The Other Woman’s House

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘So he avoids the things he wants so that he can do more wanting?’ Sam said.

  ‘Basically, yeah,’ said Simon. ‘Though if I was being picky, I’d say that there’s no such thing as “the thing he wants”. Charlie’s right – if living in Cambridge was what he wanted, he could have stayed after he finished his degree. That might have involved taking any old job, though, and living in a shithole for a while, which for Bowskill wouldn’t have been an option. It’d have been too much of a comedown for him, after three years as one of the city’s elite – accommodation in historic college buildings, studying at one of the world’s best universities. Not that he’d have been happy during his student years either. He wouldn’t have been able to relax enough to enjoy any of it, knowing it was temporary.’

  Charlie shook her head. ‘I still don’t see how taking a job in Rawndesley would move him any closer to his—’

  ‘I do,’ Simon cut her off. ‘I can guess what his strategy was: get a job with a reputable firm, one with good promotion prospects and branches all over the country – specifically, one with a branch in Cambridge – and wait for the opportunity to transfer. Meanwhile, you might be living in Rawndesley, but you’ve got a plan to get back to where you want to be. And you can start working your way up the corporate ladder, so that when you do transfer to Cambridge you can afford a decent house there. For as long as you’re living in Rawndesley, it’s easy to accept that your current life is a compromise – Rawndesley’s a compromise kind of place. What Bowskill was unwilling to do was compromise in Cambridge – to him, Cambridge represents perfection, and he’s only willing to be there when the conditions are perfect. In the unlikely event of that ever happening, he’d find he felt worse than ever – big shock to his system. The day Kit Bowskill’s forced to admit that no detail of his life could be improved – that’s a dangerous day for him. He’d have to recognise that the problem’s internal – that’s he’s the detail he needs to change. Probably at that point he’d have a breakdown.’

  ‘So…before applying for a job at Deloitte Rawndesley, he’d have applied to Deloitte Cambridge?’ said Charlie.

  ‘Yeah – and all the other firms he’d decided were worthy of him,’ said Simon. ‘He could probably have coped with an entry-level salary and a tiny flat if he’d had a job he was proud of, and could see a clear way to the top. Maybe there were no openings, or maybe he had interviews and lost out to other people – either way, Deloitte Rawndesley was the best he could do. He might have set himself a deadline: transfer to the Cambridge branch within two years, five years, whatever.’

  ‘Clearly he failed,’ said Charlie.

  ‘No. You still don’t get the way his mind works. Someone like Bowskill never fails. He’s always en route to realising his master plan. Success and victory are always just round the corner.’

  Charlie made a face at the back of Simon’s headrest. If she wasn’t entirely familiar with every nuance of Kit Bowskill’s dysfunctional psyche, that could be because she’d never met the man. Simon had only met him once, yet he seemed to be an expert on Bowskill’s particular brand of unquenchable dissatisfaction. Charlie wondered if this was something she ought to worry about.

  ‘Whatever Bowskill’s transfer-to-Cambridge plan was, he changed it when he met Connie,’ said Simon. ‘From the second he met her, moving to Cambridge without her would have felt like a terrible failure.’

  ‘You’re saying he fell in love with her?’ Charlie enjoyed trying to make Simon say the word ‘love’.

  He neatly avoided it. ‘I doubt he’s capable of normal emotions,’ he said. ‘Everything he feels is couched in terms of a want. He’ll have decided he wanted Connie as much as he wanted Cambridge, but she had strong roots in Silsford – she was a Monk before she married Bowskill, as in Monk & Sons. Her family’s lived in Little Holling for generations. It won’t have taken Bowskill long to realise that prising Connie out of the Culver Valley was going to be hard. Connie told me herself: the whole ethos of no one ever leaving is woven into the fabric of her family. There was a glimmer of hope for Bowskill, though – he quickly saw that Connie’s parents drove her insane. She was desperate to get away from them. Cleverly, he didn’t put any pressure on her or try to persuade her. He encouraged her to spend time with her parents, telling her what a great thing a close family was – he said that all the time, Connie told me. He was relying on her getting so sick of the Monks that she’d suggest moving away. He probably had to wait longer than he’d initially hoped, but it happened eventually – one night they went out for dinner and Connie told him how bored of the Culver Valley she was. Bowskill wasted no time in telling her he’d been offered a job by Deloitte Cambridge, a promotion—’

  ‘Too much of a coincidence,’ Charlie cut in.

