Your Guilty Lies (ARC)

by Ruth Heald

  ‘What is it, then?’

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s all so long ago now.’

  I frown. I thought we were being completely open with each other, but there are still things that she and Mum won’t tell me. Even now we’re all adults. ‘Just tell me, Melissa.’

  ‘I can’t. It’s not for me to say. You need to ask Mum. Maybe you can ask her when you tell her about Ian.’

  My stomach knots. I’m dreading having a heart to heart with Mum about Ian. I can’t face her judgement.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Just let me be the one to tell Mum that Ian’s left me. Keep it to yourself until then.’

  She frowns at me and then nods. ‘OK. I suppose I can manage that. For you.’

  * * *

  After we’ve paid the bill, I get up to go to the toilet. It’s only a short walk home but my pelvic floor is yet to recover from giving birth. As I exit the toilets, I catch sight of a dark green coat just like Ian’s, held out by a waiter to a man with his back to me. I feel a pang of disappointment at the thought of Ian. If only he had been the man I thought he was.

  The man shrugs his arms into the coat as he talks to the woman with him, in a bright red coat and heels. She’s in her late fifties, neat ash-blonde hair cut into a bob. She looks slightly familiar and I wonder if I’ve seen her around locally. She’s impeccably dressed with perfectly done make-up. Unlike me. I’ve got no make-up on and I’m dressed in unflattering maternity clothes, which I suspect have a smattering of baby sick on them somewhere.

  The man turns slightly and I see him in profile, as he pushes the door to the restaurant open to leave. I see the familiar features; deep-set eyes, a chiselled jawline and a slightly crooked nose from a childhood accident. It is Ian. My heart sinks. I know I should say something, but I freeze. I watch as he holds the door, letting the woman go through first. Who is she? I still can’t place her.

  I can’t take my eyes off them as they leave the restaurant; can’t rid myself of that sense of loss for the family life Ian and I could have had. I watch them, transfixed, as Ian walks confidently through the double doors, looking like a man without a care in the world. When they reach the street, they turn towards each other. Ian wraps his arms around the woman and gives her a passionate kiss.

  13

  ‘Your mother’s gone out. I’m going to help you with your homework.’

  My sister and I look at each other in surprise. I see my fear reflected in her eyes, her frown the mirror of my own. Where has Mum gone? Has she left us?

  ‘OK,’ I say warily. My sister fetches our books from our school bags and brings them to the table. We’ve got vocabulary homework this week. A list of ten words to learn, that we’ll be tested on at the end of the week.

  ‘Words and their meanings,’ Dad reads from the piece of paper slowly.

  He laughs, suddenly. ‘Look at this one here. “Mistake!” Do you know what that means?’

  My sister and I look at each other, confused by his smile and the laughter in his voice.

  ‘It’s when you do something wrong,’ my sister says cautiously.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Quite right. It’s an error. Something that should never have happened. Can you think of any examples of mistakes?’

  I squeeze my eyes shut and concentrate as hard as I can, hoping to come up with an answer. When he hits us, I’m sure that’s wrong. But it isn’t a mistake.

  I think of something else. ‘When I drew a line instead of a circle and had to rub it out,’ I say triumphantly.

  He looks at me. ‘Yes, you would do something stupid like that, wouldn’t you? You’re a stupid little girl.’

  I stare at my feet.

  ‘What about when Mum didn’t wash the dishes properly?’ my sister says.

  I look at her, confused. Why’s she bringing Mum into this? He shouted at Mum for hours after that. I don’t know why she wants to remind him.

  ‘Yes!’ he says. ‘Well done.’ He tussles my sister’s hair aggressively. She recoils, but luckily he doesn’t notice. Instead he whisks her up and out of the chair and spins her round. I see the fear in her eyes. She thinks he might throw her across the room.

  But he doesn’t. He puts her down gently. She’s shaking.

