Unfaithful: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller

by Natalie Barelli

  I shake my head. “Oh. Sorry, I thought… forget that. I wasn’t thinking. Did you say suicide?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “I see.” I think about this for a moment. Rub my hands over my arms, like I’m trying to warm myself up. “To answer your question, yes and no. I was his supervisor—”

  “Which is why I was asking.”

  “Yes.” I raise my hand. It’s shaking. I cross my arms. “I understand that now. He was struggling, yes. He was late on his thesis—they all are, to be honest. Just once I’d like to see a student turn in a thesis on time!” I laugh, then catch myself. “I’m sorry. What I was going to say is, I hardly ever saw him because he stopped coming. He liked to work at home, on his own, in his own time. I was concerned he was using drugs, maybe some kind of amphetamines, stimulants of sort? I don’t know if that helps.”

  “Thank you. It does.”

  “And I wish I’d said something sooner, about the drug use. If he was using I mean, I actually have no idea. Just an impression I got. I think I even mentioned it at the time.”

  Detective Jones watches me for a moment, then he nods abruptly, thanks me, and finally walks out.

  I let out a breath as I sit there with my heart thumping and what’s left of my fingernails between my teeth. Why did I have to say that? I hardly ever saw him anymore but I was worried about his excessive drug use. How would I know that if I never saw him? Did Detective Jones pick up on that? That I’m inconsistent? Of course he did. That’s his job, catching people out when they lie. Also, did I say that the first time they came to ask about Alex? I hardly ever saw him anymore. I have no idea. I can’t remember.

  I call Luis. “Have they been yet?”

  “Yes, a female detective. She’s gone.”

  I release a breath. “A detective came to talk to me too, just now.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Same as you, I suspect. Asked how she seemed when I saw her last. Which was last Friday. That’s what I said.” I wonder if he’s going to contradict me, but he doesn’t. “They said she died by falling down the stairs.”

  He doesn’t reply.

  We sit in silence for a moment. “You okay?” I ask.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Good. It’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.”

  “I don’t know what that means, Anna.”

  “I know. Just trust me, okay? Everything will be fine.”

  Thirty

  Luis arrives back home and he stands in the kitchen, his shoulders bowed, his features distorted with sadness. I take him in my arms. I hold him, stroke his hair, and we stand there a while until he disengages himself and sits down heavily at the table. I sit opposite him and take his hand.

  I tell him about Detective Jones’s visit. We swap notes. Both our interviews—if that’s what they were—were strikingly similar. When did you last see her? What was her state of mind? Did she seem upset? Preoccupied? Depressed? Was she afraid?

  I drop his hand. “Did they ask that? If she was afraid?”

  He nods, runs his fingertip over a spot on the table.

  “They didn’t ask me that. As far as I could tell, her fall was an accident. What did you say?”

  He shrugs. “That she was great.”

  Great.

  “Did she seem strange to you when you walked her back to her car?” I ask. I can’t help it. It’s because he said she was great.

  He flinches, but there’s tension in his jaw. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, I’m just asking.”

  He doesn’t reply. He scratches at the same spot but with more vigor now.

  “Talk to me, Luis.”

  He remains silent and doesn’t meet my eye. Then he gets up, grabs a knife from the cutlery drawer and returns to his chair. He uses the knife to scrape off something at the same spot.

  “What are you doing?”

  “There’s a bit of wax or something. Or some gum. I’m removing it.”

  He’s like a man obsessed. I put my hand on his. “Stop.”

  He raises his head and looks at me, and his features crumple with misery. I squeeze his hand. I check the clock behind me. “Pull yourself together, Luis. The kids will be home any minute.” Just as I say that, Matti and Carla bounce through the front door into the kitchen. They leave traces of slush from their shoes on the clean floor and I don’t care. I hug them tight, together and in turn. They complain, of course: “Mom! You’re crushing me!”

