His Other Life

by Beth Thomas

  Tears are running silently down her cheeks now, but she doesn’t seem to be aware of them. ‘Oh, Grace, you have no idea what this has been like for me. It’s been unimaginably hard. I mean, you’re not a mother so you couldn’t possibly understand it, but for a mother, it’s a feeling of abandonment, or rejection – yes, that’s probably a better way of putting it. The feeling of the years and years of devoted love you give to someone, absolute devotion, you know, that person is everything to you, there’s nothing like it, nothing comes close, you’d do anything for him, and then they do this and it’s all thrown back in your face. You can’t possibly understand, you’re not a mother, only a mother would know.’

  It doesn’t make sense, but then I didn’t really expect it to. I want her to keep talking, though. I think she’s making a connection between the secret existence of Ryan and the absence of Adam. Or has Ryan abandoned her in some way too? ‘You’re right,’ I tell her, rubbing her arm, ‘I don’t know. I’m only a wife but for the mother in these circumstances, it’s much more awful, isn’t it?’

  She’s nodding vigorously before I’ve even finished. ‘Oh, yes, yes, it is, you have no idea. I mean, there’s the grief of course, you know, that he’s gone now and you can’t see him any more, that’s so hard, it’s unbearable, I just couldn’t bear it. I mean, I was going mad, you see, I couldn’t sleep or eat or anything and Ray was just, you know, being Ray and not much use, but he doesn’t really know either. I mean, it’s not the same for dads, is it? All they do is have a bit of fun right at the beginning. They don’t carry him around in their tummy for nine months and feed him with their body and cuddle him in the night or kiss him when he cries. It’s all those things, all those precious things that I did, that I wanted to do, that I loved doing, and it’s all thrown back in my face. I mean, someone you love, going off like that, having to accept it, having to know that he doesn’t really care about you any more. Oh, Grace, I’m so glad you understand, such a lovely girl.’

  A quick glance at Matt shows me that his eyebrows are practically on the ceiling. I focus back on Julia, who’s wringing her hands now. ‘But he does love you, Julia. Of course he does.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she says impatiently, swatting my soothing hand away, ‘I know that. Of course he does. But he still went. Didn’t he?’

  ‘Of course he …’ I start. Then stop. Look at Matt. He just shrugs so I go back to Julia. She’s a mother, devastated over her lost son, vanished and unfindable. And yet her face is giving me … peeved. Seething, actually. Her eyes and lips are narrowed and she’s breathing hard through her nose. Suddenly I feel as though a chilly hand has grasped my shoulder and I turn quickly but of course there’s no one there. Adam’s not there.

  Julia stands up suddenly and walks a couple of steps across the room. ‘How could you do this to me?’ she says, as if there’s been no shocked silence. ‘How could you have been so cold and heartless? So selfish?’

  I open my mouth to remind her that I didn’t go, but then I realise she’s not talking to me at all. There is a fourth person in the room with us, she feels him there too, standing behind me, cool and dispassionate and silent.

  ‘Well, that’s just the start, though, isn’t it?’ she goes on. ‘I mean, after that, you just stay away, don’t call, don’t visit, don’t even text me, and I know you know I hate that but I wouldn’t mind, it would be better than nothing, better than this silence.’ She turns suddenly to face me, and I’m shocked by her expression. Her features are distorted – her mouth wide and square, her eyes huge and dark and pleading – by rage, or by grief, or by pain or by all three merged together in a giant raw emotional wound. ‘It’s more than anyone could stand!’ she cries.

  I glance at Matt and he’s shaking his head, and I can see from his face that he feels just as sorry for her as I do. This poor woman, her son is gone, probably forever, and she just isn’t accepting it. ‘Julia,’ I start, but she acts as if we’re not there.

  ‘I mean, at least it’s not Ecuador,’ she says, more to herself than to anyone present, or not present. ‘That would be unthinkable. So far …’ She makes eye contact with me again and stares at me earnestly. ‘Not that it makes any difference. I mean, he could be in the next town, the next road, the next house. Wouldn’t make any difference. I still can’t see him, can I? Not if he doesn’t want to see me.’

  I open my mouth to ask something, but Matt lightly touches my arm. ‘Why do you think he doesn’t want to see you?’ he asks, then looks at me.

