The Man She Married (ARC)

by Alison James

  I feel a spasm of stomach ache grip me, and I have that peculiar sensation you get when the blood drains from your face. ‘I feel pale,’ I used to say to my mother when I was little.

  ‘But I still want to know,’ I say weakly. ‘I need to know. I can’t put it behind me until I do.’

  And then I feel my waters break. This can’t be right, I think, my mind racing back to the pregnancy textbook I devoured recently. I’m only just into my second trimester. My waters can’t break now, surely.

  I gaze dumbly up at Cardle as though he can help me, then down at my lap as I feel another little gush of liquid. I’m wearing a pale blue dress, and it has a huge, dark stain on it. I lift the hem, and there’s blood streaking my thighs, reaching past my knees. Not amniotic fluid, blood.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Cardle says without irony, as drops of red pool on the light grey carpet.

  ‘I need to go to hospital.’ My voice is high and thin, as if it’s coming from someone else. ‘I think I’m having a miscarriage.’

  * * *

  The car moves briskly through the seething traffic on the Mile End Road, heading for the Royal London.

  ‘They’ve got a good maternity unit,’ Cardle says, but offers nothing else, not even a reproach about my ruining the upholstery in his battered Subaru. The interior of his car is a mess anyway, which is a relief. An empty can of Red Bull rolls around in the footwell, alongside empty crisp packets, a cigarette carton, chocolate wrappers and tickets from parking payment machines.

  The car is unceremoniously dumped in a disabled space near the door to Accident and Emergency and I hobble inside, pausing every few seconds as further gushes of blood ooze down my thigh.

  A harassed woman at reception tries to make us sit down and wait, but Cardle tells her with authority and a touch of menace, ‘This lady needs urgent attention. Now. She’s haemorrhaging. And she’s pregnant.’

  I’m whisked into a side room and the junior doctor – who looks about fourteen – pages the on-call obstetric registrar.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say to Cardle, ‘you don’t have to stay.’

  ‘I’m going nowhere.’

  Someone fetches a portable ultrasound and the registrar arrives, introduces himself and starts running the probe over my stomach. A kindly healthcare assistant has helped me into a hospital gown and is having a stab at cleaning me up.

  ‘Right,’ says the doctor eventually, after looking at the screen carefully for a few seconds. ‘The good news is: we still have a strong heartbeat.’

  He turns the screen round a little so that I can see. The baby is sucking its thumb.

  I gasp. ‘It’s okay?’

  The doctor nods. ‘Baby looks absolutely fine.’

  Cardle exhales hard. ‘Thank Christ for that.’

  I stare at him, amazed.

  ‘But the less good news is that you have what’s called “placenta praevia”. It’s when the placenta grows over the cervix. That’s what’s causing the bleeding. How many weeks are you now?’

  ‘Around fourteen.’

  ‘Okay, so…’ The doctor lifts my gown and takes a look between my legs. Cardle tactfully turns away, and I’m grateful to him. The doctor walks to the small basin in the corner of the room to wash his hands. ‘In most cases as the uterus expands, the placenta moves out of the way. Usually by no later than thirty weeks.’

  ‘And if it doesn’t?’ I ask.

  ‘Then you’ll need careful monitoring in your third trimester, and if it hasn’t moved by thirty-seven weeks, then you’ll need to be delivered by Caesarean section.’

  I stare, rapt, at the image on the screen. This is the second time I’ve seen my baby, but it’s no less thrilling.

  The doctor turns back and smiles at me as he wipes his hands dry with paper towels. ‘We’ll admit you overnight just for observation. The bleeding seems to be slowing down, but we need to be sure it’s going to stop. If it does, you can be discharged, but I’m afraid it will be bed rest for a few days, followed by restricted activity.’

  ‘What does restricted activity entail?’ I ask, with a sinking feeling.

  ‘No sport or exercise, no heavy lifting, no sex.’ He gives Cardle an apologetic smile.

  ‘Oh no!’ I say. ‘God no! He’s not my… I just happened to be in his office when the bleeding started, and he gave me a lift.’

