The Adulterer's Wife

by Leigh Russell

  ‘Thanks, Mum. Sorry I’ve been a bit cross with you lately.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, this is a stressful time, but as long as you’ve done enough work you’ll be fine. Remember, it’s the preparation that counts. And you’ve certainly…’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ he interrupted me with a smile that was almost a grimace. ‘I wasn’t asking for a pep talk. I know you mean well but sometimes your fussing just isn’t helpful, it’s irritating. And I’ve got enough on my plate as it is.’

  ‘Good luck anyway.’

  ‘Thanks. And you too, have a good day.’

  I returned his smile more brightly than my prospects for that day warranted, but the last thing I wanted to do was upset him just before an exam. As he turned and walked away, a group of other pupils walked past him.

  ‘Oh well, at least they’ll be finished soon,’ another mother remarked.

  Watching Dan lag behind the other kids, I nodded. ‘I’ll be glad when this is all over.’ I wasn’t thinking about the exams.

  ‘I know, I can’t wait for them to finish. It’s insane, the number of tests they have to do,’ she replied.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll be fine.’

  It was bizarre, chattering about mundane issues as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened, when I knew my husband had been conducting an affair behind my back.

  The other mother shrugged. ‘You know what they’re like at that age. He thinks the world owes him a living. But life is never that easy.’

  ‘No, it certainly isn’t,’ I agreed.

  With the image of Dan’s worried face in my mind, I drove home. He had looked so vulnerable, walking in to school alone. What was about to happen was going to shatter his world. But the situation was not of my making. I was only reacting to Paul’s betrayal. I hoped Dan would understand that.

  4

  Reaching home, I was surprised to see Paul’s car in the drive. Going inside, I called out to him, but there was no answer. He wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room, so I went upstairs and was startled to see the mound of his body still lying in bed. I called his name, then reached out and shook him by the shoulder. He didn't respond, so I shoved him more strongly, shouting at him to wake up. His arm felt oddly stiff. Grabbing hold of it to heave him over onto his back, I barely registered that his eyes were open. Meanwhile he continued stubbornly unresponsive. In a panic, I slapped his face. He didn’t flinch. Everything about him felt rigid. He just lay there, glaring up at the ceiling.

  ‘Paul! Paul! Answer me! For Christ’s sake stop it. Look at me!’

  Kneeling up on the bed beside him, I studied his face. He didn’t even blink. Leaning forward, I listened. He made no sound. I checked for a pulse, a heartbeat, a breath, any sign of life in his motionless body, but there was nothing. Sitting back on my heels, I gazed at him in horror, for the first time taking in his unhealthy pallor and fixed stare. It didn’t take medical training to work out that he had passed away in the night.

  It’s difficult to describe how I felt right then. Numb is the best word I can come up with. I knew I ought to do something, but what? Should the doctor be called? Or 999? I stared at Paul. He would have known what to do, but he was dead. Nothing I did or failed to do could make any difference to him now. In a daze, I pulled the duvet over his face, so I couldn’t see his eyes, staring in silent accusation. Then I clambered off the bed and went into the bathroom, as though he wasn’t there. And it was true. He wasn’t.

  My mind seemed to have switched off, but I was aware that my body was physically shaking. All at once, I felt the bitter taste of vomit in my throat and ran to the toilet to be sick. Vomit splashed the sides of the bowl and flecked my jumper. Still shaking, I washed my face. I looked terrible.

  ‘Come on,’ I muttered. ‘Pull yourself together. Do something.’

  Before making any calls, I showered and changed my clothes, carefully avoiding looking at the bed. A hump in the duvet showed where Paul was lying, covered up. I felt as though I was in a nightmare, so that I half expected to wake up and find him snoring at my side. But this wasn’t a terrible dream, and he really was dead. I had heard his mistress’s breathy voice asking me who I was. Her words kept repeating inside my head, ‘Who’s this? Who’s this? Who’s this?’ as clearly as if she were in the room with me, yet I could no longer recall the sound of Paul’s voice. It was as if he had been deleted from my bank of memories.

