The Trailing Spouse

by Jo Furniss

  “I haven’t told him yet,” she says. “I’m hoping it might change his mind. Another little girl to love as much as he loves you.”

  The peregrine falcon spirals up the thermal, so close I could reach out and dash it from the air. I turn to face my mother. “He’ll never love another girl as much as he loves me.”

  My words buffet her like the wind. She takes a step back, her foot brushing the last strands of grass that cling to the land.

  I follow her to the edge. “Teddy doesn’t want you.” I jab her in the chest, and she puts her hands up to protect herself. “Turning up at our door because you’re too stupid to take precautions. Even I know how to roll one on and I’m only fourteen. You’re a drunk and a failure, and we won’t clear up your mess again.” Another jab as she turns, using her shoulder to shield herself. “He doesn’t love you. And he won’t love another man’s child.”

  “He loves you, doesn’t he?”

  “Leave Teddy alone.” I’m so close I could hug her.

  “Oh, Teddy! Our blessed Teddy. Why do we have to call him by that stupid name?”

  “You don’t call him that,” I say, as my hands find her hips. Her weight pushes back into my palms, giving me purchase. “He’s my Teddy. And I won’t share him with another little girl.”

  And I push.

  So hard I almost go with her over the edge. But she’s bigger than me, heavier. Her feet slide off the packed earth and plummet, but she doesn’t fall clear of the land. Her body twists and her breasts slam onto the dirt; she gives a last huff as the wind is knocked from her, and her weight drags her slowly down as though her body is being sucked into quicksand and not falling through hundreds of meters of clear air. All ten fingers claw lines through the dirt until one hand finds a grip on an exposed root. Two fingernails cling on. The tips turn pink and then white. I hear her voice from below the ragged edge of the cliff, a rapid cry like a bird’s mating call. Her hair must have jumped loose from her hood to spiral in the wind. It’s so thick and dark. It swirls like seaweed caught in the tide. Like mine. Beautiful.

  Her fingers crawl away across the bone-white root.

  And then they are gone.

  I reach down and pick up a fingernail, ripped off at the root. I tuck it carefully into that tiny pocket in the front of my jeans. The condom pocket. Then I start screaming and run down the hill to Teddy.

  Chapter 49

  A slender girl crossed the hotel lobby, making a beeline for the lifts. Thick, dark hair swirled in her wake. Amanda dropped behind the lilies. The elevator opened, and the girl vanished inside.

  What was Josie doing in Yangon?

  Amanda stared for a moment at the balletic movement of bodies across the foyer, as though performing for her. The blog—the countdown, the stories, the clues spooned out in bite-size morsels—had all been a performance. A confession. Aimed at whom, Amanda didn’t know, but like a trail of candy, she had followed a merry dance, starting in a frosty London park, with Josie’s hero confronting a dangerous dog, and ending on a cliff top where she claimed him for herself.

  She killed her own mother.

  What else is she capable of?

  As the elevator light showed that Josie had reached the fifth floor, Amanda was running across the lobby to the closing doors of the second elevator, shouting for the occupants to hold the lift. Inside, she jabbed the button for the fifth floor, earning a tut from a couple of tourists behind her.

  “It’s an emergency,” she hissed. “My husband’s dying.”

  The door opened, and she glimpsed their startled faces as she left.

  She skittered down the corridor toward room 513. The carpet swallowed her footfall, so she felt as inconsequential as a ghost. Nothing moved except air against her skin. Heavy wooden doors lined her route, a forbidding row of judges in dark cloaks. At room 513, she pressed her ear to the wood but heard only the rush of her own blood. Behind her, the lift chimed as it sank to the lobby.

  Amanda hammered on the door. What did it matter if Ed saw her now? She had woven a tapestry of guilt, and she felt it unraveling beneath her nimble fingers. She knocked again. Inside, she heard an ugly rush of sound as the toilet flushed. And the door opened a crack.

  “Ed?” She pushed the door back. He was on his knees. A dense smell hit Amanda in the face, and she put her hand up to cover her nose. Ed fell back into a fetal position.

