The First Wife (34 page)

Jack spread his hands out. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m new to this, but I think I have as much idea of what’s going on here as anyone. There’s no need for any of this. Can we just grab a seat and talk this through? Lily hasn’t done anything wrong. She just wanted to be sure of the score before going through with this wedding. Turns out she was bang on the money There can’t be a wedding, because the guy’s still married, isn’t he?’

Jack set off into the sitting room, and we followed him, though Sarah did not seem amenable to the idea of sitting down and talking. She kept the baby held close to her with one hand, and went around picking up all his things with the other. I stood and watched as she took his play mat and dumped it into a cupboard with a pile of his clean clothes. There were three photos of him in frames on the sides, and she put them into the cupboard too. She packed a big bag with the hat and gloves from the table, and some nappies and baby wipes from the pile in the corner. When most of his stuff was in the cupboard, she locked it and put the key in the big bag. Apart from this bag, there was no sign that a baby lived here.

As she did all this, she talked, quickly.

‘It’s too late,’ she said. ‘Lily, you are young, clueless, and I know you’re not streetwise. Actually it never occurred to me that you’d have the nous to do a thing like this, because if it had occurred to me I would have planned for it. If this stops you marrying him, perhaps there’ll be a bright side. Tell me this, and tell the truth: have you, even for a moment, seen the real Harry?’

‘The real Harry?’

‘You know. The one who did this.’ She rolled up her big jumper and, just for a second, gave me a glimpse of a livid red scar down her side. Then it was gone. ‘I miscarried three babies because of him. I thought I’d actually like to have this one.’ She stroked the baby’s hair. ‘This is Carlos, by the way I gave him a Spanish name as a sort of rubbish disguise, but I just call him Charlie anyway.’

‘It’s not Harry’s fault if you miscarried, and anyway . . .’ I had been about to say that I knew she had never wanted children, but it did not seem as though she would be interested in this take on her reality.

She looked weary as she said: ‘But it
is
his fault. He was obsessed with the idea that I was sleeping with Seumas from next door. I absolutely wasn’t. He’d driven past me walking up the hill with Seumas once, and Seumas was carrying my shopping for me. After that, nothing I ever said was going to convince him otherwise. I almost came to believe it myself.’

I sat down. I could not listen to this. I wanted to put my fingers in my ears. But instead I said, ‘I don’t recognise him at all in that. But the . . .’ my voice wobbled at my treachery, but I forced myself to continue . . . ‘the police,’ I said through tears, ‘did come to talk to me – about a hit and run accident, on the night of your Christmas party. There was a man hit by someone in a silver car. He was on life-support for ages. And then he died.’ My voice was shaking, however hard I tried to control it. ‘But there’s no way . . .’

‘You know there is,’ she said. ‘Bloody hell. I remember that night. If I’d known . . . You know it’s true, Lily, or you wouldn’t have just said it. I suppose you lied to them, because “you love him”.’ She made quotation marks in the air with her fingers. ‘Why do you think he’s kept you close? You’re the only one who can give him an alibi.’

‘Sarah,’ I said. I was spinning. ‘It’s not at all like th—’

‘It’s a horrible moment,’ she interrupted, ‘when you start to see the truth. But there’s no time for this. If you’re here, he’s here. So that means I’m off.’

I took hold of her arm. She shook me off.

‘He’s
not
here,’ I said. I could not engage with any of the rest of it. I wanted her to know that, for the moment at least, she was safe. ‘He thinks I’m at a spa, on a hen weekend. I just told you that.’

‘He doesn’t.’

‘He does.’

She stopped for a moment. ‘Lily, he doesn’t. OK then – call him. Not on my phone, but withhold the number on your mobile, or his mobile.’ She nodded to Jack. ‘And ring him. If his phone rings with a British tone, then I’ll accept that he might not have followed you out here, and we can talk it through for a few minutes before I go. If it’s a Spanish tone, I’m out of that window. I should be gone by now. I should be gone.’

Jack was holding out his phone.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ll use mine.’

My hands trembled as I took it out of my bag. We all looked at it.

‘God, that phone,’ Sarah said. ‘It was mine, wasn’t it?’

