My Other Husband

by Dorothy Koomson

Genres: General Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Cleo Forsum is a bestselling novelist turned scriptwriter whose TV series, 'The Baking Detective' is a huge success. Writing is all she's ever wanted to do, and baking and murder stories have proved a winning combination. But now she has decided to walk away from it all - including divorcing her husband, Wallace - before her past secrets catch up with her. As Cleo drafts the final ever episodes of the series, people she knows start getting hurt. And it's soon clear that someone is trying to frame her for murder. She thinks she knows why, but Cleo can't tell the police or prove her innocence. Because then she'd have to confess about her other husband. . .A series of terrifying murders. A set of complex lies. And a woman with no way to clear her name.

Release date: July 7, 2022

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 432

Sample

8 AUGUST, 2022

OFFICES OF BURRFIELD & CO., BRIGHTON

AFTERNOON

‘You really didn’t have to come in to the office to see me about your divorce, you do realise that, don’t you, Ms Forsum?’

I nod. ‘I know. I know I could do it all online, that it’d be cheaper and probably quicker, but I didn’t want a paper trail – or online trail.’

Jeff Burrfield frowns at me, confused all of a sudden. ‘I thought you said your husband knows about this?’ He starts flipping through his notes, probably scared now that he’s wrongly attributed this nugget of information to the desperate woman in front of him who is checking out of her relationship. ‘You said that he was on board and . . . ah, yes’ – his finger runs along the line where he has made his initial observations – ‘he couldn’t wait to get rid of you. And he couldn’t believe he’d spent so many years of his life with a heartless cow like you.’ He raises his balding head and we lock gazes.

‘To be fair to me, I did make it clear that he never actually said all that,’ I offer in a pathetic voice. ‘That was my interpretation of the situation as seen by him. Possibly.’

‘But he does know you’re divorcing him?’

‘Yes, he does know.’ He doesn’t know why but he does know, I add in my head.

‘Oh good,’ Mr Burrfield murmurs, visibly relieved that there is no subterfuge. ‘Things are always a bit less unpleasant if everyone involved is apprised of the situation.’

‘My husband would never say anything like that, it’s not his style or nature. He’s very much a peace, love, hope-to-all-beings kind of person.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘Yes, yes I am. Within reason.’

A ghost of a smile haunts Mr Burrfield’s lips and I feel sorry for him. It can’t be pleasant or even vaguely fun to be this close to human relationships as they disintegrate. Does it make you cynical? It must do. You can’t sit on that side of this type of desk, listen to all those stories of things going awry and NOT wonder why people bother in the first place. His ring finger is bare so I’m assuming he hasn’t married or, if he has, that it’s gone awry. I don’t get the feeling he is long-term attached, but I could be wrong. Either way, he gives the impression that he is someone who would prefer all of this ‘unpleasantness’ not to exist, but since it does, he’ll continue on with the forbearance needed to guide lost, separating souls through it.

‘Can I ask you something, off the books, as it were?’ I say. I need to get a definitive answer to this, this question that has been circling my mind for many, many years. This question that I get a million different answers to whenever I’m brave enough to search the internet.

‘What do you mean, “off the books”?’ he replies, drawing back a little from me. Not very noticeably, just slightly. Just enough to let me know on an unconscious level that I won’t be getting anything for nothing out of him.

‘I mean, not something you should probably write down in my file there since it doesn’t really relate to me.’

‘Who does it relate to, then?’

Good question. Obvious question. So why don’t I have a ready answer? Because every answer will sound fake, every reply will be a lie. ‘I mean, well, a friend of mine. A close friend of mine.’

Mr Burrfield puts down his pen, shuts his file, removes his glasses. Now he is out from behind his glasses, he looks much younger but more mature. Much more worldly than the long-suffering, slightly bumbling solicitor I originally sat down with. I’d picked his name from the internet. Trawled through until I found one near enough to where I am currently working so I could base my break around this meeting, but also far enough away that no one will see me going in to these offices and find out before the rest of my family about the irretrievable breakdown of my marriage.

‘What is it your close friend would like to ask?’

