The Third Wife

by Lisa Jewell

  “Honestly,” said Maya, already mentally planning to leave the place cleaner than she’d found it, “it’s fine. It’s only a couple of days and you know how much I love your children. It’s genuinely a pleasure.”

  Caroline smiled at her and said, “Thank you, Maya. You’re so, so kind.”

  There was something vaguely melodramatic about her demeanor and it occurred to Maya that maybe Adrian had been talking to Caroline about her again. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Caroline had virtually chosen Maya’s engagement ring for him, after all. Adrian saw Caroline as a peerless arbiter of good taste and the font of all emotional intelligence. She was his go-to friend if a client needed advice about interiors, if one of his junior partners was having personal problems that were affecting their performance at work, if he needed to choose something nice for Cat’s birthday—or if his new wife had fallen out of love with him and he wanted to know how to fix it.

  “Are you OK?” Caroline asked, widening her pale blue eyes.

  “I’m fine,” said Maya brightly.

  “You know, Maya, that if you ever need to talk to me . . . about Adrian. About anything . . .”

  Maya did not want to talk to Caroline. Not now. It was an offer that should have come a lot earlier to have held any substance. She shook her head and smiled. “Thank you,” she said.

  Caroline gave her one last compassionate smile before checking the time on the clock above Maya’s head and snapping back into scary Caroline mode. “Shit,” she said, “I need to run. Kids,” she called out, her eyes and hands inside her handbag, searching for something, “Mummy’s going now! Come and kiss me!”

  Beau raced from the sofa and threw himself into Caroline’s arms. She squeezed him hard, kissed Otis on the top of his head and blew a kiss to Pearl, who was blowing her kisses from the garden door, a dog held under her arm.

  There was a false exit, followed by the sound of Caroline crashing back down the basement stairs, grabbing a file of paperwork, and then finally the sound of the front door slamming shut in her wake, a whistle of air being syringed through the house and sudden stillness.

  Maya looked around, nervously. A whole house. Three whole children. Two whole dogs. A full eight hours. And she had responsibility for all of it. She smiled at Beau, who was standing looking over Otis’s shoulder at whatever he was doing on the laptop. “So,” she said to him, “fancy helping me to load the dishwasher?”

  Beau looked at her as though she’d just suggested a bonus day at school.

  “I never load the dishwasher,” he said. His sweet face was a study in frosty affrontedness. It wasn’t one of Beau’s own faces. He’d picked it up from elsewhere and was trying it on for size.

  “That’s OK,” she said. “I’m sure I can manage it by myself.”

  She peered surreptitiously over Otis’s and Beau’s shoulders at the screen as she collected bowls and cups from the surfaces, trying to work out what they were both looking at, checking that it was age-appropriate. It looked like some kind of virtual world peopled by colored blobs with black eyes and a variety of interesting hats. Each blob appeared to be in charge of a smaller blob and there was lots of whizzing about and things coming up in speech bubbles, much too fast for Maya to read them. It looked perfectly harmless.

  As she stacked things into the dishwasher she looked out across the basement and into the garden, where Pearl was still combing a dog. Pearl looked up and caught Maya’s eye and she smiled, very briefly, before returning her gaze to the dog. Between them the TV was still on, Go, Diego, Go!, lots of shouting in Spanish. She closed the door of the dishwasher and walked over to the coffee table, found the right remote and turned it off.

  “Why did you turn it off?” cried Beau, looking at her in horror.

  “Because nobody was watching it.”

  “I was watching it!”

  “No, you weren’t,” she said gently. “You were playing on the computer with Otis.”

  “I am not playing on the computer. I’m just standing here. Otis is playing on the computer!”

  “Well, whatever you were doing, you weren’t watching the TV. And it’s really loud.”

  “Turn it back on!” he cried.

  Maya looked at Beau in surprise. Otis looked at Maya in surprise. It was the first time Maya had ever heard Beau shout at anyone. She had recently started to notice the small flashes of resentment behind his eyes, the tiny shrugs of his head, but this was the first time she had seen him submit properly to his urges.

