The Last Wife

by Karen Hamilton

  Yet I made a mistake, too.

  If I’d opened my mouth and told anyone who’d listen that Charlie was missing, regardless of how common it was, I could have extracted myself from them. I should’ve insisted that we went to the police or at least tried to find him. They’d have had to face up to what they’d done, however accidental (or not).

  I’d have got on with my life, but by allowing myself to be guided by Nina, I remained immersed in her world. That’s the thing when you don’t fit in—you’ll be surprised at what you’ll do to make yourself more popular. I used to lie to make my life appear better. Back then, I lied through my inaction and a failure to act in the right way. It’s hard to forgive myself.

  Now I’m stuck with yet another dilemma. And poor Charlie has faded away from collective consciousness. No one truly cares anymore. It gives me an idea. Perhaps I’ll create a small album for Camilla, too. Everyone hopes they’re safe, that they can slip through life with various misdemeanors or more serious crimes unseen, but the camera can always see.

  When I photographed weddings or parties, the purest details were revealed in the images I snatched during the final hours. The same applies to that photo of the three of them. A random stranger snapped that image while momentarily hidden behind Nina’s camera, unseen in the picture, yet they were a witness to Charlie’s final hours. It can’t do any harm for Camilla to have a reminder of that.

  I close the album’s cover; it’s done. In pictures, Nina’s old life flows into the new: me, Jack, Goldie. The last picture is one of all the children in age order: Louise, Felix, Emily and Jack. Two boys, two girls. #happyblendedfamily. We have plenty of digital memories. It was important to have a physical one, too.

  I phone Christian. There must be something in my voice, because he agrees to see me the following morning.

  * * *

  I am openly wistful, raw, with nothing left to hide. Strange, really, that I used to carry around with me this (yet another) irrational fear that if all my therapists somehow got together, they’d get a fuller, more accurate picture of me. For the first time, I speak from the heart, unfiltered.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” I say. “It’s one of those things that you think you get but I didn’t, not until I wished for something for so hard and so long, then I got it. And it wasn’t what I wanted, or what I thought it would be. I did set out to steal Nina’s life.”

  “In what way?”

  “I thought if I had what Nina had, I’d be happy. She and I... We were friends, but I felt like her assistant or yes-person rather than us being in an equal friendship, especially as we got older. Love, hate. Envy, desire. It’s hard to explain what keeping quiet, or always guessing at what is the right thing to say or do, does to someone. I was never fully myself because I thought we wouldn’t stand a chance of being friends if I was. She was full of life, full of confidence in herself.”

  I stop. I feel pathetic even saying that out loud. I don’t want Christian to think that our work together has been a complete waste of time, that I don’t get that I am responsible for my own actions, feelings and thoughts. I do—now—but it doesn’t take away the fact that, deep down, I have to admit to myself that I always wanted what she had.

  I believed that Nina had it all: a family (and no question about whether or not to keep her first baby), work she adored, a life partner I assumed she loved, too. I really did believe that the grass was greener. Now, here I am. And it’s not nearly as green as I imagined. I try to explain it differently.

  “When I was with Ben,” I say, “I always carried with me a sense of feeling like the outsider looking in. I especially hated bank holidays, all those families crowded everywhere having fun.”

  We both laugh.

  “If we were out having lunch, I’d stare at my plate of olives, artisan bread or whatever, and I never fully appreciated what a luxury it was because I wanted to be with the other people, the ones who were having a nicer time than me. I assumed that they were the ones who had got it right, who understood life’s rules. I truly had no idea, did I? I was wrong.”

  Christian smiles in understanding.

  “I thought I’d be happy, that I had one chance to grab at life and everything would slot into place, that it would all suddenly make sense...yet it hasn’t happened that way.” I take a deep breath. If I’m in the mood for being honest, I may as well continue. “I wanted a baby to replace the one I didn’t have, plus the future family I didn’t have with Charlie.”

  “It’s normal to mourn a loss,” he says. “You made the right choices for you at the time.”

  “A friend of mine died recently in horrible circumstances,” I blurt out.

  I drop tiny hints at my guilt at falling out with him not long before his death. It’s tempting fate (a tiny bit) but I trust Christian to keep anything he guesses to himself. From my patchy online research—I’m cautious with my searches—it seems that therapists don’t have a legal duty to report a crime; it’s an ethical decision based on their beliefs. I think Greg would approve of these small clues. He loved figuring out if the bad guy was going to get caught.

  My mind flits. I want to get everything off my chest. I have a feeling that it’s time to say goodbye to Christian for good.

  “I’m trapped,” I say. “By my own choices.”

  “You do have options, Marie,” he says gently.

  I nod as if I do. “I know,” I lie. “Thank you.”

  When it’s time to say goodbye, I want to tell him how sorry I am that there are some people who are beyond help and that I am one of them. Christian is one of the good guys, he tried his best with me. I’m going to miss him and his understated wisdom.

  I wait outside on the street in the rain for Stuart to pick me up. I’m too emotional and tired to drive. I told Stuart that Christian is my grief counselor. It’s true, really.

