First wifes shadow, p.22
First Wife's Shadow, page 22
‘How do you know I’d get that much?’ I could see he was interested.
I’d done my research. ‘I’m guessing, but I bet you could. I was thinking maybe after two years you could tell her you want babies. That you’re sorry, heartbroken in fact; you don’t want to have to choose, but it’s an undeniable instinct. She’d be forty-nine then, chances of her conceiving are minuscule, even if she was keen to try. I’d bank on the fact she loves you enough to grant you a divorce so you could find someone you could have children with.’ She’s just the sort to do the full-on martyr thing, choosing to live alone with her self-loathing rather than with a man she felt she’d trapped.
He looked uncomfortable. ‘I suppose. But two years. It’s a long time.’
‘Well, the only thing that could speed up the process is if you divorce her. If she was found at fault.’
‘She’s not the type to have an affair.’
‘No, she isn’t,’ I said carefully. ‘But you could divorce her on grounds of her unreasonable behaviour.’
He shook his head. ‘That won’t work. She’s pretty much the most reasonable person I’ve ever met.’
‘She likes a drink, doesn’t she?’
‘No more than most.’
And this was it. ‘That might be true, but we can make it look differently.’ I carefully started telling him the details of my plan, gauging how much he might be prepared to hear. ‘Now that I have access to her computer, I could change more things in her diary so she misses important events and appointments. People will start to talk about her unreliability and look for reasons behind it.’ People can be depended upon for that – thinking the worst, gossiping. It’s a rotten fact of life. ‘I could move things around the house so she believes she’s being forgetful.’ I had already been doing this. I wanted her to doubt herself. She’s obsessed with being in control; it will be interesting to watch what happens when that slides. ‘You can start dropping hints to her friends and colleagues that she’s drinking a little too much, that you’re worried about her.’
‘Gaslight her, you mean?’ I could hear the confusion and disapproval in his voice, perhaps with an undertone of disgust. Mattie generally plays things very straight. It isn’t that he’s especially moral, it’s more that he’s too lazy for complications.
‘I wouldn’t call it gaslighting. That’s a bit reductive. Didn’t she tell you her brother and father were alcoholics?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then, her drinking too much should be easy to sell. Just think, I know the exact worth of everything she owns. When it comes to divorce, she won’t be able to try to say the value of her estate is less than it is. I’d like to see her try to lie to your lawyer.’
‘I don’t have a lawyer.’
‘We’ll get you one when the time comes. One step at a time, hey? You have to marry her first.’
‘And you’ve just thought of this now?’ He sounded suspicious.
‘Yes, just occurred to me,’ I replied firmly. So firmly that he dared not question me further.
Of course this wasn’t true. I’d never intended to settle for scraps and morsels, I want the whole feast, but I knew that if I admitted that, he’d get weird about it. Most likely go on about me always having crazy plans, perhaps moan that I take things too far, an accusation that he has levelled at me in the past. Plus, it was unlikely that he’d be thrilled that he’d fallen for my lies; no one likes being lied to, because it makes them look stupid.
I waited. The silence throbbed through me. Weirdly, it felt loud, overwhelming. This was up to him. I couldn’t do it without him. I hardly dared breathe.
‘OK.’
I wanted him to be crystal clear. ‘You’ll do it?’
He looked sad. Jaded. Jagged. ‘We’ve started this thing now. We need to finish it.’ He sighed in a way that reminded me of when I was a kid and I used to let all the air out of the tyres of my foster dad’s car on the days he was supposed to drive me to see Mum in prison. The hiss was sort of desperate and hateful.
There’s always a line, and we’d just crossed it.
34
‘I asked her to marry me.’
