The Other Woman’s House

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘It’s the lack of forensic evidence that’s the problem,’ Kit explains to her now. ‘They’ve gone over every inch of 11 Bentley Grove, taken up the carpets, the floorboards – essentially, they dismantled the house and sent the various parts off for analysis, and they found nothing. Well, no, they found more than nothing,’ Kit corrects himself. ‘They found nothing in a way that means something.’

  ‘Twenty billion’s more than nothing, isn’t it, Daddy?’ Benji asks Anton, tapping him on the leg with a grey plastic alien toy.

  ‘Anything’s more than nothing, mate.’ If things were normal between Kit and me, I would look at him now and send a silent message: Could this be the most profound thing Anton’s ever said?

  ‘Sam told us there are two different kinds of non-result, in forensic terms,’ Kit goes on. ‘The conclusive and the inconclusive.’

  Still with us, Anton?

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Mum says impatiently.

  ‘You can find nothing at the site of a possible crime and still not know if a crime’s been committed there or not. Or, as in this case, you can find no forensic evidence and say beyond doubt that a particular crime wasn’t committed there. Sam says there’s no way there could have been the amount of blood in that house that both Connie and Jackie Napier saw without it leaving forensic…detritus behind. Since it didn’t…’ Kit shrugs. ‘The police have nothing to work with. Forensically, they have to conclude no one was killed there. They’ve got one estate agent and two former owners of the house swearing blind that the carpet in the lounge now is the same one that’s been there for years, since before the present owner moved in. They’ve spoken to the neighbours, who told them not much, apart from that Bentley Grove’s a lovely quiet street. No known missing persons fit the description Connie and Jackie Napier gave them, and there’s no body. What can they do?’

  ‘They’re the police,’ says Mum, tight-lipped. ‘There must be something – an angle they haven’t thought of, something else they can pursue.’

  ‘Kit’s trying to explain to you that there isn’t,’ Fran tells her. I wonder if it bothers her that she’s sticking up for a man she believes to be a liar with a secret life. She hasn’t said anything about the conversation we had on Monday – not to Mum and Dad, not to Anton. They don’t know about the address in Kit’s SatNav, or his car on Street View. I didn’t ask her not to tell anyone; it’s her choice that we should all keep playing Happy Snappy Families. She’s playing her role as willingly as Kit’s playing his.

  And you, Connie? Why don’t you say something? Why don’t you tell everyone your husband might be a murderer?

  ‘Ian Grint’s no fool, Val,’ Kit tries to soothe Mum. ‘He knows Connie and this Jackie person are telling the truth. Sam thinks his bosses know it too, but look at it from their point of view. If a murder has been committed, they’ve got no body, no suspects, no evidence apart from two witness statements and no way to take it forward. Completely hamstrung, aren’t they? It’s not so bad for Grint – he’s only a DC, the buck doesn’t stop with him. His DI’s the one who’s got everything to gain by saying, “This isn’t a crime, it might just be a prank – let’s assume it is, and forget all about it.”’

  ‘A prank?’ Mum appeals to Dad again. ‘Did you hear that, Geoff? Killing someone is a joke, now, is it? Leaving them bleeding on a carpet…’

  ‘Mum, for God’s sake.’ Fran makes a face that suggests mental impairment. ‘Kit’s saying that the police think there was no killing – the prank was getting someone to lie down in a load of red paint, or tomato ketchup…’

  ‘I know the difference between blood and paint,’ I say.

  ‘What sort of prank is that?’ Mum demands. ‘It’s not very funny, is it? What woman in her right mind would ruin a lovely dress by lying in paint?’

  ‘Sam and Grint both think the prank theory’s as daft as we all think it is,’ says Kit. ‘Someone higher up the Cambridge police ladder suggested it when they found out that whoever hacked into the website and changed the virtual tour changed it back again half an hour later. I don’t really understand why that’s significant, and I’m not sure Sam and Ian Grint do either, but there’s not a lot any of us can do. The decision’s been made.’

  ‘And you’re just going to sit back and do nothing?’ Mum stares at me in horror. ‘Pretend it never happened? What about your responsibility to that poor woman, whoever she is?’

