What was she thinking?
Did she honestly think he would just let her walk out and live a life without him? That there would be no consequences? No price to pay for destroying his life?
She would learn soon enough she was wrong. And be under no illusions about the trouble she was in. There was no hiding place for her, and no escape either. The top of the front door was bolted tightly, too high for her to reach up and unlock it without standing on something, and he’d taken the back door key after locking it and had the key safely hidden in his trouser pocket. He would put it back afterwards, after he’d finished dealing with her. She was somewhere inside this house, and soon, very soon, he would find her. Her perfume would give her away. Lead him where the scent of sweet jasmine and soft lavender grew stronger. He just had to follow his nose. Then he could punish her.
In the kitchen he picked up a heavy mallet, its double-sided, spiked-faced head shiny new. It was well crafted with a generous wooden handle for a good grip. He used one like it often to tenderise tough cuts of meat, to break down tough muscle fibres to a silky softness that melted in the mouth once cooked. This one would only be used once, and then got rid of. He didn’t want reminders, or any microscopic cells of her blood finding their way into his food.
At the bottom of the wide staircase he stood still and listened. The house was never silent. Tick… tick… tick… clocks keeping time, passing time, stealing time with their endless arrogant ticking. Wooden floors and wooden doors creaked and sighed and moaned with age. But once you were familiar with hearing them – these sounds of aging and time – you could hear the other sounds trying to be unheard. She was being very silent, but the longer he waited the harder it would be for her to stay silent and hidden.
His fingertips brushed against the flock wallpaper as he climbed the stairs. The familiar velvet-like texture comforted him – the laurel leaf design in keeping with the period of the house. She had wanted to change and modernise their home, but he was all for tradition. It was a shame she didn’t share the same values, didn’t see the role she had been given to cherish when he placed a ring on her finger. She had broken her vows and thought she could be free.
He stilled halfway up the stairs as he heard a soft whimper. The sound was too young to have been made by her. It cut off abruptly. An infant cry – and his grip on the mallet handle was now less sure. How selfish of her to hide with the child. She must know she put them both in danger. He imagined her hand pressed over the small mouth, her eyes desperately urging the child to be still and quiet. Perhaps she thought hiding together might protect her, might ward off her punishment. She was a selfish mother to have taken such a risk. He was in no mood to be lenient, in no mood to take pity.
At the top of the stairs he strengthened his grip on the hammer. Through the landing window behind him sunlight shone across the oak floor, turning the polished floorboards the colour of autumn leaves, their surface pitted and marked with the imperfections of the past. Mothers and fathers and children had walked this floor and their maids and servants swept it clean. This house had served seven generations, if not more, and soon it would only be him left standing – the last of the line.
There were seven closed doors to choose from, three on each side of the corridor and one at the end. The master bedroom was third on the right and it was to this door he went. As he neared it he heard again the sound of whimpering, followed by a shushing noise as she tried to quieten the child. It was too late for that. He breathed in the air around the door and placed his hand against the grain as if to absorb her essence. He stroked the wood’s silkiness before reaching for the doorknob, the cool round shape of it familiar in his palm. It turned with the lightest pressure and let him in.
Her yelp moved him further into the room with a sudden step. He looked down to where she hid by the side of their bed, her eyes full of fear. Her legs were tented to hide the child from view, her arms wrapped around her knees, and her hands cradling the small head to shut out the sight of him standing there. Sitting like that on the floor she reminded him of a drawing he’d seen by a German artist of a woman cradling a dead child, and he remembered learning about the artist’s husband, that he too was a doctor.
As he raised the mallet from his side, her eyes pleaded with him, but any notion to change his mind passed as he noticed the suitcases on their bed, packed with everything she was taking.
He tried to smile for her, but his face was full of sadness at what she had brought them to. She would get her wish to leave him. He was granting her that, just not in the way she had hoped. She would be leaving behind her suitcases. Leaving behind clothing and shoes, trinkets and adornments, all the things she felt necessary for her new life which she wouldn’t need any longer.
And when that too was all gone, every physical reminder swept away, he would be left with only the memory of her – a scent of sweet jasmine and of soft lavender – that would become part of the air he breathed. Become part of the house forever.
