Читать книгу The Wife’s Secret: A dark psychological thriller with a stunning twist - Caroline England, Caroline England - Страница 15

Olivia is running late as she leaves her untidy house to collect Hannah from school. The afternoon has flown by as it always does and she feels hot as she searches for her keys, but the cold air swipes her cheeks at the door, so she turns back to fetch her coat. It’s only then that she stops to study the wedding photograph again. She doesn’t look at the man this time, but at the girl. She has pale hair and pastel eyes but a bright, confident smile. She holds a single bunch of yellow roses and her dress is traditional but plain. There are no feathers or frills in her hair. This isn’t a girl who needs chocolates or flowers to tell her she is loved. This isn’t a girl who craves flattery or attention to give her self-worth. This is a girl who’s said ‘for better or for worse’ and who means it.

‘Here’s the post for signing, Mike,’ Judith says as she neatens a letter escaping from the tidy rectangle of her long day’s endeavours.

Mike looks up at her and nods, then drops his head again, continuing to punch numbers into a calculator, which spews out digits on a tiny receipt. She turns away towards the filing cabinet, feeling contemplative. The filing is up to date, but she hovers for a moment, busying herself by opening cabinet drawers, tidying the hanging baskets and closing them again. Mike hasn’t said much to her at all today. He looks tired and unhappy, and she wonders how the flowers fared last night. Pretty badly, by the looks of it, she concludes.

She casts a final glance at Mike and notes that his frown line seems more pronounced than usual. It is, she reflects, the one slight imperfection in an otherwise perfect face.

She has her hand on the handle when he abruptly speaks. ‘Who’s the father of your baby, Jude?’ he asks.

Judith turns, blurting out a laugh of surprise. It’s the first time in all the years she’s known him that he’s asked such a personal question. ‘Bloody hell, Mike. Am I dreaming or did you really ask me that?’

He drops his intense gaze and picks up a pen. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘None of my business.’

Judith studies his slightly flushed face. There’s something vulnerable about him, she thinks, like a little lost boy who needs a big cuddle from the wicked witch or the snow queen, to be led by the hand into the land of temptation … he just doesn’t know it.

She toys with the idea of teasing him, perhaps asking if he realises his question is tantamount to sexual harassment, or something similar, but he looked so sincere when he posed the question that a straight answer seems only fair.

‘No, that’s fine,’ she says, pulling out the client chair and sitting heavily, grateful to be off her feet for a minute or two. ‘Actually, no one in particular, as it happens. Just someone who was tall and pleasant for an evening or two. With hair and good shoes. And, of course, with straight white teeth.’ She smiles. ‘Some things you can’t compromise on.’

She watches him absorb her reply and then laughs at the look of mild shock on his face when he realises her answer is serious. ‘For a leftie, you’re very conservative at times. I don’t know why you’re surprised, Mike. You of all people know I’ve tried them all, big, small, black, white. I even married a couple and they all ended in disaster. So I figured there’s me and my mum and that’s all the baby needs.’

She stops for a moment, her head cocked. She can almost see the slow chug of Mike’s mind trying to keep up, to understand. ‘Ask yourself this, Mike: what’s better, to have a dad who buggers off after two minutes, to have one who gives the odd slap, or not to have one at all? Well, I know which one I’d prefer, the one with the least heartache.’

It’s dusk outside, the office empty save, perhaps, for one or two other surveyors who are still at their work stations clocking up chargeable hours before the end of the month. Mike sits at his desk for a long time without moving. It’s the first time in twelve years of marriage that he doesn’t want to rush home at the end of the day. He has no idea what awaits him. Olivia busied herself with the girls and their school bags when he left this morning, avoiding all eye contact with him.

It has been a day of maybes, his mind fit to burst with the awful uncertainty of it all. Maybe Olivia will forgive him for the things that he said. Maybe life will go on as before. He wants it to, of course, but there’s an iota of a maybe that still hangs around, suggesting there’s no smoke without fire. Maybe he was right.

Last night everything was fine. After the frisson of the shower he took Olivia to bed, dried her body with kisses and eventually she smiled and said, ‘Yes, just there. That’s so nice. Oh, Mike, where have you been?’ It was love at its best, hearing her come, the sweetest of sounds and one he can never get enough of, before releasing himself.

‘You didn’t explain why,’ she said later as they lay entwined in the dark. ‘Why you went away in here,’ she said, kissing his temple.

Mike sighed. His fears now felt foolish and childish. He’d hoped she wouldn’t ask. ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said, drawing her close.

‘It matters to me,’ Olivia said, pulling away from him. She turned on the bedside lamp and looked intently at his face. ‘What was it, Mike? Was it the miscarriage? I thought we grieved together and put it behind us.’

He sat up, staring ahead at nothing in particular. He suddenly felt angry, really angry. He could feel the heat rise in his body, the colour flood his face. ‘You put it behind us, Olivia. You wiped the slate clean and said “never mind”.’

He could feel her flinch, heard her intake of breath, but he knew he wouldn’t stop. ‘But you didn’t pause for one moment to consider how I felt. Everyone was there with their condolences and their sympathy. We’re so sorry, Olivia, how are you, Olivia, can I do anything, Olivia. He was my child too, my loss. It was me who wanted him, not you.’

‘That isn’t fair, Mike. You have no idea what it’s like to be pregnant, let alone give bloody birth. I was as sick as a dog, in and out of hospital with the vomiting. It was bloody awful but I did it for you. Because you had some stupid hang-up about wanting a son. How do you think the girls would feel if they knew that they weren’t good enough for you, just because of their gender? We live in the twenty-first century for God’s sake, women are equal and our girls are wonderful.’