  “I don’t care,” I tell them. I just want to hug them forever. Luis just sits there scratching at the spot on the table but they don’t seem to notice. I cut up some fruit for them, ask them about their day. For once I’m grateful for their trite responses. Good. Fine. Okay.

  Matti grabs a chocolate milkshake from the fridge and drinks straight from the carton. Carla goes upstairs to do some coding for her school project. Matti takes his milkshake into the living room, mumbling something about playing with his Xbox. Normally that would be out of bounds at this time of the day—or so I hope, I’m not usually here now—but not this time. I am so overwhelmed with love for them that it makes my eyes swim. I will never stop striving to keep my family together. It’s what courses through my veins, this craving to be everything that my mother wasn’t, to keep my children safe, and happy. My kids will never grow up thinking they’re unloved, or unwanted, or not enough for either of their parents. Anything I do to achieve that goal is, as far as I’m concerned, fair game.

  My reverie is broken by the sudden sonorous tones of a news bulletin: Homicide detectives are investigating after a woman was found dead in her home—

  Luis and I stare at each other, then rush to the living room. For a moment I’m confused, but it’s only that Mateo has set up his Xbox game on the TV set. I snatch up the remote.

  “Hey!”

  “It’s just for a second, Matti.” I switch channels until I find it.

  —this morning. The woman was found just after 9:30 a.m. by a cleaner.

  Luis is next to me, eyes transfixed by the screen.

  The medical examiner’s office is yet to determine the cause of death. At this stage it’s not clear whether the police are treating the death as suspicious. Investigators did not release any other information.

  My cell rings and I look for my bag, which I find hooked on the back of the chair in the kitchen.

  It’s June.

  “Hi.”

  “I saw the news—”

  “I know. It’s awful. We were just watching it as well.”

  “—and I’m not comfortable about lying, about whether we were together last night.”

  I walk out of the kitchen and through to the backyard. A gust of wind makes me shiver. I sit on a dry patch on the top step. “It’s not really lying, June.”

  “Well, it is, actually. We weren’t together. I don’t want to make a big deal of it—”

  “Why did you change your mind?”

  “I don’t know, Anna. I just don’t feel comfortable with this. If you haven’t done anything…”

  I just can’t speak. I sit there, my head shaking like a broken toy. “I haven’t done anything,” I manage to say. “Did the police contact you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Okay, so there’s no problem then.”

  “But there will be a problem, Anna.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because the cops will want to know where you were last night. They’re going to ask you for an alibi and you—”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Oh, come on. Because your husband was having an affair with her! If she was killed—”

  “Wow, back up a second. Nobody said she was killed. They think it was an accident, okay? I mean, I should know, I’m the one who spoke to the police earlier.”

  She waits a moment. “Look, I’m just not comfortable, that’s all. Wherever you were last night—”

  “I told you, I was drinking. I went to
a bar. Bars.”

  “So you’re covered, then. Just tell them where you went. You don’t need me to lie for you.”

  I rub my forehead. I need to think. I’m so tired and my brain isn’t working properly. Luis comes to the door, watches me.

  “Can I come over? We could talk…” I ask.

  “What, now?”

  “Yes, please. Please, June.”

  It’s raining again and I left my umbrella at home. By the time I arrive at June’s house, water is dripping down my neck and into the collar of my jacket.

  I take off my coat and lay it on the back of a chair while June makes room for me on the sofa by grabbing a pile of magazines and articles and putting them on a table near the window. She disappears and returns with two mugs of something warm and caramel-colored.

  I take mine with both hands. “Thank you, it smells delicious. What is it?”

  “It’s a chai tea, with cinnamon. And a dash of bourbon.”

  “Thank you. That’s exactly what I feel like.” I take a sip of the hot drink. It’s incredibly delicious. “Do you have a recipe for this?”

  “Yes. I’ll dig it out and give it to you.”

  “Thank you. I’d like that.”

