The Life She Wants

by J. M. Hewitt

  Anyone who has information regarding Gemma’s whereabouts is asked to contact Central Essex Police on…

  ‘It didn’t say how much money was missing, did it?’ Tommy asked.

  Anna shook her head. She couldn’t look at him, at either of them. If they studied the photo closely… And yet she felt a bloom of pleasure that old Mr Henderson had thought she was only in her twenties.

  She blinked the feeling away and studied the paper again. How were they even looking for her? She had covered her tracks with the goodbye card she had left. She had been so careful not to mark his face when she had killed him. She went back in time to that dim, gloomy hallway where she had sat atop his body and closed off his airways. He had been struggling, she’d been forceful. His skin was old and paper-thin. Had she left imprints of her fingers on his face?

  Another horrible thought caught at her: that she had worn the very same beret pictured in the newspaper when the boat had docked in Åndalsnes, and when she had gone to Paula’s suite last night for a coffee. It was a deep, dark pink, unmistakable. Thankfully the newspaper was in black and white, but online, in the article that would be all over social media, the photo would be in colour. She had to ditch the beret and just hope against hope that Paula wouldn’t see the same article online and remember that she owned an identical hat.

  But she had Paula’s phone, she remembered, so she wouldn’t be scrolling through the news on that device. And the article had referred to her as Gemma, which was also good.

  ‘Can’t believe how close to us this is.’ Tommy shook the paper in his hand.

  Paula sat back in her chair. ‘It’s not that close,’ she said. ‘We don’t live in Ilford.’

  Anna narrowed her eyes. Was that snobbery in Paula’s tone? Or was she trying to hide the fact that she was horrified that a crime had taken place in their vicinity?

  ‘Where are you from, Anna?’ asked Tommy.

  ‘The city,’ she replied without missing a beat.

  ‘What, central London?’ Tommy whistled. ‘That’s expensive.’

  She met his eye. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I suppose it is.’

  He was looking at her the way he had the first time they had met. Impressed, again, with her apparent wealth. Her eyes drifted over to Paula. The woman looked unhappy now, her husband’s awe needling at her. Tommy folded up the newspaper and drained his coffee. Anna put her hand on the paper.

  ‘Do you mind?’

  He shook his head. ‘Feel free.’

  He looked at her again, really looked, and Anna maintained eye contact. Was he looking at her suspiciously, comparing her to the woman in the newspaper? Or was it lust? His eyes darkened, and she smiled.

  Lust.

  Paula cleared her throat.

  ‘Shall we get on, then?’ she asked, standing up.

  Reluctantly, Tommy dragged his gaze away from Anna.

  ‘See you later,’ he said.

  Anna smiled and raised her hand in a wave. Paula left the table without a word.

  * * *

  ‘You’re pissed off,’ said Tommy as they climbed the winding stairs to the deck. ‘What’s wrong now?’

  Paula stopped short, glancing at the mirrored wall that ran alongside them. For a moment she studied her own face. No, definitely not pissed off. She looked hurt. She looked how she felt. How could Tommy be so blind, both to her and her true emotion? Couldn’t he see that Anna was blatantly flirting with him? Did he think Paula had missed those little looks that passed between them? How could he be so disrespectful as to behave like a simpering teenager, not even having the courtesy to do it behind her back?

  They emerged from the stairs onto the top deck, a blast of icy air hitting her head-on. She gasped and pulled her hood up.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said through teeth that chattered. ‘I’m just cold.’

  She pushed on, moving to the side to clutch at the railing as the wind buffeted her. In an instant she was back there, in the same place she had stood a few nights ago. Carefully she walked the length of the deck, not waiting for Tommy, not looking back to see if he was behind her. Where the railing curved to the bow, she stopped. There were no unbroken railings, and it all looked so different in the daylight. She turned again, started to walk back the way she had come. Tommy was standing still, staring out over the sea. As she reached him, she came to a stop.

