Woman with a Secret Read online

  His response came straightaway. “You don’t understand,” he’d written. “The man you were with at the Chancery Hotel, the one who drove you wild for hours and then disappeared without warning—it wasn’t me, or anyone you know. He was a stranger.”

  “NICKI, IT’S MUM. WHO’S King Edward?”

  Involuntarily, my hands clench. Did I really pick up the phone and whisper his name out loud? Get a fucking grip, Nicki. “Oh, I’m just looking at Ethan’s history homework,” I say, glancing down at the failed test on the table in front of me. I must make time to read it, take it in, take it seriously. Soon. “Mum, I’ll have to call you later,” I say. “I’m bursting for the bathroom.”

  “Call me straight back, please,” she says. “It’s important.”

  “Is something wrong? You sound . . .” She sounds the way Kate Zilber sounded when I first told her I was being followed, the way I don’t want anyone ever to sound when they speak to me. Nothing horrifies me more than that Please sit down because I have some very bad news tone. Please follow me to that room over there in which something deeply unpleasant will happen. It’s never as bad once you find out what the thing is. I’d far rather someone screamed, “A nuclear war’s just started!” in my face, without warning. Why add a layer of presuffering suffering?

  “Do you want to have the discussion now, or do you want to call me back?” asks my mother.

  “I’ll call you in five minutes,” I say. As soon as I’m off the phone, I run to Adam’s and my bedroom and get my three tiny glass angels out of my bedroom drawer. It’s an embarrassing superstition that I have, one I can’t seem to shake off: if I’m going to be speaking to or seeing either or both of my parents, I need to have the angels with me—in a pocket, in my sock, somewhere. They’re my lucky charm. No one knows about them, not even Adam or Melissa.

  Once they’re safely in my pants pocket, I go back to the spare room and call Mum, feeling adequately armed. That doesn’t mean she won’t wound me, but it will prevent the wound from being fatal.

  “What’s so urgent?” I ask her.

  “Did you kill this Damon Blundy man?” she asks without preamble. “Were you having an affair with him?”

  I feel like a fisherman who, after an agonizingly long wait, has caught a large, rare fish. There’s something satisfying about getting proof—yet more proof—that I’m right not to trust my mother, right to believe she doesn’t and never has had my best interests at heart. Ideally, she would indicate that she thinks I’m bound to have murdered someone every time I spoke to her; that would save me the hassle of wondering, periodically, if she might not be quite as monstrous as my father.

  “I definitely didn’t kill Damon Blundy, but thanks for thinking of me,” I say. “As for an affair, that’s none of your business.”

  “It’s the police’s business, since he’s been killed,” Mum says. “And . . . Dad and Lee say, and they’re right, that it needs to be Adam’s business too. You’re the mother of his children, with them every day, their main carer. Adam needs to know the truth about you. We’re not happy about any of this, but you’ve left us with no choice. You’ve gone too far this time, Nicki.”

  She thinks I did it. She really thinks I killed him. I didn’t, but I feel a cold, hard pride all the same.

  “No, you’ve gone too far,” I correct her unemotionally. It’s not an act. In the presence of my parents and Lee, my feelings do a runner. I couldn’t cry or get angry now if I tried. I’m an android, specializing in sarcastic put-downs. “By the way, the gone-too-far-this-time line would have had more impact if you hadn’t been saying it to me since I was a toddler.”

  “Put Adam on the phone. Or do you want me to drive over there?”

  I manage to force out a laugh. “So, wait, let’s see if I’ve got this right: Dad and Lee have decided to bring me to justice, appointed you as the messenger, and the message is that you’ve all snitched on me to the police? And you’re going to share your inventive theory with Adam too?”

  “There’s no point lying any longer, Nicki. Melissa’s told us everything.”

  “Everything and more, by the sound of it, since me killing Damon Blundy isn’t part of everything. Nor is me having an affair with him. And feel free to tell Adam whatever you want, but there’s nothing about me he doesn’t know, as of yesterday. After my interview with the police . . . I assume Melissa told you all about that?”