  “Please don’t talk to me like that,” she said. “It’s not very nice.”

  “Well, it’s not very nice for you to turn off the TV without asking me.” He was softening. The devil was climbing back into its box.

  “OK, Beau,” said Maya. “I’m sorry, I should have asked. Would you mind if I turned off the TV until you’re ready to start watching it again?”

  He shook his head.

  “Thank you.”

  Maya breathed in deeply, just once, and carefully placed the remote control back on the table. Pearl was watching curiously through the garden doors.

  “I didn’t know you were a professional dog groomer as well as a champion ice-skater,” said Maya, joining her in the apple-blossom-heavy garden.

  Pearl shrugged. “I just watched some tutorials on YouTube,” she said. “It’s really easy. They used to get so stressed out at the dog parlor. Now they really enjoy it.” She pressed the palm of her hand hard into the stomach of the dog and it was clear that every muscle in the animal’s body was relaxed. “Was that Beau shouting?” she asked.

  “Yes, it was,” said Maya, “believe it or not.”

  Pearl pulled up one of the dog’s legs and tackled some matted hair with a small metal comb. “That’s not like him,” she said.

  Maya sat down. “No,” she sighed. “No, it’s not at all.”

  “He said something weird the other day,” said Pearl, picking apart the matted fur. “He said he wished he’d been a big boy when Daddy left because then he would have stopped him.”

  “Oh.” Maya felt an emotional blow to her middle section. She cupped it subconsciously.

  “Yeah. It’s weird. I mean, he was only one when Daddy left so as far as he knows it’s always been like this.” She shrugged and rolled the dog away from her, pulled up the opposing leg, started the process again.

  “That is kind of strange,” said Maya. “I wonder what brought that on.”

  “Maybe it’s something he’s picked up from nursery? You know? The other kids living with their mums and dads? Maybe he’s just worked out that he’s different?”

  Maya wriggled awkwardly in her seat.

  “He seems quite cross, you know? When we got back from Suffolk he was saying, ‘Why can’t Daddy come and sleep here? Why does he have to go to that other place?’ And he was asking me and Otis about what happened when Daddy left; he kept saying, ‘Why did you let him? Why didn’t you stop him?’ And acting like it was all our fault, or something.”

  “Oh God.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Pearl. “It’s Daddy’s fault. He’s the one who thought it was OK to go.”

  “Are you cross with him?”

  “Not really,” said Pearl. “I do miss him though. I liked how he used to wake up really early, like me. So all the lights used to be on down here when I came down. And he’d be sitting there, in his dressing gown. He used to make me breakfast. And ask me about my dreams. Before everyone else got up. Just the two of us . . . I miss that.”

  A smile had set itself hard onto Maya’s face. She thought of her own unexceptional childhood and the mundane details she’d taken for granted: the double humps in her parents’ bed in the morning, the tweed overcoat hanging by the door, the beers in the fridge, the football on the TV on Saturday afternoons; the strong arms to carry her to bed when she’d fallen asleep in th
e car, the two heads in the front seats of the car on drives to visit friends, and yes, she remembered it now, her father up first, sitting in the kitchen every morning in his trousers and a T-shirt, his business shirt hanging on the back of his chair, stirring leaves around a teapot and greeting her with puffy eyes as she appeared in the doorway with a gruff: “Good morning and how are you today?”

  “What about your special nights at Daddy’s flat?” Maya asked tenderly. “Do they help? Do they make it better?”

  Pearl shrugged. “I guess,” she said. “But it’s not the same.”

  “No,” said Maya. “No. I don’t suppose it is.”

  They sat in silence for a while. Pearl let the dog go and wiped hair from the palms of her hands.

  “What would you think if Daddy said he was coming back to live here?”

  Pearl turned and threw Maya a look of hope and wonder. “What?”