  ‘Not a coincidence – a lie,’ said Simon. ‘If I ring Deloitte Cambridge on Monday and ask, I know what they’ll tell me: they didn’t offer Bowskill anything. He went to them, soon as he could after finding out Connie wanted to move, and told them they had to let him transfer. Not a promotion, necessarily – any job, though I suppose it could have been a promotion. I’m sure Bowskill had spent years, by then, making sure he impressed all the relevant people. Deloitte must have agreed to the move, because Bowskill and Connie started looking at houses in Cambridge. They found the perfect house.’

  ‘18 Pardoner Lane,’ said Sam.

  ‘All the “perfects” seemed to be lining up,’ Simon went on. ‘Perfect city, perfect woman, perfect house, perfect job. Someone like Bowskill’s happiest when he’s tantalisingly close to realising his dream – before it comes true, and he wakes up the next day to find that he’s still the same sad fuck he was before. Fuck, is this traffic ever going to move?’ Simon banged the window angrily with his fist. ‘I can’t even take the pavement route, not without killing fifty tourists. You know Cambridge better than I do, Char – shall we get out and run? How far are we from Bentley Grove, on foot?’

  ‘This is the worst bit,’ Charlie told him. ‘Let’s sit it out. Once we get to that roundabout ahead, we’ll be okay.’

  ‘It must have been a big blow, when he didn’t get 18 Pardoner Lane,’ said Sam.

  ‘He could have got it, if he’d been less arrogant,’ Simon told him. ‘There was someone else interested, but when Hugh Jepps broke the news to Bowskill, Bowskill accused him of lying, said he didn’t believe this other buyer existed, that it was a ruse to bump up the price. He walked away – told Jepps to get back to him once the other bloke had lost interest. You can see where the idea for his and Jackie’s fake bidding-war scam came from.’ The car swerved sharply to the left; the wheel scraped the kerb.

  ‘Simon, don’t,’ Charlie groaned. ‘The pavement’s not an option – let it go.’

  ‘By the time Bowskill worked out that the other buyer story was true, a deal had been done,’ Simon said. ‘The Beth Dutton people were selling to the Gilpatricks. Bowskill would have had a hard time accepting that. That’s where Jackie Napier came in. Hugh Jepps had told Bowskill the house was sold, there was nothing that could be done, but Bowskill sensed that Jackie was more sympathetic to his cause.’

  ‘Which, if she wanted to shag him senseless, she would have been,’ Charlie chipped in cheerfully.

  ‘She was.’ Simon’s solemn tone cut through her frivolity. ‘She rang the vendors and asked them to reconsider – probably told them how keen Bowskill was, that he’d be willing to pay more than the price they’d agreed with the Gilpatricks. The Beth Dutton people were torn – they were against gazumping on principle, but they saw a chance to get their hands on more money. They told Jackie that if Bowskill could go fifty grand above what the Gilpatricks were going to pay, he could have the house.’

  ‘They were so principled that their sell-out mark-up was that much higher,’ Charlie muttered scornfully.

  ‘We know what happens next,’ said Simon. ‘Bowskill’s folks won’t stump up the cash and he cuts them off. Meanwhile, Connie’s been quietly going to pieces.
Much as she wants to move, she’s also panicking. Bowskill can’t tell her the truth about 18 Pardoner Lane and admit he failed, so he rewrites the story. In his fictional version of events, he reclaims his power – instead of being at the mercy of circumstance, he’s in control. He pretends he’s changed his mind for the sake of Connie’s health, and tries to enthuse her about his new plan: their own business, a beautiful house in the Culver Valley – a new dream, a fake one.’

  ‘It came true, though,’ Sam pointed out. ‘I’ve seen their place in Little Holling. It’s pretty amazing – the archetypal idyllic country cottage. And they did start their own business – something to do with data and databases. It’s called Nulli Secundus. I get the impression it’s a success.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, Bowskill made it all happen,’ said Simon. ‘But it was never his dream – only a stage on the way to the real goal.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Charlie said irritably. The heat was getting to her. She wanted to open a window, but if she did, Simon would demand she close it for the sake of the too-feeble-to-make-a-difference air-conditioning. ‘Maybe the new dream was real.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen that bedroom at his mum and dad’s place,’ Simon told her. ‘For as long as there’s breath in his body, there’s no way Kit Bowskill’s settling for living anywhere but Cambridge.’