  ‘What can Connie do?’ Kit asks.

  ‘I could apply for a job as Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire police,’ I suggest.

  ‘Where’s the cake, Daddy?’ Benji asks Anton. ‘When are we going to give Connie her presents?’

  I have no idea what he’s talking about. Then I remember that this is supposed to be my birthday party. Today is my birthday. Like all Monk family celebrations, it began at 5.45 p.m. and will finish at 7.15 p.m., so that Benji can be in bed by 8.

  ‘First thing Monday morning, Kit, you phone the police,’ says Dad. Welcome to the conversation. ‘You tell them you think it’s a disgrace – you want answers and you want them now. You want to know what they’re planning to do, and they’d damn well better be planning to do something.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Mum nods her support.

  ‘If they mess you around, you threaten to go to the press. If they still don’t pull their finger out, you put your money where your mouth is. The minute it hits the local papers, the minute Cambridge residents know about this and start to panic, there’ll be nowhere for DC Ian Grint and his chums to hide.’

  ‘Dad, what are you talking about?’ Fran laughs. ‘Local residents won’t start to panic. You make it sound as if there’s a maniac on a killing spree, roaming the streets of Cambridge. Would you panic, if you heard that someone had been killed in Little Holling, if you had no reason to think you were in danger?’

  ‘That would never happen,’ Mum says. ‘That’s why we live in Little Holling – because it’s safe and no one’s likely to murder us in our homes.’

  ‘Cambridge isn’t exactly Rwanda, is it, and someone seems to have been murdered there,’ Fran fires back at her.

  ‘Cambridge is a city, with…people from all over the place living in it. No one knows anyone in a city, there’s no sense of community. Nothing like what Connie saw would happen here, and if it did, the police would investigate it properly.’

  ‘Define “here”.’ Fran looks to me for support. I look away. I can’t risk getting into any kind of argument with Mum, in case I get carried away and accidentally mention that if ever a murder is committed in Little Holling, it will very likely be of her, by me. ‘Cambridge isn’t that far away. I’m sure it’s got quite a low murder rate, because people who live there are generally quite intelligent and have better things to do than kill each other. Whereas in the Culver Valley…’

  ‘The Culver Valley’s one of the safest places in England,’ Dad says.

  ‘Are you kidding me? Anton, tell him! Don’t you two read the local papers? In Spilling and Silsford in the last few years, there have been…’ Fran stops. Benji is tugging at her arm. ‘Yes, darling? What?’

  ‘What’s a murder? Is it when someone dies, when they’re a hundred?’

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Mum wails at Fran. ‘Poor little Benji. It’s nothing for you to worry about, angel. We all go to heaven when we die and it’s lovely in heaven – isn’t it, Grandad?’

  ‘Angel?’ Fran looks ready to pounce. I don’t think I’ve seen her this angry before. ‘We’re on earth at the moment, Mother, not in heaven, and his name’s Benji.’

  ‘First thing Monday morning, Kit.’ Dad wags his finger. ‘You let that DC Ian Grint have it right between the eyes.’

  I have to get away from them all. I mumble something about tea and cake, and force myself to leave the room at a normal pace, instead of running, which is what I want to do. In the kitchen, I close the door and lean against it. How long can I get away with staying in here? For ever?

 
The sound of knocking interrupts my fantasy. Kit. It must be – I can hear Mum, Dad and Fran still arguing in the lounge. I don’t want to let him in, but as his co-conspirator I have no choice. He might have something important to say about the maintenance of the lie that we’re presenting to my family this afternoon: our fake happy marriage.

  ‘You okay?’ he asks me.

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘Just about staying afloat. Let’s get on with the tea and cake, and then maybe we can get rid of them early.’

  ‘They’ll leave at exactly seven fifteen, whatever we do or don’t do,’ I say. Kit ought to know better than to hope something different might happen. ‘Dad and Anton’ll go straight to the pub for their Friday night pint, and Mum’ll be busy for at least half an hour helping Fran put Benji to bed. I’ll drive you to the station at seven twenty-five – that way I can be back by the time they all resurface. If any of them bothers looking, they’ll see both our cars and assume we’re both here.’

