My Husband's Wife

by Jane Corry

  ‘So you think they made it up? Why would they do that?’

  ‘I’m not them, so I don’t know, do I? But like I said, we didn’t get on. Their television was so loud. We never got any peace. We complained to them, but they didn’t listen. And old man Jones didn’t like it when I told him off about his garden. Talk about being run-down! Reflected badly on ours, which, I might add, I kept in pristine condition. After that, they got really unpleasant. Started threatening us. Threw litter in our garden.’ His mouth tightens. ‘Mind you, accusing me of murder was taking it a touch too far.’

  ‘What about your fingerprints on the boiler?’ I point to the relevant lines on the report. ‘The prosecution said you turned up the water temperature to maximum.’

  Those dark eyes don’t even flicker. ‘I told my defence at the time. Do I need to repeat this? The pilot light was always going out, so I had to keep relighting it. So of course my fingerprints were on the boiler.’

  ‘So how did Sarah die if you didn’t murder her? How can you explain the bruises on her?’

  Those fingers begin to drum the table as though to a silent beat. ‘Look. I’m going to tell you exactly how it happened. But you have to let me tell you in my own way.’

  I realize that this man needs to be in control. Perhaps I’ll let him for a while; see what I can uncover that way. ‘Fine.’

  ‘She was late getting back from work. It was two minutes past eight when she got back. Usually it’s 6 p.m. On the dot.’

  I can’t stop myself from butting in. ‘How can you be so certain?’

  His face suggests I’ve just said something very stupid. ‘Because it took her precisely eleven minutes to walk home from the shop. It’s one of the reasons I encouraged her to take the job, just after we moved in together. It was convenient.’

  My mind goes back to Sarah’s profile. ‘Fashion sales assistant’. It sums up a stereotypical picture. Immediately I rebuke myself. I am no typical lawyer. Ed is not a typical advertising man. And Joe? Is he a typical insurance salesman? I’m not sure. He’s certainly very precise about figures.

  ‘Go on,’ I say encouragingly.

  ‘She was drunk. That was obvious.’

  ‘How?’

  Another ‘Are you stupid?’ look.

  ‘She could barely stand straight. She reeked of wine. Turned out she’d had half a bottle of vodka too, but it’s difficult to smell that stuff.’

  I check my file. He’s right. Her blood alcohol level was high. But it doesn’t prove he didn’t kill her. ‘Then?’

  ‘We had an argument because she was late. I’d made dinner, like I always did. Lasagne with garlic, basil and tomato sauce. But it was all dry and nasty by then. So we had a row. Raised our voices, I admit. But there was no screaming like the neighbours said.’ His face wrinkles with disgust. ‘Then she was sick, all over the kitchen floor.’

  ‘Because she was drunk?’

  ‘Isn’t that what people do when they’ve had too much? Disgusting. She seemed better after that, but the vomit was all over her. I told her to have a bath. Said I’d run it, like I always did. But she wasn’t having any of it. She slammed the door on me and turned up the bathroom radio. Radio 1. Her favourite station. So I left her to it while I washed up.’

  I interrupt. ‘Weren’t you worried about her being alone in a bath if she was drunk?’

  ‘Not at first. Like I said just now, she seemed better after being sick – more sober – and anyway, what could I do? I was worried she’d report me to the police again. Sarah could be very imaginative.’

  ‘So when did you go and check on her?’

  ‘After half an hour or so I did get worried. I couldn’t hear her splashing and she wouldn’t answer when I knocked. So I went in.’ His face goes blank. ‘That’s when I found her. Almost didn’t recognize her, even though her face was up. Her skin was purple. Dark red and purple. Some of it was peeled back. There were these huge blisters.’

  My body shudders involuntarily.

  Joe goes quiet for a minute. I’m glad of the break. ‘She must’ve slipped and fallen in. And the water was so hot,’ he continues. ‘Much hotter than you’d expect after thirty minutes, so I can’t even guess what it was like when she got in. I burnt myself lifting her up. I tried to resuscitate her, but I’ve never done a first aid course. I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing. So I dialled 999.’

