The Perfect Couple: The most gripping psychological thriller of 2020 from bestselling author of books like The Party and Have You Seen Her

by Lisa Hall

  ‘Darling, are you OK?’ I look up to see Sadie’s concerned face looming over me. I’m not sure if I am imagining it, but I think I see the corner of her mouth tug up into a little smile.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ I say after a moment, raising my eyes to her. ‘You did all of this.’

  ‘All of what? You haven’t been sipping out of my glass, have you? That’s for grown-ups only.’ Sadie smirks and I know for certain then.

  ‘How could you?’ I get to my feet, shaky now the shock has set in. ‘Rupert was supposed to be your friend, but you did all of this. Sneaking into the house, making me think that someone had been there. Sending me vile messages and Lola… oh my God, you did that to Lola.’

  ‘I fucking hate cats. And so does Rupert, believe it or not.’ Sadie smirks as she pulls out a packet of cigarettes and lights one, blowing the smoke in my face.

  ‘And you sent that video message. What were you going to do, delete it so that when I showed Rupert it was gone, and I look mad?’

  ‘Clever girl. Who do you think Rupert is going to believe when you run to him and tell him that Sadie is the big, bad wolf? Me – his oldest friend? Or you? Some little tart he’s married to but barely knows. Who’s been accusing people of all sorts of things practically from day one? Calm down, Emily, you’ll only be making a fool of yourself. Although, I suppose that’s the best way for things to go.’

  ‘He’ll believe me.’

  ‘No, Emily, he won’t. I’ve made sure of that, haven’t I? Don’t you realize that you’ve fucked everything up by appearing on the scene?’

  ‘You wanted Rupert for yourself.’ Realization dawns as I watch the hatred settle on her face. She never liked me. All those times that she ‘let me in’ it was all fake. ‘You wanted Rupert all for yourself. What did you do? Drive Caro to it?’ I can’t resist taunting her a little. ‘You drove Caro to it, and then your plan backfired?’

  Sadie is silent for a moment, shock written all over her face. ‘What kind of person do you think I am? Of course, I had nothing to do with Caro dying, you sick bitch. But when Rupert was all alone, I knew it was our chance to be together. It should have been me all along – it would have been if I hadn’t introduced him to Caro at university.’

  ‘That’s what you told Rupert, that night of your Easter party, wasn’t it? And he rejected you.’

  ‘I told him he needed to sort himself out after the memorial. I meant it was time to move on, with me. I was always the right one for him, and I thought after Caro died, he would see sense, finally. I didn’t mean for him to settle down with some…’ Her mouth twists as she spits the words at me.

  ‘Some… what?’ Fury makes me bold. ‘You wanted me to think I was going mad – you wanted Rupert to think I was going mad. That way, Rupert would leave me of his own accord, and then you could step in, and no one would think badly of you, they’d all be relieved that Rupert had someone who could take proper care of him.’ I let out a harsh bark of laughter. ‘I think you might have severely underestimated me, Sadie.’

  Sadie blinks, and takes another drag on her cigarette. ‘The way you underestimated me, you mean? Oh, thank you Sadie, for including me, thank you for being so kind to me, Sadie. You’re pathetic. And now Rupert thinks you’re bonkers, he’ll be glad to be rid of you.’

  ‘I doubt that very much,’ I say, as I hold up my phone, the screen showing that our entire conversation has been recorded.

  Chapter Thirty

  Sadie sits shell-shocked at the table, as I scoop up my bag and turn to face her.

  ‘I think it’s best if Rupert doesn’t see you for a while,’ I say.

  ‘All you have to do is leave,’ Sadie says finally, quietly from where she sits at the kitchen table. ‘That’s all I ever wanted to do was to make you leave. You’re like a cuckoo, forcing your way into the nest.’

  ‘I’m not the cuckoo, Sadie,’ I say, ‘you need to look a lot closer to home for that. Don’t contact Rupert – don’t call him, don’t try to see him. I’m warning you.’

