The Other Woman’s House

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The tea rooms at Silsford Castle. We’re going to have a cup of tea and a chat.’ Fran sounds grimly determined. Nothing about her tone suggests that any of it will be fun.

  I allow her to push me into her car. It smells of a mixture of crisps and Johnson’s aloe-scented baby-wipes, which she still uses all the time, even though Benji is five and there is currently no baby in her branch of the family. I’m aware that I have no right to find this irritating. Fran gets in on the driver’s side, dumps her bag in my lap and sets off without bothering to fasten her seatbelt.

  ‘Why Silsford Castle?’ I ask. ‘Why not somewhere that’s on our way home?’

  ‘Home? Where’s that, then?’ Fran turns to look at me, to check her words have shocked me as they were intended to.

  ‘What?’ I snap. A stab of fear makes my gut twist. ‘What do you mean?’

  She shakes her head as if to say ‘forget it’. ‘Is your phone still switched off?’ she asks.

  ‘No. I turned it on when I—’

  ‘Turn it off. Don’t ask why, just do it. I don’t want any interruptions.’

  I obey the order, aware that I probably ought to protest; that would be most people’s response. Does it say something bad about me that I find it soothing to be told what to do, so I don’t have to think for myself?

  Why did Fran ask me where home was?

  ‘You need to go back to the doctor,’ she says as we leave Spilling town centre behind.

  ‘What’s the point? He can’t find anything wrong with me.’

  ‘He can’t be looking very hard,’ she mutters.

  We drive the rest of the way in silence. As Fran pulls into one of five disabled parking spaces on the cobbles outside Silsford Castle, I can’t stop myself from saying, ‘You’re not allowed to park here.’

  ‘I don’t care about allowed. And I’m okay with it ethically because I’ve got you with me,’ she says. ‘If walking out of the police station and nearly collapsing for no reason doesn’t count as a disability, I don’t know what does.’

  I hate her for saying it, for making me panic about what will happen when I get out of the Range Rover. Will the dizziness strike again? What if I don’t have enough time to get to something I can lean against?

  Fran hasn’t asked me how it went with the police. She must know why I was there.

  I’m fine when I step out of the car into the sunny afternoon. Therefore it can’t be going from inside to outside that sets me off, and it can’t be standing up when I’ve been sitting for a while. All I’ve managed to establish, after months of monitoring myself, is that I can have a dizzy attack at any time, in any circumstances – there’s no way of predicting it. Or avoiding it.

  The tea rooms at Silsford Castle smell of cinnamon, ginger biscuits and roses, as they have since I was a child. The waitresses’ aprons haven’t changed either – they’re still pale blue, frilly-edged, spotted with tiny pink roses. Without asking me what I’d like, Fran orders two cups of Lavender Earl Grey, then heads for the round table in the corner by the window, the same table Mum always made a beeline for when she brought us here as kids for what she called our ‘weekend treat’, after our Saturday morning trips to the library.

  Right, then, girls – shall we get out our library books and read one while we have our chocolate fudge cake?

  ‘Why am I here?’ I ask Fran.

  She narrows her eyes, peering at me. ‘Is it Benji?’ she says. ‘It must be.’

  ‘Is what Benji?’

  ‘The reason you’re pissed off with me.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘If you don’t want to babysit every Tuesday night, you don’t have to – just say the word. Tell you the truth, Anton and I don’t like it any more than you do. It’s like you’ve got a timeshare in our son. Often we want to do things as a family on a Tuesday and we can’t – it’s carved in stone that you have to have Benji, or that’s how it feels sometimes.’ Fran sighs. ‘Loads of times I’ve nearly rung you and asked if it’d be okay for us to keep him just this once, and I’ve chickened out, in case you’d be offended. Which is ridiculous. Why am I scared to be honest with you? I never used to be.’ I’m not sure if it’s herself she’s angry with, or me.

  A timeshare in our son. She didn’t think up that phrase today. She and Anton have been bitching about me and Kit – probably as much as we’ve been bitching about them.

  Mum was the one who said, after the first time I babysat for Benji, ‘Maybe it could be a regular thing. You and Kit could have him every Tuesday, overnight – give Fran and Anton a break, and give you a chance to get to know him properly, not to mention a bit of practice for when you have your own.’ It didn’t matter what Fran or I thought; Mum wanted it to happen, so it happened.