‘Sorry, you did what?’ I was in my mum’s flat when I took his call. I dragged the toe of my trainer over the lino floor, deliberately leaving a black mark, then slammed my hand on the magnolia wall. The walls were decorated so sloppily that the paint covered the light switches and power sockets. The effect this creates is not one of sleek unity, more of a careless insipidity. It’s a tight, cramped space. The first thing I always do whenever I arrive is open the windows. My mum complains that I let the heat out, but it’s just something I need to do. On some level, being with Mum means I have less air. Hearing his news made the flat feel more claustrophobic than ever. He’d asked her to marry him. What the fuck? It was Sunday evening. I had only mooted the idea of marriage to him on Thursday evening. This was far too rushed, too impulsive. ‘That’s not what we agreed,’ I said sternly. ‘I was going to tell you what to say when, in order to get her to say yes.’
‘Well, she liked my proposal and she did say yes.’
‘Oh.’
‘Aren’t you going to congratulate me?’ I could hear the smugness in his voice. The triumph.
‘Congratulations.’ It stung. No, that’s not right. It felt more than that. There were shafts of debilitating pain shooting up through my body. I collapsed into a kitchen chair, slamming my shoulder blades heavily into the wooden back. Everything my mum owns is mean and hard. It hurt. I was glad of the pain that resulted from the physical impact. I hoped it would distract me from the strange shock of hearing my boyfriend was engaged to someone else. This was my idea, my idea, my idea, I repeated to myself. It was, but I hadn’t expected it to hurt so much.
‘So tell me all about it.’ I don’t know why I asked. It didn’t matter. It was done, but I felt a need to keep a grip on the situation. I didn’t like him going rogue, but since he had, I needed to understand exactly how things had played out, despite the hurt running through my body like a poison.
‘She was freaked out after your handiwork with the bolognese. We cleaned up together, and when we finished, I asked her to marry me. It was totally impulsive; the idea was swirling around my head because you’d been talking about it, and I just blurted it out. You know, a seize-the-day, what-have-you-got-to lose sort of thing.’
What? Hang on. What was he saying? He proposed after they cleared up the bolognese? Thursday. He had waited three days to tell me this news. The news that he was engaged to be married. What the actual fuck? Wasn’t that the sort of thing he might have wanted to update me on straight away? He could at least have sent a text. What had they been busy doing for the last three days that the need to pass on this info slipped his mind? No, actually I didn’t want the answer to that. I bit down hard on my lip until I could taste blood. Mattie didn’t seem to notice my silence; he was too buoyant with the victory of his independent strike to care. Instead he blathered on about ‘moving up the timeline’, ‘striking while the iron is hot’, ‘no time to lose’. One self-congratulatory cliché mushed into the next. I blinked furiously, trying not to let tears fall down my cheeks. I’m not a crier. Not usually. Kids who grow up in care learn not to show their emotions. I’ve heard kids who go to posh boarding schools learn the same lesson, so don’t get out the violins. I was crying then, maybe, but that was just because I was shocked, not weak or sad or hurt or scared. I couldn’t be. It was my idea. I wouldn’t allow myself to be.
He was gloating, behaving as though he’d won a Nobel fucking Peace Prize. He kept repeating how brilliant it was that he’d brought the plan forward a few months. ‘The sooner I’m in, the sooner I’m out.’ He was wrong. We needed to take this slow and steady. If it appeared he was in an unseemly rush, or behaving impulsively, it would ring alarm bells, either with her or with her friends. Someone would start to whisper ‘fortune-hunter’. He’d have been better waiting a few more months. Why had he done this? Was he teaching me a lesson, flexing his muscles? He continued, ‘I mean, when I first saw the shitstorm you had created, I was so pissed off with you. Did you have to?’
‘I was annoyed that she’d spoilt our evening,’ I replied honestly.
‘That tomato sauce really stains, you know. You ruined her white alpaca wool rug and the sofa will have to be re-covered. We’ve put a throw over it for now, I’m going to get it sorted on Monday morning. Get some upholsterers’ quotes in. I was thinking like a grey leather cover. At least that way if you go crazy again it can be wiped clean.’ He laughed at his joke. I didn’t. ‘What do you think? Will grey leather work, or maybe cream?’
I thought he should put the damaged sofa in the Old Schoolhouse, say it was beyond repair and just let her buy a new one. Even stained, it was better than anything we owned. But I didn’t give him my views on the interior decor. Instead, I concentrated on what he was saying to me and what he wasn’t, and tried to make sense of both.
