The Woman Next Door: An unputdownable psychological thriller with a stunning twist

by Sue Watson

  ‘You follow her round like a lost puppy. She’s just using you,’ she snapped, but she’s wrong. How could Kirsty ever understand mine and Amber’s friendship, it’s like trying to understand someone else’s marriage, you have to be there to know. I don’t follow her around, I happen to enjoy her company, and Amber isn’t using me, she likes me – and there’s a big difference. We’re good friends, we support each other and I won’t just abandon Amber because Kirsty’s feeling pushed out and being immature about it. I have enough on my plate without worrying Kirsty’s childish resentment influencing my friends and work colleagues. I’d be tempted to send her a text telling her not to be so silly but I still haven’t found my phone and feel so cut off. I’ve hunted through the whole house. I even recruited Matt to help and bring fresh eyes to the search, thinking it must be somewhere obvious that I’d missed.

  ‘Is it looking at me?’ I said, but he searched everywhere too, even upturned the sofa and stripped the cover – and nothing. I know I had it last in the kitchen, so it has to be in the house, but if it doesn’t turn up in next couple of days I’ll have to order a replacement. Then, on top of this, Matt keeps asking how long Amber’s staying and when she’s going back home. He asked again this morning.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said for the umpteenth time. ‘When is her stalker going to stop stalking? I don’t know, therefore I don’t know how long she’ll stay – funnily enough, Matt, I can’t see into the future.’

  ‘Yeah, but she must have other friends… family?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, and tonight she’s staying with one of them, her ex Ben,’ I snapped.

  ‘So while we’re supposedly keeping her safe here, she goes off with her ex as soon as he whistles. What if he’s the—’

  ‘He isn’t apparently,’ I said, trying to stay calm. Hoping Matt wouldn’t ask me how I know Ben isn’t the stalker – I don’t, but Amber seems convinced.

  ‘So how long is she staying with him? For good I hope?’

  ‘Matt, I have no idea what’s happening with her ex, but she’s relying on us, and if she asks if she can stay here we have to be there for her. How would you feel if something terrible happened to her because she was in that big house on her own one night and he decided to pounce? First a dead bird, next…’ I couldn’t even bring myself to complete the sentence.

  Don’t get me wrong, I love Matt – but he is so involved with his school drama commitments, he often isn’t home until late, so it makes me angry that he objects to my friend staying over. He’s had to spend a lot more time involved in school business since he got the promotion, and in the past few weeks has been full-on with the school play. When he isn’t rewriting the script and worrying about casting he’s had to spend whole weekends in his office upstairs marking papers and planning lessons. If Amber wasn’t around I’d have to eat on my own, watch TV alone and potter around just waiting for him to materialise. So whenever she asks if she can stay over I’m going to bloody well say yes.

  Kirsty once said that she and her husband had talked about our marriage (which annoyed me a bit; I don’t like the idea of my life being dissected over their evening meal).She said they both felt like Matt and I had become distant with each other, and that he’d withdrawn when we discovered we couldn’t have children.

  ‘Me and Pete think Matt might be grieving for the family he’ll never have,’ she’d said. At the time, I didn’t really want to hear it. I wasn’t handling it very well myself and Matt and I both needed to come to terms with it in our own way. We didn’t need the well-meaning advice from the obscenely fertile Pete and Kirsty, who had two healthy, happy children and the option of more any time they wanted. Matt and I don’t talk about babies these days – we don’t really talk about much come to think of it – but I sometimes think about what Kirsty said, and I just hope Matt’s not bottling up his feelings. When everything’s sorted with Amber, I’ll take time to sit down with Matt and see how everything is with him. But for now she’s my biggest concern and I’m hoping Matt will understand.

  When the school bell goes at 3.15 p.m. I run straight out of the classroom to my car. I don’t want to be late for the police. I almost bump into Kirsty going the other way down the corridor. ‘Got to fly,’ I say in a friendly voice, but she makes a point of deliberately ignoring me. Childish. But even in my rush, I turn and feel a frisson of sadness, promising myself that when we’re through this and I know Amber’s safe I’ll reach out to Kirsty. Friendship is important to me – it means everything really, because our friends can mean more to us than family.