  This can’t be why Fran has brought me here, to talk about babysitting. ‘I don’t care,’ I tell her. ‘I’m happy to have Benji every Tuesday, some Tuesdays, no Tuesdays – whatever you want. You and Anton decide.’

  Fran shakes her head, as if there was a right thing to say and what I’ve just said wasn’t it. Sometimes I feel as if, more and more, I’m speaking a different language from the rest of my family; translation in either direction adds a dollop of provocation, a patina of offence, that wasn’t present in the original.

  ‘That house in Cambridge, 11 Bentley Grove – you’re not buying it, are you?’

  Why does she sound triumphant, as if she’s caught me out? I open my mouth to remind her that I can’t afford a 1.2-million-pound house, but she talks over me: ‘You’re selling it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on, Connie, don’t bullshit me. It’s your house. You own it, you and Kit. You’re the ones who’ve put it up for sale.’

  This has to be one of the more absurd things that’s been said to me in my life so far. It almost cheers me up. I start to laugh, then stop when I see the waitress heading our way with a serving-trolley. As she lays out saucers, cups, spoons, tea strainer, milk jug and sugar, I can feel Fran’s impatience radiating across the table; she wants an answer.

  ‘Well?’ she says, as soon as the waitress has retreated.

  ‘That’s the maddest thing I’ve ever heard. Where did you get that idea from?’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Con. I don’t know how the dead woman face down in a pool of blood fits into the story – I’m not convinced you didn’t make her up, though I can’t think why you’d—’

  ‘Will you shut up and listen?’ I snap. ‘I didn’t make anything up – I saw what I told you I saw. Do you think it’s my idea of fun, spending the whole morning at the police station for no reason? I don’t care if you believe me or not – it’s the truth. I don’t own 11 Bentley Grove. A doctor called Selina Gane does. Ask the police if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘Then why were you looking at it on Roundthehouses in the middle of the night, if you don’t own it already and you can’t afford to buy it?’ Fran asks. ‘Don’t pretend you were just browsing. There’s a link between that house and you and Kit.’

  ‘How can you know that?’ Damn. Have I just admitted she’s right? She seems to think so, if the gleam of triumph in her eye is anything to go by. Why aren’t I a better liar? ‘All of a sudden, you’re interested in 11 Bentley Grove,’ I say bitterly. It’s easier to be angry with Fran than with myself. ‘On Saturday you didn’t give a shit. I asked you if you thought I’d imagined what I saw – do you remember what you said? “I don’t know. Not necessarily. Maybe.” That was it – the sum total of your response, before you turned your attention back to Benji’s supper.’

  Fran pours cups of tea for us both. I wait for her to defend herself but all she does is shrug. ‘What should I have said? I didn’t know what I thought – how am I supposed to know whether you saw a dead woman on Roundthehouses or not? Mum and Dad were both kicking off in their different ways – I figured you had enough to deal with from them, so I took a back seat.’ She puts down the teapot and looks at me. ‘Soon as I’d put
Benji to bed that night, I logged onto Roundthehouses myself. While you were stewing about my lack of interest, and slagging me off to Kit for sure, I was looking at photos of 11 Bentley Grove. I did nothing else all evening, even though the pictures didn’t change. That’s how uninterested I was.’

  Something made her connect the house with me and Kit. It’s an effort to swallow the tea that’s in my mouth. ‘What did you see?’ I ask, my voice cracking. ‘Tell me.’ Why didn’t I see it, whatever it was? I spent hours looking.

  ‘You’re pathetic, Connie,’ Fran says matter-of-factly, ignoring my question. ‘You sit there thinking the worst of everyone, harbouring your secret grudges and resentments, blowing stupid things up into huge problems and dwelling on them endlessly, making sure never to say a word about what’s bothering you so that no one has the chance to explain that they’re not quite as bad as you’ve decided they are.’

  ‘What did you see, Fran?’

  ‘You flinch every time Mum opens her mouth, as if she’s the devil in oven gloves. Yes, she can be annoying, but you should do what I do: tell her to get a grip and then move on, forget it. Same with Dad. Tell all of us to piss off if you want to, but be upfront about it, for God’s sake.’

