by Lisa Jewell
He went back to his news feed and scrolled idly for a while. There was Otis, posting some crappy YouTube link. He’d changed his profile photo again; he seemed to change it every two and a half hours. This one showed him staring intensely into the webcam, his face slightly bloated by the lack of depth. He looked psychotic. Luke sometimes wondered if Otis wasn’t a bit psycho. He found it quite hard to relate to his younger brother these days. He was a closed book, like Pearl, but the difference was that Pearl had always been inscrutable, ever since she was a tiny toddler, while Otis had started off easy to read and became inscrutable over time. And it didn’t suit him.
Luke clicked on a few links, added to a couple of comment threads, and then he got bored. He glanced up from the screen. His eye found its way to a framed photo of Maya further along the kitchen counter and he felt that familiar thump of despair, that kick of regret. He stared at the photo for a moment or two before opening up his dad’s photo drive. He scrolled down until he got to folders dated earlier than April 2011. There was one: Cornwall ’10. Luke had been there. All of them had been there. It was back in the days when they’d all done everything together, one enormous, multi-tentacled octopus of a family. It had been a blustery half-term week, sunshine and showers, gallons of wine and cooking rotas, pub lunches and kids and dogs running around everywhere. It had been back in the days when his dad had bent over backwards to make sure that nobody ever felt the sharp end of divorce. When he’d made it seem like an advantage to be part of a broken family. He’d almost felt sorry, back then, for people who only had one family.
Luke flicked through the photos. His father took good photos. He had an expensive camera and he knew how to use it. Luke smiled at the group shots; there were the little ones, so much littler then: Beau still a toddler, Otis smiling widely in a way he rarely did these days, funny little Pearl, wearing a dress. She did not wear dresses anymore. And there, on the far right of the shot, was Maya.
Luke sucked in his breath. It wasn’t a great photograph of her. She was wearing some heinous professional walking gear, a blue shiny thing with a hood. That was his father’s influence. He always favored practicality over style. But still her pure loveliness shone out. She had her arm around Pearl’s shoulders and Luke could almost imagine that she was smiling at him. Just for him. And that had been the problem really. Maya had been one of those people who made everyone feel as though they were the most important person in the world. As though they were special. And like a total moron Luke had thought that he was more special than anyone. More special even than his dad. His flesh still crawled when he thought about that awful night at the pub, a few weeks after Cornwall, when she had stared into his eyes and hung on to his every word and brushed his arm gently with her fingertips and shared confidences with him and he’d thought . . . well, it didn’t matter anymore what he’d thought. The fact was he’d been wrong.
Maya of course had been gracious and sweet. Had said she was “flattered.” Yeah, right. Even now, coming up for two years later, Luke felt his skin flush hot with humiliation. He’d stopped hanging out with the family so much after that. So no, he couldn’t blame his dad entirely for the fact that they rarely saw each other. But he could blame his dad for the rest of it: for never calling, for not arranging the big holidays anymore, for turning up to family gatherings looking thin and distracted. And for letting Maya go out one day and never come back.
He spent another hour looking at family photographs. His eyes swam with tears and he got up at one point to blow his nose. He peered at his face in the mirror, half relishing the melodramatic ugliness of it, half fearing that he wouldn’t be able to leave the house today. He poured himself more grape juice and then went back to the laptop, patting at his eyes with the screwed-up tissue. He wanted more. He needed more. He searched the entire C drive and network for the word “Maya.”
He read through her accounts, her marking notes, a recipe for chicken tagine that his dad called “Maya’s Chicken,” checklists, “Maya’s passport.” And there, strangely buried away in a folder called “Transfers” in a subfolder called “New Folder,” was a file called “E-mails.”
Luke clicked it open.
It was a Word document. Three pages of copied and pasted e-mails, all addressed to Maya. All unsigned. Dated from July 2010 to April 2011. And all beginning with the words “Dear Bitch.”
PART TWO
15
July 2010
The sun shone too brightly through the living-room window, turning the screen of her laptop into a dark-glassed mirror. Maya swiveled it around and moved to the armchair. Billie looked at her, slightly affronted by her relocation, and then turned her attention to an itch on her hind leg.
Maya was looking for a cottage to rent for the October half-term. Adrian had asked her as a favor since she wasn’t at work this week. It was a tall order. At least five bedrooms, but preferably six, walking distance from a pub so they wouldn’t all have to haul themselves into three vehicles every time they fancied a pub lunch, near a train station so that Cat could get there and back on the train when she came for the weekend. It needed a good-sized garden for the kids and the dogs, possibly with a trampoline or some swings, but no dangerous water features or pools, as many bathrooms as possible and a “reasonable standard of décor.”
