Thoughts as troublesome as they are obscure niggle at the back of my mind, but I push them to one side. It is time to get up, to go and find my husband.
*
A strong sense of déjà vu curls around me as I head down the wide stairs. I always seem to be doing this, I decide; get up, get dressed then go downstairs in search of my husband. I should imagine that it won’t be long before I develop a migraine, then take to my bed again.
My life has turned into Groundhog day.
Today, I have made more of an effort with my appearance than ever, and I’m wearing a pair of baby-blue chord flares, matched with a skinny-rib, red rollneck. I fancy that my outfit has a seventies’ vibe, and I find this pleasing.
I find Shane in the kitchen, his back to me, fiddling with his coffee machine. He is wearing an old Kasabian t-shirt and blue stripey underpants, his feet bare and his dark hair mussed. I take in the sight of his broad back and his sturdy hips that are so unlike Jack’s snake hips…
I catch myself, internally recoiling in shock.
Jack’s hips? Why would I even think of such a thing?
Shane spins around on the spot, sleepy dark eyes fixing on me as if my bizarre, immoral thought has transmitted into his brain via an invisible electrical current.
“You scared me, I didn’t hear you,” he says. “Are you okay? You were out for the count in the spare room by the time I got in from work. Did you have another migraine?”
“Yeah,” I say, squirming uncomfortably under his penetrating gaze.
I notice that he has dark shadows under his eyes, that the whites are lacklustre. He looks tired – exhausted, in fact.
“It’s been happening a lot, lately,” he says. “Maybe you should see a doctor. Or at least talk to my sister.”
“I was thinking much the same thing.” I pause, really looking at him, taking in the entirety of his face. “You look like shit,” I say honestly.
He smiles humourlessly, rasping a hand over the dark stubble staining his wide jaw. “Yeah. I feel like shit. I’m having problems at the office.”
Really? comes that sardonic little voice in my head – the voice that sounds so much like Alice. You sure it’s not just exhaustion from fucking that sexy little Isla chick?
I bristle at the unwelcome bout of paranoia. He is tired, that’s all. He’s self-employed, and puts in the hours. He lives and breathes his job, and if he’s having problems, then it undoubtedly is going to take its toll.
“The same problems from yesterday?” I ask casually.
“Yep. The very same.”
I’m still none the wiser as to what his problem actually is.
“You’re no closer to fixing it?” Suddenly, I’m not sure if I should know what his problem actually is, if he has told me, but I don’t remember him telling me…
“Sadly not.” He runs both hands through his thick, dark hair, with only the hint of grey at the temples. He lets out a small, hollow-sounding laugh. “I’m just overworked and underpaid.”
His hands drop from his hair and he shuffles awkwardly over towards me in his vaguely clumsy, Shane kind of way. He grips my shoulders and peers intensely into my eyes.
“You are dressed,” he says solemnly. “And not only are you dressed, but you look beautiful. It’s a shame to waste such a nice outfit, so how about I take you out to lunch today? I feel like showing you off to the world.”
No, he’s not being solemn, he’s being glib, that Alice voice warns in my mind. He’s playing you.
“What’s gotten into you? Who are you and what have you done with my husband?”
Shane hugs me. Instinctively, I stiffen in his grip, but only for a split-second. I force myself to relax and return his embrace. The sudden surge of affection I feel for him is sullied by a twinge of jealousy. Is he sleeping with Isla behind my back?
“I mean it, baby,” he mumbles into the side of my neck. “Work is just mad sometimes. I’m sorry I’ve been so distant.”
Gently, I extract myself. “I could murder a coffee,” I pointedly tell him.
“Sure.”
For a moment, I think I detect the way his warm, loving smile wavers. He’s either tired of my constant rejection, or he doesn’t love me anymore…
Stop, the little voice whispers in my mind – my voice this time, not Alice’s. Stop overthinking every little bloody thing.