Martha King shivered as she looked through her binoculars at the face of the man getting out of the car. She shivered not from the cold air blasting under the collar of her coat, but from seeing that face again. No matter how many times she had seen him over the last two weeks, the shock didn’t seem to lessen. It was uncanny how his features hadn’t seemed to change, how he didn’t seem to age. The house he was entering seemed to have stood timelessly too. The front door, the same dark green; the heavy curtains, with the same curved swags. Nothing altered. Nothing changed, except the height of the hedges grown above the stone wall wrapping the property nice and neat, private and safe from prying eyes.
And the woman, of course. She was a change.
Martha thought the house would lay empty forever, would never have a light on inside or a car on its driveway again. Watching and waiting and for it then to happen had tested her sanity and given her a false hope that the lights on inside the house were from before. And then cruel reality reminded her it was the present. Her memories were fading on so many other things, like paper drawings bleached from the sun – she had difficulty seeing them clearly. Yet here, they were painfully vivid. She had been kindled by those memories when she saw the new couple arrive. Rooted to the spot, stuck in a trance, just seeing, disbelieving; a silence in her ears as her eyes took their fill, before a sound intruded. Her laugh, as she was carried over the threshold. The sound of such joy shocked Martha’s ears awake, shocked her that such a sound could be allowed after what happened. As if regard for the past was all forgotten.
They’d been ensconced in their new home for over two weeks now, and Martha was there every day watching. Casually passing by, or stopping outside to stand and stare as if looking up at something of interest in the sky. On the odd day when rain was predicted, she took shelter in a spot under a tree in the field behind the house, and used her binoculars. Or she would go in the car, as she had today, parking it down the street to wait out the rain. If anyone noticed her, and so far not a single soul seemed to have, she was ready with her answer – she was a birdwatcher, a lover of nature, and spring was the best time to spot wildlife – and be ready to show her copy of Collins Complete Guide to British Wildlife from the library. For now, though, she was invisible. Just an old lady pottering about with her shopping bag containing a thermos, sandwiches, binoculars and library book, minding her own business.
A pattern had emerged over the last few days. Each morning he would step out of the house at seven thirty, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, get into his car and drive to the hospital. Martha followed him the first day and found driving behind him in peak-time traffic a challenge. She’d caused a bother to other drivers somehow, with car horns blaring at her for something she had done wrong. Since then she only drove to the house, as the car found its own way there, and watched the comings and goings of his new wife, just like she was doing now.
She was certainly full of energy, this new wife – light and quick as she came out of the front door and bounced on the balls of her feet in her running shoes. She stretched arms and legs, bending and pressing and limbering in her bright blue Lycra for over a minute, and then proceeded off at a pace down the road, her long dark hair up in a ponytail, swinging from side to side across her shoulders. Martha gazed after her and then, realising the house stood empty, she made her way up the drive to peer in through windows she once looked out of.
Her anguished cry trapped the air in her throat, and she had to relax the muscles in her face and purse her lips in order to breathe out. She had expected it to look different, changed from her memories of it, not for it to be exactly the same. The lamps, the paintings, all of the furniture – it was all just as before. He had changed nothing for his new wife.
Martha didn’t need to imagine what it felt like to be inside this house. She could feel, as if she was touching it now, the raised threads of the brocade fabric as she smoothed the arms of the small Queen Anne chair. Her chair, reserved for her when visiting. A tear in the fabric, where an arm was worn, had been mended with black thread for lack of silver, but was only noticeable if you knew where to look or where to touch.
A heavy sting inside her chest had her quickly fumbling in her coat pockets for the tiny pump bottle. Her memories had brought back to life images and sounds so real that if she knocked on the window they would see her standing there looking in, as clear as she could see them looking out. She could hear music, and her eyes darted to the corner of the room where the piano stood. His graceful hands were moving over the keyboard, playing a melody that once soothed her but now made her shiver.
Raising her tongue she sprayed liquid into her mouth, ignoring the slight burn as she repeated the action. She rested her forehead against the windowpane, waiting for the sharp stinging in her chest to ease. It would settle in a moment and then she would be on her way.
