But she jumps up and grabs her car keys from the table. I watch as she leaves the front door open and runs down the path. She jumps in the shiny red car and disappears to rescue her son.
Chapter Thirty
I know I’m right. Just the fact that she’s left me, the crazy ex, in her house, proves it. I look around. This was the other home, then. Where he stayed while he told me he was abroad.
In the kitchen, the cupboard under the sink is packed to the brim with every kind of household cleaner you can think of. No cups or plates on the drainer. This is a show home and Katy is on the edge of her nerves.
With my new distance I know how he did it. With Katy, anyway. He wove a web of lies. He told her that I knew. Once I had the answers, I was going to post the pictures on the thread of shame and expose Katy. Her laptop is open on the table. I tap it. It comes to life and I see that she’s logged into Facebook following Alicia’s thread of #cheatingbastard comments. More than a thousand now.
I could easily log in as Alicia, place the blame on Katy, but I don’t. She’s as duped as me. I feel a pang of sorrow. No doubt, right at the beginning, she believed that he loved her. She believed that he was trapped in a loveless marriage where they were ‘staying together for the kids’. She would have believed that he was just biding his time before he left.
Even when she had Jamie and Jack was living here (no doubt between ‘business trips’), she still believed it would all be fine. I can see it in her, wondering what the fuck is going on. Wondering how he can drift in and out of her life and make her feel so bad, yet still want him.
She’s like me. My science self kicks in and I wonder if there has been a study. I wonder if it’s only women who have children with philanderers that can’t get over them, that succumb to a certain brand of abuse.
I pick up a picture of Jamie. He’s bigger now. I look closer. He does have a look of Charlie. Around the mouth. I tear up as I realise that he’s Charlie and Laura’s half-brother. I try to think about the future. If all this works out the way I want it to, Jamie and Katy will be in my life for ever. It suddenly strikes me that this is the right thing. Charlie and Laura deserve to know their brother. Poor little Jamie, none of this is his fault. And it wouldn’t be too bad. Katy’s nice. She didn’t ask for this any more than I did.
But my work is done here – for now. I drive back to the hotel and pack my cases. It’s time to go home. None of these women are going to the police. All of them have more to lose than they have to gain. The only person who is complaining here is Jack. And that’s only because he’s finally been caught out.
I leave a note for Lee behind the bar – Nice meeting you, sorry I can’t make dinner. The barman discreetly hands me a piece of paper with a mobile phone number scribbled on it – Call me, Lee. I suddenly feel hot and my face glows red in the mirror opposite. I think it’s a warm glow.
I check out under the watchful gaze of the elderly couple who nudge each other and whisper. I glance at the TV on the wall as the receptionist calculates my bill. I catch a glimpse of #allgirlstogether on the This Morning show. A muted Holly Willoughby talks to two women, one who is labelled as ‘jilted’ and the other as ‘married to a cheater’.
I don’t need to hear what they are saying as the Twitter feed scrolls up the page. They cut to an angry-looking man, palms up, presumably explaining why men cheat. He’s labelled ‘sex addict’, and I snigger to myself. I sincerely hope that Jack is labelled a sex addict. I hope that everyone is following this now and they have seen the nine women that he has cheated with.
My bill is ready and before I leave I have one more thing to do. He’s slept with other women in our bed. One of them was wearing my wedding dress. He had a secret baby. Proposed to another with a ring stolen from me. What could be lower than any of that?
I open made-up Monica’s laptop and push in the flash drive with the journal on it. I scroll through the now familiar scenes of him with them until I come to the pictures of Paula. Somehow, even to me, now desensitised, it seems terrible. I don’t really want to see but I have to.
The first pictures are from Janine and Freddy’s wedding. We were both bridesmaids – Janine had six – and in these pictures Paula was doing her ‘pussycat’ look at the camera. When we were teenagers she would stand in her bra and knickers and practise her looks. Pouting, seductive looks that worried me. She was sleeping with her boyfriends when she was fourteen and she would regale me with details of what they got up to.
I told my mother, of course, but she just told me that Paula was on the pill. Did I want to go on the pill? Was I sleeping with Jack? When I told her that we were waiting a while she pulled her lips back and narrowed her eyes. That was part of the problem. Paula was outrageous and I was made to feel bad for doing the right thing.
Paula’s pussycat look was designed specifically to give teenage boys a hard-on. She’d have her friends around on Friday nights when my mother was out and they would dance around in skimpy dresses practising their looks. I was supposed to be ‘looking after’ her. Babysitting. I had to come home from uni at weekends and struggled to keep up, studying while Jack sat beside me and his eyes followed Paula.
I blamed her. Her constant ‘can I practise on Jack?’ and ‘Come on, Caroline, join in the fun’. Of course, Friday nights turned from nights in to nights out. I’d witness the ‘getting ready’ with her pouty friends and the ultra-short dresses. Then sometime after 2 a.m., she would arrive home loudly with a pissed-up man in tow.
Inevitably, I’d be making coffee or studying at the kitchen table when the hungover victim tried to make an escape. I’d nod and smile and lower my eyes and soon I became known as ‘Paula’s nice sister’.
