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3

Tuesday, 7 August 2007


Someone followed me this morning. Or else I’m going insane.

I head for my desk, keeping my eyes down and reminding myself to take deep breaths as I cross the large, open-plan office. The advantage of everybody being so visible is that we tend to go out of our way not to notice one another, to pretend we work in closed, private rooms.

I turn on my computer, open a file so that it looks as if I’m working. It’s an old draft of a paper I’m presenting in Lisbon next month: ‘Creating Salt-marsh Habitats Using Muddy Dredged Materials’. That’ll do.

Is there any evidence that taking deep breaths ever made anyone feel better?

Someone followed me in a red Alfa Romeo. I memorised the registration: YF52 DNB. Esther would tell me to ring the DVLA and sweet-talk them into giving me the name of the car’s owner, but I’m not good at sweet-talking, and although every Holly-wood film contains at least one maverick office-worker eager to break company rules and give confidential information to strangers, in the real world-in my experience, at any rate-most employees are champing at the bit to tell you how little they can do for you, how absolutely forbidden they are to make your life one iota easier.

I’ve got a better idea. I pick up the phone, ignore the broken dialling tone that tells me I have messages, dial 118118 and ask to be put through to Seddon Hall Hotel and Spa. A man with a Northern Irish accent asks me which town. ‘ York,’ I tell him.

‘Oh, right, got it.’ I hold my breath, silently urging him not to ask me the question that always makes me want to bash my head against something hard. He does. ‘Would you like to be put through?’

‘Yes. That’s why I said, “Can you put me through?” ’ I can’t resist adding. Think for yourself, dork. Don’t just stick to the script, because every time you do that, every time one of your colleagues does it, it’s five seconds of my life wasted.

Even if someone isn’t trying to kill me, I still haven’t got any life to spare. I try to find this funny and fail.

The next voice I hear is a woman’s. She gives me the good-morning-Seddon-Hall spiel that I’ve heard several times before. I ask her to check if a man called Mark Bretherick stayed at Seddon Hall between Friday, 2 June and Friday, 9 June 2006. ‘He was in suite number eleven for the first two nights, then in suite fifteen.’ I can picture both rooms clearly, on the top floor of the courtyard bit, on the galleried landing.

The pause before she speaks suggests she might have watched the news lately. ‘Could I ask your name, please?’

‘Sally Thorning. I was a guest at the hotel at the same time.’

‘Do you mind me asking why you need this information?’

‘I just need to check something,’ I tell her.

‘I’m afraid we don’t normally-’

‘Look, forget Mark Bretherick,’ I cut her off. ‘That probably wasn’t his name. There was a man who stayed at Seddon Hall from the second to the ninth of June last year and I need to know who he was. He booked suite eleven for the whole week, but then there was a problem with the hot-’

‘I’m sorry, madam,’ the soft-voiced receptionist interrupts me. I can hear her computer whirring; she’s probably looking at his name on her screen right now. ‘I don’t mean to be unhelpful, but we can’t give out guests’ names without a good reason.’

‘I’ve got a good reason,’ I tell her. ‘Whoever that man was, I spent the week with him. He told me he was Mark Bretherick, but I don’t think he was. And, for reasons that I can’t go into because of my own confidentiality policy, I really need to know his name. Urgently. So, if you could check your records…’

‘Madam, I’m really sorry-I’m afraid it’s unlikely that we’ve kept records from that far back.’

‘Yeah, right. Course it is.’

I slam down the phone. So much for sweet-talking. Was I too honest, or not honest enough? Or did I sound like a bossy cow? Nick says I sometimes ask questions in a way that makes people pray they won’t know the answer.

Last night-because I had to do something-I waited until Nick went to bed and wrote a letter to the police about the Brethericks. It contained almost no information, only that the man identified as Mark Bretherick on the news might be someone else. On my way into work this morning I stopped at Spilling Post Office and put it in the police postbox. By now someone might have read it.

They’ll think I’m a crank. I told them the bare minimum. Anybody could have written what I wrote, to get attention or cause trouble-a drunk teenager, a bored pensioner, anyone. They’ll put me straight in the Wearside Jack category.

I think about what I told the Seddon Hall receptionist: whoever that man was, I spent a week with him. I could have written that in my letter to the police without giving away my identity. Why the hell didn’t I? The more detailed my account, the more likely they would have been to believe me. If I explained everything, how and why it happened… Suddenly I feel a burning need to share the full truth with somebody. Even if it’s only the police, even anonymously. For over a year I’ve kept it completely secret, telling the story to myself but no one else.

I highlight the draft of my salt-marsh habitats article and delete it, leaving only the heading in case someone looks over my shoulder. Then I start to type.

7 August 2007

To whom it may concern


I have already written to you once about the Brethericks. I posted my first letter this morning at about eight thirty, on my way to work. Like this one, it was anonymous. I am writing again because, after posting my last attempt, I realised that it would be easy for you to dismiss me as a time-waster.

I can’t tell you my name for reasons that will become clear. I am female, thirty-eight, married and a mother. I work full-time, and the work I do is professional. I am university educated and have a PhD. (I’m saying this because I can’t help thinking it will make you take me more seriously, so I suppose that makes me a snob too.)

As I said in my last letter, I have reason to believe that the Mark Bretherick I saw on the news last night might not be the real Mark Bretherick. This story may seem irrelevant at first but it isn’t so please bear with me.

