My Perfect Wife: An absolutely unputdownable domestic suspense novel Read online

  He sat down. ‘The mugs are in the bottom cupboard now. Your mum changed things around before she left.’

  I took out two mugs, switched on the kettle and plopped in the tea bags.

  ‘How is Mum?’

  ‘Very well,’ he sighed.

  ‘And Aunt Maggie?’

  ‘Hanging on in there.’

  I imagined how hard my mother was working to keep my aunt happy and comfortable in the last months of her life. I stared out of the window at her garden, neglected by Dad. Tall, spiky weeds pushed through the rose bushes; the purple buddleia, six feet high, shadowed half the small patch of overgrown grass, which was covered in moss patches and dandelions. It was strange to see it so unloved.

  This garden, their house, had been Mum and Dad’s dream. They didn’t see the ugly bungalow that the sniffing residents saw. Represented in every brick was proof of how they had come up in the world. They had worked hard for their home and its spot in one of the most expensive areas in Britain, in north Surrey’s sought-after commuter belt, five minutes’ walk from a train that sped into London in forty minutes. The house, bought off plan with a little help from the Huxleys, had cost them more than it should have, considering its size, but they had aspired to this better life. The deprivation of the rural town of Galashiels, where they had both come from, was their past. Connolly Close was where they had arrived, down south, surrounded by affluence. The fact that the mortgage had crippled them every month was beside the point. If they stood at the entrance to the close, they would see the markers of others’ success, reminding them that their sacrifices – one child, no holidays, few clothes or meals out – had been worth it. Their next-door neighbour, Alan, was a City lawyer with a sporty Audi. In the house opposite, an estate agent – ‘so handsome’ – lived with his young family and their chocolate Labrador puppy. Four doors down, at the bottom of the close in the big house with the electric gates, was a property developer, Mr Turns. It was a long way from home, and Gordon and Sally liked it that way.

  ‘It’s looking a bit wild,’ I said.

  ‘Your mum planted some tomatoes in the lean-to, do you see?’

  ‘I’ll make a salad with them.’

  ‘They’re a bit green still. I’ve got some tinned carrots if you want some with your spaghetti.’

  At first I thought he was joking. Then the charge of a memory surged through me. A dented can, with its torn white and orange label, rolling back and forth on the lino. A salty, slimy taste in my mouth; his shouting drowned out by the thrum of blood rushing through my ears. ‘No thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Your mum said you must eat your vegetables.’

  ‘I’m not twelve!’

  He opened the can and poured the contents into a saucepan. ‘You need to eat properly, Heather.’

  ‘Sure, okay, I’ll have a few,’ I said. I would bend to him in the way I never did as a child, hoping it would make a difference.

  I remembered his lessons back then: how grateful I should be for every crumb – or tinned carrot – on my plate. How those crumbs equalled the blood, sweat and tears of their sacrifice.

  So many lectures. So many mistakes.

  I had left a fingerprint smear on the paintwork in the lounge and they accused me of taking the walls that housed me for granted. I had lost a sock from my sports kit and they lectured me about how hard they had worked to pay for every thread of clothing I wore. I had asked for £3 extra pocket money for a school trip and they retold stories about their childhoods of paper rounds and glued shoes and meat-free stews. And what about the poor souls who turned up at the Salvation Army soup kitchen every Sunday!

  My sense of inadequacy ran thick in my veins still. I strived to be like them, but they were a hard act to live up to.

  So I ate my slimy carrots, forcing back a retch with each mouthful. I felt his attention on me completely, though his eyes were on his own bowl.

  We ate in silence mostly, with the odd throat-clearing and a failed attempt at some weather chat and a sad story about one of the poor souls at the soup kitchen, where he and my mother still volunteered. Shouldered by guilt, I pictured swathes of time with him and his heartbreaking stories, and was weighed down by sadness.

  ‘I’ve recorded a documentary for us,’ he said.

  ‘Cool.’

  ‘It’s about the agricultural history of Missouri.’

  The episodes of the second series of an American comedy that I had been looking forward to watching on my iPad would have to wait, for months, possibly.