Her eyes closed to shut out the ghosts in the drawing room. How could he bring his new wife here and not change a thing? Had he no care to change it? Was he happy to have his new wife touch the same things, see the same things? Maybe he got a kick out of watching her walk around the house touching things, unsuspecting; felt pleasure at her not knowing? Martha suspected he did. He would not have changed. A leopard cannot change its spots. No more than this man can change his ways.
Adrift in the memory of it all, she lost time and stayed still, standing with eyes closed and memories open. She was startled out of her trance as something touched her shoulder, and she swung around too fast. The woman neatly saved her from falling, and Martha gratefully kept a grip of the hands holding her upright, trying to catch her breath and offer her gratitude. ‘Oh, my dear, you gave me a fright, but thank you for catching me.’
Up close, his wife had startlingly blue eyes, the same turquoise as the hydrangeas Martha chose for the grave.
Her smile was warm and generous, and her voice full of care. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you here to visit me?’
Martha shook her head. ‘No, my dear, I’m not. I thought this was my friend’s house till I peered in the window and saw that it isn’t. Silly me, I’ve got my roads mixed up, I think. Hers is the next road along.’
‘Do you want to come in and catch your breath, have a glass of water?’
Martha stepped back from the window. ‘No, thank you, dear. I’ll be on my way as she’ll be waiting. You have a lovely home. Have you been here long?’
‘No, not long at all,’ she replied, smiling again as if unable to contain her happiness for any length of time. ‘I’m newly married and I’m getting used to everything being new, including my new name. Which, by the way, is Tess Myers.’
Martha did well to hide her surprise, lowering her eyes and moving her shopping bag to the other hand. ‘That’s your husband’s name then, is it?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Dr Daniel Myers. That’s my husband.’
Martha bade her goodbye, offering thanks again for being saved from a fall, her hands trembling so badly she had a job to get the car keys out of her bag. As soon as she could she got into the car and sat in it shaking, her mind whirring with what she had just learned. He had changed something after all, which would allow him to hide in plain sight. He’d changed his name.
Tess held a wooden meat mallet up to the light, wondering if it would be unhygienic to use it on the steak. She’d found it in a drawer of kitchen tools that she’d not got round to cleaning yet. It might have been there years. The utensils all looked old – the potato masher and rotary egg whisk had green-painted handles. She decided against using it. The steak probably didn’t need tenderising as it was a nice dark red with a good trim of fat along its side.
She’d not given much thought to preparing this meal as her mind was buzzing over getting the job. She hadn’t expected to hear back so soon, after having the interview only that morning.
The thought of going back to work filled her with relief. She was not cut out to stay at home. There was only so much cleaning her brain could take. Deciding where to start each day, whether to shine old furniture back to new again or clean a cupboard full of tacky Delftware that had been left unused for too long, was not how she wanted to spend her days. She’d prefer to pay for a cleaner, and would when she was back at work. After working for a living for the last decade she wanted to get back out there and do the job she had trained for. Otherwise she’d stagnate in this new place and get lonely.
Apart from the occasional nod she got from the quirky old lady she met a few days ago, she didn’t know anyone yet. She had spent the last month getting to know her new home with its far too many rooms. Its grandness made her feel like she was a visiting guest. It would embarrass her to ever say she had a drawing room and a library with a proper rolling library ladder for the wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases. She’d only got as far as dusting the old books, but they’d all seemed very highbrow in blocks of different colour denoting different collections. She still expected to wake up and find she had been living in a dream house.
To be told they were moving somewhere new had come as a complete shock and not how she’d imagined starting married life. She assumed that they would live at his flat in London on the doorstep of St Mary’s Hospital where they both worked. But in the blink of an eye her old job was gone, as he’d got a new one in the city of Bath. Two weeks after their honeymoon they moved. She’d been alarmed at the idea of leaving the familiar for somewhere she’d only heard of, resisted being swept up in the vortex of his excitement for living somewhere new.
When they first arrived she had gazed at the house waiting for him to say he was only joking, but when he took a key out of his pocket she was stunned that the house she was looking at was really theirs. They’d driven along a wide road of walled and gated properties and then Daniel slowed the car and drove it through wrought-iron gates that were open. She’d thought he was making a U-turn until he carried on up the driveway and parked by a wide garage. She’d looked to where he was pointing at a pale stone Georgian house rising three floors to chimney stacks atop a grey slate roof. Tall windows in perfect symmetry gave a glimpse into some of the rooms, and in the one above a pillared porch she’d seen a chandelier hanging with a long drop from the ceiling. She’d felt herself floating until the thought of how did one change the lightbulbs? helped pin her back to the ground.