In December 2005, my boss asked me if I could go on a work trip abroad, for the week of Friday, 2 June to Friday, 9 June 2006. At that time my children were very young and I was working full-time, juggling several different projects and not getting much sleep. Every day felt like a struggle. I told my boss I didn’t think I’d be able to do it. Since having my second child, I hadn’t been away from home for more than one night at a time. To go away for a whole week didn’t seem fair on my husband and the children, and I felt utterly drained when I imagined getting home afterwards and having to clear up the mess that would have accumulated in my absence. It simply didn’t seem worth it. I felt slightly disappointed at having to turn down the work because it sounded like an interesting project, but I barely gave it a thought because I was so sure it was out of the question.

I told my husband later, expecting him to say, ‘Yeah, there’s no way you could have gone,’ but he didn’t. He looked at me as if I was mad and asked why I’d said no. ‘It sounds like the opportunity of a lifetime. If anyone asked me, I’d go like a shot,’ he said.

‘I can’t. It’s impossible,’ I told him, thinking he must have forgotten we had very young children.

‘Why not? I’ll be here. We’ll manage fine. I might not stay up till midnight every night ironing socks and hankies like you do, but who cares?’

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘If I go away for a week, it’ll take me two weeks to get on top of everything once I get back.’

‘You mean at work?’ he said.

‘And at home,’ I said. ‘And the kids’ll really miss me.’

‘They’ll be absolutely fine. We’ll have fun. I’ll let them eat chocolate and go to bed late. Look, I can’t look after the kids and keep the house tidy,’ he said, (he could, of course, but he genuinely believes that he can’t) ‘but we can hire some help.’ He mentioned the name of a woman who babysat for us regularly.

As he outlined a possible plan-and I can remember this as vividly as if it happened yesterday-a weird feeling started to grow inside me. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it felt like some kind of explosion or revelation: I could go. It was possible. My husband was right, the children would be absolutely fine. And I could ring them every morning and every evening, so that they could hear my voice and I could reassure them that I was coming back soon.

Whoever you are that’s reading this: I’m sorry to make it so personal. But if I don’t tell you all this, the rest won’t make sense. It’s not a justification, just an explanation.

A week away, I thought. A whole week. Seven unbroken nights. I could catch up on my sleep. At that point my husband and I were getting up three or four times a night, and each time we might be up for an hour or more, trying to settle a wakeful child. And we were both working full-time as well. It didn’t seem to bother my husband. ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ he used to say. ‘We’ll be tired, that’s all. It’s not the end of the world.’ (My husband is the sort of person who would say that even if he bumped into someone who was holding a large nuclear bomb and wearing a name-badge that said ‘Nostradamus’.)

I rang my boss and told him I could go after all. I hired the babysitter that my husband had mentioned, and within a couple of days my trip was arranged. I would be staying in a five-star hotel in a country I’d never been to before. I started to fantasise about the trip. All the work stuff would happen during the day, leaving my evenings free. I could have long, hot baths and lovely room service dinners that I wouldn’t have to cook myself. I could go to bed at nine thirty and sleep until seven the next morning-that was the most alluring prospect of all. I’d assumed, without even realising it, that my relationship with proper sleep was over for good.

What had so recently seemed impossible quickly became a necessity. Every time I had a stressful day at work or a bad night with the kids, I recited the name of the place I was going to in my head-the hotel and the city. If I could manage until then, I told myself, I’d be fine. I’d spend that week refreshing my mind and body, repairing all the damage that had been done by years of overwork and refusing to rest. (I am a workaholic, by the way. I didn’t even take any real time off when my children were born-I just worked from home as much as I could for the first six months, sitting at my computer while they slept in their baby-bouncers next to my desk.)

The trip was scheduled for June last year. In March, my boss told me the project had been cancelled. My trip was off, just like that. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to crying in a professional situation. I think my boss could see how disappointed I was because he kept asking me if I was okay, if everything was all right at home.

I wanted to scream at him, ‘Everything is absolutely f ***ing great at home, as long as I can get away from it for just one week!’ I honestly couldn’t imagine how I would manage without the break I’d been banking on. Reconciling myself to going without wasn’t an option. I needed something, a substitute. I asked my boss if he could send me somewhere else. The company I work for does similar sorts of work for many different organisations, so it didn’t seem too unrealistic a request. Unfortunately my boss had no equivalent trip to offer me.

Feeling absolutely wretched, I turned to leave his office, but he called me back. He gave me a stern look and said, ‘If you need to get away, go. Take a week off, go on holiday. ’ I blinked at him, wondering why I hadn’t thought of it myself. He then ruined it by adding, ‘Take the kids to the seaside,’ but I could feel the smile forming on my face. He’d planted a seed in my mind.

I decided I would go away, on my own, without telling anyone. I pretended that the trip had not been cancelled, and booked myself into a spa hotel, safely far away from where I live. I would relax, recuperate, and come back a different person. I didn’t feel guilty for lying to my husband, not at that point. I convinced myself that if he knew he would approve. Once or twice I considered telling him. ‘Oh, by the way, my work trip was cancelled, but I thought that instead I’d go and spend a week lying beside a swimming pool in a white towelling bathrobe. Oh, and it’s going to cost us about two and a half thousand quid-is that okay?’

He might not have minded, but I wasn’t prepared to risk it. And, actually, even if he’d said, ‘Fine, go ahead,’ I couldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have done it openly-left my kids for a week and swanned off to have orange-blossom oil rubbed into my back. I had to lie about it because it seemed so frivolous, so entirely unnecessary. And yet-and I don’t know how to convey to you how much-it was absolutely, desperately necessary for me at that point in my life. I felt as if I might die if it didn’t happen.

