My Husband's Wife Read online

  Jane Corry

  * * *

  MY HUSBAND’S WIFE

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One: Fifteen Years Earlier

  1: Lily

  2: Carla

  3: Lily

  4: Carla

  5: Lily

  6: Carla

  7: Lily

  8: Carla

  9: Lily

  10: Carla

  11: Lily

  12: Carla

  13: Lily

  14: Carla

  15: Lily

  16: Carla

  17: Lily

  18: Carla

  19: Lily

  20: Carla

  21: Lily

  22: Carla

  23: Lily

  Part Two: Twelve Years Later

  24: Carla

  25: Lily

  26: Carla

  27: Lily

  28: Carla

  29: Lily

  30: Carla

  31: Lily

  32: Carla

  33: Lily

  34: Carla

  35: Lily

  36: Carla

  37: Lily

  38: Carla

  39: Lily

  40: Carla

  41: Lily

  42: Carla

  43: Lily

  44: Carla

  45: Lily

  46: Carla

  47: Lily

  48: Carla

  49: Lily

  50: Carla

  51: Lily

  52: Carla

  53: Lily

  54: Carla

  55: Lily

  56: Carla

  57: Lily

  58: Carla

  59: Lily

  60: Carla

  61: Lily

  62: Carla

  63: Lily

  64: Lily

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Reading Group Questions

  Acknowledgements

  Follow Penguin

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  MY HUSBAND’S WIFE

  Jane Corry is a journalist who spent three years working as the writer-in-residence of a high security prison for men. This often hair-raising experience helped inspire My Husband’s Wife, her debut thriller. It also led to her role as a judge for the Koestler Award for prison writing. Until recently, Jane was a tutor in creative writing at Oxford University, and she now runs writing workshops in her local area of Devon and speaks at literary festivals all over the world.

  This book is dedicated to my amazing second husband, Shaun. Never a dull moment! Not only do you make me laugh but you also give me space to write.

  This dedication is also shared with my wonderful children, who inspire me every day.

  Prologue

  Flash of metal.

  Thunder in my ears.

  ‘This is the five o’clock news.’

  The radio, chirping merrily from the pine dresser laden with photographs (holidays, graduation, wedding); a pretty blue and pink plate; a quarter bottle of Jack Daniel’s, partially hidden by a birthday card.

  My head is killing me. My right wrist as well. The pain in my chest is scary. So, too, is the blood.

  I slump to the floor, soothed by the cold of the black slate. And I shake.

  Above me, on the wall, is a white house in Italy, studded with purple bougainvillea. A honeymoon memento.

  Can a marriage end in murder? Even if it’s already dead?

  That painting will be the last thing I see. But in my mind, I am reliving my life.

  So it’s true what they say about dying. The past comes back to go with you.

  THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

  Tuesday 20 October 2015

  The artist Ed Macdonald has been found stabbed to death in his home. It is thought that …

  Part One

  * * *

  FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER

  1

  Lily

  September 2000

  ‘Nervous?’ Ed asks.

  He’s pouring out his favourite breakfast cereal. Rice Krispies. Usually I like them too. (Crispy, without milk.) As a child, I was obsessed by the elfin-faced figures on the packet, and the magic hasn’t quite left.

  But today I don’t have the stomach to eat anything.

  ‘Nervous?’ I repeat, fastening my pearl earrings in the little mirror next to the sink. Our flat is small. Compromises had to be made.

  Of what? I almost add. Nervous of the first day of married life, perhaps. Proper married life in the first year of a brand-new century. Nervous because we should have taken more time to find a better flat instead of one in the wrong part of Clapham, with a drunk as a neighbour across the landing, where both bedroom and bathroom are so small that my one tube of Rimmel foundation (soft beige) and my two lipsticks (rose pink and ruby red) snuggle up next to the teaspoons in the cutlery drawer.