  “She did, yes. She’s worried about you. We all are.”

  “Thanks. I’m touched.”

  “Melissa, as your best friend—”

  “Best friend?” I laugh. “Yes, a best friend containing a Trojan horse containing a worst enemy—that kind of best friend. It was talking to her yesterday that made me decide to tell Adam everything. I had a feeling that some unwarranted suspicion of murder and a huge betrayal might be just round the corner. I didn’t want anyone holding me to ransom, so I told him all my secrets. Which, I’m afraid, means I’ve spoiled your fun. You can always tell him anyway if you want? I can ask him to pretend he doesn’t already know.”

  I’m going to have to tell Adam, now that I’ve called Mum’s bluff. Confess all my sins. I will worry about that once I get her off the phone.

  Some of my sins. I don’t have to tell Adam everything.

  Thankfully, Melissa knows nothing about King Edward and the Chancery Hotel.

  “I even told Adam whether I did or didn’t kill Damon Blundy,” I say childishly.

  “You just told me you didn’t kill him,” says Mum. “Are you admitting you did now?”

  “No. I’m saying I told Adam the truth about whether I did or didn’t.”

  “And you told me a lie?”

  “No. I told you the truth too.”

  “This isn’t a game, Nicki.”

  But everything must be a game, mustn’t it? Or else it’s all too much to bear. Everything is a game and I have to win.

  “Have you and Dad hired a man with streaked hair to follow me?” I ask. “Or has Lee?”

  “What man with streaked hair?”

  “I’ve no idea. That’s why I’m asking you. A man’s been following me.”

  “You’ll probably end up in bed with him,” says Mum. It’s the first flare-up of anger I’ve heard in her voice since the beginning of the conversation.

  “No, he runs away when I turn around,” I say. “Perhaps it’s a weird kind of sexual ‘What’s-the-Time-Mister-Wolf?’ role-play game?”

  “What did Adam say when you told him about your various one-night stands and your long-running affair with Damon Blundy?” Mum asks.

  “He said, ‘I’ll forgive you all your sins, but only if you take me on a no-expense-spared snowboarding vacation in the French Alps.’ No, he didn’t really. I’m kidding. And I had no long-running or indeed short-running affair with Damon Blundy. I thought you believed in honesty—doesn’t it bother you to make up a pack of lies about me and keep putting it forward as the truth?”

  “What did Adam say, Nicki? When you told him about your many infidelities?”

  Many? Melissa only knows about two since I got together with Adam. Add to those my fictional affair with Damon Blundy: three. Hardly “many.” Mum needs to get out more. Actually, given that she lives with Dad, she needs to get out permanently. If she’d been braver as a young woman and allowed herself to see him for what he is and act on it, there might have been some hope for her.

  “It’s none of your fucking business what Adam said. Generally, I tend not to discuss my private life with people who inform on me to the police when I’m innocent.”

  I hang up and sit still in my chair, waiting for my feelings to catch up with what’s just happened. It will take a while. I must make the most of this numb time to get as much done as possible. Preparations.

  Will Adam ask for a divorce? Is this the true beginning of my life falling apart?

  I must do whatever it takes to extricate myself from being suspected of murder. If that means telling the police my real r
eason for making a quick getaway on Elmhirst Road on Monday, so be it. I’m not a coward like my mother. I’ll do what I have to do.

  I pick up the phone and call Adam at work. When he answers, I say, “I need you to come home.”

  AN HOUR LATER, ADAM and I are in our bedroom with the door closed. Downstairs, the TV reassures our children by producing its usual comforting early evening burble of voices. Sophie and Ethan have no idea that they might soon need more comforting than usual. Hopefully, if I handle this right, they will never find out how close they came to having their world shattered.

  “So . . . what is this?” Adam asks. “Don’t tell me you’ve dragged me home from work to show me three colored glass angels?”

