The Secret Wife

by Gill Paul

  She rang the number on the company’s letterhead and was put through to someone called Mark, who told her that the inheritance concerned was worth over fifty thousand dollars in cash. There was also a cabin on Lake Akanabee in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York state, which had been uninhabited since her great-grandfather’s death, and royalties for some books he had written. He was an author! How intriguing.

  ‘So what do I have to do to claim it?’ she asked carefully, picking up a pen.

  ‘We’ll send you some forms to fill out,’ explained Mark, ‘and you return them to us, along with a copy of your birth certificate – and a marriage certificate if you’re married – and we’ll do the rest.’

  ‘Do I have to pay anything upfront?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Legal fees or anything?’

  ‘No, we take our cut when the money and the ownership papers for the cabin come through,’ Mark told her. ‘Do you want me to send you the information?’

  ‘Why not?’ she agreed.

  She forgot to tell Tom that evening, but when the paperwork arrived confirming the totals, she showed it to him. He didn’t seem particularly impressed.

  ‘Fifty K minus fifteen per cent is forty-two and a half thousand dollars and at today’s exchange rate that’s about twenty-seven thousand quid. Better than a poke in the eye. Do you want me to give you the number of a financial advisor who can give you some ideas on investing it?’

  She looked at him across the table and wondered about this stranger she had married. The Tom she had known back in college would have suggested blowing the windfall on a round-the-world trip for two, or perhaps buying a yacht and learning to sail. They were only in their mid-thirties, they had paid off the mortgage thanks to the inheritance when her parents died, neither of them wanted to have children, and now all Tom could think of was saving for the future? She felt she was seeing him through different eyes than she had a decade ago; or maybe she was the same person and he was the one who had changed. It was hard to tell.

  Back then he’d wanted to be a composer and had spent most days writing songs on his keyboard and sending demos to record companies. After they failed to leap at the chance of buying his creations, he chucked it all in, took an accountancy course and was now working as an auditor for the City Council. He had become serious and precise, leaving home at the same time every morning in a neat predictable suit, the kind of outfit no one would ever notice. If he committed a crime and witnesses were asked to describe him they’d struggle to come up with anything because he was so nondescript: short brown hair, hazel eyes, medium height, grey-blue suit, no unusual features.

  Kitty made fun of him for his plain ties that were always in the same shade as his plain socks, for his trousers that were hung in a trouser press overnight so the crease fell in exactly the right place. It made her want to raid his drawer and leave only mismatching socks; or to get him drunk and drag him to a tattoo parlour to have a gothic emblem etched on his forearm. She found it irritating that he drank sensible decaf coffee and brushed his teeth for exactly two minutes; she was bored with the weekend sex routine of an orgasm for her, one for him, invariably achieved the same way.

  He was a good provider – they were lucky not to have money worries – but at some point they had stopped having fun and she couldn’t think when that had happened. The holiday in Costa Rica the previous autumn had been glorious; Christmas with his extended family had been nice. But since then life had felt monotonous, with nothing interesting on the horizon.

  It didn’t help that her own career had stalled. She’d studied journalism at college and always imagined herself flying first-class to LA to interview celebrities for Vanity Fair, or breaking the story that David Cameron had a secret lover in a Guardian exclusive, but instead she reviewed theatre for the local paper in their part of north London. She earned a pittance and had to sit through dire shows at least three evenings a week then churn out five hundred words of lively copy that didn’t betray how deeply disenchanted she was with theatre as an art form.

  Her mother’s oft-repeated view that writing was a hobby, not a reliable way to earn a living, kept echoing in her head. She’d wanted Kitty to study law, but memorising all those endless judgements sounded unbearably tedious. Should she have listened? Or should she push herself harder to succeed as a writer? There seemed no urgency when Tom earned enough for them both. She kept planning to write a book but changed her mind about the subject before managing more than a few thousand words. If she couldn’t maintain an interest, how could she expect to hold her readers’ attention?

  ‘You’ve always had a lazy streak,’ her mum used to say. ‘You get it from your dad’s side.’ Perhaps it was true.

  She wondered what kind of books Dmitri Yakovlevich had written. She vaguely remembered that Grandma Marta had Russian roots; the surname certainly sounded Russian: perhaps his work was all in his native language. She’d find out when the royalty statements came through.

  There was nothing that seemed suspicious in the Inheritance Tracker forms so she signed on the dotted line and sent them back with the required certificates. She and Tom vaguely discussed what to do with the cabin in upstate New York, and he was in favour of selling it.

  ‘After it’s lain empty for thirty-odd years, the level of repairs needed to make it habitable would cost more than the thing is worth,’ he said with his business head.

  ‘It might be a good investment,’ Kitty maintained. ‘We could renovate then rent it out through a local agency.’ She had a flair for DIY. Her father had taught her carpentry skills and she had already done up three properties in London: two she sold on at a profit and one in which they still lived.

  ‘We’d only be able to rent it three months of the year,’ Tom said. ‘No one wants to holiday in the Adirondacks in winter, and it wouldn’t cover its annual costs on the summer rental alone.’

