Woman with a Secret Page 24

  I have a close relationship with somebody who knows the truth—someone whose real name I don’t know, true, but still: a man I shared my honest thoughts and feelings with for years. He was a man. He wasn’t Melissa—how could I suspect that, even for a second? He shared his thoughts and feelings with me too, in a way that neither of us ever has with anyone else.

  He cares about you. He’s a killer, but he loves you. He’s obsessed, and when you’re obsessed, you’ll do anything.

  You’ll do anything, also, when nothing matters to you more than finding out the truth.

  I touch the letter keys on my phone’s screen with the tip of my index finger. “Dear Gavin/King Edward,” I write. “We need to talk. Can we meet, as soon as possible? N x”

  I press “send.”

  THE MAN YOU WERE with at the Chancery Hotel . . . it wasn’t me, or anyone you know. He was a stranger.

  Words that will hurt for the rest of my life. Hurt of a kind that most people never feel.

  I managed to remain coherent in order to find out as much as I could. I emailed back immediately. “What do you mean, he was a stranger? If you sent an acquaintance of yours to have sex with me—a process he failed to see through to its logical conclusion, incidentally—then you must know his name. I’d like to know it too.”

  As I pressed “send,” I was thinking, “I could call the police. I’ve been raped. This is rape, what’s happened to me. Even though . . .” And then I remembered myself on that bed, and how I’d felt at the time. I realized how pointless it would be to think in terms of the police. They’d probably never find him—King Edward would protect him—and even if they did, he’d be sure to mention in court how much I’d enjoyed it. And Adam would find out, and my children would find out . . . No, it was unthinkable.

  Another email arrived from King Edward within five minutes. “Nicki, are you crazy?” it said. “You honestly think I’d send a stranger—a real stranger? You think I’d do that to you? Wow, I’m pretty cut up about that. KE7.”

  “You told me he was a stranger,” was the most I could manage in response.

  “You’re right, I did,” King Edward wrote back. “Please forgive me—I’m not thinking clearly at the moment. I’m all over the place, to be honest. Nicki, it was me. Of course it was me. The man you’ve been writing to since June 2010 and the man in that hotel room are one and the same. KE7.”

  “Then what did you mean when you said he was a stranger?” I had detached myself by this point. I knew what my next logical move was each time, and I made it, but I’d switched off my feelings. I knew, though, that when I switched them back on, I would find that nothing King Edward had said or would say, or could ever say, would make me feel any better.

  His next email nearly stopped my heart. “I am not, and have never been, Damon Blundy. That’s what I meant by the stranger line. You’ve believed that you’ve been having a love affair with Damon Blundy. You haven’t. The man in that room was me—a man whose name you still don’t know, a man who’s still hiding from you. A stranger. I was being melodramatic. Of course I’m not really a stranger.”

  I didn’t believe a single word he said, and knew I never would again. I remember going through the possibilities in my head:

  1.King Edward was Damon Blundy, but the man at the Chancery Hotel wasn’t.

  2.King Edward was the man at the Chancery, but he wasn’t Damon Blundy.

  3.King Edward was neither Blundy nor the man at the Chancery.

  4.King Edward was Blundy and the man at the Chancery.

  There were probably more options to choose from, but I decided I’d rather run a deep bath and drown myself than try to figure them out.

  Another email arrived, when I failed to respond to the last one. “I lied to you, Nicki. I’m so, so sorry. I know you won’t forgive me. That’s why I couldn’t email you for days afterward. I felt too guilty, if you want the truth. I hate myself as much as you must hate me. Please believe that. I don’t know why I ever thought it was a good idea to pretend to be someone I’m not. Please be reassured that everything else I’ve ever written to you has been sincere and heartfelt. As for our time together in the hotel, I’m sorry about not seeing things through to their logical conclusion. You know my code—I tried to explain it to you. Quaint though it might sound, I don’t want to cross my line in the sand and be fully unfaithful to my wife in terms of all things physical. I need to be able to live with myself. I hope you understand. I suffer from poor impulse control, and if I cut myself too much slack, I’m afraid of what might happen. KE7.”