  ‘This is the gate that was open,’ he said, and he tapped it with his ungloved hand. His wedding ring clanged against it, making a small, tinny sound. ‘It’s padlocked now,’ he added, and he brought up a booted foot and kicked at the lock as if to prove his point.

  Paula said nothing, just turned so she was facing the open ocean. The sea was choppy; frothy white waves slammed against the side of the Ruby Spirit, throwing up a fine spray of salty seawater. Suddenly she felt very small indeed. The expanse of the ocean, the size of the ship and everything that had happened to her on it made her shrink inside the oversized coat she wore.

  ‘It wasn’t locked that night. It was open,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘I know. We reported it, Dermot and me. They apologised but couldn’t understand how it wasn’t locked in the first place.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter now,’ she said.

  That wasn’t true. An open gate on the side of a cruise ship was bad; it did matter, because anyone – little kids or older people – could have wandered through it and been seriously injured or died, just like what had almost happened to Paula. But it was what was behind the incident that mattered most of all.

  She inhaled deeply, steeling herself to say the words he didn’t believe. ‘Tommy, I’m certain there was someone else there that night.’

  ‘There were lots of people there that night. We were all there, looking for the Northern Lights. And we’d all been drinking.’ His tone was gentle now, placatory, protesting against her argument that she had been pushed, even though she hadn’t said the words here today.

  And that was how the conversation would always go, she realised. She would protest that she’d been attacked, and he would say she or the person who had walked into her was drunk. Round and round in circles, just like their annual autumn conversation about babies and their lives moving forward together.

  She swiped at her eyes, suddenly tired.

  ‘Let’s go back inside,’ she said quietly.

  * * *

  Using Mark’s master key, Anna let herself into Tommy and Paula’s suite. She had watched them go up to the top deck, Paula looking miserable, Tommy looking strained.

  It was freezing cold today, she knew, having followed them up there at a distance and melted into the little pockets of people milling around. They might not stay outside for very long, Paula especially.

  She sneered as she thought of the woman’s need for creature comforts and tried to imagine Paula having to deal with Mark’s body the way she herself had done last night. There would be no chance that she could steel herself to do anything like that. She didn’t have the backbone, living the easy, privileged life she’d led.

  Anna had done it before, even before William; she had been in a corner and fought her way out each and every time, learning from a young age that you couldn’t rely on anyone apart from yourself. The only way to get out of a rut was money, and plenty of it, and not having to share it with anyone else.

  William’s money would soon be gone, and Anna needed more. It was as bad as an addiction, the primal need she had for security. And time was running out. Although the newspaper and old Mr Henderson had put her in her early twenties, she was actually halfway through her thirties. She looked good because she didn’t eat, and she took care of her skin and worked out and kept herself looking young and elfin. But the terror age was looming, and she wasn’t anywhere near where she needed to be when she reached forty.

  This was her one big chance. The chance to have Paula’s life.

  She didn’t know what she was looking for, not really. Just anything that could extend the rip that was already the
re in the couple’s marriage. In the bathroom she opened the cabinet and looked inside. His and hers wash bags, Tommy’s plain black, Paula’s designer. She pulled Tommy’s off the shelf, poked around among the razors, hair gel, aftershave and moisturiser. She rummaged around in her own bag and pulled out a box of condoms. Taking two out, she slipped one into Tommy’s toiletry bag, which she put back on the shelf, then placed the other one so it was just visible.

  She moved out into the main living area, opening drawers, the wardrobe, the suitcases that sat behind the couch. There was nothing of interest, she thought, feeling disappointed as she came to the end of her search. At random, she pulled a couple of Paula’s tops and trousers out of the wardrobe and shoved them in her own bag. The woman had brought what looked like her entire wardrobe; Anna wondered if she would even realise there were items missing.

  She hoped so.

  She did another turn around the suite, verifying that Tommy hadn’t left his phone in the room. She’d wanted that, wanted to prevent him from looking further at the article about William and the damning photo of herself. She sighed. Oh well, couldn’t win them all.

