The Wrong Mother Read online

  ‘No!’ he said, grabbing my arm. ‘It’s not like that. Listen, I’ve probably said it all wrong, but… what you said before, about needing to come away this week and sleep and rest because you’d never had the chance before and you wouldn’t again, well…’ He looked as if he was struggling for the right words. He didn’t find them. Eventually his face sort of crumpled and he turned away from me. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘You’re probably right. I’ll bugger off, as instructed.’

  His vehemence had shocked me, and his sudden dejection was as much of a surprise. He looked as if he might cry, and I felt guilty. Maybe I’d misjudged him.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  He sighed, leaning over his drink. ‘I was going to say that sleep and rest aren’t the only things you don’t get enough of once you’ve had a child.’

  ‘You mean sex?’

  ‘No.’ He almost smiled. ‘I meant adventure. Fun. Not knowing exactly what’s going to happen.’

  I couldn’t speak. If only he hadn’t said that, if only he’d said something else, I’d have been fine. I’d have been able to stand my ground.

  ‘You know, I’m away a lot for work,’ he said. ‘Overnight. Often. One or two nights at a time, once or twice a month. This time it’s a week. And whenever I check into another hotel on my own and throw my overnight bag down on the bed, I think to myself, I don’t know what I want more-sleep or adventure. Should I order dinner in my room, watch telly in bed, get my head down early and wake up late, or should I go down to the hotel bar and try to pick up an exotic woman?’

  I laughed. ‘So tonight you opted for the latter.’ Though for him I could hardly have been exotic. I lived less than half an hour’s drive from his house. ‘Didn’t you say Lucy was five?’ I said. ‘She must be sleeping by now.’

  He looked miserable, as if he wished I hadn’t said that. ‘I can’t remember the last good night I had,’ he said. He seemed needy, yet at the same time strong and determined. Almost angry. I suppose I found him intriguing.

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘No one warned me it might get worse.’

  ‘It might.’ Unexpectedly, he grinned. ‘But it could also get better. For a bit. Say, this week. Couldn’t it?’

  I had never been unfaithful to my husband before. I never will again. I am not the unfaithful type. I hate the whole idea of infidelity. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ I told him.

  ‘You can’t, in all conscience, say no,’ he said. ‘I’d be too embarrassed. The only way you can save me from the fate of massive humiliation is by saying yes.’

  I knew I ought to be finding him more annoying by the second, but I was starting to like him. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t. I told you, I need to rest. Spending a week with another man-that’d be a big deal for me. It’d send me into panic mode, and I’d go home in a worse state than I was in when I left.’ Part of me couldn’t believe I was taking this seriously enough to give him such a considered response.

  ‘It could be this week only,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t have to keep in touch. We’re both happily married, neither of us wants to break up our family. We’ve both got a lot to lose. We’re parents-in other words, nobody expects us to do anything secret or exciting ever again.’

  He was right. My best friend, who was and still is single, was always telling me I was prim and proper, just because she occasionally saw me trying to persuade my children to eat broccoli, or changing the TV channel if someone was being hacked to pieces on the screen. She thought I’d become a boring mumsy type, and this idea enraged me. And I found this man-Mark Bretherick-physically attractive, especially when he promised that we could confine our adventurous activities, as he called them, to the daytime and early evening, so that I could still have my seven nights of unbroken sleep.

  We didn’t share a room. We never spent a night in the same bed. By ten thirty each evening, we were back in our separate suites. But we ate together, had massages together, sat in the outdoor hot tub and the hammam together-and obviously we did the obvious.

  One evening, in the restaurant, he started to cry. For no reason, it seemed. He burst out of there, embarrassed, and when he came back he asked me to forget it had happened. I worried he was starting to fall for me, having second thoughts about not keeping in touch once our week together was over, but he seemed all right again after that, so I stopped worrying.

  However terrible it sounds, I didn’t feel guilty. I thought about a book I’d read as a teenager, Flowers for Algernon. I don’t remember who wrote it, but it’s about a retarded man who (I can’t remember how) suddenly becomes clever and fully aware. Perhaps he takes a drug of some kind, or someone experiments on him. Anyway, for a while he is bright enough to realise he was retarded and isn’t any longer. He feels as if a miracle has happened. He falls in love and starts to live a full, happy life. And then the effect of the drug or experiment starts to wear off, and he realises he will soon be retarded again, unable to think clearly-he will lose this brilliant new life that is so precious to him.

