by Liz Lawler
Their guests arrived on the dot of three o’clock and her husband welcomed them into his home effusively. Before their arrival he’d put on some easy-listening music in the background, creating a relaxed mood. Ed handed him a couple of bottles of wine and mentioned that he and Anne had got a taxi, which prompted him to immediately offer them drinks. Tess held back until Ed came forward and gave her a light kiss on the cheek. He smiled at her warmly and then Anne stepped forward to do likewise, handing Tess some mint chocolates. Tess smiled into the woman’s eyes and said thank you. It wasn’t as difficult as she’d thought it would be to act happy, as it was nice to have some people there, no one ever having visited before.
During the meal Daniel smiled several times across the dining table at her and she smiled warmly back. He rested his hand on the nape of her neck while topping up her glass of wine and she closed her eyes as if enjoying the contact. She flirted and teased and laughed out loud at Ed’s jokes and kept direct eye contact with Anne whenever she spoke. She had been gracious and amusing, attentive and listening and spinning a make-believe fairy tale that Ed, for one, was believing.
‘So he whisks you away right after you marry and presents you with this wonderful home. And all in secret?’ He laughed, clearly delighted. ‘My God, Daniel, but you’re a romantic. I think it’s a delightful story, Tess, and I truly wish both of you many years of happiness here.’ His gaze rested fondly on his wife. ‘And now, my dear, I think we should leave this relatively newly married couple to enjoy a glass of wine on their own.’ He stood up and went over to pull back his wife’s chair.
At the door he shook hands with his host warmly and kissed his hostess on the cheek. ‘We’ve had a wonderful afternoon, Tess. Simply wonderful.’
‘Yes,’ Anne agreed, smiling directly at Tess. ‘The ambience could not have been more perfect. I commend you, Tess, on a job well done.’
As Tess stood on the front doorstep waving goodbye, her husband lightly squeezed her shoulder. ‘You did a splendid job, Tess. Ed certainly has you up on a pedestal. It was nice how you explained how we came to live here. Anne looked less concerned about you and for that, my sweet, you will be rewarded.’
She closed her eyes in anguish, waiting for him to suggest they go to bed. He bent down and lightly kissed her cheek. ‘You can go to London tomorrow.’
Tess inwardly sighed. She’d given a good performance. She had done a splendid job. Now she had to do another splendid job and uncover her husband’s past. First stop: London.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The customer at the ticket office counter was holding up the queue, loudly arguing with the man behind the window. ‘Too many fucking options,’ she shouted. ‘Paper, regular, e-tickets. How the fuck was I meant to know I had to print a paper ticket? Gonna miss the fucking train now.’
Tess sympathised. She’d be up on the platform now buying a coffee but for having to queue for this prepaid ticket. There was no queue at the ticket vending machines where she would have bought her ticket if she’d had her debit card. Finally able to get to the counter as the woman flounced off in a huff she gave her address and her husband’s name and was handed her seven-day ticket, which she pocketed. She then checked the departure board to find out which platform she needed.
At nine o’clock on a Monday morning the platform wasn’t that busy. She supposed the commuters to London caught earlier trains. She could hardly believe she was standing there, that he was letting her make this trip. Or how quickly he sorted everything out. He had managed to book a removal van for the Wednesday and an Oxfam van for the Tuesday. He’d bought her a seven-day train ticket, made lists of what he wanted kept and what could go to charity. He’d worked a small miracle considering only yesterday he said she could go. Making it all very easy. Before leaving for work he’d handed her thirty pounds ‘spending money’ as if she were a child on a day trip. Which pretty much summed up her new position. She had no access to her own independent income. Pretty clever of him to have taken her bank card, ensuring her reliance on him.
‘Tess!’
She turned and saw an attractive blonde waving at her, walking quickly towards her. A Gucci bag hung over the woman’s wrist, her hand free to hold a Starbucks cup.
She forced a smile. ‘Hello, Vivien.’
Vivien smiled back. ‘So glad I caught you. Daniel rang me last night and said you were going up to London after I rang him yesterday morning to let him know I’d be going. I’d completely forgotten I have a charity meeting there today. That was so sweet of him. Now we can keep each other company, so that will be nice.’
Inwardly, Tess groaned. She would not be able to sit quietly with her thoughts. She would have to listen to this woman babbling for the entire journey. How clever of her husband to ensure she had company. He was getting cleverer by the minute, she was thinking. It felt rather suspicious that Vivien hadn’t remembered this on Friday. Had she really rung him? Or had Daniel asked her to make that up? Maybe after enlightening her of Tess’s mishap at work? She hoped she wasn’t going to be lumbered with her all day. That she did really have a meeting to go to.
Tess smiled as if agreeing. ‘Yes, that will be nice. Thank you, by the way, for the lovely evening. We had a lovely time, and it was nice to meet your friends.’ She thought it best not to mention that she’d seen them again yesterday.
Vivien pulled a guilty face. ‘Mark’s idea. I don’t know them that well. But he knows Daniel is very keen to get to know Ed better. He thinks Daniel is very interested in the research Ed is doing.’
