The replacement, p.19
The Replacement, page 19
I am terrified. I hear myself screaming but the door is shut now and it is almost completely dark.
‘Tracey! Come back! It wasn’t my fault. I swear I never knew. He’s tricked me too. Please.’
My arm begins to hurt. A lot. It feels swollen and I check for blood. There is none. My face is scraped and I wipe it with my sleeve. But most of all I am rigid with fear.
‘Tracey! Don’t do this. Come back. My kids. I need to get my kids.’ As those words escape, I hear myself groan – an animal noise, deep and visceral. My children. My children. I need to get Ben and Angel. The next words are a whimper.
‘Tracey. Please. Come back. When are you coming back? Please.’
I hear a rustle behind me. I turn quickly. A shape is huddled in the corner of the space.
‘She said she’s not coming back. Not once she’s found you.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It’s her. Jem. Of course it is. My eyes adjust to the barely there light and I see her. She looks small and childlike huddled against a wall. But as she stands, I recognise her shape. Her long limbs and her blonde hair. It’s light enough to just see her, but I can’t make out her features.
I turn to look at the space. My survival instinct kicks in and I feel the walls all the way round. She comments.
‘You’re wasting your time. There’s no way out.’
But I have to see for myself. I have to feel every inch of that wall to get my bearings. The walls are wet and the floor is damp soil. The ceiling slopes from high to low and I try to visualise how this fits into the canal bridge wall. Why it’s here. What it is. I can’t look at her.
‘There has to be. She can’t do this.’
I feel the length of the wall up to the door. There are some metal bumps and it’s clear there was a ladder here once. She’s crying. It’s one extreme to another as my fire melts to concern.
‘Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself when you fell? Everyone’s been out looking for you.’
She wipes her eyes. ‘Yes. I think I’m okay. Is Pepe okay? Did you see him? I was badly bruised down one side, and my shoulder hurt. Bit better now. Just very cold. She’s brought me food. And some water.’ I peer into the darkness and can just make out a pile of rubbish in the corner. And a bucket. ‘So that’s something. But she keeps saying…’
She collapses into sobs and I rush to her. I hold her. This woman who has been the centre of my hate for so long. She is sobbing in my arms and no wonder. It’s been almost two weeks in this dank, dark room. If you can call it that. I listen as her sobs subside. All I can hear is water. No cars. No footsteps. Just the flow of water.
I know we are near a lock. I try to picture it but my heart won’t go past the conker trees and Angel and Ben. Their hands warm in mine. Mittens and the smell of their hair. I have to get out of here. I hold her in front of me.
‘Your dog is fine. Right, tell me everything. All I know is you left a note for Daniel. And you sent me a message. They found your car up Lees Valley on the bridge. I don’t get it. I don’t understand.’
I look at her in the half-light. She is bedraggled and her face thinner than before. Her eyes are pleading with me.
‘She… she… she was at the school. When I dropped Ben and Angel off last week. She started talking to me. We made friends.’ She starts to cry again. ‘I’m stupid. I’m so bloody gullible. I thought I’d finally fitted in with the school mums. They wouldn’t speak to me. She said she had kids in the year below Angel. We went for coffee. She invited me to the garden centre. I left a note for him.’
I hug her again. I can’t believe I thought all the mothers of Ben and Angel’s friends had taken to Jem. In my imagination they had been inviting her to coffee mornings and bring and buy bake-offs.
‘It’s okay. Tell me. We can make sense of it. But on the note you said you were going away for days?’
She continues. ‘I was. I needed some time to think. But Tracey… she… she… we drove to the road at the top, just by the school. She told me her and her husband used to come here a lot. Then we cut through. Then she grabbed me. I think she had a knife. She took my phone and my bag and I just thought she was going to rob me. She’s completely mad.’
Mad. Like I was. I know that madness. Mad like when someone takes what is part of you.
‘But the message?’
