The Other Woman’s House (34 page)

I recognise nearly all the characters in the story: guarded, intelligent Simon Waterhouse; kind and modest Sam Kombothekra; practical, insensitive Fran; Selina Gane, angry and frightened. I can even find adjectives for Jackie Napier, whom I saw for only five minutes: sanctimonious, superior, charmless. And the dead woman on the carpet: she was dead, drained of
blood, still. Those were her defining characteristics. There's only one person I can't bring into focus, however hard I try.

‘Connie?' Alice prompts me.

‘I have no idea who or what Kit is,' I say eventually. ‘It's as if he isn't a person at all, just a…an image, or a hologram. A collection of behaviours.'

‘You mean you don't trust him.'

‘No.' It's hard to describe something that's missing. An absence only has a clear shape when it was once a presence, when you know what's gone. ‘I don't trust him, but that's not what I'm saying. When I'm with him, I don't sense a…a person there, under the skin.' I shrug. ‘I can't explain it any better than that, but…this isn't new. It didn't start with me finding 11 Bentley Grove in his SatNav. I've known it for years, I just haven't allowed myself to admit it.'

Alice is waiting for me to say more.

‘When Kit was a student in Cambridge, he fell in love with someone. He sort of let it slip, but when I asked him about it he clammed up and denied it. He's always resented his parents, but would never tell me why. He pretended he didn't, but I could see that he did – I heard it in his voice whenever he spoke to them. Then he disowned them altogether, and I'm pretty sure he lied about the real reason.'

‘And then came the SatNav, his car on Street View, the woman's body, the dress,' says Alice. She twists her swivel chair round to face the window. ‘Connie, I wouldn't normally say something like this to a patient, but I'm going to say it to you: I think you're right not to trust Kit. I have no idea what he's done, but I think you need to stay away from him.'

‘I can't. Selina Gane won't speak to me, and the police have said they aren't taking it any further. The only way I'll find out
what's going on is if I can persuade Kit to tell me the truth. What?'

Is that pity in her eyes?

‘You don't think I'll ever find out, do you? You think I should give up.'

‘I know you're not going to.' She smiles at me. ‘I wouldn't either, if I were you.'

‘Before all this happened, I was like Kit,' I tell her. ‘I wasn't real either. Now I have a characteristic: I'm the woman who won't give up.'

‘You weren't real?'

I'm not sure it's something I can explain, but I have to try, however crazy it sounds. ‘In 2003, when Kit and I were looking at houses in Cambridge, I felt…non-existent.'

Alice waits for me to elaborate.

‘Most people have a type of house they prefer: townhouse in the centre of a city, stone cottage in the middle of nowhere. Some people always buy new-builds, some would only ever consider a house that's more than a hundred years old. The house you choose says something about the sort of person you are. When Kit took me to see a cottage in a village called Lode, just outside Cambridge, I thought, “Yes, I could be a rural cottage sort of person.” Then he took me to a penthouse flat on a main road in the city centre, and I thought, “This could be me – maybe I'm a townie at heart.” I didn't know myself at all, or what I wanted. After three or four viewings, I started to panic that I didn't have an identity. I was transparent – I saw through myself and there was nothing there. I thought, “I could live in any of these places. I can't say about any of them that they're ‘me' or ‘not me'. Maybe I don't have a personality.”'

Alice leans back in her chair. It creaks. ‘You were
openminded. Kit took you to see lots of beautiful houses, and you liked them all in different ways. Perfectly understandable, and nothing to worry about. Perhaps each house spoke to a different aspect of your character.'

‘No.' I wave away her reassuring words. ‘Yes, it was silly of me to panic about not knowing what sort of house I wanted, of course it was, but I
did
panic – that's what's worrying. Each time I saw a house and wasn't instantly sure if it was “me”, I felt more and more unreal. As if any self that I might once have had was draining away, drop by drop.' I chew on my thumbnail, afraid that I'm admitting too much and will somehow be made to suffer for it. ‘And then we found this amazing house, 17 Pardoner Lane – the best of the bunch by far, I can see that now – and I was in such a state, I had no idea whether I loved it or hated it. Kit adored it. I pretended to – don't know how convincing I was. I felt like I was falling apart. All I wanted was to be able to say, “Yes, this house is absolutely me” and…know what that
meant
.'

Alice bends down, reaches into the open brown suitcase under her desk. It's where she keeps her remedies; the inside of the case is divided into tiny square compartments, each one containing a small brown glass bottle. ‘You were anxious and depressed, overwhelmed by your family's unreasonable expectations,' she says, picking up one bottle, then another, reading the labels. ‘That sense of your self diminishing came from trying to stifle your own needs for your parents' sake, because they found them inconvenient. It had nothing to do with being flexible about what sort of house you wanted to buy, I promise you.' She has found the remedy she was looking for.
For extra, extra mad people
.

I want to say more about the house I should have fallen in
love with, but was too neurotic to see clearly. I need to confess to all of it: how I set out to ruin things, chipped away at Kit's conviction with my paranoia. ‘17 Pardoner Lane was next to a school building – the Beth Dutton Centre,' I tell Alice. ‘I lost sleep – whole nights – over the bell. How ridiculous is that?'

‘The bell?'

‘The school bell. What if it rang between lessons and was too loud? The noise might drive us mad, and we'd never be able to sell up and move on because we'd have to be honest with prospective buyers – we couldn't lie about a thing like that. Kit said, “If the bell's too loud, we'll ask them to turn the volume down.” He laughed at me for worrying about something so stupid. He laughed again when I got cold feet a few days later for an equally ridiculous reason: the house had no name.'

