The First Wife: An unputdownable page turner with a twist

by Jill Childs

  I imagined strangers tramping through the rooms, trailing dirt across the worn kitchen floor that my mother took such pride in cleaning. She always leaned the mop across the doorway when she finished, as a signal to me not to dash inside until it dried.

  They’d walk round our bedrooms, one by one. The box room which had always been my den and, later, homework room. It looked so tiny once the furniture was taken out, their shapes remembered in dirty outline on the walls.

  I swallowed hard and watched my feet striding forwards, one after the other, flattening the springy grass just for a moment, falling into the same easy rhythm as the waves.

  The charity where I’d worked had been kind. They’d offered extended leave – unpaid –when Dad went into hospital and let it stretch when his health showed no sign of improving. They sent flowers after he died. An autumn bouquet, it was called, mellow gold and orange, and a card saying they were all thinking of me. They didn’t have much in the way of resources, but they said they’d do their best to accommodate me if I decided to come back, even when I took my notice letter round.

  Perhaps it would have been sensible to accept their offer. To find a room to rent in town and go back to work, at least while I figured out what I really wanted, while I was still grieving.

  But I needed to leave. If I didn’t go now, perhaps I never would. I only moved back home in the first place to be with Dad, to ease the end of his life after Mum left us.

  I needed a clean break. I couldn’t bear the thought of walking past our home and seeing it changed. Cupboards torn out and thrown into trucks to go to the tip. Mum’s flooring ripped up. Dad’s dodgy shelves and light fittings, bought on the cheap and never quite right, discarded.

  I couldn’t live in a place so thick with memories, with ghosts. It would suffocate me.

  But where should I go next? And to do what? It wasn’t only the legal process that was holding me up. I didn’t want to rush. I needed time to rest and recover the person I’d once been. I needed a bolthole.

  There was a gnarled, leafless tree ahead, perched on the cliff edge, bowed and battered by decades of winds blowing in from the sea. Just beyond it, I picked up a coastal path which curved gracefully round the headland. The wind eased as the path led me inland. The grass was broad and open here and ahead, a property loomed, then, further on, a second. They were large – similar to Caroline and Dominic’s house – renovated Victorian buildings with faux turrets, fences with back gates giving way to the coast and glassed in balconies, smartly appointed with padded chairs, glass-topped tables and plants, looking out towards the sea. One garden had a children’s playset outside, a blue plastic slide and swing, still splattered with the remnants of recent rain.

  As I passed them, a dog came hurtling towards me across the grass, legs flying, ears flattened back against its head. It ran all the way round me, then paused to sniff at my feet before its owner, a middle-aged man in green wellingtons and a dark waxed coat, whistled from afar, calling him back. Without thinking, I lifted my hand and waved to the man and he nodded back, then turned away, inland. It struck me how utterly lonely this stretch of coast was. He was the first person I’d seen. I didn’t think there were still corners of England which were so sparsely populated.

  On the far side of the big houses, I stopped and saw the path the man and dog had taken, a track leading away from the sea through the trees along the edge of a wire boundary fence. I turned down it. At once the wind fell away to nothing and sun warmed my face. My breath was close and loud to me again, no longer snatched by the breeze. I lifted a hand and smoothed down clumps of windswept hair.

  The path emerged at the edge of a modern estate, a circle of bungalows and one-storey brick houses which looked out of place after the grandeur of the Victorian facades along the coast. They were modern and boxy, council properties perhaps, an abrupt return to suburbia with their semi-transparent curtains at the front windows, neatly tended pocket gardens and parked cars.

  I carried on, aimless now and starting to feel footsore, past a deserted children’s playground, then a small carpark hugged by a row of shops: a modest supermarket, a hairdressers’, a dry cleaner’s, a closed Italian restaurant and a café.

  I browsed the aisles of the corner supermarket, putting together a basket of groceries to see me through the rest of the day. Chocolates for Caroline and a bottle of wine. A cuddly dog and a colouring book for Lucy. They were items I’d intended to buy on arrival at the station but simply hadn’t had the room to carry.

