His Perfect Wife

by Natasha Bell

  A few days later he made his final trip to the police station. Nicola met him in the gloomy linoleum reception and led him to one of the sparse meeting rooms. DI Jones was already waiting. Marc spied a stack of formal-looking letters on the table. He’d given little thought to the dotted lines Nicola had directed him to in the past, but as he stepped into the solemn, cell-like conference room he realized they must be to do with malpractice suits. Whatever Nicola and DI Jones were about to tell him, they needed to cover their backs and make sure he didn’t sue them in the future for overlooking something.

  “Dr. Southwood.” DI Jones stood up to shake his hand across the table. “Take a seat.” He motioned toward the chair opposite and Nicola stepped around the room to sit beside him.

  DI Jones cleared his throat and began to talk about the case. He tiptoed around the subject of my mother, saying they’d made “inquiries,” but found little “conclusive evidence.”

  “What does that mean?” Marc asked.

  “Well,” Nicola said, crossing her legs beneath the table. “We’ve searched Alexandra’s mother’s house and examined the phone and electricity records—”

  “But…” Marc prompted, his patience thin.

  “But,” she said, nodding, “there’s nothing definite. The house is full of her mother’s things. She was an artist, wasn’t she? There are canvases and bits of junk. We think that, by the state of the dust on them and a few items of clothing found in the house, that Alexandra must have stayed there at certain points since 2007, but the electricity meter over the past few years shows minimal usage, not even enough to suggest a kettle was boiled. There’s a smashed window at the back of the property, but no other signs of vandalism or theft. None of the neighbors have noticed anything, but they also couldn’t say for certain that the property was empty for the whole period. A lot of the houses around there are holiday rentals and apparently Mrs. Carlisle wasn’t the most sociable of people whilst alive.”

  “What about the carer?” Marc said. “Who the hell is she?”

  DI Jones cleared his throat once more. Marc clenched his fist beneath the table. “Just be straight with me, will you?” he said.

  “Look, Dr. Southwood, I’m not going to lie. Things look increasingly circumspect. We haven’t been able to locate the carer. In fact, we can find no record of a Caitlin Morse in the area at all. We examined the phone line and it’s still connected, so we contacted the telephone company and their records show not only that there have been no incoming or outgoing calls except from you and our precinct in the past twelve months, but also that a call forward has been set up.”

  “A what?”

  “An instruction for all calls to be forwarded to a Skype account. It means the woman who picked up the phone and claimed to be Miss Morse could have been answering from anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world even.”

  “So you think—”

  “We have a lot of questions right now,” DI Jones said, cutting him off. “And it seems someone has gone to a lot of effort to keep them unanswered. As a precaution, we’ve run another exit check. Alexandra’s passport has still not been used.”

  Marc tried to match DI Jones’s gaze, but glanced away, his eyes landing on the camera in the corner of the room. He swallowed, wondering if DI Jones could tell he already knew my passport hadn’t been used, because it was sitting in our office.

  DI Jones coughed. “I need to make clear nothing has changed the evidence found at the river. We’re investigating a suspected murder, Dr. Southwood.”

  Marc shook his head slightly, as if he could shrug off DI Jones’s words. “What about before she disappeared?” he said, trying to keep the desperation from his voice. “You must be able to find out whether she went to Dorset when she said she did?”

  DI Jones and Nicola exchanged a look. “We’re working on a couple of theories about where she might have gone in those periods, but what we’re struggling to put together is how.”

  “What theories?” Marc said, panic rising in his throat.

  “We’ve checked the records of Alexandra’s personal account,” DI Jones continued, ignoring Marc’s question, “as well as your joint account and credit cards, but there’s no trace of Alexandra traveling or staying anywhere during those time periods. Not even any moderately large withdrawals that would be consistent with her paying cash.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning it may not have been her who paid for it.”

  “But—”

  “We’re working on the assumption,” DI Jones said, “that wherever Alexandra went, somebody else must have been funding her.”

