The Women: A gripping psychological thriller

by S. E. Lynes

The police radio crackles. Christine dips her head. Her trousers make swishing sounds as she strides out of the room. The living-room door clicks shut. Silence but for the occasional crackle from the fire.

  Samantha presses her face to her knees. Cradles the back of her head. She hears the door handle rattle, the hinge creak. Sees the tips of Christine’s black shoes.

  ‘Thank God for CCTV, eh?’ she says. ‘Samantha, they’ve found her.’

  Twenty-Five

  The ANPR picked up a red Toyota Yaris on the M58, Christine tells her once she has calmed down, once she’s stopped crying loud, messy tears of relief. The police tailed the vehicle and pulled the driver over on the A570 after she’d left the motorway at Junction 3 in the direction of Ormskirk. Emily was found safe and well in the back seat. The suspect, Charlotte Suzanne Lewis, was arrested at the scene and has been taken into custody.

  ‘Can I go to her?’ Samantha asks.

  Christine shakes her head. ‘They’ll bring her to you, love. They’re on their way.’

  Samantha can’t stop crying. Christine keeps her arm around her, tells her over and over that everything will be all right.

  ‘Do you want to call your partner?’ she asks after a moment.

  ‘Yes. Yes, thanks.’

  But Peter’s phone is still off. Anger explodes in her chest. Where the hell is he and why isn’t he picking up? It’s been hours. She calls back, leaves a message.

  ‘Peter, it’s me again. It’s after eight.’ Her voice cracks. The flashing thought comes to her – she should leave him to stew, let him suffer, suffer like she has, but she pushes it aside and goes on. ‘Emily’s safe. The police have found her and they’re bringing her home.’

  Christine takes updates over the police radio. ‘They’ve taken Suzanne in for questioning. She’s cooperating.’

  ‘Why?’ Samantha asks. ‘Why did she do it?’

  Christine shakes her head. ‘We won’t know until she gives her statement. Sounds like she had some sort of episode. Not sure if there was any logic to it. We just need to be grateful it didn’t go any further.’

  They leave that there.

  ‘She planned it,’ Samantha says after a moment, the thought crystallising as the words leave her. ‘Last week she was getting cosy with the nursery staff. And with me. The first time she saw me with Emily, she knew her name, I’m sure she said her name … or maybe she didn’t, oh, I don’t know! But she made sure the nursery girl saw us together, you know, chatting like friends.’ Her face burns with realisation. ‘I wondered why she was being so familiar when she’d been so quiet in class. She was getting more confident, maybe preferred being outside the classroom, that’s all I thought. Oh my God.’

  ‘We don’t know that. Let’s see what she has to say, eh?’

  Samantha’s phone rings. Peter.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ She bursts into tears, her voice shrill. ‘I’ve been out of my mind. Peter; it’s been hours. Where the hell were you?’

  ‘Calm down, Sam. It’s been stressful for you, I understand that.’ Peter’s voice does not change, not in pitch, not in volume. He sounds exactly as he would if he were ordering a meal or attending to an innocuous yet irritating enquiry. ‘I was in a conference,’ he continues with dogged calm. ‘I never have my phone on if I’m lecturing, you know that.’

  ‘She took Em,’ Samantha sobs. ‘She took our baby, Peter. I thought I’d never see her again. And you were nowhere …’ She is gasping for air, the words a slurred mess. Christine gives her shoulder a squeeze.

  ‘What happened exactly?’ Peter asks. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘They’re bringing her home.’

  ‘Who? The police?’

  ‘Yes.’ She can’t stop her nose from running, her eyes from leaking down her face. Fat tears run into her blouse, her bra. Peter’s voice is a switch, a valve. One word from him and relief is pouring endlessly from her. Everything she’s heard about him today is meaningless. It’s in the past. What matters, all that matters, is that their child is safe and Peter will be here soon.

  ‘Where was she?’ he asks. ‘Who took her?’

  ‘Suzanne, one of my students. Emily was in the crèche. Look, just come home. We can talk about it when you get here.’

  ‘I’m in the car now. I’ll be there by ten, latest. Have you got someone with you?’

  ‘Christine. She’s the policewoman. Just get here, Peter. I need you.’

