The Women: A gripping psychological thriller

by S. E. Lynes

  After breakfast that morning, he gives her a peremptory nod and asks if she’s ready, and thinking that he’s still cross with her, she replies quietly that yes, she is. And as with the coffee–sex routine, only much later will it occur to her that another routine was substituted that morning: the soft kiss on the back of her neck, the casual remark on the colour of the sky or the wonderful surprise of birdsong was in that moment replaced forever by the irritable twitch of his head, the dull, unsmiling way of speaking to her. She will not be able to remember when exactly these things became part of the fabric of their life, nor when the chatty drives into London or to Richmond station became silent, the CDs he longed for her to check out replaced by Radio 4 news, which, if she tries to talk over, is met with a brusque, frowning shh.

  When Marcia asks her how it’s going, Samantha tells her that Peter is a bit of a stickler. Grumpy, she would say, though not out loud, and definitely not to Marcia. ‘Cold’ is the word that nestles lower, much lower down. But this is part of what it means to live with someone romantically, which of course she has never done before. And the thing is, he is right about so many things. It is important to listen to the news, rude to talk over the top when someone is listening, inconsiderate in the extreme to take a shower when you know your partner needs one. If she wants to be worthy of him, she has to grow up; she knows that. And in the evenings, particularly after their seven o’clock pre-dinner glass of red, he softens, he really does.

  ‘Come here,’ he says, beckoning her to join him on the couch, pushing back her hair and kissing her neck. ‘God, you’re gorgeous.’

  It is the stress of his day diluting, she thinks. And hers too. In fact, she feels herself de-stress along with him, closes her eyes to the feel of his hand as it traces its way to her waist. Yes, her evenings are never lonely. And Peter has helped her to become so much more organised. Where before she studied whenever the hell she liked, sometimes until two in the morning, a turret of Hobnobs diminishing rapidly on her desk – chaos! – now she drinks camomile tea, eats proper food at the proper time, has a regular bedtime of ten thirty.

  Daytimes, if Peter’s at home, she writes her essays at the dining-room table while he works in the study. If he’s going into the uni, he likes her to study in the library until he’s finished lecturing, so that they can travel home together. Evenings are for reading, nothing heavier. Her iPhone is not allowed after eight o’clock. Together they lie top to tail on the sofa, wine on the coffee table, fire in the hearth. In these moments, she feels a little more at peace, and it is this peace she focuses on, hoping that it will permeate the rest of her days, gradually overtaking and obliterating that small seed of unease.

  The new year dawns: 2017 is ushered in by firelight and an incredible bottle of vintage Veuve Clicquot. Just the two of them, together in their love nest.

  And then one Saturday in February, just after Peter’s thirty-ninth birthday – which he celebrates at home with a 1968 Saint-Émilion Grand Cru Château Cheval Blanc – she realises that her period is late. She missed one in January too, and she thinks back to that drunken time with Peter over Christmas. While he’s out running, she stares at the calendar, racks her brains, but she can’t think, can’t think, can’t remember exactly. All she knows is that the possibility alone is making her nauseous. God only knows what confirmation will do. If she even is, which she can’t be. She isn’t. Oh please God, make her not not not be pregnant.

  She calls Marcia. ‘Hey, can I come over? Like, now?’

  ‘Sure,’ Marcia says, and even in this one word, Samantha can hear the surprise of former closeness now lost.

  But perhaps not forever. She tells Peter she is meeting Marcia for coffee. She’s so sorry, she forgot to mention it and now she’s late. She waits until he is in the shower to tell him, shouts it to him through the steam.

  ‘What?’ he protests, but for once, her stress levels trump anything he might have to say, even as he complains that he’s bought some Guatemalan Finca Capetillo for them from Monmouth Coffee, that he’d thought they’d drink it together this morning with the papers, that he wishes she’d mentioned it earlier.

  ‘I’ll have some later,’ she says, running down the stairs before it becomes an argument. ‘I won’t be long,’ she calls up, knowing he can’t hear her. She feels like she’s abandoning him, guilty that he is now upset because of her, but panic wins over guilt and she legs it all the way to the station, stopping only at the chemist on George Street.

