The Wife’s Secret: A dark psychological thriller with a stunning twist

David picks up another file, feels the battering of his heart and tries to breathe. He can’t bear to contemplate what will happen regarding claims arising before today or how he’ll repay the funds he has borrowed from Peter to pay Paul. That’s something he needs to discuss with Charlie. The trouble is that Charlie doesn’t seem to be in the mood for listening.

Antonia’s stomach rumbles for its lunch as she pulls off her green buckled wellies on the steps. Her mum called three times before nine this morning, so she escaped to the garden with her secateurs. Snip, snip, snip. She’s been savage with her pruning, savagery that usually works.

She steps back for a moment in her socks, lifting her head and taking in her home’s clean white facade. Bless David. She never asked for a house like this, but as he often says, he’d promised it from their very first date. She can still picture it clearly.

It was a Sunday. He’d arrived ten minutes early in a low sports car. She couldn’t have told you the make, but it was small, shiny and sleek, and rather than soundless as she expected, it was loud, booming with noise, much like the man who drove it.

‘Hope you like poussin,’ he’d said at the traffic lights. Then after a moment, putting his hand on hers, ‘Only chicken. We’re having a picnic. The hamper’s in the boot. Is that OK?’

She’d nodded, feeling foolish. She hadn’t dressed for a picnic. Not knowing what to expect, she’d worn a pale pink shift dress and high heels.

David had driven towards Derbyshire, chatting all the way, then turned off the main road at some gates, parking up, jumping out to open her door and holding out his hand.

‘Welcome to Lyme Hall!’ He’d deliberately said it as though it was his and she’d laughed, pleased he was so easy to be with despite her faux pas with the heels.

Spreading out a blanket on a manicured lawn at the front of the house, David had opened the basket. Not just tiny chickens, but glossy pork pies, Scotch eggs, stuffed peppers and champagne.

‘Please take a seat,’ he’d said, gesturing to the ground. For a moment she’d frozen. The shoes were sharp-heeled, the dress fitted. Then, thinking what Sophie would do, she’d slightly hitched up her dress and slipped off her shoes. ‘This is lovely,’ she’d said.

‘And so are you,’ he’d replied.

Much later, topping up her wine, he’d grinned at her. ‘I’ve done nothing but talk. Now it’s your turn. Tell me about you.’

The mild panic was there as always, but he hadn’t told her anything really. He was a solicitor, he lived somewhere in Cheshire, he played football on a Sunday, but nothing personal, somehow. She found she liked it; she liked that he talked incessantly, but didn’t say anything profound.

‘Well …’ she’d begun, but as though sensing her hesitation, he’d put up his hand.

‘No, don’t tell me anything. You’re perfect just as you are.’

But after all the arguments with her last boyfriend, she hadn’t wanted to appear odd, wanted to get it out of the way. ‘I run a hair salon, share a flat with two friends. My dad died way back, but I still have my mum. She’s a bit fragile so she’s in a care home.’ She’d smiled, embarrassed. ‘No brothers or sisters, so there’s pretty much just me.’

David had gazed at her, but after a few moments the intensity in his eyes was replaced with a smile. ‘Me too. Parents died long ago. See? I knew you were perfect.’ He’d leaned back and stretched out his legs. ‘Told you last night you were the woman I’d marry.’ Turning to the grand facade of Lyme Hall, he’d nodded. ‘Did I mention I’m going to buy you one of these?’

Antonia now smiles and shakes her head at the memory. It had been the first time she’d visited a National Trust property and David had watched her face as she’d gazed wide-eyed and open-mouthed at its magnificence and splendour. Though considerably smaller, it’s what his clients and visitors say of White Gables all the time: ‘The renovation is magnificent. Must have cost a fortune.’ She can see that and she’s proud, but it’s the garden which pleases her. She feels she’s had more of an input. Not planting, necessarily, though she did all the bedding plants herself, but nurturing. She nurtures the plants, the beds and the bushes and they respond in kind.

‘Antonia, darling, you do have green fingers!’ Naomi the neighbour shouts from over the fence, her voice startling Antonia as she stands on the doorstep. She feels suddenly shy.

‘Perhaps I do,’ she replies with a guilty clutch of conceit as she blushes in acknowledgement.