  Afterwards, I ate a bar of chocolate, then sat over a cup of coffee in the deserted café. Already the drama of my surprise arrival at the station the day before seemed a long time ago. I didn’t know what I’d expected from Caroline, but I’d sensed a cry for help in her last email. A plea for me to come here, for a reason she didn’t explain.

  Maybe that need for me, whatever it was, had passed. Maybe I’d made too much of it in my head, in my grief-stricken state, as I watched Dad suffer and fail. She certainly seemed perfectly self-contained now, with her husband and daughter and business leads.

  The middle-aged woman behind the counter paused at the table when she came to collect the empty cup and looked at me curiously.

  ‘You lost your way, then?’ She ran her eyes over my clothes. ‘You don’t look like a walker.’

  I smiled at her bluntness. ‘I’m staying with friends,’ I said. ‘At The Conifers, down the coast?’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘Dr Lamley’s old place?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I shrugged. ‘Dominic and Caroline bought it at the start of the year. Have you met them?’

  She shook her head and withdrew with my cup and saucer.

  I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t see Caroline as the type to pop down to the local shops and chat with the locals, especially not if they lived in council housing.

  I was heading out when she called after me: ‘Watch yourself walking back along the cliff! The wind’s getting up. Could be a storm.’

  ‘Really?’ It had looked so calm when I’d left the house just an hour or so earlier.

  The woman shrugged. ‘It turns on a sixpence here. See for yourself.’

  She was right. By the time I reached the coastal path, the sky was leaden. The wind buffeted me so hard at times that I struggled to stay on my feet. I hugged the treeline and kept well away from the edge of the cliff. The day darkened and the Victorian houses looked forbidding as I passed them for a second time. The swing creaked back and forth in the breeze as if a ghost child sat in the empty seat.

  The heavens opened as I reached the most exposed part of my walk, the steep approach to the bluff which would lead me up and over the rise and back to the cove and the house above it. Rain fell in torrents, hard and full. I started to run but the wind, sweeping across the exposed ground, blasted me to and fro, slowing me down.

  A sudden gust seized me and set me staggering, driving me several steps towards the cliff edge. Frightened, I dropped to the grass and crawled on hands and knees, my head low, away from the shore and into the treeline.

  As soon as I gained the trees, the shelter cut the force of the wind and the roar, which had been almost deafening, gave way to an eerie whistling. I slowed to a walk, feeling suddenly exhausted, striking haphazardly through the trees, taking as much refuge from the storm as the tall, straggly trees allowed. The wood smelt richly of tree sap and leaf mulch and pine needles. Sticks crunched and snapped under my feet as I strode on.

  I’ve never had a great sense of direction and I still wasn’t clear about the local terrain but if I kept going, I decided, I’d have to hit the road sooner or later. It was a detour, but at least then I’d know where I was and be able to follow the road round to the turnoff and then pick up the start of the drive up to the house.

  I started to shiver. My coat clung, sodden, on my back, heavy with rainwater. My feet sloshed in my shoes, sending up a light spray with every step. Water dripped through the trees onto my head, running down my soaking hair and
cheeks. My canvas bag, filled now with groceries and presents, bounced across the front of my body, the fabric dark with rain. I thought about Lucy last night, wet and cold and crying out in the darkness. I plodded on and focussed my mind on imagining getting back to the house, stripping off my clothes and stepping into a hot shower. Getting warm again.

  I’d been walking away from the cliff edge for about half an hour when I started to despair. All the way, I’d thought: another five minutes and I’ll hit the road. It must be coming up soon. It can’t be much further.

  Now, finally, I stopped, cold and miserable, and looked around, admitting to myself for the first time that I was simply lost. The copses of conifers and low, dank rhododendron bushes all looked alike, ahead and behind me. The road had failed to materialise and I had no idea why.

  I closed my eyes and tried to tune in to the wind and the crash of the waves and to orientate myself by sound, then headed roughly parallel to the sea, striding between the trees in as straight a line as I could manage. The bushes thickened as I walked, forcing me into another, unintended detour. After some time, the ground started to slope away. I had to slow my pace and plant my feet carefully at an angle on the slippery grass to stay upright. Distantly, a dog barked.

