Unfaithful: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller

by Natalie Barelli

  I hold my breath and keep my head down as I slip pass. I catch a flash of dark hair and the glimmer of a silver and purple ring on an index finger.

  “Sorry,” I mumble.

  I step out onto the sidewalk and run to my car.

  Six

  I shove the beanie in the glove compartment and drive off. My heart is still pounding. Every sense is heightened. Every sound is a roar. Even the breeze on my skin feels like a hurricane.

  Did anybody see me? I visualize the wall opposite Alex’s window. It’s a plain brick wall, the side of an old warehouse building. No windows that I can remember. The alley is narrow, empty except for trash cans and the dumpster. He didn’t make a sound when he fell, which is possibly the strangest part. How long was I in the apartment after that? I don’t know. Two minutes? Five maybe?

  I try to remember if I told anyone I was going to see Alex, but no, I don’t think so. Then I think Don’t think so isn’t good enough so I rack my brain, retrace my steps. There’s the call, of course, from this morning, but that’s not unusual.

  In the parking lot back at the university, I pull out the letter, as if, somehow, that’s going to tell me something. I smooth its creases against my thigh and begin to read it again just as a loud bang above me makes my heart somersault.

  “You okay, ma’am?”

  It’s the attendant, or maybe a security guard: I can’t tell, but he’s wearing a uniform. I realize he tapped the roof of my car to get my attention. I wind my window down. “Yes, thank you.”

  “Okay, then.”

  How long have I been sitting here? I tear the letter in as many pieces as I can and grab the beanie from the glove compartment. I shove the lot in the trashcan near the elevator, then make my way upstairs, drop my things off and go to teach my next class.

  I am normally a very engaged teacher. I ask questions as I go, make sure I’m not losing anyone along the way. But today, I teach the class on autopilot. I don’t even snap at Melanie—one of my brightest first years, but with an attitude problem—when she puts one leg up on the foldaway tablet arm of her chair. About a third of my class is young women, which is not unusual in the first year. They’ll fall away, though, most of them anyway, over the next three years. At the beginning of term, I usually play a mental game where I try to guess which ones will stick it out. Melanie is one of them: she’s so smart, and I really believe she loves the subjects, but she puts people off with her insolence. Especially me. She seems to have zeroed in on the fact that I’m a bit of a pushover and unconvincing in my admonitions. Whenever I tell her off—half-heartedly, as she scares me a little—she’ll double down and pop a bubble of gum moments later.

  At one stage I hear her scoff something like, Hello? and I realize I haven’t said anything in a while. That’s because I heard muffled voices out in the corridor and I thought, This is it. They know. They’re going to burst in the door and announce that Alex is dead. Except it doesn’t happen and the voices move on.

  I get through the rest of the class and then walk quickly to the staff room. I grab my tuna and egg salad from the fridge so that I can pretend to eat it back at my desk. I say pretend, because I don’t touch it. I can’t eat anything, let alone tuna and egg, but I tell myself that that’s what I would be doing normally. So that’s what I’m doing. I pull the lid off the Tupperware, poke at the food with my fork, close it again and shove it in the trash, container and all.

  I go through my tasks during the rest of the day like I’m in suspended animation—I almost have to physically jerk myself forward at regular intervals just to keep moving. At one stage Geoff pops his head in and I think, This is really it. He says the name, Alex, but he doesn’t say, dead, and I blink in confusion.

  “What did you say?”

  “I was asking if Alex is doing a presentation next Tuesday for the panel…?”

  I picture him lying behind the dumpster. Why hasn’t he been found yet? How long is it going to take? Or maybe he has, but no one will tell us. Could that happen? Should I say something soon? Something like, I was expecting to hear from Alex, he’s not answering my calls. I wonder if he’s all right?

  “Is he?” Geoff asks again.

