My Husband's Son: A dark and gripping psychological thriller

by Deborah O'Connor

  Keith had seemed odd to me right from the off, secretive. I’d thought it was because he had Barney captive, because he had a child that wasn’t his, but maybe his behaviour was off because he had something else to hide. Keith had told me Mikey was his nephew. Maybe he’d been telling the truth. Maybe he was harbouring his sister and her children from an abusive ex-husband. Maybe it was her and her children that he had to protect?

  Taking the next turning on my left, I swung round the corner and found myself on a familiar street. Carla’s new street. It seemed I’d driven here on autopilot.

  As I approached the outside of her building, I slowed the car and tried to see if there were any lights on. It was almost 3 a.m. Unsurprisingly, all the windows in her flat were dark.

  I pulled over and switched off the engine. Despite her numerous attempts to get in touch, we hadn’t spoken since that night at the barbecue. Mark had stitched her up just as badly, if not worse, than me and Jason. Still scared of what I might say, I’d avoided her until now.

  I rang her doorbell three times. The hall light switched on and Carla appeared in the gap between the chain and the door. Wearing a faded Levellers T-shirt that went all the way to her knees, she’d swaddled her shoulders in the red silk kaftan she used as a dressing-gown.

  ‘Heidi?’ she said, her voice croaky with sleep.

  ‘I need to talk to someone.’

  She blinked twice, not quite awake, and closed the door. For a moment I worried she was turning me away, that after all her ignored calls she’d finally lost patience and decided to wash her hands of me. But then I heard the metal jingle of her releasing the chain and the door reopened. She motioned for me to come in.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  I found I needed a few moments’ peace ensconced round her kitchen table before I could relay the evening’s events. Despite the hour and the fact I’d just knocked her out of bed, Carla didn’t press for details. Instead, she sat there yawning, drinking her tea and reaching down to where Jasper slinked by her shins. It was one of the things I loved about her: she never felt compelled to fill our time together with noise; she never made me hurry out my words before they were ready. Sometimes I would lie on her osteopath’s table while she manipulated my shoulder, and I would want to chatter and gossip and she would talk just as much as me. But then, there were other times I wanted to lie there quietly, or maybe even close my eyes, and then she would just do her thing, reaching her cool hands underneath my ribcage, trying to loosen the constriction there, and the silence between us never felt awkward or tense the way it often can.

  ‘I went back to that shop,’ I said, at last.

  Giving me a look that said, oh, so that’s what this is all about, she put down her mug and drew the kaftan around her chest.

  ‘The one with the boy?’

  I nodded, and then, suddenly desperate to tell her everything, I spoke quickly, expelling the sentences as fast as I could.

  ‘I went there last week. I saw him coming home from school. I managed to get some photos, but they were no good. I went back but there was this man and I fell over –’

  ‘Hang on,’ Carla interrupted. ‘You were there just now, in the middle of the night? By yourself?’

  ‘There was a photograph of the boy and some other people,’ I explained, impatient to continue. ‘In the house. You could see it through the back window.’

  ‘But why in the middle of the night?’

  ‘I needed to get a better look. Without being disturbed. I needed to see if I could identify any of the other people in the picture.’ I realised I was babbling and slowed down. ‘But then there was this bloke. He thought I was on the game and when I told him I wasn’t, he got angry and he chased me.’

  ‘Chased you? Chased you how?’

  ‘Down the street. He had a brick.’ I mimed the way he’d held the weapon in the air.

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘I think we should call the police.’ She went to get up, but I put my hand on her arm, stopping her.

  ‘I don’t want them involved. You know how the copper grapevine works. It would take five seconds for word to get to DS Gooder and he’d almost certainly mention it to Jason.’

  ‘And where does Jason think you are right now?’

  ‘I waited until he was asleep before I went out.’

  Her face flashed with an anxiety I’d never seen before. Edging her chair in close to mine, she took hold of my hands. ‘It sounds like everything has got a little out of control.’ She gave them a squeeze. ‘Maybe what happened tonight was just the fright you needed to make you stop.’