  That’s how I felt, like that man, whatever his name was. I knew I only had a week, and I had to cram everything into it, all the things my life lacked-rest, adventure, being able to concentrate on myself, my own needs. More importantly, I felt I would be able to do everything I had to do more happily and more efficiently when I got home. I was certain my husband would never find out, and he hasn’t.

  And then last night I saw the news. I saw a man who was supposed to be Mark Bretherick, and he wasn’t the same person. Maybe the man I met could only do the things he did-the things we both did-as somebody else, which would be understandable. But, whoever he was, he must have known the Bretherick family well because he knew so much about them-enough to convince me that he was one of them.

  The story I’ve just told you might have nothing to do with the deaths of Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick. If it doesn’t, I apologise for wasting your time. But I can’t get it out of my head that the two things might be connected. Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick died several days ago, and my husband tells me it’s been on the news and in the papers every day. I didn’t know this-I don’t think I’ve sat down with a newspaper since my first child was born-but if it’s true then the man I met in the hotel last year is bound to have seen the reports. He will have guessed that by now I know he isn’t who he told me he was. I know this sounds totally crazy, but yesterday somebody pushed me into the road and I was very nearly run over by a bus. Today I was followed by a red Alfa Romeo, registration YF52 DNB.

  I’m sorry I can’t tell you the name of the hotel, or my name or any more than I’ve told you. If by any chance you find out who I am during the course of your investigation, please, please contact me at work and do not let my husband find out about any of this. My marriage would be over if he did.

  A low, rasping voice from behind me jolts me out of my seat. ‘I see dead people,’ it says. I make an undignified whimpering noise as I whirl round to see who is behind me.

  It’s Owen Mellish, my least favourite colleague. My body sags as if it’s been punctured. I turn back to my screen and quickly click on ‘close file’, feeling my face heat up. Owen is laughing loudly and slapping his knee, pleased to have given me a fright. His short, paunchy body, squeezed into a tight green T-shirt and ripped denim shorts, is sprawled in a swivel chair which he rocks back and forth with one of his trunk-like hairy legs.

  ‘I see dead people,’ he says again, louder, hoping to attract laughter from nearby colleagues. I want to rip out his stupid goatee beard hair by hair.

  No one responds.

  Owen gets impatient. ‘Haven’t you all seen The Sixth Sense?’

  We tell him that we have.

  ‘That woman that’s been on the news-Bretherick. The one who killed her sprog and herself-she’s a dead ringer for Sal, isn’t she? Spooky!’

  I’ve never met anybody with a more irritating voice. Owen sounds, all the time, as if he badly needs to clear his throat. Every time he speaks you can hear the phlegm rattlin
g inside him; it’s disgusting.

  ‘You will be dead soon if you don’t learn how to drive.’ He laughs. ‘Before, on the road. What was that all about?’ He is looking at his audience, not at me. He wants to belittle me in front of everybody. Like Pam Senior yesterday, yelling at me in the street. It must have been Owen who beeped his horn at me when I came to a standstill outside our building earlier.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumble. ‘I’m tired, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Owen pats me on the back. ‘I’d be in a state too if I were you. You know, legend has it that if your doppelgänger dies, you die too.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ I grin at him to show that his words have had no effect. Actually, that’s not true. They’ve made me feel more robust. Owen could never be anything other than utterly prosaic. Hearing him drone on about doppelgängers inspires me to pull myself together. So what if Geraldine Bretherick looked like me? Plenty of people look like plenty of other people and there’s nothing sinister about it.

  I don’t dislike many people, but I do dislike Owen Mellish. He thinks he’s witty, but all his jokes are against other people. They’re jibes concealed behind a thin veil of humour. Once when I rang the office to say I was stuck in traffic and had been for nearly an hour, he laughed at me and said triumphantly, ‘I came in at sparrow’s fart and there was barely a car on the road.’

