Woman with a Secret

by Sophie Hannah

  “Why do you want to know all this?” Charlie asked.

  “I’ll tell you when you get me the answers to those questions, and any others you can think of that I haven’t. Anything to do with Melissa Redgate, cars or driving—I want to know about it.”

  “Like, is her car tidy or messy?”

  “No, that’s irrelevant.”

  “Ah. OK. As the asker of these questions, aren’t I more likely to be able to work out what’s relevant if you . . . Simon? You still there?”

  Unbelievable. He’d cut her off midsentence.

  CHAPTER 7

  Thursday, July 4, 2013

  ADAM IS DRIVING. I am thinking how much I wish we were driving to a police station because I’m kind of a suspect in a murder case, but one who has no other terrible problems. Not one who has just confessed to cyber infidelity, and been told she’s forgiven, and doesn’t believe it for a second.

  “You can’t forgive me,” I say. “I don’t believe you have. Not so soon.”

  Adam sighs. “Well, I have. I’m not sure what you expect me to do to convince you. I’ve not shouted, or refused to talk about it. I’m not being off with you, am I?”

  He sounds anxious to please me. I sense he’s turned to look at me. I wish he’d be more careful while he’s driving. Keeping my eyes on the road, I say, “You’re being exactly the same as you always are. How is that possible? Don’t you care?”

  I want him to care. Two days into my correspondence with him, King Edward asked me how I’d feel about us pledging to be exclusive to one another, though he made clear that this vow of exclusivity couldn’t include spouses. I said yes. I stuck to it too. It’s the only time I’ve ever been anything approaching faithful in a relationship.

  I want Adam to want me all to himself the way King Edward did.

  Whoever he is.

  “Nicki, I care. OK? If you’re asking if I’m angry . . . what would be the point?” Adam indicates left. “It was a shock, I’m not denying that, but . . .” He sighs. “We’ve been together for twenty years. It’d be too much to expect that you’d never be tempted by anyone else.” After a pause, he adds quietly, “I have been.”

  “Really?” I hope I don’t sound too eager. “Tell me. Who? Did anything happen?” I’d give anything for it to turn out that Adam’s as bad as me. I would forgive him anything.

  “Nothing’s ever happened, no,” he says decisively. So decisively it makes me wonder. I don’t think he’d lie, but . . . how tempted was he? How many times?

  I’d forgive you. Whatever you’d done. Words I say to Sophie and Ethan often. Words no one has ever said to me.

  That must be real love, mustn’t it? Knowing you want to share the rest of your life with someone whatever they’ve done, knowing they’re perfect for you whatever mistakes they’ve made. I hope that’s how Adam feels about me.

  “And nothing happened between you and this Gavin guy, did it?” he asks.

  “If nothing had happened, I wouldn’t be on my way to the police station to humiliate myself,” I say, nearly gagging as I contemplate the ordeal that lies ahead.

  “I mean nothing physical.”

  “No. Nothing physical.”

  “Good. If you’d slept with him twice a week for the last six months, that I’d find harder to forgive, but you said yourself—when you think about it now, it seems like a kind of madness came over you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can understand that. I’m not saying I’m thrilled it happened, but . . . I don’t know, maybe it’s unrealistic to expect no obstacles ever in a marriage.”

  “Maybe,” I say, wondering what exactly Melissa told Lee. She doesn’t know about Gavin or King Edward, thank God, but she does know about two one-night stands I had when Adam and I were first married, two incidents that now seem so trivial and far away it’s as if they happened to someone else—or perhaps they didn’t happen at all. The case for their being real is no more persuasive than an episode of some old soap opera I watched decades ago.

  I have to hope that if Melissa or any member of the Redgate family says anything to Adam, it will be in general terms.

  So Nicki’s told you, has she?

  Yeah, she’s told me.

  My mother would be talking about the two one-night stands, and Adam would be talking about Gavin. No one would be indelicate enough to go into detail, surely.

  “I read something once,” I tell Adam. As soon as I’ve said it, I regret it.

  “What?”

  “You’ll think I’m trying to make an excuse.”