It relaxes her usually; the garden, the fresh air, the birds and the hills reaching up to the steep ridge of The Edge. But today she’s agitated and even gardening hasn’t settled her. She goes inside, takes off her waxed jacket in the hall and strokes her arm. The cut has started to scab and it’s itchy. It always is when the healing process is underway. Like a little reminder.

‘The Chablis has been staring at me again,’ Sophie joked the other day.

‘Then don’t have it in the house,’ Antonia replied sternly.

But she understood completely. A tempting treat at the tip of one’s fingertips. It’s just a question of how long each of them can resist.

‘That’s a nasty cut,’ David had commented, not so long ago. ‘How did you do that?’

They were in bed and a shaft of light slanting through the shutters lit her naked body.

‘Gardening. Those hawthorns can be vicious,’ she’d replied brightly, turning towards him and pulling him into an embrace. But she’d caught his troubled look, that frown of love he has when he doesn’t know she’s looking. She must be more careful.

The answerphone light in the kitchen is flashing. She sighs and stares for a moment, then walks briskly to the telephone, quickly presses play, turns her back and busies herself loudly at the sink as though that will swamp the sound of the inevitable.

‘Hi, it’s Zara Singh again. The journalist? I think we got cut off. I’d really appreciate it if you could call me back?’ The rise in tone makes it sound like a question. And then she hears Candy’s hesitant voice, for the fourth time today. ‘Hello, Chinue, love. It’s Mum. Are you there?’

Olivia pushes the washing-machine door to, programmes a light wash and then leans against it, staring out of the utility room window which, she notes with a sigh, needs cleaning both inside and out. She knows she’s been moody and uncommunicative with the girls again today and feels vaguely guilty, but the truth is she can’t help herself.

She looks at her hands, which still have a slight tremor. Her jaw is aching from clenching her teeth. She’s seething. She seethed silently all night and all day and the churning hasn’t abated, not even a drop.

‘The bastard, the absolute bastard.’ The sheer anger and frustration brings tears to her eyes while his words repeat in a galling loop in her head. She marches into the kitchen and puts on the kettle before collapsing on to a chair. ‘Fuck you, Mike,’ she says out loud.

She considers phoning her sister, regaling her with last night’s conversation word for word. But she knows what her sister will say. ‘Come on, Olivia. He’s only human. Everything’s fine now you know he’s not having an affair with his tarty secretary or anyone else. I told you so.’

Her sister likes Mike. Everybody likes bloody Mike. But not everyone agreed to bear him another child. She really didn’t want a third child but she did it for him. She went through yet another amniocentesis to check for Down’s Syndrome and then experienced the worst of her pregnancies with horrendous sickness and overwhelming tiredness while having to care for two other young demanding children. It was she who gave birth to a dead baby; it was she who felt the pain and the fear, the impotence, the failure.

‘Fuck you, Mike!’ she declares again. And then, ‘God, what a cow’ as she leans down to pick up a piece of ceramic she’s missed from the floor. She looks at Hannah’s empty seat and feels another wave of emotion. Hannah is only five, accidents are bound to happen and it’s only a broken cereal bowl. How she wishes she hadn’t shouted quite so loudly and for quite so long. Hannah cried so much at school that the teacher had to peel her away from Olivia’s arms. Then she walked away swiftly, down the long corridor, past all the happy pictures and paintings and books, fearful that the teacher would call her back and suggest she take Hannah home.

Olivia sighs loudly. An awful mother and murderous to boot. Focusing on Hannah, her anger recedes for a spell. She’ll make it up to her after school, she thinks, her mind racing with ideas. She’ll make her a cake or buy her a treat and say sorry. She’ll try to be patient, she’ll try to be kind.

Lifting her head, she glances at the clock to check the time, but her eyes catch the wedding portrait of her and Mike hanging against the dark red wallpaper in the hall, still not replaced from when they moved in nine years ago. That couple was happy, she thinks, look how they laughed.

Stepping forward, she studies the photograph. She hasn’t looked at it, really looked at it, for a long time and yet she walks past it maybe twelve times a day. Perhaps that’s what’s happened to their marriage, she thinks, perhaps they’ve grown so used to each other that they just walk past without seeing.

She gazes at Mike’s striking face in the photograph. She can see no resemblance between him and the man who said those hurtful words about the miscarriage to her last night, even though they look much the same. The person in the photograph was fun, he was open and loving, a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. Not a man given to irrational deep thought.