  Samantha rings off, buries her face in her hands. Christine rubs her shoulders, shushes her, tells her it’s all over. But something is knocking at her, the branch against the kitchen window of the farm. Some tenebrous thing: tap, tap, tap.

  ‘Excuse me a moment,’ she says and leaves Christine on the couch.

  Tap, tap, tap. Suzanne’s earnest expression – Do you want me to make sure she’s settled? Something in the set of her eyes, her brow. Her chin, perhaps, when she turned to the side. Something.

  In their bedroom, Samantha opens Peter’s bedside cabinet drawer and pulls the photo wallet from beneath the rest. Tap, tap, tap. The branch knocks louder, quicker against the darkened pane. She knows which picture she’s looking for. She knows exactly. And she finds it.

  Twenty schoolgirls stand around an adored, good-looking young teacher. Samantha stands up, walks to where the overhead light is brightest, holds the photograph under it. She looks. She looks and looks. Twenty schoolgirls, having the time of their lives. The handsome teacher, arms around them. A school trip to York, a day out – laughs and larks, trying a little cheek because you’re not in the classroom now. It’s not so long since Samantha herself was that age. Hey, sir, what’s your first name? Hey, sir, how old are you? Sir, have you got a girlfriend?

  One girl is not looking at the camera. One girl is looking at Mr Bridges. She is laughing with shiny-eyed delight. The line of her jaw, the profile of her nose … The handsome teacher has his arm around her around her around her; he has chosen her, oh the bliss.

  ‘Suzanne,’ Samantha whispers into the silent room. ‘Suzanne Lewis.’

  She sinks onto the bed. In the photograph, Suzanne’s hair is darker. She is fuller in the face. But her thin shoulders are the same, her white knees protruding from her grey school skirt rather plump. She is pretty. She is attractive. This is not, has never been, about a jilted girlfriend. This is about something else – a teenage crush turned sour? That’s not enough, is it? Not nearly enough to sign up for a class halfway across the country, drive hundreds of miles, write poisonous poems, kidnap a living, breathing baby. Suzanne could have written notes and posted them if she’d wanted. She knew their address, used it to enrol. But that wasn’t enough for her. She must have wanted to progress from leaving the pages in the folder to delivering her handiwork personally, taking the intimidation up a notch each time. It’s so bloody extreme.

  Peter said he left secondary teaching when his father died. He gave Samantha to understand that his wealth handed him a new opportunity, that his father dying was the reason for his career change. Tell them you hope to be published next year. This is his brand of truth. Tell someone something with enough conviction and they’ll either fill in the rest or forget to ask. Opportunities cannot have been rare for Peter Bridges, with his private education and his familial wealth and his beautiful, beautiful face. He would not have had to wait until his father died to change career. So is this why he changed? These girls look no older than fifteen. They are children.

  What to think, what to think. She is full of boiling water. Frantic thoughts bubble and pop to nothing. She has the same precipitous feeling as when he first asked her to come home with him, except now she is on the edge of an abyss. This dark hole is her partner’s past. The past life of her lover, the father of her child, the man who wants to marry her. This is Peter’s less artful history come back to haunt not just him but Emily and her too. It’s possible she and her daughter are but collateral damage in other harm done long, long ago. Peter is the bullseye
, but the dart pierces where the dart lands, and so far he has not felt the slightest prick.

  ‘Bastard,’ she mutters. Abuser, she does not say.

  She replaces the photographs exactly where they were. Visits the bathroom then makes her way back downstairs. What she really wants to do is turn the house upside down, looking if not for skeletons then at least for bones. She has become suddenly adept at piecing together half-told stories. And it would help her pass the agonising time waiting for Emily to come home.

  ‘Christine,’ she begins while still in the hallway. ‘There’s no need for you to stay if you’ve got other things to do. I mean, you must have finished your shift by now.’ She stops at the doorway, pats the door jamb, leans against it. ‘Really, I’ll be fine now. Peter’s on his way.’

  ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ Christine replies. ‘I’ll wait until they get here with little Emily. Or Peter, whoever arrives first.’

  Later, then. It’s a waiting game now.