  ‘But he has settled,’ Charlie argued. ‘Or else he’s changed his mind: he was fixed on Cambridge once, but then he had a rethink and—’

  ‘You didn’t see what I saw,’ Simon interrupted her. ‘It wasn’t the bedroom of someone planning a rethink – take my word for it. The cottage in Little Holling was a stepping stone. Starting his own business was a good move: if you work for yourself, you can relocate head office when it suits you – you’re not dependent on Deloitte or any other firm having an opening at the right time.’

  ‘But…Connie told me he’s obsessed with the Little Holling house,’ said Sam. ‘She said he’s commissioned an artist to paint its portrait.’

  ‘Yuck,’ said Charlie. No need to say any more when one word summed it up.

  ‘Obsessives remain obsessive, but they sometimes change the focus of their obsession, don’t they?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Not Bowskill,’ said Simon irritably. He hated it when other people’s inconvenient questions got in the way of his certain knowledge. ‘Changing his mind about the best place to live would feel like failure to someone with his mindset – it’d involve admitting he’d been wrong for years. He feels humiliation acutely and easily. Imagine him pulling all those pictures off the walls of his Bracknell bedroom, thinking about the fool who put them up in the first place.’

  Sam and Charlie exchanged a look. Neither wanted to point out that none of this could be known for sure.

  ‘While he and Connie were looking for their Little Holling house and starting up their business, Bowskill was dwelling on where he’d gone wrong,’ said Simon. ‘First mistake: walking away from 18 Pardoner Lane and expecting it to come back to him. Not believing in the Gilpatricks. Second mistake: letting Connie see his enthusiasm for moving, once she’d suggested it. His certainty and determination scared her off – she fell into the role of the one who panicked and applied the brakes. He became the reassuring adult and she was the frightened child. Her hair started falling out, she was sick with nerves all the time – it was all wrong – Bowskill didn’t want to be in Cambridge with a bald invalid wife who felt she’d been steamrollered into moving and resented it. Finding out that there was no way of him getting his hands on 18 Pardoner Lane was what convinced him: one by one his “perfects” were falling away, and it was better to pull out and wait.’

  Sam and Charlie waited. The traffic had started to inch forward.

  Simon didn’t move, not until the car behind beeped its horn. He was too focused on his thoughts; the outside world, with its baking heat and its traffic jams, had receded.

  ‘Second time round, Bowskill planned to do it differently,’ he said. ‘He told Connie he’d changed his mind, he had no desire to move to Cambridge – told her to forget all about it, they could be just as happy in Silsford. It was classic reverse psychology, and it worked. Connie started to resent him for giving up on the Cambridge dream. Thinking he’d abandoned it, she claimed it as her own. Bowskill, meantime, was waiting for 18 Pardoner Lane to come up for sale again – he was prepared to wait as long as it took. The longer the better – he knew Connie would get progressively unhappier, caught in the Monk family trap. When the house finally came on the market again, Bowskill would be ready with his pre-emptive offer – enough money to make sure the Gilpatricks accepted, whatever that took. He’s the director of a successful company now – no question of him having to go begging for handouts. Once his offer’s been accepted, he tells Connie, “Oh, by the way, a mate of mine in Cambridge says our house is for sale again – pity we’re so happy here.” Then he sits back and lets her enthusiasm for their original dream do the rest. Aided and abetted by her desperation to get out of the Culver Valley and never go back.’ Simon said this last part with feeling, as if he knew how she felt. Charlie was puzzled. He’d always given the impression of being wedded to Spilling until death did them part – his death, presumably, since Spilling was as dead as it was ever going to be, at least until the sun made the world explode, or whatever it was that was eventually going to happen to put a stop to everything; science had never been Charlie’s strong point.

  ‘So, second time round, Connie’s in the role of enthusiastic driving force?’ said Sam.