  “Who else could have?” Marc said, his voice rising. “What are these theories? What aren’t you telling me?”

  DI Jones cleared his throat. Nicola avoided Marc’s eye.

  “We’re looking into links with the PayPal donation we received for the appeal. Whoever’s involved clearly has both funds available and an interest in keeping an eye on our case.”

  “You think she was having an affair, don’t you?” Marc said, less incredulously than he’d have liked.

  Neither Nicola nor DI Jones spoke. Marc felt the silence wrap around his throat and chest. He believed in me, he truly did. He loved me. He trusted me. But like a mantra uttered until the sounds run into one, these phrases were beginning to lose their sense. As much as he willed his faith in me to remain unshakable, he couldn’t help but feel the panic of our world unraveling. Though I’d been gone for months, until they found out about my mother, he’d still felt me close by, in his heart and imagination if not in body. But now he saw only blurred reflections rippled by raindrops in a once still pond. He’d stopped sleeping.

  “Look, Dr. Southwood,” said DI Jones, “we’re not trying to make this more difficult for you. We know these things are hard to hear. But we have to look at the evidence. Your wife lied to you about her mother, told you repeatedly that she was staying with her. Then on top of that someone posed as her mother’s carer to continue the lie after Alexandra’s disappearance. The theory we’ve been examining is that Alexandra may have had plans for another short break but something went wrong. Maybe her accomplice changed his or her mind and something went sour. We don’t know.”

  Marc looked at him. Why did he say “her?” Marc wanted to ask, but couldn’t without admitting his own suspicions, without examining Fran’s accusations. He quashed the thought. “The other times,” he said, following another thread, “she told me where she was going and how long she’d be. She didn’t want us to worry. Whatever she was doing, she still cared enough to protect me and the girls. But that night we were expecting her home, we—”

  “Which is why we think something went wrong,” Nicola said. “Perhaps the other person surprised Alexandra, perhaps there was a confrontation. Marc, none of this changes the fact that it’s incredibly unlikely Alexandra is still alive.”

  “What’s the next step?” he asked, ignoring her tone.

  Nicola’s eyes flitted away from him.

  “We’ve already explored a couple more avenues,” DI Jones said, pushing a printed report across the table. “But we’ve tied up a lot of our resources in searching for Alexandra over the past few months.”

  Marc looked up from the papers. “What does that mean? You’re giving up?”

  “No,” DI Jones said, looking Marc in the eye. “We will continue to review the case and when anything further develops we will reassess the need for resources, but right now we’re going to reassign it to our non-immediate cases. It will be headed by a centralized missing persons officer for the North.”

  Marc stared back at him dumbly. Nicola’s head was lowered.

  “We need you to sign a couple of forms to state you understand the procedure.” DI Jones pushed more papers and a pen toward him.

  As he was leaving, Nicola handed him the card for the ce
ntralized office and suggested he get back in touch with the Missing People charity.

  “I’m sorry, Marc. I only found out yesterday.”

  He sat in his car for a long time, unable to turn the ignition. Back at home, he mulled Nicola’s advice and clicked through to the Missing People website. He read about a now twenty-four-year-old, missing from Peckham since December 22, 2006: five foot three inches tall, of medium build with brown eyes and black hair in a ponytail. Marc stared at the sad eyes and glossed lips of the photo and imagined a family still desperate to find her. Next to hers was a photo of a smiling seventy-six-year-old woman, a garden visible in the background. Case reference number 13-000981: missing from Boston, Lincolnshire, since April 12, 2003. Next, a twenty-five-year-old with long dark hair, posed without a smile on an overcast cliff-top somewhere: missing from Southampton since May 19, 2013.