‘Well, it’s kind of awkward and she feels extremely silly, but what would happen if she’d . . . no, no, let me start again. What if my friend, at some point in the past, had gone to another country and just, on a whim, got married? If she didn’t register that marriage when she came back to England all those years ago and then got married again to someone else, would it be OK or would she, potentially, be in trouble?’

Mr Burrfield looks like I have smacked him square in the face right after I’ve sworn at him. He doesn’t move or even seem to breathe for a few seconds, he just sits with shock and horror drenching his face as he stares at me. Eventually, he looks down at the file in front of him, at its mottled beige cardboard that holds the early details of the dissolution of my marriage. ‘Your friend would not be potentially in trouble, she would be in a huge amount of trouble. Bigamy, which this is, carries a prison sentence of up to seven years.’

Seven years! SEVEN years. Those words have turned my stomach, have made me want to vomit right here on his nice, neat desk. SEVEN years.

‘But if it wasn’t registered, does it count?’

‘Assuming your friend followed all the legal requirements when getting married in whichever foreign country she chose for the ceremony to take place – that is, she had all the required documentation and then signed a marriage licence or register – then the marriage is considered legal and binding here in the United Kingdom.’

‘Even if it wasn’t registered?’

‘Foreign marriages are not “registered” as such. What you’re referring to is the commonly misunderstood situation where the foreign marriage is “recorded”, almost a case of letting the Government know the marriage exists at the General Register Office and letting them keep a copy of the licence so that you can have access to it if you require for any reason – such as proof that you are indeed married. This would ensure that while your marriage would not be “registered” in the same way a marriage of UK citizens getting married here would be, there would be a record of it and you would be able to get a copy of your wedding certificate. However, this practice was discontinued in 2014. No foreign marriages are “recorded” at GRO any more. And in any case, whether the marriage occurred before or after 2014, your friend would still be married with or without the marriage being “recorded” at the GRO.’

Oh. Oh. ‘Seven years you said, yes?’

His nostrils flare briefly before he nods gravely.

‘OK, good. Fine. Thank you. I’ll be sure to tell my friend to, you know, not get married until the old marriage is sorted out.’

‘You do that,’ he states before slipping his glasses back into place and picking up his short, stubby fountain pen. ‘You should also warn her not to tell anyone about it. If she has indeed married while already married, that is a criminal offence. Not something to shout about.’

‘She wasn’t shouting about it, she was just asking . . . Me . . . Asking me to ask you.’

‘Indeed,’ he replies sourly. ‘I’ll make sure I’m in touch later this evening about the papers. I have a feeling this divorce needs to be expedited.’

I couldn’t argue with that. At all.

‘That guy’s staring at you,’ Trina stated with a mixture of puzzlement and disdain.

The university common room where we sat often made me feel like we were sitting in the Colosseum – little groups of five or six gathered at small, low circular tables, waiting for the show to begin in the centre. Some groupings had more members and they spilled out, no matter how close they tried to fit themselves together. Other people had fewer companions, some were on their own – but all of us noisily crammed in here sat around the large expanse with its well-worn, shiny parquet floor, apart but together.

At the end of the canteen by the large glass doors, which opened out to the grass-and-concrete quad, was a serving hatch where cut-price teas and coffees, snacks and cold cans of pop were sold by the people who ran the Students’ Union. Cut-price instant coffee in a Styrofoam cup and a bag of Maltesers had become my daily ‘poison’.

Trina and I, first-year students who lived on campus, had one of the better seating areas. Our table and seats were wedged slightly behind one of the smooth stone circular pillars, creating a sort of nook where we could see everything.

‘Which guy?’ I asked distractedly. I was concentrating on watching the first Malteser of the pack disintegrate into my coffee, to which I’d already added five sugars. The Malteser bobbed along the surface, seemingly impervious to the heat, acting as if it could possibly survive the hot milky end that was fast approaching.

‘First of all, that’s disgusting,’ Trina said, screwing up her beautiful face and pointing one of her glossy sea-blue nails at what I was doing to the chocolate and the coffee, ‘and second of all, the guy with the jacket and the dimples.’

I knew who she meant. ‘Oh, him.’