  I drive from school like the wind and almost have an accident, but when I get to Amber’s they’ve already interviewed her and have left.

  Amber is pretty monosyllabic about the whole thing, says she’s told them everything and they are going to keep an eye on her property.

  ‘That was it?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, they talked about getting the alarms up to date…’

  ‘Okay, and so you’re going to do that?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve booked an alarm guy to come and do a check,’ she says vaguely.

  I am so disappointed. I was hoping for a proper chat with the police, especially after the bird on the doorstep. I wanted to get their take on things; I’d even made notes with the dates and times of the texts and calls, based on what Amber had told me. Though Matt said he felt it was a little over the top when I produced my ‘evidence’ at breakfast. ‘You’re going to make a fool of yourself waving that in their faces,’ he snapped. He was in such a grumpy mood. Typical that the police should get it wrong and turn up too early, even though I’d specifically asked them to come after three thirty.

  It’s been a week since the police visit and Amber’s mostly been staying with us, except for the night she stayed with Ben. ‘It was fine,’ she said, when I asked, but she didn’t want to talk about it, so I don’t imagine it was all that fine.

  She’s staying over with us again tonight and we’ve had a great time. She hasn’t had a text in over a week, and she looks happier, brighter, more chilled than I’ve seen her for a while.

  ‘I told you, if I ignored it long enough, he’d just go away,’ she says as I clear up the dinner plates and stack the dishwasher.

  ‘I hope you’re right.’ I smile at her sitting at the table and feel like I should reassure her more. ‘In fact, I’m sure you’re right,’ I add, although I’m not totally convinced. I read a lot of true crime books and love a good documentary on TV, and rarely does a stalker just walk away. They are obsessed, and obsessions don’t just disappear into the ether, something Amber doesn’t quite seem to appreciate. But I don’t want to spoil the evening by scaring her with my doom-like prophecies when she clearly wants to forget it all and just enjoy herself.

  Earlier, Matt cooked for us and, despite being a little stressed about tomorrow’s first night of the school play, he was funny and charming and made us laugh. His cooking was delicious too, and he’s promised to show Amber how to make dauphinoise potatoes. She said the ones he made us tonight were, and I quote, ‘Better than sex, but a lot more fattening!’ This made Matt smile. She’s such a flatterer, and though he isn’t delighted to have her, I think he’s accepted our house guest for now.

  Matt’s gone to bed now, so we’ve moved into the sitting room and taken a sofa each, both with a glass of wine and our feet up. I’m glad she’s here. I wondered if she might decide to go home as she hasn’t had any more creepy texts this week, but she seems happy to stay. And I’m more than happy to have her around. I love her company.

  As it’s late, we’ve had a few glasses and she’s relaxed. I pluck up the courage to ask her about Michael, her husband. As we’re now best friends, I should know what happened.

  ‘Were you happy with your husband?’ I ask, sitting up from my reclined position on the sofa and topping up our glasses of red.

  ‘Yes, but it was a difficult time, when he died.’

  ‘I can imagine, and you finding him…’ I recently put his n
ame and ‘death’ into Google. As it was so long ago, there wasn’t much, but I was surprised to see it was suicide, and poor Amber had discovered his body.

  ‘Michael was depressed,’ she says firmly, like she’s making a point.

  ‘Do you know why he killed himself? Did he leave a note?’ I couldn’t find anything on Google, no reason, nothing.

  ‘It was my fault,’ she says. I’m shocked and for a few seconds I don’t know what to say, how to ask what she means. But I don’t need to, because Amber goes on to offer an explanation.

  ‘I was having an affair,’ she suddenly says into the silence.

  Wow, I didn’t expect that. I’m surprised at her honesty and feel bad for even asking, but at the same time I was curious.