  The police are first. Samantha has been trying to watch television in the snug but has not taken in a single scene. Christine knocks, opens the door.

  ‘Samantha, love,’ she says in a low, quiet voice. ‘They’re here.’

  Samantha is out of her seat. She is running barefoot over the black-and-white floor of the hall, out onto the front path, into the cold, surreal night.

  ‘Emily!’ Her baby’s name is shrill in the chilly air.

  A WPC gets out of the passenger side. The street lamp throws its vanilla light onto her cropped blonde hair, her skin pale as porcelain.

  ‘Samantha,’ she says, smiling. ‘Don’t worry, she’s fine. Your little girl is fine.’ She has a northern accent. Like Suzanne’s. She pulls open the back door of the patrol car. ‘We gave her some formula and she’s slept all the way home.’

  Samantha’s throat blocks. A whimper escapes her. Her fingertips are cold against her mouth.

  The WPC reaches in, pulls out the car seat. In it, Emily, asleep, as if nothing has happened.

  Samantha’s legs fold beneath her. She collapses against Christine’s warm, solid form.

  ‘You see,’ Christine says softly, holding on to her. ‘Told you she’d be all right.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Samantha sobs into her hands. ‘Thank you all so much.’

  Twenty-Six

  The police have gone. In the firelight, Samantha feeds her little girl, weeping intermittently. On the coffee table is her laptop, which she pulls towards her. It’s awkward – her back is stiff from all the trauma – but she manages. On the back of the photograph was written St Catherine’s. She googles St Catherine’s School, Ormskirk. Nothing comes up. She tries the same school, widens the search to Merseyside. Nothing. She googles Ormskirk, discovers it’s in Lancashire, not Merseyside, and tries again. Nothing. She tries the school together with Lancashire, gets a school in Edge Hill. It must be that one, though there is no useful information. She tries the school, the town and Peter’s name. The turn of the millennium. She herself was only a few years old. Again, nothing. No news reports, no scandal, no information.

  Emily rolls away from the breast, sated. Samantha lies cuddled up beside her under a blanket on the sofa, stroking her soft head.

  ‘I’m not letting you out of my sight again,’ she whispers, pressing her lips to Emily’s button nose. ‘Oh my darling. My darling, darling girl.’

  The deep roar of a car engine. She opens her eyes, hears the engine cut. Peter. She is still on the sofa, Emily asleep beside her. The rattle of a key in the lock.

  ‘Peter,’ she mumbles, blinking, rubbing at her eyes. Her mouth is dry and stale. Her face is sticky. Her shoulders are sore and stiff. When she sits upright, she has the impression of hot fluid draining down through her bones, through her arms and legs, out through her feet.

  ‘Sam.’ Peter is at the door of the living room. Another step and he is by her side, holding her hand, kissing her on the head, kissing Emily, who is still asleep. Samantha thought she’d done all her weeping, but she has not.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ he says. ‘Don’t cry, my love. It’s over. I’m here now. You’re safe.’

  For several minutes, they cling to one another in silence, until Peter eases himself away.

  ‘Long drive,’ he says. ‘Need to use the little boys’ room.’

  She hears the door, his cough, even hears the stream of pee, the flush, the tap, the door again. The sounds comfort her. They are his sounds. His footsteps don’t return but go instead into the kitchen. The chink of glasses, the roll of the runners on the cutlery drawer. She checks her watch and sees that it’s almost midnight. It is so late to be pouring a drink. She doesn’t know if his dependency should worry her. And what has happened is so utterly traumatic, the idea of their evening ritual, performed as if life were normal, almost offends her.

  She waits, and then there he is, a glass of red in each hand.

  ‘Here.’ He hands one to her and goes over to the fire to stoke it. Throws on a couple more logs before coming to sit beside her and the baby again.

  ‘It’s so late,’ she says. She wonders if she should lift Emily from the sofa, but for the moment, she cannot bear for her to be out of sight.

  ‘Traffic was hideous.’ He drinks, a long slug, sets his glass down. ‘So, start from the beginning. Tell me everything.’

  She tells him, though not everything. She didn’t plan to be sparse with the facts, but in the moment, it is what she does. It is his brand of the truth, she thinks. She has learnt it from him. She is glad that he is here, she is. But trust will have to be built by degrees.