  Owen is a sediment modeller, and unfortunately I have to work with him on almost every project I undertake. He creates computerised hydrodynamic models of sediment structures, and I can’t work without them. The programs he writes can apply any conceivable tidal or water change, natural or man-made, to sediment with any ratio of silt to sand to cohesive mud, any flock-size. It constantly annoys me to think that, without Owen and his computer, my work would be far less accurate.

  At the moment he and I are working together on a feasibility study for Gilsenen Ltd, a large multinational that wants to build a cooling plant on the Culver Estuary. Our job is to predict future levels of contaminant concentrations and industrial enrichment, in the event of the plant being built. We have to deliver our final report in two weeks’ time, and Gilsenen has to pretend to care; it’s crucial to its image that it appears ecologically responsible. So I have to speak to Owen often, and hear his rattling voice, and I can’t get it out of my head that his wife had their first child only four months ago and two months later Owen left her for another woman. Now he takes his new girlfriend’s daughters to the park every weekend, and even has a photo of them on his desk at work, but he never mentions his own son, who was born with a serious heart defect. It’s a pity his computing expertise doesn’t extend to making a mathematical model that can assess the effect on a baby of being abandoned by his father.

  ‘ “To whom it may concern”.’ Owen’s looking at my screen, reading my words aloud. ‘What’s that? Making a will, are you? Very sensible. What happened to your face, anyway? Hubby been beating you again?’

  I grab my mouse and try as quickly as I can to close the file I thought I’d already closed. Do I want to save the changes? In my flustered state, with Owen looking over my shoulder, I click on ‘no’ by mistake. ‘Shit!’ I open the file again, praying. Please, please…

  There is no God. It’s gone. The draft of my salt-marsh article has been resurrected.

  I push past Owen, out of the office and into the corridor. All that effort-gone in the time it took to press a button. Shit. Would I have sent it? I doubt any police force anywhere in the world has ever received a letter like it, but I don’t care-every word of it was true, and writing it made me feel better for as long as it lasted. I ought to go back to my computer and start from scratch but that’s a prospect I can’t face at the moment.

  I try to focus on despising Owen but all I can think about, suddenly, is the red Alfa Romeo. Writing to the police was a way of pushing it aside. Now that my letter’s disappeared, I can’t avoid it any more.

  I first noticed it on the way to nursery. It was behind me almost constantly, and all I could do was stare at it helplessly, worrying. Normally, car time is grooming and breakfast time for me, the only chance I get to brush my hair, put on my perfume, eat a banana. Today, I felt watched, and couldn’t bring myself to do any of those things.

  I couldn’t see the driver of the Alfa Romeo because of the sun reflecting off his windscreen. Or hers. I thought of Pam but I knew this wasn’t her car. She drives a black Renault Clio. When I turned left into Bloxham Road, where the children’s nursery is, the Alfa Romeo went straight on. I was relieved, and even laughed at myself as I lifted Jake out of his car seat, while Zoe waited patiently on the pavement beside me holding her shiny pink handbag with pink and blue butterflies on it. My daughter is obsessed with handbags; she won’t leave the house without one. Inside today’s choice she’s got fifty-pence in ten- and twenty-pence pieces, a pink plastic car key and fob and a multicoloured plastic bead bracelet.

  ‘Nobody’s following us. Silly Mummy,’ I said.

  ‘Why, who did you think it was?’ Zoe asked, surveying the empty road, then scrunching up her face to examine me more closely.

  ‘No one,’ I said firmly. ‘There’s no one following us.’

  ‘But you thought there was, so who did you think it might have been?’ she persisted. I smiled at her, proud of her advanced reasoning skills, but said nothing.

  I dropped the children off and, on my way out of the building, bumped into Anthea, the manager, who is in her mid-fifties but dresses like a teenager, in crop-tops and visible thongs. She gave me another dressing-down, twirling her long streaked hair round her index finger as she spoke. I’d been late to collect Zoe and Jake four days in the past fortnight, and I’d forgotten to bring in a new packet of nappies for Jake so the girls had had to use nursery spares when they changed him. Heinous crimes, both. I apologised, mentally added ‘Buy new nappies, try harder not to be late’ to my list, and ran back to the car, swearing under my breath. I had a lot to do at work today and didn’t have time for Anthea’s lectures. Why didn’t she just charge me for any spare nappies Jake used? Why didn’t she charge me extra if the staff had to stay longer on the days when I was late? I would happily have paid them double, or even quadruple, for that extra hour. I’d still only have had to write one cheque at the end of the month. I don’t care about spending money, but I get twitchy at the thought of losing even a second of valuable time.