  ‘To make me stop?’ This I hadn’t expected. ‘What if I don’t want to stop?’

  Covering her eyes with her palms, she took a breath, lifted them up to her forehead and smoothed back her curls.

  ‘How can I put this?’ she said flatly. ‘When you first told me about the kid in the shop, you said you showed Jason the boy and he stated definitively that the child was not Barney, right?’

  ‘Right, but –’

  ‘He was sure he wasn’t Barney,’ she reiterated. ‘Listen to yourself. You spent this afternoon spying on a child on his way home from school and tonight were almost attacked. Now you’re in my kitchen ranting and raving about a kid you’ve seen up close what, all of once, twice?’

  ‘Does it matter how many times I’ve seen him?’ I threw my next sentence like a punch. ‘How many times did it take for you to realise Mark was a journalist?’

  I expected her to recoil, but instead she kept her gaze fixed on me.

  ‘I’m sorry I was the one who brought Mark into your house, but the honest truth is him lying like that was not the end of the world. I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but I was happy to be used. The sex was great. Looking back, there were a whole lot more pros than cons.’

  Removing my hands from hers, I tried to get up but my ankle gave from under me. She was at my side in an instant.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ She dropped to her knees. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ I winced as she took my foot in her palm. ‘I went over on it when I was running away.’

  She rotated my ankle gently, right and left, and I cried out in pain.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ she said once she had finished her examination. ‘It’s only a sprain.’ She replaced it carefully on the floor. ‘Ice it, keep it elevated and it should be back to normal in a few days.’

  We sat there sipping our tea, the wind chimes tinkling outside the kitchen window.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, for once unable to bear the silence. ‘The thing I said about Mark.’

  She chewed her lip.

  ‘I think you need to consider the possibility that all this stuff with the boy has to do with something else,’ she ventured. ‘That maybe it’s more about …’

  ‘It’s not,’ I jumped in before she could go on. ‘I know what you’re going to say, and this is absolutely, definitely not about Lauren.’ I banged my hands on the table. ‘Why will no one listen? Why will no one help? Barney could be there now, right in front of our bloody noses and we’re not doing anything about it. Don’t you see how ridiculous that is?’

  I was about to go on, but something about the expression on Carla’s face made me stop. Patient but wary, it was the same look I used to see on the doctor whenever he came to sedate me in the weeks after Lauren went missing. It was a look of compassion, a look that meant, I am here to help you but I also think you might be a little bit crazy.

  I was suddenly and painfully aware of exactly what I must sound like. It was like stepping into a bath of cold water.

  ‘OK,’ I conceded, dropping my head into my hands. Carla was right. When you looked at the facts, this whole thing was preposterous.

  ‘No more. Do you hear?’ said Carla, reaching across for a hug. I nodded my assent and let my cheek rest against her shoulder. Her kaftan was warm and smooth to the touch.

  I closed my eyes. In a little while
I’d go home to my bed and my husband and then in a few hours I’d get up and go to work. And, I told myself, if I tried really hard, pretty soon everything would be just as it was before, as though I’d never laid eyes on that boy.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Saturday evening, and Jason and I were celebrating our wedding anniversary. Laid out between us were the remains of a curry: yellow poppadom shards and stray grains of pilau littering the white tablecloth.

  Since the night I was chased, I’d left the boy in the off-licence alone. It hadn’t been easy. Every time I thought I’d banished him from my thoughts the shop’s LEASEHOLD AVAILABLE sign would flash into my head and, no matter what Tommy had said to the contrary, I’d be gripped with an awful fear that I was standing by and doing nothing while my husband’s son was once more spirited away.

  ‘To my lovely wife.’ Jason raised his pint and I lifted my wine in response. ‘Thank you for two wonderful years.’

  The toast complete, I reached across the table for his hand and interlocked our fingers. Jason brought our crabbed double-fist up to his mouth and kissed both our wedding bands. Remembering him doing the very same thing in the registry office just after we were married, I smiled. Jason: my husband, my friend, my saviour.

