The First Wife: An unputdownable page turner with a twist

by Jill Childs

  Dominic had never wanted me here. I’d heard that with my own ears. He knew we’d been close once. He must suspect me. How could he know for sure what Caroline might have told me about him, about the state of their marriage?

  Why was he coming back tonight? I rubbed at my face, trying to make myself think. Had he heard about the unidentified body that had washed up along the coast? What if he’d found out that I’d been to the police, offering information and trying to persuade them that I recognised that brooch, that I thought there might be a connection, however vague, between Caroline and that badly decomposed body?

  DNA evidence is only useful, the Detective Inspector had explained, if we have a match. If someone’s already been reported missing and we have a blood relative who can provide a DNA sample.

  I swallowed hard.

  I eased open the toilet door inch by inch, peering through the crack. I had to assume the worst. I had to imagine them capable of anything and everything.

  The studio was empty. There was no sign through the large picture windows of anyone outside. I looked round. The door was bolted on the inside, as I’d left it. Yes, I had replaced the floorboard, concealing the safe from view.

  I checked the clock, my mind racing, trying to decide what to do.

  I must go back to the police and tell the detective everything I’d found. I didn’t have strong evidence, but I had something. I had the notebook now, with Caroline’s record of her illness and of Dominic’s affair, with her plaintive cry for help in her final days when she feared for her life.

  It was a lead. The police could investigate and find out for certain if the remains were Caroline’s. Her mother in Canada could provide a DNA sample and see if there was a match. Or maybe Lucy, if the police could get a court order? I couldn’t imagine Dominic giving permission if the result might incriminate him.

  But all that would take time. That detective already seemed to doubt me. What if she didn’t take me seriously, at least until Caroline’s identity was established? This wasn’t just about getting justice for the dead. It was about protecting the living too. How could I go to the police and raise my suspicions about Dominic and Fi while they still had Lucy? If Fi suspected for a moment that Lucy had given them away, what might she do to her?

  I locked up from the outside and concealed myself behind the beach house, out of sight of the main house but with a partial view of the path which ran down from there. I was on my guard, watching in case the imposter Caroline – Fi – came back, looking for me. Caroline’s notebook bulged inside my jacket.

  I waited. The light mellowed and thinned over the water as the day stretched slowly towards dusk. As the sun fell, the breeze from the sea grew stronger and colder and I huddled close to the back of the beach house to shelter. A storm was blowing in.

  Lucy would be getting ready for bed now. I thought of that woman and the way she handled Lucy, her sharp temper when she thought I couldn’t hear. I should have realised from the start, from the first day when I saw Lucy come in with her nanny and she didn’t run across the room to hug her, as a happy three-year-old would rush to her mother. She’d hung back from us both, her face closed and miserable.

  I thought of her night terrors and her fear as she clutched the bars of the nursery, screaming at the sight of the woman battling the waves.

  Mrs Minns at the nursery had been right. Lucy’s silence wasn’t natural. It was about much more than a difficult move back to England from Hong Kong. She was traumatised. Whatever she had been through, it was more than any young child should be forced to suffer.

  As the darkness thickened, the first rain started to fall, fat, heavy drops, turning the earth to mud in moments. I ran back up the path towards the house. The lights blazed. The downstairs curtains still stood open. As I skirted the back of the house, I had a clear view into the empty, lit kitchen and a glimpse, through the open kitchen door, of the hall beyond. Deserted. High above, the windows of the nursery were dark.

  My heart hammered. I climbed the steps and listened. Nothing. I put my key into the front door lock and turned it as silently as I could, eased the door open and closed it behind me, pinching the latch as it clicked shut. I held my breath. Quiet.

  The electric light was startling after the darkness outside, the blast of warmth comforting. The hall lights were on, leading the way up the main staircase to the shadows above. The sitting room door to the left and the kitchen door ahead to the right were both closed now, fringed by a frame of light. She could be in either room. The door could swing open at any time.

  I concealed myself just inside the dark doorway of the dining room and listened. After a few moments, water cascaded into the sink. Shortly afterwards, a male voice sounded on the radio, a low murmur broken up by bursts of studio laughter.