Eighteen months ago Maya would have had a poor grasp of what constituted a “reasonable standard of décor” but after three such family holidays she now knew that she needed to avoid carpeted bathrooms, metal Venetian blinds, fake stained glass, dirty shower curtains, spider-filled anterooms and candlewick bedspreads, all of which had caused various members of the extended Wolfe family some kind of distress at various points. She had also been directed to avoid anything cheap modern: “You know, chrome, red leather, oversized canvases of the innards of orchids.” This was from Caroline. Maya liked Caroline. She really did. But she was head of visual merchandising at Liberty and was all about the aesthetic. Susie on the other hand, dear who-gives-a-shit-as-long-as-it-smells-nice Susie, she would keep on smiling and saying, “I don’t mind, really I don’t, whatever you all think,” and then she would arrive and immediately find the one thing wrong with it: “Oh, what a shame the sun goes behind those trees so early.” Or: “Dear God, what are these mattresses filled with, mushroom soup?”
So Maya knew she needed to spend at least a day on the Internet, studying each page of information with forensic attention to detail, blowing up each picture and studying it for flaws, reading and rereading the descriptions for potential traps like “bedroom four is accessible only from the kitchen” or “the friendly owner lives on-site and is always available for assistance and sightseeing advice,” before she could even begin sending out links for the others to look at.
She could never have imagined when she’d first set eyes on the shambling, scruffy form of Adrian Wolfe on her first day at Adrian Wolfe Associates two years ago that she would end up as his wife. She was a temp at the time, halfway through her summer break after teacher training college, brought in for a week as a “girl Friday.” That was back when Adrian’s practice was just seven people in a room above a pub in Tufnell Park. Everyone piled on top of everyone. A lowly paid, paper-shuffling temp had as much visibility as a partner back then. She’d stayed for nearly a month in the end, long enough to have been to the pub a few times, to have sat at the kitchen counter chatting over mugs of tea, long enough to have become one of the guys. And, by a matter of just two hours, long enough for Adrian to catch her forcefully by her arm as she passed him a drink in the pub at her leaving drinks and say, “Where are you going after? I’d love to buy you a thank-you dinner.”
By that time, of course, Maya knew that Adrian had two families, that his life was a wobbling Jenga tower, one extracted brick away from toppling over. She had heard his late-night phone calls to Caroline explaining he’d be late again and the echo of Caroline’s long-suffering sigh at the other end of the line. She�
�d met Caroline, once, one of the most intimidating women she’d ever encountered. Tall, naturally blond, unsmiling. She found it hard to imagine how Caroline and Adrian had ever found their way to one another. But then she’d met Susie a few months into their relationship, and it had all made perfect sense. She could see that Caroline had been nothing more than an inverse reaction to his first wife. She tried not to dwell too much on what that made her.
Adrian had assured Maya all the way through the two months of their illicit affair that it was all over between him and Caroline; that they barely spoke these days; that she was distant; that she was completely out of love with him. And, given how graciously and peaceably Caroline had let Adrian go, how kind Caroline had been to Maya from their first meeting and how few ripples their affair appeared to cause in the waters of Adrian’s family, Maya could only assume that he’d been telling the truth.
And here they were, two years later, not just living in a flat together but married. She had a brilliant job as a year-two teacher in a posh girls’ school in Highgate. Adrian’s practice had exploded and was now based in a huge studio in Farringdon, employing thirty-eight people, most of whom did all the work—meaning he now took Fridays off.
Caroline liked her. Susie appeared to love her. She got on really well with all the kids. Everyone said that things were much better since Maya had come into Adrian’s life. Everything was perfect. Truly perfect.
Except for the e-mail.
It had arrived in her inbox yesterday.
She’d had to leave the room when she saw it, as if it was a bad smell that she needed to escape from. She’d clasped her heart and then the kitchen counter. Then, a few moments later, she’d come back to it. She’d shaken the screensaver off with the mouse and there it was.
Dear Bitch
I can’t believe it’s been two years since you stole somebody else’s husband. I didn’t think you and Big Daddy would last longer than a couple of months. But for some reason you’re still here! Have you not worked it out yet? You’re not wanted. Everyone’s pretending they love you so much but they don’t. They hate you. So why don’t you go now? Stop acting like the lovely little wifey and get your own life instead of crashing other people’s.
The e-mail address was [email protected].
An involuntary laugh had slipped from her body as she read.
Nervous laughter.
Then a wave of nausea had passed over her. The Lone Voice.
The e-mail was written in the tone of an objective observer, but the sentiment seemed entirely personal. She knew, instantly, and without a doubt, that it was one of them. It was a Wolfe. One of the children. One of the wives. One of the people who smiled so sweetly at her, who hugged her on greeting and kissed her on departing, who told her how happy she made Adrian, who praised her cooking, admired her shoes, played with her hair, sat on her lap, drank tea that she made, went on holidays that she booked. Told her that they loved her. The nausea passed and was replaced by tears.
The faces of Adrian’s family passed through her mind like a police identity lineup. Each one she discounted immediately.
She was about to press forward to send it to Adrian at his work e-mail but then changed her mind. It might freak him out. She did not want to freak him out. She didn’t want to worry him. And she didn’t want whoever it was to get into trouble. Instead she moved it into her junk folder, where she wouldn’t have to look at it every time she checked her e-mail.
She’d been bullied at school for four years by a group of blond-ponytailed girls who’d taken exception to her waist-length flame-red hair and freckled arms. Every day had been like a living nightmare. They’d called her Red Rum. Asked her about her pubic hair. Sent her cruel letters. Cornered her in the playground and terrorized her. It had only ended when she’d left school at sixteen. And it hadn’t been character-building. All it had taught her was to appease and to please.