  Marc kept clicking, the page loading six articles at a time. He glanced over the mostly male faces looking out at him, homing in on the women, wondering what their stories entailed, what their husbands and children and parents were feeling. A sixteen-year-old from Coventry, gazing quizzically at him from a photo booth, missing since 28 May. A thirty-nine-year-old grinning in a bathing suit, on holiday with someone she loved, Marc thought, missing from Wrexham since August 19. A fifty-eight-year-old with a piercing stare and a lipstick frown, missing from Enfield since July 22, a single line beneath her description: “Lorraine, we would love to hear from you.” A twenty-two-year-old who could be one of his students, elegantly dressed, sunglasses propped atop her head, expression curious, missing from Edinburgh since June 7.

  They continued. He was surprised to see so many reported missing during 2013. All of these women had disappeared this year. In the months he’d lost to missing me, others had misplaced those they loved too. Yet I feel so alone, he thought.

  From a column on the left of the screen he selected “Join the Search.” An image of the British Isles appeared. Scrolling over it with the mouse, he could see who was being searched for in any area. “We are currently publicizing thirty-two missing from Yorkshire and seven thought to be in the area.” He clicked the link and there on the first page of six photos he saw me. That over-published image they took from his laptop on the first visit to the house. “Age at disappearance: thirty-seven. Alexandra Southwood has been missing from York since February 21, 2013. There is great concern for Alexandra as her disappearance is out of character. Alexandra is urged to call our confidential service Message Home for advice and support. Alexandra is five foot, four inches, of slim build with short, dark brown curly hair and blue eyes. She wears a wedding ring.”

  He leant back in his chair and returned my gaze. The more he looked, the more I resembled those other unfamiliar faces, the more I seemed to belong to their world rather than his.

  “Are you out there, Al?” he asked aloud. “What don’t I know? What don’t I understand?”

  Locking me up in my sixty-five-word profile, he left the office and descended the stairs to tie his shoes. He shrugged on his jacket and locked the door behind him. The gray sky danced behind the oranges and reds left on the branches. He breathed in the wet air and flexed his fingers in the cold. He’d never admit it to Nicola or DI Jones, but a tiny part of him was beginning to believe in their version of me.

  * * *

  That’s it then. He’s had enough of me trying to raise a reaction. He reminded me that everything he’s done and everything he’s doing is to try to help. To “straighten me out.” We only have a couple of weeks, he reminds me. A couple of weeks until he makes a decision about my future.

  “I don’t care if I live or die!” I shout. It’s true, I realize. All I care about now are my children. He chuckles and tells me I have a strange way of showing it.

  So no more. He says he won’t come every day, that I don’t deserve his sympathy or care. He says he’ll treat me as I’m asking to be treated.

  “You think I’m your enemy,” he says. “But I’m all you have left.”

  He leaves and I lie on the bed and close my eyes. I wish I could slide myself into Marc’s world, slip on to his tongue and fizzle his pain away like a living Alka-Seltzer. This might have ended so differently if I could have maintained his faith in me. If I could have sat beside him through those miserable weeks and months as he flicked through every channel, scanned the papers and read every quote from students, waiters and paperboys. He was desperate to know what they knew, convinced there was one person out there with the information he needed. His mind wandered from one second to the next. At times, he started to believe the evidence. It felt like a betrayal to contemplate it, but what if I was dead? Should he try to accept it?

  I imagine Marc closed his eyes when he saw himself on-screen. Unshaven and pathetic-looking, pleading for the one person who knew what had happened to come forward. How far were my husband’s imaginings from my truth now? Did his imagination stretch to see me banging against these walls, unheard in this reinforced room? Did he see my matted hair and chapped lips?

  I lie here wondering what the Marc I remember would do if he got hold of my captor. I dream about my husband plucking out his eyes. I ache to be rescued.

  2010

  4/19/10

  Al,

  How’s it going? Did you guys finish the kitchen renovation yet? Is it everything you dreamed of?

  I’m still living in my crappy flat, of course. Nothing quite as exciting as designing my own space. Some fun things still happen to your old friend, though. I was asked to give a lecture at NYU this month. I had to turn it down, of course—it’d be pretty difficult to give a lecture without revealing your face—but it was nice to be asked.

