‘But we have waited and waited and nothing much has come our way,’ he said petulantly. ‘How am I going to disentangle myself from this? I’ve met her friends now. The more people I meet, the more likely it is that we’ll get caught out.’
‘Caught out how?’
‘There are a million ways. Someone only has to find a hole in my backstory.’
I shot him a quick glance. Wary. ‘Did you slip up?’
He tutted, turned away from me. ‘No, but I might at some point. This is complex, you know. And it’s obvious her best mate doesn’t like me.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’ He is generally very charming. Women like him. I think we’ve established that much.
‘She cross-examined me like she’s some sort of MI5 agent. She’s jealous of me, I think. Thinks I’m a threat to her relationship with Emma.’
‘Good to know. We might use that.’
‘What if someone recognises me from our real life?’
‘That’s not going to happen. Her friends live in Surrey, we stay in Hampshire or London. They’re older than we are, they have kids and stuff. You don’t mix in the same circles.’
‘She lives here in Hampshire.’
‘She doesn’t have any friends around here. She keeps herself to herself.’ She’s a snob. None of us are good enough for her.
‘Everyone is only a few degrees of separation from everyone else in the end. Someone somewhere might be connected.’ He shook his head slowly and added, ‘Plus, I think she really likes me. I don’t want to hurt her.’
His voice was quiet. There were no big actory gestures. I kept my face as still as possible. It was important not to react even though he had just told me he liked her. That he cared for her. Because that was exactly what he had said, under the guise of saying the feelings were hers. What was he thinking? She’s a decade older than he is. She’s obsessed with her work, therefore de facto boring! What can he possibly like about her? True, she has a great body. But she works at it, she must at her age. I’ve watched her run. She really puts herself through it every morning, sweating and panting and clearly aching. I have a great body and I don’t have to do much to keep mine in shape other than smoke and drink a lot of sugar-free Red Bull. She looks a little like me, actually. I should have perhaps factored that in. Who knew that Mattie had a type? We’re both brunettes, although I wear my hair much longer, and we’re both brown-eyed. Slim, tall. Is that going to be a problem?
‘I’m just going to have to finish the relationship sharpish and walk away,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s the sensible thing to do.’ A shadow flashed through his eyes. Regret? I hoped he was only regretting the fact that if he did walk away, he’d have to say goodbye to the oyster and champagne lifestyle he’d been enjoying. ‘I’ll probably have to ghost her. Right?’
He always thinks I have the answers; luckily for him, I always do. We sat in a heavy silence. The clock was ticking, the fridge was humming, birds outside were tweeting, oblivious to the misery, the need and despair unfolding between us. A dangerous, chaotic combination. Necessity is the mother of invention and desperation is necessity’s older, bossier, more insistent sibling. Finally I muttered, ‘I suppose we could …’ I broke off. ‘No, that’s mad.’
‘What, what?’ He reached for a lifeline that he was sure I’d supply. A way out. A solution.
‘No, honestly, forget it. It’s a stupid idea.’
‘Becky, we’re desperate at this point, more desperate than we’ve ever been. Any idea at all must be considered.’
So with apparent reluctance, I told him the first part of my real plan. The petty fraud, theft, blackmail had never been that. She is worth millions. Literally millions. There is so much to play for. There is everything. ‘You could marry her.’
He laughed, but then he saw I was stony-faced. ‘What? Are you crazy?’
It was not the first time I’d been asked this, by him and others. It is a fairly regular charge to be dropped at my door, actually. It always makes me laugh. People say it like it’s a bad thing. They’d be shocked if I said yes. If I told them that it is exciting to be crazily ambitious, crazily untethered, crazily immoral. Look, if believing in seizing opportunity with both hands is crazy, then yes, I am crazy. I feel sorry for people who are not. It’s so much more fun, so much bigger, such a souped-up, vibrant way to live.
I smiled and said encouragingly, ‘Think about it, she’s mad about you. She’s not getting any younger. If you proposed, all her Christmases would have come at once. She’d say yes in a heartbeat. I’m sure of it.’
‘You think.’ I could see that he liked the idea of her accepting his proposal; his pride had taken a beating these past few years as I’d refused to capitulate to his many offers. Then his face collapsed and he added woefully, ‘But marriage is for life.’ Now I was the one laughing. What planet did he live on? He looked angry, so I stopped laughing. He clarified. ‘I mean, it’s not an easy thing to get out of once you’re in it. I’d need to be married to her for years to walk away with any proper cash.’
‘Well, maybe one or two years, yes. But it would fly by, and you like her company well enough, don’t you? It’s not actual torture. It’s just like a prolonged acting job. It’s like being on a soap.’
‘And you’d be OK with me marrying someone else? Marrying her?’
I had to handle this with kid gloves, obviously. I didn’t want to appear careless. I’m not careless. It has been awful knowing they’re together. I’ve had to shove it out of my mind again and again, put it in a box, lock the box, throw away the key, but there is a bigger picture here. ‘It wouldn’t be ideal, but I’d get used to it. I’d know it’s fake. It is only for a short time. We’ve waited years to marry; a couple more wouldn’t hurt us. It wouldn’t change anything between us.’
‘Wouldn’t it?’
‘No, my love, it wouldn’t.’ I reached for his hand and squeezed it. ‘Plus, she works away often enough, and whenever she’s away from home, I would come to you. We’d still be together.’ I put my hands on his face, stared into his eyes. ‘We are above petty jealousy. We are better than that. Stronger than that. I think you’d come away with at least two million. That’s a fraction of her wealth, but a fortune to us. We could pay off the mortgage and finish the refurbishment of the Old Schoolhouse. We’d be set for life.’
‘How do you know I’d get that much?’ I could see he was interested.
I’d done my research. ‘I’m guessing, but I bet you could. I was thinking maybe after two years you could tell her you want babies. That you’re sorry, heartbroken in fact; you don’t want to have to choose, but it’s an undeniable instinct. She’d be forty-nine then, chances of her conceiving are minuscule, even if she was keen to try. I’d bank on the fact she loves you enough to grant you a divorce so you could find someone you could have children with.’ She’s just the sort to do the full-on martyr thing, choosing to live alone with her self-loathing rather than with a man she felt she’d trapped.
He looked uncomfortable. ‘I suppose. But two years. It’s a long time.’
‘Well, the only thing that could speed up the process is if you divorce her. If she was found at fault.’
‘She’s not the type to have an affair.’
‘No, she isn’t,’ I said carefully. ‘But you could divorce her on grounds of her unreasonable behaviour.’
He shook his head. ‘That won’t work. She’s pretty much the most reasonable person I’ve ever met.’
‘She likes a drink, doesn’t she?’
‘No more than most.’
And this was it. ‘That might be true, but we can make it look differently.’ I carefully started telling him the details of my plan, gauging how much he might be prepared to hear. ‘Now that I have access to her computer, I could change more things in her diary so she misses important events and appointments. People will start to talk about her unreliability and look for reasons behind it.’ People can be depended upon for that – thinking the worst, gossiping. It’s a rotten fact of life. ‘I could move things around the house so she believes she’s being forgetful.’ I had already been doing this. I wanted her to doubt herself. She’s obsessed with being in control; it will be interesting to watch what happens when that slides. ‘You can start dropping hints to her friends and colleagues that she’s drinking a little too much, that you’re worried about her.’
‘Gaslight her, you mean?’ I could hear the confusion and disapproval in his voice, perhaps with an undertone of disgust. Mattie generally plays things very straight. It isn’t that he’s especially moral, it’s more that he’s too lazy for complications.