I scrolled down until I had the word
Harry
on the screen. I looked at them, at Sarah jiggling her baby around, at Jack’s open expectant face (I could see he was confidently expecting the British ring tone, though I could also see that he had no idea what one would sound like), at the baby, looking innocent and content.

It took a few long seconds to connect. Then it started to ring. It rang with a foreign tone. I had not heard one before, but this, I knew, was it. A long flat tone, followed by another, and another.

Nobody said a word. I hung up before he could answer.

‘Oh,’ I said in the end.

‘Shit,’ added Jack.

‘See?’ said Sarah. ‘He followed you because he didn’t trust you. He’s spying on you. He knows precisely where you are. He’s probably outside on the pavement, right now. I can still get away.’

Jack was staring at Sarah.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘OK, Sarah. Let’s get you out of here. I have no idea what’s going on, but you need to be somewhere else, don’t you? You’ve got a place to go?’

‘Yes. Thank you. Look, I’m clutching at straws here, but he might not know
why
Lily is here. You’re going to have to face him for me. Tell him anything you want but don’t mention me, OK? Lily doesn’t have to marry him anyway.’ She had her coat on now, and a woollen hat that she pulled down as low as she could. She put a fleece hat on the baby and did her coat up so that the child was almost invisible.

She hesitated. ‘Jack? He’s not going to like Lily being here with you. Help her stand up to him. Lily, if you see the real Harry, it’s going to be a blessing in disguise. Good luck. I wish I could take you with me. There are no words for that man.’

‘But . . .’ I did not believe her. I didn’t believe a word she said about him. She was mad, and bad. That scar looked nasty, but it could have come from anywhere. Harry would never have done that to her.

She shook her head at me, and left, through the window.

Lily was pale and tense. There were tears in her eyes as she walked over to the window and closed it.

‘What now, Jack?’ she asked, her face suddenly wild and panicked. ‘What do we do?’

He tried to think of a sensible answer.

‘Lily,’ he said. ‘Come here. It’s OK’ He could see that Sarah was telling the truth about the man, but he feared that he would not be the one to make Lily see that, and he was scared that if he went at it too strongly, he would send her running outside the apartment into that bastard’s arms. ‘This is not about you,’ he told her. ‘It’s about Harry, isn’t it, and Sarah. We just have to . . .’

At that point, he ground to a halt. He had no idea what they
just had
to do. Presumably, the bloke was hanging around this building somewhere, and also, he presumably knew which flat they were in. It was only a matter of time before he would appear on the doorstep; and if he did that, Lily would let him in, Jack knew she would.

If they left, he had to assume that they would walk straight into him. On the other hand, there was nothing else to be done. Lily was looking at him with huge wild eyes.

‘We have to leave here,’ she said. ‘Go somewhere else. I should ring Fergus.’

Jack was sceptical. ‘His brother?’

‘He knows about it all, I’m sure he does.’ Lily was different. Maybe, Jack thought, she was in a state of shock. It was almost like a trance.

‘You haven’t got his number. You said that, remember? Look, this is a lot for you to take in.’

She shook her head. ‘Sarah’s wrong. She must be. I mean, on the one hand,’ she waved her little white hand around for emphasis, ‘on the one hand you have a woman who faked her own suicide and had a secret baby while her own husband, who would have been happy to give her a divorce, went through hell. On the other hand,’ she spread the fingers of her other hand, ‘you have a man who lost his wife, and he was genuinely devastated, I know he was because I was there. Who found some happiness again. And who then finds out that everything was a massive trick. Who would you trust in that scenario?’

Jack felt that this was a rhetorical question, but all the same, he could not help himself. ‘I’d trust Sarah, actually,’ he said.

Lily frowned at him and shook her head so her hair bounced around.

‘Why would you though?’ she almost shouted, suddenly. ‘Why trust
her
? She’s the liar. Oh Jack. I almost believed her, but . . . I love Harry. I do.’

‘Do you really, though? What about that business with the police and the car?’

Lily’s face closed. ‘You’re right about one thing,’ she said. ‘This
is
about the two of them. It’s not about me, although it’s all my fault that it’s come to light. Let’s get away. We can go back to yours or something. I don’t want to be in her place any longer.’

And before Jack could say a word, she was out of the door.

