The Other Woman’s House (36 page)

‘I've just come from Pardoner Lane. The house you didn't buy in 2003 was number 18.'

‘So you believe me?'

A question Simon was keen to avoid answering, especially now that Bowskill was looking more confident. Believing had nothing to do with it; Simon had checked the facts for himself. His confidence was in his own findings, not in Kit Bowskill. Still, he had other more personal questions he wanted to ask, and it wouldn't do any harm to go as far as he could down the feel-good route. ‘18 Pardoner Lane's next door to the Beth Dutton Centre, so there's no argument,' he said. ‘You're right and Connie's wrong. About the house number, anyway. She got everything else right: the iron railings, the Victorian architecture, the sash windows. Number 17's on the other side of the road.'

Its owners, a friendly middle-aged couple, had invited Simon in for a coffee and looked disappointed when he'd said there was no need, he only had one quick question for them. They had bought the house brand new in 2001, since which time it had never been on the market. Yes, they remembered number 18 going up for sale in 2003. It was snapped up within weeks, they told Simon, and the same thing happened when it came up for sale again last year. ‘We considered buying it, actually – both times. It's got more kerb-appeal than ours and bigger rooms. Unfortunately, that was reflected in the price. And when we thought about it, it seemed crazy to move across the road – though it doesn't make sense really, that, does it? It's like when you go out for a meal and someone orders the thing you want and you think, “Oh, well, I can't have that now that she's having it”, and you end up ordering something you don't like half as much!'

Simon had nodded, bemused. He tended to avoid restaurants, but still, he felt he ought to have known what 17 Pardoner Lane's owner was talking about, and he didn't. He spent too much of his time nodding at things that made no sense to him, for politeness' sake.

‘I need to ask you a personal question,' he told Bowskill.

‘Fire away.'

‘Your parents.'

The reaction was unmistakeable: instant resentment. Of Simon, for having asked, or of Mr and Mrs Bowskill senior? Simon couldn't tell. He knew a little bit about them, thanks to Connie. Their names were Nigel and Barbara and they lived in Bracknell, Berkshire. They ran their own business: something to do with making lasers which were used for fingerprinting.

Bowskill had regained his composure. ‘Let me guess,' he
said. ‘Connie told you I'm no longer in contact with them. I take it she told you why?'

‘She told me she'd never really understood why.'

‘That's bu—' Bowskill caught hold of his anger. A strained smile replaced his scowl. ‘That's simply not true. Connie knows perfectly well what happened.'

‘Do you mind telling me?' Simon asked.

‘I can't see why you'd care. What's it got to do with anything?'

‘Just interested.' Simon tried to make it sound incidental. No reason to tell Bowskill it was the main reason he'd wanted to meet him. ‘As someone whose own parents are on the trying side…'

‘But if you hit rock-bottom, they'd be there for you, wouldn't they?' said Bowskill. ‘In an emergency, they'd do whatever it took – they'd look after you.'

Simon had never thought about it. In her younger days, throughout his childhood, his mother had stifled him with her nurturing, treated him as if he was made of glass and might break if he did anything rash like go round to a friend's house. Now, it was hard to imagine Kathleen looking after anybody. She'd lost her air of authority a long time ago. Although she was only sixty-one and had no health problems, she moved and spoke like a frail old relic shuffling ever closer to annihilation. Simon had often imagined meeting her as a stranger, what he'd think of her. Asked to guess her age and story, he'd have said eighty for sure, and at some stage she must have been mugged at knife-point by teenage thugs and lost the will to live.

He opened his mouth to say that in the direst of emergencies he would go to a whole range of people – including complete strangers – before he would involve his mother, but Bowskill was on a roll. ‘What parents wouldn't help their child? I haven't
got siblings, so it's not as if there's any competition for their attention. I wasn't asking them to donate their kidneys.'

‘What happened?' Simon asked.

‘Connie was disintegrating. Physically and mentally – shouting in her sleep, nightmares, her hair was falling out. I was properly worried about her. I thought…well, she didn't, so it's not tempting fate to say it: I thought she might do something stupid.'

