by Jill Childs
I crossed the room to the low door at the far end. It creaked open to reveal a narrow en-suite bathroom with a slanting ceiling. It was fitted into the space under the eaves, white and freshly painted, the suite modern.
As I turned away, my eye caught my flushed face in the mirrored front of the bathroom cabinet, reflected back to me at an angle as the loosened door swung. I opened it to see how it fastened.
I’d expected it to be empty. It wasn’t. I stared, my breathing hard.
An upturned shot glass sat on the middle shelf and, beside it, a miniature bottle of red wine.
I didn’t need to peer more closely to see what it was. Shiraz. Left there for me to find.
I stood, trembling, thinking hard. About Miss Dixon and the bottle of bitter wine she’d said was waiting for her in the boathouse, a glass already poured for her to drink.
I thought about the bathroom cabinet and the way its front swung open, inviting me to look inside. Why, of all places, there?
Fifty
Anna agreed to go to bed early that evening. She looked worn out, her cheeks pale and hollowed.
I sat on the edge of the bed with her as she drifted into sleep, stroking her soft, spiky hair away from her forehead and studying her features. My stomach twisted as I looked at her, so vulnerable, so unaware. The fair skin, her long, dark eyelashes, fluttering now as she tipped backwards into oblivion, her bow-shaped upper lip, the deepening puff of her breath. Buddy the sheepdog was tucked in beside her, his head on the fleshy cushion of her upper arm, as if he could protect her from what lay ahead. I waited, keeping watch over her as she slept, frightened to leave her alone in this house. She stirred but didn’t wake when I kissed her on the forehead.
Downstairs, I heated a ready meal in the microwave and poured myself some orange juice.
I settled in the sitting room, glass in hand, gazing out over the valley. There was no TV, no WiFi, not even a telephone. I’d lost my mobile signal as soon as we’d come over the ridge and dipped down into the hollow. It was hard to imagine being more isolated.
I sat very still, listening to the silence. Ahead of me, the valley steadily darkened, the black tinged with pink as the sun set. I wondered what Bea was doing. If she and Clara missed us. I thought of our old terraced house and the neighbours on either side, audible every time they plugged an appliance into a socket or turned up the volume on a film.
I imagined this place in winter. The caravans and tents and bed and breakfast trade would pack up and leave. It would be desolate here. Barely a soul. I thought of Mike Ridge, quietly watching from his car as we packed up and drove away.
The darkness, thick now, pressed down. All I saw, as I looked at the windows, was the reflection of the room, hanging there in the blackness. The settee, the coffee table, the lamps and in the midst of it all, a woman I didn’t yet know, Helen Mack, silent and still, glass in hand, looking back at herself.
Crack. I started. Stiffened as I listened. Could it be a large animal which had strayed too close? I reached for the lamp and switched it off, hiding myself in sudden blackness. The only light now spilled weakly from the other end of the barn, from the overhead lights left on in the kitchen.
I sat, rigid, waiting. For a moment, nothing. I started to breathe again. Then another crack. I jumped. The sharp retort of a dry stick breaking. A person. I was sure of it. Creeping down the side of the building.
I moved as quietly as I could, dropping low and clinging to the deeper shadows along the lines of the furniture. I reached up to switch off the lights in the kitchen, grabbed a kitchen knife from the block and ducked low again. I crawled under the dining-room table and crouched there, my knees drawn up to my body, my arms wrapped around them, trembling.
A footstep, quiet and careful, crunched across the loose stones near the front door. I held my breath. Silence. A sigh. A scuffle of soft shoes against the wooden door. I shrank back further into the darkness, thinking of Anna asleep upstairs, tightening my grip on the handle of the knife.
A key scraped in the lock and the door opened. A man stood there, silhouetted against the night sky.
‘Helen?’ A throaty whisper.
I sat up abruptly, cracking my head on the underside of the table.
‘Helen, it’s me.’ His tone was theatrical, savouring the drama.