Olivia shakes her head as the anger resurfaces. The bastard implied she was somehow responsible for the miscarriage, for the death of their son. She still can’t believe it; it was an unforgivable thing to say, but an even worse thing to actually believe.

Antonia looks at her watch and continues her pacing from the lofty hallway, around the staircase to the lounge. She feels guilty. Hot and guilty. She’s aware that it’s a terrible betrayal, but she can’t help herself. She’s spent half an hour reapplying her make-up and has changed her clothes twice. It’s ridiculous, she knows, but she’s nervous, more nervous than she ever expected. She catches her face in the hall mirror and somebody else stares back with long, straight, dark hair looking polished, calm and relaxed.

It’s not as though I don’t know him, she thinks. It’s me who instigated it and now I must see it through with no regrets.

She glances at her watch one more time, the white-gold strap bright against her honey-coloured skin. He’ll be here any minute and it wouldn’t do to be waiting at the door. She walks into the silent lounge and puts on an Adele CD for company. Standing for a moment, she listens, but even Adele’s intoxicating voice doesn’t seem right, so she turns it off and plumps up the sofa cushions yet again.

The doorbell is shrill in the silence. Antonia stands up, touches her hair and then takes a deep breath. Then she walks to the front door, straightens her shoulders and opens it.

‘Hello, Sami,’ she says.

CHAPTER NINE

Olivia is running late as she leaves her untidy house to collect Hannah from school. The afternoon has flown by as it always does and she feels hot as she searches for her keys, but the cold air swipes her cheeks at the door, so she turns back to fetch her coat. It’s only then that she stops to study the wedding photograph again. She doesn’t look at the man this time, but at the girl. She has pale hair and pastel eyes but a bright, confident smile. She holds a single bunch of yellow roses and her dress is traditional but plain. There are no feathers or frills in her hair. This isn’t a girl who needs chocolates or flowers to tell her she is loved. This isn’t a girl who craves flattery or attention to give her self-worth. This is a girl who’s said ‘for better or for worse’ and who means it.

‘Here’s the post for signing, Mike,’ Judith says as she neatens a letter escaping from the tidy rectangle of her long day’s endeavours.

Mike looks up at her and nods, then drops his head again, continuing to punch numbers into a calculator, which spews out digits on a tiny receipt. She turns away towards the filing cabinet, feeling contemplative. The filing is up to date, but she hovers for a moment, busying herself by opening cabinet drawers, tidying the hanging baskets and closing them again. Mike hasn’t said much to her at all today. He looks tired and unhappy, and she wonders how the flowers fared last night. Pretty badly, by the looks of it, she concludes.

She casts a final glance at Mike and notes that his frown line seems more pronounced than usual. It is, she reflects, the one slight imperfection in an otherwise perfect face.

She has her hand on the handle when he abruptly speaks. ‘Who’s the father of your baby, Jude?’ he asks.

Judith turns, blurting out a laugh of surprise. It’s the first time in all the years she’s known him that he’s asked such a personal question. ‘Bloody hell, Mike. Am I dreaming or did you really ask me that?’

He drops his intense gaze and picks up a pen. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘None of my business.’

Judith studies his slightly flushed face. There’s something vulnerable about him, she thinks, like a little lost boy who needs a big cuddle from the wicked witch or the snow queen, to be led by the hand into the land of temptation … he just doesn’t know it.

She toys with the idea of teasing him, perhaps asking if he realises his question is tantamount to sexual harassment, or something similar, but he looked so sincere when he posed the question that a straight answer seems only fair.

‘No, that’s fine,’ she says, pulling out the client chair and sitting heavily, grateful to be off her feet for a minute or two. ‘Actually, no one in particular, as it happens. Just someone who was tall and pleasant for an evening or two. With hair and good shoes. And, of course, with straight white teeth.’ She smiles. ‘Some things you can’t compromise on.’

She watches him absorb her reply and then laughs at the look of mild shock on his face when he realises her answer is serious. ‘For a leftie, you’re very conservative at times. I don’t know why you’re surprised, Mike. You of all people know I’ve tried them all, big, small, black, white. I even married a couple and they all ended in disaster. So I figured there’s me and my mum and that’s all the baby needs.’