‘I'm giving you a different remedy this time,' says Alice. ‘Anhalonium. Because of what you said about feeling as if you were transparent and having no personality.'

‘I'd never lived anywhere that didn't have a name,' I say, not listening to her. ‘Still haven't. First I lived at Thorrold House with Mum and Dad, then I moved in with Kit. His flat in Rawndesley was number 10, but the building had a name: Martland Tower. Anyway, that was different. Neither of us thought of the flat as home – it was temporary, a stop-gap. Now I live in Melrose Cottage, Fran and Anton's house is Thatchers…In Little Holling, all the houses have names. It's what I'm used to. When Kit was so keen on 17 Pardoner Lane, and I tried to imagine myself living in a house that was just a number, it seemed…wrong, somehow. Too impersonal. It scared me.'

Alice is nodding. ‘Change is incredibly scary,' she says. She always sticks up for me. I'm not sure it's what I need, not any
more. It might do me more good to hear her say, ‘Yes, Connie. That's really mad. You need to stop thinking in this crazy way.'

‘One night I woke Kit up at four in the morning,' I tell her. ‘He was asleep, and I kept shaking him. I think I must have been hysterical. I hadn't slept all night, and I'd worked myself into a state. Kit stared at me as if I was a maniac – I can still remember how shocked he looked. I told him we couldn't buy 17 Pardoner Lane unless we gave it a name – I couldn't live in a house with no name. I wanted us to look on the web, find out if it was possible to give a house a name if it didn't have one already. You know, officially.'

Alice smiles, as if there is something understandable or endearing about my insanity.

‘Kit saw I wasn't going to calm down or let him get any sleep until he'd come up with a solution to the problem I'd invented, so he said, “Come on, then – let's go and investigate.” He soon found enough on the internet to convince me there was no need to worry: we could give number 17 a name if we wanted to. It's easy – all you have to do is write to the Post Office. He said, “How about The Nuthouse?”'

‘You must have been hurt,' says Alice.

‘Not at all. I started laughing – thought it was the best joke I'd ever heard. I was so relieved that everything was going to be okay – Kit would get the house he loved, and I'd be able to make it feel like home by naming it. Course, on one level I must have known I'd now have to come up with some other obstacle…' I shake my head in disgust. ‘I wonder what it would have been: that I didn't like the doorknob, or the letterbox. My hysteria would have attached itself to some other random thing, given half a chance, but I didn't see that then. Kit was relieved too. We were almost…I don't know, it was
like we were celebrating. We didn't go straight back to bed – we stayed up looking at house name websites on the internet, laughing at the ridiculous suggestions: Costa Fortuna, Wits End. Apparently names like that are really popular – that's what the website said. I found it hard to believe, but Kit said he could imagine some of his colleagues calling their houses things like that. “It's a common affliction, thinking you're funny when you're not,” he said. “Wits End. Might as well call your house, ‘I'm a Dullard'.” I asked him what he wanted to call ours.'

‘What did he say?'

‘Oh, loads of stupid things – things he knew were stupid, to wind me up. I don't think he tried too hard – he knew it wasn't up to him. The name needed to be perfect, and it had to come from me – something that would say “this is home” and make all my anxiety go away. Kit started talking rubbish. “I've got an idea,” he said. “Let's call it
the Death Button Centre. Do you think the people at the Beth Dutton Centre'd be pissed off? Or the postman?” I told him not to be ridiculous. Should've known that'd only make him worse.' The memory, absent from my mind for so many years, is suddenly more vivid than reality. I can see myself clearly, sitting at the desk in the Martland Tower flat, Kit kneeling down beside me, both of us in our pyjamas. We only had one computer chair in those days. I was howling with laughter, so loud I could hardly hear Kit's voice, tears pouring down my face. ‘He pretended he was deadly serious, said, “It's growing on me the more I think about it: the Death Button Centre. We could get a plaque made for the front door. No, I know, even better – let's call it 17 Pardoner Lane…”' The words evaporate in my mouth as new fear surges through my body.
What? What is it?

The Death Button Centre. The Death Button Centre…

I stand up, stumble, steady myself against the wall.

‘Connie? What's wrong?'

I know what I saw – the missing detail that I haven't been able to bring to mind until now.
Yes
. It was there. It was definitely there, in the picture with the dead woman and the blood. But not in the photograph of the lounge, the one without the woman, the one I would see if I looked at the tour of 11 Bentley Grove now. In that picture, it's missing. ‘I've got to go,' I tell Alice. I grab my bag and run, ignoring her pleas for me to stay, leaving behind the bottle of remedy she has prepared for me that's standing on the corner of her desk.

 

POLICE EXHIBIT REF: CB13345/432/25IG

Ian Grint was early. Simon had guessed he might be; he'd sensed the detective's anger within seconds of meeting him, the impatience of a man who needs to prove people wrong, and quickly. Grint headed for the bar, making a pint-lifting gesture at Simon, who nodded. Actually, he hadn't needed as much time as both he and Grint had thought he would. He'd finished reading everything half an hour ago, and had gone for a stroll. The pub Grint had chosen, the Live and Let Live, was in a residential area, so Simon hadn't seen any of the historical college buildings that Charlie had told him he had to see because they were so beautiful, only houses and another small pub: the Six Bells.

Walking around, Simon had drawn the conclusion that Cambridge was a more imaginative place than Spilling. More tolerant too. The front door colours had surprised him: yellow, orange, lilac, pink, bright turquoise. Evidently the inhabitants of Cambridge believed that all shades were eligible for consideration; in Spilling most people opted for something sombre and dignified: black, dark red, dark green. Simon doubted there was a single orange door in the whole of the Culver Valley.