  Or nervous about going back to work after our honeymoon in Italy? A week in Sicily, knocking back bottles of Marsala, grilled sardines and slabs of pecorino cheese in a hotel paid for by Ed’s grandmother.

  Maybe I’m nervous about all these things.

  Normally, I love my work. Until recently, I was in employment law, helping people – especially women – who had been unfairly sacked. Looking after the underdog. That’s me. I nearly became a social worker like Dad, but, thanks to a determined careers teacher at school and, let’s say, certain events in my life, here I am. A 25-year-old newly qualified solicitor on a minimum wage. Struggling to do up the button at the back of my navy-blue skirt. No one wears bright colours in a law office, apart from the secretaries. It sends out the wrong message – or so I was told when I started. Law can be a great career, but there are occasions when it seems ridiculously behind the times.

  ‘We’re moving you to Criminal,’ my boss announced by way of a wedding gift. ‘We think you’ll be good at it.’

  So now, on my first day back from our honeymoon, I’m preparing to go to prison. To see a man who’s been accused of murder. I’ve never been inside a prison before. Never wanted to. It’s an unknown world. One reserved for people who have done wrong. I’m the kind of person who goes straight back if someone has given me too much change in the newsagent when I buy my monthly copy of Cosmo.

  Ed is doodling now. His head is bent slightly to the left as he sketches on a notepad next to his cereal. My husband is always drawing. It was one of the first things that attracted me to him. ‘Advertising,’ he said with a rueful shrug when I asked what he did. ‘On the creative side. But I’m going to be a full-time artist one day. This is just temporary – to pay the bills.’

  I liked that. A man who knew where he was going. But in a way I was wrong. When he’s drawing or painting, Ed doesn’t even know which planet he’s on. Right now, he’s forgotten he even asked me a question. But suddenly it’s important for me to answer it.

  ‘Nervous? No, I’m not nervous.’

  There’s a nod, but I’m not sure he’s really heard me. When Ed’s in the zone, the rest of the world doesn’t matter. Not even my fib.

  Why, I ask, as I take his left hand – the one with the shiny gold wedding ring – don’t I really tell him how I feel? Why not confess that I feel sick and that I need to go to the loo even though I’ve only just been? Is it because I want to pretend that our week away from the world still exists in the ‘now’, instead of in the souvenirs we brought back, like the pretty blue and pink plate that Ed is now sketching in more detail?

  Or is it because I’m trying to pretend I’m not terrified of what lies ahead this morning? A shiver passes down my spine as I spray duty-free Chanel No. 5 on the inside of both wrists. (A present from Ed, using another wedding-gift cheque.) Last month, a solicitor from a rival firm was stabbed in both lungs
when he went to see a client in Wandsworth. It happens.

  ‘Come on,’ I say, anxiety sharpening my usually light voice. ‘We’re both going to be late.’

  Reluctantly, he rises from the rickety chair which the former owner of our flat had left behind. He’s a tall man, my new husband. Lanky, with an almost apologetic way of walking, as if he would really rather be somewhere else. As a child, apparently, his hair was as golden as mine is today (‘We knew you were a “Lily” the first time we saw you,’ my mother has always said), but now it’s sandy. And he has thick fingers that betray no hint of the artist he yearns to be.

  We all need our dreams. Lilies are meant to be beautiful. Graceful. I look all right from the top bit up, thanks to my naturally blonde hair and what my now-deceased grandmother used to kindly call an ‘elegant swan neck’. But look below, and you’ll find leftover puppy fat instead of a slender stem. No matter what I do, I’m stuck on the size 16 rail – and that’s if I’m lucky. I know I shouldn’t care. Ed says my shape is ‘part of me’. He means it nicely. I think. But my weight niggles. Always has done.

  On the way out, my eye falls on the stack of wedding cards propped up against Ed’s record deck. Mr and Mrs E. Macdonald. The name seems so unfamiliar.

  Mrs Ed Macdonald.

  Lily Macdonald.