I set off on the morning of Friday, 2 June, not even bothering to pack the things I’d have needed if I’d been going on the work trip. My husband would never in a million years notice something I’d left at home and think, Hang on, why hasn’t she taken that? He doesn’t notice anything, which I suppose makes him easy to lie to.

The hotel was unbelievably beautiful. On my first afternoon there, I had a full-body massage (I’d never had one before) and it was like nothing I’d ever experienced. I fell asleep on the table. I woke up six hours later. The therapist explained to me that she’d tried to wake me by shaking a set of bells in front of my face and saying my name, but I was sound asleep. Then she’d read the form I’d filled in at the spa’s reception and seen that I’d rated my stress level, on a scale of one to ten, as twenty, so she decided to let me sleep.

When I woke up, I felt unbelievably different. I wasn’t at all tired. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt like that-not since I was at university. All the different parts of my brain felt clean, efficient and ready to go. That night, from the hotel’s plush bar, I phoned my husband. I told him I’d arrived at my hotel. He’d forgotten its name. I told him I would be out and about most of the time and that if he needed to contact me my mobile was the easiest way. But I couldn’t avoid saying the name of the hotel I was supposed to be staying in, a hotel on the other side of the world. And a man heard me.

As I was putting my phone back in my bag, I looked up and saw him watching me. He had dark auburn hair, green eyes, pale skin and freckles. His face was boyish, the sort that will never look old. His drink was in front of him-something short and colourless. I noticed the blond hairs on his forearms. I remember he was wearing a blue and lilac striped shirt with the cuffs rolled up, and black trousers that were moleskin, I think. He grinned. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping.’

‘No, you shouldn’t,’ I agreed.

‘I wasn’t,’ he quickly explained, looking a bit flustered. ‘I mean, not deliberately.’

‘But you heard, and now you’re wondering why I lied about where I am.’ I don’t know why, but I told him-about the cancelled work trip, my massage, my six-hour sleep. He kept saying that I didn’t need to explain myself to him, but I wanted to, because my reason for lying, I thought, was about as benign as they come. It was self-defence, basically. I really believed that and still believe it. He laughed and said he knew how hard it could be. He had a daughter too: Lucy.

We started talking properly. He introduced himself to me as Mark Bretherick. He was married to Geraldine, had been for nearly nine years. He told me he was the director of a magnetic refrigeration company, that he made fridges for scientists to use that were much colder than normal fridges-nought degrees Kelvin, which is the coldest possible temperature. I asked him if they were white and square, with egg compartments in their doors. He laughed and said no. I can’t remember exactly what he said next but it was something to do with liquid nitrogen. He said that if I saw one of his fridges, I wouldn’t recognise it as a fridge. ‘It hasn’t got Smeg or Electrolux written on it. You couldn’t put your stuffed olives or your Brie in there,’ he said.

After we’d been talking for a while, it emerged that he lived in Spilling. At the time I lived in Silsford-a short drive from Spilling-and we couldn’t get over the coincidence. I told him about my work, which he seemed to find interesting-he asked me lots of questions about it. He mentioned his wife Geraldine all the time and seemed to be very much in love with her. He didn’t say this, but it was clear she was very important to him. In fact, I smiled to myself because, although he was obviously highly intelligent, he was also one of those men who cannot utter a sentence without it containing his wife’s name. If I asked him what he thought about something (as I did many times, not that evening but later, during the course of our week together), he would tell me, and then immediately afterwards he would tell me what Geraldine thought.

I asked if she worked. He told me that for years she ran the IT helpdesk at the Garcia Lorca Institute in Rawndesley, but that she’d always wanted to stop working when she had a child, and so when Lucy was born she did. ‘Lucky her,’ I said. Although I would hate not to work, I felt a pang of envy when it occurred to me how easy and calm Geraldine’s life must be.

On that first night at the bar, Mark Bretherick said one odd thing that stuck in my mind. When I asked him if he thought I was immoral for lying to my husband about where I was, he said, ‘From where I’m sitting, you seem pretty close to perfect.’

I laughed in his face.

‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘You’re imperfect, and that’s what’s perfect about you. Geraldine’s a perfect wife and mother in the traditional sense, and it sometimes makes me…’ He stopped then and turned the conversation back to me. ‘You’re selfish.’ He said this as if he found it admirable. ‘Practically all you’ve told me tonight is what you need, what you want, how you feel.’

I told him to sod off.

Far from being put off, he said, ‘Listen. Spend the week with me.’ I stared at him, speechless. The week? I’d been wondering whether I even wanted to spend the next ten minutes with him. Plus, I wasn’t sure what exactly he meant. Until he added, ‘I mean, properly. With me, in my room.’

I told him he had a phenomenal cheek. I was quite rude to him. ‘You want a week of sex with someone you regard as worthless before returning to your perfect life with the perfect Geraldine. Bugger off.’ That was what I said to him, pretty much word for word.

‘No!’ he said, grabbing my arm. ‘It’s not like that. Listen, I’ve probably said it all wrong, but… what you said before, about needing to come away this week and sleep and rest because you’d never had the chance before and you wouldn’t again, well…’ He looked as if he was struggling for the right words. He didn’t find them. Eventually his face sort of crumpled and he turned away from me. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘You’re probably right. I’ll bugger off, as instructed.’

His vehemence had shocked me, and his sudden dejection was as much of a surprise. He looked as if he might cry, and I felt guilty. Maybe I’d misjudged him.