I scrambled out and switched on a light. Ralph. He was standing there, just inside the front door, blinking in the flood of light. He looked different. His face was leaner. The floppy hair had been cut away, replaced by a military-style razor cut. He was wearing a waxed green jacket and black jeans, already dressing for his new part.
‘Ralph!’ For a moment, I just stared, then my mouth crumpled.
He opened his arms and I ran straight into them, pressed my face into his chest. His smell, sudden and familiar. The feel of his body, broad and muscular firm. His warm skin.
He lifted my hand and looked with amusement at the knife I was still clutching.
‘That’s not a very nice welcome.’ He laughed. ‘And after I came all the way back from the dead, too.’
‘Oh, please.’ I twisted to drop the knife on the counter, then wiped my eyes and hugged him again. ‘You scared the life out of me.’
He kissed the top of my head, then loosened my arms, unzipped his jacket and hung it on the back of a dining chair.
I watched him, still dazed. ‘I thought you weren’t coming for another week or two.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s boring, being dead. How’s Anna? Is she okay?’
I glanced at once towards the spiral staircase. ‘She mustn’t know, Ralph. Not yet. I need to prepare her.’
‘That’ll be interesting. What’re you going to say? That I’m an angel?’
‘Hardly.’ I smiled. ‘Anna will be fine. I never told her you were dead. I kept saying missing. But I need a bit longer, Ralph. She’s been through a lot.’
He gestured round the barn, at the furniture, the lights, the scenes he’d set as if he were dressing a stage for one of his grand school productions. ‘Like it?’
I nodded. ‘Very much. You’ve always had great taste.’
He looked satisfied. ‘Did Anna like her dog?’
‘Loves it. She’s called it Buddy.’
He lifted my top and ran cold hands over my skin. I shivered.
‘She didn’t ask who’d bought it. But it was a bit risky, Ralph.’
‘I love risks,’ he murmured into my ear, tightening his hold of me. ‘I thought you knew that by now.’
Fifty-One
I searched the fridge for food and started to cook him what I could find, sausages and eggs. Already, the kitchen was absorbing the smell of his body. He changed the air in a room, just by being there.
I set the sausages sizzling and spitting, feeling his eyes on me, watching my movements. I dropped a fork to the floor with a clatter, banged dishes, clumsy with nerves.
Once he’d eaten, we sat on the settee, side by side, Ralph’s arm tight around my shoulders, and looked out into the darkness that veiled the Yorkshire landscape.
Ralph, heavy now with food, said, ‘I don’t want to say I told you so. But I was right, wasn’t I? We did it.’
I didn’t answer. I thought about the life ahead, a life in hiding, pretending to be people we were not. It wouldn’t be easy, but he’d promised me it would all be worth it. This was our chance of a fresh start. There would only be one woman in his life from now on. Two, if you counted Anna.
I said, ‘I’ve been paying cash for everything, like you said. I’ve brought a few thousand.’
‘Good. I’m nearly out.’ He nodded. ‘We won’t need a lot. It’s pretty cheap, round here.’
I tried to smile back. I imagined walking down the High Street with Anna, constantly checking shop windows to see if anyone was following us. Jumping every time I heard footsteps. Being constantly afraid of a knock at the door in case someone had traced us. I still wasn’t sure I could do this. Live a lie.
‘I was go
od, wasn’t I?’ He chuckled to himself. ‘I nearly did break my bloody neck, hurtling down those steps in the dark. Gotta hand it to me. The sound effects were awesome. I deserve an Oscar.’
‘I had my heart in my mouth on the sail back,’ I said. ‘You grabbed hold of the rope okay?’
‘That water was freezing.’ He grimaced.
I thought back. There’d been no moving him, once he’d come up with his crazy plan. Don’t you see? he kept saying. It’s perfect. We get that mad bitch off our backs and, once the insurers pay out, we’ll be rich. We can start again. Clean sheet.
He said, ‘And we were right about Laura Dixon. She bought everything. She really thought she’d killed me.’
Poor, weak Miss Dixon. I’d sensed how unstable she was. I’d felt her anxious eyes seek me out, all those times I’d been sitting in the school library while children stumbled through their reading.