  She checked the empty corridor behind her and went inside, clicking the door shut.

  “Ed? Is Josie here?”

  He didn’t try to ask questions—why was Amanda here, what was happening, why would Josie be in Yangon when she should be in Singapore? He didn’t seem able to talk or even grasp that it was his wife who had come to his aid in a country thousands of miles from home. With Amanda’s help, Ed made it to the bed. He curled away from her, his long body folded into a question mark. He lay still, too still.

  On the bedside table, half a bottle of whisky remained. And an empty water bottle. What have I done? she thought. Has the clonazepam made him so sick so quickly? She needed to get help. The phone hung from its cradle; she put it to her ear and heard a sound like the sea. She tapped the receiver, but the line was dead. When she tugged the cord, it whipped up into the air, loose, severed from the wall.

  The phone had been cut; someone else had been in the room. Amanda could feel Josie’s presence, as if she might be on the other side of a two-way mirror, watching.

  Ed groaned and tried to move, but this time it was too much; he heaved and sent bile across the bloody sheets. Amanda grabbed his phone from the bedside table, kneeling beside him to press the pad of his forefinger onto the button. The iPhone came to life. He’d missed three calls from Camille Kemble. Amanda didn’t have time to wonder at the woman’s role in events. She tapped in 999, then changed it to 911. What was the emergency number? She had no idea. And what would happen if she called the police? How would she explain these circumstances? Would they be able to save him? His breathing had turned to rapid panting. Would they arrest her? She was right here, red-handed. The maid had seen her trick her way into the room. There were sedatives in the water. She had traveled on a false passport. Ed heaved one more time, his whole body convulsing, but nothing came. There was nothing left.

  Amanda found her way to the sofa beside the open window. A warm breeze stirred the muslin curtains, and she shivered in response. Her mother said a shiver was caused by someone walking over your grave. For a second, she wished for her mother; Laura would know what to do. But a presence in the room demanded attention. There were three in this marriage, Amanda thought, but only two here. Where was the third? Where is Josie?

  With a whisper that brought Amanda to her feet, the interconnecting door opened. It took her a moment to notice the steak knife that Josie held in front of her crotch, the girl framed in the wall opposite the bed. Amanda ran to slam the door, but Josie blocked it with a shoulder, slipping into Ed’s room and letting it click behind her.

  “Give me his phone,” she said. She released one hand to take the mobile from Amanda’s limp grip. “Did you call an ambulance?”

  “I didn’t know the emergency number.”

  “Liar. You didn’t want to get caught.” Josie punched the PIN into Ed’s phone with her thumb and checked for outgoing calls. Satisfied, she slipped the mobile into the back pocket of her jeans. Then she produced a white belt from a hotel bathrobe, pointed the knife at Amanda’s hands, and, when she obediently held them out, bound her wrists. Josie went to sit on the right side of the bed. She stared at her father, biting a hangnail. When he bucked, gripped by a stomach spasm, she pressed both hands over her mouth.

  “Teddy?” Josie said. After a beat, it became clear that her father wasn’t able to answer, and she swallowed a gulp of air. “I didn’t think it would be this bad.” The serrated edge of the steak knife made ridges in the bedsheet as Josie shifted her weight, leaning close to his ear to whisper over and over, “I’m sorry.”

  Amanda kept the door
within reach. “He’s had an overdose.” She waited for a reaction, but Josie sat back on her haunches, working her teeth against the hangnail of the thumb holding the blade. She would cut herself if she wasn’t careful. Josie’s habitual self-control—what Amanda had always taken as a cultured air of teenage nonchalance—had evaporated. She finally saw the real girl, her riot of mixed-up colors, fragmented like the picture of Chairman Mao she both loved and hated. Josie projected a coherent image, but up close she was an artful arrangement of broken pieces. The blog had revealed the blows that shattered her.

  Amanda knew she couldn’t stick her stepdaughter back together here and now, but maybe if she could reach her, she could do enough to make the center hold. Enough to get all of them safely out of this room . . .