  Without waiting for her to reply, I slam my way out before she can get to her feet. Once away from the house I start to run, heart racing, my feet slamming against the pavement sending shooting pains into my knees. I wait until I am around the corner before I stick my arm out and hail a passing cab. I give the driver the address of Rupert’s office and slump back in the seat, my breath coming in painful gasps. I am sure that Sadie will be on the phone to Rupert before I’ve even made it to the end of the road, but it doesn’t matter, I have the recording.

  We pull up outside Rupert’s building and I pay the driver, before taking a deep breath and approaching the glass-fronted space where my husband spends every day. A receptionist is on the phone as I enter, and she holds up one finger in my direction as I walk up to the desk.

  ‘Rupert Milligan, please,’ I say, as an older gentleman passes by, giving me a quick double take before he gets into the lift. There is something familiar about him and it’s only as I take my own place in the lift up to Rupert’s floor that I realize it is Michael Osbourne, Caro’s father and the owner of the large construction company Rupert works for. I offer him a tiny smile, the back of my neck prickling uncomfortably, and I am relieved when I step out of the lift and he stays on.

  Rupert is sitting at his desk, engrossed in whatever is on his screen when I tap lightly on the door to his office. He glances up, irritation on his face at being interrupted before he realizes it is me.

  ‘Emily—’ His tone is cautious, and he peers behind me as if expecting someone else to be there. ‘What are you doing here? Is everything OK?’

  It seems that Sadie hasn’t called him – although what exactly could she say, knowing that I had recorded our entire conversation? ‘I’m sorry to come here unannounced. Have you got a few minutes? I really, really need to talk to you.’

  ‘I’ve got a meeting in half an hour, but yes, I guess I can take a break now. Do you want to go out and get some coffee?’

  He’s already reaching for his jacket, and I think about Michael Osbourne and the way his eyes flickered over me. I think I’d prefer to talk to Rupert outside, away from any connection to Caro, so I nod and follow him back into the lift and out into the street. We enter a tiny coffee shop set back from the main street and Rupert gets us both a drink.

  ‘What’s all this about, Em?’ Rupert looks at me warily, and tips sugar into his coffee.

  ‘All these things that have been happening at home… the notes, the phone calls, what happened to Lola… I know who’s behind it.’

  Rupert lets out a long stream of air, his cheeks flushing a dark pink. ‘For God’s sake, Emily, we’ve talked about this! I don’t want to hear any more about it! No one – I repeat – no one is out to get you. No one is trying to scare you away. No one has been in the house, no one is watching you. Caro is dead. Please, Emily, just leave it because I don’t know how much more I can take.’

  I blink and wait for a moment, a little shocked by the way his anger rises to the surface so easily, before I pull out my mobile and slide it across the table towards him.

  ‘Like I said, Rupert, I know who’s behind it all. Just watch the video.’

  He picks up the phone and presses play, and my voice filters out from the speaker. ‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ I watch the emotions play out across his face as he watches the video from start to finish, the blood draining from his face as he hears me accuse Sadie of pushing Caro over the edge.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Rupert slides the phone back to me, his hands visibly shaking. ‘Emily, I’m so sorry. I should have believed you.’

  I shrug, as if it’s not that important, but part of me wants to get up and shout, ‘Good! You should be sorry; you should have taken my word for it.’ But if there’s one thing my mother did teach me, is that it’s sometimes best to hold your tongue.

  ‘Caro said the same things, sometimes, you know.’ Rupert speaks again, stirring at the remains of the coffee in his cup. ‘That things
had been moved, that she thought someone was following her, but there was never anything concrete, nothing solid. It was exhausting, that constant act of reassuring her. I thought it was just the same thing happening again with you. I thought you were just…’ He puts his head in his hands. ‘You accused her of pushing Caro too far?’ When he raises his eyes to mine, they are bloodshot and watery.

