The Rival

by Charlotte Duckworth

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction; Female Sleuths; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Helena is beautiful, privileged, happily married and the Creative Director for the UK's hottest luxury beauty retailer. She has everything that Ashley has ever wanted. When Ashley wins a job as Helena's assistant, she is determined to impress. But is Ashley the perfect protégée or a ruthless rival? When Helena discovers she is pregnant, Ashley's fierce ambition soon becomes apparent and it sets in motion a terrible series of events that could see both women lose everything... A gripping psychological thriller perfect for fans of The Whisper Network and Liane Moriarty. 'This is a taut, chilling read with a killer twist at the end' Sun 'Brilliant and insidious' Lucy Clarke, author of You Let Me In 'A compelling addictive read... I absolutely loved it' Karen Hamilton, author of The Perfect Girlfriend

Release date: September 1, 2018

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 348

Sample

NOW

Seven months later

Helena

It’s Tuesday. Again.

The Tuesdays of my previous existence slipped by unnoticed. None of the loaded expectation of a Monday, the bitter-sweet bliss of a Sunday, nor the joyful anticipation of a Thursday. Instead, they simply vanished into the working week, absorbed by the busyness of life, eaten up by meetings and emails and Things To Attend To.

Tuesdays are somewhat different now.

There’s a poster in my therapist’s office. It’s hidden behind the door, as though she’s not quite sure if it’s in good taste. Colourful calligraphy reminds me It’s good to talk! every time the door is closed, barring my escape. Good for her, yes. Even now, I still drive the four and a half miles to her practice, once a week. I pay my six pieces of silver (ten-pound notes) and sit on her sofa (I am still a little disappointed by this – I had pictured a Le Corbusier for that money, at the very least) and I cry like a bereaved mother is supposed to. I cry so much that I hate myself. I cry until blood vessels burst under my eyelids, until I’m so full of self-loathing that I want to scrub myself out and start all over again. And at the end of my forty-five minutes I wipe my face, blow my nose and go home like a good girl.

Tuesdays.

Jack is waiting for my return, his face a backlit smudge hovering at the living-room window as I pull up in my car. He’s hoping desperately for a breakthrough, for a sign that I’ve made some progress. But I have nothing to give him. Instead, I step into the hallway, put my bag down on the floor and silently wrap my arms around him. He doesn’t ask me how the session has gone.

Tonight, as usual, there’s something warm in the oven, waiting: comfort food – even though he knows I’ll only pick at it. We make small talk over dinner and then, despite the fact it makes me drowsy with the medication I’m on, I drink red wine in front of the fireplace.

It’s not so much a fireplace as a brick-built fire area, complete with enormous tiled hearth, wood-burning stove and old rusty nails, left over from the previous owners’ collection of horse brasses. This is what you get for escaping to the country. An acre of land that leads down to a sad excuse for a river, with five bedrooms, two bathrooms, outbuildings to house your husband’s new carpentry business, and no neighbours for three-quarters of a mile.

The perfect family home. Except for the people dying on my doorstep on a regular basis, that is.

As we do every evening, we sit in front of this fireplace, in what people always describe as a companionable silence, but which is more often merely indifferent. Jack is reading. I know he wants to be watching TV really, a political drama on Netflix, something like that would do nicely, but he’s trying to be supportive, by providing the space for me to ‘open up’. Instead of talking to him, however, I am guiltily staring into that space, as I always do, counting the rusted horse-brass nails in the bricks, from top to bottom. There are eighteen, but I always count them carefully, in case I’ve missed one.

Today I’m thinking how, in a previous life, I would have used these nails for something decorative. To hang pictures, perhaps? Me, Jack and our adorable brood. No, that would have looked too messy. What else, then? At Christmas, you could use them to hang a wreath from. Not a wreath, that’s the wrong word. Wreaths are for front doors and graves. A garland. A beautiful winding garland, with holly and snowberries – it would twist all around the arched opening to the fire, creating a ‘centrepiece’.

The week is stretching ahead of us, empty and cold. We haven’t lit the fire yet this year and my toes are chilly underneath my blanket. October is such an empty month. I wonder what we can do with a cold, dull weekend at the end of a cold, dull week, just the two of us here at home. A few weeks ago, my father made noises about coming to visit us this Sunday but, as usual, he hasn’t confirmed. I phoned his PA yesterday. She had no record of his planned visit in her diary.

I swallow a large gulp of wine.