  I went downstairs to make myself a strong cup of tea and work out what to do next. I had never felt so alone, and there was no one I could approach for advice. Aware that I was procrastinating, I continued to put off making the call for as long as possible. While no one else knew what had happened, I could somehow carry on pretending to myself that Paul wasn’t dead. So, I sat in the living room shutting everything else out of my mind and telling myself that a good cup of tea deserved my undivided attention. The whole situation was surreal. All the time I had been downstairs chatting inconsequentially with Katie, and then dropping Dan at school, Paul had been lying in our bed at home, dying or already dead.

  After a while I stopped shaking and my mind cleared. Perhaps it was fortunate that, for the moment at least, my anger with Paul was so raw. My fury at his betrayal held back grief that might otherwise have overwhelmed me. But more than anything, I was afraid people would wonder why I hadn’t reported my husband’s condition as soon as I woke up. Should the police somehow become involved, would they believe that I had left the house thinking my husband was peacefully sleeping? If there had been any way I could have simply got rid of his body without repercussions, I would have done it. He deserved to be disposed of in a rubbish bin, along with his phone. But that wasn’t practicable.

  I didn’t know who to contact but had a vague idea that a doctor would need to sign a death certificate. And a doctor would be familiar with the correct procedure. Once I decided how to tackle the situation, it took a while to speak to someone at the medical centre. Several of the other receptionists worked part time, like me, and I didn’t know the woman who took my call.

  ‘I need a doctor,’ I told her. ‘No, I don’t want an appointment and I can’t come to the surgery. The doctor must come here. I think my husband’s dead. That is, I know he is. He’s not breathing, and I can’t find a pulse. Yes, it’s my husband. No, I haven’t called the emergency services because there’s no point. I told you, he’s dead.’

  Finally, after confirming Paul’s full name and date of birth, and my full name and relationship to him, I was told a doctor would be with me soon.

  ‘Wait there,’ the voice on the line advised me, as though I might be contemplating going shopping instead of staying at home to open the door. ‘The doctor will notify the coroner’s office when he gets there, so you don’t need to do anything else for now. Just sit tight and someone will be with shortly.’

  Soon after my call, one of the practice doctors arrived. Tall and grey haired, he nodded solemnly at me. We had been introduced when I started working at the medical centre, but he had never spoken to me before.

  ‘Where is he?’

  Without a word, I turned and led him upstairs to the bedroom where I pulled back the duvet to reveal my husband staring up at the ceiling. The doctor frowned and glanced at his watch. It felt as though time stopped as I waited to hear what he had to say. I tried not to look at Paul’s face, but my eyes seemed to have developed a will of their own. Paul lay, motionless, and his face appeared to have taken on a greyish hue so that he looked more like a statue than a man.

  ‘Well,’ the doctor said, turning to face me after he had examined the body. ‘I’m sorry to confirm that your husband is dead.’

  ‘What happens now?’

  He gazed solemnly down at Paul. ‘I’m afraid I can't issue a death certificate without knowing the cause of death. The coroner’s office will need to know exactly what happened here.’ He looked at me with a slightly quizzical expression. ‘Your husband’s been dead for around ten hours.’

&
nbsp; I wasn't sure what the doctor meant but couldn't see why the specific cause of Paul’s death mattered. It wasn’t unheard of for an apparently healthy man in his early forties to drop dead. If he had suffered a heart attack because of stress from worrying about keeping his affair secret, it served him right. But I kept such thoughts to myself. All I wanted to do was get the body removed from the house as soon as possible. Uppermost in my mind was the thought that I was going to have to sleep in that bed, and I would have to throw out the mattress and sheets that were soiled and beginning to stink. Apart from the horror of death, the smell was making me feel nauseous again.