  He is saying the last bit in an even, steady tone. Not distraught. But not totally detached either. Like someone trying to hold it all together.

  ‘The police said you didn’t seem very upset when they arrived.’

  His eyes are back on mine. ‘People show emotion in different ways. Who is to say that the person who wails loudest is the most distressed?’

  He has a point there.

  ‘I’m telling you the truth,’ he adds firmly.

  ‘But the jury found you guilty.’

  I sense a tightening behind the eyes. ‘They got it wrong. My defence were idiots.’

  The HOPE poster stares mockingly down.

  ‘An appeal is generally only launched if there’s new evidence. The bones of what you have said are already in the files. Even if what you’re saying is true, we have nothing to prove it.’

  ‘I know that.’

  I’m losing patience now. ‘So do you have new evidence?’

  He is staring hard at me. ‘That’s for you to find out.’ He picks up the pen again. ‘PEAL,’ he is writing now. Over and over again.

  ‘Mr Thomas. Do you have new evidence?’

  He just continues writing. Is this some sort of clue?

  ‘What do you think?’

  I want to snap with frustration. But I wait. Silence is another trick I learned from my brother.

  There’s the steady sound of ticking from a clock I hadn’t seen before. It has a handwritten notice stuck up underneath it: DO NOT REMOVE. Unable to stop myself, I give a short snort of laughter. It’s enough to break the silence.

  ‘One of the men stole the last one.’ Joe Thomas is clearly amused too. ‘He took it to bits to see how it worked.’

  ‘Did he succeed?’ I ask.

  ‘No. It was finished.’ His face becomes hard again and he draws an imaginary line across his throat. ‘Kaput.’

  The action is clearly designed to intimidate me. It does. But something inside me makes me determined not to show it. Carefully, I look across at the piece of paper on the desk. ‘What’s the significance of “peal”? The one with “e” and “a” in it.’

  ‘Rupert Brooke.’ He speaks as if it was obvious. ‘You know. “And is there honey still for tea?” Church bells pealing across the village green and all that.’

  I’m surprised. ‘You like the war poets?’

  He shrugs, looking out of the window towards the exercise yard. ‘I didn’t know them, did I? So how can I say I like them? But I can guess how they felt.’

  ‘How?’

  His face swivels back to mine. ‘You haven’t done your homework very well, have you, Miss Hall?’

  I freeze. Didn’t he hear me when I introduced myself as Lily Macdonald? And how does he know that Hall is my maiden name? I have a flash of Ed’s warm hand holding mine at the altar. This meeting had been arranged before my marriage, so maybe Joe Thomas had been given my previous name. Maybe he wasn’t listening properly when I introduced myself. A niggling instinct tells me that it would be safer not to correct him at this stage. A correction might not get us off to the right start.

  Besides, I’m more concerned with the reference to the homework. What did I miss? A lawyer can’t afford to be wrong, my boss tells us all, again and again. So far, I’ve been all right. Not like one of the newly qualified lawyers who was taken on in the same month as me and sacked for failing to lodge an appeal within the given time.

  ‘It won’t be in your notes,’ he adds, observing me glance down. ‘But I’d hoped that your lot would have done more digging. Think about it. War poets. What did they go through? What beha
viour did they display when they came home?’

  I feel like a struggling student on University Challenge. ‘Shock,’ I say. ‘Many refused to talk because of post-traumatic stress.’

  He nods. ‘Go on.’

  Desperately, I try to dredge up my A-level memories. ‘Some of them were violent.’

  Joe Thomas sits back, arms folded. A satisfied smile on his face. ‘Exactly.’

  This isn’t making sense. ‘But you weren’t in the army.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So why did you kill your girlfriend?’

  ‘Nice try. I pleaded innocent. Remember? The jury made a mistake. That’s why I’m appealing.’ He jabs at my notes with a long artistic finger that doesn’t match his substantial frame. ‘It’s all there. Apart from this extra clue, that is. Now it’s over to you.’

  There’s a scraping of the chair on the floor as Joe Thomas stands up unexpectedly. For a moment, the room spins and my mouth goes dry. What is happening? All I know is that those very dark, almost black, eyes appear to be looking right through me. They know what’s inside me. They see things that Ed doesn’t.