  Kit nods. I fill the kettle and switch it on, take the shop-bought birthday cake out of the bread bin. I chose the most expensive one in the supermarket, as if that could make up for anything. I load cups, saucers and teaspoons onto a tray, fill the milk jug with milk, scrape the discoloured granules off the surface of the sugar so that Mum won’t recoil when she looks into the bowl. Last but not least, a plastic lidded beaker full of apple juice for Benji, the only five-year-old in the world who still drinks out of a baby cup.

  Kit’s pulling clean cake plates out of the dishwasher. ‘Tomorrow I’ll spend the day at Mum and Dad’s,’ I tell him. He holds out a large serrated knife for me to take. ‘If I’m there, none of them will come here. I’ll tell them you’re at home working.’

  ‘This is insane, Con. Why can’t we tell them the truth? Our current project’s coming to a head in London, I’m needed there full-time, so I’ve decided to stay at the flat for the foreseeable future.’

  I take the knife from him. ‘That isn’t the truth, Kit.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ he says impatiently, as if I’m splitting hairs. ‘Not the truth truth, but…can’t we tell them something closer to it, so that we don’t have to pretend I’m living here when I’m not?’ I watch him make up his mind to say more, and know what’s coming. ‘Or we could make our lie true: you could let me move back in.’

  ‘Don’t.’ I push him away, not daring to meet his eyes in case it’s obvious from mine how much I miss him. He moved out on Wednesday. For the last two nights I’ve lain awake crying, unable to sleep, using all my willpower to stop myself from ringing him and begging him to come home. I thought of myself as a good person until all this happened, but I understand now that I’m not. I could so easily lose my grip on what’s right, turn to Kit and say, ‘You know what? I don’t care if you’ve been seeing someone behind my back. I don’t care if you’re a liar or even a killer – I’m going to love you and stay with you anyway, because the alternative is too soul-destroying and too much effort.’

  ‘We’re going to have to do it, aren’t we?’ Kit closes his eyes. ‘The full performance: sing happy birthday, open presents, blow out candles, “For she’s a jolly good fellow”, hugs and kisses all round…’ I see the shudder pass through his body.

  ‘Of course we are. Isn’t that what’s happened every year since you’ve known me? My family don’t know this year’s any different.’

  ‘Connie, we’ve got a choice.’ He moves towards me. I ought to stop him. ‘We can put all this behind us, go back to how we were. Imagine neither of us had a past, imagine today was the first day of our lives.’

  ‘We wouldn’t be married. We’d be strangers.’ If I don’t turn myself against him quickly, I might never be able to. ‘I agree, that might be preferable,’ I say. ‘At the moment we’re strangers who are married.’

  ‘What are you two up to?’ Mum throws open the kitchen door without bothering to knock. ‘What are you talking about? Not the police still, I hope. This is supposed to be a celebration. Geoff’s right, Kit – you’ll ring this Ian Grint fellow on Monday, and it’ll all be sorted out one way or the other.’

  ‘I’m sure it will,’ Kit says expressionlessly.

  One way or the other. Which two ways does she have in mind? I wonder. Scientists could kidnap my mother and replace her with a robot that looked exactly like her, and no one would notice as long as they made sure to programme enough clichés into the machine’s vocabulary: one way or the other, now look what you’ve done, what’s that supposed to mean?

  I do the only thing that might make the rest of this so-called party bearable: I go back to the lounge and start a conversation with Anton about fitness. I tell him I’m fed up of being skinny, ask what I can do to build up muscle tone without ending up looking like an action woman with hard bulgy arms. I don’t listen to his answer, but thankfully it’s long and detailed, and saves me having to talk to anyone else. Dad and Fran argue on the other side of the room about whether anybody who moves to a city is signalling his or her willingness to be viciously assaulted on a regular basis, and Benji throws plastic aliens up in the air, trying to hit the ceiling and often succeeding.