  I took a deep breath and hurried across the hall to the stairs and up to the landing, then on to the second landing above. Every muscle was tense, trying to read the stillness. I wanted to get away as quickly as I could, but I couldn’t leave Lucy. I just couldn’t.

  I took the top stairs, from the upper landing to the nursery, two at a time, squeezed myself into the darkness, then shut the door behind me and leaned against it.

  A movement. A rustle of bedclothes.

  ‘Lucy?’

  No answer. I blinked, trying to get my eyes to adjust now to the shadows.

  ‘It’s me. Sophie. Are you ok?’

  She sat up in bed, her eyes wide, her short hair sticking out in rough spikes. The silver sequins of a sparkly unicorn gleamed on her pyjama top.

  I crossed to her at once and opened my arms to her and she pushed herself into them. I sat for a moment, happy to comfort her, rocking to and fro, her small hard body pressed against mine.

  ‘She’s not your mummy, is she?’ I whispered into her ear.

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘It’s ok,’ I went on. ‘Your real mummy wrote me a long, special letter. Look.’

  I pulled the notebook out of my pocket and offered it to her. She didn’t know how to read it, even if there had been enough light to see the words, but her face shone as she turned the pages. She opened it wide and lifted the book to her face and I thought for a moment that she was going to lick it. In fact, she ran her nose down the paper, imbibing the faint trace of her mother’s smell, then raised her head with a smile.

  ‘Mummy,’ she whispered.

  I moved closer to her, whispering too, afraid that our voices would be caught by the child monitor.

  ‘What happened, Lucy? Can you tell me?’

  The smile went out as suddenly as it had come. She fixed me with her eyes, intent and wary. A moment later, she pushed back the bedclothes, swung herself quietly out of bed and tripped across the room, her feet pale and bare, to the three-sided windows. She raised the curtain on the right-hand side to reveal the window which faced the cliff edge and the sea beyond, and crept inside the folds, letting the material settle round her shoulders like a vast cape.

  I followed and joined her there.

  It was cold and draughty against the windowpane. The wind was driving the rain against the glass, water streaming in rivulets down the other side. Through the streaks, the solid black of the cliff below fell away to the pulsing darkness of the sea, wiped now into high waves.

  I tried to make out Lucy’s face. She was pinched and tense.

  ‘You saw something?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You got up at night, Lucy, and saw something down there? Lucy, what did you see?’

  Her lips puckered and she shook her head as she began to cry against me, making a spreading wet patch across my jacket. I tightened my arms round her.

  ‘It’s alright, Lucy. Hush, now. No need to cry. No need to say anything, not just now.’

  I put my finger to my lips, as I had earlier that same day in her father’s bedroom, and whispered into her ear.

  ‘Let’s have an adventure. Let’s get you dressed in nice warm clothes and have a midnight adventure
. Shall we?’

  * * *

  I moved quickly and quietly round her room, finding warm socks and trousers, a t-shirt and thick sweater, a waterproof jacket. She allowed herself to be dressed, her eyes heavy with tiredness.

  When she was ready, I led her down the stairs, step by step, warning her with my eyes to stay quiet. We reached the small landing outside my bedroom and turned to peer down into the hall. The kitchen door was closed. A pot clanged. The low murmur of the weather forecast gave way to the sharp full stops of the pips, signalling the top of the hour.

  I whispered into Lucy’s ear: ‘Wait a moment. Wait here. Can you do that?’

  I ran into my bedroom to grab my bag and the keys to the nanny car.

  She looked such a slight, vulnerable figure, waiting for me in the dark. I took her hand in mine and we set off down the main staircase, tense, creeping together step by step.

  We were almost at the bottom of the stairs when she stumbled, her hand pulled from mine as she pitched forwards. I grabbed at her, but she was already falling, crashing into the side of the bannisters and bouncing down to land in a heap at the bottom, limp.

  For a second, utter silence. The house held its breath with me. The only sound was the beating of the rain against the downstairs windows.