  I’ve laid them out in a neat row on the bed. The duvet’s plain white and they stand out nicely. “I need to tell you something you’re not going to like at all,” I say to Adam. “But first I want to tell you a story about when I was a child, and I want you to tell me what you think about that story.” Without waiting for his agreement, I start to tell him.

  I stole the three angels from my playgroup when I was four years old. One is pink, one green and one yellow.

  At age four, I didn’t realize I’d stolen them. I simply saw them in the toy tin at playgroup, loved the way they looked and decided to take them home with me. When I showed them to Mum, excited about my haul, she didn’t say a word, but she looked at them as if they were capsules containing ricin. She went to get Dad, who bellowed at me until long after it got dark—about serious crimes and punishment and bad people getting their hands chopped off.

  The next day, Mum stood over me at playgroup while I recited the apology she and Dad had made me learn by heart and practice in front of them several times over breakfast. It contained none of my own words. Neither of them had smiled at me even once since my semi-accidental confession the day before; both were still as angry as they’d been at the moment of discovery.

  I returned the angels to the tin and did an excellent job of pretending I didn’t care. Inside, I was screaming, But I need them! By this point, I’d decided that I preferred the three angels to my parents. The woman who ran the playgroup kept telling my mum that it wasn’t important, and Mum kept contradicting her and saying that it was. After Mum had gone home, the nice playgroup owner said I could have the angels as a present, since I liked them so much. I remember thanking her, and thinking, You’ve no idea, have you? There’s no way I could ever take them home and let my parents see them, no matter what story I tell them—not even if they’re accompanied by a letter from you insisting that you want me to have them and that it was your initiative, not mine.

  Being four, I didn’t phrase it to myself quite like that, but I understood the impossibility of taking the three beautiful angels home. I also understood that the kind playgroup woman didn’t understand, which was even more distressing.

  On the other hand, I had to have the angels. I had to risk it, even if something unimaginably terrible happened to me as a result. My liking for them had turned to deep love. I would have risked anything. So I said thank you and put them in my shoe. From that day until the day I left home, the day after my eighteenth birthday, I kept those angels safe in my parents’ house. Mum and Dad never found out I had them. They still don’t know. I often wonder if they’d recognize them if I pulled them out of a jacket pocket one day and said, “Look.”

  I tell Adam that I can’t face seeing or speaking to my parents without having the angels hidden somewhere in my clothes. “I’ve never told you before because I was scared you’d think I was crazy.”

  Adam frowns. “It is a bit weird, Nicki, you’ve got to admit. I bet there’s no one else—I mean, not even one other person on the planet—who can only speak to their parents with secret angels concealed about their person.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I say. “Any other comments on the story?”

  “Um . . .” He looks caught out. “Maybe you should try and find a way to not need the angels when you see your folks? Stupid superstitions like that—why keep them going? Why not choose to behave rationally instead?” Seeing my face, Adam changes tack and says, “Though I suppose it’s a harmless enough ritual, and if it makes you feel better . . . I’m not quite sure what you want me to say.” He frowns. “Lovely of the kindergarten lady to let you keep them—very shrewd of her.”

  “Why shrewd?” I ask.

  “Well, she obviously twigged that your mum was guilt-tripping you above and beyond what the situation required. She felt sorry for you and probably thought being allowed to keep the angels would cheer you up.”

  I can’t be bothered to ask him any more questions. “I’ve been unfaithful to you,” I say quickly, to have it over and done with. “I need to tell you about it because it’s connected to a murder investigation. I wouldn’t have told you otherwise. I did it because there’s something in me . . . I mean, it’s nothing to do with you or our relationship. I’d have been unfaithful to anyone I was married to. I love you just as much as I always—” I stop with a gasp.

  Just as much as . . .

  He is no less dead. He is just as dead. The meanings are interchangeable.

  I know what it means. Exactly what those words mean. And, though I still don’t know who killed him, I know that Damon Blundy’s death is my fault.

  Mine and King Edward’s.