  Between them, Mum and Kit arrange my presents in a heap on the rug – another Monk family ritual performed on all gift-worthy occasions. Everyone takes their turn to pick a present out of the pile and hand it to its recipient. The picking must be done in order of age: Benji, Fran, me, Anton, Kit, Mum, Dad, then back to Benji again if there are still more parcels to be distributed. The system is not without its flaws: when it’s my birthday and my turn to pick, obviously I know that I’ll end up giving whichever present I select to myself. For years, Dad has been lobbying for change: if the occasion is a birthday rather than Christmas, the person whose birthday it is should be excluded from the picking. Mum is violently opposed to a reform along these lines, and has so far succeeded in blocking it.

  The whole pantomime makes me want to shoot myself in the head.

  This year, Benji has bought me a lavender bag in the shape of a heart. I give him a thank you cuddle and he tries to wriggle free. ‘When people die, when they’re a hundred, their hearts stop beating,’ he says. ‘Don’t they, Daddy?’

  Mum and Dad give me what they always give me – and Fran, Kit and Anton – and have done ever since we’ve had homes of our own, for our birthdays, Christmas and Easter: a Monk & Sons voucher for £100. I plaster a smile to my face, kiss them both, feign gratitude.

  Kit’s parents used to be good at presents. I assume they still are, even if they no longer buy them for us. I always loved the things they gave me: spa day vouchers, tickets to the opera, membership of wine and chocolate clubs. Kit was never impressed. ‘Anyone can buy stuff like that,’ he said. ‘They’re corporate client gifts, from people with plenty of money who don’t care.’ Even before he cut his parents off, he didn’t seem to like them much. I couldn’t understand it. ‘I’d give anything to have parents who were normal, interesting people,’ I told him, impressed by the way that Nigel and Barbara Bowskill, who lived in Bracknell, often drove into London to go to the theatre or to an art exhibition.

  When Simon Waterhouse asked me why Kit had disowned his mum and dad, I told him what Kit had told me: that in 2003, when I was having my mini nervous breakdown at the prospect of leaving Little Holling, when my hair was falling out and my face was paralysed and I was vomiting all the time, Kit’s parents had told him that he was on his own with his problems and could expect no help or support from them – they were too busy setting up their new business.

  I couldn’t imagine either Nigel or Barbara being so uncaring, but when I said that to Kit, he snapped at me that I hadn’t been there and he had, and I’d have to take his word for it: his parents didn’t give a toss about me, or about him, so why bother having anything further to do with them?

  I thought I’d given Simon an answer to his question, but he looked dissatisfied. He asked me if there was anything else I could tell him, anything at all, on the subjec
t of Kit and his parents. I said there wasn’t. It was true, strictly speaking. What would have been the point of saying that I’d always wondered if Kit deliberately misinterpreted or magnified something more innocuous that Nigel and Barbara had said, wanting an excuse to cut them out of his life? I decided it was probably unfair of me to suspect him of framing them in this way, so I said nothing about it to Simon.

  ‘Go on, Connie – everyone’s waiting.’ Mum’s voice drags me back to the party I’d rather not be part of. There’s a parcel in my lap, wrapped in ‘Happy Birthday’ paper: my present from Kit. Only he, Fran and I know that I’ve seen it before, that it contains a Chongololo carrier bag. All three of us are thinking about me nearly spoiling Kit’s thoughtful birthday surprise – or at least I am. Me in the doorway, Kit hovering over the scissors and the Sellotape, trying to look as if he isn’t hurt by my lack of trust. I see it like a still from a film that means nothing to me; I feel no remorse, no regret. Guilt gets boring after a while; you end up deciding it must be someone else’s fault, not yours.

  I don’t want this present, whatever it is, but I must pretend I do. Mum claps her hands together and says, ‘Ooh, I can’t wait to see it! Kit’s got such good taste!’ I make fake enthusiastic noises as I tear off the paper, thinking that at some point I will have to tell Mum and Dad that Kit has moved out, that I could save myself weeks or months of lying by telling them now. Why don’t I? Am I naïve enough to hope, in spite of everything, that the trouble between us will blow over?

  What did Kit say? We could make our lie true.

  I drop the wrapping paper on the floor, open the Chongololo bag and pull out a blue dress.