Unfaithful: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller
Page 26
I point at a package on the desk. A UPS midsize box.
“What’s this?” I ask June.
“I don’t know. It came for you last week. How long are you staying, by the way?”
I pick it up, turn it around. “I’m going back tonight. You want to join us for your break? We’d love to have you.”
“Yes, please!” June beams. “I’ve been brushing up on my chess skills. I can’t wait to try them on Matti.”
I laugh. Rob has taught Matti to play and now Matti’s obsessed. And he’s very good. He played all the time with June over Christmas and again when she came over last month, and she only beat him once.
“How are they?” she asks, as I retrieve a pair of scissors from the drawer and cut through the tape.
I stop, tilt my head at her. “You know, last time you were there, I heard Matti laugh for the first time. He sounded the way he used to. It was the most beautiful sound.” She nods, and her eyes water. “And Carla has made some friends and there’s a light returning in her eyes.” I take a breath. “I think they’re going to be okay.”
“And you?” she asks. But it’s a joke between us, because I reply, “I’m okay, and you?” And she’ll say, “I’m okay, and you?” until we laugh. It’s stupid, but it’s our stupid. It’s all part of our way of coping.
It’s taken a lot of therapy for June to be where she is now. She’s only just returned to work, and she’s been promoted to senior administrator in the English department, but she doesn’t know how long she’ll stay. Not very long, is my bet.
It’s taken a lot of therapy for me, too, but I have my kids, and Rob. And I never say this to anyone, but I miss Luis. I miss him so much some nights I cry myself to sleep.
June gets to her feet and brushes her hands. “I should get back to it. Lunch?”
“Yes please.”
“Okay. I’ll come get you around one.”
After she’s gone I finally open the UPS box. Inside is an envelope with my name on it, and below it is another, smaller, cardboard box, but this one is different. It’s old and battered, like something you might have kept in an attic for the last fifty years. It isn’t sealed and I lift the flaps.
It’s the smell that hits me. An image of my old school flashes into my mind and for a surreal moment I am transported to another place and another time.
I pick up the letter and slide my finger inside its flap.
Dear Dr. Sanchez,
You wouldn’t remember me but we met once. My name is Vernon and I used to share Alex’s condo in Tremont. In the chaos of moving out I accidentally packed some of Alex’s things, and everything has been in storage until now, which is why I haven’t returned these to you before. These notebooks belonged to Alex but as they bear your name I am returning them to you.
Sincerely,
Vernon Tuckey
I open the box again. Inside are plain, wire-bound notebooks of varying colors. I know the style well—I used the same when I was at school. But these are old and musty, discolored in places.
I pull out the first notebook from the pile and open the page and there’s a moment when it feels like the room tilts as I read my own name, in my own childish handwriting, on the first page: Anna Miller
I snatch Vernon’s letter from the table and read it again. …but as they bear your name…
This makes no sense. And how would Vernon know my maiden name? I pull all the notebooks out, more frantic now. Twelve of them in total.
The Pentti-Stone conjecture, a solution, by Anna Miller
It’s like reading another girl’s old schoolwork. Pages and pages of mathematical equations in small, dense handwriting that starts neat in the early pages but seems to trip over itself by the last ones. Lines and lines of calculations framed by doodles of flowers, round petals floating over the margins, sometimes Hope’s name with a little heart to it, my mother’s diagonal flick of the pen across the page.
I did this? Yes, I did. I know it, but I don’t. I recognize the sequences, the logic, the rationality, the inferences, but I recognize them from Alex’s notebooks, and I am shocked that, at the time, I didn’t recognize my own work.
Then I see why Vernon returned them to me. Inside the cover page of a number of them is written: Dr. Anna Sanchez, senior lecturer, mathematics department, Locke Weidman University.
I know that handwriting and it’s not mine, it’s Alex’s. I flick through every notebook, every page, more frantic now. They are riddled with his notes, exclamation marks, excited markings. So close! Yes! No! Why?
I lift the old cardboard box and study it, looking for a clue. On its side, in blue marker, is written: $2 the lot.
I vaguely remember when I moved out of home to go to college, my mother had a yard sale of all the things I was leaving behind, including my textbooks. She could’ve written this. This could well be her handwriting. This box would have contained my math books too; she would have packed the whole lot together. How it came to be in Alex’s possession, I don’t think I’ll ever know.
I go through each notebook again, one by one, and I am shocked at how far I had come to solve the Pentti-Stone. But I remember distinctly showing these to my mother, my heart quickening with anticipation and her shaking her head: “No, Anna. That’s not right. Try again.”
