The Other Woman’s House (25 page)

‘You phone, no Simon,' said Domingo. ‘Sister Olivia. You come now, you phone on my house. She much upset, crying.'

Charlie had already started to run. All her thoughts – divorcing Simon, loving him, hating him – had fallen away, leaving only one word in her mind: cancer. Olivia had survived the disease years ago, but Charlie had always secretly feared it might come back, no matter how many times her sister had assured her that wasn't the way it worked. ‘If it doesn't come back within five years, then, officially, it can't ever come back,' Liv had insisted. ‘If I'm unlucky enough to get cancer again, it'll be a new cancer – not the return of the old one.'

Liv wouldn't ring unless it was serious, not after hearing Charlie describe what she'd do to anyone foolish enough to intrude on her and Simon's privacy.
Tell nobody where we are – nobody – unless it's life or death. Or someone determined to give us a very large amount of money.

Life or death. Had she made this happen, by using those words?

Somehow, she made it into Domingo's wooden lodge. He had to punch in the number for her and put the phone in her hand. He touched her shoulder briefly before leaving her alone, closing the door behind him. No doubt in his mind that the news would be bad; no doubt in Charlie's either.

‘Liv? Is that you?' All she could hear was sobbing.

‘Char?'

‘Calm down. Tell me.'

‘I think I've messed up my life.'

‘What's wrong? What's happened?'

‘I'm going to have to leave Dom. I've slept with someone else. More than once. Don't be angry with me for ringing. I
had
to talk to you – I feel as if I'm going mad. Do you think I might be?'

Charlie rubbed her swollen eyes and sank into the nearest chair – a round wicker thing, like a large tilted picnic basket on legs, covered with a blue and red tartan wool throw. She waited for her heartbeat to catch up with her brain. Terror still had her in its grip – a monster that needed to be wrestled into submission.
A monster you created yourself, out of nothing. Needlessly
. Had she done the same thing with Simon's walk? He'd tried his best to convince her that it was nothing to do with not wanting to spend time with her. ‘I'm not used to never being alone,' he'd said. ‘I only need half an hour, maybe an hour – then I'll be back.' Was that unreasonable? ‘I'll probably even miss you while I'm gone,' he'd added grudgingly, eyes down, as if the admission had been extracted from him under duress.

‘Here's the deal,' Charlie said, once she was calm enough to speak. ‘I'll talk to you for five minutes – only because I'm relieved. I thought you were going to tell me Mum and Dad had dropped dead on the golf course.'
I thought you were dying. I thought my marriage might be over
.

‘You've never liked Dom. You must be doubly relieved.'

‘Do you want to waste your five minutes on a fight?'

Silence.

‘How's the honeymoon?' Liv asked eventually.

‘Fine, until you phoned. Well, fine-ish.'

‘Why “ish”?'

Charlie lowered her voice. ‘We've had sex a grand total of once.'

‘Is that so bad? It's only Monday.'

Charlie had given this some thought. If it happened again tonight, then it wouldn't be so bad. If not, that'd be two consecutive nights without – how could that be anything but a disaster? If Simon didn't make a move when they went to bed later, Charlie didn't think she'd be able to put a brave face on it as she had last night, when he'd turned his back on her and been asleep within seconds. Was that why she was so jumpy, so ready to assume the worst? Today had more pressure on it than an ordinary Monday should have to bear.

‘It's as if he thinks we shouldn't be doing it,' she said tearfully. ‘He…avoids me afterwards, like we've done something shameful. He's lying there right next to me, but he's avoiding me.' Charlie sighed. ‘It's hard to explain.'

‘Simon's weird in all areas, not just sex,' said Liv, as if this somehow made things better. She sounded a lot less distraught than she had a minute ago. Charlie wouldn't have put it past her sister to feign a wrecked life when all she really wanted was to gossip. ‘You've been sleeping together for a while, living together for even longer – it changes things. I
never
want to have sex with Dom any more. I've got this little trick—'

‘Please don't tell me about it,' Charlie cut in.

