The First Wife: An unputdownable page turner with a twist

by Jill Childs

  The First Wife

  An unputdownable page-turner with a twist

  Jill Childs

  Contents

  Untitled

  Untitled

  Prologue

  1. Sophie

  2. Caroline

  3. Sophie

  4. Caroline

  5. Sophie

  6. Caroline

  7. Sophie

  Mystery woman washed up on beach

  8. Caroline

  9. Sophie

  10. Caroline

  11. Sophie

  Untitled

  12. Caroline

  Untitled

  Acknowledgments

  Untitled

  THE FIRST WIFE

  By Jill Childs

  Untitled

  [Dedication]

  For Sheila

  Prologue

  I lie full-length on the wet, wiry grass in the darkness and strain to make out the shape of the rocks, the surging water, below. A salty wind scours my face. The boom of the waves rises to meet me, loud in the stillness of evening.

  I can’t see the sea but, like death, I know it’s there, close now, waiting for me. A vast expanse of nothingness. The edge of the flat world.

  Above, the clouds are thin and spare and between their ever-moving snatches, the moon struggles to repair itself.

  Other people, different people, might take pleasure in it –

  ‘See, the moon. So beautiful. Always reminds me how lucky we are. How blessed.’

  Maybe other people are.

  I inch forward until my head hangs right over the drop. Foam flashes here and there as the sea surges against the rocks. The crashing waves echo, then fall back to silence.

  I could jump.

  My heart skips as I imagine it. I can almost feel myself leaping forward, into space. It feels like flying, those fractions of suspended time. Legs kicking at empty air, arms spread wide. And the rocks – crocodiles with open mouths – waiting below. I see myself lying on them, distant, body broken and crumpled, head split in two.

  I ease back from the brink and rest my forehead squarely on folded arms, eyes squeezed shut. My ears pound with blood and I wait, focussing on my breathing, until slowly it settles and slows again. I’m still here, body and soul still bound together. It’s a relief. A revelation. But for how much longer?

  And then it comes to me. There, lying on the coarse grass, my body weak and starting now to shiver, ideas come tumbling through my mind, one after another, and the plan forms, my plan. I will have revenge. There is a way. My breathing quickens a second time. My cheeks flush.

  Soon, when my strength returns, I will crawl away from the cliff-edge and drive back to the house. I will pull off my wet clothes and wrap myself in a dressing gown and, when my hands have stopping shaking, I’ll power up my laptop and write a long, compelling email to my old friend, Sophie.

  I will invite her to stay. I will urge her in the strongest terms. Not now. Not while her father is so frail. But as soon as possible, once her own private storm has passed.

  Sophie, my dear friend, will you do this for me? Please?

  I think, if the moment is right, that perhaps you will.

  I roll onto my back and feel the cool air blow across my face, down my body. When I open my eyes, I stare up into brightness, so dazzled by the light that specks and strangely expanding shapes, spheres and tubes, explode in front of my eyes and when I blink, they float and spangle and it’s harder than ever to tell what is real and what is not.

  One

  Sophie

  On my last night at home, my last ever night in that small house where Mum and Dad and I lived for so many years, I had the murder dream again.

  I woke with a start and lay rigidly, sweating, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, watching the thin patterns of shadow swim back and forth as the trees in the garden lifted and swayed in the wind. My heart pounded. For moments, lying there, the terror of the dream held onto me. The same dream as before. No violence. No blood. No enactment of the actual moment of death. Just the sickening knowledge that I’d somehow committed a terrible murder, the ultimate crime, and the creeping horror that someone knew what I’d done.

  Who exactly was he? This man who read my guilt? A policeman or detective, perhaps. It didn’t matter. He was just a featureless man with stern eyes who knew. He knew and I knew he knew. The dream was suffused with dread. The net was tightening around me. The inescapable reckoning was creeping at last towards me. Sure and certain and final.

  I lay, shaking, and forced myself to breathe deeply. Just a dream. I hadn’t committed a murder, not in real life. I wasn’t facing life behind prison bars. A dream.

  I managed to twist onto my side and check my phone. Ten past four. I wriggled out of the sleeping bag, still sloughing off the memory of the dream, and padded downstairs.

  The kitchen floor tiles were cold. I went to pour myself a glass of water, half asleep, and opened the cupboard door to find an empty carcass where glasses should have been. The surfaces, cleaned out and ready for the buyer, shone eerily in the darkness. Even the sounds were different now. Hollow. The rooms were barely familiar without the clutter of furniture, vanished from the places it had always stood. All packed up now and taken away to the saleroom, to the charity shop and, just a few pieces, keepsakes – nothing we had was worth very much – sent into storage for a future I still couldn’t imagine.

  I stood there at the sink and ran the tap, cupped my hands and drank from them, starting to shiver. I slurped noisily, feeling like a naughty child, then found myself turning quickly, feeling rather than seeing the silent, watching figure of my mother there by the far counter. I blinked at the emptiness. Nothing after all but dust and shadows.