Completely thrown, she could only stutter when she asked how many bedrooms it had. He’d laughed and said not enough once children arrived, and she’d been reminded of her guilt for letting him think it could happen soon. On their honeymoon he’d suggested they start trying, that neither of them were getting any younger. He’d been delighted when instead of her swallowing her contraceptive pill she spat it out in the sink before getting into bed. In the night she’d taken another one as he lay sleeping, as while she wanted a family she didn’t want one straight away. She wanted to be a wife first and to have time with just him as they’d only been together a few months. As selfish as that seemed, with him nearing forty, it was important to Tess to feel she was wanted for herself alone.
She’d shrieked with laughter when he picked her up and carried her over the threshold of their new home. Where yet another surprise waited.
The house was fully furnished, and looked lived-in. So much so, Tess expected to meet its occupants. He’d set her down on a black-and-white chequered floor next to a tall ebony grandfather clock, and her eyes had taken in the sweep of the wide wooden staircase, backed by a dark red wall. When the clock gave a resounding bong she’d laughed with nerves. The hallway was long and rectangular with three doors either side. Tess slowly wandered along the hall, peering in through the open doors. On the left and from front to back was a drawing room, library and a study. On the right a dining room, a cloakroom and the kitchen. A short passageway next to the stairs led to a back door and a downstairs bathroom. Hanging over the radiator in the bathroom she’d found a heavy cotton skirt in a khaki brown as if left there to dry.
In a daze she’d walked around the rooms gazing at sofas and armchairs, tables and ornaments and lamps and clocks. Many paintings hung on the walls in all the rooms, and in the corner of the drawing room a baby grand piano was hidden under a velvet cover. The kitchen cupboards brimmed with china and silverware and crystal, and pots and pans hung on hooks above an old stove. She’d climbed the stairs to the first and second floors and found all the beds made ready with white linen. She counted them and wondered why on earth would they need seven bedrooms?
It was as if the family who lived there before had upped and left the house and all their possessions behind a hundred years ago – the furniture was old and the white linen threadbare. Daniel had laughed at her bafflement before telling her the contents came with the house, leaving her to imagine how much it all cost, and feeling guilty for not being able to financially contribute. In London she’d only ever rented her flat and had come to this marriage almost empty-handed after spending her savings on the wedding.
Tess returned from her reverie when she heard the front door opening, and waited eagerly to greet her husband. He looked immaculate as he walked into the kitchen. His tall figure moving fluidly towards her gave her butterflies. His black hair, free of any grey and cut short, had a hint of a side-parting, and his naturally pale skin drew attention to his dark eyebrows and sea-green eyes. In a suit cut from cloth that bore a label with only the tailor’s name and their location in Mayfair, he looked like someone very much in charge, and very sexy too. She went to kiss him, but stopped at the look he passed.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
He gestured towards her clothing. ‘It’s still early. Anyone could knock on the front door.’
She laughed lightly. ‘Well, it would be no one we know. No one knows where we live yet. And anyway, you like these pink pyjamas. I’ve only just put them on after getting out of the bath. It’s seven o’clock in the evening in case you didn’t know.’
He didn’t laugh back, but instead raised his eyebrow at her. He removed his suit jacket and hung it carefully over the back of a chair before joining her at the stove. Tess knew her face had gone red. He’d made her feel embarrassed and now she didn’t want to tell him her good news. Instead, she mumbled that dinner would soon be ready.
He eyed the two steaks waiting to be cooked, the dish of tinned peas waiting to be popped in a microwave and the frozen chips she was placing in the oven. He waited while she adjusted the oven temperature before giving his unimpressed opinion.
‘Is this what we’re eating?’
Tess was startled. She’d never heard him being peevish before, and she was mildly shocked by his manner. It wasn’t like she was offering him beans on toast. He was getting steak. She turned to tell him he should be grateful for what he was getting, but he was ready for her.
