The Women: A gripping psychological thriller

by S. E. Lynes

  He grabs hold of her arm. His fingers dig in, hurt.

  She tries to step back, but he has tight hold of her, shakes her so that she staggers first back then forward. Her face bumps against his chest; she cowers.

  ‘Look at me.’ He shakes her again by the wrist.

  She looks up; his dark eyes are almost black – red-rimmed, mad.

  ‘I get it,’ he spits through clenched teeth.

  Another second, two. He lets go.

  She reels backwards, rubbing at her arm. Her legs are trembling and already a hint of blue has started to cloud the red marks on the inside of her wrist. Peter has turned away from her. He is leaning against the fireplace as if exhausted, one hand pushing over and over through his hair.

  ‘We didn’t …’ he says. ‘We weren’t … we didn’t consummate our relationship fully until she was sixteen, not that it’s anyone’s business but mine.’ He swings round to face her, his mouth an ugly rectangle, hair sticking up strangely. ‘Honestly, you appear to be suggesting that I was a dirty old man, but I wasn’t that much older than her. For God’s sake, it didn’t even last that long.’

  ‘Did you bring her here?’ Her own voice sounds chastened, even to her.

  His mouth flattens. He glances towards the fire. ‘Once. Once, yes. But it was a long time ago. To be honest, I’d pretty much forgotten all about it.’

  ‘She hasn’t though, has she?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  For a moment, neither of them speaks.

  ‘So,’ Samantha begins – carefully. ‘Why would she take our baby?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘You told me you left secondary teaching because your father died. Is that true? I’m guessing not. I assume she’s why you left.’

  Peter shakes his head. His hands are on his hips. He gives a weary sigh.

  ‘Peter?’ she insists. ‘You told me it was because your father died.’

  ‘I told you I left teaching when my father died. I didn’t say it was the reason.’ That ugly rectangle again: Peter’s mouth, spitting its own particular brand of truth. It’s possible he said exactly that; Samantha cannot now remember the exact wording. All she knows is that he gave her to understand that his father’s death precipitated his career change. And he knows it.

  ‘So why did you leave?’ Gingerly she lowers herself onto the sofa, in the hope that he too will sit down. It feels safer to do this, to try to take the heat out of this … whatever this is. ‘Did someone find out? Were you prosecuted?’ She gasps. ‘Peter, are you on the sex offenders register?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Sam!’ He slams his hand hard on the coffee table.

  Emily flinches, gives a soft cry. Samantha pulls her into her arms, unsure who needs the comfort most. Never, never has she seen Peter like this. Though she is less afraid of him now than she was a moment ago.

  ‘Don’t raise your voice at me,’ she says quietly. ‘You’re bigger than me and stronger than me. It’s intimidatory.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never intimidate you. I’d never shout. But you’re determined to drive me to it, baiting me like a bull, sneering from up there on your moral high ground.’ He looks at her with something like hate, then appears to compose himself a little. ‘Think about what you’ve just said. I’m not a monster. What you’re accusing me of is … it’s very serious, Sam.’

  ‘What you’ve done is very serious. You were in a position of power. It’s enough that you even touched her before she was sixteen. If you’d been caught, you’d be on the register. Let me put it another way: were you caught?’

  ‘It came out, yes. But I’m not on the … I’m not on any criminal register. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that at all.’

  ‘So tell me, what was it like?’

  ‘I … As I’ve said, I was young. I behaved badly – I’m not saying I didn’t. But it was a relationship, Sam. Misguided, yes, but I didn’t pressurise her in any way. For God’s sake, I didn’t rape her.’ He exhales heavily. ‘Her parents found out and I was discreetly dismissed, and that was the end of it. My father died soon after.’

  ‘So you were never prosecuted?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Neither the school nor her parents wanted a scandal. It would’ve been too hard on Lottie. I was dismissed on compassionate grounds on account of my father’s ill health and I moved on. That’s it. Whatever mental-health problems Lottie went on to suffer, they were not my fault. If she has since obsessed over me, that’s not my fault either.’ He drains his glass, rubs his eyes. ‘I need a shower.’ He gets up, leaves the room.