  “No, I don’t mean he is. I just mean, would that be nice? Would it be good? Or would it be weird?”

  “Well, it would be weird in one way because it would mean that he’d split up with you and he’d be sad and stuff.” She rolled the excess hair into a tiny ball between her hands and let it fall to the ground. “But in another way it would be really great. Although . . .”

  Maya waited for her to speak.

  “In a way it would be weird because I’d just be scared, you know, waiting for him to do it again.”

  “You think he’d do it again?”

  Pearl gave her a withering look. “Dad?” she said. “Yes. Of course he would. He’s addicted to love.”

  Maya laughed.

  “It’s not funny,” said Pearl. “He is. Mum told me. She said that’s why he left us. Because he’s addicted to being in love and he’s not mature enough to deal with real life. You know, people being grumpy and boring and stuff.”

  “Your mum said that to you?”

  “Yes. My mum treats me like an equal. She doesn’t tell me stupid fairy tales about things.” She shrugged. “It’s better that way. It’s like, when I’m grown up, I’ll know what to expect. And I won’t marry a man who is addicted to being in love. I’ll marry a man who likes it when I’m grumpy.”

  Maya smiled. And then, feeling the softness of intimacy in the air, the openness of their mutual channels, she said, “Do you ever hate me, Pearl?”

  “No,” Pearl replied, rather suddenly.

  “Really?”

  “Why would I hate you?”

  “Because I let your Daddy leave you all.”

  “I told you. That wasn’t your fault. If it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else.”

  “What about your mum? Does she hate me?”

  Pearl looked up at Maya through her pale eyelashes and then looked down again. “I don’t think so,” she said, quietly. “I think . . .” She paused. “I think she just feels sorry for you.”

  “Sorry for me!”

  “Yes, because . . .” She stopped again, checking herself for the sake of damage limitation. “Mum just thinks he’ll leave you, too.” She shrugged apologetically. “That’s all.”

  Maya nodded. Of course that’s what Caroline would think. She would have to think that to make everything more palatable. “And Otis. What do you think Otis thinks? About me?”

  “I don’t know what Otis thinks about anything. He’s not the chatty type.” She sucked her lips together and raised her brow. “But I don’t think he hates you. I don’t think anyone hates you.”

  Maya laughed gruffly. “You’d be surprised.” She let a silence fall, because here it was, a small window of opportunity and she didn’t want to miss it. “Have you ever heard anyone say anything? About me? You know, nasty stuff?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t just mean family. I mean, like, other people. You know, maybe family friends.”

  “No,” she said again, shaking her head forcefully. And then she opened her mouth, as though to say something before shutting it again.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t mind. Honestly. I’d rather know.”

  Pearl sighed and said, “Well, Charlotte said something. In Suffolk, that was a bit horrible.”

  “Oh,” said Maya cautiously, “really? Like what?”

  “Oh, just something about your hair. I can’t even remember what it was.”

  Maya caught her breath. “Did she say I looked like the ugly one in a boy band?”

  “What? No.” Pearl looked mystified by the question.

  “Right, so, what exactly . . . ?”

  “Oh, I can’t remember, just that you looked much prettier with it longer. That you looked a bit manlike. Something like that.”

  Maya thought of the chat she’d had with Charlotte while playing croquet in the sunshine. She remembered how effusive Charlotte had been about her hair. How sweet. Yet the moment Maya was out of earshot she’d been bitching about her behind her back.

  And then she thought again of that strange moment, when Charlotte had walked in on them making up her bed, her and Luke, and the tail end of their conversation that she’d overheard. It wasn’t the first time Charlotte had walked in on Luke and Maya having an intimate conversation. There’d been that time at Susie’s New Year’s Day party too. Did she suspect something? Did she know? Could it be sweet, silly Charlotte trying to oust Maya from the Wolfe family? Could it be her sending those horrible e-mails?

  She sighed. The e-mail situation was spinning around her head like a top gone crazy, ricocheting off the walls of her consciousness, dizzying her to the point of nausea.