  ‘Your mother does make a lot of mistakes. Every day. Simple things you’d think she’d know how to do by now. The dishes. The washing. The ironing. She can’t get anything right. What would she do without me to put her right? I spend my whole life trying to control that stupid woman.’

  I want to stick up for Mum. To tell him that if he thinks she’s so awful, he should just leave. I open my mouth and my sister kicks me under the table. Hard.

  ‘But do you know what your mother’s biggest mistake was?’ He’s on a roll now, loving the sound of his own voice.

  ‘No,’ my sister says. ‘What was it?’

  ‘It was having you two, of course.’ Dad laughs uproariously.

  I glare at him. Mum always said we were her little miracles, not mistakes. She said we were a lovely surprise, a gift from God.

  ‘We wanted a son,’ he continues. ‘But instead we got two daughters. Life’s not fair, is it?’

  Twenty-Seven

  I stare, trying to process what I’m seeing. Ian. Kissing another woman.

  ‘Are you OK, miss?’ a waiter asks, as he manoeuvres past me to reach for a customer’s coat.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Outside, the kiss ends, but Ian and the woman stay caught in their embrace, his arms wrapped tightly around her.

  ‘The toilets are upstairs.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say absently, as I watch Ian and the woman pull apart. They say a few words to each other and then he puts his arm round her waist and they walk away together, his hand resting on her hip in exactly the same way it rests on mine when he’s with me. They go to a car parked a few doors down, get in and drive away. I feel sick.

  When I return to our table, my sister is already standing, her bag in her hand. We part company outside the restaurant, promising we’ll meet more frequently. But I hardly absorb her words. My brain is flooded with the image of Ian’s lips meeting the woman’s, his hand on her hip, the scene repeating again and again in slow motion in my mind. He’s been cheating on me. Or else he’s met someone else already.

  I hurry home with the buggy, barely even aware of my own children’s screams.

  When I get back, Paula is already there. For once I’m grateful when she whisks the twins away from me, berating me for not feeding them when we were out and telling me that we’re now completely off her schedule.

  I sit down on the sofa and try to make sense of what I saw at the restaurant. I’m devastated by his betrayal. Finding the unpaid bills was bad enough, but now this. How could he let me down so completely? How could he be so uncaring? And how long has he been cheating on me?

  I close my eyes, tears stinging them, and the kiss replays again in my head. I don’t want to see it; don’t want to remember. Our relationship is definitely over. There’s nowhere left to go with it.

  I get out my phone and google Ian. I don’t know why I expect Google to give me an answer when the truth’s been staring me in the face. Ian’s clearly never cared about me at all. I never went to his house, never met any of his friends. He kept everything separate and compartmentalised. How could I not have seen it? How could I be so stupid? I’ve never been the suspicious type in relationships. I’ve always just taken people as they come, but now I wonder if I’ve been naive. I’ve only googled Ian once before. It was after our third date and I’d just found out his surname. I hadn’t seen anything that alarmed me that time, but then again, I hadn’t been expecting to. I’d just been curious. He was only supposed to be a fling at the beginning. I never expected us to end up here.

  This time I’m more thorough. I scan through pages and pages of results. In the background, I hear the twins screaming and Paula trying to calm them down.
At first her voice is soothing, but then it gets higher and more irritable. I’ve only heard her like that once before. When I asked her to move out.

  I blink, focusing on the sound. She’s angry with them.

  I turn away from my search as I hear Paula’s voice grow louder. ‘You little brat,’ she says. ‘Take your medicine.’

  What medicine? They don’t take any, except Calpol.

  Frances’s screams have stopped now. As I race up the stairs, I hear Alice’s cries fall silent too.

  I meet Paula at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘They’re asleep.’

  ‘What medicine were you giving them?’

  ‘Just Calpol. I think they’ve caught a bit of a chill. How many blankets did you put over them when you took them out earlier?’

  ‘Blankets? They were wearing jumpers.’ Although the oppressive heat of the summer has faded now, it’s still warm.