  She peeled herself off the wall and approached the bed. “Your father’s really sick, Josie. We should call an ambulance. It’ll be okay if we get him to the hospital. I’ll take care of all the rest.”

  Again she didn’t respond, so Amanda folded herself onto the edge of the mattress. “He’s your father.”

  The girl rolled to her feet, knife wavering in her hand, and Amanda retreated to the wall. “Well, he’s your husband, isn’t he? And you’re the one who poisoned him.”

  “It’s only a sedative, but I think he’s had too much.”

  “The postmortem is going to find him full of rat poison.”

  “It was clonazepam. His own medication.”

  “No. You stole poison from the pest-control people at the condo. You tested the dose on those poor dogs. This was premeditated.” Josie scissored her arm so that the point of the blade was all Amanda could see. “You’re a murderer. A barren depressive. Ed never loved you the way he loved me, and that sent you over the edge. Our bond, mine and his, was unbreakable. You’re just another link in a chain of romantic mistakes. And when you realized that, you killed him.”

  Let her burn off steam, Amanda thought. Don’t react. “We need to call an ambulance for your father.”

  “It’s too late. You killed him. Because you were so deluded, you convinced yourself he was cheating and murdering women.”

  “How do you know about the women?”

  “I know everything you do. Selling your gear. Your ‘secret’ identities.” Josie made quote marks in the air, the knife emphasizing her irony. “Your bank accounts. Interpol. I’m everywhere. Your shadow.”

  “But how?”

  Josie rolled her eyes to show she was indulging an out-of-touch stepmother. “You use the same password for everything. I mean everything. Even the bank, which is just stupid. I hacked you in five minutes.” Beside her, Ed’s body bucked, a violent thrash that almost sent her off the bed. “I thought he’d go to sleep.” Josie stroked his streaming brow with shaking fingers. The knife hung by her side and Amanda wondered if she might grab her wrist, overpower the slight girl, shake or bite her hand until she dropped it. But with bound hands, it would be difficult . . .

  “We need to get him to the hospital, Josie.”

  Ed groaned, and Josie shrugged one shoulder to shield herself, refusing to see what she’d done to her father. She chose to go on the offensive instead. “Wouldn’t you prefer to hear about the murders your husband committed?”

  The ghost enclosed Amanda in its embrace and squeezed air from her body.

  “How many women did he hurt, Amanda?”

  “Five. That I know about.”

  “That you know about?” Josie’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “How many women did Ed hurt, Amanda?” She shifted the knife so the blade pointed backward in her grasp. A stabbing grip.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How many do you think?” Josie got to her feet.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have a guess.” She took a step closer.

  Amanda’s voice came out very quiet. “None.”

  “That’s right. None. He didn’t hurt a soul. I can’t believe you doubted him, after all he’s done for you. But you were very easy to convince. It’s almost like you expected the worst, which isn’t surprising, I guess, considering your own family. Are you interested in the technical details, the software that let me copy real news sites and post my own pages on the Internet? Once you picked the right keywords—it took you a while—up popped my stories. Now that’s what I call fake news!”

  “But Laureline Mackenzie was on Interpol; you couldn’t fake that.”

  “Laureline Mackenzie was real. She gave me the idea. It was so weird that she disappeared when Teddy was right there in Tokyo. I thought to myself, What if he did it? What if he kills every time he goes away—different cities, different jurisdictions—how long could he get away with it? Ages, probably, because he’s smart. Like me. Most of them aren’t as smart as Teddy and me. Did you see the news this morning? Laureline Mackenzie was found in a guy’s basement. He cut out her tattoo. I liked that orchid. I spent hours Photoshopping it onto pictures to load on Teddy’s old phone.”

  Amanda’s eyes closed for a beat. “And the other women?”

  “Zurich was mine. And the alleyway in Manila. There were a couple of others you didn’t even find. You don’t question your sources, do you? You don’t corroborate a story; we learned that at school. But you believe everything you read just because it’s on the Internet. It’s actually really antifeminist the way your mind works. You think that because the victims are strippers and hookers, nobody cares about them.”