  I was almost in tears, soaked through, exhausted and woefully lost, when the trees suddenly thinned and I found myself stumbling onto a narrow mud path, running with rainwater. It led me back towards the sea, I sensed that, but the storm had almost blown itself out. Nature was calming herself. Up above, the dense black clouds were breaking up, giving way to lighter ones and, on the horizon, a haze of watery sunshine.

  The path led me down to a cleft in the cliff face, with rocky sides so high that I felt I was pressing through walls. I emerged, on the far side, on a broad ridge, a natural shelf which overlooked the sea far below.

  Next to me, pressed back against the stone, was a large wooden hut. It had the look of a beach house and for a moment I imagined its being lifted by a giant wave from the shore where it belonged and tossed up here, high above the tide.

  I stood for a moment, looking at it, not quite believing my senses. I loved it at once. There was a feeling of child’s den about it, partly because of its size and partly because it had the satisfyingly simple shape of a rectangular box, with wooden planked walls and sloping tiled roof, interrupted only by a large skylight.

  I crossed to look. The wooden eaves and window frames were freshly painted, picked out in a vivid red which made a pleasing contrast with the dark brown walls. Paving slabs laid at the sides and along the front gave a relief from the mud and stone and looked neatly set, with no sign of weeds pushing through between the cracks. It was only as I reached the little house that I saw its most attractive feature. The front, facing out over the sea, held a vast single pane window. I stood against it, put my hands to the glass to block out the light and peered inside.

  A wooden easel was set up on the other side of the glass, a tall, black director’s chair beyond. Around it, canvases were stacked in rows, wooden frames propped up, one against the other, like dominos, ready to fall. The floor was varnished but streaked with bright blobs of spilt paint.

  An artist’s studio. I nodded to myself, staring, feeling the sudden guilt of the trespasser. Of course – Caroline’s. It must be. I twisted round, trying to crane far back enough to look along the top of the cliff and find the house there. It must be close at hand. But if it were, it was hidden. All I could see from this angle was steadily rising rock. A secret hideaway. I shook my head. How very Caroline.

  She’d always loved painting, even as a child. I envied the fact she could set to and cover a sheet of paper with bold, bright strokes and be satisfied with the results when my own efforts made me wilt with embarrassment. I knew she’d pursued it since. Still-life classes and silk painting and ceramics, for a while. She’d written expansively from Hong Kong about the light, the colour, the oriental inspiration. Those were the only parts I tended to skim.

  I carried on round the front to the far end of the hut. The wooden door was set back, sheltered by a narrow porch. It was sturdy and locked fast. I tried to imagine what else might be inside. A small toilet and washbasin, presumably. A mini kitchen perhaps with kettle, fridge and microwave. Perhaps even somewhere to sleep.

  I felt a sudden envy, a need to be inside, sheltered and cosy. I wanted this place. It ought to be mine. The strength of feeling took me by surprise. I didn’t know where it came from. I had no desire to take up painting, I never had. But I felt a strong and instant connection with this hideaway, as powerful as the unease I’d felt in Lucy’s attic bedroom. It was perfect. Perched in the midst of the elements but protected from them too.

  I stood again against the large window, peering in, hands to the glass, twisting my face this way and that, trying to make out the shadows of the interior. The shifting patterns of the sea and sky swam across the glass. The wind, rising again, caught my clothes and made me shiver. I didn’t want to leave but I had to keep moving.

  I scrambled back up the cliff face, out through the cleft in the rocks and headed as fast as I could onwards along the cliff edge, hurrying over a virgin expanse of wild grass, stumbling with cold.

  When I looked back, the path, the break in the rocks and of course the hut itself were all invisible, erased from sight as dramatically as they had appeared. Ahead, a few minutes later, the house loomed, standing proudly on the cliff in the distance and I broke into a run, desperate now for the chance to get dry and warm as soon as I could.

  * * *

  I spent the afternoon curled in bed, a mug of coffee on the bedside table, reading a detective novel I’d borrowed from the shelves in the sitting room. Caroline loved crime stories. She wasn’t a great reader as a child – the books we’d studied in English class, laced with pages of description, bored her – but she always loved murder plots.