He turned his head and stared at Olivia. He could feel a throb in his temple. ‘That’s crap and you know it. I wanted another child, Olivia. Another child. It might have been a girl, and that would have been great.’

‘But it was a boy, Mike, and you couldn’t conceal your delight, could you? It was written all over your face when they told us, your son and heir, just what you always wanted. Until that moment I didn’t realise how much I’d disappointed you with mere daughters.’

Part of Mike wanted to shout. Part of him wanted to take Olivia by the throat and shake the unfairness of her words out of her. But instead he dropped his head, the cold despair he’d felt for months seeping through his body, dispersing the heat. ‘Don’t you dare say that. You’re not being fair. I adore my girls, you know I do.’

They sat for a moment and listened to the gentle thrum of the traffic from the far-off motorway.

‘Then why the total withdrawal and the silent treatment for so long?’ Olivia asked quietly.

He looked at her then. The harshness had gone from her face. Her pale eyes were sad, soft, concerned. He was hurting her. He was hurting himself. He understood this and yet he knew he had to push ahead through the numbness, to at least try to focus his mind and put his thoughts into words.

‘Because try as I did, I couldn’t put it him to rest, Olivia. I’ve spent months asking myself why. Why did our little boy die? No one had a reason, he wasn’t Down’s or disabled. He was perfect, wasn’t he?’

Olivia nodded, her head propped on her knees, her fingers playing with the quilt and so he continued, trying to marshal his thoughts and frame them into words. ‘And because we got no answers from the hospital or the consultant, my mind has tormented me with its own.’

‘And they are?’ Olivia asked slowly, turning her head to look at him.

Mike was silent for a while, but he had come so far, he knew it had to be said, to exorcise those ugly pestering thoughts, if nothing else. The frequent picture he had in his mind of Olivia with a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other flashed before his eyes. She hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol when pregnant with the girls. Prawns and eggs and all manner of other foods had been off the menu too. ‘That you did something. God, I don’t know. It sounds so stupid now, but I felt that by thought, or by word or by deed you did something. Something to cause the miscarriage.’

For a moment Olivia didn’t move, her unfathomable gaze fixed on his face. Seconds ticked by as he waited for an answer, a reaction. The moment he had voiced his innermost ugly thoughts, he knew how unworthy and pathetic they were.

She eventually stood from the bed and walked into the en-suite bathroom, closing the door quietly behind her. He watched and waited, numb, wretched and unbelievably tired. He had wanted to say it for so long that the desire to confess had become overwhelming. But now the words were out, he felt bereft and empty. As though someone had put their hand in his chest and pulled out his heart.

He’d started to drift off by the time Olivia returned to the bed. ‘You bastard,’ she said, quite clearly, as she turned off the lamp.

The unmistakable and sickening sound of two cars colliding on the busy main road outside Mike’s office building jolts him back to the present. ‘You bastard’, he still hears, but he knows it’s time to go home.

‘When you’re feeling sorry for yourself, remember there’s always someone worse off,’ his grandpa often said when life had gone awry and little Michael sought him out for a hug. Same words as the priest, but delivered so much more kindly. Mike nods in acknowledgement, hoping that no one has been hurt in the collision below. He collects his jacket from the back of his chair. But still he can hear the tip-tap of the dog’s claws on the laminate behind him as he turns off the light and heads for home.

Olivia smooths the clean sheets on the bed, then stares into space for a few breathless moments before trudging wearily down the stairs. She waits for Mike in the lounge, her head resting on the sofa’s curved arm. She’s exhausted; complete physical and mental exhaustion. Anger has sapped her and she wants to sleep. But at least it’s gone, or even if not completely, it has receded, to be replaced by that old, familiar feeling of self-loathing.

As a small child her temper was the family joke, her tantrums legendary. ‘Short-fuse Olivia,’ her dad regularly teased with his soft Geordie accent. As much as she tried, she was unable to count to ten, to bite her tongue, breathe deeply or any of the other things she knew she should do to control it. But coming down south to university in Manchester changed her. By writing, debating and using self-styled anger management, she stopped her knee-jerk reactions, she put her sharp mind and sharp tongue to good use.

But ‘short-fuse Olivia’ is still there, she fears, increasingly pestering to break free. She hates being a cow, even when she’s being a ‘justifiable’ cow, she hates it. She despises herself for allowing short-fuse Olivia and her knee-jerk reactions to escape.

She checks her mobile again. Still no word from Mike. He always sends a text when he’s leaving the office. Perhaps he’s still working; perhaps he’s angry; perhaps he’s buggered off forever. It’s difficult to judge. Last night she was a cow. Last night they were strangers.

She’s tried to make amends with the girls by buying Hannah a chocolate cake from Morrisons, undoubtedly full of hyperactivity-inducing additives which they’ll pay for tomorrow, and then covering it with sweets to make it look home-baked. She’s given Rachel a ‘don’t tell Dad’ expensive mascara. But with Mike it’s more difficult. Now that she’s calm she knows everything is fine, actually. He said some crazy things last night, but he was honest. Wasn’t that what the couple in the wedding photograph used to do? Be honest and open and talk? Talk for hours. About everything. Sometimes all night. She needs to say sorry, to get things back on track. ‘Sorry, Mike,’ she should say. As simple as that. And as difficult. Olivia struggles with that word. She always has.

She feels the vibration of her mobile under the cushion. Holds her breath as she opens the message from Mike.

On my way home, it reads.