‘What? No, it's not a sexual thing, it's psychological. If Dom starts angling in, if I only don't want to a little bit, I make a point of letting him. That way, when I
massively
don't want to, when I'm desperate to finish whatever book I'm reading and it really can't wait, I'm off the hook – I can say no with a clear conscience, knowing there's no way he can accuse me of never saying yes.'

Charlie stared at the phone. Was it something to do with this being a long-distance conversation? Would she understand
her sister better if they were in the same country? She tried not to picture Dom angling in.

‘…isn't that I don't find him attractive – I do. But…I don't know, we've done it so many times.'

And now you're doing it with someone else as well.

‘Has Simon got worse since the wedding?' Liv asked. ‘Is the shag rate in decline? Too early to tell, I suppose.'

Charlie sighed.
Tastefully put
. ‘Look, I don't really want to talk about it, and I especially don't want to whisper about it in a Spanish caretaker's hut. Tell me about leaving Dom.'

‘I
can't
leave him.'

‘Who's your new man?'

‘I can't leave Dom, Char. It would destroy him. He has no idea that it would, but it would. And if I leave him for this…other person – not that he's asked me to, not that we have
anything
in common – I'll soon be equally bored of having sex with
him
, won't I? Even if it doesn't feel that way at the moment. So I might as well stay with Dom and cheat on him discreetly until my fling becomes as boring as my main relationship. Not that Dom himself is boring – just the sex. Which isn't to say it's
bad
.'

Charlie couldn't bring herself to attempt a response.

‘What do you think?' Liv asked anxiously.

‘You don't want to know.'

‘I'm bound to get bored of New Sex Man, once the novelty wears off. Don't you think?'

‘I'm bored of talking about him, if that helps,' said Charlie.
New Sex Man
. He was probably a weedy vegan arts journalist or some pompous writer Olivia's paper had sent her to interview.

‘It's inevitable.' Liv sniffed. Charlie heard her blow her nose.
‘It's a law of nature. Every grand passion shags itself into tedium, given time.'

‘How uplifting,' said Charlie. ‘Talking of time, yours is up.'

‘Wait – there's one more thing I wanted to ask you, just quickly. Simon won't mind that I phoned, will he?'

‘He won't know,' Charlie told her. ‘He's gone for a walk.'

‘On his own?' Olivia's indignation could be heard all the way from London. ‘Why didn't he take you with him?'

‘What's your question, Liv?'

‘I just asked it: will Simon mind that I phoned? I don't think he'd mind. Would you mind if he had a very quick phone conversation with…someone, anyone? From home, or…work?'

Charlie swallowed the scream that was clogging her throat. ‘Sam wants to talk to Simon, does he?'

‘Don't go mad. I haven't told him where you are, but…could Simon maybe ring him? I don't know the details, but I think someone might have been murdered.'

‘So? That's like interrupting a postman on his honeymoon because someone wants to send a parcel to their gran. You can tell Sam from me that he's a gutless fuckhead, using you to pass on his messages.'

‘Don't be mean about Sam – he's sweet. And he hasn't asked me to pass on anything – I haven't spoken to him for months. Look, whoever's been murdered, I think it might be someone Simon knows. Or knew. Oh, I don't know!'

Someone Simon knew? Immediately, Charlie thought of Alice Fancourt.
Not her, anyone but her
. Charlie didn't know if Simon ever thought about her these days – the subject, like so many others, was well and truly embargoed – but she knew as surely as she knew her own name that if Alice had been murdered, Simon would start to obsess about her again.

Charlie could feel her brain struggling to fight off the intense heat and the red wine. Something didn't add up. Something fairly obvious, once you thought about it. ‘If you haven't spoken to Sam, how do you…' She stopped, unable to find the missing words as the answer hit her like a lead ball in the chest. How many men had Liv had time to meet, since Friday? ‘New Sex Man,' she said, as neutrally as possible. ‘Who is he, Liv?'

‘Don't be angry,' Liv sounded terrified.

‘He's Chris Gibbs, isn't he?'

‘I didn't plan it. I didn't mean for—'

‘End it.'

‘Oh, God, don't
say
that! You've no idea how—'

‘End. It. That's not a suggestion, it's a fucking order. You stupid
fuck
!'