  “Fully unfaithful”—that was the phrase that made me want to stab him in both eyes. And that was when I wrote back and said it: the stupid, ridiculous, reckless thing that led to Damon Blundy’s murder.

  He is no less dead . . .

  That, also—that same angry email—was when I told King Edward never to contact me again. If what he’d done to me was love, then I was going to find the opposite of love, I said. I’d go straight back to Intimate Links and answer an ad that wanted nothing more than sex, nothing more than a body to use; it would be less soul-destroying.

  And so King Edward created Gavin.

  If I’d only ignored his last email, there’d have been no Gavin, no humiliating encounter with a policeman in a supermarket parking lot, no involvement in a murder case.

  No murder at all?

  Very possibly.

  It serves me right that I’ve been dragged into the police investigation. If it weren’t for that last email I sent King Edward in February, Damon Blundy might well still be alive.

  MY PHONE BUZZES ON the table. I grab it.

  A new message.

  I gasp when I see the name in my inbox. I wrote to Gavin’s address—mr_jugs@hushmail.com—but it’s King Edward who’s replied from the address that’s been engraved in my mind since 2010: kingedward7@yahoo.com. Same subject heading as in my email to Gavin: “Meet?”

  My heart hammers in my chest. I drop my phone, pick it up again.

  You knew Gavin was King Edward.

  Of course I knew, but now the last sliver of doubt is gone.

  I open the message.

  Hi Nicki,

  It would be unreasonable of me to refuse your request, wouldn’t it? After everything I’ve put you through. Am I unreasonable? Not to that extent, no. Yes, we can meet as soon as possible. At the Chancery Hotel again. Make the arrangements and tell me when. Like last time, I will arrive at the appointed hour. You’ll be waiting for me, as you were last time. In **all** respects, as you were last time. Yes, even the blindfold, which, once again, you must promise not to remove at any point during our meeting. You must also promise, like last time, not to speak a single word.

  You said in your message, “We need to meet and talk.” I will talk. You will listen. I’m confident that, once you’ve heard everything I have to say, you will know what you want and need to know. You will know who killed Damon Blundy. (I know you think it was me. You’re wrong.)

  Am I unreasonable? I suppose I am. Those are my conditions. I hope you will agree to them.

  Trust me, Nicki, I won’t harm you. I love you.

  KE7

  DING DONG, HYPOCRISY IS ALIVE AND WELL

  Damon Blundy, April 16, 2013, Daily Herald Online

  Yesterday, former Labour MP Paula Privilege, in admirably nonpartisan fashion, blogged about misogyny in connection with the death of Margaret Thatcher. By all means, said Saint Paula, criticize Thatcher’s harsh treatment of the unions if you wish, and her warmongering in the Falklands (sic), but don’t call her a witch, because that language is sexist and debasing of women. I was amused to learn that this was Saint Paula’s opinion, in the light of something she’d tweeted to her 68,000 Twitter followers on April 8, the day Baroness Maggie died. After reading her blog post that railed against the use of witchy imagery in connection with the unfairer sex, even if they happen to be one’s political opponents, I trawled back through Saint Paula’s tweets to see if she’d
deleted the one that revealed her true feelings on the matter. These, I think, can be summarized neatly: “It’s wrong to compare women to witches, unless I do it, in which case it’s OK.”

  Here’s what Saint Paula tweeted on April 8:

  Paula Riddiough @politixpaula

  Finally, room on the broom! For strong but compassionate women in politics. Never celebrate death. Always celebrate hope for the future.

  She hadn’t deleted the tweet, and must either have forgotten about it by the time she wrote her blog post a week later or else she assumed no one would notice the disparity. For the culturally excluded among you, Room on the Broom is a bestselling picture book by Julia Donaldson, author of such children’s classics as The Gruffalo and Tiddler. The broom in question belongs to a witch. I shall spell it out for the hard-of-believing-a-leftie-can-ever-put-a-foot-wrong: Saint Paula’s tweet unequivocally implies that Margaret Thatcher was a witch and that, by dying, she has made room for superior women like Paula herself in the political sphere. But the meaning goes further than that: Paula’s tweet suggests that the compassionate women who might take Thatcher’s place would also be sitting on the broom. All women in politics are witches, are they, Paula? What, even the ones who empathize with Argentinian dictators partial to purloining islands that don’t belong to them?