  Julia turns towards him. ‘Oh I don’t know, do I? He’ll have some reason. Some selfish reason. That’s the lot of the mum, isn’t it? Devote your life to someone and then they do something awful and you can’t see them any more.’

  My ears prick up when she says ‘something awful’, and I quickly look at Matt. He’s interested too. His nose is practically quivering. I want to ask Julia so many questions, but Matt’s hand on my arm stays me.

  ‘I know they say that’s what happens,’ Julia is going on, ‘that your child will end up hating you. But it still hurts. Like you wouldn’t believe. And the fact that he knew what everyone was saying, about how he left me and didn’t even care enough to say goodbye. He knew that, and still didn’t …’ She takes a deep breath in and releases it in a rush. ‘Still didn’t come back.’

  Matt takes a step nearer to her and puts his hand out towards her. ‘What happened, Julia?’ His voice is almost a whisper, and he reminds me of someone gently coaxing a wild animal out of its hiding place. We want it to come out, it has to come out, but we all know that at any moment it will be free enough to explode from its hole and lunge at us with its razor teeth and sharp claws.

  Julia drops her head and stares at her hands in her lap. There’s a pause and for a moment my attention leaps to the sound of the clock ticking on the wall. In my head, it’s incredibly loud, pounding away relentlessly, drowning everything else out. ‘He said he was him,’ she says eventually, so faintly I have to strain to hear it.

  ‘He said who?’ Matt coaxes, and my entire body tenses, sensing the danger, getting ready to fight or flee.

  Julia looks up, glances at Matt, then focuses on me with brimming eyes. ‘He said he was Adam.’

  TWENTY

  I’m hit with the limp stroke of anti-climax. I was expecting gigantic revelation: what I got was nonsense.

  ‘Said who was Adam?’ I start, putting my hands out. ‘Who said it? It doesn’t make any sense, he said he was Adam.’ I shake my head. ‘Adam’s gone, God knows where, we’ll probably never see him again …’

  But she’s coming towards me, a sad smile on her lips, shaking her head, tilting it on one side almost pityingly. ‘Oh Gracie,’ she says, ‘but you must know by now, surely, that there is no Adam.’ She takes a breath, as if to say more, but doesn’t go on. I put my hands up to stop her. Stop her coming, stop her looking at me, stop her speaking.

  ‘What? What do you mean?’ There’s something coming, something terrible, I can feel it mixed up in her words somewhere, it’s there, shocking and inconceivable, squatting at the back like a troll with sharp teeth. And I know that if I keep still, if I sit down and think about it carefully, go back over everything that’s happened and everything Julia has just said, I’ll be able to make sense of it, to work it out, to coax this particular monster out of its hole. So I start moving. Because no way do I want to get to the bottom of this. Instinctively, I feel that this particular beast is going to do a lot of damage when it’s finally free. Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s because way, way down at the bottom of my mind, I already know what’s what.

  I march purposefully to the door and yank it open. ‘Come on, Matt, we don’t need to be here any more, this is pointless, let’s go.’

  He grabs my arm. ‘Grace, wait. Christ, didn’t you hear what she just said?’

  ‘What? Oh, yes, yes, I heard it, now come on, let’s go, I’m really hungry. Ooh, you know what I fancy? A Cornetto. A mint one. Shall we go and get some from somewher
e?’

  ‘No.’ His hand on my arm tightens. ‘We have to hear this. You know we do.’

  I’m already shaking my head. ‘But … No, I don’t want to.’ He raises his eyebrows. ‘No, I mean, I want to go. I want to go and get an ice cream.’ Even to my own ears, I sound like a child. Matt wraps his great big arms round me and turns to the side to rest his cheek on the top of my head.

  ‘Grace,’ he whispers, ‘this is important. I know it, you know it, Julia knows it.’ He steps back and holds me at arm’s length. ‘I think you … you guessed this a while ago, didn’t you?’

  I stare into his face. ‘No.’ But it’s barely more than a whisper.

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  I close my eyes, then nod once slowly.

  ‘Thought so. Your brain has probably been working it out, putting all the pieces together, without you even realising it.’

  I don’t say anything.

  ‘So this is it. Here is your chance to hear it all, everything, from the horse’s mouth as it were, and finally know, once and for all, what happened. And why.’ He bends and peers directly into my eyes. ‘You must want that, surely? I know you want that.’