  Actually, scratch that, it made me really sad to turn it down. Imagine standing before those students and being able to tell them something real. Imagine if just one of them heard what I was saying and took it away with them. Obviously I can’t regret anything I’ve done. My name is out there, it means something. I’ve got more money in the bank than I ever imagined. And mostly I still like keeping my face hidden, I really do. But every now and again I sort of wonder what I could achieve if I stepped out from my own shadow. What sort of platform I could have.

  I miss you, Al. I want to spend the day walking the city with you. I want to go to museums and performances, plays and films. I want to feed our brains and then gorge ourselves on junk food, spin on the rides on Coney Island and stand in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge like the giddiest of tourists. I miss being able to talk with you, laugh with you, rage with you. Abandon myself fully in your presence. It’s not the same with anyone else.

  Am x

  SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 2010

  “We have to see this,” I said, still devouring the article before me. “At the Whitechapel next month.” I looked up from the paper in excitement, willing my husband to meet my gaze, match my enthusiasm.

  “Hmm?” he said, spooning coffee into the cafetière.

  “Sophie Calle’s new piece,” I said. “It’s called Take Care of Yourself. The title’s from a breakup email someone sent her. She’s got a load of women to reperform her own rejection. How brilliant is that? The private made public, the personal universal—it’s so rich.”

  Despite everything the past decade of knowing this man should have taught me, my own excitement had temporarily blinded me such that sitting two feet from my husband, the Guardian spread over our John Lewis countertops, and M&S bagels toasting in our Kenwood four-slice toaster, I found myself truly expecting Marc to be affected by this news. I wasn’t asking him to drop the coffeepot, shatter the glass over the Italian slate we’d just had fitted and cause a minor catastrophe in our otherwise perfect morning. But I did need him to climb at least a few rungs on my ladder of excitement, to hesitate and ask the dates, wonder about the ethics, show some—any—kind of interest.

  Marc smiled and reached for the kettle. He poured t
he boiled-not-boiling water over the coffee grinds in a circular motion, taking care to cover each granule. He continued pouring until the water reached the lower lip of the outer metal casing, then delicately balanced the plunger on top of the concoction and glanced at the Jones & Co clock above the cooker, noting, I knew, to plunge the filter in exactly four minutes.

  Finally he turned to me and spoke. “Is she the creepy stalker?”

  My lips pursed. He was teasing me, just as we both might tease our daughters if they bounced into the room squealing over their magazines, thrilled by the latest bit of Justin Bieber gossip. “You’re a shit, you know that?” I said, trying but failing to match his light tone. My disappointment was not feigned. “She’s not a bloody stalker. She’s totally seminal. She’s the queen of the unexpected.”

  Marc folded his arms. “But she stalked someone, right?”

  I exhaled through my teeth. “She examines identity by pushing the boundaries of privacy. She used a lost address book to create a picture of a person from those who knew him. It was an aesthetic act—”

  “Didn’t he sue her?” Marc interrupted.

  “That’s so not the point,” I said. “Or if it is, then it’s exactly the point. Her performances are about crossing that line, about invading privacy and working within the space that makes us strangers. We all think we’re walking around in these bubbles; we forget someone might be watching us.”

  “I don’t see how that’s not creepy.”

  “Just because you can only get excited by dead poets rotting in their graves. Christ, this is like you reading that Byron just woke up as a vampire and invited you to a laudanum party.”

  Marc’s shoulders shook with laughter. “I was joking, darling. It sounds exciting—as does the laudanum party. Shall we go to both?”

  I glared at him. I actually hated him right then.

  Marc began apologizing, asking when the exhibition opened, making reference to the Paul Auster novel I’d given him one Christmas—offering something, I supposed, to prove he took me seriously. I was barely listening. None of this mattered, I reminded myself. What mattered was that today was Sunday, that I needed to get the girls’ uniforms in the machine so they’d have time to dry on the line, that we had to nip out to get wrapping paper for Emma’s present before the party at three, that if there was time this evening we should look at booking a hotel for Ruth’s sixtieth. That I loved my husband and my family and my life.