  Post-graduate students are asked to do a presentation every three months to evaluate their progress. They’re not compulsory, but you’d have to have a good reason not to attend. Alex didn’t do the last two because by then he’d decided to switch his topic and he wasn’t ready to disclose that. We’d discussed this one, coming up, just last week.

  “I can’t get you another dispensation. It’s getting awkward, but I’ll think of something,” I said at the time.

  “No, let’s do it.”

  “Really? Okay, but I’m surprised. I thought you didn’t want to discuss it publicly?”

  He’d grinned. “I’ll present on the theta and zeta functions. That’s what everyone thinks I’m working on, anyway.”

  “Oh.” I’d nodded, not hugely comfortable about this. It’s one thing to keep your work under wraps, it’s quite another to deliberately mislead the entire department.

  “Do you have something new to present?”

  “No.”

  “So how’s that going to work?”

  He paused, then he turned to me, his face bright, like he’d just thought of something. “You could do it. You could write up something in no time! It’s your field, right?”

  He hadn’t just thought of it obviously. He’d known he was going to ask me. But I told him, no. In no uncertain terms. Even worse than lying to the department, it’s downright cheating. “Categorically out of the question,” I said. “And you may not have noticed this, but I’m kinda busy, Alex.”

  “But don’t you see? That way, they’ll leave me alone! Otherwise they’ll start to ask questions! They’ll suspect something. Or maybe they’ll drop me from the program!”

  “No, they won’t. I’m your supervisor. Only I get to drop you.” Which wasn’t strictly true. But saying no to Alex is like arguing with a particularly willful three year old. He begged, he sulked, he got angry, he pleaded, he threatened, he sulked again, and, in the end, I said yes because I just wanted the conversation to end. So I did the work. I stayed up until four in the morning to do it. I would have given myself an A+ for it, too.

  Geoff clears his throat.

  “Sorry. Yes. He’s confirmed that to me. He’ll be there.”

  He nods. “Good. I look forward to it.” He’s about to leave but stops, turns around. “You okay?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “You just seem a long way away.”

  “Sorry. Just tired.”

  “You look tired. You’re not upset about the promotion, are you?” And it occurs to me then that he didn’t even bother to tell me himself. Nobody told me, except for Mila, and that doesn’t count. She was just gloating.

  “No, I’m not upset about the promotion.”

  I wait until I am back in my car to have a cry. Then I drive home, and when I walk in the door, into the noise of my kids preparing Carla’s play, there’s a moment where I almost convince myself it never happened.

  “Hello?” I say, as I move towards the living room.

  “No!” they shout. “Don’t come in!”

  “Okay! Sorry! Where’s your dad?”

  “In the shed!” they shout.

  I stride across the garden to the shed and stand in the doorway. Luis is bent over his bicycle and for a moment I’m almost tempted to blurt it out. Something horrible happened today.

  “Hey, babe, how was your day?” he says, without looking up.

  It occurs to me, not for the first time, that a certain distance has crept between us recently. It’s the way he says, How was your day? like he’s not actually interested, or he’s too distracted to really listen. But maybe I’m over-thinking it. Maybe it’s because he’s been so busy. And yet, right now, as I stare at him in silence, I’d give anything for him to look up, to see me, to ask me what is wrong even though I can’t tell h
im. Just so I know he sees me.

  But he doesn’t.

  “Good,” I say, finally. “I’ll see you inside.”

  The laundry is still sitting in the washing machine. I could call out Carla on it, but I don’t have the energy and I just shove it in the dryer, then proceed to make dinner.

  Luis returns, opens a bottle of wine and gets plates out. Normally—a word that right now makes me want to hoot with laughter—we eat together at the table. I always insist on that. But because of the kids’ play, which luckily is only twenty minutes or so, we’re eating at the coffee table in the lounge.

  I go through the motions. I laugh when Luis laughs, clap when Luis claps. I’m unable to comprehend what’s happening but I do my darnedest to hide it, and I’m grateful that I have something to look at other than the images in my own mind. When the performance is over, we give feedback, which in my case consists of repeating everything Luis says, but with different words, and telling them how wonderful they both were. Afterwards, they go to their room to finish homework and Luis says he has to go back to the studio to work.

