The First Wife: An unputdownable page turner with a twist

by Jill Childs

  My mother said, ‘She didn’t invite you though, did she?’

  I hesitated. She never did like Caroline, not even when we were children. You make too much of her, she used to say, her lip curled. She’s only friends when it suits her.

  ‘I didn’t expect her to. She knows I couldn’t go.’

  Her sniff was audible down the phone line. ‘She could have paid your fare, if she really wanted you there. She’s got the money. How long have you two been friends?’

  ‘Mum.’ I shook my head at the empty hallway. ‘Don’t be like that.’

  A pause. ‘Well, good for her.’ Her tone was sharp.

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. I knew what she was thinking. She’d stopped asking about Andrew. Those conversations never went well.

  After a while she said, more thoughtfully: ‘Anyway, who knows? It mightn’t be the fairy-tale you think.’

  Barely a month after that, my mother was gone, killed by a drunk driver who mounted the pavement as she headed for the bus stop after her shift at the hospital. My best friend. My champion, always. And I was heading home to look after Dad. Just for a while, I told myself, just until he found his feet. Perhaps I was testing Andrew too, looking back at it. Moving away to see if he came after me, if he finally realised what he was missing. Of course, he didn’t.

  Now I said, ‘I can’t believe you came back.’

  Caroline shrugged, eyes on the road. ‘It’s Lucy, really. I love Hong Kong but it’s not great for kids.’

  She navigated another tight bend. The road was barely wide enough now for two cars to pass and the light was thickening as dusk grew. A salty tang reached me. We must be nearing the sea.

  ‘How old is she now?’ I was nervous about seeing her. I’d saved every photograph Caroline sent me over the years. There hadn’t been many. The scrunched-face baby, swaddled in white linen. The toddler, beaming, face smeared with chocolate. The two-and-a-half year old in shorts and t-shirt, shoulder length hair in bunches, eyes wide as she laughed. The sight of her stirred something in me, a longing I’d now shut away. ‘Three?’

  ‘Three and a half.’ She kept her eyes on the road.

  I nodded, thinking about that and wondering where she was. How could Caroline have a pre-school child and still manage to appear so glamorous, so free? ‘Is she in nursery?’

  ‘No, we’ve got a live-in nanny. Tanya. Bulgarian. She’s not ideal but, you know, needs must.’

  I tried to imagine what it must be like for Lucy, brought back from the luxury of expat life in Hong Kong to a wild corner of a country she barely knows. ‘Has she settled ok?’

  ‘I guess so.’ We lapsed back into silence for a while and I only realised that she was still thinking about Hong Kong when she suddenly said, ‘Shame you never came out to see us. You missed a trick.’

  I didn’t answer. She seemed to skim effortlessly over the fact I’d have struggled to afford it. Even if I could have, she’d never really invited me. Just vague lines at the end of her lengthy emails which hinted at a visit but never seemed to mean it.

  I tell you, sunset from the Peak is something else. You should come out and see it some day!

  Or her passionate descriptions of Chinese New Year and the massive firework displays which lit the harbour. We had the bank’s boat this year – the junk. We crammed twenty-five on board. Let me tell you, free-flowing champagne and bobbing boats do not mix!

  The life she described sounded so very different from mine.

  I didn’t regret moving home. Dad leaned on me so much after Mum died. I didn’t have the heart to abandon him. He needed someone to shop and cook and keep him company and then, just when I thought he might start to manage, he had his first heart attack and there was no going back.

  I found office work with a local charity, but the pay was poor. And as the years passed and Dad’s health deteriorated, it became impossible to leave him, even for a few days.

  She swung off down a bumpy track, setting the car jolting and lurching.

  ‘Hold on to your hat!’

  I gripped the door strap as the car threw me to this side and that. I opened my mouth to say something, a way of asking her to slow down that might sound like an ironic joke: ‘steady on, old girl!’ Or something similar. But her eyes were gleaming, thrilled, and I shut it again.

  She negotiated a tight bend at speed.

  ‘Eyes front! Any minute now!’

