Perfect Ten

by Jacqueline Ward

  I get out of the four-wheel drive and go over everything in my mind. I’ve brought Frances’s phone with me, dismantled, of course. Monica’s phone is at your mother’s and her laptop is in the car, deactivated. My phone and laptop are at home, both with the location turned on.

  I don’t know how long it will take you to convince the police that they need to take action, Jack. But I know you. You’ve already tried to deny Pam on Facebook, posting in the middle of the night because someone has alerted you. You’re like your mother. You won’t wait for morning. You’ll call DS Percy, because you like the personal contact. You think it gets you further.

  I know you. You’ll have done all this already and you’ll have made sure that you get an assurance that whatever device is posting to Monica’s account is traced. You’ll know the location is on because you’ll have seen I tagged our home. You’ll think it is a done deal.

  If I can find out where my mobile is using ‘Find my phone’, then the police will have something much more efficient. I expect they will trace Monica’s phone and the laptop IP address. DS Percy will put two and two together and know that whoever posted the pictures has the holdall and will search her house. And your mother will let them.

  I try to imagine her face when they find the bag. I wish I could be there, in the cloakroom, looking out onto the scene. Her working out how it got there, puzzled because she was so sure that she had destroyed me.

  Watching as they open the holdall in her pristine kitchen and all the pictures fall out, Pam Harding’s on top. Their faces as they realise what the journal is. What it has recorded. DS Percy’s expression of distaste as she begins to understand the full situation. Asking herself who marks women out of ten? What sort of man takes photographs of himself having sex with his mistresses?

  It will all be out in the open. They’ll know what this was about, what you were trying to hide. They’ll even see what you said about me. That I am stupid. Naïve. Your mother will look like a bitter woman who is mistreating her daughter-in-law. Of course, she will try to turn it around and tell them that she was doing it to protect me. That of course you needed to suffer after what you had done to poor Caroline. That she was helping me with the children. So it all looks good for her.

  But the fact will remain that the bag was found in her home and the phone, with recent texts, in her hallway. The only conclusion the police can reach is that she has done it. She has harassed your exes and because you have made an official complaint about the holdall, she will be blamed. Perfect.

  I walk slowly home and the sun is just about peeping through the trees. It’s still dark, but it’s light enough to cast shadows and to see the dew on the grass and the spider’s webs that decorate my bay trees. It’s easily light enough to see Pam Harding standing in the middle of my lawn.

  Chapter Twenty

  I sneak around the skip and through the gate at the side of the house and she doesn’t see me. Rover is already going fucking mad so I don’t have to worry about that. She’s shouting something.

  ‘Caroline, I know you’re in there. You’d better get out here right now or I’m coming in. Open the fucking door.’

  I rush through the back door and upstairs and grab my dressing gown out of the bathroom and change into it. I go into the bedroom and rub some of the feather debris into my hair and onto the dressing gown. I open my own laptop and log onto my Facebook account. Then I go downstairs and open the front door. It bangs in my face as she kicks it.

  She rushes at me and I stand my ground.

  ‘You’re going to be sorry you did this, Caroline. Very sorry.’

  I fold my arms and we’re nose to nose.

  ‘I’m going to be sorry? You’re the one who wore my fucking wedding dress and slept with my husband in my bed.’

  She takes a step backwards.

  ‘You posted the picture online. You.’

  She goes to grab my hair but I hold her wrist. I twist it and pull her towards me.

  ‘No. I didn’t. That’s what he wants you to think. But it’s nothing to do with me. Can’t you see I’m in pieces here? I’ve just had to see that picture myself.’ I let her go and cover my face. ‘How do you think I feel? It’s really … really … affected me.’

  She pushes past me and hurries into the kitchen. She sees my laptop and the picture. She looks in my internet history for Monica’s login. It isn’t there, of course. She even tries the drop-down login box to see if the auto text is there.

  She turns and looks at me.