  ‘It just slipped out. She denied it, but she admitted that she’d done all those things to me. That she wanted you for herself. Well, you know what she said, you watched the video. I haven’t been lying, or making things up, and I’m definitely not going mad.’

  ‘I’m just a bit stunned by it all,’ Rupert says, as he takes up the phone and watches the video again. ‘Part of me can’t believe that Sadie would behave as aggressively as that – I’ve known her for over twenty years! We went to uni together, I was best man when she and Miles got married and I never realized… I mean, she said stuff when she was drunk, like the night of the Easter party but she never meant it.’

  I direct him on my phone to the video message that Sadie sent to me last night, watching the shock on his face as he sees himself and Sadie on the night of the party. ‘What did you say to her, that night?’

  ‘She was drunk,’ Rupert says, ‘she was saying something about how it should have been her, we were a good team, something like that. She always says stuff like that when she’s pissed… I always just brushed it away as a joke. I know she’s not one hundred per cent happy with Miles, but whoever is one hundred per cent happy?’ He reaches over and squeezes my hand, as if to reassure me that this doesn’t apply to him. ‘I said something to her about how I love her, but as a friend. I didn’t tell you I saw her when you asked the next morning because I didn’t want to upset you. You were already a bit down about the fact that someone had called you Caro by mistake.’

  ‘You should have told me,’ I say quietly, ‘and you should have believed me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Em,’ he picks up my hand, kisses the back of it, ‘and I should have known. I should have known that Sadie would be jealous, that she would cause trouble between us. I feel like an idiot for not seeing it, for just seeing her as good old Sadie, friends for years.’

  ‘What do you mean? Why should you have seen it?’

  I certainly hadn’t – I’d been desperate for her acceptance. I remember how I had felt that day when she’d said I was ‘one of us’, how pathetically grateful I’d been.

  ‘Sadie was always on at Caro… she always wanted whatever Caro had; I just didn’t realize that that extended to me. If Caro bought a new bag, Sadie would turn up with the same one the next day. If Caro was wearing a new dress, sure enough a few days later Sadie would be wearing it.’

  I think back to the first time I went to Sadie’s house, how it had struck me that her furniture and the décor in the sitting room had been remarkably similar to the sitting room at Rupert’s house. ‘What did Caro think about it?’

  ‘She didn’t mind,’ Rupert says, ‘most of the time anyway. I got more annoyed about it than her, I think. She took it as a form of flattery most of the time.’

  I don’t know whether to feel offended or relieved that Sadie clearly doesn’t think my style is worth copying. ‘Most of the time?’

  ‘Yeah, there were some times when it did really get to Caro. I mean, Sadie can be a bit overbearing, you know that. Sometimes Caro didn’t want her to copy her. I remember Caro being pissed off about a pair of earrings – she was wearing them for the party…’ he breaks off for a moment, brushing at sugar that has spilled across the table, ‘she was wearing a pair of diamond earrings that I’d bought her for our wedding day and Sadie had wanted to borrow them. Most of the time Caro was quite relaxed about lending her things to Sadie, even though half the time she wouldn’t get them back, but this time she said no, and Sadie got the hump about it.’ Rupert shrugs, and finally meets my eyes again. ‘Can you ever forgive me for not believing you? Can we get back to how things were?’

  I stare at him, his deep, navy blue eyes, the way his hair falls over his forehead, the light stubble that grazes his cheeks, even though he shaved this morning. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be his housekeeper, to come in, do what I needed to do, and go. There was never meant to be any emotional attachment. I was never meant to fall in love with him.

  ‘Em?’

  I smile, realizing he’s still waiting for a reply. ‘Yes,’ I say, even though as I say it there is something nagging at the very recesses of my mind, that unnerving feeling that I had before that something is not quite right. ‘Of course we can. But I think it’s best if we don’t see Sadie for a little while. I just feel as though everything will be too awkward.’