She stops for a moment, her head cocked. She can almost see the slow chug of Mike’s mind trying to keep up, to understand. ‘Ask yourself this, Mike: what’s better, to have a dad who buggers off after two minutes, to have one who gives the odd slap, or not to have one at all? Well, I know which one I’d prefer, the one with the least heartache.’

It’s dusk outside, the office empty save, perhaps, for one or two other surveyors who are still at their work stations clocking up chargeable hours before the end of the month. Mike sits at his desk for a long time without moving. It’s the first time in twelve years of marriage that he doesn’t want to rush home at the end of the day. He has no idea what awaits him. Olivia busied herself with the girls and their school bags when he left this morning, avoiding all eye contact with him.

It has been a day of maybes, his mind fit to burst with the awful uncertainty of it all. Maybe Olivia will forgive him for the things that he said. Maybe life will go on as before. He wants it to, of course, but there’s an iota of a maybe that still hangs around, suggesting there’s no smoke without fire. Maybe he was right.

Last night everything was fine. After the frisson of the shower he took Olivia to bed, dried her body with kisses and eventually she smiled and said, ‘Yes, just there. That’s so nice. Oh, Mike, where have you been?’ It was love at its best, hearing her come, the sweetest of sounds and one he can never get enough of, before releasing himself.

‘You didn’t explain why,’ she said later as they lay entwined in the dark. ‘Why you went away in here,’ she said, kissing his temple.

Mike sighed. His fears now felt foolish and childish. He’d hoped she wouldn’t ask. ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ he said, drawing her close.

‘It matters to me,’ Olivia said, pulling away from him. She turned on the bedside lamp and looked intently at his face. ‘What was it, Mike? Was it the miscarriage? I thought we grieved together and put it behind us.’

He sat up, staring ahead at nothing in particular. He suddenly felt angry, really angry. He could feel the heat rise in his body, the colour flood his face. ‘You put it behind us, Olivia. You wiped the slate clean and said “never mind”.’

He could feel her flinch, heard her intake of breath, but he knew he wouldn’t stop. ‘But you didn’t pause for one moment to consider how I felt. Everyone was there with their condolences and their sympathy. We’re so sorry, Olivia, how are you, Olivia, can I do anything, Olivia. He was my child too, my loss. It was me who wanted him, not you.’

‘That isn’t fair, Mike. You have no idea what it’s like to be pregnant, let alone give bloody birth. I was as sick as a dog, in and out of hospital with the vomiting. It was bloody awful but I did it for you. Because you had some stupid hang-up about wanting a son. How do you think the girls would feel if they knew that they weren’t good enough for you, just because of their gender? We live in the twenty-first century for God’s sake, women are equal and our girls are wonderful.’

He turned his head and stared at Olivia. He could feel a throb in his temple. ‘That’s crap and you know it. I wanted another child, Olivia. Another child. It might have been a girl, and that would have been great.’

‘But it was a boy, Mike, and you couldn’t conceal your delight, could you? It was written all over your face when they told us, your son and heir, just what you always wanted. Until that moment I didn’t realise how much I’d disappointed you with mere daughters.’

Part of Mike wanted to shout. Part of him wanted to take Olivia by the throat and shake the unfairness of her words out of her. But instead he dropped his head, the cold despair he’d felt for months seeping through his body, dispersing the heat. ‘Don’t you dare say that. You’re not being fair. I adore my girls, you know I do.’

They sat for a moment and listened to the gentle thrum of the traffic from the far-off motorway.

‘Then why the total withdrawal and the silent treatment for so long?’ Olivia asked quietly.

He looked at her then. The harshness had gone from her face. Her pale eyes were sad, soft, concerned. He was hurting her. He was hurting himself. He understood this and yet he knew he had to push ahead through the numbness, to at least try to focus his mind and put his thoughts into words.

‘Because try as I did, I couldn’t put it him to rest, Olivia. I’ve spent months asking myself why. Why did our little boy die? No one had a reason, he wasn’t Down’s or disabled. He was perfect, wasn’t he?’

Olivia nodded, her head propped on her knees, her fingers playing with the quilt and so he continued, trying to marshal his thoughts and frame them into words. ‘And because we got no answers from the hospital or the consultant, my mind has tormented me with its own.’