  “Sorry,” said Pearl, mistaking Maya’s silence for hurt feelings.

  “No,” said Maya. “No, don’t be silly. It’s fine. I don’t like my hair either; I’m growing it out.”

  “Good,” said Pearl. “I like it longer.”

  “Thank you for your honesty.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Pearl. “I’m a very honest person.”

  “Yes,” said Maya. “Yes, you really are.”

  41

  After the rather explosive start, the rest of the day passed quietly enough. After lunch someone arrived to take Pearl to the rink. Beau asked to go for his afternoon nap shortly afterwards and then, for an hour or so, it was just Maya and Otis in the kitchen together.

  Otis was listening to music now, through the laptop. His eyes never left the screen, while his overlarge feet tapped irritatingly against the plinth of the kitchen counter. Maya looked around her. She had tidied the basement, plumped every cushion, put away every bowl, every felt-tip pen, every piece of paper. The sun had gone behind a bank of clouds and the house felt big and deserted. Maya had only ever been in this house when it was full of people, children and noise. It felt strange and slightly unsettling to be here alone, like being on the set of a popular TV show when all the actors had gone home.

  She offered Otis a drink, a snack; he politely but monosyllabically declined both. And then she passed from the basement and up the stairs towards the upper levels of the house. She looked at the art on the stairs as she passed: the fluid pencil sketches of the children at various stages of their development, the pop art that clashed so perfectly with the watery representations of favorite holiday locations, photographs arranged together in multiple-aperture frames. She stepped into the hallway, towards the oversized dresser bearing more photos and a huge glass vase of plonked-in peonies. A fan of mail had been deposited on a worn-out polka-dot doormat. She reached down for the mail and placed it on the dresser, next to a glass paperweight filled with swirls of aqua-blue and green, and a box of pebbles and shells gathered from beaches on breezy half-term holidays.

  To the left, through double doors, was the formal reception room: button-backed sofas in teal velvet, peacock-print cushions, white floorboards, gilt-edged mirrors, hardbacked books arranged i
n piles on a mirror-topped coffee table. More and more and more photos. More and more beach ephemera. At the other end was a battered piano overhung by a huge canvas of abstract streaks of paint, a large chrome floor lamp with an arced neck and glass doors out onto the wrought-iron spiral staircase. Everything just so, yet conversely looking as though nobody had given any of it so much as a moment’s thought.

  Maya exited this room and continued up the stairs. On the next floor was the study, Caroline’s bedroom and en-suite and up a short flight of steps a palatial bathroom with an antique chandelier hanging at its center.

  She remembered some of the things that Adrian had told her in those early days of their affair about this house, about this marriage. He’d told her that he hated this house, how it was all that he and Caroline had talked about for the five years it had taken to renovate it from its former state of dereliction. He told her how much happier he and Caroline had been in their scruffy house-share, just the two of them and baby Otis.

  “It’s always the house,” he’d said, “that’s where the rot sets in. When women start to care more about cushions than they do about love.”

  Maya had nodded at the time and felt herself a cut above, being as she was a woman who had never given a moment’s serious consideration to a cushion in her life. She had understood him—yes, she had—understood how hard it would be to live with a woman that shallow and uncaring. She had pictured this house then, this perfect prison of cushions and custom-made cabinetry, of lights that had been obsessed over to the point of madness and bathroom tiles that had been discussed and dissected to death. She had imagined it soulless and harsh, the product of a horrible woman and her lack of affection for her poor neglected husband.

  Maya had tried to ignore the kick of surprise to her gut the first time she’d been here. When she’d seen for herself the sweetness of the place, the little touches that shouted family and love: the children’s art and the scribbled portraits, nothing showy, nothing there just for the sake of it. The clutter, the mess, the dents both made and left in the cushions on the sofa. It was, she had realized, the perfect family home, created out of love by a woman who had thought she would live here as part of a family forever. Nothing more, nothing less. He had lied to her. But she let it pass.