  ‘You see, they must have caught something. Next time you need to put blankets over them in the buggy.’

  ‘OK, right,’ I say, feeling a stab of guilt. ‘I’m just going to check on them.’

  ‘They’ve just dropped off. You might wake them.’

  ‘I’ll go in anyway.’ I push open the door to the room softly, with Paula standing over me.

  I can see from the doorway that they are both fast asleep. I go over to the cots and watch the rise and fall of their tiny chests, feeling myself calm. Paula’s right. They’re fine.

  ‘Satisfied?’ Paula asks, smiling.

  ‘I’m sorry. I just worry sometimes. Particularly about Frances.’

  ‘You’re a first-time mother. It’s perfectly normal to worry. But I’ve seen it all before.’

  I return downstairs and back to my phone. I need to find out more about Ian: where he lives, who his friends are, his history. It’s crazy that I’ve been with him for so long without knowing any of this. I’ve had his children without knowing who he really is. I feel so foolish.

  Most of all, I want to know who the woman he was kissing is. I want to know where he’s gone; if he’s staying with her. I search for Ian Ainsworth along with Wimbledon, as he’d told me he lived near there. There are pages and pages of results for Ian Ainsworths, but no connection with Wimbledon that I can see.

  But what really surprises me is that there seem to be no records of anyone with his name operating as a director in a property business. Surely if he’d set up a successful property company, then there’d be some record of that online?

  I frown. There must be another way of finding out where he’s gone. I wonder if he still has the house where he was living before he moved in with me, if he’s gone back there. I search 192.com for his address, but can’t find it. He must be ex-directory. And then I think of his credit card that I still have in my wallet. The one that was declined. I go to my wallet, pick up the card and turn it over in my hands. Credit cards are always linked to addresses. I wonder if I phone up the bank, could I get his address? But they’d never give it to me. His address would be on his Amazon account or his eBay account. But I don’t have access to those. Then I remember: he put his credit card details into my phone once when we ordered takeaway online on a romantic weekend away in Ireland. He’d have had to put in the address his credit card was registered to.

  I rack my brains and remember the name of the takeaway. When I log into my account on their website, his credit card details are still there. Alongside an address in Morden where it’s registered. I smile to myself, momentarily forgetting that I’ve made a complete mess of my life, and instead being pleased with my detective work. This is where Ian was living when he first met me. I wonder if he’s there now.

  I make a note of the address in my phone. I deserve to know who Ian really is. Tomorrow I’ll go over there. I’ll confront him. I’ll find out who the woman is. For the sake of my daughters.

  * * *

  I feel so lonely at night, without my twins, without Ian. I’m devastated. I love Ian. But it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough for him. The ceiling that Ian fixed has started to leak again and the water drips down the walls. I sniff, trying to hold back tears. Behind the peeling wallpaper I can see pencil drawings of the family. More paper has come away now, and I see there is another picture underneath. This time it is just a family of three. A mother, father and a little girl. I pick at the wallpaper and see more markings. Two children lie at the feet of the family. Whereas the other people are delicately drawn, these two children are scribbled out, with big, thick pencil marks scoured through them.

  I feel unnerved, even though I know the drawings are years old. I wish Ian was beside me, just for the comfort of another person breathing in the room. Another body to share this journey. At night thoughts circle in my head, an endless loop of worry.

  In the stillness, I think I hear the faint sound of a baby crying. I strain my ears and I’m sure it sounds like Frances’s faint whimpers. My heart tugs in recognition.

  I get up, throw on a nightdress over my sweaty body and walk down the corridor to Paula’s room, stepping over a cuddly toy that’s been dropped near the top of the stairs.

  I hear a scuttling sound over the wooden floor and flick on the light to see a huge rat, its tail swishing behind it before it disappears through a gap in the skirting board.