‘What?’ I asked.

He sighed, leaning over his drink. ‘I was going to say that sleep and rest aren’t the only things you don’t get enough of once you’ve had a child.’

‘You mean sex?’

‘No.’ He almost smiled. ‘I meant adventure. Fun. Not knowing exactly what’s going to happen.’

I couldn’t speak. If only he hadn’t said that, if only he’d said something else, I’d have been fine. I’d have been able to stand my ground.

‘You know, I’m away a lot for work,’ he said. ‘Overnight. Often. One or two nights at a time, once or twice a month. This time it’s a week. And whenever I check into another hotel on my own and throw my overnight bag down on the bed, I think to myself, I don’t know what I want more-sleep or adventure. Should I order dinner in my room, watch telly in bed, get my head down early and wake up late, or should I go down to the hotel bar and try to pick up an exotic woman?’

I laughed. ‘So tonight you opted for the latter.’ Though for him I could hardly have been exotic. I lived less than half an hour’s drive from his house. ‘Didn’t you say Lucy was five?’ I said. ‘She must be sleeping by now.’

He looked miserable, as if he wished I hadn’t said that. ‘I can’t remember the last good night I had,’ he said. He seemed needy, yet at the same time strong and determined. Almost angry. I suppose I found him intriguing.

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘No one warned me it might get worse.’

‘It might.’ Unexpectedly, he grinned. ‘But it could also get better. For a bit. Say, this week. Couldn’t it?’

I had never been unfaithful to my husband before. I never will again. I am not the unfaithful type. I hate the whole idea of infidelity. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ I told him.

‘You can’t, in all conscience, say no,’ he said. ‘I’d be too embarrassed. The only way you can save me from the fate of massive humiliation is by saying yes.’

I knew I ought to be finding him more annoying by the second, but I was starting to like him. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t. I told you, I need to rest. Spending a week with another man-that’d be a big deal for me. It’d send me into panic mode, and I’d go home in a worse state than I was in when I left.’ Part of me couldn’t believe I was taking this seriously enough to give him such a considered response.

‘It could be this week only,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t have to keep in touch. We’re both happily married, neither of us wants to break up our family. We’ve both got a lot to lose. We’re parents-in other words, nobody expects us to do anything secret or exciting ever again.’

He was right. My best friend, who was and still is single, was always telling me I was prim and proper, just because she occasionally saw me trying to persuade my children to eat broccoli, or changing the TV channel if someone was being hacked to pieces on the screen. She thought I’d become a boring mumsy type, and this idea enraged me. And I found this man-Mark Bretherick-physically attractive, especially when he promised that we could confine our adventurous activities, as he called them, to the daytime and early evening, so that I could still have my seven nights of unbroken sleep.

We didn’t share a room. We never spent a night in the same bed. By ten thirty each evening, we were back in our separate suites. But we ate together, had massages together, sat in the outdoor hot tub and the hammam together-and obviously we did the obvious.

One evening, in the restaurant, he started to cry. For no reason, it seemed. He burst out of there, embarrassed, and when he came back he asked me to forget it had happened. I worried he was starting to fall for me, having second thoughts about not keeping in touch once our week together was over, but he seemed all right again after that, so I stopped worrying.

However terrible it sounds, I didn’t feel guilty. I thought about a book I’d read as a teenager, Flowers for Algernon. I don’t remember who wrote it, but it’s about a retarded man who (I can’t remember how) suddenly becomes clever and fully aware. Perhaps he takes a drug of some kind, or someone experiments on him. Anyway, for a while he is bright enough to realise he was retarded and isn’t any longer. He feels as if a miracle has happened. He falls in love and starts to live a full, happy life. And then the effect of the drug or experiment starts to wear off, and he realises he will soon be retarded again, unable to think clearly-he will lose this brilliant new life that is so precious to him.

That’s how I felt, like that man, whatever his name was. I knew I only had a week, and I had to cram everything into it, all the things my life lacked-rest, adventure, being able to concentrate on myself, my own needs. More importantly, I felt I would be able to do everything I had to do more happily and more efficiently when I got home. I was certain my husband would never find out, and he hasn’t.

And then last night I saw the news. I saw a man who was supposed to be Mark Bretherick, and he wasn’t the same person. Maybe the man I met could only do the things he did-the things we both did-as somebody else, which would be understandable. But, whoever he was, he must have known the Bretherick family well because he knew so much about them-enough to convince me that he was one of them.

The story I’ve just told you might have nothing to do with the deaths of Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick. If it doesn’t, I apologise for wasting your time. But I can’t get it out of my head that the two things might be connected. Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick died several days ago, and my husband tells me it’s been on the news and in the papers every day. I didn’t know this-I don’t think I’ve sat down with a newspaper since my first child was born-but if it’s true then the man I met in the hotel last year is bound to have seen the reports. He will have guessed that by now I know he isn’t who he told me he was. I know this sounds totally crazy, but yesterday somebody pushed me into the road and I was very nearly run over by a bus. Today I was followed by a red Alfa Romeo, registration YF52 DNB.

I’m sorry I can’t tell you the name of the hotel, or my name or any more than I’ve told you. If by any chance you find out who I am during the course of your investigation, please, please contact me at work and do not let my husband find out about any of this. My marriage would be over if he did.


A low, rasping voice from behind me jolts me out of my seat. ‘I see dead people,’ it says. I make an undignified whimpering noise as I whirl round to see who is behind me.