Fast forward a few years and Jack’s attraction to Paula became much more obvious. Karaoke night at the Red Lion consisted of him abandoning me for a sing-song with angel-voiced Paula, culminating in ‘Hey Paula’. It was a great laugh to everyone, very funny, but I could almost see the sparks flicker between him and her. Every time he saw her he’d break into, ‘Hey, hey Paula!’
I finally flipped one Christmas Eve when he danced with her almost all night. He told me I was paranoid. He told me that I was imagining it. She was my sister. What did I think he was?
Janine and Freddy’s wedding is a surprise, though. Either that or I’d given up by then. I’d been fitted for my bridesmaid dress pre-baby, and although I’d regained my figure soon after having Charlie, my boobs were enormous and heavy with milk. The dress wasn’t made for breastfeeding and in the end I gave up and decided to go home.
I fully expected Jack to stay. There was rarely any point in trying to get him to come home with me; on reflection it was always an opportunity for him to meet new women when I wasn’t there. This night he came home. I can see why now. The pictures of Paula with the pussycat look are outside the church from a distance. Round the back. In the background I can see my father’s grave and bile rises.
I upload the photographs of Paula as a new thread on Monica’s Facebook. Straight away people are liking them and tagging them and sharing them and there’s a direct message. It’s a journalist from the Sun asking to meet Monica. Offering a substantial sum of money for her story.
I delete it. Now I’ve posted these final pictures I feel like I really am at the end of it. I’ve shown the world just how low he can go. Paula, ever-simpering and saintly, will be shown as she really is. A man-stealing bitch. There’s still a slight niggle as to why she hasn’t admitted it. Not that I’ve seen her since that wedding. She’s disappeared off the face of the earth. Shame, probably. Can’t face me. But she’ll have to one day.
I Google her and there are no results. An old Facebook page with her smiling out, last updated five years ago. Where is she?
One thing’s for sure, he won’t be able to hide it now. The photographs already have over 100 likes. I check Alicia’s thread and they’ve been copied onto there, with someone pointing out that ‘that’s her SISTER!’ and ‘You OK Caroline hun?
We’re here for you.’ Fiona has sent me a message telling me to phone her if it all gets too much. I see now that she’d messaged me several times but I’d ignored her – I’d put that right when all this was over.
It’s time to go home and face the music. My best reading of what’s gone on with DS Percy is that she’s concerned for my well-being, either because she’s believed his ‘mentally ill’ line or because she wonders how much I can endure. I don’t think I’m in trouble. She suspects I’m behind this but can’t prove it. I think it through. I’m going to need a witness. I ask the barman for the note back and leave my phone number for Lee. I add two kisses and, Ring me.
Because I’ve felt perpetually that I’m in trouble for years I don’t know if I’m a hero or a villain. I’m obviously the pioneer of the #allgirlstogether movement. I’m the vessel for the outpouring of #cheatingbastard behaviour from both women and men. What I’m not sure of is how the police will view this. I do know that they need a complaint in order to act, and the only one they have so far is from Jack.
I log off and switch on my own phone. Back to the real world. As soon as I switch it on it flashes with messages. I can deal with this later.
Chapter Thirty-one
My mind races all the way. I could take this further. I could go on TV and really let everyone know what I’ve gone through. Everything that is happening now is a public record of me fighting back against what Jack put me through. All the more reason to maintain a dignified silence.
It isn’t illegal to make a fake Facebook account. It isn’t illegal to post pictures on the internet. Just like it isn’t illegal to break someone’s heart. It isn’t illegal to ask someone why they slept with your husband. I didn’t hurt anyone at The Tea Cosy. Not physically. I bitterly regret that, though. The rest is revenge. I wonder if that’s how it will work.
Or, like everything else in my life so far, I’ll somehow be punished for someone else’s mistakes? It doesn’t matter now. I started from a losing position and that was the problem. If it all goes to shit now I haven’t lost anything.
Will the police be waiting for me? Will they have believed him? As I turn the corner I see a red car parked up across my drive. As the driver sees me, they pull across and let me in. I turn up the drive and park behind the skip. It’s Katy.
She looks angry and I feel sorry she has to go through this. I wonder what happened when she went for Jamie, what he said to her. I half expect her to fly at me, call me a liar. Instead, she stands right in front of me. Her eyes are sad but there are no tears. Her face is set in a harsh stare. She says just one word.
‘Sorry.’
It’s what I need to hear. I just needed to know that somewhere in all this someone had considered my feelings. That they hadn’t just disregarded me. A wave of relief washes over me and I hug her. She hesitantly hugs me back. Katy takes the key from me and opens the front door. The door scrapes a pile of mail into a bigger pile of mail. I’d almost forgotten what happened before with Pam. The mess.
Katy looks around in wonder.
‘Fucking hell. Fucking hell. What happened here?’
I put the kettle on.
‘Things haven’t been so good. Then … one of his women came here.’
I show her the bedroom. She already knows which door it is, a tiny detail that isn’t lost on me. She stands and stares.
‘Bloody hell.’