But it was right. How could she not see it? Did she deny it on purpose, because she didn’t want to live up to her end of the bargain? If you solve the Pentti-Stone then you can go and play. She never believed I could solve it. She never bothered to check my work. She just slashed the pen across the page with barely a glance. No, that’s not right, try harder.
And how could I not remember these? Is this what trauma does? Makes you block things out? I remember nothing that is in these notebooks other than the pain and the frustration they still evoke now. The moment my mother released me from working on the Pentti-Stone conjecture, I banished the content from my mind but I could not forget the anger, the sadness, and I never wanted to think of it again, until Alex brought it up, and then I had to.
I’d come so close. As close as Alex was when he showed me his own drafts. Which makes sense, since they were mine. I remember him coming to the university—because of me, he’d said. He’d read a paper I’d published, a perfectly ordinary paper on Brownian motion, a topic completely unrelated to the Pentti-Stone.
“I must do my thesis here! With you!” he’d said. Of course he had. He already knew he was going to tackle the Pentti-Stone when he came to Locke Weidman. He was smart enough to know what these notebooks contained: the solution, except for one missing piece. He must have come to the conclusion he couldn’t finish it alone, so he tracked me down. And irony of ironies, I finished it for him. I came up with the last piece of the puzzle. I called him in the middle of the night. What if…? Then I let him take all the credit because I’d only contributed that tiny morsel, believing he’d done everything else.
He hadn’t. I had. And after that, I was no longer needed.
I’ve changed my mind…
I go through them again, slowly this time. Then I open the last notebook to the last page of equations. There are still blank pages, untouched, at the back of that notebook, and I grab a biro from the holder and without having to look it up, I proceed to write down the last piece of the proof.
The letter I write to the Forrester Foundation, two hours later, is not the one I thought I’d write. It’s a lot shorter, for one thing, and it makes my heart sing, for another.
Dear Jack,
I trust the enclosed twelve notebooks comply with your requirement for supporting documentation detailing my process to arrive at the solution.
With gratitude and kind regards,
Dr. Anna Sanchez, née Miller
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Books by Natalie Barelli
Unfaithful
The Housekeeper
The Accident
The Loyal Wife
Missing Molly
After He Killed Me
Until I Met Her
A Letter from Natalie
Dear reader,
Firstly, a heartfelt thank-you from me for choosing to read Unfaithful. If you would like to keep up to date with my new releases, please sign up to my newsletter. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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Some books are easier to write than others. Some of them come almost fully formed in the writer’s imagination before putting pen to paper or finger to the keyboard.
In writing Unfaithful, I chose to begin with this idea: Can our childhood experiences inform our adult choices to the point where we would break the law? Commit fraud, for example? Can Anna’s actions, in taking credit for work that wasn’t hers, be forgiven once we understand that being the best, being brilliant, winning prizes, was the only way she could get her mother to love her?
This novel was far from fully formed by the time I put finger to keyboard and after that initial idea, the story took many twists and turns. If you’ve come this far, you’ll know that idea made up only one small part of the plot. But it was the germ of the story for me. After that, I let the characters tell me the rest. I hope they entertained you (and surprised you!) as much as they did me.
Reviews, as you probably know, are the best way for readers to discover our books, and if you enjoyed Unfaithful I would be hugely grateful if you would leave a review. It makes a massive difference, so thank you.
Until next time,
Natalie
nataliebarelli.com
Acknowledgments
It takes one person to write a book, but it takes a lot of people to write a better book, and I’m massively lucky to have some brilliant people helping me along the way. This is where I get to thank them properly.
My favorite mathematician, Laura De Carli: I can’t thank you enough for sharing your insight into the world of university mathematics, for your detailed answers to my many questions and for all your great suggestions.
The very kind and always patient Mark Freyberg, for answering all my law-related questions. This is the fourth time you are in these pages, Mark, and I am hugely grateful to you.
Jessie Botterill, editor extraordinaire, thank you so much for your patience, your enthusiasm, for fixing up all the bad bits and coming up with all the good bits. I can’t wait for us to do it again.
My writing buddy, Debra Lynch: thank you for being such a great support and for making me laugh! (A lot!)
My family and my friends, for being such a generous cheering squad, especially my husband for supporting me above and beyond in every way.
And to you, dear reader, for reading this book. It means the world.
Published by Bookouture in 2020
An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.bookouture.com
Copyright © Natalie Barelli, 2020
Natalie Barelli has asserted her right to be identified
as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-80019-094-8
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.