It’s Owen Mellish, my least favourite colleague. My body sags as if it’s been punctured. I turn back to my screen and quickly click on ‘close file’, feeling my face heat up. Owen is laughing loudly and slapping his knee, pleased to have given me a fright. His short, paunchy body, squeezed into a tight green T-shirt and ripped denim shorts, is sprawled in a swivel chair which he rocks back and forth with one of his trunk-like hairy legs.

‘I see dead people,’ he says again, louder, hoping to attract laughter from nearby colleagues. I want to rip out his stupid goatee beard hair by hair.

No one responds.

Owen gets impatient. ‘Haven’t you all seen The Sixth Sense?’

We tell him that we have.

‘That woman that’s been on the news-Bretherick. The one who killed her sprog and herself-she’s a dead ringer for Sal, isn’t she? Spooky!’

I’ve never met anybody with a more irritating voice. Owen sounds, all the time, as if he badly needs to clear his throat. Every time he speaks you can hear the phlegm rattling inside him; it’s disgusting.

‘You will be dead soon if you don’t learn how to drive.’ He laughs. ‘Before, on the road. What was that all about?’ He is looking at his audience, not at me. He wants to belittle me in front of everybody. Like Pam Senior yesterday, yelling at me in the street. It must have been Owen who beeped his horn at me when I came to a standstill outside our building earlier.

‘Sorry,’ I mumble. ‘I’m tired, that’s all.’

‘It’s all right.’ Owen pats me on the back. ‘I’d be in a state too if I were you. You know, legend has it that if your doppelg"anger dies, you die too.’

‘Is that a fact?’ I grin at him to show that his words have had no effect. Actually, that’s not true. They’ve made me feel more robust. Owen could never be anything other than utterly prosaic. Hearing him drone on about doppelg"angers inspires me to pull myself together. So what if Geraldine Bretherick looked like me? Plenty of people look like plenty of other people and there’s nothing sinister about it.

I don’t dislike many people, but I do dislike Owen Mellish. He thinks he’s witty, but all his jokes are against other people. They’re jibes concealed behind a thin veil of humour. Once when I rang the office to say I was stuck in traffic and had been for nearly an hour, he laughed at me and said triumphantly, ‘I came in at sparrow’s fart and there was barely a car on the road.’

Owen is a sediment modeller, and unfortunately I have to work with him on almost every project I undertake. He creates computerised hydrodynamic models of sediment structures, and I can’t work without them. The programs he writes can apply any conceivable tidal or water change, natural or man-made, to sediment with any ratio of silt to sand to cohesive mud, any flock-size. It constantly annoys me to think that, without Owen and his computer, my work would be far less accurate.

At the moment he and I are working together on a feasibility study for Gilsenen Ltd, a large multinational that wants to build a cooling plant on the Culver Estuary. Our job is to predict future levels of contaminant concentrations and industrial enrichment, in the event of the plant being built. We have to deliver our final report in two weeks’ time, and Gilsenen has to pretend to care; it’s crucial to its image that it appears ecologically responsible. So I have to speak to Owen often, and hear his rattling voice, and I can’t get it out of my head that his wife had their first child only four months ago and two months later Owen left her for another woman. Now he takes his new girlfriend’s daughters to the park every weekend, and even has a photo of them on his desk at work, but he never mentions his own son, who was born with a serious heart defect. It’s a pity his computing expertise doesn’t extend to making a mathematical model that can assess the effect on a baby of being abandoned by his father.

‘ “To whom it may concern”.’ Owen’s looking at my screen, reading my words aloud. ‘What’s that? Making a will, are you? Very sensible. What happened to your face, anyway? Hubby been beating you again?’

I grab my mouse and try as quickly as I can to close the file I thought I’d already closed. Do I want to save the changes? In my flustered state, with Owen looking over my shoulder, I click on ‘no’ by mistake. ‘Shit!’ I open the file again, praying. Please, please…

There is no God. It’s gone. The draft of my salt-marsh article has been resurrected.

I push past Owen, out of the office and into the corridor. All that effort-gone in the time it took to press a button. Shit. Would I have sent it? I doubt any police force anywhere in the world has ever received a letter like it, but I don’t care-every word of it was true, and writing it made me feel better for as long as it lasted. I ought to go back to my computer and start from scratch but that’s a prospect I can’t face at the moment.

I try to focus on despising Owen but all I can think about, suddenly, is the red Alfa Romeo. Writing to the police was a way of pushing it aside. Now that my letter’s disappeared, I can’t avoid it any more.

I first noticed it on the way to nursery. It was behind me almost constantly, and all I could do was stare at it helplessly, worrying. Normally, car time is grooming and breakfast time for me, the only chance I get to brush my hair, put on my perfume, eat a banana. Today, I felt watched, and couldn’t bring myself to do any of those things.

I couldn’t see the driver of the Alfa Romeo because of the sun reflecting off his windscreen. Or hers. I thought of Pam but I knew this wasn’t her car. She drives a black Renault Clio. When I turned left into Bloxham Road, where the children’s nursery is, the Alfa Romeo went straight on. I was relieved, and even laughed at myself as I lifted Jake out of his car seat, while Zoe waited patiently on the pavement beside me holding her shiny pink handbag with pink and blue butterflies on it. My daughter is obsessed with handbags; she won’t leave the house without one. Inside today’s choice she’s got fifty-pence in ten- and twenty-pence pieces, a pink plastic car key and fob and a multicoloured plastic bead bracelet.

‘Nobody’s following us. Silly Mummy,’ I said.