‘You haven’t even looked up.’

‘Don’t need to. Jacket and dimples – how you can see them from here I don’t know – describes him perfectly. There’s only one guy with a jacket of note who stares at me.’

‘So you know he stares at you?’ She was really puzzled now.

‘Yes. He’s in my Psychology class.’

‘So you know him beyond the staring?’

‘Yes, he’s in my Psychology class.’

‘And you know his name?’

‘Yes, he’s in my Psychology class. How many times do I need to say it?’

‘And you know why he stares at you?’

I shrugged half-heartedly. I suspected I knew why, but to be honest, it wasn’t something that happened to me on a regular basis. Or at all, really. Not unless the starer was a creepy older man who thought . . . well, actually, I tried to avoid wondering about creepy older men as much as I could.

‘Have you spoken to him?’ Trina asked.

‘Don’t make me say it, Trina,’ I told my next-door-neighbour-in-halls.

‘Oh shut up! You might be in the same class as him but never spoken to him. Like, have I spoken to half the freaks in my Maths classes? I think not.’

‘Yes, I’ve spoken to him. We’re working on a project together in class.’

‘Oh . . .’ she said knowingly. ‘Ohhhhh . . . It’s like that.’

‘It’s like what?’ I asked, abandoning the disintegrating Malteser to its fate to look at her.

She flicked a few of her black-and-royal-blue plaits over her left shoulder, then smoothed her hand over them, twisting them together to sit over her right shoulder. ‘You and him are making the beast with two backs.’

‘What? No! NO. Absolutely not.’

‘Really? Why not?’

‘We’re just not.’

‘Well, with the way that man is staring, I guess you’re RCing him.’

I side-eyed my friend. I had NO idea what she was on about. ‘What is RCing?’ Knowing Trina, we were about to go off on a tangent so sharp the original point would be completely forgotten.

‘Oh please, like you don’t know,’ she scoffed.

‘I totally do not know. You need to tell me what RCing is and tell me quick.’

‘You’re Romantic Comedying him. You know how it goes: you don’t know he exists or you hate him and then you end up having to “work together” and you start to see a different side to him and decide to give him a chance. That chance turns into you falling for him. You have a few weeks or months of sickly, kissy-kissy bliss. And then something big happens which means he discovers that you didn’t feel for him like he felt for you and you split up. You both mope around for a bit, then you have to make some huge, grand gesture to get him back.’ To complete her soliloquy, she flicked her plaits back over her shoulder and then snatched up her coffee cup, took a gulp and realised too late she’d actually picked up my cup and now had a mouthful of sugary coffee and half-melted Malteser. Her gagging face was so funny it was almost worth having to buy a new coffee to start Malteser-melting again.

‘I know what romantic comedies are, thank you,’ I told her. Trina kept opening her mouth and sticking out her tongue, obviously trying to get rid of the taste. Trina and I had never discussed our mutual love for those movies and books, and I couldn’t believe she was crowbarring the dude with the jacket into my tried-and-tested, loved-and-adored framework. It was a heinous act on her part as far as I was concerned. I pointed briefly in his direction. ‘He is not and never will be the star of my rom-com life. All right?’ I looked around the room. ‘I can’t see anyone in here who’s going to be a part of it.’ I returned to eyeing her distastefully again as she glugged water, trying to wash away the taste. Trina was being overdramatic – Malteser-flavoured coffee wasn’t that bad. ‘And if you keep going on about that guy, you’re not going to be my sassy best friend.’

Trina stopped mid-gulp and slowly lowered her water as she spun on her seat to look at me. ‘I am no one’s sassy best friend. I am the main character. Always.’

‘Well, I am too, so . . .’

‘I’ve always wondered what happens when the two people who are traditional sidekick characters are friends? How do they negotiate the thorny subject of who gets to main character and who gets to sidekick?’

‘The first one to get a long-term love interest, I guess.’ I shrugged and rummaged in my pockets for change. I was careful with my coffee-and-Malteser money. I only brought out the exact amount of money so I wouldn’t be tempted to spend too much. My grant and student loan had a long way to stretch but these two were my daytime luxury. Technically, Trina should be doing the coffee-buying, though. Like that was going to happen. She would simply tell me there was nothing wrong with the cup she had pretty much spat into. Like she wouldn’t pour away a cup I had breathed too close to.