Suddenly, Jack puts down his book. My eyes rest on the spine. It’s a biography of a racing car driver, Senna. I am vaguely aware that he died young but that he died doing what he loved. People were devastated at his death, lamenting it as a terrible waste, but I envy him. That’s the way to go. We all have to go at some point, so why not go like that? And after all, death is only sad for the people you leave behind.

Jack is looking at me.

‘What are you thinking about?’ he says. In the dull light, his face looks more drawn than I remember it, and I give myself an inward kick for not noticing him more, the toll it’s taken on him too.

‘Senna,’ I say, because it’s true. I nod towards the book laid down on the arm of his chair. ‘I was thinking how much I envied him.’

Jack shakes his head. He doesn’t know how to deal with this. In the old days when I was given to moments of self-pity he would write me off as being melodramatic, but I’m untouchable now.

‘Darling—’ he says, and I know he’s about to ask me how my therapy session went, but he thinks better of it and so he stops.

‘It’s fine,’ I say, giving a lopsided smile. ‘Sorry. I was being stupid.’ I adopt a sing-song voice, all feigned nonchalance. I pick up my wine glass, holding it aloft. ‘Don’t worry. Not going to top myself. Not this week when there’s still Malbec left in the cellar!’

A flicker of disapproval passes across his face; his lips are set in a line. He knows the drinking makes my depression worse. I hate what I am doing to him.

‘I was only going to say that you had a phone call while you were out,’ he says. ‘But you looked so serious . . .’

A phone call. The way he’s said it makes me think that finally, finally, she’s got in touch. There’s been an epiphany and she’s penitent, devastated, she wants to beg for my forgiveness. She wants to make it right, somehow, even though she knows she never can.

But this is the Ash of my fantasies. She doesn’t exist, because she isn’t a real person. This isn’t how Ash is. This is someone far removed from reality, someone I imagined into existence when I met her, someone I credited with more than she could ever deserve.

Suddenly, the wine tastes acrid and I put my glass down on the coffee table, watching as one dark red drip travels back down the inside of the glass.

‘Who was it?’ I ask. In the few seconds before he replies, I try to guess. Kate, perhaps? My father? Not my mother . . .

And then, just as he tells me, I realize I already know. Of course it was him, he’s been trying to track me down for weeks. I don’t answer my mobile any more. Most of the time, in fact, it’s switched off. But I have seen the missed calls gathering, and I have listened to his breezy message.

Jack lets out a great sigh. And I wonder if he knows, or if he’s just tired of dredging up the past, never knowing how I’ll react.

‘David,’ he says, and the name is somehow comforting; proof that my powers of deduction, if nothing else, aren’t as sodden as the rest of me. ‘He wants you to ring him.’

THEN

Ash

I take a seat in the furthest corner of the reception area and pull out my notebook and pen. Today is a triumph and it isn’t yet 8.30 a.m. I begin to write.

It’s your attitude not your aptitude that determines your altitude.

It’s a secret, this notebook. Not even Gary knows about it. A few years ago I heard someone talk about morning pages. At first, I misinterpreted: mourning pages – thinking it was something you wrote to lament all you’d loved and lost. Self-indulgent. But then I read an article about them online – how they’d transformed people’s lives and mental health – and I decided, why not? Any excuse for new stationery.

So I started. Just one page per day of rambling thoughts. Notes on the weather, my fitness, the condition of my skin, how Gran is. But lately I’ve become a little, I’ll admit it, obsessed with apho­risms. I have an app, and every morning at 6 a.m. when my alarm goes off, one flashes across my screen. A focus for the day.

And today’s seems apt.

I bring the pen back to the page as the running commentary begins in my head.

Drum roll, please!

The Life of Ashley Thompson: A Biopic

An unwanted child. Brought up by her grandparents, she grew up in a home where a game of Cluedo was considered an intellectual pursuit. Where the only thing to read was Woman’s Weekly, and where crosswords were ignored but word searches were agonized over. But she rose above such challenges, secured her place at the London School of Economics (editor’s note: not Oxford, but that was clearly a case of prejudice – the interviewer heard her accent and wrote her off immediately), studied Business, gained a first with her dissertation on ‘Women Who Smashed the Glass Ceiling’, spent two years interning and working in a clothes shop to pay the bills, and now, here she is, the newest recruit for one of the biggest tech start-ups of the past five years. In a brand-new office. On the fifteenth floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Granary Square.