  I hung on grimly and peered forward through the gathering gloom. She took another bend, navigating the rough drive through a copse of wind-battered trees. They arched sideways, bending gracefully away from the coast.

  A moment later, we drove through a set of open iron gates, set in a high boundary wall. At once, the wild scrubland outside gave way to more tended grounds: a small wood with oaks and beeches and rows of bushes between the conifers. The drive turned from mud to gravel. She opened her window a crack and cold, salted air flew in, with the gunfire crunch of the wheels flying over loose stones.

  ‘I keep telling Dom to make this a proper road,’ she said. ‘And cut down these trees. It’s such a jungle.’ Something shifted in her mood as she drove. She seemed lighter, happy to be home. ‘You know Dom. Airs and graces. He thinks he’s the Country Squire out here. You can imagine.’

  I couldn’t. I’d never met Dominic. I wondered what he’d make of me. From everything Caroline had told me, we had very little in common.

  I shivered. She swung the car to the left, spraying stones, and drew to a halt in front of the house. I sat and stared. It loomed dark and imposing against the fading sky. It wasn’t big enough to be a mansion, but it had the presence of one, with a turret to one side and a single high chimney. Sloping, uneven stretches of roof, gleaming in the last rays of sunlight, reached tiled arms protectively across the top of the façade. Large sash windows and, high above, attic windows striped with bars. The porch stood proudly out from the centre of the house, waiting for us.

  Caroline had already unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed out, slamming the door carelessly behind her, letting in another sweep of cold sea air. I couldn’t bring myself to move. I didn’t know why, but I was suddenly afraid. I didn’t want to leave the safety of the car. I didn’t belong in their world. I wouldn’t fit. I couldn’t pretend to be like them when I wasn’t. The weight of the day pressed down on me. Just this morning, I’d woken at home, the family home I would never see again. For a moment, I felt utterly bereft and bit my lip to stop my mouth from crumpling.

  Caroline opened my door, my rucksack on her shoulder. The raw salt breeze hit me again as the door opened. It carried the beat and scrape of the sea, of waves crashing distantly on a pebbled beach. I shivered.

  ‘Well, come on. You can’t sit here all night.’ Caroline nodded back towards the boot. ‘Just bring the bag. Dom can get the cases.’

  She led me inside in a flurry of keys and locks. I stood there in the broad hall, breathing in the smell of the house. Fresh paint layered over an underlying mustiness that spoke of old brickwork and a hint of salty damp. It was too large to feel cosy, but it seemed a refuge, a shelter from the rising wind outside.

  She gestured up the stairs. ‘That’s the guest room. First floor, right ahead. There’s an en suite if you want to freshen up. Hope it’s ok. Tea?’

  She bustled ahead and took the second door on the right, snapping on the light as she entered. A tap ran and then a filling kettle gurgled and its lid banged closed. Her footsteps were quick.

  I heaved the rucksack onto my shoulder, picked up the bag from the hall floor and set off up the stairs. It was a sweeping staircase, designed to impress, which turned back on itself at the first half landing and continued upwards towards the main body of the house. I stepped forward through the first door, dropped my bags and found the lights.

  It was a generously proportioned guest room, freshly painted in light green. Large windows ran down the far side and to the left. In the centre, against the right-hand wall, a King-sized bed dominated th
e space. A pink and white silk spread, embroidered with flowers and elephants, lay across it. A wall hanging, edged with green and brown, hung overhead. I went forward for a closer look. It was neat hand-work, embroidered with the small figures of dozens of children, flying kites, chasing each other, playing with balls and hoops.

  I blinked. It was beautiful and clearly, like the silk bedspread, one of their Hong Kong treasures. The sight of it washed me with sudden sad longing. For the sense of that exotic place, so far away, which was familiar to them and which I never expected to see. For their easy affluence which made all this possible. Even for the children I’d always wanted and needed to accept now I might never have.

  I pulled myself away and stepped further across the plush carpet towards the windows. The drama of the view hit me with such force that I groped for the window seat and sat heavily on the cushions there. I’d had a sense of approaching the sea as we drove in, but I hadn’t realised it was so close, right there at my feet. I was looking straight down a sheer cliff to a jagged cove far below where waves crashed and foamed as they ran across black shining pebbles, then bubbled and rattled as they receded, shaking the stones together like handfuls of dry bones.