As I looked for any amount of money, my gaze scanned the room and snagged on the green gaze of the man who hadn’t stopped staring at me. His expression didn’t change when our gazes slotted together, stuck on each other like two vital pieces of a puzzle.

I didn’t understand him.

When we were in class, when we worked together, he talked to me like he talked to everyone else. I didn’t detect anything that might suggest he thought differently of me to anyone else. He was jokey and clever – always answering questions with the assurance of someone who did the extra reading and then some. Always ready with a joke or humorous observation that might have escaped most people. But when we were in other settings, when I wasn’t directly interacting with him, he would stare at me. Only at me.

‘Don’t you start!’ Trina said, nudging me and releasing me from the stare-hold that had taken over for a few moments.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked her.

‘Don’t start staring back at him. I literally just told you – I am no one’s sidekick. You’re not allowed to get with him or anyone else until I have someone.’

‘I am not getting with him.’

‘Yeah, pull the other one, it’s got carnival bells on.’

I allowed myself another sneak look at him, and he wasn’t staring at me. He was sitting back in his seat, a book in one hand, a hot drink in the other. It was almost as though, now he’d got my attention, as brief as it might have been, he could get on with his life. Now that he knew I knew he was there, he could go about his day.

And what about me? How was I meant to go back to normal knowing that any second now he could start staring at me again?

8 AUGUST, 2022

4TH FLOOR, HONEYMAY PRODUCTIONS OFFICE, BRIGHTON

AFTERNOON

I’m juggling my bag, my laptop bag and a brown paper bag of my sleep medication, as well as my jacket, my hat and hand sanitiser, when I try to press the white rectangle of my pass with my name and a picture of my face against HoneyMay Productions’ security panel.

It takes a couple of goes and I probably should just dump a couple of things on the floor to make it easier, but I don’t. I’m the kind of stubborn that means I’ll keep going, keep swinging my pass in the direction of the security panel until . . . until . . . until I can get the pass to dangle close enough and long enough to beep and flick from red to green.

As it beeps to let me in, I put my shoulder against the frosted glass door and push it open. I usually work from home, holed up in my office with my messy desk, draughty windows and very expensive ergonomic office chair that makes my coccyx hurt if I sit in it for more than twenty minutes. But for the past six months, I’ve been coming regularly to write at the offices of HoneyMay Productions, the production company who bought my books for TV adaptation seven years ago.

In the early days, when I was learning all about writing for TV, I also used to come here to meet with more experienced writers and script editors. I’ve been coming back recently because I can’t be at home. I’m in the process of dismantling my life as I know it, and I have to focus. At home there is Wallace. And even when he’s not there, he’s there. In the pictures, in his scent on the bedding, in the way the furniture is arranged, the way the lights are placed. We moved into our house seven years ago, and every day has been spent making it ours. With all the stuff in front of me, the things I have to do, I have to focus on work and I can’t do that if I’m getting sentimental and googly-eyed over belongings.

The office area they’ve found for me to work in is just off the main open-plan workspace. It’s a smallish meeting room with a bank of four desks pushed together in the middle. Where I usually sit and plug in my laptop has the picture window to the right and the door to the left.

Most people ignore me as I bustle past with my belongings in my arms and my security pass dangling from my wrist. They didn’t do a Cheers-style ‘NORM!’ greeting when I used to arrive, but some of them at least raised their heads and smiled at me. Now they all pretend they don’t see me; they blanch and look away if they accidentally make eye contact and they absolutely do not want to say hello.

Everyone hates me at the moment. I’m learning to be OK with that.

I dump the tangle of my belongings on the desk beside the one I sit at and notice there’s a laptop, a mobile charger and a reusable coffee cup on the desktop. Someone came in to work in here while I was out, obviously. I wonder if they’ll stay or will come scuttling in, collect their belongings and leave.

