glass three times. Then I take my car keys from the hook in the utility room and head for the garage.

  I have no idea if I’m a skilled enough driver to precision-crash my car. I’ll have to scrape the side mirror against something hard enough to break it off—a wall, the corner of a house—but I’ll need to take care to do no damage apart from that. I can’t overdo it and cave the passenger door in, or scrape off half of the paintwork. At the police station, I mentioned no damage to my car apart from a missing mirror.

  A hard, vertical surface in a deserted place: that’s what I need. The corner of a building, a lamppost . . . As I start the engine and press the button to open the garage door, I wonder if there might be an easier way: instead of driving off in search of something to crash into, I could stay at home and hunt for something heavy that I could slam down on the side mirror from above and smash it off that way.

  No. The police might have a way of spotting that. If they sent my car away for forensic tests, or whatever the equivalent of a post-mortem is for vehicles . . .

  They’re not going to do that. Get real.

  I can’t take the risk. As closely as I can, I have to try and replicate what I told Waterhouse and Sergeant Sam: an impact from the side, at speed.

  I turn left out of Bartholomew Gardens onto Neather Street because if I turned right, that would take me in the direction of Lupton Road, which is the way to Elmhirst Road and Damon Blundy’s house. If I was keen to avoid the murder scene yesterday morning, when I didn’t know it was a murder scene, I am even keener now. The thought of being there, near his house, makes my throat close up.

  He is no less dead.

  I still can’t make out what those words are pointing to in my mind. I should stop worrying away at it; maybe then the answer will come to me.

  It’s a relief to be out of the dark garage, away from Bartholomew Gardens. I drive in the direction of Rawndesley with no clear idea of what I’m looking for but hoping to know it when I see it. I drive past walls, fences, mailboxes: all hard enough to take a side mirror off a car. Nothing looks quite right, or there are too many pedestrians around. And there’s a blue car behind me, too close.

  Please. Please, something, be around the next bend in the road. The hour between one and two that felt so long ten minutes ago is shrinking all the time.

  Finally, when I’m starting to despair, I turn a corner and see a children’s playground ahead, separated from the pavement by tall, chunky metal railings with sharp points at the top. There’s no one around apart from a mother pushing her daughter on a swing. A woman pushing a little girl on a swing, I correct myself. I of all people should know that it’s impossible to identify a relationship from the outside.

  Sometimes it’s equally hard from the inside.

  The woman and the girl are both facing away from me. This will do.

  The curb is high here, all the way along, and I’m going to have to mount it to get close enough to the railings. I try to work out if this is better approached at speed in a high gear or slowly, in first. I’m not the world’s greatest driver.

  Maybe I could find somewhere more suitable.

  Or maybe not.

  It takes me several attempts, but finally I manage to get my car up over the curb. The exhaust makes a metallic crunching noise as it scrapes against the pavement. The woman and little girl turn and stare at me. I stop and wait, unwilling to do any more with them watching. A few seconds later, they get bored with gawking and look away.

  I reverse, adjusting the car’s position as I go so that it’s parallel with the beginning of the railings. Then I drive forward, accelerating fast, veering to the left until the passenger-side mirror hits against one metal railing after another. The noise is unbearable. I clench my teeth and wince. I can’t stand to look at the damage I’m doing; knowing it’s happening is bad enough.

  It must be gone by now.

  I keep accelerating all the way to the end of the railings, then brake and look.

  My car no longer has a passenger-side mirror. Thank God.

  My relief doesn’t last long. The woman in the playground has left the little girl on the swing and is hurrying toward me with a concern-creased forehead and a “We need to have a serious talk” expression. Why, for fuck’s sake? The railings are fine. I haven’t hurt anyone, only an object—one that belongs to me and is none of her business.

&nbs
p; Slamming down my foot on the gas, I screech around the corner and disappear before she can get to me, powered by my desperation to escape as much as by an engine.

  She can’t have seen my plate number. I drove away too quickly. I’m safe.

  It’ll be easier to pretend to myself that I haven’t just done what I’ve done once I’ve put some distance between me and the scene. Fifteen minutes from now, I’ll be at home, with a car that’s missing one side mirror; the story I told the police will be truer. True, in fact.

  I don’t understand how I can do this: deceive myself and believe it, while knowing I’m lying.

  The word “lying” gives me a jolt. I look up at the rearview mirror. There’s a car immediately behind me—blue again, and too close, like before. Is it . . . could it be the same car? No, that’s paranoia. I accelerate so that I can see the make: BMW. Like Flash Dad’s from school. I dismiss the stupid idea that Flash Dad might be following me and sigh with relief when the car takes a left turn and disappears from view.

  I spend the rest of the drive home checking my mirror every two seconds. Nothing.

  Back in my house, with my newly wrecked car safely stowed in the garage, I avoid looking at my BlackBerry while I make the cup of coffee that’s essential to my survival for even another ten seconds, then call Adam at work and tell him I need him to come home straightaway. “Melissa’s summoned me,” I say. “I have to go to London.”

  I used to call her Mel, when she was only my best friend, before she met my brother, Lee, and decided to double up as my sister-in-law. I called her Mel when they moved in together, and when they got married. I switched to Melissa a few months after their wedding, when she explained her new policy to me—how everything was going to be different between us from now on. Including her name in that “everything” made sense to me: an effective way of signaling the change in the way I felt about her. I’m sure she’s noticed, though she’s never commented.

  “What? That sounds inconvenient for me,” Adam says cheerfully. “Though not impossible, I suppose. What’s wrong with Melissa?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But . . . she’s not ill or—”