  ‘So it really wasn’t you? Only he said …’ I’m standing there in a scruffy dressing gown with feathers in my hair. She looks past me. ‘Jesus Christ, what the fuck is going on here?’

  She cranes her neck to look at the towers of boxes, some of them opened randomly last night to locate the knives. I slump onto a chair.

  ‘This is always happening. Jack sending people round. Doing … stuff. Them somehow blaming me.’ I look up at her. ‘It’s not my fault that he slept with you. Or that he took photos. Or that they ended up online.’ I’ve got her attention now. She’s pacing around. ‘I think we’ve both been had here, love.’

  She stops and stares at me.

  ‘OK. So how did you know it was me, then? I’ve changed a lot since that picture.’

  She hasn’t changed at all. Maybe a little heavier, hair shorter. But it’s so obviously her.

  ‘I saw you on Facebook. In my wedding dress.’

  She’s peering at me now.

  ‘But the picture didn’t show my face. It was from the back.’

  My God. She hasn’t seen the second picture. I scroll down the screen on my laptop. She leans forward, then makes a little noise.

  ‘Holy shit. But I do look good.’ She turns to me. ‘Sorry. That’s really inappropriate. Sorry.’

  Yes, Pam does look good. Nine out of ten, in fact. Couldn’t keep her mouth shut. I’m guessing that she was always blurting out inappropriate things. So let’s find out what she knows.

  I put the kettle on. She’s fidgeting and tapping her foot. Staring at me. She’s very intense.

  ‘So why are you covered in feathers?’

  I pour the tea. Slowly. Make her wait.

  ‘Come with me.’

  She follows me upstairs. I open the bedroom door and she gasps.

  ‘Oh my God. Have you been robbed?’

  ‘No. This is what that picture made me do. I can’t bear to sleep in here any more. You weren’t the first, you know. My next-door neighbour saw him with all sorts. Brought them here in the afternoons. While I was at work.’

  She’s looking at the picture of Charlie and Laura.

  ‘Those your two? Are they …?’

  ‘No. He made sure that I lost everything. Everything.’

  I begin to clear things up and she’s helping me. She’s collecting the tiny seed pearls and the pieces of dress and putting them back in the box. She knows the layout of this room and she knows where the box belongs. When she’s collected as much as she can, she pushes it back on top of the wardrobe, which makes me hate her even more.

  I fetch a bin bag and we scoop up the feathers silently. Then the smaller pieces of memory foam. Pam piles the bigger pieces on the bed base and we sit there, looking at the room, both tired to distraction. I make my move.

  ‘So what did he say, then?’

  She’s rubbing her eyes.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Jack. What did he say about all this? I expect he’s as upset as I am.’

  ‘Well, when my sister told me about the picture being on Facebook, I rang him. Just the sort of stupid fucking thing he would do.’

  This surprises me. I expected her to be still in awe of him.

  ‘Oh. Why?’

  She takes out a cigarette and lights it with a Zippo lighter. Her fingernails are glittery green.

  ‘Because he’s a prick. But I guess you know that?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. He’s certainly not treated me well. As you know.’

  She
points her cigarette at me.

  ‘He told me that you were a bitch who wouldn’t give him a divorce. A marriage of convenience, yada yada yada …’

  ‘So what made you think he was a prick?’

  She thinks for a moment, as if there are several things and she has to weigh up the worst.

  ‘Well, he told me you were living separate lives. I wanted him to leave you but he kept making excuses. So I got suspicious and followed you. You weren’t living separate lives at all, were you?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘He lied right to the end. Made me feel like I was crazy for knowing he was lying. So I got rid and felt immediately better. Until now.’

  I hurry her along now.

  ‘So what did he say? When you rang him?’

  ‘He told me you’d posted it. Something about some photos you’d nicked off him. Said you were a psycho. But anyone can see that you’re just heartbroken.’ She puts her hand over mine. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have done any of it. I shouldn’t have come here.’