‘Oh,’ Gail Brewster, one of the production assistants, says as she enters the room. ‘Didn’t realise you were back.’ She stands just inside the doorway, looking on edge and unsure about whether to come in or just run for it.

‘Yup,’ I reply and dip my head as I start to sort out my belongings and set up my computer for work. I mean, yes, I’ve been telling myself that I’m fine with everyone hating me but, er, maybe I’m not as at ease with it as I thought.

‘I’ll just get out of your hair,’ she says. She starts to gather up the items she’s left on my desk.

‘Cool,’ I mumble.

‘Are you OK?’ Gail asks as I take a seat at ‘my’ desk.

‘I’m fine,’ I say.

‘Are you sure? You seem . . .’

‘I’m fine. Honestly, I’m fine.’

‘If you’re sure. How are the rewrites coming along?’ Even though Gail smiles as she asks this, her concern has evaporated as quickly as droplets of water dripped into a hot pan. It seems like something a supportive colleague would ask another colleague, but we are behind and they need this script. They needed it yesterday but I haven’t finished it. I’m finding it difficult to do that.

I’m finding it difficult to end this.

I mean, I have to. But it’s not as easy as it should be.

Seven years ago, not long before I married Wallace, my agent, Antonia, sold my first novel, The Baking Detective, to HoneyMay Productions. It’d been a real dream-come-true moment. It took me a while to realise that things are rarely that simple. That despite all the heralding in the entertainment press and social media, ‘optioned’ meant pretty much nothing. Anyone could option anything if you had a few thou to hand. But this was different. This was one of the things that went beyond optioning and skated smoothly and deliciously into being slated for development, to being greenlit for production. To being actually made.

And to actually appearing on a streaming network. Every step of the way, I’d kind of stood on the outside myself a little, wondering when it would all go wrong. Not only had it got on to the screens, people liked it enough to keep tuning in. So much so, it was not only commissioned for a second series, it stopped being shown in one clump and was actually scheduled to run weekly. The Baking Detective was a hit because, apparently, everyone loved a woman who could bake and solve crimes at the same time. Some of the crimes committed were hideously gruesome – but because Mira Woode solved the mystery while finding time to bake at least one thing (the more the better), people seemed to ignore the truly horrible nature of the murders. In fact, the more ghastly the murder, the more elaborate the cake to balance the sensibilities, the more people seemed to love it.

Which led to where we are now.

Me in the middle of a divorce and dismantling my life as though I were taking scaffolding down from the outside of a finished building. And part of that dismantling meant leaving the show.

No one is happy.

No one wants this to end.

Once I’d handed the first Baking Detective novel over for adaptation, I had no power. They could do whatever they wanted, except the two things I’d had written into the contract:

1.The main character had to be played by a dark-skinned Black woman.

2.Once I decided it was over, it was over, and HoneyMay Productions couldn’t make any more.

What this meant in real terms was that when I decided the series was over, the character, the stories and pretty much the entire franchise stayed with me and they couldn’t make any more. No one wanted to agree to that, of course. They offered me an eye-watering amount of money to get rid of that clause. When that didn’t work, they went to the other end of the spectrum and threatened to walk away. But I wouldn’t budge.

‘Fine!’ I could almost hear the HoneyMay team involved in this deal say. ‘But we’re lowering our offer and she’d better not think about trying to negotiate for more when she changes her mind further down the line.’

I minded, of course, not getting as much money as I could potentially have got. But I cared more about having a woman who looked like me on the screen and being able to walk away cleanly.

So Gail’s nice question was probably delivered through gritted teeth. She tosses her wavy blonde-brown hair, revealing the line of studs and mini-hoops that run from the top of her ear to her earlobe. All silver. All marking out her style. She is my age and a jeans, T-shirt-and-hoodie woman, but these earrings show that she has her own style, too. Since she started about six months ago, she’s always been quite nice to me, but she, like everyone, is probably being nice to my face because we have to keep working together for now.

‘The rewrites are going well,’ I reply to Gail. ‘I’ve nearly finished the latest draft for the penultimate episodes and then I’ll get on with the final episode stuff.’

