by Ashe Barker
“An e-card? You sent an e-card? Not a proper one, a black card with a heart on it? A card that said on the front that it was to the one I love?”
“No. Faith, what did you find?”
I drag in a long, deep breath, then spit out the words quickly. “It was from Ed. I recognised his handwriting. Ed sent Caroline a card. He said he loved her.”
Ewan’s muffled curse draws on vocabulary he normally reserves for the bedroom. Or the dungeon. I remain silent, let the bizarreness of all this sink in for both of us.
As if our lives were not already hopelessly tangled by fate, that this final, cruel blow should land now.
“Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?”
“It’s his handwriting. He’s written inside that he loves her, that he wants to be with her.”
“What exactly does it say? Do you have it there with you?”
“Yes.”
“Read it out to me. Now.” His tone has hardened. This is his dom voice, and my emotional response is instant.
I open the card, though the words are etched on my memory. I have no need to read them, but I do anyway. “For my dearest, beloved Caro, on your birthday. I love you, and I can’t wait until we can be together for good. Yours always. E.” I pause, then, “It’s his writing. No mistake about that.” Then, in a whisper, “Did you know?”
“No, I fucking didn’t.”
“Wouldn’t she have told you? I mean, if you weren’t exclusive? You wouldn’t have minded if she slept with someone else, so why would she keep it from you?”
“I wouldn’t have minded for me, but I’d have been fucking furious for you.”
“You didn’t know me then.”
“I knew of you. I knew Ed was married. Carrie would have known full well I’d never stand for her screwing around with my next-door neighbour. I wouldn’t have tolerated her dumping on my own doorstep. Literally.”
“So that’s why she hid the card then. So you wouldn’t find out.” I’m starting to piece bits of this together.
“Maybe. Where did you find it?”
“In the bottom drawer of her dressing table. Under some magazines.”
Ewan says nothing for a few seconds. I can hear his low breathing on the other end of the line, as though he’s considering carefully what to say next. “Faith, I always try to avoid saying anything negative about Ed. He was your husband, and I know you loved him even though I wasn’t fond of him. But… you know better than anyone that he was a womaniser. He flirted with any woman he saw, especially if they encouraged him… Could this have been just more of that? It might not mean anything. Not really. Just a bit of flirting gone too far.”
I’d already explored that possibility, but in my gut I don’t accept it. Hearing the suggestion stated out loud by Ewan further convinces me. I can tell by his voice he doesn’t believe it either. I don’t answer him. There is no answer. Ewan picks up the theme again.
“Did you ever see anything, anything at all to make you suspicious? Ed wasn’t exactly the soul of discretion.”
“No. Nothing.” I can hear the hitch in my voice. In moments I’ll be in tears.
“Baby…” Ewan has heard it too. The compassion in that one word almost melts my heart.
“I wish you were here.” My tears are flowing now, unheeded down my cheeks.
“Me too, love.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too. I’ll be there soon.”
“I know. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to wreck your day. I know you have business, and…”
“Faith. I…”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye.” I hang up, before my grief completely overwhelms me. I drop the phone to the kitchen floor with a noisy clatter and lay my head on my arms. I give in to it, I stop fighting and face the truth. I stop fooling myself, there’s nowhere to hide.
I’m eye to eye with a relationship turned sour, the loss of the marriage I thought I had, the realisation that if he hadn’t been taken from me by death, I’d have lost Ed anyway. I probably already had, even before he sent his motorbike careering into that tree.
And what about Caroline? How could she look me in the eye? We were friends, or so I thought. All the time she was… what? What exactly was she doing with my husband? How far had it got between them?
I sob for the broken promises, the betrayal, the future lost, that I now know was never anything more than a fantasy.
Chapter Fourteen
I spend the next day in a daze. So much for the pressing demands of my clients, the unmissable deadlines that kept me from accepting Ewan’s invitation to fly out to Qatar. I drift around my house, drinking tea, staring at the television, waiting for the clock to count down the hours until I can go back to bed.
The card continues to sit on my kitchen table, taking the piss out of me. Not definitive, not enough in itself to tell me the story I so desperately need to hear, it serves as a constant reminder that I’ll never know the truth. Not the whole truth.
My head is whirling with questions, but there’s nowhere to take them. Ewan was my one hope, though I dread to consider how I might have reacted if he’d told me that he had his suspicions about Caroline and my husband, or worse still that he knew of Ed’s betrayal. If there’s any shred of comfort in all this, it’s that Ewan was clearly as shocked as I was. He never saw this coming either.
I make myself yet another pot of tea and glare at the offending item propped against my sugar bowl. Come to think of it, hearts and flowers would never be Ewan’s style. I hadn’t thought them Ed’s either, but perhaps Caroline brought out other qualities in him.
The bitch. The conniving, secretive, lying bitch.
I watched her die, held her hand in her final, lucid moments. I’m not proud of the feelings I have toward her now. Is it possible to hate someone who’s dead? It must be. I do.