  ‘Yeah,’ Simon said. ‘And Bowskill’s the doubter, the one who has to be persuaded – because he loves his Little Holling cottage so much, or so he’s made Connie believe – he’s even commissioned a portrait of it.’

  ‘Yuck,’ Charlie said again.

  ‘From the minute he missed out on getting 18 Pardoner Lane in 2003, Bowskill threw his heart and soul into his pretence of loving all things Silsford,’ said Simon. ‘He had to – to create the necessary resistance in Connie. Meantime, he’s working on the other strand of his plan, the one based in Cambridge.’

  ‘Jackie Napier,’ said Sam.

  ‘Jackie Napier,’ Simon repeated. ‘Clever, unscrupulous, and keen to claim Bowskill as her own. Here’s a question for you: if Bowskill hated to be seen to fail, how come he ended up involved with a woman who must have known exactly how gutted he was not to get the house he wanted? He’d have had to tell Jackie he couldn’t raise the fifty grand. For someone as proud as Bowskill to end up in an…affair with a woman who’d witnessed his defeat in that way – how was it possible for him?’

  ‘You’re the one who knows him so well,’ said Charlie drily. ‘Tell us.’

  ‘All right.’ No problem for Simon, who of course knew everything. ‘Jackie’s smart enough to pick up very early on that Bowskill needs to see himself as a winner. She says to him, “You haven’t lost the house – you just haven’t got it yet. You’ll get it in the end, but we need to play a longer game.” She comes up with a plan. First step? She makes a copy of the keys to 18 Pardoner Lane before handing them over to the Gilpatricks on completion of the sale. She uses her fake charm – which would have been hard to resist – to befriend Elise Gilpatrick, so that she can find out as much information as possible, including much that’s of interest to Bowskill: the Gilpatricks have a young baby and they’re not planning to stop at one. 18 Pardoner Lane doesn’t have a garden. Sam, would you and Kate ever buy a house without a garden?’

  ‘We wouldn’t,’ Sam said. ‘With kids, you need a garden.’

  ‘And Jackie Napier would have told Bowskill that the Gilpatricks would realise this, probably sooner rather than later,’ said Simon. ‘She also found out that no one was at home on weekdays – Elise and Mr, whatever his name is, worked full-time, and the baby was at nursery. Wouldn’t it be a laugh, Jackie says to Bowskill, if we used their house as if it was already ours? Almost like staking a claim as the true owners – the ones who know wh
at’s going on, in contrast to the deluded Gilpatricks who only think they’re in control and don’t realise that the house isn’t really theirs. Now do you see why Jackie made sure to befriend Elise Gilpatrick? She needed to be seen at the house, often, with Elise, so that no one suspected anything when they saw her there in the daytime. Friends have each other’s keys, don’t they?’

  ‘She’d also have wanted to guarantee that, if and when the Gilpatricks decided to move to a house with a garden, they’d ask her to handle the sale of 18 Pardoner Lane instead of going to another estate agent,’ Sam pointed out.

  ‘Right,’ said Simon. ‘Which they duly did, last year. That’s when Jackie’s plan started to cave in around her ears. When she tells Bowskill the Gilpatricks are finally moving, he doesn’t react as she expects him to. She’s all proud of herself, bragging about how clever she was, finding her friend Elise the perfect house. Instead of saying, “Great, nice job” and buying 18 Pardoner Lane, Bowskill starts asking about the house the Gilpatricks are moving to. By now his envy of the Gilpatricks has become ingrained – he’s lived with it for six years. All that time he’s been reading the letters they’ve left lying around, rifling through their personal stuff – he knows what’s in their bathroom cabinet, what’s in their minds, probably. If they’re happy, he senses their happiness. It disturbs him. Enrages him. But he can’t stop, can’t help immersing himself in their life and envying it. They have a real life and he doesn’t – he’s attracted to what he knows he’s incapable of being and…having. The Gilpatricks are the usurpers, the winners who bagged the big prize. If they’ve suddenly found somewhere they think is better, what does that say about 18 Pardoner Lane? Maybe it’s not the perfect house after all, if the winners no longer want to live there. Sam, you mentioned a transfer of obsession – this is the moment when it happened, the transfer moment: Bowskill decides it’s not about the house any more, it’s about triumphing over the Gilpatricks by getting the thing they want.’