  “No, I won’t. Even if I do, it might be quite a relief. I’m not sure I can take extreme hair shirt for much longer.” Adam grins at me. When I look at his face, I see that he is upset—more so than he’s willing to admit. He’s trying to protect me from his pain, because he can see mine growing in me and it scares him.

  “I read that people who have judgmental, controlling parents . . . that they kind of . . .” How I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. It’s a daft theory. Adam will laugh. “That they sexualize bad behavior, in their minds. They grow up being criticized for everything they do, because it’s not what the parents would ideally like them to do, and . . . it’s hard to live with the daily attacks of a parent determined to improve you. Hard for a child—even an older teenage child—to cope with that kind of onslaught when their only crime is just trying to be themselves.” Even an adult child. “So their minds sort of warp, to defend against too much pain. They twist their perceptions so that they get pleasure from the idea that they’re being bad and that people would disapprove. They sexualize wrongdoing. They become the people who get kicks out of illicit affairs. But . . . it’s just a theory. One that’s obviously hugely convenient for sinners like me.”

  “Sounds plausible, I suppose,” says Adam. “Look, on the subject of difficult parents . . . I know yours can be irritating, but you didn’t mean what you said, did you? About never seeing them again? I hope you didn’t.”

  “No.” Yes. But without Adam’s support, I won’t be brave enough. So, no.

  “Good. Because they’re Sophie and Ethan’s grandparents.”

  I laugh weakly. “Yeah. Lucky old Sophie and Ethan. You don’t think they picked up that anything was wrong, do you? Between us?”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  We’ve left them with a babysitter—the teenage daughter of a neighbor. I had to fight the urge to say, “If by any chance someone calls or comes around saying they’re a member of my family, don’t let them in. Don’t let them speak to the children.”

  “My mother will probably tell them, first chance she gets,” I say to Adam. “‘Hi, kids. How’s school? By the way, your mother’s a cyber-slag. She’s lucky your dad didn’t throw her out on the street when he found out, to forage for scraps.’”

  Adam winces. “Oh, come on! Nora would never do that to Soph and Ethan. Your family don’t really believe you killed Damon Blundy. And I don’t think Nora would actually have told me anything about Gavin, if push had come to shove.”

  Has he not been paying attention? “Adam, Melissa went to the police and encouraged them to suspect me of Damon Blundy’s murder. My parents and Lee will have been behind that for sure. No way Melissa’d do it of her own accord.”

  “I can see them thinking you needed a bit of sense shaking into you, but I don’t believe they honestly think you’re capable of murder.”

  “I am capable of murder,” I tell him. “I just haven’t committed it yet, that’s all.”

  THE POLICE HAVE SENT a woman to take my statement: Sergeant Charlotte Zailer. Tall, skinny, dark hair, bright red lipstick. Sharp dark eyes that make me wonder what she’s thinking about me, even before I’ve said anything. She looks as if she’s thinking plenty.

  Her breasts are large for a skinny woman. It was the first thing I noticed about her when she walked into the holding cell Adam and I were placed in when we arrived. It’s probably not called a holding cell. The man who escorted us in here
called it a meeting room. Still, it’s not a room I’d wish to spend any time in.

  I don’t normally pay much attention to other women’s breasts, but Sergeant Zailer’s are hard to miss. Given what I’m about to reveal, the sight of them, even covered up, makes me feel paranoid. I am certain Adam is thinking the same thing. Perhaps we’ll laugh about it together later.

  “Mr. Clements, perhaps you could encourage your wife to tell me what she came here to tell me?” says Sergeant Zailer. “I can’t wait forever.”

  “Nicki . . .” Adam murmurs.

  “I don’t need encouragement.” I needed to prepare myself, that’s all. And now I have. “Now that Adam knows the truth, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. You’ll disapprove of me, but I don’t mind that. I’m used to being disapproved of.”

  “I already disapprove of you,” Sergeant Zailer says as if it’s a stroke of good luck. “You lied to two of my colleagues, didn’t you? You said your car was missing a side mirror on the morning that Damon Blundy was murdered. We know that’s not true. We’ve got CCTV of your car with both mirrors clearly still attached.”