“Lunch sounds like a lovely idea,” I say in what I hope is a placatory way. “Are you sure you don’t need to do any work today?”
“Quite sure. I just want to take my beautiful wife out to lunch.”
Yeah, comes the unbidden thought. That’s only because you have your stupid stag night later and you don’t have time to go into London…
I silence the petty little voice. Because lunch does sound good. We haven’t been out together in so long, and I’m sure that it’ll do us both the world of good.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
TESS
I’m not having a good time. It had all started so well – the nice restaurant with the sea views, the fish dish worthy of any Michelin starred restaurant, and finally, the company of my elusive husband in a social setting that isn’t my own home.
But I’m not feeling it at all. I don’t know how much of this is due to the way Shane seems so somehow mentally absent with me. Sure, he is saying and doing all the right things, he is attentive to me and appreciative of the food, and his phone is nowhere to be seen.
The fact his phone is absent is enough to put me on edge. Usually, it is glued to his hand, and I can’t help thinking as to why it is suddenly so conspicuously turned off. He made such a big thing of not having it on that it has made me suspicious. This is maybe unfair, but I can’t relax. I can’t stop thinking that he’s hiding a barrage of incoming calls and texts from Isla…
“What’s the matter?” Shane asks me, reaching across the small, square, wooden table for my hand.
We have one of the two window seats, overlooking the churning, grey Atlantic. The restaurant – Bert’s Boat – is almost full despite it only being a Wednesday, probably as it is the run up to Christmas. I don’t get out all that much, but when I do, this restaurant is my favourite place. Usually, I love all the dark wood, the trawler nets wrapped around the dark beams, and the low lighting, finding it cosy and romantic. But now, I just find it claustrophobic and creepy.
I just don’t know what’s wrong with me lately.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” I reply with a tight smile that feels more like a nervous twitch.
He gives my hand a reassuring squeeze and my instinctive inclination is to pull away from him, but I refrain.
“Are you worried about tonight?” he asks, his dark gaze boring into mine, as if he is trying to read my mind.
“No,” I reply, a shade too quickly, perhaps.
Because I am faintly annoyed about him hitting the town without me, but that’s not why I feel out of sorts. I am far more concerned about Isla.
“I don’t particularly want to go either,” he says, “but I really can’t get out of it. I promise I’ll leave as soon as I can.”
“I’m not worried about it.” I’m being half honest, at least. “You have a good time; Andrew will be upset if you leave early. Don’t worry about me.”
I am aware of how my words are coated with more than a hint of petulance, but I am powerless to stop it. Thankfully, Shane doesn’t rise to the bait, because I honestly don’t want to argue with him. I just feel so off.
“I’ll be home by midnight at the latest, I promise. And no visits to Pink Flamingos.”
The strangest feeling of déjà vu courses through me at the mention of Broadgate’s one and only strip club. Perhaps it is born of a niggling sensation that we’ve had this conversation before. I push the creepy-crawly feeling to one side. I even manage a smile.
“I know you won’t. You wouldn’t risk your life in such a way.”
He laughs at that. “Damn straight; you’d have my balls for earrings.”
“Yeah,” I smirk. “You know it.”
The waitress takes that moment to reappear, bringing with her our puddings. She places the dishes before us – a lemon cheesecake for him and a chocolate fudge cake with cream and ice cream for me.
“Can I get you anything else to drink?” the young girl asks.
“We’re fine, thanks,” Shane replies with a broad smile.
A brief stab of jealousy twists in my chest. I wonder if he’s noticed how pretty she is.
She’s just a kid, I tell myself. She can’t be more than twenty. Shane wouldn’t fancy a child.
But still that sense of uneasiness – that mistrust – lingers.
“Unless you would like another glass of wine?” Shane says.
I realise he is talking to me, and I shake my head with a soft no thanks, for I really don’t want to go through the rest of the day with a hangover kicking in.