  I shifted around in my seat. I was wearing the new hold-ups, black lace bra and knickers I’d bought especially for tonight and, while I’d been sat down, the elastic stocking-tops had started to dig deeper and deeper into my thighs. I never usually wore stuff like this. It felt like too much of a prompt. Still, tonight’s celebration was all well and good but it couldn’t hide the fact recently something between us had fractured, just below the surface. And so, even though it felt like I was decorating the fissures and cracks splitting their way up our walls with patterned paper and fairy lights, I found myself doing it anyway. I found myself having to try.

  It hadn’t always been like this. We used to be the kind of couple that had sex anywhere, anyhow. On our first holiday together we went to Paxos, a tiny Greek island. Out for a walk one morning, we’d come across a deserted cove. To get to it we had to climb down a hill. We’d been kissing before we even reached the bottom. I remembered how the beach had these spine-bruising white pebbles that warmed our skin. As I’d climbed on top of Jason, I’d struggled to get traction on the scree and the movement had sent hundreds of the stones clattering down towards the sea. Sweat had pooled in Jason’s clavicle, mixing with his sun cream. As we got close, he’d sat up, and the sweat and the cream had run down his chest in neat white lines. Afterwards, we’d waded into the water holding hands and the green seaweed had floated loose like grass around our calves.

  ‘While I remember, I need a favour,’ said Jason. He wet his forefinger with his tongue and used the moisture to pick up a stray piece of poppadom. ‘You know I’m being assessed in December?’

  I nodded. Jason was now booked in for the exam that, if he passed, would take him up to the next level of first-aid instructor.

  ‘I want you to come and observe me teaching. I thought you could take notes, let me know if there’s anything I can improve on.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I said, giving him a mini-salute. ‘What day is the class, Saturday or Sunday?’

  ‘Actually, it’s a Tuesday. I was hoping you might take the day off.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, already imagining Yvonne’s face were I to ask for last-minute leave just over a week after my formal warning. ‘I’ve got quite a lot on. Can’t I come to your next weekend session?’

  ‘You could, but the thing I really need to brush up on is my’ – he stopped and sat up straight, ready to reel off the course’s formal title – ‘ “Communication With Mixed Age And Ability” module.’ He relaxed again. ‘Those classes only run during the week.’

  I tapped my fingers on the table, not sure what to do. I hadn’t told him about my warning and so he was oblivious to just how tricky things were at work. I looked across to where he sat with his eyes focused on the tablecloth. This exam was important to him. I’d find a way to make it work.

  ‘In that case,’ I grinned, ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

  He looked up in surprise.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, leaning across to give me a kiss. ‘I knew I could count on you.’

  I reached for the dessert menu and was about to offer it to Jason when I noticed the waiter seating a couple at the next table. The woman was heavily pregnant and, much to her dismay, the waiter was making a huge fuss, pulling out her chair and gasping at the size of her bump. We both watched in silence and, once the show was over, I made sure to catch Jason’s eye.

  ‘I’m not getting any younger and we’re not always all that careful,’ I said, alluding to our hit-and-miss approach to contraception. Most couples had ‘the baby talk’ at the start of a relationship, once things started to get serious, but when we’d first got together we’d been understandably distracted by other topics. Every now and again the subject would come up in conversation and we’d dance around it, an elaborate tiptoe that, despite my best efforts, never really went anywhere. I reached my foot under the table and pressed my leg against his. I was sick of tiptoeing. I needed to know where I stood on the matter. Where we stood. ‘Do you think you’ll ever want to become a father again?’

  ‘Again? I still am a father.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that – you mustn’t think that’s what I meant.’ I felt him move his leg away from mine. ‘I meant, would you ever want another child. With me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He spoke quietly. ‘I wouldn’t want Barney to come home and think I’d tried to replace him.’ Registering the look that must now be on my face, he began to back-pedal. ‘I’m not saying no,’ he soothed, ‘it’s just – I wouldn’t feel comfortable. Not yet, not until Barney is found. Otherwise, it would be like … like I was …’ He faltered, unable to complete the thought.