  I couldn’t resist embroiling Her Saintliness in a Twitter debate on the subject:

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula Saw your room on the broom tweet. Read your blog today. So which is it—OK or not OK to compare women to witches?

  Paula Riddiough @politixpaula

  @blunderfulme Not okay. Good point, I hadn’t spotted that. I apologize, and will delete tweet.

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula Your instinct, on hearing of death of one of UK’s greatest women, was to tweet misogynistically, in a way you profess to find unacceptable. Hypocrite!

  Paula Riddiough @politixpaula

  @blunderfulme I’d be a hypocrite if I tried to defend my original tweet. I’ve apologized for it and have now deleted it.

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula Hypocrite. Your misogyny pours forth, soon as you hear of the death of someone you disapprove of. Never call yourself a feminist again.

  Wasim Khalid @waswashere

  @politixpaula @blunderfulme Paula, ignore him. He is the cunt to end all cunts.

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula @waswashere Christ, the misogyny on here’s unbelievable. I thought I was a sexist shit. Feel like Emmeline Pankhurst compared to you lot!

  Paula Riddiough @politixpaula

  @waswashere I will take your advice and ignore him!

  Wasim Khalid @waswashere

  @politixpaula Haha, yeh, he’s a bitter twat! You are one amazing lady, btw!

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula @waswashere More misogynistic language! Paula, any views?

  Paula Riddiough @politixpaula

  @blunderfulme I don’t condone sexist language, but he’s right about one thing: you’re bitter. And we’re done here.

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula A Twitter spat with a bitter twat? No better spat. No, that’s where it’s at. (To misquote Julia Donaldson.)

  Paula Riddiough @politixpaula

  @blunderfulme Very good. I’m so very impressed by how clever you are.

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula I notice you haven’t criticized @waswashere directly for his appallingly misogynistic language. Can’t bear to criticize a fan? Hypocrite.

  Paula Riddiough @politixpaula

  @blunderfulme Do fuck off, Damon.

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula Once there was a dish and her name was Riddiough. / She had the blinkered mindset of a left-wing twit / But Riddy was a bird . . .

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula . . . who inflamed imaginations. / She talked pure rubbish but she looked well fit.

  Paula Riddiough @politixpaula

  @blunderfulme Once again: fuck off, Little Johnny Tory.

  Wasim Khalid @waswashere

  @politixpaula @blunderfulme You tell him, sweetheart!

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula @waswashere He’s calling you sweetheart now, Paula—any thoughts? Bit sexist, no?

  Paula Riddiough @politixpaula

  @blunderfulme A former MP took a look online. / She spotted the rage of a right-wing swine. / Why are you trolling me, tedious louse? . . .

  Paula Riddiough @politixpaula

  @blunderfulme . . . Go and spout bile in your Hicksville house.

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula That’s terribly kind, but I can’t for a bit. / I’m busy exposing a hypocrite.

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula (A hypocrite? What’s a hypocrite?) / A hypocrite? Why, Riddiough is it.

  Coffee and Biscuits @coffeebiscuits

  @politixpaula Hicksville? Charming! Fine way to talk about your former constituency!

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula She has terrible friends with risible views / And visible cleavage on Channel Four News . . .

  Damon Blundy @blunderfulme

  @politixpaula . . . Why am I hounding her? Well, she cried, “Witch!” / And her favorite phrase is “Tax the rich.”

  Alleviate Suffering @thealleviator

  @politixpaula @blunderfulme Jesus, what a pair of exhibitionist narcissists! Fuck the both of yous.

  (I love that contribution from Alleviate Suffering at the end there. It quite made my day.)