  She nods. ‘He told me he was going to end his life, but I didn’t believe him.’ Then, as if she realises what she’s just said, she turns to me, her eyes dark and cold. ‘I’ve never told anyone that I was having an affair when Michael died, you must never repeat it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone. You know you can trust me,’ I say, glad she felt able to confide in me.

  ‘I do… I do trust you, Lucy. I… It’s just I’ve never been able to trust anyone. I’ve always felt like the moment I do, I’m taken advantage of. Even Ben. But Michael was different, like you – he seemed to actually like me for me. No hidden agenda, no gold-digging or using me to further his own career.’

  ‘Do you feel that Ben did that?’

  ‘I didn’t realise it at the time. Michael and I had married young. We met when I was seventeen, married by eighteen. I was trying to escape my home life, my mother.’ She pauses. ‘When I met Ben I was only twenty-two, and married, but he opened up a big old world to me, made me see that there was so much more to life than staying home every night, and Michael suddenly seemed boring.’ She looks at me sadly. I see a hint of regret in her eyes and feel so sad for her.

  ‘You must have been very unhappy at home to want to run away and marry so young,’ I say, probing, wondering what had happened.

  She nods, but doesn’t seem keen to elaborate, just carries on talking about Ben. ‘He was my boss, a few years older, and he seemed so worldly, so sophisticated. He still does.’ She goes off for a few seconds into her own little ‘Ben’ world and all I can think is that she’ll never be over him.

  ‘Ben told me I was amazing, and with his guidance I could go anywhere, do anything, even host my own chat show. I believed in him, and for a while I even believed in me. I was completely seduced by Ben and by this life he was offering me, something I’d never imagined myself being capable of. All the time I hated myself for what I was doing to Michael, I still do. But I loved Ben, and even though we tried, we couldn’t stay apart for long. Ben was obsessed with me as much as I was with him.’

  ‘Obsessed?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, you know how it is,’ she says, like I would know how it feels to have a man obsess over me. ‘I still loved Michael in my own way, but I was a teenager when we met, he was my first real boyfriend, and I suppose I was ready for something more,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘That was Ben.’

  ‘So you told Michael?’

  She nods, her eyes filling with tears, and again I’m struck by how much this still has an instant emotional impact on her over twenty years later.

  ‘Michael’s death was tragic… He was so young, but I was young too, and God, I had fallen madly in love with Ben, and even though nothing had happened, not really, I’d decided the honest thing to do was to tell Michael. I told him it didn’t mean I didn’t love him, but I couldn’t in fairness stay with him. But then he…’ She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and seems to disappear for a few seconds. ‘It was all so horrific. And after that, if anyone had found out about Ben and me, and that we were the reason Michael killed himself, we’d be blamed and our careers would have been ruined too. Ben said I was going to be a big star and we’d put so much into this. Things were just starting to take off for me. So we decided to end our relationship and keep things on a professional basis.’ She looks up to the ceiling with a sad smile. ‘I think that plan lasted a matter of weeks, and we were back together.’

  ‘That must have been very hard for you,’ I say.

  ‘It was, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that Michael’s family suspected we were having problems in our marriage, but I just denied everything. I felt so guilty, the fact that I broke his heart will stay with me for ever… but I keep it inside. It isn’t “out there”, where they can crucify me.’

  When she was the pretty TV weather girl I recall there was interest in her young husband’s death and remember photos of the two of them. I was struck at the time by their beauty, the photos of their wedding, of the two of them smiling, with so much ahead, and then the starkly contrasting shots of Amber walking down a road in London alone, looking sad and tearful.

  ‘When he died, Michael had a little money,’ she’s saying, ‘but he changed his will, stipulating that his family should receive everything, except the sunrise painting… which he left to me.’

  We sip our wine and I can see now why the painting means so much to her. It’s all she has left of him.

  ‘Lucy, if I tell you what happened with Michael, can I trust you?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You promise you’ll never tell a soul?’