  SPONTANEOUS MEDIA COMBUSTION

  Damon Blundy, November 1, 2011, Daily Herald Online

  What can I say? I was wrong. It happens sometimes, and when it does, I admit it. In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Times, Saint Paula of Privilege has finally revealed her true reason for sending her son Toby to a failing state school when she could easily have afforded to send him to an excellent private one. (Toby is mentioned by name in the feature, incidentally, and his photograph also appears; let’s hope the boy has no yen for privacy.)

  It seems that Paula wasn’t, as I once suggested, motivated by the desire to score political points for a rotten cause at the expense of her only child’s welfare and future. Nor was her decision, as I later playfully posited, a passive aggressive one-in-the-eye for her aristocratic Tory parents who sent her, our very own Paula of the Proles, to an exclusive all-girls boarding school where she suffered the torment of receiving a world-class education. No, gentlest reader, none of the above. Our Paula sent young Toby to Gorse Edge School because she was having an illicit affair with its deputy head, Harry Bowers.

  I’m sure Bowers and his wife, Julie, would rather you and I didn’t know this, but, thanks to Saint Paula’s obsessive desire to prove me wrong, we do. We and all the other Sunday Times readers, and all their friends and families, have the full story, in Paula Privilege’s own words. I particularly like the parts that refer to me specifically. I get no fewer than four mentions, which proves that I am currently the person uppermost in Saint Paula’s mind. I pity poor Mr. Privilege. How’s he coping with all this media attention? By “poor,” I of course mean unfortunate; last time I looked, Richard Crumlish was just about managing to scrape by on his heir-to-colossal-diamond-fortune private income.

  Still, a vast fortune is no substitute for a faithful wife, one could argue, and this isn’t the first time that Saint Paula’s adulterous exploits have spilled over into the public sphere. Remember Keiran Holland? I try not to, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Remember the mediocre American movie director whose name I have forgotten? Both Crumlish and Labour let those two indiscretions pass, and no doubt for the same reason: hotties like Paula are few and far between. Will Crumlish stand by his woman again, now that she has cheated on him a third time and freely shared the full details of her betrayal with a national newspaper? It’s early days, and, while we remain glued to every facet of their unfolding marital misfortune, we can only speculate: will it be stick or carats for Saint Paula?

  Whatever happens to her marriage, her political career is over, or very soon will be. Charitable as it is in allowing the likes of Eds Miliband and Ba
lls onto its front benches, the Labour Party’s goodwill cannot possibly stretch as far as retaining an MP who announces to the country without a hint of regret that she chose a school for her son with a view to sneaking into the stationery cupboard with her tastiest constituent seconds after she’d dropped off little Toby at his classroom door.

  Just in case Labour are feeling especially lenient about both infidelity and exhibitionism at the moment (you never know—they might have heard that the Tories are making moves in that direction and be keen to follow suit), Saint Paula made sure to add another choice revelation to her spontaneous media combustion:

  If Damon Blundy wants to add luster to his sad little life by trashing me week after week in his column, can I suggest that he judges me for the shoplifting problem I had as a teenager that lasted into my early twenties? Oh, sorry, I forgot—Blundy doesn’t know about that because I never got caught. Perhaps he’d like to admit that he has no idea what kind of person I am—good, bad or indifferent—just as I have no idea what kind of person he is, though I do know, as we all do, that he chooses to behave for much of the time like a vile bigot. But we mustn’t let his bigotry, disgusting though it is, blind us to his foolishness. It is tempting to assume that those who offend and upset us are telling hard truths that we can’t stand to hear, but sometimes, as in the case of Blundy, they are as wrong as they are unpleasant. Only a fool would imagine that my decision to send my son to a state school was in any way controversial or a matter of public interest. Thanks to my relationship with Harry, I was in the fortunate position of knowing enough about Gorse Edge and its staff to trust it completely, but even if that hadn’t been the case, I would have sent Toby to his local state primary school because I believe in state education.