  And then, the last place, the bedside table. A pile of euros, not neatly stacked but haphazard piles and crumpled notes. She slipped some into her purse.

  * * *

  ‘Has anyone handed in an iPhone?’ Paula asked at the information desk. ‘I lost it a couple of days ago.’

  The girl stared at her with narrowed eyes and shook her head. ‘Nope,’ she replied.

  Startled by the woman’s seemingly uncaring demeanour, Paula wandered back to Tommy. ‘She was rude,’ she said.

  Tommy glanced back to the reception desk. ‘Was she?’ he asked through a yawn.

  She sighed. She would have to accept that her phone was gone, probably back on the bench in Åndalsnes. It was the end of the Instagram posts she’d planned for this trip, not that she’d been in the mood to put anything on social media so far.

  ‘What shall we do now?’ she asked.

  Tommy shrugged and offered nothing further. Tears stung Paula’s eyes. She remembered the days when there was no question of how they would spend any precious free time. In bed, or driving out to a forest and making love on the bonnet of his car under a starry sky.

  At that moment, Dermot and another pal, Angus, wandered past. Tommy grinned and there was much back-slapping and clasping of hands. Paula smiled weakly, hovering on the fringes of the group.

  ‘Hey, we’re going to try out the casino. Wanna come?’ Angus said.

  Paula brightened. The casino was one place they hadn’t spent any time, and though they didn’t have money to burn, they could certainly afford to enjoy an hour or so of indulgence.

  Tommy said, ‘Yes! Good plan, buddy.’ He turned to Paula, put a hand on her arm. ‘You don’t mind, do you, love?’

  ‘No, sounds great,’ she said.

  ‘Cool.’ He dipped his head, landed an awkward kiss on her cheek. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  And with that, he was gone.

  Paula watched their departing figures with disbelief. From behind her came a snort of laughter, and she turned to see the woman on the information desk raise her hand to cover her mouth. All at once she recognised her as the stylist who had wrecked her hair in the ship’s salon, and her rudeness suddenly made sense. The girl had been demoted. Banished from the salon to work on the information desk.

  Paula’s face reddened. She ducked her head and walked quickly away.

  In her suite, she closed the door behind her. Leaning against it, exhaustion overcame her. More than anything she wanted to call Julie, and she reached for her bag, belatedly remembering that her phone was gone. She thought of Tommy, of asking if she could use his phone, and remembered he was with his pals in the casino, enjoying the lunchtime fun that she wasn’t invited to.

  How had this happened? she wondered as she pulled off her coat and slung it on the bed. How had a once-in-a-lifetime cruise turned into something so awful, and on top of that, how had it managed to highlight every single rotten piece of her marriage?

  Tears came, in earnest this time, and she let them flow as she stumbled into the bathroom and pulled off some toilet roll to wipe her eyes. When her crying jag was done, she rinsed her face with cold water and towelled it vigorously. Looking in the mirror, she started, not recognising the woman who glared back at her with red-rimmed eyes and a pale, drawn face. She opened the cabinet, pulled out her make-up bag and rummaged for the powder that Anna had given her on that first day.

  Shoving the bag back, she froze, icy fingers of dread creeping along her skin, making the hairs on her arms stand up. Her heart lurched so far up in her chest that she thought she might be sick. With hands that shook, she reached up to the other shelf and pulled Tommy’s toiletry bag into the sink. As she stared down at the contents, the tears came again.

  * * *

  Anna sat herself down at the roulette table and picked up a pile of chips. Across the room, Tommy, Dermot and their mate Angus were standing at the slot machines. In perfect synchronisation they fed their coins into the machines, pulling the handles, their eyes low-lidded and glassy. Small-time players, she thought as she fingered the five-hundred-euro chips in her hand. She started low, putting in fifty euros, getting the feel of the atmosphere, playing small like the boys. At least until they noticed her.