  I craned forward, made dizzy by the sense of the earth so suddenly giving way to nothingness. My forehead pressed against the glass as I peered right down, trying to see what was directly below. A thin line of shrubbery skirted the back of the house and, seen from this angle, it seemed to be all that separated the building from the edge of the cliff. I ran my eyes along it, tracing the line to the far corner of the house and the grassy bank there, a mown lawn which sloped down towards a low fence with a wooden gate which separated the lawn from a steep path, disappearing between the rocks and patches of wild grass, down towards the sea.

  ‘What’s she got in here? The family silver?’

  A man’s voice in the hall. Deep and rich and well-educated.

  Caroline’s voice from the kitchen, low and amused: ‘I very much doubt it.’

  I crept to the door of my room and peered down the edge of the bannisters, hiding in the shadows. A joke at my expense. Of course there was no family silver. I wasn’t from that sort of family.

  I hesitated there, hurt, wondering what to do, when the man headed up the stairs towards me, carrying my suitcases. It was too late to move. He looked up at me in surprise.

  ‘You alright there? Got stuck?’ He smiled and his teeth glistened. He looked stylish in a polo shirt and designer jeans.

  ‘Hello.’ I forced a smile, embarrassed at being caught.

  ‘You must be long-lost Sophie. The invisible friend.’ He set down a case, pinned it against the stair with his knee and put out his hand. ‘Dominic.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’ His grip was firm and warm. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m very well, thank you. How are you?’

  His tone was playful. He picked up the case again, passed me and took my luggage through to the guest bedroom. I followed after him.

  ‘I love the house.’

  ‘Do you?’ He set the cases on the carpet and took a step towards the window, looking out to sea. It was grey, the sky already heavy with rain. The waves swelled as the wind whipped the water. ‘So do I. I don’t think Caro’s convinced. A bit wild and woolly for her.’ He hesitated, looking down at the water. ‘But then I’m not stuck out here all the time. Just weekends.’

  I tried to remember Caroline’s emails. You’ll love it here, she’d written. It couldn’t be more different from Hong Kong. Please come and stay. Please.

  That was months ago when they’d first moved back and Dad was in hospital, his battered heart exhausted. I’m on the home stretch, love, he’d said, his voice barely a whisper, tubes everywhere, his skin papery and thin. He was only just seventy, but he looked older. His breath was laboured and came in rasps. Even squeezing my hand, when I sat at his bedside, my fingers wrapped round his, seemed to tire him. I think he knew then. He knew the next heart attack would finish him.

  Remembering, I swallowed, looking too at the surging water. ‘Thanks for letting me come.’

  He shrugged. ‘You’re welcome. I hope you’re not too bored out here. We don’t get many visitors.’ He gave me a thoughtful look and I wondered how much Caroline had told him about me. ‘Anyway, I’m glad I caught you. I’m afraid I’m heading back to London shortly. I stay up there during the week. Needs must.’ He hesitated. I sensed that he was wondering if I’d still be here when he came back but didn’t quite like to ask. The truth was, I wasn’t sure myself. Caroline’s initial invitation had been so vague – do come soon! stay as long as you like! – but that was months ago and my arrival had clearly caught her off-guard.

  He cleared his throat, then changed the subject. ‘Looks like Caro’s just landed her first client! Did she tell you? Burrells. The hotel chain.’

  He saw my blank look. Caroline never struck me as an entrepreneur. She didn’t need to work. Her father had made a small fortune and she’d inherited the lot. She made her HR jobs sound more like socialising than work and she’d packed it all in once she and Dominic got engaged.

  ‘Hasn’t she told you about the business?’ He shook his head. ‘Well, I won’t steal her thunder. She’ll want to tell you herself.’ His smile was conspiratorial and I looked away. It wasn’t just his looks, although he was certainly handsome. He had presence. I felt as if I’d know without looking if he entered a room. He was one of those men who changed the air, raised the temperature, just by being there.