  ‘Obviously.’ Rupert gives me a relieved smile. ‘I’ll do whatever you want to do. I’m just glad you’re OK. We’re OK.’ Checking his watch, he pulls a regretful face and slides out from where he’s sitting. ‘I’m sorry, Em, I have to go. I can’t miss this meeting. Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

  I nod and let him kiss me, watching him walk the few feet back to the office before I turn and walk in the opposite direction, back towards the house, finally feeling for the first time in a long while as though I don’t need to dread going home.

  It’s only much, much later, after Rupert has arrived home early with a bouquet of flowers, and we’ve been out to our favourite Italian for dinner and then made love, quietly and urgently as if that will patch up the last of the holes between us, that it comes to me and I realize exactly what it is that didn’t feel quite right, and my heart goes cold.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Feigning sleep as I hear Rupert get up and get ready for work, I wait until I hear the front door slam closed before I open my eyes. I haven’t slept a wink, not since I realized what it was that didn’t fit, the thing that was making me feel off kilter. I lay there, rigid, all night, afraid to move a muscle in case I woke Rupert up and he asked me what the matter was, as I tried to fit all the pieces together and come up with something that added up.

  Feeling stiff and sore, and almost foggy with tiredness, I slip out of bed and pull on some sweatpants and a jumper – cashmere, both of them, and both bought by Rupert – and tying my hair up into an untidy bun, I sit down at the dressing table and reach behind the mirror for Caro’s jewellery box. Remembering how everything had skittered out across the floor and table the last time I opened it, this time I gently lift the lid with care. The light catches the gold and silver trinkets as the sun streams in through the open blinds and I feel a sharp pang of envy that Caro had all of this, before I mentally slap myself – Caro might have had all of this but it doesn’t mean she was happy.

  Carefully I sift through the jewellery, pulling out gold chains and larger earrings, laying them gently on the dressing table as I search for the tiny item I’m looking for. Finally, I find it, tucked into the corner of the velvet lining, and I pull it out and hold it up to the light. A single, solitary diamond earring, .31 carat, by the looks of things and remarkably similar to ones that I have eyed on the Tiffany website many times before. Large enough to be expensive. Large enough that you wouldn’t be so careless as to just lose one.

  I slide to the floor and sweep my arm under the dressing table – that’s where I dropped it before, so it stands to reason that the other would be somewhere near by – but there’s nothing under there but dust. I check all around, sweeping my arm under the wardrobe, and under the bed but there is no sign of a matching earring.

  I hear Rupert’s words as he sits across the table from me yesterday – ‘She was wearing a pair of diamond earrings that I bought her for our wedding day’ – and Sadie telling me that on the night she disappeared, Caro was wearing a ruffled red gown and diamond earrings. My stomach rolls as I finally start to accept the implications of what finding this earring might mean.

  Maybe she had other pairs? I return to the jewellery box and rummage through it closely, and although there are plenty
of earrings, none of them are diamonds. Amanda will know. I head downstairs, needing coffee and something to settle my roiling stomach, and as I wait for the kettle to boil, I dial Amanda’s number. It’s not as if I can call Sadie, not after yesterday.

  ‘Hello?’ She sounds blurry, groggy, and I glance at the clock, realizing it’s barely eight o’clock.

  ‘Amanda? I’m so sorry to wake you, it’s Emily.’

  ‘Emily? It’s early… sorry, I was awake half the night; this baby is going to be a gymnast, I think.’ She pauses for a moment and sounds as though she is stifling a yawn. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I think so.’ I dump water into a mug with coffee granules and give it a half-hearted stir before I move to the kitchen table. My legs feel wobbly, and I am dizzy and nauseous, but I am not sure if it’s from lack of sleep or fear of having my thoughts confirmed. ‘Listen, I wanted to ask you about the night Caro disappeared.’

  ‘What about it?’ A cautious note creeps into her tone and I hear a slight rustling, as though Amanda is propping herself up in bed.

  ‘Sadie said Caro was excited about the party, but then she and Rupert had an argument and Caro stormed out.’