  She gets up and goes to the bathroom. I know as soon as she turns the tap on that she’s running water over her cigarette stub. I’d found them in the mother of pearl mini-bin in the bathroom round about the time I’d smelt smoke in our bedroom. When I asked you, you made up some cock-and-bull story about my hormones making me smell funny things. I even Googled it at the time.

  They were hers all the time. She’s been here more than once. I stand in the bathroom doorway as she sits peeing. She’s used to this. One of the girls.

  ‘So how long did it go on for?’

  ‘Six months.’

  Six fucking months. I swallow a little bit of bile.

  ‘Even though you knew about the children? Were they ever here?’

  ‘No. Never. I promise. Look, Caroline, this was a while ago and I’m really sorry. Come on, I’m on your side.’

  She’s sorry now. Now everyone has found out. Before, when it was your little secret, she wasn’t sorry at all. She’s eyeing me, looking for any sign that I’m going to turn on her, but I don’t. I want her to trust me, so I smile and nod. She follows me back into the bedroom and I watch her settle into what’s left of our bed, curled up and drowsy. She’s kitten-like, still selfish even though she knows she’s ruined someone’s life. I lie down beside her and pull the ragged quilt cover over us. It really is a lovely #allgirlstogether scene.

  Her breathing slows. I can’t sleep. I look at the feathers in the bin bag. I pull down the box and examine pieces of my wedding dress. I loved that dress. Tiny seed pearls make a tap, tap, tap on the floor but she doesn’t wake.

  I hurry back to my Facebook account and look at all the comments on Monica’s pictures. It’s light outside now and the world is waking up. Everyone is logging on to see the latest instalment in your downfall, and now they’re seeing naked Pam in my room.

  It’s seven o’clock. Pam’s words snap at me. I’m on your side. Is she? Is she on my side? Fuck, fuck, fuck. Were they all on my side? Duped, like me? I stand outside my bedroom door. Our bedroom door. The thing is, I know that she is sorry. Genuinely sorry. But there’s one little thing that’s bugging me. She told me she followed me. Us. So she knew that we were together. Still a couple. Yet she kept on seeing you. For six months. What kind of woman would do that?

  In the early days, when I first lost the children, I couldn’t understand how people could hurt other people like this and get away with it. How I could hurt so much, have so much wrong done to me, yet I could do nothing about it. It isn’t illegal to hurt someone you love. To ruin their lives. You just have to ‘get over it’. Let it go. Even the kind of cruelty you put me through. All’s fair in love and war. It doesn’t seem like it is right now. Not at all.

  I turn around and look at the two doors facing me, both locked. My children’s names stencilled on the doors, with ivy frames. I want revenge, but I want my children back too.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Pam’s suddenly behind me. I jump, wary of the horrible things I want to put her through that race through my mind. But I’m stronger than that. The thought surprises me and I straighten. She smiles.

  ‘Come on. It’s been a long night. Let’s have a cuppa.’

  Her voice is soft and quiet and I wonder if, apart from fucking my husband, she is a nice person. She motions for us to go downstairs and we sit at the kitchen table. She tilts her head to one side.

  ‘I know you don’t believe me, but he took me in too. Told me he was leaving you. That he’d leave soon. And yeah, I did feel sorry for your kids. But I thought I was in love.’

  I snort. ‘But you fucking knew he was with me. You fucking knew.’

  ‘I bet you hate me, don’t you?’

  Her eyes are pleading. I nod.

  ‘Maybe not hate. Strong dislike? You deserve it.’

  She winces. ‘OK, maybe I do. But deep down you know that it’s not my fault. It’s his. I was stupid. So were you. And whoever else he took in. But having a go at me is just going to make it worse. For both of us. The Facebook stuff is one thing ... but all that upstairs, the dresses and that, well, it’s a bit …’

  She lights a cigarette and gets a saucer from the cupboard. I think how close I came to taking real revenge. I feel a pang of guilt, a roll in the pit of my stomach when I think about Frances’s shop. What the hell is happening to me?