  I’ve spent ages trying to perfect my signature, looping the ‘y’ through the ‘M’, but somehow it still doesn’t seem quite right. The names don’t go together that well. I hope it’s not a bad sign.

  Meanwhile, each card requires a thank-you letter to be sent by the end of the week. If my mother has taught me anything, it is to be polite.

  One of the cards has a particularly ‘look at me!’ flamboyant scrawl, in turquoise ink. ‘Davina was a girlfriend once,’ Ed explained before she turned up at our engagement party. ‘But now we’re just friends.’

  I think of Davina with her horsey laugh and artfully styled auburn locks that make her look like a pre-Raphaelite model. Davina who works in Events, organizing parties to which all the ‘nice girls’ go. Davina who narrowed her violet eyes when we were introduced, as if wondering why Ed would bother with the too-tall, too-plump, tousle-haired image that I see in the mirror every day.

  Can a man ever be just friends with a woman when the relationship is over?

  I decide to leave my predecessor’s letter until last. Ed married me, not her, I remind myself.

  My new husband’s warm hand now squeezes mine as if reading my need for reassurance. ‘It will be all right, you know.’

  For a minute, I wonder if he is referring to our marriage. Then I remember. My first criminal client. Joe Thomas.

  ‘Thanks.’ It’s comforting that Ed isn’t taken in by my earlier bravado. And worrying, too.

  Together, we shut the front door, checking it twice because it’s all so unfamiliar to us, and walk briskly down the ground-floor corridor leading out of our block of flats. As we do so, another door opens and a little girl with long, dark, glossy hair swinging in a ponytail comes out with her mother. I’ve seen them before, but when I said ‘hello’, they didn’t reply. Both have beautiful olive skin and walk with a grace that makes them appear to be floating.

  We hit the sharp autumn air together. The four of us are heading in the same direction but mother and daughter are now slightly ahead because Ed is scribbling something in his sketchbook as we walk. The pair, I notice, seem like carbon copies of each other, except that the woman is wearing a too-short black skirt and the little girl – who’s whining for something – is dressed in a navy-blue school uniform. When we have children, I tell myself, we’ll teach them not to whine.

  I shiver as we approach the stop: the pale autumn sun is so different from the honeymoon heat. But it’s the prospect of our separation that tightens my chest. After one week of togetherness, the thought of managing for eight hours without my new husband is almost scary.

  I find this unnerving. Not so long ago, I was independent. Content with my own company. But from the minute that Ed and I first spoke at that party six months ago (just six months!), I’ve felt both strengthened and weakened at the same time.

  We pause and I steel myself for the inevitable. My bus goes one way. His, the other. Ed is off to the advertising company where he spends his days coming up with slogans to make the public buy something it never intended to.

  And I’m off to prison in my navy-blue skirt suit and suntan.

  ‘It won’t be so scary when you’re there,’ says my new husband – how I never thought I’d say that word! – before kissing me on the mouth. He tastes of Rice Krispies and that strong toothpaste of his which I still haven’t got used to.

  ‘I know,’ I say before he peels off to the bus stop on the other side of the road, his eyes now on the oak tree on the corner as he takes in its colour and shape.

  Two lies. Small white ones. Designed to make the other feel better.

  But that’s how some lies start. Small. Well meaning. Until they get too big to handle.

  2

  Carla

  ‘Why?’ Carla whined as she dragged behind, pulling her mother’s hand in a bid to stop this steady, determined pace towards school. ‘Why do I have to go?’

  If she went on making a fuss, her mother might give in out of exhaustion. It had worked last week, although that had been a saint’s day. Mamma had been more tearful than usual. Birthdays and saints’ days and Christmas and Easter always did that to her.

  ‘Where has the time gone?’ Mamma would groan in that heavy, rich accent which was so different from all the other children’s mothers’ at school. ‘Nine and a half years without your father. Nine long years.’

  For as far back as she could remember, Carla had known that her father was in heaven with the angels. It was because he had broken a promise when she’d been born.