Charlie dropped the phone on the table, ran out into the hot night, and collided with Domingo. She'd completely forgotten about him. She might forget him again, one day, but she would never forget his wooden hut, his phone, his splintery picnic-basket chair with its red and blue blanket. She would think of all those things whenever she thought about betrayal, from now on. And she thought about betrayal a lot.

‘Sister okay?' Domingo asked.

‘No, she's not,' Charlie told him. ‘She's a stupid cunt.'

‘Tell them,' I say to Kit. ‘Forget about my feelings, forget about trying not to hurt me. Say what you really think. How can you stand to sit there and listen to me tell lies about you, if that's what I'm doing?'

We're at Parkside police station in Cambridge, in a room with yellow walls, a blue linoleum floor and one large square window that's covered with some kind of chicken-wire grid.
So that no one can throw themselves out
. Sam Kombothekra is sitting on our side of the table, between Kit and me. That surprised me; I thought he'd sit opposite, with DC Grint. Is a detective from Spilling still a detective when he's in Cambridge? Does Sam have any power in this room, or is he here today only as our chauffeur, our silent chaperone?

Kit looks at Grint. ‘I've never been to Bentley Grove – never walked there, never driven there, never parked there.' He shrugs. ‘What else can I say? Plenty of people drive black saloon cars.' There are two red grooves on his neck where he cut himself shaving this morning, and blue-ish shadows under his eyes; neither of us slept last night, knowing we had this ordeal to get through today. Neither of us combed our hair before leaving for Cambridge. What must Grint think of us? He did his best not to react when I explained about my bruises and the lump above my eye, but I can tell he finds me disgusting, and he can't
have much respect for Kit. What kind of idiot would marry a woman who blacks out and bangs her head on library tables? I feel defensive on behalf of us both; I want to tell Grint that we're better people than he thinks we are.

I want it to be true.

You don't remember knocking your head on that table. What else don't you remember?

‘The pink blur in the black car on Street View isn't the same pink as Connie's coat,' says Kit. ‘It's deeper – more like red.'

‘Connie says it's the same pink,' Grint counters.

Kit nods. He heard me say it.

‘Why are you nodding?' I snap at him. ‘You don't think it's the same pink. Why don't you argue?'

‘What's the point?' Kit keeps his eyes on Grint. ‘Aren't there things you can do to the Street View picture to unblur the car registration? That's the only way to prove if it's my car or not. Maybe you could see who's driving it.'

‘He means me,' I say.

‘Time and money,' says Grint. ‘If you were a suspect in a serious crime, if we needed to prove your car had been parked on Bentley Grove, we'd look into enhancing the image. Has a crime been committed, Mr Bowskill? To your knowledge?'

‘Not…No.' Kit lowers his eyes.

I can't stand this any more. ‘He was going to say, “Not by me.” Weren't you? I don't know why you won't admit it! I know what you're thinking.'

‘Mr Bowskill? Mrs Bowskill seems to think you have something to tell us.'

Kit presses his fingers into his eyes. I realise I've never seen him cry, not once since we first met. Is that unusual? Do most men cry?

‘Just because it's crossed my mind doesn't mean I believe it! I
don't
believe it.'

‘He thinks I may have murdered a woman,' I translate, for the benefit of Grint and Sam. ‘In the lounge at 11 Bentley Grove.'

‘Is she right?' Grint asks Kit. ‘Is that what you think?'

‘Something's changed, that's all I know.' Kit stares down at his hands. ‘Yesterday morning, DS Kombothekra told us there was no reason to worry about anything. Then suddenly we're summoned here. Suddenly you're interested in us – in the colour of Connie's coat, in where I did or didn't park my car…Doesn't take a genius to work out what's going on.'

‘What conclusion would that genius draw?' Grint asks, rubbing his index finger along his silver tie-pin. He's tall and lanky, with bad scars on his chin from years-old acne. His voice doesn't suit him. It's too heavy and deep, the wrong sound for a skinny man to make.

‘You believe in Connie's dead woman,' Kit says. ‘Something's happened to make you believe she's real. You wouldn't waste all this time on us otherwise.'