  Stuart is late.

  I don’t take out my umbrella. I enjoy the sensation of getting wet, the fresh drops on my face. I’ve always found it hard after a therapy session to switch off. This time is no different. I can’t erase the image of Greg’s eyes, the sound of the stone hitting his skull or Camilla’s hardened expression and the knife penetrating Greg’s throat.

  Was it the exhaustion, was it anger, fear? What was it that made me so determined to get involved, to silence him? I’m still shocked by my own rage. The desire came from somewhere deep within. I genuinely felt such a rush of protection toward my family, that it was inevitable. If not then, if not that way, then maybe another. It’s hard to know. I’d love to debate it—properly debate it—with Christian, rather than hint “at something bad, something irreversible, feeling enormous guilt at being the last person to see my friend alive,” but I have to work within the only safe boundary I’ve got. Which is myself.

  When Stuart pulls up, I open the passenger door, sit down and twist around to face the back and give Jack a smile. His car seat is empty.

  “Where’s Jack?”

  “Deborah is looking after him. She’s going to pick the children up from school, too. We’re not expected back for a while.”

  Stuart doesn’t take the expected route home. Instead he drives toward a different part of the forest.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We need to talk.”

  I don’t like the sound of this at all. Yet, I can’t think of the right things to ask or say.

  It’s only as he starts driving up a track, that I realize where he’s headed. The lodge. My insides knot.

  He pulls over.

  My heart beats faster.

  “I think this is the spot. It looks like the place from the news,” he says before he switches off the ignition and twists around in the driver’s seat so that he can fully look at me. His expression is intense. “You’re going to need me, in a perverse kind of a way, just like Nina did. To be your alibi.”

&nbs
p; Oh. My. God.

  “You’ve been acting strangely,” he continues. “I recognize the signs. Guilt. I appreciate what you’ve done, Marie. Greg was a bad man. He targeted Nina when she was vulnerable.”

  “How did you know?”

  “She told me about him. She didn’t want me finding anything out after she was gone that she couldn’t atone or apologize for.”

  “But you’ve never said anything—”

  “I didn’t blame her. I blamed him. Then, I was so grief-stricken after she died that in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t seem important anymore. But he kept coming to the book group, getting friendly with Camilla, then you, as if he thought I didn’t know. When you told me he was with Camilla that one night, I was concerned. Yet things have worked out. After all, give someone enough rope...”

  I don’t know Stuart at all, any more than I suspect Nina did. Sickening thoughts race, one after the other, twisting and reforming. Did I take an unnecessary risk? Have I tried to protect him when he didn’t need me to? Perhaps he would’ve taken action himself. Have I been played?

  Yet, he looks so calm, so innocent, so grateful, even. I can’t trust my own mind to figure it out.

  The rain beats down on the car roof. It’s oddly soothing. It’s nicely isolating being temporarily cut off from the outside world. Drops snake down the windows.

  “As for you and what you’ve done for this family...it’s amazing, Marie.” He takes my hand. Both our hands are cold and mine are shivering. “There’s something I’ve never told you. Kevin is my stepfather. I found out during my teenage years that my real father had run off, left my mother as soon as he found out she was pregnant. It’s hard to explain, but I wanted my children to have a perfect-as-possible life, free from the negative actions of others. It’s very important to me.”

  “I see.”

  I’m not sure I do. I’m genuinely surprised and hurt that Suzanne never let it slip. I assumed we were close.

  “Everyone has secrets. I loved Nina. I had to do whatever it took to make things work for all our sakes. Listen carefully to me.” He cups my face in his hands. “It’s too much of a burden for you to keep this to yourself. It ate Nina up. I’m not going to let that happen to you.”

  “It wasn’t me,” I say, releasing his hands from my face as gently as I can. “I didn’t kill Greg.”

  “No,” he says. “But you’re culpable. You and me, we’re a proper team now. Just like Nina and I were. You can rely on me, I promise. I won’t let you down.”

  Tears fall. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The faint taste of salt dissolves on my lips.

  “Don’t be sad,” he says.

  I need to get away from this place. “Drive us home, please. It was a horrible choice of place to bring me.”

  However, something becomes clear: if Stuart is my alibi, then I can’t be Camilla’s.

  Forty-One

  Greg’s camera has remained hidden and camouflaged among my own equipment. Until now.

  It needs a new home. I remove it from its hiding place.

  I hesitate outside Camilla’s front door—listening—before I slide in my key, even though Camilla’s car isn’t in the drive. She’s showing no signs of moving out.

  I befriended her ex-partner on social media. He accepted my friend request within days. It amazes me that people still do that—I could be anyone. He appears to have moved on, as he is expecting a child with a new partner. After lots of painstaking digging and reading of endless inane comments, as well as figuring out that he had disagreed with Camilla moving away with Louise, I discovered that he was married when he and Camilla met. Although, I’m hardly in a great position to judge. What I can judge, though, is Louise’s welfare.

