The Marriage Trap: A completely addictive psychological thriller

by Sheryl Browne

  Unbelievable. Jason shook his head and pressed the phone to his ear. Just what mates were for: to offer you shite advice when your marriage hit a blip.

  ‘Though, personally, I think that would do you the world of good,’ Mark trundled on. ‘A quick no-strings-attached—’

  Jason held up a hand, his look hopefully telling Mark to zip it, as he realised who it was calling.

  ‘Jason, Robert here,’ Fenton said. ‘Karla said you were working.’

  ‘I am,’ Jason confirmed, immediately agitated by the brusque tone.

  ‘Right, well, I’ll get straight to the point. Time is money, after all,’ Fenton went on, predictably. ‘I’m prepared to put a deal on the table.’

  A… ‘What?’ Jason laughed, incredulous at the man’s gall.

  ‘Don’t be obtuse, Jason. It’s not a good business attribute,’ Fenton said, with his usual condescending sigh. ‘A deal. A business loan, boy. You’re haemorrhaging money currently and making nil profit. Come to my office, two o’clock on Monday, and we’ll discuss terms.’

  And those terms would be what, Jason wondered. Apart from the fifty per cent share in his business he fully expected Fenton would demand. Karla had clearly discussed it further with him. Once he’d left this morning, presumably, which pretty much summed up her confidence in him. ‘Thanks,’ he said, his throat tight, ‘but I think I’d rather bleed to death.’

  SEVEN

  KARLA

  I was hoping the children would be worn out after an hour spent kicking a football around the park. I should have known better. They’re still bounding with energy while I’m flagging. We troop dutifully across the park to my parents’ house for our regular Saturday visit, which Jason, understandably, prefers not to accompany us on, usually going off to the supermarket, or else to the office. I find Mum in the kitchen when I let myself in with my key. ‘Trainers off, guys,’ I instruct Holly and Josh, who need no encouraging. Having had the usual lecture about not treading mud onto the carpet, they’re already halfway out of them in anticipation of Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones – the second prequel to the original Star Wars trilogy which is showing on Sky, Josh has reliably informed me – and Mum’s home-made cake in front of the TV.

  I head towards the kitchen as the children skid to the lounge. They’re possibly already on a sugar high, I realise guiltily. I was a bit distracted in the park, not quite as ‘brilliant in goal’ as Holly claimed I was. My mind was on the photo I’d found on Jason’s phone, his exchange of messages with Mark. Jason and Mark go back years, right back to their errant youth. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they swap boyish messages. I’m more surprised that Jason would comment chauvinistically about a woman’s appearance. But then, women do that sort of thing all the time. The gossip about six-packs and who’s met who online is rife in the administrative assistants’ office at work. As I’m the office manager as well as personal assistant to the chief executive – to whom they imagine I might report back – there’s usually a lull in the conversation whenever I go in, but not for long. I’m as up for the juicy details as the rest of them. That Jason hadn’t immediately deleted the photograph though, and that he’d scored the undeniably beautiful woman, bothers me. If he’d replied ‘not my type’ or even ‘nice’, I might not feel so uneasy, but to have been so impressed, to have actually asked Mark if she had a sister…

  I know it’s just a turn of phrase, but I can’t help thinking that Jason might be tempted elsewhere. That – with the problems between us and the many arguments lately – our marriage might be floundering along with his business. Might Jason be growing tired of the responsibility of having a family? We were so young when we married, after all. Is he fed up of being tied to one woman? A woman who’s constantly nagging him and apparently not overjoyed at the prospect of having sex with him?

  Icy trepidation prickles my skin, despite my repeated attempts to reassure myself. I so wish I hadn’t looked at his messages. With things so unsettled between us, my suspicion seems to have gone into overdrive.

  Checking the phone Jason had eventually rushed off without is safe in my bag, I push the kitchen door open and freeze as, out of nowhere, stark memories of my childhood assail me: sheet rain lashing against the window, my mother oblivious to me as she gazes at the windswept trees in the park beyond it. I see them: ethereal, solemn-faced funeral guests, whispering in hushed tones, warily watching my mother as she goes into the lounge. Following behind, I watch her carefully from where I hover uncertainly in the doorway. I see the look in her eyes as she locates my father, who’s stoically circulating, despite his grief. My gaze travels between my parents, but I focus on my mother, trying to read the expression on her face, to find some comfort there. I see the confused incomprehension in her crystal-blue eyes, which fleetingly hardens to deep hatred. And I wonder, does she know? Has he told her that Sarah didn’t move when she fell, but lay on the path like a porcelain doll?