Ralph went on, ‘It’s shut her up, anyway. Served her right. I never thought she’d be such a mad bitch. ‘
I cleared my throat. ‘How was the cottage?’
We’d chosen one of the derelict cottages along the coast, its windows boarded up, the flooring dank with mildew. It stank of foxes, rising damp and wood rot. I’d done my best to clean it up and Ralph fixed the door and padlocked it, then stored his things there, a supply of dried and tinned food, spare clothes and his camping gear. That’s where he’d headed once he’d swum the final stretch to the shore that night.
He shrugged. ‘I survived. Can’t say I was sorry to leave.’
I considered the vacancy in our own house, after he’d gone. The air had seemed empty without him. I’d missed him terribly. But, over time, I’d sensed something else too. The cautious fluttering of my old self. My more assertive, more independent self.
I remembered the evening I’d entered his study and cleared it, the satisfaction I’d felt when I’d categorised and ordered his books and packed them neatly into boxes. I remembered the things Bea had said about me, once I’d finally started to adjust to living without him. You look fab. Better than ever. All sort of sparkly.
‘How was my memorial service?’
‘Not a dry eye.’ I pulled a face. ‘You’d be amazed what lovely things people found to say about you. Even Miss Baldini.’
‘Shame I wasn’t there.’ He looked amused.
I considered him. Ralph. My husband. The father of my child. The man I’d stood by. The man I’d carried on loving, no matter how many times he disappointed me.
I said, ‘I went to see her. Laura Dixon.’
He stared out towards the darkened windows, his jaw set.
‘What were you thinking?’ I went on. ‘Why did you send her texts? She might’ve gone to the police. And why did she change the locks? That was you, wasn’t it, letting yourself into her flat?’
He shrugged, splaying the fingers of his free hand. ‘Harmless enough. Anyway, she had it coming.’
‘Harmless?’ I sat up and twisted to face him.
‘What?’
I took a deep breath. ‘You tried to kill her, didn’t you?’
‘Kill her?’ He laughed. ‘Come on.’
I persisted. ‘You drugged her with her own pills. Was that why you went round to her flat – to get them?’
He looked taken aback. ‘What’re you talking about?’
‘You crushed them into the wine you left her in the boathouse.’ It was bitter, she had said. But I drank it for him.
He lifted his arm from the back of the settee and made circles with his stiff wrist.
I said, ‘She knew something was wrong. She was just in too much of a state to think it through.’
‘You know what? I’m sorry they found her.’ He was still flexing his fingers, bringing his wrist back to life. ‘A couple more hours and it would have been too late. Honestly? Far better if she’d just died.’
I looked away. I thought again about Miss Dixon, hunched in her armchair, gazing out vacantly at the passing world.
Ralph said, ‘She was trouble. You know she was. If she’d gone bleating to Sarah Baldini about all her crazy theories, they’d have come after me. They’d have to make a show of taking it seriously. Suspending me. Launching an investigation. Who knows? I might’ve ended up behind bars.’
‘In prison?’ I stared at him, suddenly chilled. What was he talking about? He’d been a fool to pursue Laura Dixon and if she’d carried out her threat and told the governors about their affair, maybe they’d have disciplined him. But prison? ‘What crazy theories?’
‘She’s delusional. That’s all.’ He got to his feet and strode over to the windows, suddenly hiding his face. ‘Anyway, we’re shot of her now. Thank God.’
I scrutinised him as he stood, hands on hips, looking out towards the valley.
‘What crazy theories, Ralph? What do you mean?’
He didn’t answer. I sat in silence, my eyes on his back. Something was bothering me. This wasn’t just about his fling with Laura Dixon. There was something else.
‘Can I really not stay the night?’ he said, turning suddenly to face me. ‘I’m sick of camping.’
‘I know. You must be.’ I managed to smile. ‘But we said we’d wait one more week. Let’s not blow it now.’
He sighed. ‘Tell Anna tomorrow. Get it over with.’
I shook my head. ‘She’s only just got here. Give her a chance to settle in.’