  “Anna? What’s going on? You didn’t come to ask me for a recipe.”

  I sit back against the couch. “You know why I’m here.”

  “What happened last night?” she asks.

  I look at her, right into her eyes. “I did something really bad.”

  “Oh god. What did you do?”

  “It’s not what you think,” I say quickly. I tell her how I showed up at Isabelle’s door. How we argued. The terrible things she said to me.

  “She said she was pregnant.”

  Her eyes grow wide. “Luis’s?”

  “Yes. Or so she said.”

  “What happened then?”

  I consider telling her about the necklace, how I snatched it off her, how it caused the thin welt on my hand, but I don’t. I’ll leave that for another day. I don’t think June needs any more reasons not to help me.

  “We argued. She said she loved him and… anyway, look. When I left her, she was perfectly fine, and that’s the truth. I just walked out. She was laughing behind my back. I sure didn’t kill her. And anyway, she fell down the stairs, according to the detective.”

  “Down the stairs?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  She shakes her head, like she’s annoyed with me, like I’m not taking the situation seriously.

  “But you see, June, if the police were to find out, it would probably get leaked to the press, don’t you think?”

  “Why would it get leaked?”

  “Because she’s… because I won the Pentti-Stone, because it’s a lurid story… The usual reasons.”

  She thinks about this for a moment. “And you really, really didn’t do anything to hurt her?”

  “No, June, I promise you, she was perfectly healthy when I left her. She was in much better shape than I was, and that’s the truth.”

  She takes the time to think about it some more, and I sit there, my heart in my mouth. Finally she says, “Okay, then I’ll say we were together. I’ll say we came back here if anyone asks.”

  “Oh god, thank you. Thank you. June, you have no idea what that means to me.”

  She shakes her head. “So what time did you get home?”

  “Good question, I’m not sure, to be honest.” I give a small, embarrassed laugh. By now I’m embarrassed about everything I’ve done, the way I behaved, how out of control I got. “About one a.m. I think. Maybe later.”

  “You really did go out on the town.”

  I sit back and sigh. ‘I know.”

  “You hungry?” she asks.

  I smile. “Why?”

  “I have tons of yummy things in the kitchen. I’ll bring something out.”

  I laugh. “Honestly, I’ve put on weight since I’ve met you.” I follow her into the kitchen.

  Her kitchen is nothing like mine. I’ve never seen a kitchen so messy. Jars with what looks like flour and sugar are left open haphazardly on the bench, which is already riddled with crumbs. I kind of wish I hadn’t come in here. “Nothing too filling, please. I still have to make dinner for the children.”

  She pops off the top of a container and hands it to me. “Check this out.”

  I lean over to take a look. “Smells yummy, looks shocking. What it is?”

  “Caramelized salted peanut toffee. I thought I could serve it with cocktails. Actually, I don’t know what I was thinking. Anyway, I made a mess of it. I used honey instead of sugar and it’s gone all hard and weird.”

  “You make it sound so tempting.”

  “I know.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I was experimenting. Anyway, you’re supposed to serve them with dry martinis or something.”

  “What are they like?”

  “Disgustingly delicious.”

  “Can I have the martini without the salted caramel peanut disgusting thing?”

  “No way. It’s a job lot. All or nothing.” She winks at me.

  “Anyway, it’s irrelevant,” I say, my head throbbing again. “I don’t know if I can ever drink anything ever again.”

  “Sure you can, just the one. It’ll make you feel better, I swear.”

  I sigh. “If you say so.”

  She puts the crumbly, sticky mess on a plate, and hands it to me. “Take that with you, I’ll bring the lemon and olives.”

  We’re back in the living room when she asks abruptly. “Do you have a gun?”

  “Me? No! Why would you ask that?”

  “Don’t you think if Isabelle had a gun, she probably wouldn’t be dead now?”

  “But that’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it’s not. If she was killed—”

  “We don’t know she was killed, June.”