  And most important of all, they don’t condemn.

  He leans towards me. I catch the smell of him. I can’t put my finger on it. Not a pine or lemon cologne smell like my husband’s. More like a raw, wet, earthy animal smell. I feel a strange shortness of breath.

  BANG!

  I jump. So does he. Stunned, we both look at the window where the noise has come from. A large grey pigeon appears to be frozen in the air, just outside. A white feather blows gently in the breeze: the bird must have flown into the glass. Miraculously, it is now flying away.

  ‘It’s alive,’ says Joe Thomas flatly. ‘The last one died. You’d think they’d be put off by the bars, wouldn’t you? But it’s as if they know better. Maybe they do. After all, birds reach heights that we know nothing about.’

  Criminals, my boss warned me, can be remarkably soft in certain areas. Don’t let it fool you.

  ‘I want you to go away and come back next week.’ The instructions clip out of Joe Thomas’s mouth as if this scene hasn’t taken place. ‘By then, you need to have worked out the connection between the war poets and me. And that will give you the basis of my appeal.’

  Enough is enough. ‘This isn’t a game,’ I say shortly to hide the inexplicable mixture of fear and excitement beating against my ribcage. ‘You know as well as I do that legal visits take time to organize. I might not be able to come back so soon. You have to make the most of this one.’

  He shrugs. ‘If you say so.’ Then he glances at my still-tanned wrists with my silver bracelet and then down to the shiny gold wedding ring, heavy with newness. ‘By the way, I got it wrong just now, didn’t I? It’s Mrs Macdonald, isn’t it? I trust you had a good honeymoon.’

  I’m still shaking when the taxi driver drops me off at the station. How did Joe Thomas know that I’d been on honeymoon? Was it possible that my boss had told someone when organizing the visit paperwork while I was away? If so, it was in direct contradiction to another piece of advice he’d given me: ‘Make sure you don’t give any personal details away. It’s vital to keep boundaries between you and the client.’

  The advice, rather like the warning about ‘conditioning’ from the officer, had seemed so obvious as to be unnecessary. Like most people (I would imagine), I’d been shocked by the odd news story about prison visitors or officers having affairs with prisoners. Never once had I read about a solicitor doing the same. As for those strange thoughts in my head just now, it was nerves. That was all. Along with my disappointment over Italy.

  As for Joe’s ‘mistake’ over my name, I can’t help wondering if it was on purpose. To wrongfoot me perhaps? But why?

  ‘Five pounds thirty, miss.’

  The taxi driver’s voice cuts into my head. Grateful for the diversion, I fumble in my purse for change.

  ‘That’s a euro.’ His voice is suspicious, as though I’d intentionally tried to put one over on him.

  ‘So sorry.’ Flushing, I find the correct coin. ‘I’ve been abroad and must have got my money muddled up.’

  He takes my tip with bad grace, clearly unconvinced. A mistake. A simple mistake. Yet one that could so easily be taken for a lie. Is that how Joe Thomas feels? Is it possible that he made a mistake and is so fed up with being misunderstood that he decided to play games with me? But that doesn’t really make sense.

  I glance at my watch. It’s later than I thought. Surely my time would be better spent going back to the flat, rather than the office, and typing up my notes. Besides, it would give me the opportunity to look into Rupert Brooke. My client might have unnerved me with his knowledge about my private life. But he also intrigues me in that uncomfortable way when you feel you ought to know the answer to a question.

  ‘Get as much from him as possible,’ my boss had said. ‘He was the one who approached us to make an appeal. That means there has to be fresh evidence – unless he just wants some attention. That happens quite a lot. Either way, we might seek counsel advice.’

  In other words, a barrister would be consulted.

  But I’m painfully aware that I haven’t got very far. On what grounds can we appeal? Insanity perhaps? Or is his behaviour merely eccentric? How many other clients would set a puzzle like this for their lawyers? Still, there’s something in Joe’s story that rings true. Drunks do lie. Neighbours can tell lies. Juries can get it wrong.