  * * *

  I have to wait for another hour and a half before a bed is vacated on the already full-to-capacity ward. Cardle, who insists he won’t leave until I’m settled in upstairs, fetches me a cup of tea and a packet of chocolate biscuits from the shop.

  ‘Thanks, James,’ I give him a weary smile. ‘You’ve been incredibly kind.’

  ‘It’s Jim,’ he says gruffly, helping himself to one of the biscuits. ‘Nobody’s called me James since I left school.’

  ‘Thanks Jim, then.’

  ‘I’m just glad you’re okay. That – you know – you haven’t lost it.’

  I place my hand instinctively over my lower abdomen. ‘It’s the size of a peach now,’ I murmur, to no one in particular.

  ‘Few more weeks and you’ll feel him or her moving around.’

  I look at Jim with interest. ‘Have you got children?’ Hard to imagine this inscrutable, slightly dour man in a family environment.

  ‘Two. Zachary and Eloise.’

  ‘You’re married?’

  ‘Divorced. They live with their mum, back in North Yorkshire, so I don’t get to see them as often as I’d like. But they’re nearly grown up now anyway. Doing their own thing. Zac’s seventeen and Elle’s nearly fifteen.’

  ‘Gosh,’ I say, then realise what an airhead I sound.

  ‘I get it a bit more now,’ he says, sipping from his own polystyrene cup of coffee.

  ‘Get what?’

  ‘Why you need to chase down the shit who married you.’ He nods in the direction of my stomach. ‘Because he also knocked you up. Your kid is also his kid. It makes sense why you would want to find out who the guy was.’ He hesitates a second. ‘It is his? Only I know in my job not to assume—’

  ‘It’s his.’ I take a sip of tea. ‘But thanks,’ I say quietly, without looking at him. ‘That means a lot. That you understand why I need answers. Why I can’t just chalk it up and walk away. Despite what he’s done, I need to be able to tell my son or daughter who their father was.’

  A nurse pops her head round the doorway of the cubicle. ‘We’ll take you up to the ward now, Alice,’ she says cheerfully. ‘I’m just waiting for a porter.’

  ‘You can go now, Jim,’ I say. ‘I’ll be fine. In fact, I quite fancy a nap.’

  He stands up, his large frame filling the space. ‘Right you are.’ As he reaches the door, he turns and says, ‘Look, I would like to try and help you. I can’t promise I’ll be able to devote a whole lot of time to it, but give me a ring when you’re off bed rest and I’ll see what I can find out.’

  Thirty-Four

  Alice

  Now

  During my enforced convalescence, I add to my Pinterest board of nursery interiors and start to plan mine. I decide that the walls will be a neutral oatmeal colour, with carpet and soft furnishings in shades of cream and pale grey.

  Once I’m up and about again and have managed to convince myself that I’m not going to start bleeding every time I walk up and downstairs, I make a start on clearing the single bedroom on the first floor. It’s a room that until now has acted as overflow storage. There are shoes that I no longer wear, suitcases, sports equipment, and boxes full of old photographs. The ancient chest of drawers that used to belong to my parents can be stripped down and repainted, I decide. I’m pulling open drawers and emptying the contents onto the floor to sort into ‘chuck’ or ‘charity’ piles when my mobile rings in my pocket.

  It’s Jim Cardle.

  ‘How’s the restricted activity programme going?’ There’s a sardonic note to his voice, yet it sounds as though he’s smiling. To my surprise, I’m pleased to hear
his voice.

  ‘Fine. I’m just making a start on the nursery.’

  ‘You’re what?’ He’s incredulous. ‘From my understanding that’s exactly what the doctor didn’t order. At least promise me you’re not going up any ladders.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I assure him, though I’m sure he’s not worrying, not really. ‘I’m going to get someone in to do the actual decorating. I’m just emptying out the room.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound inactive to me,’ Cardle says. ‘I’m not sure I approve. But you’re okay, now, I take it?’

  ‘I’m fine, I promise. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’ve managed to resolve a MisPer job… turns out the guy had just been on a massive bender… so I’ve got a small window to work on your case.’