‘Why, who did you think it was?’ Zoe asked, surveying the empty road, then scrunching up her face to examine me more closely.

‘No one,’ I said firmly. ‘There’s no one following us.’

‘But you thought there was, so who did you think it might have been?’ she persisted. I smiled at her, proud of her advanced reasoning skills, but said nothing.

I dropped the children off and, on my way out of the building, bumped into Anthea, the manager, who is in her mid-fifties but dresses like a teenager, in crop-tops and visible thongs. She gave me another dressing-down, twirling her long streaked hair round her index finger as she spoke. I’d been late to collect Zoe and Jake four days in the past fortnight, and I’d forgotten to bring in a new packet of nappies for Jake so the girls had had to use nursery spares when they changed him. Heinous crimes, both. I apologised, mentally added ‘Buy new nappies, try harder not to be late’ to my list, and ran back to the car, swearing under my breath. I had a lot to do at work today and didn’t have time for Anthea’s lectures. Why didn’t she just charge me for any spare nappies Jake used? Why didn’t she charge me extra if the staff had to stay longer on the days when I was late? I would happily have paid them double, or even quadruple, for that extra hour. I’d still only have had to write one cheque at the end of the month. I don’t care about spending money, but I get twitchy at the thought of losing even a second of valuable time.

On the way to the post office to post my anonymous letter to the police, I kept checking my rear-view mirror. Nothing. I’d got halfway to Silsford before I saw the red Alfa Romeo again. Same number plate. Sunlight bounced off the windscreen and I still couldn’t see the driver; a dark shape was all I could make out. I tasted bitter coffee in the back of my throat, mixed with bile.

I pulled over by the side of the road and watched the Alfa Romeo speed ahead of me and out of sight. It could be a coincidence, I told myself: I’m not the only person who lives in Spilling and works in Silsford.

I forced myself to calm down and started my car again. All the way to work I checked my mirrors every few seconds like a learner driver under the beady eye of her instructor. There was no sign of the Alfa Romeo, and by the time I got to Silsford I’d decided it was gone for good. Then, as I turned the corner to get to HS Silsford’s car park, I saw a red Alfa Romeo parked at the far end of the road, on the right. I gasped, my heartbeat racing to keep up with my brain. This could not be happening. I accelerated, but the Alfa started to move as I approached and was round the corner and away before I could catch a glimpse of the driver.

I braked hard, slamming my fist down on the steering wheel. The registration. I’d been so shaken up by the sight of the red car that I hadn’t checked the number plate. I sat perfectly still in the driver’s seat, unable to believe my own stupidity. It has to be the same one, I thought. How many people drive Alfas? A horn beeped loudly behind me. I realised I was in the middle of the road, blocking the traffic in both directions. I waved an apology to whoever was behind me-sodding Owen Mellish, as it turns out-and swerved left into HS Silsford’s underground car park.

The ‘HS’ in the company’s name stands for hydraulics solutions. We’re spread over the top five floors of a rectangular tower block that nevertheless manages to look short and fat. It’s all dark metal and mirrors on the outside, and beige and white on the inside, with square brown suede sofas, potted plants and little water sculptures in the plush reception area.

I work here two days a week, and for the Save Venice Foundation three days a week. Save Venice wanted someone from HS Silsford on secondment part-time for three years. Almost everybody in the office applied, tempted by the prospect of the all-expenses-paid trips to Venice. I can’t prove it but I’m sure Owen went for it and has never forgiven me for being chosen over him. Every day, I vow not to allow him to wind me up.

Not bothering with the deep breaths this time, I steel myself and march back to my desk. ‘Madam Snoot just phoned for you,’ Owen calls out when he sees me. ‘She wasn’t very happy when I told her you were off skiving somewhere, not at your desk.’

‘On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I don’t work for her,’ I snap.

‘Ooh, touchy.’ He grins. ‘I’d listen to your voicemail if I were you. I know you’re scared of her really.’

There are two messages from Natasha Prentice-Nash, or Madam Snoot as Owen calls her. She’s the chairman of the Save Venice Foundation and insists on that title rather than ‘chairperson’ because she claims that isn’t a word. Esther has also left two messages for me-at 7.40 and 7.55 this morning-which I delete and resolve to ignore. I listen to the rest: one from nursery, left at 8.10, one from Monk Barn Primary School at 8.15, one from Nick at 8.30, who says, ‘Oh, hi, it’s me. Nick. Um… Bye.’ He doesn’t tell me what he wants, or say that he will phone back. He doesn’t ask me to phone him.

After Nick’s comes a man’s deep, plummy voice that I don’t recognise. I picture plump cheeks, white teeth and a thick pink tongue above some sort of cravat. Not that I even know what a cravat is. ‘Hello, this is a message for, um, Sally. Sally Thorning.’ Whoever this man is, he doesn’t know me well enough to ring me at 8.35 on a Tuesday morning. ‘Hello, Sally, it’s, um, it’s Fergus here. Fergus Land.’ I frown, puzzled. Fergus Land? Who’s he? Then I remember: my next-door neighbour, the male half of open-topped-sports-car Fergus and Nancy. I smile to myself. His cheeks are plump. Good guess.

‘This is a bit odd,’ says Fergus’s recorded voice. ‘You may well have difficulty believing it, but I assure you it’s true.’

My mind freezes. I can’t cope with another odd thing, not today.

‘I’ve just this minute sat down with a library book, one I took out of Spilling Library last week. About the Tour de France. I’ve just bought a new mountain bike, you see.’