  She tells him that two students came home with her and the policewoman, that they stayed a while. She does not mention their names, nor does she tell him about the photograph of Suzanne. At a certain point, it occurs to her that she is leading up to the revelation of Suzanne’s full name, and that when she tells him, she will be watching his face.

  And so the moment comes.

  ‘They’ve taken her in for questioning,’ she says. ‘They said she’d been cooperative from the outset. Christine said it looked like a rash act of madness. An episode, she said. But I haven’t heard anything yet.’

  He takes a long, slow slug of wine. ‘Her name was Suzanne, you said? And she’d come all the way from Ormskirk?’

  ‘Ormskirk, yes.’ Samantha says. ‘It’s in Lancashire. Not that far from Edge Hill.’ She glances at him. Nothing.

  ‘And did you get a surname?’

  ‘Lewis. Suzanne is actually her middle name. Her full name is Charlotte Suzanne Lewis.’

  He frowns, appears to chew his cheek. He takes another sip of wine, coughs, as if it has gone down the wrong way.

  ‘Charlotte Lewis,’ Samantha says. ‘My guess is she used her middle name on the course in case I talked about her at home.’

  Peter coughs again into his fist. ‘What do you mean?’ He is no longer looking at her.

  ‘I mean, I think she intended a kind of slow-drip effect: to unsettle first, then unnerve, then full-on freak us out. Well, you.’

  Their eyes meet. In his, something flickers.

  ‘You knew her,’ she says. ‘Didn’t you?’

  His mouth presses tight, his forehead creases. ‘Knew her? What gives you that impression?’

  ‘Well, let’s see. The details in the poems? The fact that the last one was a spoof of your favourite poet. That would suggest she knew you reasonably well. Possibly even knew that it was the poem you read at your father’s funeral and chose it for that reason, to really get under your skin. So I’m guessing she knew you around the time of your father’s death, when you were teaching in a secondary school. St Catherine’s.’

  ‘Sam, what are you talking about? You’re being cryptic and it’s actually really irritating. If you’ve got something you want to accuse me of, then come out and say it. I’ve had a long day and I’m not in the mood for riddles, frankly.’

  ‘Riddles? Have you any idea how pompous you sound? This isn’t a riddle, Peter. N
ot to you. I’m the one trying to figure out riddles here. You know exactly who I’m talking about. I don’t believe for one second you don’t recognise her name. Charlotte Lewis. Charlotte, Charlie, Lottie, whatever she called herself. Your former pupil. St Catherine’s School. Peter, it’s almost midnight, I’ve been to hell and back and I’m very, very tired. So can we just lay our cards on the table for once? All of them.’

  ‘All right.’ It is the first time she has heard him raise his voice. His arms fly up; the palms of his hands flash like wings. But no sooner has he done this than he regains that immutable control once again. ‘All right,’ he repeats, more quietly, picking an imaginary speck from his navy chinos. ‘It’s not an episode I’m particularly proud of.’

  ‘Well it’s an episode that has had some pretty serious repercussions for your partner and your daughter, so I think you owe me an explanation, don’t you?’

  ‘All right. It was a long time ago. A very long time ago. I was very young and I behaved … irresponsibly. My father was dying. I was stressed. Lottie was … she was so full of life. She was an antidote to the death I could feel all around me. I’d lost my mother, I don’t have any siblings and Lottie was … she was silly and funny and she adored me. I didn’t seduce her. If anything, she seduced me.’

  ‘How old was she, Peter?’

  He stretches his neck, opens his mouth wide, as if to realign his jaw. ‘She was sixteen when I left.’

  ‘Peter.’

  ‘All right. But she was.’

  ‘She was a child. A child does not seduce a man. Even at sixteen, she was still a child, supposedly in your care.’

  He pushes his fingers through his hair. It is thinner even than last year, she thinks, but still so brown. ‘There was nothing childlike about her, believe me.’

  She takes a step towards him, close enough to feel the heat of his breath on her face. ‘She was a child,’ she repeats, her heart battering. ‘You abused her. You abused your position of trust. You do get that, don’t you?’