  She’s clever, Fran. She makes everything sound so manageable and normal. Listening to her, I could almost believe that the Monk family was an entirely harmless organisation, that its members were allowed to leave Little Holling as and when they pleased, and would suffer no adverse effects if they chose to exercise that freedom.

  ‘Tell me what you saw,’ I say again.

  ‘You tell me first,’ Fran says, leaning towards me across the table. ‘Everything. 11 Bentley Grove – what’s the deal? For fuck’s sake, Con, are we sisters or strangers? Let me know, because I can be either. It’s your choice.’

  ‘Yes. It is, isn’t it?’ She expects me to refuse. I’m going to surprise her. She asked to know everything, so everything is what I’ll give her: not only the bare facts, but all the tiny permutations of possibility, all the ways in which I’ve changed my mind and then changed it back, sometimes ten or twelve times a day. As I talk, I begin to enjoy myself. I know from my own experience of the last six miserable months that this story I’m telling offers no narrative satisfaction whatsoever, only a series of insoluble problems. Let Fran be as confused as I am; let her be drawn into the nightmare that never ends. I wonder if she can hear the sadistic relish in my voice as I make sure not to spare her one single detail.

  When I finish, finally, she doesn’t look as confused as I hoped she would. She doesn’t look surprised, or shocked. ‘So did you ring him?’ she says.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Stephen Gilligan – the SG that Kit was supposed to have had a meeting with on 13 May. Did you ring his secretary, Joanne Thingummy?’

  ‘Joanne Biss. No. I was going to, in the taxi on the way home, but then you turned up, and I…’

  Fran isn’t listening. She has whipped out her mobile phone, and is already asking for a number for London Allied Capital’s Canary Wharf office. I close my eyes and wait, thinking about what Alice said: that I don’t really want to know the truth about Kit. Is she right? Would I have phoned Stephen Gilligan, if it had been left to me? Was that why I had a dizzy attack as soon as I left the police station, so that I could avoid making the call?

  ‘Joanne Biss, please,’ says Fran. ‘That’s fine. I’m happy to wait.’

  ‘I would have rung,’ I tell her. ‘When I got home.’ She flashes me a sceptical look. I can imagine exactly what she’s thinking. ‘Why should I waste money on a private detective when I can stake out Kit’s Limehouse flat myself, for free?’ I say defensively.

  ‘Have you?’ Fran asks.

  ‘I’ve driven there in the evening two or three times, sat outside in the dark. Kit never closes the lounge curtains, and the flat’s on the ground floor. I ring him from the car park outside, pretending I’m calling from home. I watch him through the window, drinking red wine while he talks to me – the same kind he drinks at home. There’s never been anyone else there with him.’ And when he smiles, it’s the same affectionate smile I see on his face when he knows I’m watching. I can’t bring myself to share this fact with my sister; it’s important to me, and I don’t trust her with it.

  ‘Two or three times doesn’t prove anything,’ she says dismissively.

  ‘I’ve spent hours waiting in my car on Bentley Grove for him to come out of number 11. He never does.’ Why am I trying to convince Fran that everything’s okay when I know it isn’t?

  She raises a hand to silence me and presses her phone to her ear. I listen as she introduces herself to Joanne Biss as a new member of Nulli staff, and asks about the meeting between Kit and Stephen Gilligan on Thursday 13 May – did it go ahead as planned, or was it cancelled? She says nothing about why she wants to know, but her voice exudes the confidence and entitlement of a person who feels no need to explain herself. I would never have been able to pull off that particular tone; I’d have sounded nervous and fraudulent, and would have been quizzed about why I needed information about a meeting from two months ago. A few seconds later, Fran thanks Joanne Biss and says goodbye.

  ‘Kit was telling the truth,’ she says, laying her phone down on the table. She sounds disappointed. ‘He and Stephen Gilligan met on Thursday 13 May at three o’clock.’

  It’s as if a dark mass of cloud has lifted.

  ‘Kit could have rung Joanne Biss and told her what to say,’ Fran points out. ‘He’s had ample time. Even if he didn’t, even if the SG in his diary is Stephen Gilligan, it doesn’t mean he isn’t having an affair with this Selina Gane woman.’