What does it have to do with me? I wonder.

‘Anyway, far-fetched as it sounds, I found Nick’s driver’s licence inside the book. You know, the little pink photocard one. He obviously borrowed it too, at some point-I know he’s a cycling aficionado-and perhaps he used the licence as a bookmark or something, but anyway… I’ve got it. I don’t want to drop it through your letterbox, since I know other people live in your building, but if you want to pop round later to collect it…’

I feel weak with relief, and decide to overlook Fergus’s dig about the inadequate size and situation of my home in comparison with his. Nick left his driver’s licence in a library book. It’s typical, but not sinister. I try not to be irritated by the image of Fergus at home with his feet up, reading.

I haven’t got the energy to speak to Natasha Prentice-Nash, so I phone Nick’s mobile. ‘Fergus next door has found your driving licence,’ I tell him.

‘Have I lost it?’

‘Yes. It was in a library book about the Tour de France.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ He sounds pleased. ‘I was using it as a bookmark. ’

‘You left a message,’ I say. ‘What did you want?’

‘Did I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, right, yeah. Nursery rang. They said you weren’t answering your phone.’

‘I might have missed one or two calls,’ I say vaguely. ‘Things have been a bit hectic today.’ I stopped answering my mobile after Esther’s four attempts to ring me on it between six and half past seven this morning. She knows something is up and is determined to find out what it is. ‘What did nursery want?’

‘Jake’s hurt his ear.’

‘What? I’ve only just dropped him off. Is it serious?’

My husband ponders this. ‘They didn’t say it was.’

‘Did they say it wasn’t?’

‘Well… no, but…’

‘What exactly happened?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘They must have said something!’

‘Nothing apart from what I’ve told you,’ says Nick. ‘They just said Jake hurt his ear, but he’s fine now.’

‘Well, if he’s fine, why did they bother ringing? He can’t be fine. I’d better call them.’

I cut Nick off and ring Anthea, who tells me that Jake is as jolly as ever. He scratched his ear, that’s all, cried a bit and cheered up soon afterwards.

‘We did notice that his fingernails need cutting,’ Anthea says in an apologetic tone, as if reluctant to interfere.

‘Whenever we cut them, he shrieks as if we’re putting his neck on the block for the guillotine,’ I tell her, knowing I sound defensive. ‘I hate doing that to him.’ Neck on the block for the guillotine? Did I really say that? Has Anthea even heard of a guillotine? Her idea of history is probably last year’s Big Brother.

‘Poor little thing,’ she says, and I feel guilty for being such a snob. When I was a teenager, any form of snobbery elicited from me a torrent of fierce indignation. When my mother dared to suggest that I ought not to go out with Wayne Moscrop, whose father was in prison, I followed her round the house for weeks, shouting, ‘Oh, right! So I suppose I can only date people whose dads aren’t in prison, is that it? Is that what you’re saying? So obviously if Nelson Mandela had a son, even if he was helping to lead the struggle against apartheid, you wouldn’t want me to go out with him either!’

If Zoe ever acquires a boyfriend who has any connection with a correctional facility, I will have to pay him to forget all about her and tactfully disappear. I wonder how much that might cost. If he’s noble and principled, like Nelson Mandela’s imaginary son, he might stand his ground however much money I offer him.

‘So… I don’t get it,’ I say to Anthea. ‘If Jake’s okay, why did you ring Nick? And leave a message for me?’

‘We have to notify parents of any physical injury, however small. That’s the policy.’

‘So you don’t need me to come and get Jake?’

‘No, no, he’s absolutely fine.’

‘Good.’ I tell Anthea about my October half-term dilemma and hint that I would be willing to buy her any number of diamond-studded thongs if she could possibly bend the rules and create a place for Zoe just for that week. She says she’ll see what she can do. ‘Thank you,’ I gush. ‘And… you’re really sure Jake’s okay?’

‘Honestly, it was just a small scratch. He hardly even cried. There’s a tiny pink mark on his ear, but you probably wouldn’t even notice it.’

Wearily, I thank her, end the call and ring Pam Senior. She’s not in, so I leave a message-a grovelling apology. I ask her to ring me back, hoping that as soon as I hear her voice I will know instantly that she didn’t try to kill me yesterday. Muttering, ‘She ought to be the one apologising to me,’ under my breath, I ring Monk Barn Primary. The secretary wants to know why I haven’t filled in a new pupil registration form and an emergency contact form for Zoe. I tell her I haven’t received any forms.

‘I gave them to your husband,’ she says. ‘When he brought Zoe in for the open evening.’

In June. Two months ago. I tell her to put new ones in the post and make sure the envelope is addressed to me. ‘I’ll get them back to you by the end of the week.’

Spend the week with me. That’s what he said, Mark Bretherick or whoever he was, after I told him how long I was staying, that first night in the bar. He was also staying for a week. This time it’s a week, he said. Business. But I didn’t hear him cancelling any meetings, and he certainly didn’t go to any. I assumed he’d decided to abandon work in favour of me, but surely there would have been the odd phone call… I saw his mobile phone in his room, but I didn’t see him use it, not once.

Oh, my God. I grip the edge of my desk with both hands. He changed rooms. From eleven to fifteen. He told me there was no hot water in his bathroom, but how likely is that in a three-hundred-pound-a-night hotel? I didn’t hear him talking to any of the hotel staff about it. One morning he just told me he’d changed. Upgraded. ‘I was in a “Classic” suite before,’ he said. ‘Now I’m in a “Romantic” one.’