She freezes. ‘I didn’t send a message. How could I have? She thought I was you. She must have been watching the kids. She’s been back a few times, rambling on about someone called Tim. How one of her mates had seen you.’ Her sobs have stopped and she snorts. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t have messaged you, would I?’
She pushes me away. No. She wouldn’t have messaged me. My instincts were right and the small moment of triumph makes me laugh.
‘No. To be fair, you wouldn’t. So she must have sent it.’
Jem shakes her head. ‘You know her, don’t you? This has something to do with you, doesn’t it? I knew it.’
Even now we are arguing about Daniel. He is at the root of all this. I promised myself I would tell the truth and I will.
‘I didn’t know her until yesterday. She arrived at my house with her kids. The thing is, I’ve been… seeing her husband.’
She makes a weak laugh. ‘You couldn’t make it up. After everything you said about me, you were seeing someone who was married? Saint Lauren?’
‘No. It’s different. I didn’t know he was married. But you knew about me. You knew all about me and you still did it.’
She goes to the corner and sits back down. We listen to the sound of drip, drip, dripping for a long moment. Then she speaks. ‘I wish I’d never met him. I wish I’d never moved in with him. I really love Ben and Angel but they’re not my kids. All he wanted was a babysitter.’
I blink at her. I run my mind over the idyllic scenes on her Instagram account and what I saw through the window in those early days.
‘But you seemed so happy.’ It sounds petty and insincere. ‘From what I could see.’
She makes a pained noise. ‘I guess we were at first. I loved the nights out and the people he knew. It all seemed so grown up and so… Dan. But I didn’t sign up to be a… housekeeper.’
I think about what the kids said about her cooking and the crying. I hadn’t been able to put my finger on a particular strand of my unhappiness but, it was the same. The same Daniel-curated box. The same compartment. Cook, clean, kids. I am more stressed than I have ever been in this moment but I suddenly have a calmness. An epiphany. Belinda. That’s what he wanted. A series of Belindas while he replaced the good-time girls he’d chosen to start with. She’s still talking.
‘…and don’t bother telling me about Amber. I bloody know already. Amber this, Amber that…’
I visualise the Mulberry handbag and the picnic hamper.
‘…taking her to “business meetings”…’ I see her make quotes in the air with her fingers, ‘while I’m babysitting his kids. That’s what I was thinking about. That and–’
I interrupt. ‘Jem, listen. We need to find a way to get out of here. She’s got this stitched up. Daniel was questioned, then I was arrested. Then they let me go and Tim was arrested. They’ve charged him, I think. She must have used your credit card to order some flowers on his laptop and then planted the card on him. God knows what else.’
She is silent. She’s been here ten days and I guess she’s thought of every possible way to get out. I wrack my brains. My phone. If Bekah was watching my phone, she would have seen it nearby. I trace my footsteps, but then realise that to anyone watching it would just look like my phone was in my pocket as I walked along the canal. Tracey wouldn’t be stupid enough to keep it.
She would have driven Jem’s car to the bridge after she messaged me. It’s all becoming clear. She sent the message to me to try to snare me. She thought Jem was me. She befriended Jem at the school gates thinking she was me. I think back to the million times she could have been watching me over the past weeks. The times she sat planning to get me here, in this hole.
I need to be ready when she comes back. I need to have all this straight in my head. Bekah isn’t going to be able to find me by tracing my phone – she will probably find it in my car. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tracey had gone on to the garden centre and sat and had tea and cake. Just to make sure it fitted with a story I hadn’t even told anyone. The truth is, no one knew I was meeting her. And no one knows I am here.
I look around. This prison is inescapable. Even if I lifted Jem onto my shoulders, the door is too high above us to reach. I rub my arm. My wrist is badly swollen and the pain comes in waves. I go and sit next to her. She doesn’t move away and that’s a step forward.
‘If you were so unhappy, why didn’t you leave?’
She snorts. ‘Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? If I left. Then you could have him back.’