If anything, I’m more surprised, more disappointed in Caroline than I am in Ed. I knew he was a faithless jerk. Deep down, I knew that. I thought better of her.
I recall her final words to me. Her apology. She thought she had hurt me, and I dismissed it. I didn’t understand what she was saying then, but it makes sense now. I comforted her, reassured her, offered her the platitudes I thought she needed to hear. And all the time she was trying to seek forgiveness for stealing my husband.
Fucking hell, what a mess. What a bloody mess.
* * *
It’s late afternoon when I hear a sound at my front door. Not a knock. It’s the click of the lock. The door opens. Footsteps.
“Faith? Where are you?”
Ewan? Ewan’s here. But—how? He isn’t due back for weeks. I rush to the kitchen door in time to see him dump a holdall on the floor.
He opens his arms and I rush at him.
“You came. You came home.” I’m sobbing, grasping at his jacket. I notice it’s wet. It must be raining outside.
“Of course I came. Did you think I wouldn’t? Did you imagine I’d leave you on your own, after this?”
“I love you. I’m so glad you’re here. How did you manage it?”
“It took some arranging. I had to come via Dubai then change flights in Amsterdam. And I did a little detour to Bradford on my way. I just managed to catch Mike before he checked out of his hotel. I’m here now though.” He stiffens as he looks over my shoulder. “Is that it? The card?”
“Yes,” I snivel. “I want to tear it up but I can’t.”
“Maybe later. Can I read it?”
I nod, and he leans around me to reach for it. His arm around my shoulders tightens as he scans the scrawled words.
“He signed himself E. Did he usually do that?”
I shake my head. That had struck me as odd.
“Perhaps it was his way of trying to cover their tracks. Anyone reading this would assume I sent it. Anyone except you and me, of course.”
“Maybe. Why did you want to see Mike?”
“I as
ked him if I could borrow Carrie’s phone back. And her iPad.”
I peer up at him, my gaze watery and unfocused. I must look a mess. Neither one of us cares. “Why? What do you want those for?”
He turns me toward the table and gestures for me to sit. I do, and he takes the chair opposite.
“You want to know, right? You want to know what happened?”
I nod, fresh tears flowing now.
“Me too. For your sake rather than mine. We need to find out, and then we move on. Right? Whatever we might uncover, however much it hurts, we learn it, and we leave it. Carrie and Ed, they’re in the past. It’s just you and me now.”
I frown at him, not convinced that’s going to be possible. He reaches for my hand.
“Faith, promise me we’ll get past this. Together. Look at me, Faith.” He waits until I raise my eyes to meet his. “Do you trust me?”
That’s a question I can answer without hesitation. “Yes. Yes, I do, sir.”
“So…?”
“So we’ll learn it and leave it.”
He squeezes my fingers between his. “Right, I’ve been giving this some thought and it seems to me that if Ed was writing birthday cards to Carrie, he was probably texting too. Or there might be emails. Facebook messages. Something. Did you ever read his Facebook?”
“I don’t do Facebook. I don’t think Ed did either.”
“Carrie did. A lot. Even if she wasn’t directly in touch with Ed, she might have mentioned him on there. It’s worth checking. Wait there.”
He stands and goes into the hallway, returning moments later with the iPad I last saw peeking out of one of Mike’s boxes. He attaches the charger and plugs it into the mains.
“Battery’s dead, obviously. It may take a while to get it started. Meanwhile, I’ve had her phone on charge in the car.” He pulls that from his pocket and lays it on the table. “Shall we?”
“I still have Ed’s phone, somewhere.”
“We might want to look at that after. If they were texting each other though his texts will be on here as well as hers.”
“She might have deleted them. I know I would if… if…”
“She had no reason to. She knew I never looked at her phone and she wouldn’t have expected you to in the normal run of things. Even if she had meant to cover her tracks, she died so suddenly that she probably wouldn’t have had the chance. My guess is that there’d be something on here.”
“Have you already looked? Is there anything?”
He shakes his head. “I think we should do it together. So, would you do the honours or shall I?” He shoves the phone across the table to me.
I pick it up and press the on switch on the side. Caroline’s security screen comes up. “Do you know her passcode?”
“She used her date of birth. Not very original, or secure. Try five five eight five.”
I key in the numbers, and the home screen appears. I look up at Ewan. “So far, so good.”
He says nothing, just arches one eyebrow. I tap the icon to bring up Caroline’s text messages.
Even though, by now, I know what I’m expecting to see, I’m still shocked at the number of times Ed’s name appears in the list. Occasional messages from her brother, and three from someone called Lucy, a friend, I suppose. A handful from Ewan. The rest are from Ed. I scroll down through the dates first, to find when the messages from Ed seemed to start.
February 2013.
Four months before they died, and only a matter of weeks after Ed and I were married. So much for a honeymoon period.