What if he had only ended up at Seddon Hall because he’d followed me? Because I looked so much like Geraldine. And then, because it was short notice, he couldn’t get the same room for a whole week…

I can’t stand this any longer: not knowing anything, not doing anything. I turn off my computer, grab my bag and run out of the office.

As soon as I’m in my car with the doors locked, I ring Esther. ‘About time,’ she says. ‘I was just deciding not to be your friend any more. The only thing that might change my mind is if you tell me what’s going on. You know how nosey I am-’

‘Esther, shut up.’

‘What?’

‘Listen, this is important, okay? I will tell you, but not now. I’m about to go to a place called Corn Mill House, to speak to somebody called Mark Bretherick.’

‘The one on the news, whose wife and daughter died?’

‘Yes. I’m sure I’ll be fine, but if by any chance I don’t phone you within two hours to say I’m out of there and safe, phone the police, okay?’

‘Not okay. Sal, what the fucking hell is going on? If you think you can fob me off with-’

‘I promise I’ll explain everything later. Just, please, please, do this one thing for me.’

‘Has this got anything to do with Pam Senior?’

‘No. Maybe. I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Esther, you mustn’t say anything about this to Nick. Swear you won’t.’

‘Ring me in two hours or I’m calling the police,’ she says as if it was her idea. ‘And if you can’t explain or go into detail then, I’ll push you under a bus. All right?’

‘You’re a star.’

I drop my phone on the passenger seat and head for Corn Mill House.

Police Exhibit Ref: VN8723

Case Ref: VN87

OIC: Sergeant Samuel Kombothekra


GERALDINE BRETHERICK’S DIARY, EXTRACT 2 OF 9 (taken from hard disk of Toshiba laptop computer at Corn Mill House, Castle Park, Spilling, RY29 0LE)


20 April 2006, 10 p.m.


I don’t think I’m going to be able to be friends with Cordy for much longer. Which is a shame, as she is one of the few people I like. She phoned me a couple of hours ago and told me she’s fallen in love with another man, someone with whom she has spent a total of two weekends. She says she knows it’s crazy but she’s only got one life and she wants to be with him. Dermot knows about it, apparently, and is devastated. I don’t blame him, I told her. Last year she insisted he have a vasectomy. He wasn’t keen but he did it for Cordy’s sake, so that she wouldn’t have to keep taking the pill.

She said she couldn’t stay with Dermot just because he’d had ‘the snip’. ‘I’m not that self-sacrificing,’ she said. ‘Would you be?’

I didn’t know what to say. I was thinking, Yes, I must be. For the past five years I have felt as if I’m trapped in a small chamber inside a submarine that’s lost its oxygen supply, and I’ve done nothing about it. I continue to do nothing about it. This evening I was in the kitchen chopping chorizo for supper, and Lucy came up behind me, wrapped her arms round my legs and started to sing a song she’d learned at school. Loudly. I felt that fluttery panic in my chest again, as if I’m a butterfly struggling to escape from a thick, closed fist. That’s how I always feel when Lucy throws her arms round me unexpectedly. I said, ‘Hello, darling, that’s a nice cuddle,’ as the old familiar scream started up in my head: no space, no calm, no choices, and this is going to last for ever…

Eventually I told Cordy that, yes, in her position I would be self-sacrificing and stay. Her response was an anguished groan. I felt sorry for her, and was about to take back my words-how did I know what I would do?-when she said, ‘I don’t think I can stay. But… only seeing Oonagh at weekends, it’s going to break my heart.’

Mine iced over as soon as I heard these words. ‘You mean… if you left you wouldn’t take Oonagh with you?’ I asked, trying to sound casual. And then it all came out: the ‘masterplan’. Cordy said that if she leaves Dermot she will let him keep Oonagh. ‘I couldn’t live with myself if I took her away from him,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s not as if he can have more kids, is it? And it’s my fault. I’m the one who’s wrecking the marriage.’ She started crying then.

Cordy is not stupid. I’m sure she will succeed in fooling everybody apart from me. Her leaving-when it happens, as it undoubtedly will-will have nothing to do with this new man and everything to do with her being desperate to shake off her child, to be free again. People talk about being ‘tied down’ in the context of marriage, or living with somebody, but that’s rubbish. Before we had Lucy, Mark and I were entirely free.

The ingenious part is that no one will condemn Cordy for abandoning Oonagh. She will pretend she’s being self-sacrificing, putting Dermot’s needs before her own, heart-broken to be separated from her precious daughter.

‘I’m sure Dermot would still let me see Oonagh a lot,’ she sobbed. ‘She can stay with me every weekend, and in the holidays. Maybe we could even do fifty-fifty, and Oonagh could have two homes.’

‘A lot of men wouldn’t want to be the main one to look after a child,’ I told her, thinking of Mark, who would be hopeless. I don’t think he’s ever prepared a meal for Lucy. Or for anyone, come to think of it. ‘Are you sure Dermot does? Maybe he’d prefer Oonagh to live with you as long as he could have access whenever he wanted.’

Cordy said, ‘No, Dermot’s not like that. He’s a brilliant father. He’s done everything, right from the start. We’ve shared all the childcare, everything. I know he’d want Oonagh to stay with him.’

‘Right,’ I said, feeling my chest fill with white-hot envy. That was when I knew I wouldn’t be able to stand it. If Cordy escapes and starts a whole new life, if she manages to discard Oonagh and look like a saintly martyr in the process, I won’t ever be able to speak to her again.


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