  “But if she was… Well, this is why you don’t want to be a woman living alone and not be able to protect yourself against an intruder. Trust me, I think about that all the time in this city.”

  “You’re not making any sense. Do you have a gun?”

  “Sure I do. I’d be stupid not to have one.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “In my bedroom. It’s a small one, a .380, but it’ll do the job. You should get yourself one, honestly.”

  I think about Isabelle with a gun and suddenly, I am absolutely convinced that if she owned one, she would have used it on me. “I should go.” I say. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” I ask.

  “You certainly will.” She takes my glass and my plate and takes them into the kitchen. When she returns I have my jacket on.

  “And don’t worry,” she says, hugging me at the door. “Your secret—all your secrets, I should say—are safe with me.”

  Thirty-One

  The fact that Isabelle is dead makes me forgive Luis. That’s how I think of it anyway, because what’s the point of holding a grudge against a ghost? It’s over. That’s the thought that keeps popping into my head. It’s over. And as far as the police are concerned, it was an accident. That’s certainly the impression I got from speaking to Detective Jones.

  God, just imagine it. Thinking you were so special, it was okay for you to rip another family apart, take a father away from his children, all in the name of love, and then poof! Neck broken. Game over.

  There’s poetry in that, I think.

  Still, as we lie in bed together, me spooning Luis, I do want to whisper into his ear, Don’t do it again. Ever. I can hear him sigh. Maybe he’s even crying, I’m not sure. I put my arm around his torso and caress him, console him, just I like did all those years ago after Monica died.

  Shh. There, there.

  “I love you so much,” I say softly. “Let’s move away, you, me and the kids. Let’s get away from this place. We could move to Martha’s Vineyard.” I talk to him like this, whispering softly. I looked it up, I say. You won’t believe the amaz
ing art community there, and there’s a fencing club and a drama club and wait till you see the houses in Oak Bluffs and the Flying Horses carousel, the oldest carousel in the world, I say, although I’m not completely sure that’s the case. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Luis is asleep now, snoring softly in my arms.

  The following morning I wake with a renewed sense of determination. I watch Luis sleep for a while, lay my hand against his cheek. He doesn’t move. I slowly push the covers away and swing my legs out of bed, all in slow motion so as not to disturb him.

  I wake the children, make breakfast, prepare lunches, check homework, sign a note to say Carla can go to the theatre with the class next Saturday morning to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which I first read as The Curious Incident of the Curator in the Night-Time and I almost laugh.

  “Is Dad okay?” they ask.

  “He’s got a cold, that’s all. He’s fine.” I ruffle their hair. “Have a great day at school. I love you. Go, now, or you’ll miss the bus.”

  I feed Roxy, put everything in the dishwasher, wipe the surfaces and put on a load of laundry. I even find a tissue in the pocket of Carla’s jeans before I turn on the machine. That’s how good a day this is. It’s the way my life should be. It’s what makes me happy. I am happy when other people are happy. I was born for this role: wife, mother, homemaker.

  When Luis walks into the kitchen, I wrap my arm around his neck.

  “I thought you were going to sleep in. How are you feeling?”

  “Okay.” He runs his hand through his hair.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I rest my head against his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” he whispers.

  “What for?” I reply. But what I’m saying, really, is, It’s fine. I love you. I would do anything for you. For us. I’m a rallier.

  I steered the ship through dark and choppy waters and I’ve brought us into the light. And I know it’s crazy, but that’s how I feel. Like the sunshine has returned to our lives and swept the shadows away and, with them, everything that is scary and dark.

  The day couldn’t be better. It’s crisp, clear, luminous. Then I find that June has left a caramel cupcake on my desk. It sits on a piece of paper on which she’s scribbled, Enjoy! I drop my bag on the floor, pick up the cupcake and devour it, licking my lips, catching every last crumb. It’s unbelievably delicious.