  ‘I’ll just unpack first,’ I said.

  As I squeezed through the crack of the bedroom door, stopped by my suitcase on the floor behind it, I felt uneasy. The walls had been washed clean of the Blu Tack remnants of my posters and the windowsills were clear of my old teddy bears, but the childhood memories lingered in the air like they had been suspended in jelly. The walls seemed even closer together, the bed smaller, and the view out of the window – if a hedge could be called a view – was more limiting than ever. I remembered how much I had hated that hedge. How the evergreen leaves had looked the same all year round, trimmed and shaped and stunted into a waxy, boxy barrier against the expanse of world beyond it. Immediately behind it had sat the Huxley Seniors’ 1970s bungalow, long and thin on its five-acre plot. Now, Copper Lodge dwarfed its original footprint. My heartbeat spiked off the chart at the thought of seeing it in real life tomorrow.

  I sat on the soft bed, and had begun compressing my grown-up clothes into the tiny wardrobe when a stack of purple and yellow exercise books fell out. Feeling the need to cheer myself up, I leafed through my Year 4 English book, smiling at my messy handwriting, and came across a story that gave me an unexpected lurch in my stomach.

  My House

  The house next door is bigger than my house. It is long and thin and has lots of windows. It has a big massive garden and a swimming pool because they are rich. I can see the water is sparkly when I look through the hedge. I really want to swim in the pool but Mummy and Daddy said I am not allowed. Mummy said that if I work hard I can live in a big house and she said that without hard work nothing grows but weeds but I don’t want a big house and I like weeds. Daisies are weeds and I think they are so pretty. When I grow up I want to swim all day and not work and wear daisy chains and I want to live in a big house too.

  * * *

  Good effort, Heather! Remember the exercise was to write about your own house. Use more descriptive words. What colour was the house? How many storeys does it have? Who lives there? (2 house points)

  Unnerved, I stuffed all four exercise books under the bed and changed into my pyjamas.

  After brushing my teeth clean of the taste of carrot, I sat in front of Dad’s tiny black-and-white television to watch the solemn documentary about America’s Midwest. The narrator droned on. I wanted to hurry him along to the end, so I could go to bed and wake up and go to work, desperate to get the first day over and done with, too sick with curiosity to wait any longer. My stomach rolled over, turning inside out and upside down. As the minutes ticked by, I became more and more nervous and excited about the prospect of seeing Lucas Huxley again. It was going to be impossible to get to sleep tonight as I played over how I would simply say hello.

  Four

  Elizabeth watched Lucas approach the house. He was wearing his tennis whites. As white as the torn-up letter from Channing House in the bin by her feet.

  She picked up her mobile, pressed Bo Seacart’s number and listened to the tone from New York ring and ring in her ear.

  ‘Please pick up,’ she said, mostly to herself. She was eking out a few more moments of hope, wanting to please Lucas, earn one of his proud smiles. The strange coldness inside her, like a rod of ice, could be melted by one of those smiles.

  Her failure to action both of his simple Post-it note requests – to speak to Bo Seacart and send the forms back to Channing House – sent a stinging feeling to the back of her eyes. She regretted her overhasty ripping-up of the letter.
The prospect of confessing to Lucas set her blood pumping too fast through her body. Her fingers jittered and she dropped the phone. The ringtone cut out.

  Picking it up, she nipped outside to meet Lucas head-on.

  ‘Hi,’ she called out.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, smiling. ‘Everything okay? You look harassed.’

  He always said this when she was late. On their first date he had said it when she had turned up to the restaurant late, having been thrown off a broken-down 148 bus. Huddled under an umbrella, with her dress sticking to her knees, she had been soaked through and freezing cold, but she had said she was fine. Throughout dinner, she had worried about how she would pay for the meal and had felt the scratch of the price tag on her ribs, praying that the rain hadn’t ruined her chances of taking the dress back to Jigsaw the next day. The Mayfair restaurant had included the prices on Lucas’s menu only, which had been a great relief to her. She had been too broke to be a feminist, to insist on going Dutch or make a point about the chauvinistic menus. Two years later, in his wedding speech, Lucas had admitted he had re-ordered a cut-up credit card to pay for that meal.