  ‘It means he might not be,’ I say, feeling more optimistic than I have for a long time. ‘There’s nothing to connect him with her – nothing at all – apart from her address in his SatNav as “home”. And maybe he wasn’t the one who put it there. Maybe someone else did it.’ Go on. Say it. ‘You might have done it. Or Anton.’ It’s hard to evict suspicion once it’s made a home inside you; much easier to change its focus than to banish it altogether.

  ‘I’m not going to bother responding to that,’ says Fran impatiently. ‘Me or Anton,’ she mutters. ‘Why would we?’

  Because you’re jealous. Because we’ve got more money; because Kit’s successful and Anton isn’t.

  ‘Why are you so quick to think the worst of Kit?’ I press on with my attack, before it occurs to Fran to point out my hypocrisy. ‘Why don’t you tell me whatever it is you’ve got to tell me?’ Wouldn’t she have told me already, if it was something real? Is she clever enough and devious enough to dream up an elaborate plan to ruin my marriage and destroy my sanity, a plan so intricate and manipulative that I can’t even begin to guess what it might be?

  For fuck’s sake, Connie – she’s your sister. You’ve known her all your life. Get a grip.

  Fran couldn’t have made a woman’s dead body appear on my computer screen. She can’t have any connection with 11 Bentley Grove. She’s never been to Cambridge; she never goes anywhere apart from Monk & Sons, Benji’s school, the supermarket and Mum and Dad’s.

  ‘You can’t have looked at the photos of 11 Bentley Grove more carefully than I did,’ I say shakily. ‘There’s no trace of Kit in those pictures, and nothing that links him to Selina Gane. Nothing. It’s not even his sort of house. Kit would never call a place like that “home” – a modern, characterless box surrounded by clones of itself, other modern characterless—’

  ‘Grow up, Connie, will you?’ Fran snaps. ‘If he’s got the hots for the woman in the house, he won’t give a toss about its lack of cornicing and ceiling roses. Have you forgotten what it’s like to fall in love?’ She smirks to herself. ‘I almost have, but not quite. I can tell you right now: if I fell head over heels for someone, I’d live anywhere with them. I’d live in an ex-council flat in Brixton, or somewhere equally grim – those hideous high-rises.’ She wrinkles her nose in distaste.

  I nearly laug
h. Most people from Brixton would consider themselves unfortunate if they had to spend even half an hour in Little Holling. In a quarter of that time they’d have sampled everything it had to offer, and would be wondering why its inhabitants weren’t fleeing its deathly green quiet and making for the nearest noisy city at a hundred miles an hour.

  ‘Anyone could have programmed that address into Kit’s SatNav,’ I tell Fran. ‘Someone in the shop, like he said.’ Do I believe what I’m saying, or have I abandoned everything apart from the desire to be the winner here? If Fran was sticking up for Kit, would I be insisting he was a cheat and a liar? ‘Unless you can prove he’s been lying to me—’

  ‘I can’t,’ Fran cuts in. ‘Look, I thought I saw something on the Roundthehouses website, that’s all. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. I can’t help noticing that you’re in no hurry to find out what it is.’

  ‘This isn’t denial, Fran. This is me coming to my senses – trying to save my marriage, which I’ve spent the last six months tearing apart with accusations and doubt.’ I sniff back tears. ‘I’ve been torturing Kit – that’s no exaggeration, believe me. Interrogating him constantly, turning away from him in bed…He’s been so patient and understanding – anyone else would have left me by now. Know what I did the other day? I got home from the shop and he was in the bathroom with the door locked. He never locks the door. I made him open it. He refused at first, said he was in the bath, but I knew he wasn’t. I’d heard him walking around. I insisted. Said I’d leave him if he didn’t let me in immediately. I thought maybe he’d gone in there to phone her – Selina Gane, though I didn’t know her name then. When he unlocked the door and opened it, I expected to see him holding his mobile and looking guilty, or trying to flush it down the loo or something. I thought, this is it, finally – I’ll grab his phone and find her name and number, and then I’ll have my proof. I’ve looked at his phone before and found nothing, but I thought maybe this time…’ I stop. It’s difficult to describe a state of mind that now seems so alien. It’s as if I’m reporting on the behaviour of someone else, a lunatic.