  ‘Lucy?’

  Then a high-pitched scream tore the air. I hurried down the final stairs and slid my arms round her, moved to help her up.

  ‘It’s alright, Lucy. It’s alright. Where does it hurt?’

  She was too shocked to speak. She howled, her face puckered and reddening.

  The kitchen door opened.

  ‘What the—?’ She stood there in the kitchen doorway, the woman I once thought was Caroline, one hand on the door, staring, taking it all in.

  There was no hiding. We were caught. Lucy, very much out of bed, fully dressed, screamed in my arms.

  Her face turned to stone. ‘What do you think you’re doing? She ought to be asleep. Why’s she dressed?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I know what you’ve done.’

  She pulled a face, then sighed. ‘That’s it, is it? Well… what can I say? Well done, little mouse.’

  I swallowed. ‘I know who you are.’

  She tensed, waiting, her eyes on mine.

  I said, ‘You’re Fi. Dominic’s lover. You’re not Caroline at all.’

  ‘Fi?’ She threw back her head and laughed. ‘Oh, no. You almost had me there. And you thought you were so clever, didn’t you? Figuring it all out.’ She put her head on one side, one of Caroline’s girlish gestures which had become so familiar it was now also her own. ‘I hate to tell you but you’re as mad as she is. I’m not Caroline, you’re right. But Fi? Oh no, little mouse. She was never the villain here. She was never Dominic’s lover. That was all in Caroline’s poor, addled mind.’

  I stared.

  Her eyes were mocking. ‘You should have seen her, the day she came storming into the bank, demanding to see Fi. I watched the whole thing. The guards threw her out onto the street.’

  I pulled Lucy closer to me, frightened now.

  ‘It wasn’t hard, you know, baiting her. She was fragile as porcelain. Poor little rich girl. She was the same at school. Thought we should all pay homage to her because she was pretty and wealthy. She laughed at those of us who had to earn a living. The bank was a social club, to her. I was the one who had to slog there.’

  She was stabbing the air with her finger, working herself up into anger. I didn’t move. Just stayed very still at the bottom of the stairs, hugging Lucy. As she was speaking, a car door slammed. Footsteps came heavily across the gravel to the front door. A shadow grew there.

  She went on, unaware. ‘I took that stupid bracelet when we were all at the pool party. She was always careless with her things. I thought it’d teach her a lesson and put her in Dominic’s bad books. And it did. He was furious. Served her right. He loves me far more than he ever loved her. She just wouldn’t let him go. Wouldn’t let him be happy. She used her money to shackle him to her. And Lucy.’

  I stammered: ‘So who are you?’

  She smiled. ‘Kate.’

  She paused for effect, tilting her head as if she were daring me to recognise her.

  ‘Get it? The faithful old friend who so kindly advised her to bring Dominic to London. You know why?’ She laughed. ‘I was already being transferred here myself. Suited us very well.’

  ‘So it was yours, that Hong Kong jewellery?’

  She nodded. ‘Fraid so. Presents from Dominic. Careless of me to leave them in the flat but he said she never went.’ She tossed her head, setting her hair in motion. ‘Amazing how much I look like her, once I dyed my hair blonde. Don’t you think?’

  She hesitated, watching my face. ‘And I was the one with the fancy perfume, not Fi. I thought she’d cottoned on, after Fi’s party. Dominic told me how suspicious she was in the taxi when she smelt his clothes. But I was too clever for her.’’

  A key turned in the front door and it eased open.

  Lucy’s sobs were quietening now. I helped her onto her feet and squared up to Kate. Her smugness enraged me. I thought of my friend’s struggle to hold her marriage together.

  ‘What did you do to her? Push her off the cliff? Dump her out to sea? They’ll work it out, whatever it was. They’ll put you both away.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not me, little mouse. I tried to lead her off the cliff once. She was in such a state, it nearly worked. But I didn’t hurt her. Not like that.’

  I hugged Lucy closer to me. I put my arm round her shoulders, and she wobbled against me, her breathing ragged, as we started to inch together across the expanse of the hall towards the front door.