Simon nodded.
Properly worried about her
. As opposed to pretending to worry about her? Was that what Bowskill was doing this time round?

‘Mum and Dad made it clear I could expect no help from them.'

‘Did you ask for their help?'

‘Oh, yes. There was nothing ambiguous about it. I asked, they said no.'

‘What did you want them to do, exactly?'

‘Has Connie told you about her parents?' Bowskill asked. ‘That they brainwash her and browbeat her, cripple her thought processes so that she can't think for herself?'

Simon shook his head. ‘She mentioned them being difficult. About you moving to Cambridge.'

Bowskill laughed. ‘Understatement isn't usually Connie's strong point,' he said. ‘Nice to know she's expanding her repertoire.'

‘So what happened?' Simon asked. ‘With your parents?'

‘Connie needed to get away from her family, especially her mother. I don't know why I'm talking in the past tense – she still does. I was hoping Mum would act as a mother figure, just temporarily – you know, boost her confidence, tell her she could have the life she wanted, achieve whatever she set out
to achieve. I told her myself until I was sick of the sound of my own voice, but it had no effect. I'm only one person, and I'm not a parent, I'm an equal. No matter what I said, I wasn't enough to replace Connie's family, however bad for her they were – and she knew perfectly well the harm they were doing her, it wasn't as if she couldn't see it. But…she was scared to go against her mum, who didn't want her to move to Cambridge. It was hopeless. I knew I'd never lure her away from her family unless I had…well, something more than myself to offer her. She and Mum had always got on well, Mum and Dad claimed to love her like their own daughter, but…when it came to it, when I asked them to rally round and
be
a family for Connie, they said, “No thanks, we'd rather not get involved.”'

‘Do you think they were wary of encouraging her to go against her own parents?' Simon asked. ‘They didn't want to interfere?'

‘No,' said Bowskill flatly. ‘Nothing to do with that. They don't give a shit about Val and Geoff Monk, only about themselves. They didn't want to put themselves out, simple as that. Started spluttering about the need to stand on one's own two feet, dependency not being good for people…It was disgusting, frankly – a complete abnegation of responsibility. I'd never do that to my child, if I had one. I looked at them and thought, “Who are you? Why am I bothering with you?” That was it – I haven't spoken to them since.'

‘Sounds rough,' said Simon. He tried to produce a cheerless expression to match Bowskill's, hide his satisfaction. He'd had a theory, and although he hadn't yet been proved right, everything Bowskill had just said indicated that he soon would be.

‘Connie.'

Don't look pleased to see me. You won't be, once you've heard what I've got to say.

‘Thanks for coming.'
He's not your husband. He's a stranger. This is a business meeting.

I try to pass Kit a menu but he pushes it away. He smells of beer. We're in the restaurant at the Doubletree by Hilton Garden House, Selina Gane's hotel and now mine too. I checked in an hour ago.

‘Not hungry?' I say. ‘I'm not either.' It seems a shame. The food would probably be good. The lime green and purple velvet upholstery looks expensive. It makes me think of the dead woman's dress; the colours are the same.

I put the menus down on the table, pour us both some water.

‘Don't play games,' Kit says. ‘Why are we here?' He's still on his feet, poised for flight, unwilling to commit to a conversation with me without knowing what its subject will be.

‘I'm staying here.' I don't tell him that Selina Gane is too. Of course, he might know that already.

‘You're…' His breathing speeds up, like someone running. I wonder if he's thinking about escape. How hard is it for him to stay where he is? ‘You walk out of your own birthday party without any explanation…'

‘The birthday party
was
the explanation. That and the dress you bought me.'

‘I swear to God, Con…'

‘Forget it,' I say. ‘I don't care. I need to talk to you about something else. Sit down. Sit.'

Reluctantly, he lowers himself into a chair across the table from me. He looks as unrelaxed as I've ever seen a person look – shoulders hunched, jaw rigid, red in the face. ‘We ought to discuss work,' he says.