  And they would see her. She’d fed some highlighter into her hair last night, so that it was blonder than ever, and she’d tanned in the spa too. She was wearing skin-tight black pants, a thin, black off-the-shoulder jumper. She glanced around, at the fat, florid couples still wearing their duffle coats and wellington boots, in spite of the heat in the casino. Even the boys, all three of them normally very good-looking, appeared windswept and frozen and somehow out of place.

  Anna smiled to herself as she placed a fifty on black ten. She barely watched as it spun, not caring about the loss; after all, this was just a warm-up. When the boys came over, that was when she would commence serious play.

  In her peripheral vision she saw Tommy straighten up, his gaze sweeping the casino, his eyes alighting on her. He slapped Dermot on the back, gestured with his head. Moments later, she spotted their figures approaching, weaving in and out of the tables. She sat up straight, and placed her hand on her pile of chips.

  ‘Two thousand five hundred covering the orphans,’ she instructed the dealer, her voice loud and clear. She slid the chips along, placing them on 6, 34 and 17.

  The wheel spun and she offered a smile to the newcomers to the table, her gaze lingering on Tommy. He caught her eye, and held it as the wheel came to a stop on number 6.

  ‘We are approaching the peak date for the Leonid meteor shower. The show can be hugely impressive in a dark night sky. However, we have just left the full moon, narrowly escaping – if you remember – the perils of the maelstrom! For this reason, we are now in the phase known as a waning gibbous moon. It is neither full nor a three-quarter, so it sheds a lot of light throughout our atmosphere.

  ‘The best chance you have to see the meteors is in the pre-dawn hours, so for you early risers, get out on deck and keep watching the skies!’

  Chapter 16

  Before

  I didn’t go to school the day after I locked my mother in her room. That night, she slept soundly, and knowing that in the morning things would be very different, I took the chance to sleep too. I had done my research, and I knew the next day or two wouldn’t be easy on either of us.

  But I had no idea just how bad it would get.

  She started at five a.m. Dawn had arrived, the light was grey and pale yellow, and for a moment I ignored the banging and watched the world outside my window from my bed. Eventually she started to shout, and I dragged myself up and went to her door. The lock had held fast, and for that I was grateful.

  ‘You have to stay in there, Mum,’ I said. ‘It won’t be easy, but we need to get you off the drugs. You’ve got everything you need.’ I paused, and whe
n she didn’t reply, I added, ‘It’s just for a couple of days.’

  Silence fell on the other side of the door. I put my face close to it. I could hear her breathing, deep, heavy, dragging breaths.

  ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ Her voice was quiet, and there was humour in it, as though it was a joke that she didn’t quite get yet.

  I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. ‘I’m serious,’ I said. ‘If you carry on taking that stuff, you’ll die.’

  I wondered why I’d said those words. Because if I was honest, I didn’t fear or dread her death. In fact, if it happened, I would probably be better off. I would be moved to a foster home or a care facility, and people would look after me. They would cook my meals. They would wash my clothes. I wouldn’t have to look over my shoulder for my mother’s men wanting me to pay her debts in kind.

  But still, she was my mother. I had to try to help her get clean.

  My mind wandered then, and I allowed myself to think about the possibility of having a real mum. One who took me to town on Saturdays, who watched movies with me and helped me with my homework. It was unimaginable. I couldn’t picture it in a thousand years.

  A thump on the other side of the door made me jump. I scooted backwards.

  ‘You’ve got water in there, plenty of bottles, and some food,’ I said bravely.

  Silence descended once more, and after a while I retreated to my room and burrowed back under the covers.

  ‘I’m going out the window!’

  The bellow was so deep and raw that for a moment I thought Carl was in the house. But it wasn’t a man’s voice, it was my mother’s, and the change in her tone frightened me.

  I went down the stairs and slipped out the front, staring up at her window. She was there, spread-eagled against the glass, one of the two fanlights open, her left hand outside, waving, her cheek pressed to the pane, her mouth stretched wide in that primal man’s shout.