  Later, I crept back upstairs and crawled again into the sleeping bag, trying to curl as tightly as I could inside. My bare feet were frozen. My head ached and I wanted to fall back into sleep but I was awake now, my stomach knotted, trying to hold onto my final moments here, trying to commit it all to memory. Every creaking floorboard, every lopsided doorway, every fading pattern on the wallpaper.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and let the darkness spangle and shimmer and waited for the day to start.

  I clambered down from the train and struggled out of the unfamiliar station, dishevelled and sweating, trying to pull two suitcases on wheels and weighed down by a rucksack and the bag slung across my front. The suitcases were old with stiff, cheap wheels, damaged by years in the loft, and although I tried to walk in a deliberate straight line, dragging one from each arm, they veered off the tramlines every few paces and banged into each other, toppled and crashed.

  A man with a briefcase glared at me as one of the corners clipped his shin as he passed. A young woman with a baby in a buggy tutted and made an unnecessarily large detour round me. I hesitated on the forecourt, wondering what to do. No sign of Caroline.

  I checked my phone. She still hadn’t answered the text I’d sent from the train, letting her know my arrival time. I sighed, feeling suddenly foolish. I should have called yesterday to confirm. The last few weeks had just been such a blur of solicitors and removal men and estate agents.

  Besides, Caroline had sounded so insistent last time she wrote.

  Just get yourself down here, please, she’d emailed. Jump on the first train you can. I’ll be here. I’ll meet you at the station.

  I called her mobile and listened to it ring out. No answer. I sent another text, less hopeful now: Hi Caroline, I’m here! Ok to come and get me?

  I looked round for somewhere to sit while I decided what to do. There was a café a
little further along, on the rim of the station drop off zone. I staggered inside and dumped my luggage in a corner. It was a soulless place, old fashioned and spare. An old man sat alone in the far corner, brooding over a cup and saucer, gazing out at the road. A couple, waiting for a train perhaps, hunched forward towards each other across the grey Formica topped table and grasped each other’s hands. A blousy waitress leaned her elbows on the counter and stared sightlessly into space, as if she’d seen it all before.

  I sipped a cup of bad coffee and stared at my phone. There was still no reply to my message or missed call. I trawled back through my emails from Caroline. We hadn’t been in touch for the last few months, not since Dad was rushed into hospital, but I was sure she’d sent me a landline number when she moved into the new house earlier in the year, along with the address.

  When I finally found the number, she picked up after a few rings. It was strange to hear her disembodied voice after so long.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Caroline?’

  ‘Who’s speaking please?’ She sounded formal and slightly breathless, as if she’d hurried from another part of the house and her mind was still there.

  ‘It’s me! Sophie! I’m at the station. Didn’t you get my text?’

  A pause. ‘What, Billingslow station?’ A sudden squeal. ‘Oh, my goodness! Sophie!’

  I smiled. That squeal. It took me straight back to being girls again, giggling together at school. Thirty years disappeared in a moment.

  ‘You texted?’ she rattled on. ‘On the new number or the old one?’

  ‘The one you sent me in March. Have you changed it? Anyway, I’m here.’

  I looked out at the dull sky, leaden with rain. A bus drew up outside the station and sat for a while, its engine ticking over.

  ‘I’m in a café, near the bus stop.’

  ‘Oh, no! Not that dump!’ Her laughter was infectious. ‘Sit tight, I’m on my way!’

  The phone went down with a crash.

  I settled to wait, my mood lighter now, looking forward to seeing her. I was here partly because in Caroline’s last email, the one she sent when my father was in and out of hospital, still struggling to hang on to life – she sounded so desperate to see me. And partly because I felt a sudden need to see her too, now he’d gone. I wanted to be with someone who’d remember him from when we were both children. Someone who, despite how many years had passed since we actually met, might just understand.

  I watched the idling bus and let my mind drift. A young woman emerged from the station, hurrying, hand in hand with a four or five-year-old girl. The fur-trimmed hood of the child’s anorak fell back as she was dragged across the forecourt towards the bus. Her hair was scraped into two thin plaits which trailed down her back.

  I imagined the young woman combing out the hair and plaiting it with deft movements. I wondered if the comb had tugged, if the girl had screamed or pulled away and been scolded, if she was that kind of mother. Or if she’d been slow and gentle and kissed the top of the girl’s head when she finished, as my mother used to do. As I’d once hoped to do, with my own little girl. I shook my head. I shifted in my seat, stretching out the sudden hard knot in my chest.

  I hadn’t believed my mother when she’d tried to warn me.

  ‘Oh Sophie, don’t waste your time,’ she’d said, when I’d finally told her about Andrew. ‘Even if he does leave his wife, what kind of man would that make him? How could you trust him?’

  I’d just shrugged and turned away and she knew better than to say any more. I’d thought her old-fashioned at the time. I thought she didn’t understand, that Andrew, clever, funny Andrew, wasn’t like that. But she was right, of course. I’d waited all those years, hanging on promises, and he never did leave his wife and children. By the time I’d found the strength to break it off, I was marooned, well into my thirties and living at home again, caring for Dad. Now what did I have, as I faced the prospect of approaching forty, all alone?