I have been at this junction so many times in my mind. A place where Daniel is available again and I am faced with this question. Lisa swears I would just blindly go back in, but now I know I wouldn’t. Isn’t that the reason for all this pain? This period of madness and grieving after a break-up? A reminder of how bad things can get. How devastating. How deep.
I saw the temporary madness in Tracey’s eyes. Earlier, when I mentioned Tim and she faced me. I felt bad. Bad that I’d made her feel upset. But upset is an understatement. She wasn’t upset. I know that feeling. She is destroyed. Everything she thought was real has disintegrated and she wants payment in full.
I have been there. Myself tangled in Daniel so tightly that when this woman ripped us apart the roots of our relationship bled. The anger and the harsh reality that, after all, you are not part of each other. That everything you whispered on those hot summer nights was now redundant. That someone else was busy making a secure connection to a place where you still have scars. And more, a determination that overshadows everything else in your world that you will get even. You will somehow make this right. You will pour oil onto this fire until it feels as good as that moment of ecstasy that you just know she is getting with your man.
I realise I had underestimated Tracey just as I had underestimated the strength of my own envy and jealousy and sense of getting my own back. Making them suffer just like I was suffering. I didn’t plan. Oh no. I sneaked around. Breaking in and hiding. She is much cleverer than me. But didn’t she say I wasn’t the first?
My blood runs cold. How many more women has she done this to? Tim went to a lot of trouble to keep our rendezvous out of town. Is it a game between them? Am I the loser? I know what she is feeling. An unrealistic justification that anything she does now is deserved. That what Tim has done mitigates all her behaviour in the aftermath. Beyonce’s ‘Irreplaceable’ won’t cut it this time. No. She is on fire with fury and hate. She is burning up with determination to get her own back.
Yes, she is better than me. Or is it worse? My fear-ridden brain cannot decide. She isn’t just watching. She’s acting. She’s removing everything from her world that spoils her reality. Me and Tim. Jem is just an inconvenience. She will build a case against Tim to prove he did this. Whatever this is.
My mind won’t go there. It won’t push to the edge of this. I can’t lose hope. Someone will hear us. But no one heard Jem. I am delirious with pain and fear but I must focus. All I can hear is the drip, drip, drip of the water and my own heart beating fast. Jem’s breathing and her warmth.
‘I don’t want him back.’ I swallow hard. ‘Look, I’m sorry for what I did. All of it. I was in a bad place. It doesn’t excuse it, but I want you to know I’m sorry.’
She sighs. ‘I’m not going to say it’s all right. I’m sorry I met Daniel. I’m sorry I ever set eyes on him. Or you.’
It’s not an apology but I’ll take it. I nod. ‘Yeah. Well. When we get out of here, you’ll never have to see either of us again.’
She starts to cry again. She slips her arm through mine and squeezes it. She is shaking.
‘I will. That’s the thing. That’s why I was going away. I needed time to think. I needed to know I was doing the right thing. I had a bag in the car and it could have gone either way.’
She is sobbing her heart out. Her words are stilted and her chest heaves. I try to calm her.
‘There’s nothing here that we can’t fix. Tracey won’t want to get in trouble. She’ll let us go. And then you can sort things out with–’
She pulls away. ‘No. You don’t understand. This isn’t about me and Dan. Or you. Or her. It’s about me. I need to do what’s best for me.’ She moves very close to me. Her voice is suddenly soft. ‘I know this is the last thing you want to hear. I know how you will feel. And I’m a little bit scared of you if I’m honest. But I need to tell someone. I’ve kept it to myself.’ She rests her head against mine. So close that I can smell the last hint of her Peonia perfume in her dirty hair. ‘The thing is, I’m pregnant.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
My first instinct is to hug her and she lets me.
‘Are you okay? Is everything…?’
She nods into my shoulder. ‘I think so.’
‘Have you told her. Tracey?’
‘No. No, I haven’t. I’m too scared of what she will do.’