  Marcia makes tea in the flat they used to share while Samantha goes into the loo and pees on the white stick. They sit on the sofa and Samantha tries not to think of giggling fits and boozy, smoky nights in front of crap telly. Marcia takes her hand and holds it, grips tight when two blue lines appear like magic in the tiny window.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Samantha whimpers, a gut-churning memory she has pushed aside over and over emerging now from the fog in a hot, anxious wave. These multiplying cells – she cannot say ‘baby’ even in her mind – are the result of that—

  ‘But you were being careful,’ Marcia says. ‘Weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Samantha replies, thinking of that night. ‘But …’

  They had been out for dinner at Luigi’s, Peter’s favourite Italian restaurant, over the bridge. As had become their habit, they had drunk an early-evening glass of expensive wine – a Chianti that night, she thinks she remembers – from Taylor’s, the wine merchants Peter always uses. Later, in bed, when Peter discovered that the box of condoms in the bedside cabinet was empty, he said he was too lazy and too drunk to fetch the spare packet from the bathroom. It had made her laugh, in the moment. It’s OK, he said. I’ll be careful. Trust me.

  ‘So you let him do it without?’ Marcia is incredulous; she just doesn’t get it.

  ‘I was … we were … you know? Quite far along. I didn’t want to ruin the moment.’

  Marcia sighs. ‘But you know how babies are made, right?’

  ‘Of course I do. Stop being so judgemental. I … I suppose I trusted in his experience, you know? I trusted him in a way maybe I wouldn’t have trusted someone my own age.’

  Trust misplaced, as it turns out. Oops, he had said, forehead crashing on her chest. Don’t worry about it; it’s only once. She put it to the back of her mind, told herself it would be OK, she’d have to be so unlucky for …

  Marcia says nothing, rubs her back. Samantha is more grateful than she can put into words.

  ‘It’s one of his favourite albums,’ she says after a moment, the test limp in her hand.

  ‘What is?’

  Samantha nods to the white stick. ‘Blue Lines. It’s by Massive Attack. They were big in the nineties.’

  They laugh, because in that precise moment there’s nothing else they can do, until Samantha lets her face fall into her hands.

  ‘What the hell am I going to do?’ she wails. ‘Peter will be nearly forty by the time it’s born. I’ll only be twenty-two. I can’t have this baby. I just can’t.’

  She takes the train back to Richmond, stares out of the window and wonders how the hell she will tell him. He will not want to be tied down. By anyone. He is the dishy professor, the driver of the vintage Porsche, a few too many careful owners. He asked her to move in, yes; he has told her he loves her, yes; he has asked her to marry him twice already. Yes, yes, yes. But he has not expressed a wish for a child. He has told her he’s never before asked a woman to live with him, and while she does believe him, of course she does, it’s just that she doesn’t know absolutely that this is the truth or whether it’s the absolute truth. What is the absolute truth anyway? Most truths have something beneath: unspoken or unacknowledged or incomprehensible. Sometimes that tiny, hidden lie is only apparent or understood much later, even by the mouth that uttered it.

  The truth right now is that she feels sick – not at the hormones but at the fear of what Peter will say. Maybe she should take matters into her own hands. Marcia would help her. But no, that would involve outright l
ying. She thinks of the pervasive, insidious dishonesty that her father inflicted on her mother. She knows first-hand how devastating that is. God knows, her mother is dealing with the toxic fallout even now.

  She manages to wait until the next morning, a Sunday. She didn’t want to ruin their Saturday-night film – there is a television, as it turns out; it is in the snug, a separate small sitting room at the back of the house that they use on Saturday evenings. She decides to tell him not while they are alone in the house, but outside, where there are other people around. Why she does this hovers in some foggy, soupy place she cannot reach, or does not want to.

  She waits until they’re at a table outside the veggie café under the arches of Richmond Bridge, the one that serves the best spanakopita in Surrey, according to Peter. Boats sail by, geese drift in arrowheads on the murky water, weekenders amble along the riverside. It is freezing, but she has on her new arctic explorer coat, her cashmere hat. And there are outdoor heaters.