‘And they are?’ Olivia asked slowly, turning her head to look at him.

Mike was silent for a while, but he had come so far, he knew it had to be said, to exorcise those ugly pestering thoughts, if nothing else. The frequent picture he had in his mind of Olivia with a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other flashed before his eyes. She hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol when pregnant with the girls. Prawns and eggs and all manner of other foods had been off the menu too. ‘That you did something. God, I don’t know. It sounds so stupid now, but I felt that by thought, or by word or by deed you did something. Something to cause the miscarriage.’

For a moment Olivia didn’t move, her unfathomable gaze fixed on his face. Seconds ticked by as he waited for an answer, a reaction. The moment he had voiced his innermost ugly thoughts, he knew how unworthy and pathetic they were.

She eventually stood from the bed and walked into the en-suite bathroom, closing the door quietly behind her. He watched and waited, numb, wretched and unbelievably tired. He had wanted to say it for so long that the desire to confess had become overwhelming. But now the words were out, he felt bereft and empty. As though someone had put their hand in his chest and pulled out his heart.

He’d started to drift off by the time Olivia returned to the bed. ‘You bastard,’ she said, quite clearly, as she turned off the lamp.

The unmistakable and sickening sound of two cars colliding on the busy main road outside Mike’s office building jolts him back to the present. ‘You bastard’, he still hears, but he knows it’s time to go home.

‘When you’re feeling sorry for yourself, remember there’s always someone worse off,’ his grandpa often said when life had gone awry and little Michael sought him out for a hug. Same words as the priest, but delivered so much more kindly. Mike nods in acknowledgement, hoping that no one has been hurt in the collision below. He collects his jacket from the back of his chair. But still he can hear the tip-tap of the dog’s claws on the laminate behind him as he turns off the light and heads for home.

Olivia smooths the clean sheets on the bed, then stares into space for a few breathless moments before trudging wearily down the stairs. She waits for Mike in the lounge, her head resting on the sofa’s curved arm. She’s exhausted; complete physical and mental exhaustion. Anger has sapped her and she wants to sleep. But at least it’s gone, or even if not completely, it has receded, to be replaced by that old, familiar feeling of self-loathing.

As a small child her temper was the family joke, her tantrums legendary. ‘Short-fuse Olivia,’ her dad regularly teased with his soft Geordie accent. As much as she tried, she was unable to count to ten, to bite her tongue, breathe deeply or any of the other things she knew she should do to control it. But coming down south to university in Manchester changed her. By writing, debating and using self-styled anger management, she stopped her knee-jerk reactions, she put her sharp mind and sharp tongue to good use.

But ‘short-fuse Olivia’ is still there, she fears, increasingly pestering to break free. She hates being a cow, even when she’s being a ‘justifiable’ cow, she hates it. She despises herself for allowing short-fuse Olivia and her knee-jerk reactions to escape.

She checks her mobile again. Still no word from Mike. He always sends a text when he’s leaving the office. Perhaps he’s still working; perhaps he’s angry; perhaps he’s buggered off forever. It’s difficult to judge. Last night she was a cow. Last night they were strangers.

She’s tried to make amends with the girls by buying Hannah a chocolate cake from Morrisons, undoubtedly full of hyperactivity-inducing additives which they’ll pay for tomorrow, and then covering it with sweets to make it look home-baked. She’s given Rachel a ‘don’t tell Dad’ expensive mascara. But with Mike it’s more difficult. Now that she’s calm she knows everything is fine, actually. He said some crazy things last night, but he was honest. Wasn’t that what the couple in the wedding photograph used to do? Be honest and open and talk? Talk for hours. About everything. Sometimes all night. She needs to say sorry, to get things back on track. ‘Sorry, Mike,’ she should say. As simple as that. And as difficult. Olivia struggles with that word. She always has.

She feels the vibration of her mobile under the cushion. Holds her breath as she opens the message from Mike.

On my way home, it reads.

CHAPTER TEN

‘Mum’s driving over on Sunday. I thought we could eat out. Catch a bite in the village,’ Sami shouts from the bathroom.

Sophie marks the page of the book club choice with a bookmark from Waterstones. She hates it when people fold the corner of the page. It’s just about the only thing she’s fastidious about and she vaguely wonders what that says about her.