  Like you were admitting he was dead, I thought, finishing it for him.

  As the waiter began to clear our plates, Jason took the opportunity to stand up and was about to disappear off to the loo when he stopped in his tracks. He retook his seat, an odd expression on his face. He seemed frightened, pissed off and embarrassed all at the same time.

  ‘Of all the nights,’ he muttered, taking a sup of lager.

  He was looking at something or someone behind me. I shifted round in my seat to try and see.

  ‘Don’t. You’re being too obvious,’ he said, slinking low in his chair.

  I pretended to get something out of my handbag on the floor and while I was there inclined my head slightly.

  ‘Heidi, don’t,’ he said again.

  I scanned each section of the packed restaurant. Shiny red paper covered the walls, and the spaces between the tables and high-backed chrome chairs were marked by a series of mirrored pillars. As my eyes roved past the corner near the aquarium, I realised what the problem was. Jason’s ex-wife, Vicky, and her best friend, Mandy. They were taking off their coats and accepting menus from a waiter.

  Vicky was dressed in skinny blue jeans and gladiator sandals and a black T-shirt hung off her left shoulder, its sleeves shredded into a fringe, a tiger design made up of spattered purple paint and sequins on the front. With long black hair, a tiny frame and perfect, doll-like features, Vicky was always adorned with clothing embellished with some kind of sparkle, glitter or studding. Mandy, meanwhile, was sporting a purple Lycra mini-dress and huge false eyelashes.

  As well as being Vicky’s best friend, Mandy was also Barney’s godmother. She had been the matron of honour at their wedding, and when Vicky and Jason had divorced it had only been natural she take Vicky’s side.

  It seemed likely they hadn’t clocked our presence yet.

  I came back up to where Jason was glowering in his seat.

  ‘We can get the bill and have our dessert at home,’ I said, trying to pacify him. I tugged at my hold-ups. It felt like they were cutting into the tops of my thighs. ‘We shouldn’t let th
em spoil our night.’

  But it was too late. I’d lost him.

  Without waiting for the bill, Jason put down three £20 notes and stood up, ready to go. He didn’t stop to let me get my bag and coat and, with my ankle still sore from the fall the other night, I struggled to catch up.

  He got to the bar (the halfway point between Vicky and Mandy and us) and paused. In order to leave the restaurant we would have to walk right past where they were sitting. Jason grabbed my hand in his and went for it, striding forwards, his head held high. My ankle was killing me, but I didn’t dare complain and so I hobbled along next to him as fast as I could. We were free and almost clear when we heard them go quiet. Jason hesitated for a split second but managed to keep going. He was reaching for the door handle when Mandy muttered something that sounded like ‘freaks’ under her breath. It was all Jason needed. He retraced his steps until he was standing over Mandy.

  ‘What did you say?’

  At first I thought she was going to deny it. She looked scared and caught off guard and for a moment I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe we’d heard her wrong. But then there was a ripple of hardness around her mouth that travelled all the way up to her eyes and it was clear she had decided to go through with it after all.

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Not quite, Mandy, love,’ said Jason, his voice sickly sweet. ‘That’s why I’d like to hear you say it again. To my face.’

  ‘Mandy, please,’ said Vicky, trying to defuse the situation. But Mandy dismissed her with a wave of her hand.

  ‘Go on Mandy, say it,’ challenged Jason.

  I realised he had yet to let his gaze stray in Vicky’s direction.

  But now Mandy’s cheek had started to wobble. Most of the restaurant were watching and the manager was hovering by the bar, all of them sensing something big was about to kick off.

  ‘I thought so.’ Jason turned and went to leave, as though he’d won.

  ‘You know she’s had to start seeing the doctor again,’ Mandy shouted after him.

  ‘Mandy, shut up!’ shouted Vicky.