Which was why her affair with Adrian had been so out of character. The potential to hurt people, to piss people off, to make people not like her. It made her shudder, even now, to think how close she’d come to her own personal apocalypse.
She checked her e-mail account again now, flicking away briefly from a farmhouse in Fowey that was perfect in every way apart from a lethal-looking duck pond in the garden. It had been more than twenty-four hours now since the e-mail. With every moment that passed without a second e-mail, the more relaxed she became, the more convinced that the whole thing had been a bizarre one-off.
She sent an e-mail to the owner of the farmhouse in Fowey asking if they had any means of covering over the duck pond and then she made herself a cup of tea. She heard the ping of new e-mail landing in her inbox and she sat back down in the armchair. She assumed it was the owner of the house in Fowey. It was not.
Dear Bitch
By the way, this will keep happening until you get the message and get out of their lives. So you’d better get used to it. Or get out.
Maya felt the corners of her consciousness begin to wrap themselves around her eyes. She tried to control her breathing, but it was too late. She was back in the playground being cornered by her tormentors. The panic descended and the darkness took hold of her.
16
June 2012
Adrian sat on a hard plastic chair in the waiting area of Kentish Town police station. He had a meeting booked with DI Ian Mickelson at 10:15 a.m. and it was currently 10:25 a.m. In his hands he had his laptop zipped into a rubberized envelope and a print-off of the e-mails that Luke had given him upon his breathless arrival at Caroline’s on Saturday afternoon.
He had no idea what this might achieve. There had been no criminal investigation into Maya’s death; the coroner’s verdict plus two witness statements and a toxicology report had seen to that. Death by misadventure. She’d drunk too much. She’d fallen under a bus. These things happen.
DI Ian Mickelson finally appeared in the doorway. He was tall, as tall as Adrian, but young and remarkably good-looking. He apologized and apologized again; he shook Adrian’s hand and then he led him to a small interview room, where he directed a younger plain-clothed policeman to get them both some tea.
“So,” he began, glancing down at a notebook in his hand, “this is . . . cyber-bullying? Yes?”
“Well, yes, sort of. My wife, Maya, she died in April last year. She got knocked down by a night bus on Charing Cross Road.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.”
“Yes,” said Adrian, “and, well, the circumstances of her death always struck me as totally out of character. I mean, she was drunk, for one. Eight times over. Enough to kill her. She was tiny. And not only that but drinking alone, it appears. Or at least none of her friends ever came forward to say they’d been with her. So, we must assume . . .” He lost his momentum for a second, imagining again the sheer wretchedness of Maya drinking vodka shots on her own. “Anyway”—he brought himself back—“Maya died, we buried her, we tried to get on with our lives and then my son came to live with me, just over a week ago. He was using my laptop on Saturday. And he found a folder, hidden somewhere in the bowels of my home drive, filled with pages of these . . .”
He passed the papers across the table to DI Mickelson, who pulled them closer to himself with the tips of his big fingers and cleared his throat. Adrian watched him, silently, monitoring his facial expressions for signs of shock and distaste.
A few moments later, DI Mickelson pushed the papers away from himself an inch or two, again with his fingertips, and leaned back in his chair. He pulled a breath in through his teeth and said, “Very unpleasant. Very unpleasant indeed.”
“So,” said Adrian, “what do you think? Is there anything we can do?”
“Well, yes, we can certainly look into this. I assume you have the original e-mails?” He nodded at Adrian’s laptop.
“Well, no,” he replied. “It looks like Maya del
eted them all. I’m not exactly a technical whiz kid but I’ve had a root about, and I can’t find the originals anywhere. Just these cut-and-pasted copies. But it’s all definitely connected. I mean, look”—he pointed at the last e-mail—“right there. April the eighteenth, that was the day before she died. And there were no other e-mails from this person. I went straight into Maya’s e-mail account after her death, looking for clues, you know, and this person, this Dear Bitch person, never showed their face again. Clear evidence that they were involved somehow in Maya’s death.”
“Yes,” said DI Mickelson, running his fingertips around a button on his bright white polo shirt. “I can absolutely see that there must be some connection. But I’ve looked at the files, Mr. Wolfe, and whichever way I look at it, nobody was directly responsible for killing your wife. Two separate people saw her fall into the path of the bus; it was three thirty in the morning; the streets were virtually empty. If there’d been another person involved, the witnesses would have seen it. The bus driver would have seen it. Someone would have seen it. So while I can look into this for you, open a file, see if we can track this person down, I’m not sure we’ll be able to use it to open an inquiry into your wife’s death. It would be a separate crime. Assuming”—he looked directly at Adrian—“we can get anything out of your laptop to lead us to this person. As it stands, without any hard data,” he sighed, “these could just be a creative-writing exercise.”
Adrian flinched at these words.
“Leave it with me.” DI Mickelson tapped the edge of the laptop with his fingertips, signifying that the meeting had reached its natural conclusion. “I can get someone to have a look at this over the next twenty-four hours; you can come back for it tomorrow. We’ll call you.”