  I stifle a scream. Goosebumps spread over my skin. Trying to rid myself of the image, I listen at Paula’s door for the twins, but there’s no sound at all. I know I should feel relieved, but I don’t. I just want my babies beside me, to see them breathing, to feel them in my arms. Sometimes I get so jealous of Paula sleeping next to them, smelling their soft baby scent, seeing their chests rising up and down, hearing their gentle breaths. She’s there to pick them up when they cry, to comfort them. I want that for me. I’m their mother.

  But for now, I just need to see them, to know they’re safe.

  I knock on the door. No answer.

  ‘Paula?’ I call through the door, knocking once more.

  She must be fast asleep. How would she hear the twins wake if she can’t even hear my loud knocks? I think how she has brought the twins in less often for their night feeds lately, telling me they’re almost sleeping through the night. Is that true, or is it Paula that’s sleeping straight through, while my twins cry out?

  I push open the door.

  The room is empty.

  No Paula.

  No babies in the cots.

  ‘Paula?’ I whisper, unable to believe what I’m seeing.

  I leave the room quickly, going back out to the corridor.

  ‘Paula?’ I shout.

  The house is completely silent.

  I check the bathroom, then run downstairs, my feet thumping down the wooden steps.

  I run from room to room, but there’s no sign of them.

  Twenty-Eight

  Where have they gone?

  They aren’t in the house. I’ve searched everywhere, downstairs and upstairs.

  And yet, when I stand still in the silence, I can hear the faint sound of a baby screaming. I’m sure it’s Frances. I’d know her weak mewling anywhere. But where is she?

  Paula must have taken the twins out. But where would she have taken them at 3 a.m.? And why?

  A thought crosses my mind. Has she stolen them? Did she want them for herself? Often she seems closer to them than I am; a better parent to them than I am. But that’s just because she knows what she’s doing. Her job is to care for children. She’s a professional.

  I wonder if I should call the police. But to say what? My nanny has taken the kids out? Or that Paula and the children are missing? It doesn’t make any sense.

  For a second, I think about calling Mum. But I can’t bear her judgement. She can’t stand Paula. She’ll tell me that Paula has kidnapped them, that I clearly can’t trust her.

  But I have to do something.

  I grab my keys and go outside the house. I look both ways but there is no sign of my babies or Paula.<
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  ‘Paula!’ I shout, my voice carrying on the still night air. ‘Paula!’

  A curtain twitches across the road. The flat above the coffee shop. The owner is watching me. It twitches closed again.

  I go back inside the house, heart hammering. I have to phone the police now, just in case.

  I run upstairs as fast as I can and grab my mobile.

  And then I hear something from the bottom of the stairs.

  I dash back out of the bedroom and look down, eyes wide.

  Paula is in the hallway, rocking the babies in her arms, cooing at them.

  She jumps when she sees me.

  ‘Katie? What are you doing up?’

  ‘I… I thought I heard Frances crying… and when I went to your room, you weren’t in there. Neither were the girls.’

  ‘The twins were unsettled. I took them for a walk to calm them down. They’re better now. Look – Alice is fast asleep.’

  I come down the stairs slowly, my mind racing.

  I look at the twins in her arms. She’s right. Alice is in a contented sleep, but Frances looks anxious still, sweat on her brow, her eyes darting from side to side.

  ‘I’ll feed Frances,’ I say. ‘She might be dehydrated.’

  ‘She’s fine. She just needs her sleep.’

  I take Frances out of Paula’s arms. She’s cold and clammy and I feel a desperate need to protect her. I hold her close, feeling a flush of inadequacy. What’s wrong with her? Why is she so tiny and weak? Did I make her worse by not putting blankets on her when I went out earlier? I take her to the living room and put her to my breast.

  ‘Bring her up soon,’ Paula calls into the living room, before she carries Alice upstairs to bed. ‘You don’t want to mess up her routine.’

  But for once Frances is latching easily and sucking vigorously. And as I hold her close, I realise something. Paula said she’d taken the twins outside for a walk. But when I’d gone downstairs, the buggy had still been in the hallway. Where were they?