  The fire crackles, a schlumpf as a log falls against the chimney breast. Samantha drinks her wine, at first in sips, then pours the rest down her throat. Emily snuffles against her neck. Above her, Peter’s footsteps creak back and forth on the landing. A moment later, the rainy sound of the water in the pipes. What did he just say? No one wanted a scandal because it would’ve been too hard on Lottie. Did he actually say that? What a joke. Avoidance of scandal favours the abuser, leaves the victim with no closure, no validation, no justice. Man moves on, gets new career, invents new way of telling truth. Bullies women, two-times, damages, controls and humiliates them. Knocks up girlfriend, sticks her in the big house, goes to conferences who the hell knows where with who the hell knows whom.

  Samantha is exhausted. Her bones feel like tombstones, her head a bowling ball. She is dizzy from her thoughts swinging first one way then the other. But she gets up. She takes Emily up to her cot and tucks her in. Peter is still under the shower, trying to wash off his filthy lies, no doubt. Samantha returns downstairs. Grabs the car keys from the bowl on the phone table. Props open the front door with one of her boots.

  No central locking, she thinks, walking around to the passenger side door. Makes me appear more chivalrous than I am.

  Look at me, I’m a wreck.

  Marry me immediately.

  I would never objectify you.

  You got a ride in the Studmobile.

  He’s the opposite of a predator, the absolute opposite.

  We have a child together … he’s changed.

  She opens the car door. Inside, a thick smell, floral but stale. She bends to the passenger seat and sniffs. Perfume, she’s pretty sure. Not her own. She opens the glove compartment. In it is a silk scarf the colour of the palest blue sky. It is a woman’s scarf, unmistakably. She pulls it out, pushes it to her nose. The same floral smell as the car: stale perfume transformed over hours, made specific by the oily odours of someone else’s skin. She screws it up in her hand, is about to put it back when she sees the familiar clear plastic bag, the flash of coloured pills.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ She stuffs the scarf into the glove compartment and slams it shut.

  Peter is coming down the stairs just as she closes the front door behind her.

  ‘Sam?’ He steps heavily onto the last stair, lands in the hallway. ‘What are you doing? I’ve brought everything in from the car.’

  ‘You said there was a lot of traffic coming back,’ she says, studying his inscrutable face. ‘Was there?’

  ‘Yes, why? What is this? Look, Sam, I’ve told you the truth. It was bloody difficult for me, but I told you the whole story because I respect you too much to hide things from you. If you’re going to bring something I did years ago into every last thing going forward, that’s not going to work, is it? We need to put this behind us. Otherwise she’s won, hasn’t she? Bloody crazy Lottie who should have moved on a long time ago. And by the way, we’re not pressing charges, and you say nothing about this to the police, all right? I’ve trusted you with it, do you hear me? I don’t want any more of our life ruined by that madwoman.’

  Madwoman. Madwomen. Samantha dismissed Aisha and Jenny as madwomen, only a few hours ago. Madwomen in the attic. That attic must be getting bloody crowded. What was it Christine said? Unhappiness does terrible things to people. Yes, Samantha thinks, it does. In the months that followed the revelation of her fath
er’s affair, her mother bought a silver miniskirt, had her hair cut and coloured, acquired a brash new friend, Clare, who talked about getting a bit of action, who brought bottles of spirits to the house and kept her mother out all night. There were conversations about minor plastic surgery – tummy tucks, lip fillers, Botox – procedures she could not even begin to afford. Unhappiness does terrible things all right. It can drive a person mad.

  ‘All right,’ she replies eventually. They are in agreement about Lottie, though not for the same reasons.

  ‘And I’ve changed the password on the home computer and on both our emails,’ he says. ‘It’s Samantha1996 on all of them for now, but you can change yours again to whatever. Your name and year of birth, easy to remember.’

  Peter is still standing in the hallway, drying his ears with a hand towel. He is attempting to be casual, but the tendons in his throat are thick cables. His hair is wet. His feet are bare. He has washed her off, she thinks, the wearer of the pale blue silk scarf. He has changed into his pyjamas and robe, his cheeks hang a little and he looks about ten years older than he did this morning. If you didn’t know him better, you’d say he was just some middle-aged man. You’d say he was a vain old fool who had realised that he was no longer at the height of his powers.