  ‘Peter,’ she says. ‘I need to tell you something.’

  And she tells him, wincing a little, her shoulders hunched.

  The silence lasts a second, two, three, oh God. She makes herself look at his face. But instead of a grimace, there is a grin of what looks to her like pure joy. Confusion fills her. He half laughs, picks her up in his arms and sinks his face into her neck.

  ‘Marry me, Sam.’ The delicious scratch of stubble against her exposed skin. ‘Marry me immediately.’

  A giggle escapes her. It is so nice to be wanted this much.

  He sets her down and she takes her seat, still giggling a little, her face hot.

  ‘You’re not furious?’ she asks.

  But he has knelt in front of her, and her face grows hotter still.

  ‘Samantha Frayn, will you marry me?’

  ‘Stop it,’ she says, panicking. ‘Get up.’

  He does, thank God, though not before people have turned and thrown indulgent smiles their way. He sits on his chair, apparently quite unable to wipe the grin off his face. ‘Well then? Will you?’

  ‘I don’t believe in marriage. As you know.’ She is trying to keep this light, but she’s told him countless times. He’s said he understands. But here he is, putting her on the spot yet again.

  ‘I’m not your father,’ he says.

  ‘I know. But I’m only twenty-one. I’m just … I mean, I … I haven’t travelled, I haven’t seen anything, I haven’t even graduated.’

  He reaches for her hands. ‘Listen. I’ll look after you, dummy. We’ll have this baby, and after that I’ll take you all around the world. I’ll make sure you don’t miss out on one single thing, trust me.’ He pushes her hands to his lips and kisses her knuckles. There are actual tears in his beautiful brown eyes. ‘I’m so happy, Sam. You’ve made me so happy. And we don’t have to get married immediately if you don’t want to. We have plenty of time.’

  It is days later that she reflects on how he never once asked how she felt about it, if she was happy, whether it was right for her. It is her life, after all, not his, that will be turned upside down, though on that perfect wintry morning by the river, she has no idea just how much.

  Seven

  It is her mother who is the most difficult.

  ‘But … but you’ve only known him five minutes.’ Her voice is sharp down the phone. ‘You were only moving in with him the other month; now you’re having his baby? Why do you have to be in such a rush, love?’

  ‘I’m not. It just happened. And Peter’s delighted.’

  ‘Peter.’

  Samantha waits, but her mother says nothing more.

  ‘Mum,’ she says. ‘I know you’re worried, but if you met him, you’d like him, honestly. He’s very … well respected.’

  Unlike my father, she doesn’t say. Doesn’t have to.

  Her mother gives a great exhalation, a trailing cloud of hot steam from a train travelling all the way from God’s own county to here, the mistrusted south of England. The south: syllables spat from downturned mouths by everyone she still knows in the village.

  But Samantha knows it’s only love that makes her like this. Quite simply, her mother cannot bear for Samantha to suffer as she has. It would kill her.

  ‘It’s all right, Mum,’ she says before she rings off. ‘Everything will work out, I promise.’

  Everything does work out. With military precision. Peter makes sure she finishes her degree, gives her regular lifts into town and to her medical appointments. And on a hot day in June, when she logs on to her student portal to find out her results and discovers she has gained a 2:1, she shrieks and runs into Peter’s study to tell him the amazing news.

  ‘Er, knock?’

  ‘Sorry!’ She waits for him to turn. He swivels around on his chair and pulls his black glasses from his nose. He is smiling at her before she even has time to say it.

  ‘You’ve heard?’ he says.

  ‘I got a 2:1!’

  His smile realigns itself; his eyebrows lower a fraction, then worse, shoot further up than they were at the start.

  ‘Well, I think that’s brilliant,’ he says. ‘Under the circumstances.’

  Her delight shifts shape as an animal cowers under a whip, still recognisable but so much smaller.

  ‘Under the circumstances?’ she asks.