  It became one of our secrets. When we were teenagers, we emailed a lot about the books we were reading and the films we’d seen. She seemed to love discussing whichever mystery novel she was reading, giving me updates on the plot and adding her own theories about who’d committed the crime, usually a murder, and why. She clearly loved the thrill, the joy of pitting her wits against those of the writer’s and figuring it all out before she was told. Judging from the shelves downstairs, that at least hadn’t changed.

  My legs were comfortably tired from the long walk and my skin tingled from a long, hot shower. My clothes lay on the bathroom floor in a soggy bundle, waiting for the washing machine which I hadn’t yet found. Outside, the wind had dropped again and my senses were lulled by the soft, slow boom of the waves as I turned the pages.

  I was startled by a sudden commotion downstairs. Caroline’s voice, strident, yelling.

  ‘Lucy! For God’s sake! What have you done?’

  I froze under the covers, listening, wondering what to do. I felt defenceless. Her shrieks filled the hall. I had no idea she was home until that minute. I hadn’t heard the car.

  ‘Tanya! What the hell happened?’

  There was a hysterical edge to Caroline’s voice.

  I threw back the covers and headed onto the landing in my second-best jeans and a baggy jumper.

  Caroline was standing in her coat, car keys protruding from a clenched fist, staring wide-eyed with fury down the hall. I came out onto the stairs and peered down to see what had enraged her.

  Lucy, in the hall, hung from the banisters, one arm hooked loosely round a wooden spindle above the newel post, swinging herself to and fro. She looked peculiar and it took me a moment to realise why. One of her plaits trailed over the shoulder. The other had been cut clean off, leaving a jagged mess of short hair above her ear.

  Tanya, arms folded, stood in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Where were you?’ Caroline looked beyond herself. ‘How could you let her do anything so stupid?’

  Tanya shrugged. Her face was closed and defiant.

  ‘What can I do?’ It was the f
irst time I’d heard Tanya speak. Her voice was gravelly with a strong East European accent. ‘I am cooking lunch. She grabs scissors and snip. Gone. Very naughty girl.’

  Caroline screamed: ‘She’s three! It’s your fault, not hers. What were you thinking?’

  Tanya pulled herself up to her full height. ‘It’s not always my fault, everything that happens here. Maybe she needs help, you know? She’s troubled girl. Why is she three years and not talking? Why is she wetting bed? Everything is not my fault.’

  ‘How dare you!’ Caroline lunged at her and Tanya, unfazed, dodged smartly out of her way.

  ‘Caroline!’ I came tumbling down the stairs. ‘Come on. It’ll soon grow back. Won’t it, Lucy?’

  I reached the hall and put one hand on Lucy’s shoulder. She seemed in a world of her own, bobbing backwards and forwards, one arm clinging to the newel post, the other dramatically outstretched.

  ‘Enough. I leave.’ Tanya headed past me up the stairs. Her face was determined.

  Caroline shouted after her: ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  Then, as Tanya rounded the corner and disappeared, Caroline called: ‘Come back down at once!’

  I tightened my grip on Lucy as Caroline’s angry gaze fell away from the empty stairs and onto the child. ‘What’re you looking at? You think it’s funny?’

  I put myself between them. I’d never seen Caroline so angry.

  ‘Come on, Lucy. Let’s go and get a snack.’ I unwrapped her hand from the bannisters and led her through to the kitchen, out of Caroline’s way.

  While Lucy munched on cream cheese and breadsticks at the kitchen table, her feet drumming the floor, I combed out her hair and tried to work out how to salvage it.

  ‘It’s going to look fine,’ I told her. She didn’t seem to care. ‘We can make it shorter on the other side too and it’ll be all fluffy while it grows back. Like a little chick.’

  I tracked the noises round the house. After some time, Tanya’s heavy footsteps banged down the stairs and across the hall, then the front door slammed. Boots strode away down the gravel drive. I stroked Lucy’s back. Her face was impassive, but I wondered what was going on inside, why she never seemed to speak. How did she feel about her mother and nanny fighting and Tanya’s threat to leave?