‘Go ahead.' This is a business meeting, after all. You can't invite your husband to a business meeting and then tell him he can't talk about work.

‘You're Nulli's business and financial director. All the strategy originates with you, all the planning…You're the one who makes sure everyone gets paid. I can slog my guts out, my team can do the same, but we're wasting our time if you're not doing your bit.'

‘Agreed,' I say.

‘If you don't keep on top of things, Nulli falls apart.'

‘And you don't think I'm keeping on top of things?'

‘Are you?'

‘I haven't been, no,' I admit. ‘Not since I saw that woman's body on Roundthehouses. But it's been less than a week. The company's not going to crumble to dust because I've neglected the paperwork for a week. Anyway, all this is irrelevant. This time next year, Nulli's unlikely to exist.'

The colour drains from Kit's face. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘You're bright, you're determined,' I say briskly, deciding I ought to offer him some compensation for losing both his wife and his business. ‘You'll start another company without me. I'm sure it'll do very well.'

Kit's mouth and eyes start to move – random twitches, uncoordinated. He doesn't think this can be happening to him. I know how he feels.

‘How can you…?'

I'm sorry. I don't love you any less than I did before all this happened. I trust you less, like you less, am more willing to cause you pain, but the love hasn't changed. I wouldn't have thought that was possible – would you, Kit?

I resist the urge to explain, knowing it wouldn't help.

‘How can you calmly sit there and announce your intention to destroy everything we've got?' Kit's voice is hollow, hoarse. ‘Our marriage, our company…'

‘I need you to read something.' I pull the letter out of my bag and pass it across the table to him. ‘I wanted you to see it before Selina Gane does. Once you've approved it, I'll push it under her door. She's staying here too. Did you know that?'

Kit shakes his head slowly, his eyes wide, fixed on my handwritten words.

I expected it to be hard, but it was the easiest letter I've ever written. I assumed, for the purposes of the exercise, that Selina Gane was innocent, and I explained everything, or at least as much as I could explain: finding her address in Kit's SatNav, my suspicions and fears, how they led me to wait outside her house and follow her, how in retrospect I wish I'd been more upfront about it, spoken to her directly. That's what she'll want if she's as frightened and baffled as I am, I thought: a straightforward letter of clarification and apology, one innocent person to another.

I didn't waste time worrying about what to include and what to leave out; I was generous with information, telling her far more than she needed to know – even that I was staying at the Garden House, though in a room nowhere near hers. ‘I'm sorry
if that makes you feel as if I'm stalking you all over again,' I wrote. ‘I'm really not. I chose this hotel because its name was in my mind, because I rang you here. In an ideal world, I'd have been tactful and chosen another hotel, but I'm exhausted and my energy levels are well into the red, so I didn't.'

Reading snatches of the letter upside down, as Kit reads it, I decide that I did a good job of making myself sound sane. If I were Selina Gane, I would agree to meet and talk to me.

Kit drops the pages on the table. He raises his head slowly, as if he can hardly bear to drag his eyes up to meet mine.

‘Well?' I say.

‘You're offering to buy her house.'

‘Yes.'

‘Have you gone mad? Even more mad? You're offering the asking price – 1.2 million pounds. You can't afford—'

‘Your information's out of date,' I tell him. ‘As of today, the asking price is a million. She must be pretty desperate to sell if she's discounting it after only a week, don't you think?'

Kit puts his head in his hands. ‘So you're offering her more money, when she's asking for less – all of it money you don't have and wouldn't be able to borrow. I don't understand, Connie. Help me out here.'

‘Or you could help me out,' I say evenly. ‘All I want, now, is to know the truth. I don't care what it is. I really mean that. However bad it is, even if it's worse than I can possibly imagine. I don't care about our marriage…'

‘Thanks a lot.'

‘…I don't care if you've killed someone – on your own or with Selina Gane's help. I won't even go to the police – that's how much I don't care. I only care about myself –
my
need to know what exactly happened to
my
life.'