  I can’t help wondering if Saint Paula was one of the bloodcurdling, death-celebrating lefties who downloaded “Ding Dong, the Witch Is Dead” onto their iPods after Margaret Thatcher ascended to the great cabinet in the sky last week. I’d bet my mortgage-free Hicksville House that she was, and I challenge her to deny it.

  CHAPTER 8

  Thursday, July 4, 2013

  “I LOVE THIS ONE. It’s the only one out of about a hundred that shows us as we really are. The others were all ridiculously glamorous, and that’s so not us.” Paula Riddiough took the framed wedding photograph from the mantelpiece in her living room and placed it in Simon’s hands, which weren’t ready. Why did he need to hold it when he’d had a perfectly decent view from where he was standing? He couldn’t allow himself to worry about dropping it or else he would.

  “Fergus looks so bemused,” said Paula fondly. “As if he’s thinking, ‘What’s happening? Who are you, and why are you pointing a camera at me?’” She laughed.

  “What I was actually thinking, after the four hundredth photograph, was, ‘Any minute now this protracted smile will ossify on my face and I’ll need a chisel to get it off,’” said Fergus Preece, who stood immediately behind Paula and Simon. He’d been sitting down, but had leaped up at the mention of the words “wedding photo,” keen to take part in the viewing of an object that lived in his house and that he could presumably look at every day if he wanted to.

  Odd. Though Simon had to admit that his own attitude to wedding pictures would be regarded as odder by most people. He and Charlie had only a couple of photographs of their wedding, which Chris Gibbs had taken. Neither had ever been framed. In one of them, Charlie was yawning and laughing at the same time. Simon had no idea where the pictures had ended up. His best guess was the drawer in the kitchen where the phone chargers lived, and the snarled plastic wrap that had been there for years and was completely unusable. Every time Charlie tried to throw it away, Simon fished it out of the trash, rinsed it under the tap and replaced it in the drawer, determined one day to find a straight edge that would enable him to detach useful lengths of film from the roll. Not that he and Charlie ever generated leftovers that needed to be covered up; the idea that cooking might involve more than putting something in the microwave was one that neither of them
was prepared to entertain.

  “Photographers—a strange breed,” said Fergus Preece. He was a short man with a tanned face, white hair and a large stomach that created portholes between the buttons of his shirt. Simon knew that Paula was thirty-nine, and guessed that Fergus was fifteen years older, perhaps more.

  Like their marriage, the living room of their home blended the historic and the contemporary. There were many ornately framed portraits on the walls, all of which looked like antiques and made Simon think of words like “ancestry” and “lineage,” but the large red, green and white rug covering the stone-flagged floor had a modern, jagged pattern on it that was as ugly as it was cleverly designed: the effect was rather as if someone had dropped red and green glass onto solid ice from a great height. Simon wouldn’t have believed it possible to render such a thing in wool if he hadn’t seen it firsthand.

  He wondered how soon he could replace the wedding picture on the mantelpiece between and in front of half a dozen framed photos of Paula’s son, Toby. This mantelpiece had a two-tier display system; indeed, the whole room suggested that Fergus and Paula were passionate about partially covering things with other things. All three sofas and the two chairs had throws draped over them, and on one there was a large golden-haired dog asleep on top of a smaller black-and-white dog. Simon could see that they were different types, but didn’t know the name of either; he’d never had a pet and knew nothing about dogs apart from the fact that Dalmatians had spots.

  There were blinds at the windows with only their central portions visible behind the swags and pelmets of the curtains. Wherever there was a cushion, there was a smaller one, if not two, leaning against it. Near the door, there was a nest of three rectangular wooden coffee tables with intricate carvings on their legs, tucked in one beneath the other. They looked too old and heirloomy for the slamming down of mugs of instant Nescafé. On the surface of the top table were magazines in a fanlike arrangement, covering other magazines. Simon could see the beginnings of many titles: Country Li, Vog, Bucki, Horse &, Psycholo. Only one title was fully visible: Private Eye.