  The café door jangled open, letting in a rush of cold air.

  ‘Sophie?’

  A loud voice, confident and strident. I turned to look. Caroline? She lifted her sunglasses to peer at me as she strode across to my table. Only Caroline would wear designer sunglasses on a dark September day.

  She was wearing a short woollen jacket, baby doll style in red with large gold buttons. It parted enough as she walked to show glimpses of tight, fashionably cut jeans and a dark green sweater. Simple but elegant. Cashmere, perhaps. Her jeans disappeared into cowboy boots. Car keys dangled from one hand. Her eyes swept across my mousy hair, windswept and tangled after the journey down. My old anorak and jeans, creased and baggy from over-use. My sturdy lace-up shoes.

  I hesitated, uncertain. ‘Sorry. Is it—?’

  She broke into a smile, opened her arms to hug me. ‘Sorry? Why? I just can’t believe you’re here.’

  She took charge of the pile of luggage at my feet, slinging the rucksack on her shoulder, then picking up a suitcase and one of my bags.

  ‘Come on! Let’s go!’

  I found myself grinning as I picked up the rest and followed her out. I was ten years old again, the socially awkward one, the last to be picked for the team, wondering why pretty, wealthy Caroline had grabbed my hand and pulled me down to sit beside her on the school bus.

  She drove fast and with confidence. Her car was sporty and low and I felt awkward beside her, all knees and elbows, tilted back too far in the passenger seat, too close to the speeding road. She didn’t speak and I didn’t have the nerve to break the silence, just watched the scenery slowly change from suburban stone to fields and then, finally, the open countryside. It was a raw landscape, wind-swept, with wiry grass and gorse and buffeted, gnarled trees.

  When I found the courage, I shuffled to sit as upright in my seat as I could and took stealthy glances at her. I wasn’t sure I’d even have recognised her, after all these years. She was still imperious, still attractive, but in a different way. The slim young girl had thickened and strengthened. Her arms, grasping the steering wheel, were more muscular. Her hair was still blonde but a less vivid shade as if she’d started adding artificial colour, perhaps to mask some early strands of grey. The bright blue of her eyes was muddied by specks of grey.

  Her cheeks were fuller too. Her whole face had broadened as if her bones had stretched sideways as she aged. I thought of her mother, always so elfin in features and so elegant. I’d assumed Caroline would end up the same.

  She gave me a sideways glance. ‘Alright?’

  I blushed, embarrassed to be caught staring, and focussed forward at the road. It was steadily narrowing, the verge giving way to a mud ditch.

  She went on: ‘I was trying to think how long it’s been.’

  I nodded. ‘Me too. Twenty-five years?’ I made it a question but I’d already worked it out. We were just turning eleven when we finished primary school together. I went on to the local secondary school and Caroline’s family moved to Singapore. Then it was New York. Then Hong Kong.

  All those years, especially through our teens, I’d feasted on her letters and then, in recent decades, on her emails. They came erratically. The pauses between them could be months or even years. Her life sounded exotic. I wasn’t jealous, I was proud. It was like having a film-star for a friend. Her family just wasn’t like mine. I knew that. It wasn’t just money. They were made of different stuff.

  ‘Blimey! A quarter of a century! That makes me feel so old!’

  She laughed. Her eyes were on the road as she took a sharp bend at speed, then had to brake hard to regain control and bring us back to our side of the road. Her lips, bright red with lipstick, pursed.

  It felt odd, seeing her again. She seemed such a stranger, even though I’d thought so much about her, over the years. I remembered the long email she sent me after her wedding. That was definitely more than five years ago because Mum was still alive. I was suffocating, at the time. I’d just been passed over for another promotion at work an
d starting to realise, deep down, that maybe Andrew never would leave his wife, never would be mine in the way he’d promised.

  And I was realising too how much I’d given up for him. All the secrecy and uncertainty surrounding our relationship (“just until I’m ready to tell my wife”) had slowly turned me from a popular young woman with a hectic social life to an oddball. A woman who always left the party early, on her own. An eternally single guest at dinner parties. An unreliable friend who made excuses and abruptly disappeared when her phone rang. And for what?

  Then Caroline’s email came and she sounded so happy, it seemed the perfect end to her fairy-tale romance out there in Hong Kong. I remembered sitting on the grey speckled carpet, my back against the wall, looking down the narrow hall of my small, rented flat-share towards the kitchenette.

  I called Mum and let it all spill out of me, with all the details Caroline had described. The Anglican cathedral on Hong Kong Island, the pews decorated with flowers and satin ribbons. The way the sunlight fell in shafts through the stained glass to make dappled splashes of colour on the flagstones as Caroline processed down the aisle on her father’s arm, the whisper of her silk dress and train, stitched with seed pearls. The soprano who sang unaccompanied as they signed the register, her voice pure and perfect and timeless. The vivid purple of the orchids which made up Caroline’s bouquet, tied with a strip of white satin. How beautiful she must have looked, how effortlessly stylish and poised. Afterwards, they had the reception on The Peak, overlooking Hong Kong harbour with ice-cold champagne to offset the heat.