  ‘A small window?’ I repeat.

  ‘I’ll be able to make a start. Obviously, with such an unusual set of circumstances, it’s impossible to know how long it could take to uncover anything meaningful, so I still can’t promise you a quick result, but I can get the ball rolling at least, help you get a bit closer.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say cautiously. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Given you’re supposed to be resting, I could come to you?’

  ‘No,’ I say hurriedly. Now that I’ve cleared Ben MacAlister’s belongings, the house in Waverley Gardens has become a sanctuary, a retreat once again. I’ve expunged all traces of recent traumas, and I don’t want the real world blundering into it again. ‘Let’s go out and grab a coffee near me. A bit of gentle exercise won’t do me any harm.’

  I give him the address of Bean & Beaker, and when I walk in an hour later, Cardle’s already there, nursing a black coffee. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and dark jeans and has aviator sunglasses on top of his head. I shake his hand, which seems a little formal given that he’s seen me half-naked and smeared in blood, but I’m keen to reinforce that this is a professional relationship; nothing more. He smells faintly of shaving foam and cigarette smoke.

  ‘You look well,’ he observes. ‘Starting to show.’ His eye is directed at my thickening midriff, covered in a baggy smocked shirt. ‘How big is it now?’

  ‘The size of an avocado,’ I say with a grin.

  ‘Very fitting, in this place.’ He jerks his head to indicate the yummy-mummy clientele.

  I go to the counter to order a decaf latte and when I come back, he’s taken out a lined notebook and biro.

  ‘I’ll write while you talk. Bit like taking down an initial victim statement.’

  ‘You used to be in the police?’ I ask.

  Cardle nods. ‘For about ten years, yes. Before that I was in intelligence, for the Special Forces.’

  I widen my eyes to show that I’m impressed. ‘Is that when you got the tattoo done?’ I ask, indicating his broad, tanned forearm.

  He laughs. ‘God no, that was something I did with a mate when we were sixteen and pissed.’ He squints at it ruefully, ‘It’s supposed to be an eagle, but the bloody thing looks more like a chicken. Now, let’s start back at the beginning…’

  I tell him about my meeting with ‘Ben’ on the day of his interview for a job that the real Dominic Gill had applied for. That the lift had broken down, and he’d asked me out for coffee.

  Jim narrows his eyes. ‘How did he seem, that first time? What was his demeanour?’

  ‘Fine, you know, normal. He was flirtatious and I did think afterwards that he was coming on pretty strong… I remember noticing that he had a slight Scots accent… and that his suit didn’t fit properly.’ I pause a beat. ‘The police think he’d just met the real Dominic Gill, which would make sense. If the suit belonged to Gill, I mean. And there was something else that still sticks in my mind.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He seemed interested in my living arrangements. The fact that I owned my own house.’

  Cardle scribbles, takes a sip of coffee, scribbles some more.

  ‘At that point I didn’t think I’d ever see him again, so I didn’t dwell on it. But then I bumped into him again a few weeks later, because he’d been offered the job.’

  ‘And his suit fit this time?’

  I nod. ‘It made him seem a lot slicker and more attractive.’

  I detail our first dinner at Harvey’s, how he’d insisted on walking me home.

  ‘Did he want to see the house, d’you think?’

  I sigh. ‘I suppose so. He seemed impressed.’

  ‘And he was from the North-East?’

  I chew my lip. ‘Well, yes and no… his mother and brother lived in the Newcastle area. Except, of course, they turned out to be someone else’s mother and brother. Like I said, his accent was more Scottish than Geordie. He claimed to have worked in Scotland for several years.’ I give him a rueful look. ‘But, obviously, that could have been a lie too.’

  Cardle scribbles this down. ‘Okay, keep going. As much detail as you can, please, however trivial.’

  I launch into our brief courtship, describe my surprise when ‘Dominic’ proposed so fast and wanted a relatively quick wedding, how a couple of colleagues attended, but none of his family and friends. Cardle asks for details of the colleagues, and I can only remember Adam ‘Nickey’ Nixon.