He took a deep breath and blew out his cheeks, deciding whether to make a fuss.
I looked at my watch. ‘It’s getting late. I should get to bed.’
He said, ‘Maybe I could come up too? Just for a while. I’ll make sure I’m gone before Anna’s up.’
‘It’s too risky. What if she wakes up in the night and comes looking for me?’
‘Spoilsport.’ He knelt down in front of me and kissed my hands, lying there in my lap, then worked his way up my blouse to my lips. I shivered.
He pulled away and kissed me lightly on the tip of my nose.
‘You’re right.’ He got to his feet. ‘One more week.’ He ducked to me again and whispered, ‘You know what’s keeping me strong? The thought of all that lovely money. Ours for the taking.’
He chuckled to himself as he headed to the downstairs cloakroom.
I listened to the door click shut behind him, then jumped up and went to his jacket. I rifled through the pockets until I found his new phone, bought with cash. Pay-as-you-go, clean and untraceable.
I slipped it into my pocket just as the toilet flushed.
When he emerged, his stubbly hair looked raked through, as if he’d been examining it in the mirror, admiring himself.
He stepped forward and put his hands on my waist. ‘So, Mrs Mack, can I come calling again tomorrow? After dark, of course.’
I kissed him. ‘I’ll cook properly, if you like. Steak? You bring the wine.’
He winked. ‘It’s a date.’
He pulled his jacket on and turned to open the front door. I saw his hand go into his pocket, feel around the emptiness. He stopped, turned suddenly back to me.
I froze, trying to think of an excuse, a plausible reason why his phone was suddenly in my pocket instead of his.
‘I can’t get used to walking everywhere,’ he said. ‘I keep searching for car keys.’ He laughed at himself. ‘Soon as this is over, I’m getting a four-wheel drive. Don’t argue. We can afford it, now.’
He set off on foot, crunching and cracking his way to the footpath down the side of the house. I stood at the picture windows, watching. When he rounded the house, he paused and twisted to peer back at me through the darkness. It was the same searching look I’d seen last night when he came snooping round the hotel car park in the darkness, checking for the hire car to make sure we’d really arrived.
Then he turned again to the track and was gone, heading down towards the neighbouring valley and the sleepy campsite waiting for him there.
I stood for some moments, looking after him, thinking. Something wasn�
�t right. I couldn’t shake the feeling. There was something important that he still wasn’t telling me.
I swallowed. What did Laura Dixon know that frightened him so much? Something that could put him in prison.
I felt a wave of nausea and my legs trembled. He’d promised me there’d be no more secrets from now on. We were supposed to start again with a clean sheet. That was how he’d persuaded me to go along with his fraud. So we could emerge afterwards as Mr and Mrs Mack. A happy couple.
It was all I’d ever wanted. To give our marriage a second chance. I wasn’t like him. I never cared about the insurance money. He could keep it. It could pay for him to write poetry all day, if that was what he wanted. All I needed was already right here.
I pulled his new phone from my pocket and considered it. It lay hard and solid in my hand. He used the same number code for everything. If there were secrets stored inside, they were mine for the taking.
I hesitated. I’d learned not to spy on Ralph. Never to read late-night texts that popped up on his phone. Not to look at emails if he left them open. I’d schooled myself to look the other way. It wasn’t worth the hurt.
Now, if I was going to give up my old friends, my old life for him and become Mrs Mack, if I was going to force Anna to do the same, I needed to know the truth. I needed to know if he was finally being honest with me.
I was just afraid of what I might find.
Fifty-Two
It didn’t take me long to find the messages.
He hadn’t made any effort to delete them. It was almost as if he enjoyed the danger. As if the risk of being caught was part of the thrill.
The texts had been sent in the last few weeks. After Laura Dixon’s overdose. After he’d moved up here to start preparing our new home together. After he’d promised on his life never to betray me again.
Run as far as you like, princess. You’ll never escape me.
Then, a few days later:
Can you feel me? I’m right here. Waiting. We’re not done yet. Not until I say so.