  The different arguments in my head make the train journey back much faster than it seemed this morning. In no time at all, or so it feels, I am on the bus back home. The word sends a thrill through me. Home! Not home in Devon, but our first home as a married couple in Clapham. I’ll be able to get a meal on. Spaghetti bolognese perhaps? Not too complicated. Change into that mid-blue kaftan my mother bought me for the honeymoon. Tidy up a bit. Make the place look welcoming for when Ed gets home. And yet something still doesn’t feel right.

  On the few occasions I’ve left work early, I’ve felt like a naughty schoolgirl. And that wasn’t me. My reports were always covered with the word ‘conscientious’, as if a salve for the absence of more convincing accolades such as ‘intelligent’ or ‘perceptive’. It was no secret that everyone – most of all, myself – was astounded when I got into one of the most prestigious universities in the country through sheer hard slog. And again when I got taken on at a legal firm despite the competition. When you’re constantly prepared for things to go wrong, it’s a shock when they go right.

  ‘Why do you want to be a lawyer?’ my father had asked.

  The question had hung, unnecessarily, in the air.

  ‘Because of Daniel, of course,’ my mother had answered. ‘Lily wants to put the world to rights. Don’t you, darling?’

  Now, as I get off the bus, I realize I’ve thought more about my brother today than I have for a very long time. It must be Joe Thomas. The same defensive stance. The arrogance which, at the same time, comes across as distinctly vulnerable. The same love of games. The same refusal to toe the line in the face of clear opposition.

  But Joe is a criminal, I remind myself. A murderer. A murderer who has got the better of you, I tell myself crossly as I walk towards our flat, having paused to pick up the post from the mailboxes by the front door. A bill? Already?

  I feel a flutter of apprehension – I told Ed we shouldn’t have taken out such a big mortgage, but he just twirled me in the air and declared that we would get by somehow – and then stop. There’s a disagreement going on between a woman and a child by number 7. I’m pretty sure it’s the same girl in the navy-blue school uniform I saw this morning. But the adult is definitely not the mother with those black cascading curls. She’s a plain woman in her thirties – at a guess – with open red sandals even though it’s not the right kind of weather.

  As I draw nearer, I spot a massive blue bruise on the child’s eye. ‘What’s going on?’ I say sharply.

  ‘Are you Carla’s mother?’ asks
the woman.

  ‘I’m a neighbour.’ I glance at that terrible bruise. ‘And who are you?’

  ‘One of the teaching assistants at Carla’s school.’

  She says this with some pride.

  ‘I was told to take her home after a bit of an accident in the playground. But Mrs Cavoletti doesn’t appear to be in, and her boss says she isn’t at work today, so we’ll have to go back to school.’

  ‘No. No!’

  The child – Carla, did she say? – is tugging at my arm. ‘Please can I stay with you? Please. Please.’

  The woman is looking uncertain. She seems out of her depth to me. I recognize the feeling. Of course she’s right to be uncertain. I don’t know this child, even though she is acting as though she knows me. But she has clearly been hurt at school. I know what that’s like.

  ‘I think she needs to go to casualty,’ I say.

  ‘I haven’t time for that!’ The eyes widen as if in panic. ‘I’ve got to pick up my own kids.’

  Of course this is none of my business. But there’s something about the distress in the child’s face that makes me want to help. ‘Then I’ll do it.’

  I take out my business card. ‘You might want my details.’

  Lily Macdonald. LLB. Solicitor.

  It seems to reassure the teaching assistant. Even though perhaps it shouldn’t.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I say. ‘We’ll get a cab to the hospital. Want me to drop you off somewhere?’

  She declines, although the offer seems to appease her further.

  It occurs to me that it would be very easy to take a child if the circumstances were favourable.

  ‘My name’s Lily,’ I say after the woman has gone and I’ve slipped a note under the door of number 7 to tell Carla’s mother what has happened. ‘You know you shouldn’t really talk to strangers.’

  ‘Charlie said it was all right.’

  ‘Who’s Charlie?’

  She brings out a green pencil case from under her jumper.

  How sweet! I had a wooden one when I was at school, with a secret drawer for the rubber.