He stood and stared at the door, swinging open, for a second. This morning, Lily had been a stranger to him. Now he was in rather deeper than he might have opted to be, had he been given a choice. And she had just left the apartment, to head down the stairs straight into the arms of a man whom Jack truly believed to be a dangerous bastard.

‘Lily,’ he shouted. ‘Wait! Let’s find another way out.’

He ran down the four flights of stairs, but she was running faster. Her footsteps echoed around the hallway: he could hear her, but every time he rounded a corner, she had already got around the next one. By the time he was at the top of the last set of stairs, it was too late.

There was a tall man standing just inside the front door, and Lily was standing next to him, closer than you would unless you were lovers. Jack hung back, stepping into the shadow, trying to hear what they were saying, but their voices were low.

She did not seem to be in any danger. He was talking softly, gently to her. He was wearing an expensive-looking overcoat with a burgundy scarf. Jack would not have a clue how to dress like that. This man looked powerful, and he clearly had Lily completely in thrall to him. He put a hand on her shoulder and drew her in closer.

It made Jack want to cry with frustration. A beautiful girl with the world at her feet, and she gets taken in by an idiot like that with a flash car and a nice coat.

Lily was crying. The man, Harry, was comforting her. Then, all of a sudden, their voices were louder.

‘But Harry,’ she said, and her voice was clear. ‘You got rid of your silver car.’

‘Oh Lily,’ he said. ‘Stop it. You’re being ridiculous. Hysterical.
Where is my wife
?’ The last sentence was almost shouted.

Jack’s heart was pumping. He wanted to wade in and pull Lily out of there, onto the street, take her away – but he feared that if he did, things would end up worse. All the same, if this bastard looked like he was going to raise a fist, he’d be in like Flynn.

She did not reply. Jack thought of Sarah, and the baby, and just as he was poised to run towards Lily and stop her, somehow, from telling, she did it.

‘Lily?’ Harry said, in a tone that sounded pretty menacing to Jack.

‘She went out of the window,’ she said quickly. ‘Onto the balcony. To the neighbour’s flat, I think.’

Jack was back up the stairs in a second. He was on the fourth floor in minutes. There was no sound of footsteps behind him. He had no idea what might be going on down there. He banged on what he hoped was the right door. The landing up here was carpeted, he noticed, in mustard yellow. It must take time to locate a carpet that nasty.

‘Sarah!’ he called, in the lowest voice that might still be heard. ‘It’s Jack. She just told him you’re here!’

Seconds later, Sarah was at the open door. She was trembling but she looked determined.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Jack, did she tell him about Charlie?’

‘Not that I heard, no. But I didn’t hear everything. I don’t think so.’

She held the baby out. ‘Take him. There’s a cupboard on the third-floor landing. Wait in there till he’s passed, then take Charlie away, check into a hotel or something, anything. Call Fergus. He’ll get hold of me. I can face Harry. But he’s not getting my son.’

‘Sarah, will you . . . ?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Paloma and Pedro are here. They’re calling the police. It’ll blow my cover completely but that doesn’t matter any more. Go on. Go.’ They could both hear him coming up the stone stairs. Sarah thrust the baby’s bag at him.

‘You’ve got kids,’ she said. ‘Look after him.’

‘I promise.’

He ran, willing Charlie to keep quiet. He knew he was racing the approaching footsteps, and he tried both to walk quietly, and to get there quickly, and not to alarm the baby, who was now asleep.

The cupboard was there, and he pushed his way in, past a vacuum cleaner and some mops, stood next to a plastic bucket. He pulled the door closed, and seconds later, heavy footsteps approached.

He tensed up. Now, here was a situation he was pretty sure he had never signed up for. Hiding in a cupboard with someone else’s baby, praying that a bad guy he’d never met would carry on walking. He almost smiled as it occurred to him that he had achieved his dream of living in an Almodóvar world.

Jack did not breathe. He could not even see the baby, because it was pitch dark, and it smelled of dust and disinfectant, but he prayed for Charlie’s sake that he was still asleep.

The footsteps sped up again, and then they receded, up the last flight of stairs. He wanted to stay and check that Sarah was all right, but he knew he could not do that. She had entrusted him with her most precious object.

He was anxious as he pushed the door open. The coast was clear.