It isn’t until more than a minute has passed that the pain descends. Somehow this makes it all more real, and I feel a wave of anger. They weren’t playing at house. They weren’t temporary. Daniel got her pregnant. Until now I have felt that I have the higher ground simply because I am the mother of his children. The thought shocks me. I’m not like that. But I am. I have used that arms-folded haughtiness to take the moral peak.
My husband, father of Ben and Angel, has got this woman pregnant. They will be a family. Another family that includes Daniel but is not mine. The wave ebbs and I remember this child will be Ben and Angel’s sibling.
‘How long? How long have you known?’
‘Ten weeks. I was shocked. I’m on the pill, obviously, but I’m allergic to a whole range of things that make me throw up. He kept saying I was being silly and making the allergies up for attention.’
It sounds familiar. Belinda does not believe in morning sickness therefore Daniel does not either. Belinda definitely does not believe in allergies. She is a right-down-the-line meat and two veg person who bakes her own bread. No gluten-free for Belinda.
‘So I was being sick because someone had replaced my special pasta that I was having at lunchtime with ordinary pasta. I swapped it back and then I still felt a bit queasy. I went to the doctors and the first thing they did was a pregnancy test. I went for a scan last week. And there it was.’
I can imagine Daniel’s face when he found out he would have another responsibility. He faked pleasure when I told him about Angel. He loves her, I am sure about that, but he was not pleased.
‘What did Daniel say?’
‘I haven’t told him. His mother made a few comments about me being pregnant next, as if I had to trap him into staying with me somehow, when it was him who had begged me.’
It’s almost too much. The wave washes over me again and even numbs the pain in my arm. I see red and flinch against her. Yet I’d seen it before. Here in the darkness I allow the past to light up my memory. Julia. A sales rep from one of the bigger car companies. There had been many mentions of her in the run up. Over dinner, in the mornings when I asked him who he was working with.
I hadn’t fully understood what was going on until one night when we had found ourselves in a nightclub with another couple, Lianne and Dave Barber. Nightclubs were not my scene and hardly Daniel’s; I found myself yawning and sipping my cocktail. We’d been to a boozy dinner which had gone well – we’d danced and laughed and I suppose we wanted to prolong the evening before we fell back into the barbed stand-off that our marriage was rapidly becoming.
I’d watched his eyes drift to a woman standing by the dance floor with her friend. She was wearing an industrial style jumpsuit, something that I would never have chosen for a night out. But she could get away with it. She was quirky, all fluffy hair and earrings. The music changed and she was suddenly dancing to Bon Jovi. I swear Daniel licked his lips.
‘There she is! Julia Sinclair. I told you about her. Proper little firefly.’
He dragged me onto the dancefloor and it was obvious that he was manoeuvring us towards her. I can’t remember if it crossed my mind to question it. Probably not. I knew he wouldn’t do anything in front of me. But when we were near her, I could see her glimpsing and smiling and sashaying and wiggling. All their secrets between them.
Like all the other times, I told myself it was just my imagination. Jealousy. They were in the same business and if he was being this friendly in front of me, there was bound to be nothing in it. Yet only weeks later I saw a photograph online and Julia was in the background. It was a works dinner with no partners. She worked there, so nothing unusual about her being there. But she was completely overdressed. A long Japanese dress which looked like pure silk. High boots and a little hat that sat on top of her hair. Copious amounts of eyeliner. And she was staring right at Daniel and he was smiling at her.
It was hardly evidence, but I knew. I made sure I was at the next company night out. She looked disappointed to see me but, again, I was used to it. I just stared and smiled and blinked at her until she raced to the toilets in tears. I followed and faux comforted. Whatever was wrong? Why are you crying?
These are the games women play with each other. We are desperate to be on the same side but we rarely are when men are concerned. We are each other’s competition. Tracey understood this, which underlines my suspicion that she has played this game before. She enticed me into the false security that we were going to solve this together. She fooled Jem that the school-gate brigade had forgiven her man-stealing ways and were willing to take her into their confidence. When all the while she was plotting and planning. Just as I was and just as Jem will be when her baby is born and she wants precedence over Ben and Angel.