  “Yes, I thought of that several days too late. I know it’s pathetic, but the mirror thing was the best I could come up with. God knows how I could make such a stupid mistake. I could have told literally any other lie and it would have been more convincing: I’d left my phone at home; I remembered I’d left the stove on—anything! Once I realized I’d screwed up, I hoped the CCTV might be so grainy that my mirrors wouldn’t stand out, but . . .” I shrug.

  “Well, I’m sorry your lie didn’t work.” Sergeant Zailer smiles. She looks and sounds as if she might actually mean it. Unless it’s a tactic. It must be a tactic. “Is that why you called and asked to come in? You realized your story’d fall flat, so you decided to tell the truth?”

  “No. I’ve just told you, I was pinning all my hopes on excessive graininess of CCTV film.” I smile back at her. “I decided to tell the truth because my mother threatened me.”

  “Nicki,” Adam says urgently. I don’t know what he thinks can be done. The words are out and can’t be taken back. I don’t want to take them back. “She didn’t threaten you.”

  “She did, actually.” To Sergeant Zailer, I say, “My husband refuses to believe my mother would stoop so low, but she did threaten me. She said if I didn’t tell Adam the truth, she would. So I told him—and having told him, there’s absolutely no reason not to tell you, especially when telling you has the added advantage of making it clear I’m not a murderer.”

  “Go on,” says Sergeant Zailer.

  I sigh. Even prepared as I am, this is not going to be pleasant. “I behaved suspiciously on Monday morning on Elmhirst Road—I’m not denying that. I did a U-turn rather than drive past a certain policeman, but . . . my reason for doing so had nothing to do with Damon Blundy, dead or alive. It was the policeman I wanted to avoid.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was embarrassed and ashamed about something I’m still embarrassed and ashamed about—although now I can bear to face up to it, whereas on Monday morning, I didn’t feel I could. I just . . . saw that policeman, panicked and had to get away from him as quickly as I could.” I clear my throat, but the lump in it is still there. “I suppose the difference is that now I have no choice but to face up to it. All right. I had a cyber affair with a man called Gavin. Well, a man who told me he was called Gavin—I doubt it’s his real name. One feature of this . . . relationship, if you can call it that, is that I sent him photographs of myself. Some were more explicit than others.”

  “Go on.”

  I glance at Adam. How must he feel, hearing all this a second time, in front of a stranger?

  “I’m OK,” he says. “You can tell her. Don’t worry about me.” He turns to Sergeant Zailer. “I love my wife and I’m not going to let a brief stupid lapse turn me against her.”

  Really? How about a brief stupid lapse of nearly half a century—my entire life, in fact?

  “Your relationship’s none of my business, Mr. Clements. Go on, Nicki.”

  I can’t. I can’t say the difficult part. Maybe if I start earlier in the story, it’ll be easier. “Gavin put an ad on a website called Intimate Links. Do you know it?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Sergeant Zailer says.

  “If you’ve never looked at Intimate Links, this might sound a bit strange, but a lot of people advertise for very specific things. Particular fetishes, for example. There’s a lot of dom-sub stuff: foot worship, guys wanting mother-baby role-play, doctor-patient fantasies . . . When I used to look regularly, there was a man who posted the same ad every day asking for a woman who would make insulting remarks about his wife while having sex with him. I always wondered about that one—I mean, why specifically that? Anyway, sorry, that’s irrelevant. These ads often have particular physical requirements: this or that type of body—skinny, obese, shaved, unshaved. A lot of the adverts are very direct. Gavin’s was. He specified certain . . . physical things, things that applied to me. Blond, petite and . . . other more intimate things. His advert read as if he was describing me.”

  Because he was. He was King Edward, using a different name to reel you in.

  Adam reaches for my hand. I understand him less now than I ever have.

  I say, “I’m sure this sounds very sordid, and maybe it is, but there’s also something liberating about being able to abandon social niceties and read what people really want. And to read an ad written by a man who tells you in advance that he will be completely transfixed by your body when he hasn’t seen it yet . . . To write back and say, ‘That’s me you’re describing,’ and to get a reply within ten seconds that says, ‘Then I want you’ . . . There’s something refreshing about that, believe it or not.”