  The police investigation is ongoing. The rumors don’t die down and every time an article or someone’s comment sails close to the truth, it strengthens my resolve that I will not pay for Camilla’s—or Nina’s—mistakes any longer. I hide the camera in the top of Camilla’s wardrobe, beneath some scarves I’ve never seen her wear.

  As I go downstairs, removing my new gloves (paid for in cash and which I will dispose of), I nearly trip down the last two stairs in shock when Louise’s bedroom door opens.

  “Louise! Why aren’t you at school?”

  “I thought you were my mum! Please don’t tell her.”

  She doesn’t ask what I am doing in her home. Full of tears, she is desperate to share how she hates her new school, is being bullied, how Camilla doesn’t want to hear it.

  “I want to live with my grandparents, but they say that they’re too old to have me living there full time.”

  I hug her and promise that I’m going to make everything all right. I’m going to fix this. I often hear Christian’s voice in my head: Control the things you can.

  I’m invited to rejoin the book group, and there’s no choice but to return because everything I do or say has to be about behaving normally. I walk into Tamsin’s living room and scan the faces. Miriam, Abigail, Sharon, Camilla, they are all there. I genuinely half expect to see Greg. It’s weird how quickly I’ve adapted and managed to convince myself that he’s alive and well.

  I think, not seeing him there, that’s when everything really hits me.

  Afterward, we both walk home together. She has forgotten to bring a flashlight and her phone battery is low, so I light the way with mine. She collects Louise from our place and I walk them both back to the cottage. As she opens the door, I rummage inside my bag and hand her the photo album I’ve created especially for her.

  “A gift,” I say.

  “What for?”

  I say goodbye to Louise and wait until she is well inside the cottage before I reply.

  “A little reminder,” I say. “Pay particular attention to the first photo. It’s the last one ever taken of Charlie. Physical proof that you lied about leaving him at the party, along with the confession you made to me which I recorded.” (It’s very bad quality, but I don’t need to mention that.) “All the little things add up.”

  She is silent.

  “I’ve always had this little theory that the purest photos, the truth, if you like, are taken near the end of any event,” I say.

  “This is all very unnecessary,” she eventually says.

  “Maybe,” I say. “But you can’t blame me for having an insurance policy. I must think of my family. I know if it ever comes up, you’ll try to pin all the blame on Nina because she’s not here to defend herself. I also know that you’ll try to pin Greg on me, too, if it ever comes to it. Yet it seems you’re the one with a history of violence, not me. It wouldn’t look good for any potential future defense of yours if you were also being investigated for an earlier murder. You would be the common factor, the link between the two. Not Nina. Not me.”

  I leave her with that thought as I walk slowly back to the main house.

  * * *

  Stuart has truly embraced our marriage. He has chosen to see what I did to Greg as evidence of my loyalty. Suddenly, despite everything I’ve worked for, it feels like living with a python, the life squeezed out of me in a torturous, slow fashion. When I read to the children from The Jungle Book, I am morbidly fascinated by the picture of the grinning snake coiled around the main character.

  But I can’t leave Stuart, for so many reasons. He might say he wouldn’t drop me in it for the kids’ sake, but who is to say that he won’t? There are no guarantees that there wouldn’t be any drunken pillow talk with a future person or that the urge to come clean won’t strengthen over time. People change. I learned that from Christian.

  Stuart insists that he wanted to protect Nina, but it’s undeniably creepy how almost gleeful he was to be able to do the same for me. As if he knew it would trap me, make me stay. Because I can never risk being separated from my son. Greg’s observation that Stuart was Nina’s penance makes more sense t
o me now. And now it seems he is mine. While no one has been arrested for Greg’s murder—yet—I suddenly almost feel as though I’m serving a sentence of my own; if I stay with Stuart until Jack is eighteen, that’s roughly six thousand, five hundred and seventy days.

  Kevin and Suzanne are due to fly over to spend Christmas with us. Even my brother with the eternal itchy feet is apparently going to return before the new year. Life goes on.

  Meanwhile, we’ll all carry on pretending. If we get up each day, get dressed, eat breakfast, check our calendars and go through the motions, we’ll all get through this. In a few more years, the children’s memory of Nina will have diminished further, and it will be me who they turn to for advice. I’ll try not to overprotect them, however hard it may be. I want their upbringing to be different than mine even though I now realize that every parent does their best. I will teach them to be strong, to not rely on other people for their own self-worth, to make friends or keep friends who want to be with them because they genuinely like them. Also, to choose a partner wisely.

  I frequently dream of the knife that killed Greg: the sharpness of the blade, the serrations, the easy-grip handle enabling Camilla to hold it so tightly as she plunged it into his neck.

  I start to believe that nothing will ever happen, Greg-wise. But I promised Louise that I’d help her. Sometimes, things need a push.

  I invite her over to stay one evening and we watch movies, talk about her problems, make pancakes (sweet and savory), which are a big hit with everyone. I pretend not to notice when she feeds Goldie a small piece of one.

  We laugh. There is a genuine, happy family atmosphere, full of camaraderie and love. Perhaps I’m not so bad after all.

  Camilla is arrested at dawn.

  An anonymous tip-off. Apparently.