  ‘Should I contact the undertaker’s? I’ve never had to deal with a situation like this before and I’m not sure what to do,’ I gabbled.

  All I could think was that the body couldn’t stay where it was.

  ‘He can’t be moved just yet.’

  ‘What? Why not? He can’t stay here.’

  ‘Before any arrangements are made, you need to wait until the police have taken a look.’

  ‘The police?’ I felt my skin prickle. ‘Why? What have they got to do with it?’

  The doctor spoke gently. ‘It's likely the police will want to investigate your husband’s death.’

  ‘Investigate? What do you mean?’

  The doctor looked at me. ‘There may be good reason to question whether your husband died from natural causes.’

  For the second time that week, I felt the world spinning out of control.

  5

  No time at all seemed to elapse before the police arrived to question me and search the house. They refused to tell me what they were looking for. Fortunately, Paul had replaced his missing phone straight away, because they might have thought it was odd if they hadn’t found one. Even though I’d had no inkling of what was going to ensue, I was very glad I’d had the foresight to destroy his old phone.

  ‘I’ll tell you exactly what happened,’ I told a police woman who was questioning me in the living room.

  At that point I hesitated, aware that someone might say they had seen me dropping Dan at school. When you lie, it’s best to stay as close to the truth as possible. That way it's easier to avoid being caught out. It also makes it easier to remember your story. All the same, I was careful to say nothing about Paul’s infidelity.

  ‘As soon as I got up, I went downstairs to make my son some breakfast. We’d arranged for me to drop him at school this morning, because he had an exam. My son has cerebral palsy and school has been a real struggle for him. He’s worked hard to get where he is. It’s important he has a proper breakfast.’

  I stopped abruptly. Preoccupied with what to say to Dan when he came home, I was rambling inconsequentially. The police where there to investigate the cause of Paul’s death. They wouldn’t expect me to be more concerned with whether my son had eaten breakfast that morning than with the loss of my husband.

  ‘So, you were busy attending to your son after you got up,’ the police woman prompted me.

  I nodded. ‘I realise now, from what the doctor said, that Paul must already have been dead by then, but he was lying under the duvet and I thought he was asleep. I mean, I just assumed he was still asleep because he didn’t move when I got up. I was trying not to disturb him because I thought he must be tired if he was still asleep at that time. He’s usually awake before me. So, I got dressed as quietly as I could and went straight downstairs to make some breakfast. My son’s not been diagnosed with an eating disorder, it's nothing like that, but I must keep an eye on him to make sure he eats properly, especially when he’s feeling stressed. The thing is, I was focused on getting my son to school for his exam. Honestly, I didn't pay any attention to my husband. I just thought he was asleep.’

  She frowned. ‘So, your son had a school exam?’

  ‘Yes. He’s doing his GCSEs, and he’s very conscious of the fact that he’s doing them a year late. They’re important exams because his sixth form studies depend on how he does, and he’s been working so hard. I didn’t want to upset him.’

  Hearing myself babbling about Dan again, I had to force myself to stop talking.

  ‘And your husband?’ she prompted me. ‘You didn’t notice he was dead?’

  She didn’t hint by a single twitch of a muscle that she found my account hard to believe, but her question was unsettling.

  ‘Yes, well, if I hadn’t set my alarm early so that I could give our son a lift to school, I might not have woken up and discovered my husband was dead for another couple of hours anyway, so it didn't actually make any difference that I dropped Dan at school before I called the doctor. I mean, it could have been even later if I’d gone shopping and not come home when I did.’

  She frowned and I wondered whether I had made a mistake in sounding so dismissive about Paul’s death.

  ‘So, you dropped your son at school. That would have been at what time?’

  ‘At about half past eight. A friend came over first to pick up a coat she’d left in our taxi last night.’

  ‘Your taxi?’

  ‘Yes, I went out with a couple girlfriends last night.’

  ‘The night your husband died?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he didn't go out with you?’

  ‘No.’