‘Oh right,’ she said lamely, while remembering again his dark warning that she was not to spoil his relationship with Ed Ferris. What was her husband after? Was he hoping to work with him?
‘You look a little pale. Are you OK?’
Tess decided to test her suspicions. ‘Probably just tired from work,’ she replied. ‘It was a busy week.’
‘Work! Of course, you poor darling. My goodness, you put me to shame. Though I have to say I barely have a minute to myself between running our home and my outside interests. Oh, and my charity work, of course. Tess, we could do with someone like you. Especially for the children’s charities. They love it when we get a nurse involved in these things. Surely that handsome husband of yours would rather you did something like that in your spare time. Rather than work? How is he? I never got to ask how he’s settling in. You must be so proud. I know I would be. Mr Daniel Myers. It has a lovely ring to it, don’t you think?’
Tess noticed she placed great emphasis on the word ‘mister’. The title reserved for a consultant surgeon. Vivien clearly wanted her own husband to be called a Mr. Tess didn’t think it had a lovely ring to it. Mr Daniel Myers had taken advantage of his lofty position and let his wife hang out to dry. She answered with a pleasant lie.
‘I suppose it does, and he’s settling in well.’
‘Well, tell him we must do it again, only next time I intend to sit and chat to him.’
Tess’s reply was lost in the noise of the train arriving and she was tempted to let Vivien board the train alone and then find somewhere else to sit, but the woman was waving her to follow and Tess had no chance to disappear. She was ushered into the window seat and was trapped.
Vivien was off again as soon as she sat down beside her. ‘I meant to travel first class, but the irritating man at the gate said I couldn’t upgrade to first on the train unless I went to the ticket office. Only on weekends, for God’s sake. What difference does it make if you upgrade on a weekday, I ask you? They’re getting money for it. It’s not as if I’m unwilling to pay for the privilege. I do so hate to be hovered over by those left standing.’
Tess closed her eyes and wished the woman would shut up. The ones left standing could hear her.
‘You do look tired, a little peaky. Maybe you need a spa day. I go to a fabulous spa and you could come as my guest. It would do you the world of good.’
Tess found she agreed with her husband in wondering how in God’s n
ame Mark put up with her. He seemed a quiet, gentle man. Her full face of make-up must have taken hours to put on. And unless she had a hairdresser to hand at some ungodly hour of the day, she must have been one in a previous life to have her curled and swept, pinned and tucked hair so professionally coiffured. She was driving Tess nuts and Tess was pleading for a miracle, an earthquake, anything to make her shut up.
It happened a moment later. A gasp at the sight of brown liquid covering the cream skirt, followed by the yelp as it scalded her skin. Then the shout. ‘Oh Christ, not my fucking Chanel suit!’
She was out of her seat in a flash, shoving her way past standees to get to the toilet before Tess could offer her help. She looked around at those standing and saw several holding Starbucks cups but no one staring after Vivien or looking guilty of the deed. Vivien’s own Starbucks cup was still sat innocently on the table. Her seat was quickly taken. A young woman in an equally smart suit, but of a more sensible colour, pulled out her laptop, set it on the table and settled herself properly.
‘Do you mind?’ she asked.
Tess didn’t.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
From Paddington Station to her husband’s flat was less than a ten-minute walk. Tess didn’t want to stop and look around at the familiar. The terrace of white houses she was passing was like a slap to her senses. Hyde Park, where they had their first date, was only around the corner. Many of the places they’d gone to were close by. Alexander Fleming Laboratory Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Kensington Gardens, St James’s Park, and Little Venice with its colourful canal boats where they’d sat and shared a hot chocolate laced with brandy.
She stared at what was once his home, and hers too for those few weeks, and felt the raw emptiness inside her. The ground-floor flat in this large Victorian house was where it all began. Her foolish dream had dared her to believe it was something real. There was nothing she now found pleasing about it. It was a sham. A trick of the worst kind.
Taking the bunch of keys out of her bag she found the one to open the front door. She would spend the day searching every hidey-hole of this flat for evidence of a first wife. She would go through her husband’s personal effects like a detective and read everything twice if need be. He’d already shown he was good at hiding things. So she’d have to look extra hard.
The air was stale as she walked through the main living area to the French doors at the back. Using a second key she opened them out onto the courtyard. It was private and sheltered from wind by the backs of houses, the brick walls painted white and the floor paved with large slabs. It was a gem and would fetch its asking price. The bay tree she bought as a kind of moving in present, though grown a little unruly, had survived unattended. The other potted plants had perished. She would leave the tree. It was not on his list.
Walking back indoors she opened the doors of two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and a window in the kitchen.
It surprised her now that he hadn’t sorted out the contents before moving. Not even kitchenware or books. Had he thought it would just magic itself away? The burning question was how he afforded it all. He was a successful doctor, yes, but he was not yet forty. He had not worked as a consultant long enough yet to make this sort of money.
Vicious little thoughts kept nipping at her mind. Had he married someone wealthy and this was her money? His new home, was that her money too? Did he become wealthy from a divorce settlement or very rich because she had died?