  “But the police called about the one in Manila.”

  “Take a moment, Amanda, give yourself time to catch up . . .”

  Josie had regained her swagger as soon as she turned her back on her father. “But that was a man’s voice,” Amanda said.

  “Voice modulation software is child’s play—literally, kids at my school use it to pull pranks on their friends.”

  Ed let out a low moan that sent a shudder through Josie’s shoulders, and she went to him, tugging the pillow under his head, heavy-handed fussing like a child with a hamster. Whispering apologies. Amanda wanted to slap her fingers off his skin.

  “What about Awmi?”

  Josie wiped her hands over her face—the serrated blade barely missing her skin—in a gesture that mimicked Ed. “I don’t want to talk about that now.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too much. On top of this.” She gestured at her father. “I just feel . . . responsible.”

  “Did you trick her into drinking the bleach?”

  “Of course not. How would that even be possible?” She rolled her eyes. “She was pregnant, and Teddy gave her the money for an abortion, but she couldn’t go through with it. Said she was in love with one of the gardeners. He cut fresh jasmine for her every night when she walked with him. And the weird thing is, she didn’t seem at all worried about the future, just said God would find a way. She was happy. This man was prepared to give up his job in Singapore and take her to his country. And I got kind of angry, you know, because she was nothing, really. She wasn’t pretty or clever or accomplished like I am, and yet nobody feels like that for me. Teddy doesn’t love me enough to give up everything to be with me—”

  Amanda was about to jump in to say that Josie was loved, but she went on.

  “So I told Awmi you’d send her home as soon as you found out about the baby—that you’d be angry because you can’t have children—and she’d never see her boyfriend again.” Josie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I told her she either had to have the abortion and lose the baby, or keep the baby and lose her lover.”

  “You told her that?”

  “Maybe what I said had something to do with her decision?” Josie’s hands were shaking so hard the knife wavered in her grasp, and Amanda had competing urges: grab them to stop the trembling or grab them to snatch the knife. “I’m sorry, but I was . . .”

  “Jealous?”

  “That’s bad, isn’t it? Jealous of a maid.”

  Amanda bit back a retort, not wanting to anger her. “It’s a lot to carry o
n your conscience. Did you tell your dad?”

  Josie scratched the tip of the blade along the sheet, snagging cotton threads as she went. When she looked up, her hands were still again. “I hate it when you don’t understand. It’s so frustrating.”

  Amanda held out both hands in a gesture inviting Josie to share.

  “I spend every minute of every day trying to get Teddy to love me. I get top grades, I’m on the swim team, I’m into his music, but he doesn’t care. So I take another tack; I start fucking up. I get suspended, I post sex pictures on the Internet—”

  “You posted pictures of yourself?”

  “Still, he doesn’t care. He’s more interested in that girl from the British High Commission. There’s always another one waiting in the wings. I thought when I got rid of you—”

  “Is that what all this is about? You’ve been trying to scare me off?”

  “But you’re tenacious, aren’t you? A pit bull who won’t let go. Either that or you’re a doormat. I can’t decide. What happened to Awmi was horrid, but it was useful for my purposes: it woke you up. And once you started peering into my cage, I fed you peanuts. All along, you thought you were my keeper, but really you were my monkey.”

  A prickle of anger stirred Amanda’s insides. “Great line. Did you practice it in front of a mirror?” There was a grim satisfaction in seeing the teenager roll her eyes yet again, only with less conviction now and no snappy comeback. Amanda relished the moment as she might enjoy scratching an itch until it bled.

  The muslin curtains swirled in the evening breeze. Amanda had the same urge to jump that she’d felt for weeks. Only now she knew what she was running from: not Ed but his daughter. Now Amanda understood why she’d never been able to touch the girl: not because she didn’t have a maternal instinct, but because she did have a survival instinct. She’d sensed danger all along.

  Holding her hands forward so that Josie could see she posed no threat, Amanda moved toward the open window. She couldn’t jump—they were on the fifth floor—and she had to work out how to get Ed from the room. Maybe she could shout to someone in the street?