  ‘Let’s get to bed.’ In one stride, he is in front of her, up close. He smells of citrus; she recognises his Dior shower gel. He pushes her hair behind her ear and kisses her on the temple. ‘We could both use a little comfort, don’t you think? Relieve some of this stress? And everything will look very different in the morning, I promise.’

  ‘I need a shower too.’ She leaves him to lock the doors and rake the fire. By the time he comes upstairs, she is already in bed: exhausted, wide awake.

  ‘Gave Sally a lift home, by the way,’ he says, spooning her from behind, kissing the back of her neck, sliding his arms around her waist. ‘Professor Bailey, you know? Not sure if I mentioned she was coming to the conference. Did you know she’s married to Olivia Ford?’ He runs his hand up her belly, takes hold of her breast. ‘Didn’t she teach your Chaucer module?’

  So he knows she’s seen the scarf. He is offering up his alibi before she challenges him so that his innocence is beyond doubt. Clever, she thinks. Very clever.

  But she is no slouch on the brains front either.

  She turns over, kisses him on his lying mouth.

  Twenty-Seven

  Samantha wakes up naturally for the first time since Emily was born. She was dreaming about Marcia. They were in the late-night Spanish bar off the Tottenham Court Road. They’d had too much to drink and were dancing flamenco. It’s the dream of a memory, and for a moment she keeps her eyes closed to prolong it. Before that came nightmares: Emily’s lifeless body grey in a ditch; Emily crying and alone in a dark, dripping warehouse; a coffin smaller than any coffin should be. Each time Samantha woke with a shout, covered in sweat, parched, panting. Peter was asleep, the wide bow of his shoulders all she could see in the shadowy room. She left him sleeping, went to lay her hand on Emily’s warm body, waiting for the rise and fall. At around four, she must have drifted off, her subconscious finding this last, happier memory to polish and hold up to dream’s hazy light.

  Light filters now through her eyelids. She gives up, opens her eyes, sees the time. It is almost half past eight. The bed is empty. It is later than usual; the sky is too bright.

  Emily.

  She throws back the covers, grabs her nightdress from the floor and dashes into her daughter’s room. Emily is asleep. Samantha holds her finger under the baby’s nose. Feels the warm, sweet breath of life. It is two hours later than she’s ever slept. Since last night, Samantha has told herself over and over that Emily will not have felt one moment of fear. If she is still asleep now, it is because she must be exhausted from the chaos of yesterday. She places her hand on Emily’s chest. And there it is, just to be sure: the swell and sink. She forces herself to turn away and go downstairs.

  Peter is drinking coffee. He is standing up, facing the bank of charcoal-coloured kitchen units, looking at his phone. They don’t have coffee in bed anymore, she thinks. Haven’t done since Emily was born.

  ‘Hi,’ she says.

  ‘Morning.’ He barely glances at her, last night’s attentions lost in the cold light of the morning. And up she comes, into the clarity of realisation that it has always been like this: nights full of warmth; mornings full of this, whatever this is. He is flushed, she notices. He must have been for his usual early-morning run. She did not hear him get up. It amazes her how unaltered he is. He has slept, has got up at his usual time, has completed his customary route along the river, back through Ham House, Richmond Park, Petersham, and is now drinking his morning coffee. He has ploughed forward.

  She, meanwhile, can barely hold her cup. Her nightdress, she notices then, is on inside out. Her baby is safe but her life is a shattered windscreen, held in place only by cracks. One more tap and it will rain down shards on all of them.

  ‘Are you going in?’ she asks.

  He takes a sip of coffee, swallows. ‘Tutorial at eleven.’

  That he is going to work the day after their child was kidnapped has not come as a surprise. She has not, she realises, expected him to do anything different, has not expected more. Night’s empathy is day’s near indifference, even today. Night will come; day will dawn. Life goes on, repeat ad infinitum.

  She tells him – tells the back of his head, at least – that she’ll see him later. She doesn’t ask what time he’ll be back, doesn’t ask if he could take the afternoon off and be with her under the circs, as Marcia would say. Marcia, who would see her fragility, who at one glance would know. If Peter notices the cracks, he says nothing about it. He will come home exactly when it pleases him. His day will not be conditioned by anything she might say or do, nor by anything she might feel. Even under the circs.