He’s saving himself for later, I think with another pang of jealousy. He doesn’t want to drink with me, he wants to get drunk with his mates and screw around with other women…
Or woman, singular.
Woman, as in Isla.
A sharp shard of pain stabs at my brain, and I wince.
Please God, don’t let me get another migraine. Not here. Not today.
The pretty blonde waitress leaves us and Shane stares down at his cheesecake, oblivious to my shift in mood and the unwelcome dark turn my thoughts are taking.
“This looks amazing, doesn’t it?” His gaze shifts to my hot fudge cake. “I don’t know how you stay so thin, with your sweet tooth.”
I shrug. I don’t either. “I guess I just have a fast metabolism.”
Conversation turns to Christmas. His mother is too ill to host the big day, and she’s not up to coming to stay with either us or Kirsty, but Shane still has a duty to see her. I feel my mind switching off and I say mmm in all the right places as he talks about us going up the day after Boxing Day and staying a couple of nights. Kirsty, being the chosen one, in Shane’s own words, is going up with Jack and Jemima on Christmas Eve, and leaving on Boxing Day. Kirsty will be cooking Christmas dinner. Visits have to be staggered, otherwise their mother wouldn’t cope.
He drones on and I zone out, eating robotically, the fudge cake largely tasteless in my mouth. The faintest twinge of a migraine stabs inside my skull, as ominous as a distant black cloud on a clear day.
*
After a strangely disappointing lunch, where I felt more disconnected from him than ever, we take a walk along Broadgate beach.
The tide is out, so we are able to walk along the hard and wet, concrete-hued sand of the shoreline. When the tide is in the beach is tiny, the small portion of sand only accessible from the heart of Broadgate promenade opposite the traffic lights at the zebra crossing. But when the tide is out, the beach stretches for miles, flanked by high, rocky cliffs that gently rise upwards either side of the main beach, which is the only point where the sand is level with land.
If we continue walking in this direction on the compacted sand of the shoreline, it will take us to a set of zigzag steps set in the cliff face, up onto the main road into town – the road on which we live.
Shane puts his arm around my shoulders as we walk, pulling me tight against his body. He’s a little over six feet, but I am tall too, and I slot comfortably against him, our strides matching.
The easterly wind is bracing, and shivering, I huddle into my white duffel coat.
Next to me, Shane laughs. “Cold isn’t it? This wind will snatch your breath and steal your heart.”
Shane too is buttoned up tight in his plain black jacket. Our breath is like plumes of smoke in the cold air, and the sea churns angrily, the darkest shade of grey I’ve ever seen it.
It certainly isn’t the prettiest stretch of coastline in the UK – far from it – but I still find it invigorating. I don’t know why, but I have always felt a primal pull toward the ocean, and the ocean of Broadgate, specifically. This isn’t anything that I’ve ever said aloud, but there is something magical about this place, something otherworldly. The town’s seediness and decadence, the way its wealth and poverty coexists, side by side. Sometimes, I feel like I can sense its insane core, behind the benign exterior of amusement arcades and joke shops. I don’t just mean the people who live here are mad, I mean the town itself. I feel like Broadgate is a living, breathing entity.
I am fully aware how crazy that sounds. Maybe I am crazy, and this place fuels my madness.
“Maybe we can watch a movie this afternoon,” Shane suggests, cutting through my lonely, internal musings.
“Sure,” I say, but I’m not here in the moment with him anymore, not really.
I wonder how we appear to the outside world, if we look like any typical, youngish couple in love, or if my emotional distance is apparent to anyone who cares to look just that little bit closer.
“That new movie we both wanted to watch has come onto Netflix. You know, the one with that actor from that series you liked.”
Shane babbles on, but I’m barely listening anymore. I don’t feel at all right, as if I am a spectator of my own life, rather than the one living it. That I am nothing more than an actress reading lines from a script, and I am simultaneously watching myself from the side lines.