  I study Pam as she checks her phone messages. She looks happy. I wonder how, if she says she loved Jack, she had got over it. How do people do that? For the first time since I saw that fucking holdall I feel genuinely sad. I wonder if I’ve done the right thing, going after these women.

  I can’t change it now, but I can do something about it. I can go and talk to DS Percy. I can tell her that I’ll help her as much as I can with her inquiries and, obviously, the posts will stop so you won’t be able to complain any more.

  I watch Pam’s cigarette smoke wind through the morning sunshine.

  ‘What you said, you know, we’re on the same side?’

  She laughs. ‘We are. We’re both Jack’s exes, like it or not.’

  I hadn’t thought of it like that. It’s different for me. I was married to him. I had children with him. But I’ll take it. I need to think. Think of a way to get my kids back.

  ‘Yeah. Well, it’s just got a bit out of hand. I didn’t ask for any of this.’

  She looks around and waves her cigarette at the boxes.

  ‘All this. You need to unfuck yourself. You need to think about getting back to who you were before all this shit happened. Look, we’re never going to be soul sisters, but if you ever need anything, give me a call.’

  She tears off the top of her cigarette box, writes her number on it and throws it across the table. I’ll never use it, but I take it. I suddenly remember Sandra Bullock in some film where someone says you have to look after a plant, then a pet, then you might be ready to look after a relationship. Or yourself. The guilt eases a little and a wave of relief washes over me. I was beginning to believe it. That I was mad. That I was the psychopath. But this chink of regret tells me I’m not. Unfuck myself. Yes. There’s still a chance for me.

  Pam leaves. I put on my coat and because I’ve had no sleep I get a taxi to the police station. DS Percy is in a call me Lorraine mood. She’s talking about the Peter Daubney case, how they haven’t made any progress. How they are trying to trace and question everyone in the bar that night. Going on about a lot of things that have been stolen – more than I took, for sure. Had I remembered anything else?

  She makes me a cup of hot coffee and we chat about what we did last night as if I am stupid enough not to know she is sounding out my movements. But I oblige and give her a rundown of how I fell asleep early. When I’ve finished she leaves the room and comes back minutes later with a file and a tablet.

  ‘Do you know this woman?’

  It’s Pamela. In my wedding dress. For one horrible minute I think she’s played me at my own game and told them what I did.
/>   ‘I don’t know the woman but that’s my wedding dress. The one that I was going to give to my daughter. Priceless.’

  She reads the file. It takes a long time and I worry more about what Pam had to talk so much about. But I’m totally on the wrong track.

  ‘So it turns out that she’s contacted your ex about the picture being posted and he said you had done it. Even after I had told him that it wasn’t you.’ She shuts the file and leans forwards. ‘Look, I can see what’s going on here. He’s harassing you. And you can do something about it. You can press charges. Against both of them. Caroline, do you think that he sent those photographs?’

  My God. Just when I was going to spill the beans, she’s worked it out. She’s put it together. Finally. She not sure, but she’s asking me. Perfect.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t feel confident. It’s one thing after another. I feel … vulnerable.’ I need to get out of here. Now. ‘I’m worried what he will do next. I honestly don’t know anything about all this. But he’s convinced it’s me. I don’t know how …’

  She gets up and shuts the door.

  ‘I was going to tell you at some point but … well, it’s a bit tricky. We’ve found the missing bag.’

  I can hardly disguise my pleasure. I feel the guilt and regret fading and I try to drag them back, but the pull of revenge is too strong. It’s like a wave washing over me. I can tell her later. But for now …

  ‘Oh. Thank goodness. Did the depot find it after all?’

  She’s silent for a moment. Considering how to tell me.

  ‘No. It was found elsewhere. But you don’t need to worry about that. All you need to think about now is getting some help and getting over all this. We need to focus on finding out who robbed those men and who sent those pictures now.’