  Once she had asked what kind of promise he had broken.

  ‘It was the sort that cannot be mended,’ Mamma had sniffed.

  Like the beautiful blue teacup with the golden handle, Carla thought. It had slipped out of her hand the other week when she had offered to do the drying up. Mamma had cried because the cup had come from Italy.

  It was sad that Papa was with the angels. But she still had Mamma! Once, a man on the bus had mistaken them for sisters. That had made Mamma laugh. ‘He was just flattering me,’ she’d said, her cheeks red. But then she had let Carla stay up late as a special treat. It taught Carla that when Mamma was very happy, it was a good time to ask for something.

  It also worked when she was sad.

  Like now. The start of a new century. They’d learned all about it in school.

  Ever since term had started, Carla’s heart had ached for a caterpillar pencil case, made of soft green furry stuff, like everyone else had at school. Then the others might stop teasing her. Different was bad. Different was being smaller than any of the others in class. Titch! (A strange word which wasn’t in the Children’s Dictionary that she’d persuaded Mamma to buy from the second-hand shop on the corner.) Different was having thick black eyebrows. Hairy Mary! Different was having a name that wasn’t like anyone else’s.

  Carla Cavoletti.

  Or ‘Spagoletti’, as the other kids called it.

  Hairy Carla Spagoletti!

  ‘Why can’t we stay at home today?’ she continued. Our real home, she almost added. Not like the one in Italy which Mamma kept talking about and which she, Carla, had never even seen.

  Mamma stopped briefly as their neighbour with the golden hair walked past, shooting her a disapproving glance.

  Carla knew that look. It was the same one that the teachers gave her at school when she didn’t know her nine times table. ‘I’m not good with numbers either,’ Mamma would say, dismissively, when Carla asked for some help with her homework. ‘But it does not matter as long as you do not eat cakes and get fat. Women like us, all we need is to be beautiful.’

  The man with the shiny car and the big brown hat was always telling Mamm
a she was beautiful.

  When he came to visit, Mamma would never cry. She’d loosen her long dark curls, spray herself with her favourite Apple Blossom perfume and make her eyes dance. The record player would be turned on so that their feet tapped, although Carla’s weren’t allowed to tap for long.

  ‘Bed, cara mia,’ Mamma would sing. And then Carla would have to leave her mother and guest to tap their feet around the little sitting room all on their own, while pictures of her mother’s family glared down from the cracked walls. Often their cold faces visited her in the nightmares that interrupted the dancing and made Mamma cross. ‘You are too old for such dreams. You must not bother Larry and me.’

  A little while ago, Carla had been given a school project called ‘My Mummy and Daddy’. When she’d come home, fired with excitement, Mamma had done a lot of tongue-clicking followed by a burst of crying with her head on the kitchen worktop. ‘I have to bring in an object for the class table,’ Carla had persisted. ‘I can’t be the only one who doesn’t.’

  Eventually, Mamma had taken down the photograph of the stiff-backed man with a white collar and strict eyes. ‘We will send Papa,’ she announced in a voice that sounded as though she’d got a boiled sweet stuck in her throat. Carla liked boiled sweets. Often the man with the shiny car brought her some in a white paper bag. But they stuck to her hand and then she had to spend ages washing off the stain.

  Carla had held the photograph reverently in her hand. ‘He is my grandfather?’

  Even as she spoke, she knew the answer. Mamma had told her enough times. But it was good to know. Nice to be assured that she had a grandfather like her classmates, even though hers lived many miles away in the hills above Florence and never wrote back.

  Carla’s mother had wrapped the photograph in an orange and red silk scarf that smelled of mothballs. She couldn’t wait to take it into class.

  ‘This is my nonno,’ she’d announced proudly.

  But everyone had laughed. ‘Nonno, nonno,’ one boy had chanted. ‘Why don’t you have a granddad like us? And where is your father?’