Kids, learn from Ashley: you can achieve anything, if you try hard enough.

It’s your attitude not your aptitude that determines your altitude!

I draw a border around it, the corners spinning off into elaborate curls. My handwriting, one of the few things that frustrate me, is not neat and ordered like my mind. It has too many flicks and twists, which is why I always write in capitals if I think anyone will see. It might look aggressive, but it’s better than the alternative.

What else?

Today is the first day of my new job. Before work I ran 10km and got a personal best, if you can trust the app I’m using, which I’m not entirely sure you can, as it seemed to lose me briefly somewhere between Colliers Wood and Tooting. I arrived at 8.15 a.m., but my manager isn’t actually in yet. So I’m waiting in the lobby to be collected. I need to get a photo pass to allow me in and out of the building. The woman on reception said the machine was broken at the moment but that an engineer was coming to fix it this afternoon, so hopefully I’ll have one before the end of the day.

I pause, and cross the last two sentences out. Snore, snore.

On the way in, I had two double espressos, which I now slightly regret. My hands are quite shaky. We shall see how the day pans out. I’ve already made great plans for—

I’m interrupted mid-sentence by the sound of a chair scraping. I look up. A girl with stringy orange hair and uneven freckles has decided to sit opposite me, despite the other four tables in the waiting area being empty.

She dumps her handbag on the table right in front of me. It’s a Mulberry, but it’s old, battered, almost an embarrassment.

‘Hi,’ she says, smiling. ‘Your first day, too?’

Fake it till you feel it.

I give her my broadest grin, closing my notebook.

‘Hello!’ A little too high-pitched there, Ashley, sort yourself out. ‘Yes. Exciting, isn’t it?’

‘I’ll say. I cannot believe I’ve got a job here – I keep having to pinch myself!’ She gives a small, almost apologetic laugh. ‘My little sister is such a fan of KAMU, she spends hours poring over all the product reviews and is obsessed with their editorials. I think she’s more excited than I am. Did you know they have a ping-pong table in one of the meeting rooms?’

I wonder what I can add to this, but am saved from further conversation by Helena’s approach. Today she is in skinny jeans, pumps and a Breton top, and I am disappointed. Somehow, the UK Creative Director of a Silicon Valley import shouldn’t be wearing jeans. And the Breton top? Does she think she’s Kate Middleton?

She looks a bit like her, in fact. Not quite as thin, but with deep-set almond eyes. But blonde, of course. Her hair is long and curly and volumized. I suspect a weekly blow-dry in a Chelsea salon. I’ve seen the sort of places, watched the sort of women, on my many window-shopping trips down the King’s Road.

‘Ashley!’ she calls, hurrying towards me.

What would her running commentary say? I know her story almost as well as my own; I did my research before my first interview.

Helena Brenton (née Cawston), only child. Oxbridge with an MBA. Clever, then, but upper middle class, brought up in the Home Counties and educated at boarding school. Thirty-four. Recently married to a supremely eligible, supremely clichéd banker. Her father owns a chain of department stores, while her mother had a brief career as a model before Helena was born.

I look up and smile at her, wondering whether to stand now or wait for her to reach me. Opposite me, Freckles grabs her phone and starts fiddling with it, downcast, as though she’s last to be picked for the netball team.

‘Helena, hello!’ That screechy voice again. But Helena doesn’t notice my voice, or my concern. Of course she doesn’t. Women like her don’t notice anything.

‘Sorry to keep you,’ she says, slightly breathless herself, but only because she’s rushed here. I’m an inconvenient chore, something she’s remembered at the last minute. ‘Our app crashed so I’ve been having crisis talks with our tech team. Shall we get a coffee before we go up? I’m desperate for one.’

I search for an excuse. Another coffee would send me over the edge; into what Gary calls my ‘manic mode’. It’s not even two seconds before the escape forms on my lips.

‘Oh, I don’t drink it,’ I say, confidently, as I stand up, the lie suddenly not a lie as the idea plants itself in my mind. ‘I don’t drink any form of caffeine. It dehydrates and ages you. But I’ll have some sparkling water.’

Helena’s eyebrows twitch, ever so slightly. She strides towards the coffee bar at one corner of the reception, all neon lights and dark-stained wood, then looks back over her shoulder.

‘I’m not sure you’ll last five minutes at Kiss and Make Up without caffeine but I admire your . . .’ She tails off.

She doesn’t admire me yet, I think. But she will.