This dissociation is accompanied by a growing sense of unease. It isn’t anything that I can quite put my finger on, but the back of my neck is prickling, the flesh of my back tingling as if I am being watched.
I cast a furtive glance over my shoulder as Shane continues to speak about this film I have absolutely no recollection of expressing an interest in. The grey beach under the purple bruise of a sky is deserted, save for us, and one man and his dog a good distance behind us. There is nothing strange about this man, throwing a ball for his happy greyhound, bounding back and forth across the sand at the speed of light.
Shane grinds to a halt, forcing me to also come to a stop, seeing as his arm is wrapped around my shoulder.
“…also thought I might join this really cool, nudist stamp collecting club I saw advertised at the town hall.”
“Hmm, what?” I ask absently, unable to stop myself from twisting my head around to once again gaze at the man and his dog.
The dog is now dashing in and out of the surf, jumping in the air each time the cold, December sea laps around his skinny ankles, and even from this distance I can see the man is laughing.
There is absolutely nothing threatening about him, but the bad feeling remains, getting worse, not better.
“Tess,” Shane says, the hurt in his voice wrenching me fully back into the moment. “What is with you? You are so distracted.”
“I’m not…” I begin, then stop. Because I am, and there’s no point in lying about it.
“What is it? It’s the stag night tonight, isn’t it? If it’s bothering you that much, I’ll cancel.”
“No,” I say quickly. “You can’t do that to Andrew.”
“Then if it isn’t the stag night, what is it? Come on Tess, please, just talk to me. I’m worried about you, baby. You’ve been acting so strangely, lately, and all these migraines you’ve been getting…” His voice trails off as he peers searchingly into my eyes. “I’m worried about you, that’s all,” he finishes lamely.
As if on cue, fierce pain stabs inside my skull and the beach tilts around me, like I am on a rollercoaster. He has said the magic word and cursed me; migraine.
“Are you okay?”
Shane’s voice seems to drift towards me as if he is far away, not standing directly in front of me. I do my best to focus on him, willing my vision to snap back into focus.
“I’m fine, really. Bit of a headache, that’s all. Probably shouldn’t have had that wine with lunch.”
“You’re getting a migraine,” Shane says flatly. I think how disappointed he sounds.
“Maybe not,” I lie.
“Come on, let’s keep walking. Let’s get you home.”
; As he speaks, movement over his shoulder on the main portion of Broadgate Beach catches my eye. From where we are standing, the prom and main road overlooking the sand is too far away to properly make out details, but I am sure that I saw a figure darting up the short set of steps leading up onto the prom.
And I am equally sure that it was a tall, feminine figure in a bright-red, cropped leather jacket.
Heart hammering and mouth suddenly sucked dry of all moisture, I stare at the point where the steps meet the blue-railing-lined seafront, searching for that splash of red, but I can’t make much of anything out as it is too far away.
Shane twists his head behind himself, following my gaze.
“What is it? What are you looking at?”
He turns to face me again, and I manage a small, pained smile.
“Nothing,” I say softly. “Nothing at all.”
He studies me for a second longer with obvious concern, and then he is gently steering me up the beach, one arm around my shoulders guiding me like I am elderly, or an invalid.
“Come on sweetheart, let’s get you home.”
*
I emerge from the bathroom and a rather unpleasant dizzy spell to find Shane on his phone in the kitchen.
“When did it happen?” he is saying into the receiver as he paces up and down on the slate-tiled floor.
He falls silent and stops pacing as the person on the other end of the line talks.
“Is she okay?” he asks after a longish silence. He nods along to whatever reply he is hearing and resumes his pacing.
My educated guess is that it is Kirsty, and they are talking about their mother.
“Right,” Shane says, glaring at me with large eyes, his expression pained. He nods along again, then says, “I can’t get out of the stag night, tonight. I’m going up Saturday, anyway.” He continues making mmm noises, then says, “I’ll pass you over.”
In Spite: A terrifying psychological thriller with a shocking twist you won't see coming Page 13