  ‘Karla!’ My mother says delightedly, yanking me back to the here and now, to the smell of home cooking, which is supposed to be comforting, but somehow isn’t today. ‘How are things, my lovely?’ She downs her baking tray, atop which sits her own-recipe cinnamon apple pie, reaches for the dish towel to dust off her hands and comes across to me.

  ‘The same,’ I say, with a wan smile. Mum knows that with Jason’s business problems on top of the demands of two children, things are not all rosy at home.

  She looks at me kindly and then pulls me into our ritual hug. I hang on to her for a second, wishing I could truly go back, to a time before the dark days, and make all the bad things go away.

  ‘He’s not managed to get things sorted out then?’ she asks, scanning my eyes, her own peppered with concern as she eases away from me.

  ‘No,’ I admit, with a disconsolate shake of my head.

  Mum nods, a small sympathetic nod, and turns to put the kettle on for a cure-all cup of tea. The way she is, always cooking and cleaning, you would imagine an older woman, a mumsy mum, living a life of dull domesticity. But Mum’s not dull or dowdy, always dressing trendily but understatedly and never without a wisp of make-up – just enough to accentuate her high cheekbones and fine features. I’m not sure who I take after, but it’s definitely not her, with her natural beauty and elegance. Why does my father cheat on her, I wonder, as I’ve often done over the years. How is it that she’s always seemed so indifferent to the fact that he does?

  ‘And he won’t consider talking to your father?’ Mum asks.

  ‘No. He’s adamant he won’t take money from him.’ I sigh and wander across to drop my bag on the table and take the weight off my feet. I’m tired. Unfit, obviously. I’m not used to running around, playing football. That’s usually Jason’s job.

  ‘Oh dear.’ Mum sighs in turn and joins me at the table with two mugs of tea. ‘It’s a self-esteem thing,’ she imparts, pushing the biscuit barrel towards me. ‘A man’s ego is a delicate beast.’

  Aware of that, and that I’d badly bruised Jason’s last night, I smile sadly and help myself to a biscuit, reminding myself to watch the calories. After giving birth twice, I’m not likely to be able to compete with the perfectly sculpted woman on his phone. Piling on the pounds now, therefore, is possibly not a good idea.

  ‘We’ll each have to get ourselves a carefree toy boy,’ Mum says, giving me a conspiratorial wink.

  I smile half-heartedly. I wish now that I hadn’t danced quite so enthusiastically with him. A nice mover, muscular and very well-packaged in a tight white T-shirt and jeans, his attributes would certainly score a ten. I think of the double standard regarding men ogling women and vice versa. Am I being too judgemental of Jason? Paranoid, because of the problems between us? He was jealous. He would hardly have cut in, looking most definitely put out, if he didn’t care about me, would he?

  But does he love me? Caring is not loving, and he doesn’t often say that he does.

  ‘Can I ask you something, Mum?’ Furrowing my brow, I rea
ch for my bag.

  ‘As long as it’s nothing technical,’ Mum says, glancing uncertainly at the phone I pull out.

  ‘It’s not,’ I assure her, and quickly check over my shoulder. I’d hate one of the children to wander in. ‘We argued,’ I explain, taking a breath, ‘after the party.’

  ‘Not about the toy boy?’ Mum’s expression is a cross between bemused and amused.

  ‘No,’ I say quickly, feeling defensive of Jason. ‘Well, sort of. Jason was a bit miffed I was dancing with him, but that wasn’t what we argued about.’

  ‘I don’t see why he’d be miffed,’ Mum says, looking po-faced on my behalf. ‘You’re an attractive young woman. If he couldn’t be bothered to dance with you, then he really shouldn’t object to you dancing with someone else.’

  ‘Dad had been on at him,’ I say.