  ‘Well, if it wasn’t you, it was him, wasn’t he? Dominic.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Kate shrugged, her face wary. ‘I’ve wondered that, I admit it. She just disappeared, you see.’ She paused, as if remembering. ‘I never pressed him about it. Best not to know. We just agreed I’d move in and take her place. I didn’t mind being his wealthy wife, why not? No-one here really knew her. Until you turned up.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Anyway, even if he did get rid of her, you’ve no proof… have you?’

  As I started to walk Lucy towards the front door, it opened, bringing a rush of wind and rain. Dominic stood there, key in one hand, briefcase in the other.

  He looked from Kate to me, reading the scene.

  ‘Well, well, the little mouse finally learned to roar.’

  I said to them both: ‘Lucy saw what happened. Didn’t you, Lucy? She’ll tell the police.’

  ‘Her?’ Kate sneered. ‘Good luck with that.’

  Dominic bent down to his daughter and opened his arms. ‘Lucy would never do that, would you, darling? You’d never get Daddy into trouble.’

  She ran towards him, but instead of hugging him back, she started pummelling him with her fists, screaming.

  ‘What did you do to Mummy? I hate you!’

  ‘Lucy!’ Dominic tried to catch her hands as she hit him, her face red.

  ‘She said she’d come back! She told me.’

  She caught him off-balance, shoved him aside and bolted through the open door into the storm.

  * * *

  ‘Lucy! Wait!’

  Kate was the first to move. She dashed after Lucy, out of the front door, round the front of the house and towards the sea. I gave chase. The wind threw rain in my face, blinding me. Its force pressed me back and buffeted me sideways.

  ‘Lucy! Stop!’ My cry disappeared at once in the gale.

  Dominic overtook me and ran ahead, then came to an abrupt halt at the edge of the cliff. By the time I reached him, I was panting too hard to speak. There was no sign of either of them. We stood side-by-side for a moment, staring around, confused, trying to understand how they’d vanished.

  I shouted: ‘They can’t have gone far!’

  I looked back towards the trees. No movement. Dominic ran on along the cliff, scanning the path.

&nbs
p; I strained to listen. A moment later, a high-pitched screaming tore through the air. Terrified and other-worldly. I looked round, dazed, then waved frantically at Dominic and he came hurtling back.

  ‘Listen!’

  It came again. Lucy’s scream, full of terror.

  Dominic, understanding at once, fell to his knees and leaned forward over the edge of the cliff.

  I crouched beside him, just as he cried: ‘Careful!’

  My knees dislodged loose stones and I shuffled quickly back to firmer ground as they bounced down to the rocks below. The soil, sodden with rain, hung in ragged clumps along the rim, pocked where the stones which formed the fabric of the cliff had come loose and plummeted to the sea. The whole area was unstable. I closed my eyes, imagining how it must suddenly have given way under Kate and Lucy’s weight.

  ‘Kate!’ Dominic bellowed, cupping his hands to his mouth. ‘Lucy!’

  Another scream. Closer now. I opened my eyes and lay full-length on the wet grass, cautious, spreading my weight. I inched forward until I could just see over the edge.

  They were there, both of them, clinging to a narrow ledge, just to one side below the lip of the cliff. Kate balanced sideways on the wet shelf, her legs spread, her hands gripping the rock. Lucy shook beside her, pressed against the stone. Her face, tipped up towards us, was white with fear. Rain streamed down her forehead, her nose, her cheeks. Her hair, already sodden, hung in clumps.

  Dominic fell to his stomach and leaned forward over the cliff, his shoulder on the rock, his arm reaching as far as he could below. His fingertips almost touched Lucy’s outstretched hand.

  ‘Lift her.’ His voice bellowed into the wind.

  ‘It’s crumbling.’ Kate shifted her weight. As she moved, fragments of rock fell away from around her feet and plummeted to the sea below. She eased one hand from the rockface and stretched up towards Dominic, her hand reaching so much higher than Lucy’s could.

  He pulled back at once. ‘Lucy first!’