I open the first message:
Hi. Found that bk. Come round tomorrow if u want it
So that’s where it all started. With a book. Or was that just an excuse? I scroll down for the reply:
Thanks. See you at 2
Their first assignation? Maybe. I select another message, this time from March. Ewan comes around to sit next to me so he can read over my shoulder. I angle the phone to give him a better view.
Loved this afternoon. Tomorrow? Xxx
The reply:
Sure. same time? Xxx
Ed’s response—earlier.
F due home at 3. Dentist appt.
A red mist of anger starts to descend. I even remember that exact day, the day I had a dental check-up scheduled for just after lunch and decided to come straight home after, for a little ‘us’ time. Christ, we spent the rest of the afternoon in bed.
The deceitful little shit. The slime ball. Did they fuck in our bed, just hours before Ed and I made love there? My bed?
I’ve seen enough. It’s obvious the pair of them were at it for months. Behind my back. How could I have been so gullible? So bloody stupid? I hand the phone back to Ewan.
“I guess that gives me my answers then.”
“It looks like it. I’m sorry, Faith.”
“It wasn’t your fault. What could you have done?”
“Nothing. That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry you’ve been hurt. For what it’s worth, I always thought Ed was punching above his weight with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I thought you were gorgeous and he didn’t appreciate you. He didn’t deserve you.”
“Caroline didn’t deserve you, either.”
“She didn’t have me.” He shakes his head, his expression sad. “I never wished her any harm, but I could fucking kill her for hurting you like this. And him.”
I stare at Ewan, recalling now in vivid detail what Caroline tried to say to me as she lay dying in the road.
“She told me. Almost. After the crash, when you went to check on Ed and I stayed with her. She told me she was sorry, that she never wanted to hurt me. I had no idea what she meant. It must have been this. I thought she was rambling, but it makes sense now.”
“I guess so. Maybe it was on her conscience and she knew…” His voice trails away and he reaches for the phone. “Might as well see what else is here.”
Ewan starts up the phone again and continues to scroll down, scanning the remaining texts. His expression tells me all I need to know. It’s there, more evidence, more proof of what was happening right under my nose. Both our noses, though of course Ewan wasn’t even here for much of the time.
“Shit! Holy fucking shit!” Ewan’s expletive grabs my attention again.
“What?”
“That day, when they died—what do you remember of it? Not the crash. I mean, before you left home that day. Before you came to Hawes, what were you doing? Whose idea was it to go out?”
“Ed’s. Definitely. I was gardening. I wanted to stay here but he insisted.”
“Yeah, I bet he did. Read this.”
He passes the phone back to me. The string of texts is dated June seventeenth, the day they died. The first message is from Caroline to Ed:
What r u doing?
Messing with bike. U?
Hawes. Antiques fair
With him?
Yes
I miss u. How long is he here for this time?
Leaves day after tomorrow. Miss u too
What about if I come to meet u?
How?
Bring F for a ride, palm her off on your bloke and u come on bike. We’ll be home first… How much time will we have till they arrive?
Enough.
Text when u get to Hawes. I’ll let u know where we r
Here now
I see u. Across square. Coffee shop.
That’s the final text, obviously. I gaze at Ewan in amazement. I’m incredulous. Long moments pass in stunned silence as the truth of what happened that afternoon, the truth of how the sequence of events actually came about, drops into place.
“They planned it. They arranged to meet, and tricked the pair of us by making out like they didn’t even know each other. They intended all along for Caroline to come back on the bike.” My voice is a hushed whisper, as though this is some awful secret not to be overh
eard, as though saying it out loud will somehow make it more real, more final. As if it could ever be more final.
Ewan nods. “Looks like it. You complaining about rain and feeling cold must have seemed convenient. And that explains why he was riding like a bat out of hell in those conditions. He just wanted a quick fuck.”
“She did too.”
“Yeah. I must have been losing my touch.”
“You got it back, sir.” A little grim humour seems not out of place here.
He lets out a dry chuckle. “I guess I did.” He gives me a lopsided grin, but that fades as we both get our heads around the significance of this final twist.
Ewan reaches for my hand. “Are you okay?”
I nod, eyeing the card that started this final chapter. I open it, study Ed’s scrawl again. “He tells her he can’t wait until they can be together for good. I guess now they are. He got what he wanted. Maybe they both got what they deserved.”
Even as I say it, I know that’s not really what I think. Ed and I would have separated before much longer, I can see the inevitability of that now. Caroline might have turned out to be the love of his life, they might have made a go of it, or maybe not. But they didn’t deserve to die.
Our eyes meet across the table, both of us thinking back to that fateful day. Ewan’s wry smile is the only indication he appreciates the prophetic significance of Ed’s words. He takes the card from me, closes it, and lays it face down on the table.
“I guess it’s true what they say, that you should be careful what you wish for. Ed learned that the hard way.”
“I suppose. I should be angry still, but I’m not. Not really. Not anymore. I’m glad we found out the truth. It was the not knowing that was doing my head in.”