  ‘There’s tea down here. Are you two coming?’ Caroline’s voice, hollering up the stairs.

  I jumped. He saw it and laughed.

  ‘On our way!’ He breezed past me, taking his energy with him, galloping down ahead of me, two stairs at a time, then turning back into the rear of the house and disappearing.

  I made my way down more slowly and crossed the hall. The kitchen was deserted.

  ‘Caroline?’

  ‘In here!’

  I found her in their large family sitting room, which ran down the side of the house furthest from the sea. It had a protruding alcove, squared off with windows along three sides. Plush crimson curtains were tied back, framing the view inland toward the woods.

  Caroline had spread a white linen cloth on the square table there and set out a tea-tray with a plate of multi-coloured macaroons. She gestured me into one of the low chairs with wooden arms at either end of the alcove. It faced away from the road, towards the cliff and the sea beyond. She looked in the opposite direction, back towards the drive and the grounds.

  She had just finished pouring tea when Dominic strode in, wearing a fleece-lined car coat. He reached a hand for a green macaroon and hovered between us, eating it.

  ‘Better be off, darling,’ he said between bites. He bent down and kissed her on the lips. A lingering kiss. I glanced away. ‘Be good.’

  ‘Miss you. Hurry home.’

  He finally pulled himself away from her and nodded to me. ‘Lovely to meet you, Sophie. Sorry to dash.’

  Caroline’s adoring eyes followed him across the room and out of the door. Something changed in her face once he’d vanished from sight, a light dimmed.

  She caught me looking at her. ‘Work,’ she said, as if I needed an explanation. ‘He loves being down here. He hates tearing himself away. He just has to. It’s the price we pay.’

  A moment later, high-pitched laughter sounded outside. I twisted round to look. Dominic was swinging a little girl in his arms, raising her high over his head, then sweeping her down in an arc, skimming her just above the ground between his open legs. Her long, brown hair flew in all directions. Her mouth was open in an excited squeal. I smiled.

  ‘Lucy?’ I hardly needed to ask, but she looked so much older than the photographs. The last one must have been a year ago.

  Caroline smiled too. ‘She misses him during the week.’

  She didn’t move and a few minutes later, the noises abated and they disappeared. I turned
back towards the sea. Three gulls were wheeling, riding the currents of air, buffeted and battered in the strong wind. A car door slammed and an engine revved, then faded. Dominic, I assumed, on his way to the city.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Dominic said you’re setting up a business?’

  ‘Did he?’ She looked pleased. ‘I’m just putting out feelers, but I’m sure there’s a market for it.’ She lifted the plate of macaroons and offered me one.

  I blinked. ‘A market for what?’

  ‘Domestic recruitment.’ She set down the plate and sat forward with fresh energy. ‘High-end. Don’t you think? All these big houses along the coast. Isolated. Monied. Men who work away, a lot of them. Women either at home with kids or commuting working mums. Frustrated professionals who can’t get good childcare or decent cleaners or gardeners.’

  I bit into the macaroon, balancing a napkin and plate on my knee, trying not to disgrace myself. If I had children, I’d look after them myself, if I could possibly afford to. That was sort of the point, wasn’t it? Those were some of my best memories, making fairy cakes with my mum, sticking old tissue paper and tin foil onto bits of card. I didn’t say anything and she rattled on.

  ‘I can’t believe how poorly developed it is here, compared to Hong Kong. There you can hire everyone you need. Quick and easy. If you don’t like them, you can get a replacement the same day. Honestly.’

  I shook my head, trying to imagine hiring and firing staff in the way she described. It was another world. Not a very kind one either, from the sound of it.

  ‘Of course, labour’s cheap out there. People are desperate for work, especially jobs with Europeans. They think we treat them better, you know? Chinese families can be shockers. No sense of human rights.’

  I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded as she carried on.

  ‘And they’re well-educated. I mean, I had a housekeeper, a Filipina, who was a fully-qualified school-teacher but she earned more money cooking and cleaning for me than she would in a school back home.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’ I couldn’t help myself. ‘What a waste.’