  Kitty yawned. He didn’t seem to see the romance of owning a cabin in the American wilderness. Why had Dmitri bought it? She imagined it must be very beautiful. And then it slipped to the back of her mind over the next few weeks as she wrote her theatre reviews, had lunch or an early-evening drink with friends, took her yoga classes and ran the household she shared with her sensible, risk-averse husband.

  Chapter Six

  London, 18th July 2016

  Kitty could not put her finger on what made her pick up Tom’s mobile phone when he went for a run one Saturday morning, leaving it on the hall table. She’d never done that in all the years they’d been together, even though she knew his password and he knew hers. It wasn’t a conscious decision to check his texts but the phone was lying there, she was standing looking at it, and somehow she found herself flicking through his messages. Almost immediately she found a photo of a naked woman with huge breasts and a message that read ‘Want more of this, baby? How about my place, 11 on Saturday morning.’ It finished with a heart emoji.

  Kitty’s throat seemed to close up and she could feel the blood pumping in her temples. The sender of the text was called ‘Karren’, with two ‘r’s, and when she scrolled down she found several more texts, telling Tom he was the hottest lover she’d ever had, and making arrangements for other trysts. It appeared they’d been having an affair for at least two months; he hadn’t even bothered to delete the evidence.

  She glanced at the clock: ten to eleven. He would be at Karren’s any moment now. What should she do?

  Her closest friend, Amber, lived two streets away so Kitty jumped in the car, revving the engine as she raced round there. Amber was breastfeeding her youngest, only six weeks old, while her husband played with their two toddlers in the garden. Kitty didn’t bother with any preamble, simply handing her the phone with Karren’s nude photo on the screen.

  ‘Can you believe it? Look what Tom’s been up to behind my back! The utter bastard!’

  She expected Amber to be shocked or perhaps try to think of innocent reasons why he might have such a picture on his phone. Instead she hesitated a
fraction too long, not meeting Kitty’s eye, and the penny dropped.

  ‘You knew about this?’

  Amber looked up miserably, and handed back the phone. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought I had persuaded him to knock it on the head without you finding out. I didn’t want you to be hurt.’

  ‘You knew!’ Kitty repeated. She couldn’t believe it. This was the woman with whom she shared her innermost secrets. They discussed everything from their most embarrassing sexual experiences to their fake-tan disasters, from their career dissatisfactions to their secret celebrity crushes. She was the one who had said the right things after Kitty’s parents’ deaths, the only person she could bear to discuss them with. Amber’s face was a study in guilt.

  ‘Kitty, I …’ she began, but Kitty shook her head, mouth open in astonishment and held up a hand to stop her. There was nothing to say. Amber had known and hadn’t told her. She turned and rushed from the house, knowing that Amber would never catch up with a baby in her arms.

  She got back in the car and drove home, ignoring the persistent ringing of her phone on the passenger seat. Tom would be back soon, with a false smile and another woman’s scent clinging to him. The thought made her stomach heave. She didn’t want to be there, couldn’t face confronting him and all that would entail. The life she thought she was leading had fallen apart in an instant. Every plan she had made for the future, every dream assumed that Tom would love her forever and now it was clear he didn’t and wouldn’t. It felt like a double betrayal that Amber had known and not told her. She had to get out of the marital home, but where could she go that he wouldn’t find her?

  And then it came to her: the documents making her the owner of the cabin on Lake Akanabee had come through just a few days earlier and the cheque had cleared in her current account. Why not fly out to see it? It felt like a suitably dramatic gesture in response to such a huge betrayal.

  She grabbed a suitcase and threw in whatever came to hand: outdoor clothing, a sleeping bag, some toiletries, a few basic tools, all the paperwork relating to the cabin. Tom would never remember the name of the lake. Now she thought about it, he’d been distracted these last few months. Perhaps he was in love with Karren. Tears pricked her eyes and she shook herself, before picking up her laptop and mobile phone, leaving Tom’s phone in the middle of the kitchen table. She debated leaving a note but decided against it. Let him work it out for himself.

  She drove to Heathrow, parked the car in a long-stay car park then went to the British Airways desk and booked a ticket on a six o’clock flight, which would land in New York at nine o’clock the same evening, due to the five-hour time difference.

  ‘You need a return ticket within ninety days if you don’t have a visa,’ the carefully made-up saleswoman explained, beige shellac nails tapping on a keyboard.

  Kitty ran her finger along the desk calendar and picked a date just before the ninety days would be up. She was paying full price so she could always change the flight if she decided to come back sooner.

  In the departure lounge she used her laptop to book an airport hotel room in which to rest on arrival, then organised a hire car for the next ninety days, which cost an eye-watering sum. By focusing on practicalities, she tried to stop herself thinking that Tom would already be home. He’d probably be wondering why she wasn’t there to prepare lunch – unless Amber had called to warn him that Kitty knew his secret. What would he do next? Which friends would he phone? Would he notice that her passport was missing?

  On the flight she drank four miniature bottles of white wine, ate a re-heated dinner and dozed off in front of the new Ridley Scott movie. The time passed quickly, although she felt nauseous with sleep deprivation when she queued to get through customs in John F Kennedy airport. She conked out in the anonymous hotel room and slept for a few hours, waking as dawn broke outside the hermetically sealed windows.