  Of course I do. It’s what this entire investigation has been about, finding out a bit about Adam’s life, why he was like he was, what happened to him. I can feel a frown but I nod in spite of it. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. So come back and sit down, and maybe Julia will explain everything.’

  ‘She won’t,’ a voice says from behind me, and we all turn towards it, and there is Adam at last, standing by the door in that languid way of his, leaning against the doorframe, arms folded. Returned.

  Without even hesitating, I check his hands to see if he’s carrying a warm, aromatic white plastic bag full of take-away food. Then mentally I kick myself and slap myself in the face a few times. Of course he isn’t. That take-away food never existed. Just like Adam. This is Ryan, and Adam isn’t coming back. Adam was never even here.

  ‘Ryan!’ Julia says, launching herself at him. ‘Oh, I’m so glad to see you!’ He enfolds her in a hug and Matt and I stare awkwardly at them, and then at each other, and then at the floor.

  Eventually they break apart and hold each other at arm’s length for a moment. ‘You came back to me,’ Julia says quietly. ‘I thought … I thought that dreadful man might have …’ She closes her eyes briefly, then brightens. ‘But here you are! Back where you belong.’ She throws me a smug look, then goes back to the armchair and sits down. Ryan faces me and gives a little, oh-so-familiar smile. ‘Gracie,’ he says in a low voice and my stomach lurches. My body is recognising him, even though my mind is struggling.

  ‘So if Julia’s not going to explain this,’ Matt says, and everyone turns to look at him, ‘who is? Are you?’ he says to Ryan.

  Ryan shrugs. ‘You already know it all, I think,’ he says, and his gestures and tone are nothing like they were earlier in Didcot. Now, standing in his parents’ home, the parents of my identical but fictitious husband, where I’ve seen him stand so many times before, he’s exactly like …

  ‘We don’t know it all,’ Matt says quietly.

  Ryan throws himself into a chair and crosses his legs casually. ‘Well, you know the bit about the carbon monoxide accusations, and the unfortunate thing that happened. Like I said earlier, it could have happened anywhere …’

  ‘Happened in your property, though,’ Matt mutters.

  ‘But she could have been poisoned anywhere. So I got my sentence and that was that. You know, paid my debt to society, as they say. Except that wasn’t that. Because that woman had a partner …’

  ‘The baby’s dad …’

  ‘The baby’s dad? Oh, right, yes, I presume so. Well, he wouldn’t let it go. Leon something, his name is.’ My mind jolts. Leon. Leon. ‘Nasty piece of work,’ Ryan is saying, ‘criminal record, ABH or GBH or something, so … It wasn’t reported in any of the articles at the time, but he stalked me. For ages. Followed me around, watched the house, kept calling me up. Wanted me in prison. Or the ground. Threatened to kill me.’ He nods as he looks wide-eyed around the room at us all. ‘Yeah, no one told you that bit, did they?’ He looks outraged, as if he’s just announced that someone’s stolen his war medals. ‘I was in fear for my life, so …’ He puts his hands out to the sides, palm up. ‘I had to hide.’ He looks at me now. ‘And where better to hide than tucked away in suburbia, living the dream?’

  ‘Hide?’ I manage to croak out. I don’t want to ask any questions, I don’t want answers. I just want to leave. My mind and body are obviously locked in a battle with each other to prove which is the strongest. I think it’s my knees that are winning at the moment, bravely keeping me upright.

  He nods. ‘Yeah. It was a genius plan, really. Get a house, get a business, get married. Fake name, fake ID, easy enough to get hold of if you know people.’

  A tiny pinprick of coherent thought ignites in my mind, and I focus on it for a moment. Ryan Moorfield is two years younger than Adam. Or at least, two years younger than the age Adam told me he was, and what was on his apparently fake passport. So they couldn’t possibly be twins. I knew this, it was in my mind. Ryan must have known I knew it because the mere fact we were in Didcot meant that I had found and opened the safe. But he still lied to my face when we confronted him. He still assumed I wouldn’t add up the pieces. Still relied absolutely on my stupidity. I’m not sure at this point whom I despise the most, him or me.