‘Great, thank you.’ She lets the mask slip for a moment and those three words come out forced, as though they’ve been squeezed out like toothpaste from an almost empty tube. Everyone gets like that when the final episodes are mentioned.

Ordinarily, I would care, it would eat me up that someone doesn’t like me or is cross with me or is possibly upset with me, but right now, I don’t mind.

I don’t deserve friends, I don’t even deserve people to be nice to me. I deserve . . . everything that’s coming, I suppose. Every little thing.

‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ Gail says before she heads to the door with her stuff in her hands. ‘Holler if you need anything.’

‘I will.’

She shuts the white door behind her and I physically relax now I’m alone. Instead of allowing my fingers to move over the keyboard to get this work done, I drop them onto my lap. That doesn’t feel enough somehow, I need to unravel some more. I lower my head to the table and rest my cheek on the desk, while my eyes stare outside. From this position, high up in a Brighton building, you get the most amazing views, the most incredible vistas.

What I wouldn’t give to be one of the clouds that hangs over the city, part of the air that circulates, anything rather than being Cleo Forsum right now. Anything.

‘Cleo, I have a problem,’ Heath stated.

Heath, the man who stared at me, and I were in a small space off the main area on the first floor of the library working on our project for the Philosophy of Science module of our Psychology degree. It was almost like an alcove, but with a door that could slide across to make it a cosy little room with a table and two chairs. We had the door open, but it still felt like we were cocooned here, cossetted and hugged by the smell of books and the reverential atmosphere of learning. Libraries had always been my happy place, somewhere to visit and disappear; to escape and just ‘be’.

We’d been here a while and had been making steady progress, but suddenly he had made this statement – more of a quiet declaration, really – and I was sure it was not the sort of problem I wanted to deal with. I moistened my lips and said, ‘If your problem is something along the lines of “How are we going to condense all of this essential information into a five-minute presentation?” then I share your pain. If it’s anything else, then I don’t think it’s anything to do with me.’

Since Trina had initiated that ‘Romantic Comedying’ conversation, every interaction with Heath had become an issue. If I was friendly to him, I worried I was moving into the ‘doe-eyed, soon-to-be-kissy-kissy’ stage of the RC timeline. If I was blunt or short, I felt, rather acutely in every cell, that I was just extending the ‘enemies-to-lovers’ part of the story. If I tried to be nonchalant, it felt exactly that – I was trying too hard. Basically, Trina had rather expertly got into my head, messed around and ruined any chances of me and this guy being anything even resembling friends.

I mean, I heard the way those words just came out of my mouth and they weren’t exactly pleasant. I liked to think of myself as a pleasant person, that I could get on with most people no matter how odious, but I was constantly on edge around him. If he could just stop staring at me, too, that would be helpful.

‘I suppose it is kind of to do with the presentation and the philosophy of science,’ Heath replied. ‘And kind of not.’

I stared at the books and notebooks in front of us, the notes we’d both made, the highlighted sections and the sticky-note bookmarked sections. I wasn’t sure if I should speak or if I should wait for him to elaborate.

‘It’s the kind of not that makes it related to the philosophy of science because it is and it isn’t related to the philosophy of science, which invokes the quantum philosophy of things existing and not existing at the same time, which is hard to prove exists. A bit like trying to prove the mind exists as a separate construct to the physical brain.’

I squeezed shut my eyes. Frustration. Despair. Complete frustration. Trina had got right down into my head, hadn’t she? Right deep down, past all the rational layers, past the places that control our actions, into the irrational areas, the places where little thoughts take hold and start to grow. Start to grow in stupid, stupid ways.

Usually, being in a library space, with the books and the atmosphere they created, acted like a shield to protect me from the excesses of being around other people. They absorbed the nonsense and made me not mind as much if they went off on random tangents that were nothing to do with me. But not this fella, it seemed. He was immune to the sponge-like powers of books.

‘What are you talking about?’ I asked, my eyes still closed, straining to not scream at him.

‘I think . . . no, no . . . I know I have fallen in love with you.’

My eyes popped open in surprise, then slowly swivelled in his direction to look at him, before coming back to centre to stare at the notes and learning detritus in front of us. The theories of science a. . .