  “I have so much to do,” he says.

  “I know,” I say. “I understand.” But deep down I wish he would stay. We could sit on the couch and he would put his arm around me, and we could talk of other things, simple things, family things, and I could forget about Alex and maybe even pretend it never happened.

  Then it hits me, the enormity of what I’ve done, and for a moment I can’t catch my breath. I mumble something about going to the bathroom and I sit there on the edge of the bathtub, my head in my hands. What have I done? What’s the matter with me? I should never have bolted like this. I should have called an ambulance, explained what happened. I bet his system is full of drugs. I didn’t need to tell them about the letter but I didn’t think. I panicked, and now it’s too late, because there’s no way I can tell anyone now. What would I say? I forgot? I prevaricated? Then changed my mind?

  When I get back to the living room, Luis is shrugging his jacket on.

  “I’ll be at the studio till late. Don’t wait up,” he says, then takes off on his bicycle. Later, after the kids go to bed, I watch an episode of Martha’s Vineyard Mysteries. I can’t concentrate on the plot—I just watch the scenery, the boats, the sea, the pretty houses—and by the time Luis comes home, I’ve worked myself into such a state of anxiety that I have to pretend to be asleep so he can’t see the fear in my eyes.

  Seven

  The next day, and I’m doing it all over again. Except that I have not slept, so my brain is frazzled. Sometimes it zaps, literally zaps, with a sharp noise like someone has cracked a whip inside my skull.

  I’ve carefully made up my face, and put on my colorful Mona print shirtdress. I even made pancakes for breakfast. Matti shrieked with excitement and Carla gave me her brightest smile. I love seeing them happy. I love it so much I almost cried.

  “Knock, knock! Ready for the staff meeting?”

  Rohan stands in the doorway. I stare at him for a second too long and he lifts an eyebrow. Still no news about Alex. “Oh, staff meeting. Right.” I’d completely forgotten. I make a show of checking my watch. “Wow, ten o’clock already. Be right there.” I expect him to leave but he doesn’t, so I get to my feet and I do what I always do, which is to reach for my laptop. But then I think, You know what? Forget it. Let someone else take minutes for a change. But I change my mind back because I need to act normal. I grab it and carry it under my arm.

  “Sorry about the professorship,” Rohan says. I turn to look at him, unexpected tears nipping at the back of my eyes; partly because I know he means it, partly because I’ve been holding back tears for hours now, and they’re threatening to be set off at the smallest display of emotion. I rest my hand on his arm.

  “Forget it. The extra work isn’t worth the money, anyway.”

  He laughs. “You have a point.”

  “But, thank you, it’s all good.” Let’s face it, the professorship is the least of my problems.

  I get through the rest of the day with no news, and by this point I’m seriously considering calling the police myself. I’m marking papers with the overhead light on. It’s raining outside and it’s getting cool, so I have an old Locke Weidman sweatshirt on because my office has a thin, horizontal window below the ceiling—more like a vent, really, the type that you tilt open by turning a crank—but it’s been stuck for ages now so I can’t close it.

  The door is open, as it usually is, and June appears. She holds on to the handle and something in her demeanor makes me sure that finally, this is it. I hope I am ready. I don’t feel ready.

  “Have you heard?” she asks softly.

  “Heard what?”

  A beat. “About Alex?”

  She’s unusually pale and when she purses her lips together the corners of her mouth pull down like she’s going to cry. I sit back in my chair and put the pen down on the desk. “Is something wrong?”

  She takes one step closer and quickly glances behind her down the corridor before closing the door.

  “He… Alex… he’s dead. I’m so sorry.”

  I flinch. “Alex? My Alex?” I ask this with a hand on my chest and my eyes opened wide. Carla did that last night as part of her scene and I made a mental note of it, then rehearsed it myself in front of the bathroom mirror this morning.