  Mum’s face straightens at that. ‘Oh. I see,’ she says. She’s seen how Dad belittles him sometimes and has reprimanded him for it. She tries to make Jason feel welcome here, but sadly he doesn’t. The way Dad treats him, I can’t blame him.

  ‘I broached the subject of him approaching Dad for a loan again when we got home,’ I go on. ‘Stupidly, so late at night. We had a few words, and… The long and short of it is, Jason tried to kiss and make up and I… Well, I just didn’t feel like it.’ I don’t elaborate on why – that the things I try to forget had swamped me, thanks to my father’s behaviour at the party, and then Jason reminding me of it, as if he’d needed to.

  Mum reaches to squeeze my arm. ‘Things are that bad between you then?’ she says understandingly.

  I nod, feeling close to tears. I’m not sure why I’m so upset. Jason’s done nothing terrible really. Looking at a photograph of a woman sent to his phone is hardly evidence of infidelity, is it? He was just—

  Window shopping? Sarah pipes up, offering her unwelcome thoughts on the subject.

  ‘We had more words, obviously.’ Ignoring her, I rush on. ‘Josh heard us and woke up. Jason put him back to bed and then… he slept in the spare room.’

  ‘Definitely not good then?’ Mum says, her tone soft.

  ‘No.’ I sigh miserably. ‘He seemed okay this morning. He was tired, but I thought things were okay between us. And then…’ Bracing myself, I turn my attention to Jason’s phone and bring up his messages. ‘I saw these.’

  Mum takes the phone, glancing curiously from it to me as she realises it’s Jason’s. She takes a moment, scrolling through the messages, a myriad of expressions crossing her face as she appears to ponder. And then, ‘It’s just boys being boys, Karla,’ she tells me soothingly. ‘Just laddish banter.’

  I’m relieved she thinks so, too, but… ‘He’s not a lad though, is he?’ I point out, still unable to quiet the suspicion gnawing away at me. ‘He’s a married man with two children. He scored her, Mum,’ I say bewilderedly, ‘ten out of ten.’

  ‘And?’ Mum says, and waits for me to get to the point.

  I glance down and back. ‘I can’t help thinking he might have sampled the goods, or soon will,’ I admit, hot tears of humiliation and frustration finally spilling over.

  EIGHT

  ROBERT

  Seeing Karla’s car on the drive as he pulled up, Robert gathered his daughter was visiting. He did hope she wasn’t going to give him grief regarding his attempts to talk some sense into her useless husband. She’d already reprimanded him at the party last night for ‘talking business’, telling him they were supposed to be enjoying themselves.

  Diana had certainly been enjoying herself. He’d parted with his hard-earned cash, organising a lavish party with silver service and a live band, which had cost him a small fortune, and she was prancing about with some jumped-up little twerp a third her age on the dance floor, making a complete poppy-show of herself. Robert wondered why he’d bothered. He couldn’t do a thing right in his wife’s eyes. He’d never quite regained her trust after succumbing to his urges and taking what was obviously on offer from one of her friends, a monumentally stupid thing to do with Diana pregnant and their wedding plans already underway. Robert bitterly regretted the tacky affair, which had cost him dearly, financially as well as emotionally. Julie Ferguson had driven a hard bargain in exchange for her silence – one he’d had no choice but to meet, since she’d been in his employ. Thus his decision to include non-disclosure clauses in contracts in future. The last thing he’d needed, having just received his UK Business Entrepreneur of the Year Award, was for her to run off tittle-tattling to the tabloids, as these women do. Diana’s father, town mayor and chairman of the golf club, ergo extremely influential, would not have been impressed.

  He would definitely have been unimpressed by the events that followed months after the wedding. No amount of money could bury that unfortunate incident, once it had landed squarely on their doorstep. Fortunately, as their wedding had been featured in several glossy magazines, with a follow-up featuring her as a glowing expectant mother in Stylish Homes, Diana had seen the sense of keeping the incident to themselves. Under their own roof, as it were. The timing around her pregnancy had been opportune. Robert had counted his blessings in finding someone as pragmatic and forward-thinking as Diana, who realised that some things were best kept secret in order to preserve his business reputation – and their luxurious lifestyle.