  ‘No, never. I promise. You have my word.’

  So she pours herself another glass tells and tells me all about Michael’s death, and the part she played. I just listen, and when she’s finished I don’t know what to say. I find it hard to process what she’s just told me.

  ‘I’ve never told anyone the real truth,’ she says. ‘Do you think I’m terrible? Do you hate me now?’

  ‘No, I could never hate you,’ I say, and mean it. ‘Secrets are secrets for a reason, usually because they’re something we’re ashamed of, or we’re scared if they get out we’ll be judged, hated or worse. But I’m glad you trust me enough to share it with me – and I’m touched, I’m really touched. I’ll never say a word.’

  She hugs me, genuinely pleased that I’m not judging her for what she just told me, and I feel closer to her in this moment than I’ve ever felt to anyone.

  ‘So now I’ve told you my deepest, darkest secret – you tell me yours,’ she says, and so I take a deep breath, and tell her my secret.

  Chapter Ten

  Lucy

  Today I’ve come straight to Amber’s from school to see if she needs a lift to the studio. She spent last night at her own house, said she felt we needed our space, and despite me insisting we didn’t, she wouldn’t budge and stayed at hers. I would have called her but still haven’t been able to find my phone. Matt and I have searched high and low and come to the conclusion that it must have been accidentally thrown out with the rubbish. Anyway, I had an email to say a replacement is winging its way to me, and it can’t get here soon enough. I don’t come over to Amber’s much, mainly because these days she’s usually at ours – but since finding that horrific package on her doorstep, I’m wary.

  As I climb from the car, I’m really on edge remembering the gift, wondering if he’s still obsessed, still lurking somewhere near, watching. I can’t help it, I feel like someone’s going to jump out at me and I keep looking behind me, feeling really exposed. I’ve got myself into such a state just walking up her drive, I think I must be imagining it when I see something moving behind the back wheel of her car. But as I walk closer, I see two legs, the feet clad in red-soled shoes, and my heart does a lurch. It’s definitely her – or, God forbid, her body. There’s no one else I know who can afford Louboutins. Blood thunders through my head as I dash towards the car. Oh Jesus. I gasp in horror, my heart thumping in my chest. She’s on her knees, slumped forward almost under the back wheel. My heart’s in my mouth as I slowly bend down to get closer to her. Something terrible has happened, but I can’t even begin to imagine what it might be. There’s no obvious sign of blood, but I can�
��t see the front of her so she could have an injury to her head or chest. I try to say her name, but nothing comes out. I gently touch her back, and for a second she doesn’t move and I hear my own voice making sounds I don’t understand.

  At this she jerks up, causing me to scream in fright, which causes her to scream, and we’re now both screaming at each other on her drive.

  ‘LUCY,’ she yells, grabbing me to help her up, her stockings all laddered from the gravel, but with no signs of blood or injury. ‘What the hell are you doing sneaking up on me like that?’

  Tears of relief spring to my eyes. ‘Thank God you’re okay.’

  ‘Of course I am. But you scared me to death coming up like that – I thought it was… well, you know.’ She looks down, unable to finish the sentence, starts wiping gravel dust from her skirt. ‘Don’t you ever creep up on me like that again,’ she says harshly, and laughs, but there’s no mirth. She’s using it to cover her irritation.

  She’s been quite prickly lately and I know it’s because she’s scared – but I wish she wouldn’t take it out on me. ‘I’m so sorry. I wasn’t “creeping up on you”,’ I say. ‘I just saw you lying there and… Sorry I scared you.’

  ‘It’s fine, it’s just that I wasn’t expecting you. Sorry, I didn’t mean creeping in a weird way, I just meant… Oh, I don’t know, just ignore me. I was in a world of my own and you gave me a fright, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I croak, swallowing the shock and threat of tears; it hurts when Amber’s angry with me. ‘What were you doing down there anyway?’ I ask, resenting her reaction now and allowing a wave of anger to wash clean the hurt.