  ‘So I decided to live out my life,’ Ryan is going on. ‘At least until everything had died down a bit.’ He pushes out his lips. ‘I was thinking maybe five years, then think about what to do. Nothing to stop me leaving if I wanted to. Or I could stay, depending on how I felt.’

  ‘Nothing to stop you leaving?!’ Matt explodes. ‘What about your wife? What about how she felt?’ He turns to look at me and doesn’t look away. ‘What about the life she thought she had?’ His voice is softer as he says this. ‘Didn’t that count for anything?’

  Ryan looks from Matt to me and back again. ‘Of course it counted for something.’

  Matt rounds on him again. ‘But just not much, right?’ He shakes his head incredulously. ‘And what if you’d had children? Would they have been left too? What name would they have had? When you returned to your other life, would they ever have seen you again? Would they have been told that you’d died? What kind of life would that have left them with?’

  Ryan’s already shaking his head before Matt has finished. ‘I’m way ahead of you, mate. There was never any danger of that.’ He glances at my open-mouthed horror. ‘I made sure of it.’

  ‘Wha …?’ Matt starts, then looks at me. I can’t meet his eyes, and drop my gaze. This is torture. It feels like I’ve turned up at school with no clothes on. Except even that would have been closer to actually having sex than my passionless partnership with Adam. His distance, the reluctance, the rejections – it all makes sense now.

  ‘Anyway,’ Ryan goes on, ‘no feelings have been hurt, have they? I mean, Grace didn’t love me, that much was obvious. We were housemates, really, that’s all. She was like a …’ He snorts out a single fat laugh. ‘Like a costume for me. A disguise.’ He shrugs. ‘And I was the same for her.’

  ‘How so?’ Matt demands. ‘As far as I can make out, Grace entered into a marriage in good faith, to an Adam Littleton. But she was marrying a complete lie. Everything about you was …’ He breaks off and rolls his eyes. ‘Christ. Ray isn’t even your step-father, is he?’

  Ryan grins. ‘You got it. Nope, he’s one hundred percent my real dad. But I needed to change my name, and how else could I explain my mum and dad having a different name to me? Boom, my dad becomes my step-dad. Easy.’

  Matt is gawping at him, shaking his head. ‘You really don’t care how many people you hurt, do you?’

  ‘What are you talking about? No one got hurt. It was the perfect plan.’

  I gape at him. He must have worked me out the second I walked into his
office that day, looking to rent a flat. My gullibility must have been like a bright green light above my head, flashing and bleeping, letting people like him know as soon as they looked at me that I would be the perfect little stooge for his plan; that I would be useful and easy to manipulate. Standing there in that room, hearing the person I thought was my husband tell everyone how convenient my stupidity was, I stop being aware of the sensation of my feet on the floor or the air on my face or the breath in my lungs. The world around me fades out and I feel as if my body has stopped existing; only my mind is left, suspended weightless in deep space with no sensation.

  ‘Someone did get hurt, though, didn’t they?’ I hear a voice saying. ‘It may have been a convenient disguise for you, but your wife was definitely hurt when you disappeared.’

  My mind is floating and I can’t really focus on anything, but I hear the words. Adam’s voice says, ‘Nah, she wasn’t hurt. She was just … piqued. That’s all.’

  ‘Piqued?’

  ‘Yeah. Of course. Who wouldn’t be? As far as she was concerned, her husband had abandoned her.’ There’s a pause and I imagine Matt is staring at him open-mouthed. ‘But think about it,’ Adam goes on. ‘She knows what our marriage was like. She knows it was a shallow façade. It was so obvious. No one would ever love someone, or trust someone, who behaved like that. Someone who wasn’t really there. She may have thought something at the beginning, but after even a couple of months, she would have noticed. Look, all I did was I misrepresented myself a bit, and if she—’

  ‘Misrepresented yourself …!’ Matt explodes, his eyebrows practically leaping off his face. I bring everything back into focus and look at him, his livid rage, his furious expression. But then he stops, closes his eyes briefly and breathes slowly for a moment. When he opens his eyes, his eyebrows are relaxed and his face is bland. ‘You’re not going to take responsibility for anything, are you?’ he says calmly.

  Adam shrugs. ‘Nothing to take responsibility for, is there? I needed somewhere to hide. Someone to hide me.’ He glances at me. ‘Then she walks into my office. It was a gift.’