  His eyebrows are still high, his hands clasped in his lap. He is nodding encouragement, but encouraged is not what she feels.

  ‘It’s really great.’ He reaches then for her hands and holds them in his as he often does when explaining a point. ‘I just meant with the pregnancy and everything. I meant that it’s a marvellous achievement and I have no doubt whatsoever that you would have gained a first if you hadn’t had all that to deal with. You clever, clever thing.’ He pulls her towards him to kiss her. It is awkward, with the bump.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says quietly. ‘I’m actually really pleased.’

  She leaves him, telling him she’ll let him work, and, without a clue as to why, goes and stands by the front door and cries. It is cool here, cooler than anywhere else in the house. She pushes her face into the coats and breathes in and out. He meant it kindly. His faith in her is rock solid and she is grateful for it. But he has no idea how he has crushed her. He didn’t mean it like that. He doesn’t, cannot possibly know or understand that for her, getting into UCL was a pipe dream, to have come out with a 2:1 beyond anything she imagined. For a few moments, her delight was tall and whole. Until he brought down the whip.

  After a brief holiday in Dorset – he doesn’t want to risk flying – Peter books her on to a twelve-week adult education course. A teaching qualification will be a string to her bow, he tells her. It’s good to have a flexible profession to fall back on. By the time she finishes the course, it is late summer and she is as round as a hot-air balloon, breathless, astonished at how her ankles have swollen. This is a sick joke, she thinks. Nature is a mad sadist. How does any woman have more than one child? She doesn’t care how much childbirth hurts, she just wants the baby out.

  Peter pays for a private clinic in Cobham, a private room, a private delivery.

  And it is perhaps only at that point, when they enter the delivery room, that Peter’s confident order is obliterated by a force stronger than both of them: nature, in all its bloody and painful reality. Samantha lows like a cow, panting, sweating, swearing, pushing out with all her animal might this purple, sticky and raging baby girl, who for now at least is not taking any shit from anybody. Right now, this child will not be told what to do or how to do it or how to be. No, she comes out fast, fists tight, yelling like a barbarian.

  ‘Is she all right?’ Samantha asks, her own pain forgotten instantly.

  ‘Oh yes,’ the midwife says, placing the tiny naked warmth on Samantha’s chest as Samantha bursts into tears of relief and joy. ‘Don’t you worry about her. She’s a feisty one.’

  ‘Special delivery,’ Samantha quips later, when her baby girl is returned to her, clean and wrapped in a sof
t cotton blanket. She holds her swaddled daughter in her arms, nuzzles her nose against the soft, warm, angry little mite, kisses the world’s tiniest fists. The love is instant, like a light beam or an injection or something, designed to obliterate the hell of the last weeks and hours.

  ‘We should call her Emily.’ Peter stands over them, his face lit with pride. ‘It’s a good writer’s name.’

  It’s also his mother’s name. Samantha thought maybe Laura, after her own mother, but she hasn’t voiced it, and now Peter is looking at her all joyful and sure. Unable to be marked by childbirth, he’s going to stamp his family name on the baby like the farmer brands the cow. Samantha says nothing. Peter’s health insurance has earned him the right to pick whatever name he wants, she supposes. She doesn’t want to seem ungrateful.

  Her mother can’t believe what she’s seeing when she comes to visit.

  ‘Looks like you’ve landed on your feet,’ she says, with almost no trace of bitterness in her voice.

  Samantha shows her up the wide staircase with its dark brass runners and white eggshelled edges. The spare room and the third bathroom, which her mother will have sole use of while she stays, have been freshly painted by a guy who Peter said takes care of things around the place for me. Her mother sits on the soft double bed, runs her hands over the crisp new White Company bed linen; the gesture is not casual, it is appreciative. She gathers the new snowy bath towel in her arms and presses it to her face.

  ‘Money isn’t everything,’ Samantha says, with no idea why, or what she means by this. Sorry, perhaps. She wants to say more, but at that moment Peter appears on the landing.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ he says. ‘Who’d like to join me in the sitting room for a glass of wine before dinner?’