I had been so damned irritated when she sent him the text saying she was coming home early and not staying out with her friends. She got to spend so much time with him and I really resented our night being curtailed. But my irritation turned to fury as I saw his panic; he looked like a school kid caught graffitiing on the teacher’s desk. Of course I had to get out of there sharpish, but his fussy urgency was somehow unseemly. He ran around the house eradicating all signs of me, plumping up cushions and smoothing out the indents on the sofa where I had recently been curled up with him; he hastily washed and dried the wine glass I had drunk from and carefully returned it to the cupboard. He rushed upstairs and gathered up my clothes, shouted at me, ‘Get out of her dress!’ I felt like an undervalued mistress. Used and then nothing. It seemed that he’d temporarily forgotten I was his wife, or as near as dammit. Certainly his almost-wife. She is the other woman. I didn’t want her eating my bolognese, I didn’t want her having my peaceful evening with him. He practically pushed me out of the back door as though he was putting out a cat. He didn’t pause to so much as flash a regretful smile that our evening together had been hijacked.
I stayed and waited until she arrived home, watched through the arrogant floor-to-ceiling windows as he fussed about her, got her to taste our bolognese, poured her a glass of wine. The wine I had been enjoying.
It was an unthinking, adrenalin-fuelled act, but I don’t regret it. I had to do something. I wanted to cause some chaos, wreck things, leave a mark. Some people cut themselves. I’m more outward-facing in my destruction. There’s no resisting that feeling when it floods into me, swamps me. All I can do is give into it, bend with it. If I didn’t, if I stayed rigid, I might snap. There isn’t a choice or a decision. It’s a force. A pure, blind fury invades every molecule of my being. I don’t see red, I see white. My vision is bleached away, I feel dizzy and sick. The only thing I can do to ease the symptoms is rip and smash and throw and roar. Mattie knows this. He’s seen it often enough. He knows it’s not really my fault. It’s out of my control.
I hung about outside, cloaked by the blackness of the night, and watched her emerge from the storeroom at the back of the kitchen. Her face was a picture when she saw my work. Her shock and horror soothed mine a little. As I saw her eyes widen in panic, her face tighten with fear, I was able to breathe again.
I settled and watched them clean up together. It got cold and I didn’t have a coat with me, but I didn’t budge. I watched them go to work with rolls and rolls of paper towel, scooping gloop into black plastic sacks and then setting to with buckets of steaming soapy water and mops. I was laughing to myself, seeing how much chaos and confusion I had caused, knowing that I’d spoilt her evening as she had spoilt mine. But then suddenly they were having sex. Just there in front of me. It was disgusting to watch. Worse than anything I’d watched him do before. Worse than I’d imagined it. I wanted to leave so I didn’t have to witness it. I wanted to stay and see the act through to the grubby end. Both things at once. I told myself I should stay, that it would reassure me. Like it used to when we did the threesome thing. Back then I could always see that he was just into the sex, not into the woman. He was certainly respectful and decent enough with whoever, because he’s not a prick, but there was never a connection. If he looked at them directly, he was always looking at their bodies. If he looked in the mirror, he caught my eye. That was all he was interested in. Their bodies. Or me.
I watched as Mattie and Emma both stared into the blackness beyond the window. For a moment I thought they had spotted me, but no, it wasn’t me they were looking for. He searched out her gaze, she found his. Their eyes met.
And now they were engaged.
35
Since he was charging ahead with his part of the plan, there was nothing for me to do but up the ante in my programme to undermine her, destabilise her. So that’s what I did. Mattie and I texted constantly and spoke when we could. He did at least have the decency to give me a heads up that they were ring-hunting. At first, he had a stupid idea of giving her a valueless, sentimental ring that had been in his family. The exact same one he once suggested I wear. I told him to go to Tiffany’s, reminded him that when this was all over, she might throw the ring back at him. It would be more useful if that gesture was worth twenty grand. I like your thinking!! he texted. The double exclamation marks suggested an element of jubilation that I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with. He seemed irrepressibly buoyant, a little too close to a happy groom-to-be. Surely this was just because our plan was coming together. Wasn’t it?