  She made a note of Katie’s and Nina’s contact details, and then there was an awkward pause. I wasn’t sure what she was waiting for, so I didn’t say anything.

  At last she spoke again, and her voice was very quiet, inviting confidence. ‘Were you and your husband on good terms?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But when you woke up you didn't notice he was dead?’

  ‘It’s like I just told you, I was thinking about my- our son. It’s what Paul would have wanted as well. Our son had an important exam, so I took him to school and left my husband sleeping. That’s what I thought he was doing, anyway. I thought I’d let him have a lie in.’

  I began to cry. If the police woman interpreted my tears as grief, so much the better. To tell the truth, I was crying from fear, because the police were bound to realise none of this was making sense. I had been alone in bed with Paul all night, and no one else had been in the room, at least not while I was awake. Admittedly, I had probably been semi-unconscious rather than simply asleep, after the amount I’d drunk, but the police had found no evidence of a break in. If I wasn’t careful, they might suspect I was in some way responsible for Paul’s death.

  ‘I loved... my husband...’ I stammered through my sobs, afraid my words were too late to save me from suspicion.

  ‘We’d like to check all the electronic devices in the house,’ she replied.

  ‘All of them?’

  Although horrified, I agreed, afraid they might suspect me of wanting to hide something if I refused.

  ‘You can’t take my son’s laptop,’ I protested. ‘What happened with Paul has nothing to do with him. You can’t punish a teenage boy who’s just lost his father. ’

  ‘No one is punishing him,’ she told me. ‘But we have to go through routine procedures. You do want us to complete our investigation and establish the cause of your husband’s death, don’t you?’

  My relief when the mortuary van arrived was almost overwhelming. I had only to hold my nerve and my horrible ordeal would be over. It seemed to take a long time, but at last the body was removed. Before she left the police, woman questioning me asked me to hand over my phone.

  ‘What if my son calls me?’

  ‘You have a landline here, don’t you?’

  I nodded dumbly.

  Finally, the police left, apparently convinced by my account. I went up to my bedroom and was surprised to find the bed had been stripped. My only response was relief. I had already decided to make up the bed in the spare room and sleep there, so it didn’t affect my arrangements

  Dan was less easily satisfied. Stuttering and trembling, he was direct in his accusations when I tried to explain what had happened that morning.

  �
��How could you not have noticed he was dead? It’s unbelievable.’

  ‘I was focusing on you, Dan. You had an exam-’

  ‘Stuff my exam. We’re talking about my father’s life. You can’t shift the blame onto me and my exam. I could have missed one. It wouldn’t have mattered. I’m probably going to fail them all anyway. Neither of us should have gone out this morning. We should have been here, with Dad.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference. Your father died hours before we woke up.’

  ‘How do you know? You’re not a doctor. Maybe they could have saved him.’ He began to cry.

  ‘He was dead, Dan. The doctor said he died at about midnight. So, it wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d discovered him at seven instead of at nine. And he wouldn't have wanted me to let you miss your exam for nothing.’

  ‘How is it for nothing? And who cares about exams? I could have retaken it. I messed up anyway. But you could have saved him, and you didn’t. I’ll never forgive you.’

  ‘Let’s just calm down and-’

  ‘Don’t tell me to calm down. My father’s dead!’

  His discovery that his laptop had been confiscated prompted another outburst. He was only pacified when his grandfather offered to loan him an iPad. Dan’s eyes were bloodshot and puffy. By contrast I was dry eyed. I told him I couldn’t believe his father was dead and the reality hadn’t sunk in yet, but it was hard to conceal my true reaction. The truth was, I was glad Paul was dead. It served him right, and it saved me a lot of trouble negotiating my way through a divorce. Plus, with his death, our mortgage would be paid off. If, after all his cheating and lying, his own heart had let him down, there was a kind of justice in what had happened. Of course, I would have summoned help immediately had be still been alive when I had found him, but he was already dead and there was nothing I could have done to save him. My conscience was clear.