  “I can believe it,” says Sergeant Zailer. “Nicki, there’s no need to be defensive. I’m not judgmental about other people’s sex lives. Really. Mine would probably shock you more than yours shocks me. To be honest, if I’m shocked by anything, it’s the resilience of your marriage. I think it’s great that you and Adam are sitting here holding hands while you’re telling me all this.”

  “I know Nicki loves me,” says Adam. “She didn’t love this Gavin person. That’s why I can get past it.”

  Yes, that’s true. I love Adam. I didn’t love Gavin. I thought I loved King Edward, but I was wrong.

  “Our emails became very graphic very quickly,” I say. “It was . . . I’m not making an excuse, but it felt as if my brain had been taken over by a kind of fever.”

  It always does. Every time. You like the fever, don’t you? You need it.

  “I wasn’t me; I was this . . . lust-crazed maniac. I had no idea what this man looked like, but it made no difference. It was the things he said about my body and what he’d like to do to it that got me hooked on him.”

  “So he didn’t send you photographs?”

  “No. I never asked him to, and he never offered. I liked him being no more than words on a screen. No personality, no history, just . . . words, and sexual demands. That suited me. It made me feel less guilty—less like I had another man. He could have been some kind of computer program.

  “The photographs—the ones I sent him—became a regular thing. I tried to make them as varied as possible, which was hard because the subject matter was always the same: my breasts. Sometimes in the bedroom mirror, sometimes an aerial shot, sometimes in a bathroom stall of a restaurant.” I take a deep breath. Adam squeezes my hand. “And once—only once, on June fifth this year—in a supermarket parking lot, in broad daylight, with other people around. I thought no one was close enough to see. I took off my shirt and my bra and took a picture of myself topless. With my phone. It wasn’t very good, so I took another one, and then another. That was what I always did, until I had one from that particular batch that I thought was good enough to send to Gavin. I don’t know how I could have forgotten where I was, or the danger of being seen, but I did. I got so caught up in wha
t I was doing: mentally, physically. I suppose it’s a bit like having sex in public—people do that, don’t they?”

  Sergeant Zailer nods.

  “Taking those photographs . . . that’s how it felt, like being in the middle of a sexual encounter. I got carried away. The risk of being seen by someone was part of it, yet at the same time I didn’t seriously believe there was a risk. And then I heard knocking on my car window and I looked up and there was a uniformed policeman standing there, staring at me in horror.” Saying these words out loud makes me feel as if I’m being shaken. “I panicked. It sounds melodramatic, but I thought my life was over: I’d be arrested and charged with flashing; I’d be on the front page of the local paper; my kids would be ridiculed at school; Adam would leave me; I’d have to go to court and get a criminal record for exposing myself in public . . . I lost it completely, became hysterical.”

  “Not a pleasant experience,” Sergeant Zailer commiserates. Is she mad? Why isn’t she pointing at me and laughing? “You were unlucky. Silly, but unlucky.”

  “No, I was very lucky. He let me off with a warning, even promised not to tell anyone. Poor man, he looked more embarrassed than I was. He was quite kind to me, once he saw how upset I was.”

  Rather in the way that Sergeant Zailer is being kind to me now. And Adam.

  There are some good people in the world. I need to devise a way of existing that acknowledges this. I can’t, mustn’t, base my whole life on hiding, on defending myself.

  “It could have been so much worse,” I say. “Anyway, that encounter with the policeman brought me to my senses. I broke off contact with Gavin and resolved never to put myself or my family in that position ever again. Then, on Monday morning, I was driving along Elmhirst Road on my way to my children’s school and I saw the same policeman and just . . .” A shudder I can’t control passes through me. “I couldn’t help it. It felt like a catastrophe, like something out of a horror film—he was going to be there, waiting for me, around every corner I turned, for the rest of my life. I couldn’t drive past him, couldn’t bear the thought of him seeing me. It brought it all back: the humiliation of that moment, the fear. I couldn’t do it. I did a U-turn, and that’s the only reason you know I exist. Not because I had anything to do with Damon Blundy’s murder—because I got my tits out in a parking lot once and got caught.”