  ‘I’ll speak to him,’ he interjects, then goes back to writing.

  ‘I was pushing for a visit to his mum’s, but he kept putting me off. Came up with excuses about her being away or in ill health. In the end, I went up to Patricia Gill’s house on my own and she was indeed away. So I suppose I accepted his explanation. And anyway, then she died. Except…’ I trail off.

  ‘Go on.’

  The coffee shop’s becoming busy, and I pause to move my chair and let a woman squeeze her buggy past before instinctively lowering my voice. ‘He – my husband – said she died in February 2017. He pretended to go to her funeral. But Simon Gill said it was actually the middle of March when she died. The same day Dominic told me he was attending her memorial service.’

  Cardle looks up at me from his notebook. ‘Did the police look into that?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Apparently her death was from natural causes – she had a heart problem and then fell – so there was no reason for them to. Nobody raised doubts about foul play.’

  ‘But you think MacAlister might have been involved somehow?’ He sucks in his lips again. ‘Bit of a coincidence, him being in Newcastle the day she dies, surely? And she would have been a big threat to his cover story.’

  I twist a paper napkin through my fingers, over and over. ‘I suppose I do. Now that I know the real date of her death.’

  Cardle scribbles more down. ‘I’ll try and speak to the Northumberland police at some point, as soon as I get time, though if she was cremated, it would be impossible to prove a link… Go on.’

  I try and give an account of an ordinary, happy married life, but I can’t leave out Nicola Mayhew, who was neither a party planner nor the person who planned my party.

  ‘So you were aware he was lying to you?’

  I nod slowly.

  ‘And yet you stayed?’

  ‘That was why I first came to your office.’ I’m defensive. ‘And, the same night, I followed him to the flat in Acton where Dominic Gill used to live. When I confronted him, he just said that he shared the flat once and was picking up some stuff. It was perfectly plausible. He was always plausible.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  I wish so much that I could tell him that was it, but of course there’s more. There’s so much more. There’s the trip to Johannesburg to see a brother who wasn’t there (‘I’ll need exact dates’), there’s Shona Watson, the vanishing pension pot and the payments to the mysterious Galea Securities fund (‘I’ll need details’). When I start to parcel it all up, the evidence looks overwhelming.

  But, of course, it didn’t happen as I’m telling it, all at once. It was bit by bit over a period of years. In between, there were hundreds of mundane days, with tray suppers on the sofa, supermarket trips, Sunday lunches at the
pub, morning cups of tea in bed. How can I paint the entire picture for Jim Cardle? It’s just not possible. And there are things I really want to tell him – horrible things – but I can’t. I already feel exposed, vulnerable.

  He drains his coffee mug and sets it down. ‘Shall we order another?’

  I shake my head. ‘To be honest, I’m not that keen on decaf.’ I wait for him to pick up his pen again, but he leaves it on top of the notebook. His grey-blue eyes are even more narrow than usual, appraising me.

  ‘There are several strands to follow here, no doubt about it,’ he says finally. ‘But help me out here; this is what I just don’t get. How can an educated, seemingly intelligent woman allow herself to be taken in like this? I honestly can’t wrap my head around it.’

  I don’t reply, so he presses on.

  ‘Look, I deal with men playing away all the time in my work, and I know they can be good at covering their tracks, at pulling the wool. But this…’ He waves his hand at the open page of the notebook. ‘This guy pitches up from nowhere with no backstory and no social connections, wanting to hitch himself as speedily as possible to a woman who has no parents of her own but substantial financial means, then proceeds to act shadily at every turn. I mean, why? What kind of an idiot would you have to be to go along with it? And to want a baby with the guy!’

  I stare back at him, a hot blush spreading up my neck and over my face. Then I stand up, so abruptly that I jolt my coffee cup and splash the dregs of my decaf over the pages of Cardle’s notebook.

  ‘You know what? You’re right; I am an idiot. I’m an idiot for thinking hiring you was anything other than a waste of time. So you don’t need to worry about making time for me because you’re un-hired!’ I’m shouting now, and the yummy mummies are looking on in alarm.