From her bunch of keys she chose the one to unlock his study and went inside. A large window looked out onto the courtyard and provided light out onto it at night. She realised this was the first time she had been into this room as she’d never had reason to before. At a glance she was disappointed. He had already emptied it of files and office equipment, leaving just his desk, chair, an empty filing cabinet and a wall of built-in open shelves. There was nothing out on the surfaces, and just one framed picture on the wall. She stepped closer for a better look and felt a shock of pain. It was powerfully disturbing. She could not look at it without feeling it. The charcoal drawing was a macabre image of a mother holding her dead child and showing raw grief. The child lay cradled in the mother’s lap with eyes closed and looking lifeless. The mother was holding the child in a desperate way, tucking legs and arms around the child and burying her head against the small chest as if every fibre of her being was straining to hold onto life. Tess wished she hadn’t looked at it. It would haunt her.
She sprang back startled when the doorbell rang and quickly gathered her wits. It would be the estate agent. Tess showed him into the living room after he introduced himself as Monty. He shook hands and beamed at her. ‘Pleasure to meet you, Mrs Myers. I hear you have everything under control and should have this place cleared by Thursday, which is splendid.’
Tess looked around the spacious open-plan dining and living area, at the shelves of books, the collection of music CDs, the lamps, curtains, cushions and mirrors and pictures on the walls, and through an archway into the kitchen that had cupboard doors closed on mountains of stuff.
She smiled. ‘Yes, lucky me. My husband has thoughtfully supplied me with two packets of different colour sticky labels. I just have to stick the right colour on everything.’
‘Splendid,’ he said again, rubbing his hands as if excited they were both going to play a game. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it. Just checking we’re still on song.’
Tess liked the dapper little man who clearly enjoyed his job.
‘We are, Monty. While you’re here I just wanted to ask you something. Our new home in Bath, was it you who arranged that for us?’
He shook his head, looking surprised. ‘No, I would have if I’d known Mr Myers was buying. What did he buy?’
‘A seven-bedroom detached Georgian.’
‘In Bath!’ He scratched his head looking quite distressed. ‘Jeez Louise, that would have cost a pretty penny. What are we looking at? Three mill?’
Tess actually didn’t know so she shrugged as if he’d guessed about right.
The man sighed, looking a lot less happy in his job now.
‘I’ll tell him off when I get back to Bath,’ she declared, to show she was on his side. ‘Especially after getting him this beautiful place.’
‘Do,’ he urged. ‘I would have loved a visit to Bath.’
‘Well, if it’s any consolation he loved it here, Monty. As did his first wife.’
He looked at her with a puzzled expression. ‘First wife? I don’t recall.’
Tess laughed. She’d planned to if she drew a blank. ‘Me, of course, silly, unless you know of any other wife. I lived here too for a little while.’
‘I see,’ he said, laughing politely, his eyes a little over-wide, one foot turning in the direction of the front door. ‘I’ll get in touch with your husband about keys et cetera, but give me a call if you get any hold-ups.’
Tess would love to see his expression if she told him her phone had been confiscated so she wouldn’t be able to call him. She imagined him saying something like, ‘Well, that’s splendid.’
After seeing him to the door she set about doing the job she was there for. She took from her bag the two separate lists he’d written and a packet of lime green and a packet of shocking pink sticky labels.
The list of things to give away was the much longer list. It even included the linen which was much newer than what they had at the house. He was either being very generous or preferred what they were using now. The king-size mattress on his bed was a luxury Hypnos and though it wouldn’t fit their present bed it could have replaced one of the other mattresses in the spare rooms. Not that she should care or let it worry her; these were all his things, the same as back at the house. He’d chosen to have all that stuff there, not her. She’d had no choice in any of it. The only thing she’d ever chosen was the bay tree and that was something he’d chosen not to keep.
She wished she was on the list of ‘not to keeps’ and stuck a lime-green label on her fore
head in the hope she would be collected with all the other things he was parting with. She may get taken to a new home where she was more fitting to her new owner and her clothes and manner perfectly acceptable. She groaned and gave herself a mental shake; she was wasting what little energy she had without dragging her mind lower with silly thoughts.
She sighed and transferred the label from her forehead to a vase. She had a whole day to keep searching. So what if Monty didn’t know about a first wife? Why should he? He had sold Daniel the flat not helped him move in. She’d find something. She just had to keep looking.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tess settled back in her seat and tried to relax. She had an hour-and-a-half train journey before she reached Bath. She might as well rest. Or she could read? Reaching into her rucksack she pulled out the little black notebook, unsure why she had taken it with her. She didn’t know whether to call it a diary or a journal, or what it was: An Account. She opened it and started to read.
As I’m writing this my eyes are drawn to the red nail polish staining my fingers. It is a brighter red, like fresh blood, and will stand out against the deeper red in the wallpaper. I have painted the small tear and hope he won’t notice the repair. I am running out of platitudes and his moods are less tolerant. He now looks for things he can punish me for as if he needs the daily dose of power. He is home. I have just heard the car so I will stop writing now.