I know what she’s thinking. There but for the grace of God go I. Her turn this time. This is what could happen to me. We go back downstairs. I make tea. The milk I bought at the corner shop is still fresh.
‘So what did he say?’
I can’t help it. I still need to know. I need to know what words came out of his lying fucking mouth, even if it’s second hand.
‘Well, I went to get Jamie. He just thought I was early at first, then obviously he saw the look on my face. He ushered me into the hallway …’
‘His mother’s house?’
‘Yes. She was in the kitchen with your two.’
My two. My children. I envy anyone who has seen them more recently than me and I almost hate her, but remind myself that this isn’t her fault.
‘So what did he say?’
‘He asked me what was wrong. I told him I’d seen everything on the internet and I didn’t think Jamie should be there at the moment. There were reporters outside. He said that he’d fight me for custody if I stopped him seeing Jamie.’
I look at her. She’s terrified.
‘What else did he say?’ Her pupils are small and she pales. She doesn’t know whether to trust me. I reach out and touch her hand.
‘He said that … that … I would lose Jamie because I couldn’t look after him. That I had no chance. He had custody of his other children and this would go the same way.’
‘Did he, now? Well, it won’t. I’ll help you, Katy. He’s done this once, he won’t do it again. And he doesn’t have fucking custody. Everyone knows what he is now. Where is Jamie? You didn’t …?’
‘No. He’s at my mother’s. I had to come here and tell you I was sorry. Not just that. I want to help. I want to help you to …’
I get up and hug her. We can help each other. Through the distrust and jealousy and hurt we can help each other. The house stinks and it’s like some kind of fucked-up charity shop, but it’s home again and somehow Katy is sitting here and she’s sorry.
‘We’ll sort something out. I need to tell you what’s happened.’
I don’t tell her about the journal. I tell her the DS Percy version – another witness to what I said. She listens and sips her hot, sweet tea.
‘So it was his mother all along? I thought you said she hated you?’
‘Yes. But she’s a mother at the end of the day.’
The lies spew out and I can’t stop them. I’m careful to not let her know that I’ve seen the journal, only the bits on Facebook. I suddenly feel bad about Missy. I did all those things when I was mixed up and weak. She took my kids away.
Yet I can’t get away from it. She’s a mother at the end of the day. I remember Jack telling me that she wasn’t well liked within the family. I realise now that he isolated me from his relatives, but he did talk about them. He told me that Missy had two sisters, both ‘worse than her’ – his words.
There had been an incident where they had found out what she was really like – self-centred, grasping, greedy – and there had been a suggestion that she didn’t pay the attention she should to Jack. A bad mother, they called her. He told me that was the only time he ever saw her cry. It must be why she saw my kids – and now Jamie too – as a second chance.
So Missy knows that feeling of persecution. She knows what it’s like to be deemed a bad mother. Yet she still did it to me. I’ve often wondered if that was when it started? That all paths from there led to that afternoon in the meeting room where she took my children.
Katy’s talking, telling me all about what he has done to her, but all I can think about is whether it really is love that makes the world go round, or revenge. I push it to the back of my mind and give Katy’s plight the witness it deserves, the witness I never had. Right on cue, my phone rings: DS Percy. I wait for three rings.
‘Hello?’
I can hear her exhale.
‘Caroline. Where are you?’
‘At home. I told you I was going away for a few days to clear my head. I’ve been staying at a hotel on the tops.’
Too soon? Too needy? Too much information?
‘I’m going to come round. There have been some developments. You’ve obviously seen the media reports.’
‘Not really. I’ve been off the radar. Stress. But feel free to come round.’
I’m obviously not in deep trouble. I am, however, going to get a quick catch-up on what’s happened on Jack’s side. Between Lorraine and Katy I’m getting a pretty good picture of just how pissed off he is.
Katy is telling me that just before Jamie was born Jack went on a month-long trip ‘with w
ork’. That she bought him a ring, a band with a tiny diamond in it. When he returned, two days before she went into labour with Jamie, the ring was gone. He told her that he had lost it scuba diving.
She tells me that she has followed the Facebook thread carefully and had never realised about all the other women. When the pictures of Jack and Louise were posted, she enlarged them as much as she could and he was wearing that ring. She tells me that she never suspected.
Katy is crying and I feel tears well up too. She truly believed that, as the other woman, she was the one he had risked everything for, and sacrificed everything for. She had never imagined that there was a chain of other women. She was horrified, sick for days. He came to pick Jamie up and acted like nothing had happened. Telling her that she looked rough, that the house was a mess. What was that smell? That Jamie came back in completely new clothes, the old ones in a black bin bag. Missy was going to throw them out but …
I knew it. I’ve practically done a public service. All those women will be looking at the clues, trying to work out where they fit in this sordid jigsaw puzzle. But Katy’s sobbing. I hold her and tell her that we’ll sort it out and that he won’t hurt her now.
Katy’s just telling me how he still liked to sleep with her and, afterwards, as he got dressed, joked that she was an eight out of ten this time, try harder next time. Except it didn’t seem like a joke. I ask her if he ever hurt her. She said he didn’t, but her eyes betrayed her. She said it was playing, like in Fifty Shades.
Perfect Ten Page 20