  She went to collect her car from the rental agency, typed the zip code of the cabin into the Sat Nav and let the woman’s confident voice guide her off Long Island and due north towards the Adirondacks. It was 254 miles, she was told, and would take over four hours. Kitty was a confident driver, and she hoped to get there around lunchtime to give her time to decide in daylight whether the cabin was habitable.

  The traffic thinned after she left the interstate and for a while the road skimmed the shores of Great Sacandaga Lake before heading up into the mountains. It was warm and sunny and the views were glorious: hills covered in forests like plush green velvet, a flash of blue denoting a lake between the trees, a few white clouds against a bright sky. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding though. She tried to find a music station on the radio but the reception was too crackly. She hadn’t eaten breakfast and her stomach growled, but she was pretty sure she would throw up if she ate anything. You bastard, Tom, she thought from time to time, but mostly she tried to keep her mind blank and focus on the driving.

  Chapter Seven

  Eastern Front, Prussia, January 1915

  Postal deliveries to the front line were erratic but Tatiana wrote so frequently that Dmitri seldom had long to wait between her letters. He thrilled at the sight of her handwriting on the envelope, at the way she always called him ‘Malama sweetheart’, at the faint hint of her scent that he imagined he could detect on the pages, and at her sentiments, which became more affectionate with each exchange. She wrote that Ortipo’s snoring kept Olga awake at night, and that she had been playing a game called ruble with her sisters; she told him of her patients on the wards, of books she had read, and always she told him that she missed him.

  Dmitri found it easier to overcome his natural reserve and express his feelings in letters than he had done in person, and Tatiana reciprocated his endearments. They became bolder and he felt he learned more of her character with each letter. He imagined she must seem very private and reserved to those who didn’t know her, but to him she wrote with a straightforward honesty that was unprecedented amongst the women of his acquaintance. There were no games, or sulks or flounces.

  Was there a chance he might one day be her husband? Or did her parents have other suitors in mind for their eldest daughters? He plucked up the courage to ask and was overwhelmed by her reply:

  Malama sweetheart,

  You asked about the marriages my parents have considered for Olga and me and now I think I will make you laugh because we have endured so much speculation on the subject based on virtually no substance.

  First of all, I am told that David, the eldest son of the British King George V, is believed to have taken a liking to me when we visited there in August 1909. Of course, I was only twelve and far too young to be aware of it, although I remember dancing with him at a ball on the Standart, while fireworks lit up the sky. He was rather a good dancer, and I recall he was wearing a uniform because he was at naval college, but I can’t remember making conversation. Mama said to me afterwards that she was only twelve when she first met Papa, and that it is possible to know your own mind at that age. I think she was keen that either Olga or I should one day be Queen of England but nothing came of it. We haven’t seen David since then and I imagine he must be terribly busy with the war.

  Then in 1912, I think, the newspapers started reporting that Olga was to be married to Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovevich – which was news to Olga, who had always found him rather coarse. The rumour persisted for years with absolutely no foundation, much to Olga’s annoyance.

  You must have heard about the marriages with Balkan princes that our parents have been rumoured (erroneously, I believe) to be arranging for some time. For a while I corresponded with my cousin George of Battenberg, but never with any intention of marrying him, let me assure you! Olga was asked to consider Prince Carol of Romania, who came to visit us in Livadia last summer, but she does not want to leave Russia when she marries, so we came up with a cunning plan: we both suntanned our faces before they arrived, knowing that in royal circles it is considered paysan. We were polite to Carol but I think he took the hint b
ecause no further meetings have been arranged.

  Olga and I are agreed on two things: that we only want to marry Russian men, and that we want to marry for love, as our parents did. I can imagine nothing worse than being forced to marry someone I do not like for political reasons, but am assured by Mama that will never be the case and that we may choose our own husbands. Now I am embarrassed to have told you so much, but you asked and so here is my answer.

  I hope you are keeping warm, mon amoureux, and not straying into the way of any more bullets. Do you ever think of me or is your life too full of plans for defeating the Kaiser’s army? Are you comfortable in your bunker at night? Are you getting enough to eat? Is there snow where you are? The snow here is five foot deep and I worry that you may catch cold. Every night as I lie in my cosy bed, I worry about where you are lying and wish you could hear my thoughts through the frosty night.

  Did you receive my letter in which I told you of Anna Vyrubova, Mama’s lady-in-waiting, being in a train crash? She is most seriously injured and we are all terribly concerned but at least she is conscious and able to eat a little. Mama is nursing her personally. She is so very dear to us.

  As you are very dear to me.

  Que Dieu vous garde.

  Tatiana

  It was minus five degrees outside but Dmitri was flushed as he sat in his bunker reading and re-reading this letter by candlelight. The earthen walls glittered with ice and his breath misted the air. We only want to marry Russian men and we want to marry for love. Surely it was a hint, perhaps even an invitation? He could imagine her blushes as she wrote and wished he could kiss those pink cheeks over and over.