  June nods. “Yes.”

  I cock my head at her. “No, he’s not. I spoke to him just yesterday.” This was true, of course. There would be a record of that and I have just put it on the record that I am probably the last person to speak to him and I’m not hiding anything.

  “He’s dead, Anna. They found him a few hours ago.”

  Her words conjure the image I’ve been trying to banish from my mind. I feel my chest compress the air out of my lungs, and there’s a moment where I’m not sure I can get it back in. I sit there, looking at her, suddenly unable to speak. The room is airless in spite of the broken crank. Then I realize I’m not asking any questions. I find my voice again.

  “Who told you? Who found him?”

  “The police called. Val in student services told me just now.”

  I cover my face with my hands. “Oh my god.”

  June comes around my desk and touches my shoulder gently. “It’s not your fault, Anna.” I look up so quickly it hurts my head.

  “He was not well. Everyone knows that. There was nothing you could have done.”

  I breathe out again, slowly. “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Maybe I pushed him too hard.” I stare at her in shock: did I really just say that? I put my hands over my face and pretend to cry but suddenly I’m laughing and I can’t stop. Luckily, tears are streaming down my face anyway.

  June scans the room for a chair, then pulls the one from the other side of the desk around to my side. She sits so close to me our knees almost touch. I’ve never been this close to June before. I barely notice her, to be honest. I realize now how pretty she is, with her bouncy black curls and her curvy shape. She looks younger than me, but I think that’s because she’s in better shape than I am; we’re both nudging forty.

  “That has nothing to do with it,” she says, and for a moment I forgot what we were talking about. “You know what Alex was like, how difficult it was for him. He was depressed…”

  I stare at her for a moment. “How would you know that?”

  “He told me. He was worried about how obsessive he had become. He didn’t sleep for days at a time. I don’t know how he managed, frankly.” I stare at her in disbelief. Alex was my student, my protégé, and yet June who, as the faculty executive assistant, isn’t even part of the teaching staff, knew so much about his inner demons.

  What else did she know?

  “He told you all this? When?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Over the last few weeks. You saw what it was like. Did you see how much weight he’d lost? Did you see how he changed? He would get over-excited
, too much so, like he was on drugs. He’d say to me, ‘June, one day you’ll be able to say you knew me when!’ Then the next day he wanted to quit and go sailing for a year. To be honest, I never thought he was cut out for academic research, not at this level anyway. He was too… unstable.”

  “How did he die?”

  June’s face looks full of pain when she says it: “I’m so sorry, Anna. He jumped. Out the window of his apartment.”

  Bile rises and for a moment I think I’m going to be sick, right there on the dark blue carpet. “I thought you were going to say he took an overdose or something.”

  “I know.”

  “But jumping out of a window?” I feel as pale as June looks. “He’s really gone?” I ask, god knows why. Maybe because hearing it from someone else makes it real. Even more real than yesterday, when I looked down at his bleeding and broken body wedged behind a dumpster three floors below.

  June says something else but I don’t hear the words, only the sound of blood pulsing inside my ears. Her mouth is still moving when I step out of the room and almost run down the stairs and around the corner to the parking lot. I drop my keys before I can open the driver’s door of my car, where I spend the next twenty minutes with my forehead resting on the steering wheel, hyperventilating, vaguely recognizing the symptoms of a panic attack. I can’t even tell if it’s because Alex is dead or because of the magnitude of what I’ve done.

  Eight

  I have a longing to be with Luis, to rest my head on his shoulder and hear his soothing voice. I reach for my bag on the passenger seat and fish around for my cellphone, but the call goes straight to voicemail, which I half-expected. He always turns off his phone when he’s working.

  “Hi, it’s me. Can you call me back?” Then I add in a smaller voice: “I know you’re busy, but do you think you could come home early?” I pause, about to tell him about Alex—Remember Alex? He’s dead—but instead I just say, “I miss you.”