  ‘Sorry I’m late. The time slipped by,’ she said now, nestling into him to hide the worry on her face.

  He dropped his tennis bag on the bench as they passed and made a call. ‘Gordon! If you’re swinging by the bench at any point, could you take my rackets back to the house? Only if you get the chance. After you’ve fixed that bloody ball machine. Thanks, mate.’

  He hung up and wrapped both arms around her as they walked. She felt his dampness and the contours of his muscles. She glanced up at him, analysing his features for clues to his mood. He looked very handsome today. There were days when she couldn’t see it. His colouring was unusually sensitive to his moods. Angst about work could suck the health out of his skin, painting purple under his eyes, turning his hair from gold to brown. This afternoon, he was beautiful, which boded well.

  ‘I thought he fixed the ball machine yesterday?’ she asked, completely disinterested in the ball machine, but wanting to stave off his inevitable questions about Bo Seacart or Channing House.

  ‘He did. It jammed again.’

  The gulping of the old pool filter could be heard through the thick clouding of the hedge as they walked past. She was about to suggest a swim, when she remembered he had a dinner meeting with an American financier at his London club this evening.

  ‘What did Bo say when you called? Are they coming?’ he asked.

  She pulled away and hooked her hair behind her ears. ‘I haven’t spoken to her yet.’

  ‘Didn’t you get my notes?’

  Elizabeth’s gaze wandered along the pathways that flanked the packed, vibrant borders, over the dancing heads of the flowers in the meadow and across the Surrey Hills as she thought up her lie.

  ‘I’ve been trying all afternoon but I haven’t got through. Walt’s assistant said she’d gone to the house in the Hamptons.’

  She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t attempted to reach Bo earlier on in the day. She regretted that she hadn’t tried harder. It was a problem of hers, being lazy. She watched other women juggle full-time motherhood and successful careers without any help, and wondered how they managed it. Hours seemed to pass her by and nothing of merit was ever achieved. Lucas was the one who achieved.

  ‘Have you tried her there?’

  ‘I don’t have her number and her assistant wouldn’t give it out.’

  None of this was true. It might have been, had she tried.

  ‘And you remembered to send the forms to Channing House?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, in a panic.

  ‘Where are your shoes? There might be glass in the barn. You need shoes, Elizabeth,’ he said gently. Again his phone was at his ear. ‘Agata, could you please do me a big favour? Might you be able to bring down Elizabeth’s shoes? You’re a superstar, thank you.’

  As they waited for Agata at the door to the small barn, Lucas stood with his legs wide and his hands in his pockets, casting an eye over the building.

  Elizabeth followed the trail of his gaze over the tumbledown structure. Moss was holding the tiles together. The old brick walls were being supported by climbers. But through his eyes, she could see its potential.

  ‘Piotr will need to repoint this,’ he said, peering in through the grime of a window. ‘And he’ll need to enlarge this opening. Walt loves light. He’s obsessed.’

  ‘What will happen if I can’t persuade Bo to come?’

  He looked down at her. A hint of fear flashed up in his solid blue eyes.

  ‘If they don’t come, it means the deal’s off.’

  ‘It’s really that serious?’

  Lucas untucked his T-shirt from his shorts, like a man in a suit might loosen his tie. He laughed, a slightly false laugh. ‘You know how he rolls. If he doesn’t like me, he won’t trust me, and if he doesn’t trust me, the partnership deal goes up in flames.’