  On the way to the post office to post my anonymous letter to the police, I kept checking my rear-view mirror. Nothing. I’d got halfway to Silsford before I saw the red Alfa Romeo again. Same number plate. Sunlight bounced off the windscreen and I still couldn’t see the driver; a dark shape was all I could make out. I tasted bitter coffee in the back of my throat, mixed with bile.

  I pulled over by the side of the road and watched the Alfa Romeo speed ahead of me and out of sight. It could be a coincidence, I told myself: I’m not the only person who lives in Spilling and works in Silsford.

  I forced myself to calm down and started my car again. All the way to work I checked my mirrors every few seconds like a learner driver under the beady eye of her instructor. There was no sign of the Alfa Romeo, and by the time I got to Silsford I’d decided it was gone for good. Then, as I turned the corner to get to HS Silsford’s car park, I saw a red Alfa Romeo parked at the far end of the road, on the right. I gasped, my heartbeat racing to keep up with my brain. This could not be happening. I accelerated, but the Alfa started to move as I approached and was round the corner and away before I could catch a glimpse of the driver.

  I braked hard, slamming my fist down on the steering wheel. The registration. I’d been so shaken up by the sight of the red car that I hadn’t checked the number plate. I sat perfectly still in the driver’s seat, unable to believe my own stupidity. It has to be the same one, I thought. How many people drive Alfas? A horn beeped loudly behind me. I realised I was in the middle of the road, blocking the traffic in both directions. I waved an apology to whoever was b
ehind me-sodding Owen Mellish, as it turns out-and swerved left into HS Silsford’s underground car park.

  The ‘HS’ in the company’s name stands for hydraulics solutions. We’re spread over the top five floors of a rectangular tower block that nevertheless manages to look short and fat. It’s all dark metal and mirrors on the outside, and beige and white on the inside, with square brown suede sofas, potted plants and little water sculptures in the plush reception area.

  I work here two days a week, and for the Save Venice Foundation three days a week. Save Venice wanted someone from HS Silsford on secondment part-time for three years. Almost everybody in the office applied, tempted by the prospect of the all-expenses-paid trips to Venice. I can’t prove it but I’m sure Owen went for it and has never forgiven me for being chosen over him. Every day, I vow not to allow him to wind me up.

  Not bothering with the deep breaths this time, I steel myself and march back to my desk. ‘Madam Snoot just phoned for you,’ Owen calls out when he sees me. ‘She wasn’t very happy when I told her you were off skiving somewhere, not at your desk.’

  ‘On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I don’t work for her,’ I snap.

  ‘Ooh, touchy.’ He grins. ‘I’d listen to your voicemail if I were you. I know you’re scared of her really.’

  There are two messages from Natasha Prentice-Nash, or Madam Snoot as Owen calls her. She’s the chairman of the Save Venice Foundation and insists on that title rather than ‘chairperson’ because she claims that isn’t a word. Esther has also left two messages for me-at 7.40 and 7.55 this morning-which I delete and resolve to ignore. I listen to the rest: one from nursery, left at 8.10, one from Monk Barn Primary School at 8.15, one from Nick at 8.30, who says, ‘Oh, hi, it’s me. Nick. Um… Bye.’ He doesn’t tell me what he wants, or say that he will phone back. He doesn’t ask me to phone him.

  After Nick’s comes a man’s deep, plummy voice that I don’t recognise. I picture plump cheeks, white teeth and a thick pink tongue above some sort of cravat. Not that I even know what a cravat is. ‘Hello, this is a message for, um, Sally. Sally Thorning.’ Whoever this man is, he doesn’t know me well enough to ring me at 8.35 on a Tuesday morning. ‘Hello, Sally, it’s, um, it’s Fergus here. Fergus Land.’ I frown, puzzled. Fergus Land? Who’s he? Then I remember: my next-door neighbour, the male half of open-topped-sports-car Fergus and Nancy. I smile to myself. His cheeks are plump. Good guess.