‘Look, Tess, I don’t want us to get off to a wrong start here, so things need to change.’ His tone of voice was careful, as if it were important that she listen to him. ‘I’m not saying this to sound unkind, but coming home and finding you dressed like a teenager isn’t appropriate. We’re not living at my flat anymore. We live in this house now. You should dress for dinner. We have different standards. No doubt we will be entertaining in the future and how you present yourself will be noticed. I don’t want you judged as…’ He frowned, sighed, screwed his eyes shut, before quietly saying, ‘Slovenly.’
Her eyes could not have got any rounder, or her heart thud any harder. Her husband had just told her she was an embarrassment to him. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. Standing there in her Asda pyjamas with him in his sophisticated attire was a stinging reminder of how ordinary she was. She had no answer for him. She’d been dressing like this when they were on their own in the evenings from day one. Had he been thinking all the time that she shouldn’t be? She felt an unbearable ache in her throat from holding back tears and wanted to hide away fast.
‘Look at me, Tess.’
She didn’t want to look at him and let him see how wounded she was. Instead she bowed her head and heard him sigh again.
‘Look, this shouldn’t upset you. You’re perfect. I just want to make sure everyone sees that. We just need to work on the small stuff.’ He lightly plucked at the material of her top. ‘You needn’t look for cheap goods anymore. You’re top-shelf, Tess.’
Her insides squirmed. He’d made it sound like she was penny-pinching, but she wasn’t mean, just mindful that bills came first and buying a bargain was better than being broke.
She stood rigid when his arms went around her, not wanting this hug, and shut her eyes to hide her tears of shame. His fingertips brushed her wet lashes, and she heard him breathe out yet another sigh, lasting longer this time.
‘Tess… let’s not allow this to be a point of argument between us. Please see that I am only trying to help.’
His voice gentle and his words unrushed made them no easier to hear. He smoothed her hair back from her face, and then gently clasped the nape of her neck.
‘Work with me, Tess,’ he urged in a soothing tone. ‘You’ll see I’m right. I promise.’
She kept her eyes closed when he stepped away from her, wondering when she should make her escape. With her appetite gone she just wanted to be alone under the covers of her bed with the lights off to hide her humiliation.
‘Tess,’ he called out lightly. ‘Stop standing there, I’ve said my piece. Don’t let it spoil the whole evening. I’ve got you a present. So open your eyes like a big girl and come and see it.’
She opened her eyes to see him fetching something out of his briefcase and felt bewildered. Another perfume. The third in as many weeks. Was he spoiling her or did he think she stank? Slovenly. She couldn’t get the word out of her head. He’d have been better off buying her some fancy pyjamas seeing as the ones she wore offended him. Or an invisible cloak to hide her for when she embarrassed him. The pale pink box he handed her was tied with a tiny black bow and with trembling fingers she untied it, wishing she didn’t have to do this right now as this scent would remind her of this horrible feeling of lowliness.
He took the perfume from her and trickled a drop on the inside of her wrist. Then, raising her hand near his face, he breathed in the fragrance before pronouncing his judgement.
‘Not quite as I imagined. Not quite what I was hoping for.’
Later in bed, a tear in her confidence gaped wide as she wondered if he was referring to her and not the perfume. Was she not quite as he imagined, she not quite what he’d hoped for?
Sara, her best friend and sole bridesmaid, had jokingly quoted, ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure,’ but she hadn’t meant it. She thought Tess was the luckiest girl in the world. And so had Tess. She had met a man, enjoyed a whirlwind courtship, and hadn’t once thought things were moving too fast. She’d thought him the most elegant-looking man she had ever seen. He was thirty-nine and a successful doctor and had wanted her as his wife. Was he now regretting that?
Her mind wouldn’t stop dwelling on the things he’d said. Everything had seemed perfect considering the upheaval they’d just gone through of moving to a new house in a new city, and a new job for him. Had she missed something that might have alerted her? Had he been quieter or different with her? Was he stressed by it all? His new position as a consultant vascular surgeon held more responsibility. He was in charge of a team of doctors and his time was spent training and supervising, whilst carrying out his own clinical duties and managerial roles. He was responsible for running outpatient clinics and coordinating comple. . .
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