  Four years ago, Elizabeth and Lucas had visited Bo and Walt Seacart for supper at their penthouse, where talk of a Seacart–Huxley partnership had first begun. They had sat around a low coffee table on cushions and eaten Goan curry out of wooden bowls. The price tag was still on the bottom of Elizabeth’s – $375. Lucas had been squashed in between a Portuguese screenwriter called Tito Dantas and a documentary essayist called Jed – just Jed – who made films about the effects of architecture on social cohesion in modern-day Eastern Europe. Lucas had been keen to talk to Walter, who had been distracted by conference calls to clients in Uruguay, and he had struggled to find conversational common ground with the other guests. Had they talked about finance and economics, he would have been a fountain of knowledge, but he lacked a frame of reference for the discussions of the intellectual elite. Socially he was fun and smart – street-smart – and charming, but he rarely read books, except blockbuster thrillers on holiday; he only ever watched films to the end when he was strapped into his seat on a plane and he only bought art for his walls if he thought it might make him money. In the end, Tito Dantas and Jed had talked across him, allowing Lucas to slip away unnoticed. He had found Walt in his study. They had drunk whisky together and discussed the growth prospects of Lucas’s property portfolio, in which he wanted Walt to invest.

  ‘Of course he likes you,’ Elizabeth said.

  She genuinely believed that Walt Seacart had fallen for Lucas’s charms on day one. Shortly after the New York dinner party, Walter had been in touch about carrying out some preliminary due diligence on Lucas’s company with a view to investing. To celebrate, Lucas had not bought champagne or called a friend to share the good news; he had instead read up on modern architecture and decided to build their copper-roofed house. In many ways, he was a grown man who had not grown up. Elizabeth had been attracted to that boyish vulnerability when they had first met.

  She stepped forward to kiss his lips. ‘I like you.’

  Lucas allowed her a short kiss and cupped her face. ‘You’re my secret weapon. We’re so near to closing this deal. If Bo likes us, he’ll like us, and then we’ll be so rich we won’t know what to do with it all.’

  Elizabeth could not see the merit in having more. She imagined being as rich as Bo Seacart, and pictured herself living Bo’s life, padding barefoot across the mahogany floorboards of her Upper East Side penthouse apartment, sipping fennel tea in silk yoga trousers and headscarf – Bo had a knack of tying a batik turban over her blonde hair and looking dizzyingly beautiful – walking her two sausage dogs through Manhattan, eating her professional chef’s superfood salads, buying the right kind of art and furniture to fill their many homes: a beach house on Long Island, a hideaway in Costa Rica, an apartment in Sydney, where Bo’s mother now lived, and a 262-foot matt-black superyacht moored in Mykonos. But she was exhausted by the idea of managing all those homes, which would be empty most of the year. And if she wore a turban and walked sausage dogs, she would feel utterly ridiculous. But she understood what drove Lucas, and that was enough for her.


  ‘Here’s Agata,’ he said. ‘You’re a darling, Agata, thank you.’ His eyes followed the girl as she walked away. ‘Has she lost weight?’ he asked quietly.

  Elizabeth refused to acknowledge his question and kept her head down to tie the laces of her white sneakers. A sharp pain shot from ear to ear. A doctor had once explained to her that this pain was a sign of stress or an oncoming migraine, rather than a brain tumour.

  Lucas said, ‘Let’s take a look inside, shall we?’

  ‘Gosh, this is a mess,’ she said, peering in.

  The floor was covered in hazards. Rusty nails were sticking out of wood panels. Glass shards shone from under piles of leaves. Old tools lay in a corner that might not have seen daylight in a hundred years.

  Carefully, she followed him in, inhaling the smells of damp concrete and mulch. Through the window at the back of the building, she could see Agata and Piotr’s parked caravan.

  ‘You really think you can get this done before the fourth of July?’ she asked.

  Lucas clapped his hands together. The noise made Elizabeth jump. ‘I want you to be the one to get it done before the fourth of July.’

  She managed a smile through the swirl of panic that gathered in her chest. ‘No. No way.’

  ‘Yes way. I want you to project-manage Piotr on the renovation and be in charge of organising the summer party this year.’

  ‘It’s too soon, Lucas.’

  ‘Elizabeth, the negotiations on the deal take up every second of my energy.’

  ‘But I can’t do all this and the party. Not by the fourth. It only gives me eight weeks.’

  ‘Piotr knows what he’s doing. And you used to love the party-planning every summer. You can do it standing on your head.’

  She pulled the sleeves of her jumper down. ‘I did used to love it.’