  Leaving him in the kitchen, she returns upstairs. Checks on Emily. She is so peaceful, fists up, head to one side, lips a pout. Another kind of indifference altogether.

  ‘See you later then,’ Peter calls up. A moment later, the door shuts with a bang.

  The house is so silent that she can hear a bird calling outside: a waxwing, possibly, or a chiffchaff. It’s not a song, she knows that. It’s a territorial war cry.

  In the bathroom, she undresses, stares for a moment into the full-length mirror. It is not something she does often, at least not with any real intention – she is usually too busy grabbing a shower while trying to sing to Emily through the glass screen – but she looks now. Is she still attractive? Would or could she appeal to someone nearer her own age now that her eyes are ringed in black, the whites bloodshot, now that pregnancy has struck silver lightning onto her abdomen, now that her stomach is not taut as a drum? Her hips are wider than they were yet her ribs protrude in a rack. Her body looks like it’s been in a fight. Like it’s had a rough time and needs tenderness, a softer light, understanding.

  ‘Poor body,’ she whispers, stroking the loose pouch of her belly. ‘Poor, poor you.’

  No such ravages for Peter. At forty, he’s pretty much unchanged from the photographs in his bedside drawer. A flare of resentment hits her. How weird that it is stronger than any emotion she felt last night, in the car, nose pressed to his mistress’s scarf. She is angrier about his dumb luck than his infidelity. Unless he was telling the truth and it really is Professor Bailey’s scarf. Who cares, frankly? Emily is safe; she, Samantha, is tired.

  She wonders if this is how bitterness starts, with this not caring, or no longer caring about things that once meant so much, whether you work through disappointment after disappointment towards weary expectation, until even the most serious transgression barely ripples the surface. She wonders whether in five years she’ll have left Peter in this beautiful house on the hill, told him to go to hell, in ten be drooling over younger men in dark bars, drunk, proselytising, telling strangers what’s what, jabbing at them with an ash-piled, lipst
ick-smudged cigarette, or living in a shoe with ten kids by as many different fathers. Or maybe even dead, found only weeks after complete organ failure, empty whisky bottle and a half-eaten tuna sandwich at her feet, dozens of cats clawing at the ratty second-hand sofa upon which she’s exhaled her last.

  ‘Madwoman,’ she says to her reflection and laughs.

  She stays under the hot shower for a long time, much, much longer than three minutes.

  She cleans the shower screen with the squeegee and places it carefully back in the correct place in the cupboard. Still no sound from Emily, so she takes her chance: moisturises her legs and arms, combs her wet hair back from her face, brushes her teeth with her electric toothbrush for the full two minutes, even though Peter isn’t there to check that the beeper goes off.

  She is watching the steam clouds shrink from the mirror when she remembers Peter’s pills. She wonders if he has taken them out of the glove compartment and hidden them in the house, or taken them into work along with the scarf.

  She pulls his robe from the hook, wraps it around herself.

  In the bedroom, she tries to work methodically. She searches his side of the chest of drawers, her own, his bedside cabinet, his wardrobe, his shoes, the small wooden box with the intricate marquetry in which he keeps his monogrammed cufflinks. Nothing, no sign.

  She returns to the bathroom, goes through the shelves. Shaving foam, aftershave, razor, deodorant, aspirin, hair fudge, hair wax, hair gel, moisturiser, anti-wrinkle cream.

  Anti-wrinkle cream? She doesn’t recognise the brand, assumes it’s something expensive. She unscrews the lid, smells it, dips her finger in. It is smooth, unctuous. She wipes it on the back of her hand and, as she does so, drops the pot.

  ‘Shit,’ she hisses, falls to her knees.

  A blob of thick white cream has escaped onto the floorboards. She scoops it as best she can back into the pot, half giggling at how horrified Peter would be if he were to see her doing this. She smooths the cream with her finger, tries to make the pot look like it did before. It looks OK, she thinks. Hopefully he won’t notice. If he does, she can say she tried some, just a tiny bit. She stands up, screws the lid back on and replaces the pot in the exact same spot on the shelf. Turns it a half centimetre, back three millimetres. Yep. She’s pretty sure it was like that.