NOW

Helena

It’s late. Or early, depending on how you look at it. 2.34 a.m., to be precise. Like most new mothers, it’s not unusual that I’m awake at this time. But of course, I’m not like most new mothers.

I look over at Jack. He’s sleeping. How he sleeps through the accidents is beyond me. I know he wears earplugs – he has done since the noise of his Fulham Palace Road days – but he complains they fall out. I stroke his back before I climb out of bed, pushing my feet into my slippers and tucking my phone into my pyjama waistband. I tiptoe down the stairs and across the flagstoned hall.

Tonight I heard the car coming – I was awake, anyway. There was a split second before impact when I thought the driver might make it. Might be lucky, might just miss. But it wasn’t to be.

Outside, I can see the car sticking up above the wall. It’s twisted slightly, leaning on its side, but it hasn’t flipped over completely. I leave our driveway and walk towards the wreckage. It’s a silver Corsa this time, an old model. Unlike the car, the driver behind the smashed windscreen is young – and not drunk, I don’t think. I steady myself, breathing deeply and squinting the tears away as I open the passenger door and lean into the car. After checking he’s still breathing, I call an ambulance. His wallet is lying on the front seat beside him and I find his driving licence inside. Born in 1994.

Aaron. His address is on the licence, too – he lives in the next village. He was probably coming back from the pub after lock-in. But if he’s a local, he ought to have known what he was taking on, really. Ought to have been prepared.

I remember the piggy-eyed estate agent reassuring us that the unbelievable price of our house had nothing to do with the road. That of course it wasn’t dangerous, that the spate of accidents last year happened before the farmer who owns the field opposite had taken down the cobblestone wall, replaced it with wire fencing. That it was perfectly safe now. A wonderful spot to raise a family, he’d said, one eyebrow arching at Jack.

As I am thinking of him and his lies, the boy regains consciousness, his eyelids fluttering open like a baby waking from a nap.

‘Stay still,’ I say, leaning across the passenger seat to squeeze his hand. ‘It’s going to be OK.’

‘I want my mum,’ he says, beginning to cry. He starts to jerk about, to try to climb from the car.

‘Stay still,’ I say, a little more strictly. ‘You’ll do yourself more damage if you keep moving.’

‘Mum . . . please . . . my mum.’

His mum. I can picture her: plump, cheeks mottled with broken thread veins, bushy eyebrows and a full smile. Proud of her son. He probably has a brother, or perhaps a younger sister. She’s still at school. Aaron. He’s her big brother, her hero. And now he’s lying here, helpless and spotty with shaving rash, a line of blood running down his cheek from underneath his baseball cap. I can’t see what’s under it, what the damage is. His breath is coming fast and shallow now, almost as though he’s sobbing. Like a fish removed from water, desperate for air.

‘My mum . . . I want . . . my mum,’ he says, twisting his head to stare at me with eyes that seem both right here and far away at the same time. I shush him, squeeze his hand, tell him to hold on and that the ambulance will be here shortly. I tell him not to worry, say again that he’s going to be OK.

But how do I know whether he’ll be OK? The last year has shown me how deceptive your health can be. How one minute you can be absolutely fine, and the next . . .

The ambulance takes longer to come than it should have done. I am timing it on my phone: twelve minutes exactly. A good five minutes over the average response time. I know that Saturday nights are incredibly busy, so I’m not too surprised. But still, it’s not good enough, is it? Imagine how much blood you can lose in twelve minutes.

They thank me, as they always do. Sometimes I recognize the paramedics, but not tonight. They always look at me with sympathy and confusion. I know what they’re thinking – why does she live here? Why doesn’t she move? Who is she? What’s her story? I wonder if they can tell that I’m younger than I look, that underneath the eye bags there’s ‘something of a beauty, like her mother’, as I once overheard someone say at one of my father’s parties.

They strap him up, and put him on a stretcher. They don’t remove his baseball cap, so I’ll never know what was going on underneath it. I hear them muttering something about his leg. I hadn’t noticed his leg; I was too taken with the blood running down his cheek. I wait while they load him into the ambulance, squeezing his hand one last time as they take him away. The police are busy making notes; I tell them what I know. It’s cold and I’m only wearing a thin hoodie, grabbed from the rack by the door. I want to get back inside.

As I turn to leave, one of the policewomen asks me if I’m all right. I tell her I’m fine. Because I am. Because, upsetting though it always is, nothing will ever be as upsetting as when I lost her.

*

I’m back in my office now.