  She’d been cool towards him initially, which Robert had understood. Finding herself with two little ones to care for couldn’t have been easy, but they’d jogged along. She’d withdrawn from him completely since the episode in their lives he didn’t care to dwell on, but which Diana, with her barbed looks and long silences, would never let him forget. She had never openly stated she didn’t believe his side of the story – that Sarah had stumbled and fallen that day in the garden – but Robert knew in his heart that she didn’t.

  He’d felt bad lying to her, but he’d had no choice but to deny everything, particularly being in the girls’ room that night, inebriated to the point of unconscious. How was he supposed not to? The police would have been involved. He would have been ruined. They might even have taken Karla away. Karla… He regretted, too, that he’d had to convince her she might end up on her own in care. If she loved them and wanted to stay with them, she couldn’t tell tales on him, he’d warned her. It hadn’t been his proudest moment.

  A deep sadness washed over him as he recalled the watchful, suspicious gaze he’d often seen in Karla’s eyes thereafter. Robert tried to consign it to history as he let himself through the front door, out of the rain. He supposed Karla would take the opportunity while she was here to accuse him of being ruthless and controlling where Jason was concerned. He was ruthless, to a degree. He’d had to be. Building a multimillion-pound company up from scratch hadn’t allowed him the luxury of indulging his emotions. As for indulging other people’s, that was definitely a recipe for failure. Robert simply didn’t have the patience for sob stories. He preferred to focus on the practical and move forwards, unlike Jason, who seemed content to idle in the slow lane. The man hadn’t got a business bone in his body. God only knew what Karla had seen in him, why she’d become involved with him. Robert dearly wished that she hadn’t. He’d tried everything to convince her not to go through with the wedding. Nothing had been able to dissuade her.

  Robert hadn’t doubted Karla had fancied herself in love with him. He’d very much doubted Jason’s motives in marrying her, however. The more he’d tried to talk sense into him, pointing out the idiocy of tying himself down at such a young age, the more he’d appeared to dig his heels in. He’d been determined to go against Robert’s wishes. More than determined. A man who’s successful in business never mistakes a challenge in another man’s eyes.

  Assuming it was Karla’s family fortune he was attracted to, Robert had made a fundamental mistake, one he’d kicked himself for every day since. He could see the cocky bastard now, his dark eyes narrowed quizzically as he’d handed him the cheque, for a substantial sum of money – his, if he did the sensible thing regarding his o
wn future and got out of Karla’s life.

  Studying the cheque, Jason had shaken his head and emitted a scornful laugh, as if money meant nothing, and then, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ he’d said, locking eyes full of contempt levelly on his.

  Robert had hardly been able to contain his fury as the impudent bastard calmly tore the cheque up in front of him and tossed it at his feet. He’d sealed his daughter’s fate that day. Short of telling her the truth, which would mean losing all that was dear to him, nothing could persuade her not to marry this man who would ruin her life.

  So much for his principles: Jason hadn’t quibbled too much when Robert paid for their house, rather than allow his daughter and future grandchild to live in a shoebox of a flat on some common estate while her husband fucked about, attempting to start up a company with nil experience. Having spent his own childhood in such a place, Robert had shuddered at that thought. Karla had talked Jason round, Robert suspected. It was a wedding gift, after all, and being the penniless prat that he was, Jason had been in no position to turn it down.

  Robert wasn’t completely heartless where Jason was concerned; he did have a begrudging respect for his efforts to keep his floundering business afloat without adequate financial backing. He’d agreed to offer him a business loan when Karla had asked. She’d clearly found out what a stubborn son of a bitch he was, when, yet again, he dug his heels in. He would change his mind. Jason Connolly would realise he had no choice but to swallow his pride and come to him, and then they would get to the real deal on the table: Robert’s silence in exchange for Jason’s. It was that simple. If he truly cared about Karla, Jason would realise the truth could never come out and, finally, he would walk away. He could take the money Robert was prepared to offer him to soften the blow, or he could leave it. That was up to him.

  Glancing into the lounge, he noted that Holly and Josh were superglued to some alien thing on the TV. He wasn’t sure it was suitable viewing for an eleven and ten-year-old, but it was more than he dared do to question Karla’s parenting skills. She would jump down his throat in an instant.