I didn’t like the idea of them having a big traditional church wedding. It felt full on and formal. Meaningful. This isn’t that. It’s easier to unpick a wedding that hardly anyone else witnesses; wedding guests are more invested. I didn’t want people invested in this marriage. When he texted me to say she’d made an appointment with a vicar at St Adelaide’s in Hodstone, I immediately knew I had to stop that. It’s a great-looking church, just the village along from where my mum lives; it’s not inconceivable that Mattie and I will marry there one day. Had he even thought of that? I expected Emma to be spooked once I fucked up her parents’ graves. She wasn’t. She’s as hard as nails. Mattie had to pull out all the stops, come up with some bullshit about being too traumatised by my funeral to want to marry in a church.
I wanted them to do it abroad, with fewer witnesses. I hadn’t anticipated how quickly they’d arrange that. Fine, whatever. He was getting cocky. He thought he was in control, but when Emma insisted on a prenup, he instantly fell apart again. Came running to me for advice.
‘What are we going to do? I never thought she’d ask for a prenup,’ he was yelling, which was stupid of him. We were in the Fox and Crown, my mum’s home. People know us here. They don’t have to know our business, though. I squeezed his leg under the table. Hiss-whispered for him to calm down, offered to get him another beer. Really? He never thought she’d ask for a prenup? I’d have thought it was obvious that she would. A rich businesswoman like her, marrying a – let’s face it – broke younger man whose job is just a small step up from a hobby, of course she’d be wise to put a prenup in place. I had counted on it. For a brief period of time, I had been concerned that she might turn out to be surprisingly sentimental and not her usual practical self with regard to the engagement. It was a relief when her friends stepped in and talked her into it. Without a prenup, how was I going to get Mattie over the line?
I had to think about how much of this I wanted to explain to him, though. Since I’d watched them have sex that night they got engaged, I’d been even more circumspect about exactly what I should share with him. I love him. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love him and I can’t imagine a time when I won’t love him, but I don’t know if I can trust him. Lots of people get confused, believing one thing leads to the other. No way. I wonder what he can cope with, what he will process and support.
I brought his pint back to the table. I’d bought myself a Diet Coke. There was a flask of vodka in my handbag. I rooted around and dug it out. Amazing Graham, the landlord, knew I couldn’t afford to pay pub prices for spirits and that I brought my own with me; he turned a blind eye. Men of a certain age are generally kind to me because they still appreciate a pretty face but are terrified of very young pretty faces. Young women now are aware and demanding. They don’t accept flirtatious favours – all power to them, they don’t have to, that’s progress – but I still take what’s on offer. I will until I have the agency to tell creeps to fuck off. When I say agency, I mean money.
I poured a healthy measure of vodka into my Diet Coke and thought about Emma. ‘She doesn’t trust you, Mattie, and honestly, she’s right not to, isn’t she? I mean, you’re not in love with her.’ Worth underlining, I felt. I set my face in an expression of concern. ‘Well, you have no choice in the matter. You’ll have to sign the prenup to prove to her how trustworthy you are, or else she might not even go through with the marriage.’
‘No, shit, no. That won’t work. She’s shown me a draft. If I sign it, we have to be married for five years before I see any decent money. I’m not doing five years.’
I was glad to hear his revulsion at that idea. I touched his arm and murmured soothingly, ‘No, of course not. I’d hate that too. But I’m sure it won’t come to that. I’ve an idea. With all this evidence we’re gathering, we can change tack.’
‘Change tack how?’
‘You don’t have to divorce her on grounds of unreasonable behaviour. We can get her committed.’
The word spilt across the little table. The old boys on the table next to ours were playing dominoes; was it my imagination or did they pause? Lean our way? I put my head closer to Mattie’s.
‘Committed? Like in an asylum?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure that’s what they call them nowadays. That’s such an awful word. So loaded. I just mean we could get her put under observation or something. Get her help if she’s drinking too much and behaving destructively because of it. Same tactic, we’re just looking for a slightly different outcome.’