It’s called my office, but I don’t do any work in here, so really it’s just a sanctuary; a place to hide from the world. Jack decorated it for me, as a surprise, filling it with mid-century furniture – a rosewood desk, an original Arne Jacobsen chair, an Anglepoise, String shelving. The walls are lined in a deep brown grasscloth, the carpet a sludge green, thick pile. At the window hang slatted vertical blinds, the kind that gather dust in NHS dentists’ waiting rooms and that most people rip out, nowadays. But the scheme works. It hangs together.

When I’m tucked away in here, Jack will sometimes pop his head round the door unexpectedly and catch me, poring over a spreadsheet. He’ll wink, smile with forced cheeriness and say something like, ‘I knew it, world domination – Round Two – not far off, then!’ and I’ll grin and nod back and wish he’d disappear.

Jack.

What can I say about Jack? We haven’t slept together for more than a year. He’s more interested in the rugby, now, than in sex. He has no idea how to help me. He’s kind. He liked me better when I was working.

None of it is his fault. I can tell I’m an inconvenience now: like an ageing relative he must take care of, someone he views with nostalgic affection but at the same time wishes would hurry up and die. I’ve thought about it, a bit. Dying, I mean. But I’m a coward. Maybe if they could find a totally painless way to do it, maybe then I’d consider it. But deep down, there’s still that flame, flickering in my heart. Just a tiny amount of hope. That things will get better. That things can get better. That’s the most torturous thing of all.

I don’t do any work in here, but I do keep track of things. Someone has to, and seeing as I’m closest to it . . . Something has to be done about the road, and I’m determined to force the Council into action. There’s a calendar pinned on the back of my door. Each day there’s an accident I mark the calendar with an A. In red if there’s been a fatality.

I won’t have long before Jack comes to find me, so I make tonight’s notes in my file. Aaron Turner. He’s the first for three weeks. It’s been a peaceful three weeks. October has crept in with a gentle sweep, rather than a dramatic downturn. It’s still mild during the day, and the only chill is first thing in the morning – a pleasing, crisp bite that makes the air feel fresher. The winter will be worse. There’ll be more to come in the following weeks.

From my desk I can see where Aaron’s life changed forever. I make a note of his words to me, his expression, what he was wearing, all the little pieces of his story.

And then, pricked by shame, I take out my sketchbook and begin to draw. It’s the only way; by tomorrow, I will have forgotten the details. Those eyes, asking for his mum. I want to remember them.

THEN

Ash

I’m aware that it’s not the done thing, when you’re new, to interrupt your manager in full flow. But still. When someone is so wrong, what are you supposed to do?

‘I think,’ I say, my voice louder than intended as it cuts across the discussion, ‘you’ll find that Instagram works much better when it’s more off the cuff.’

Helena looks at me, her eyes hardening, but not unkindly – more with surprise.

‘Sorry?’

‘Instagram,’ I reply, swallowing back my nerves. ‘Scheduling it will look flat, lifeless. It’s more important that it seems spontaneous, natural. And technically, you can’t schedule posts, anyway – they don’t let you. It’s nothing like Twitter.’ I’ve warmed up now. ‘And you certainly can’t try to ram a corporate message into each caption. A sure-fire way to fail. People don’t engage with that, they slag it off.’

There’s a pause. The digital bigwigs – I haven’t quite worked out yet what they are about but they are certainly more senior than I am, and they have flown over from the US for a week of ‘onboarding’ of the new staff – stare at me as though I have interrupted them on the toilet. They’ve never even seen Instagram, let alone used it. Why the hell are they in this meeting, anyway?

‘Well,’ Helena replies, noting the bigwigs’ response. ‘I think, you’ll find there’s not a great deal of point in having a corporate Instagram account if we don’t use it to some extent to promote the core values—’

‘Core values?’ I interrupt.

‘I appreciate your input . . .’ Helena begins.

‘Listen, I don’t want to seem rude but, well, you’ve hired me for my social media expertise, right? I know what I’m talking about. I’ve curated a personal account of more than three thousand followers with barely any money, glamour or excitement in my life. Not that I don’t find my life exciting but . . . what I’m saying is: trust me. I know what I’m talking about. This is make-up. We don’t want just boring conventional pack shots borrowed from our suppliers. We need something fun, something inspirational – something about the brand, behind the scenes . . .’

I’m in full flow, what Gran describes as ‘on a mission’, and nothing and nobody is going to s. . .