The Wife's Revenge Read online

  The Wife’s Revenge

  Deirdre Palmer

  Copyright © 2019 by Deirdre Palmer

  Artwork: Adobe Stock © zdenek kintr

  Design: soqoqo

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat Books except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are used fictitiously.

  First Dark edition, darkstroke, Crooked Cat Books. 2019

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  For my brave, lovely cousin,

  Pat Corby.

  Acknowledgements

  Once again, thank you to my writerly friends for their generosity in sharing their knowledge and experience, for never being too busy to chat, and for their general all-round fabulousness.

  Certain people deserve a special mention: Kate Harrison, who came up with the title of this book after I realised my first attempt simply would not do; Jo Bartlett and Susan Hope for gamely reading the first draft and commenting so usefully, and kindly!

  A big thank you to my publishers Laurence and Steph Patterson for being so enthusiastic about my writing and taking me on yet again, this time to be part of Crooked Cat’s exciting new imprint, darkstroke. I hope I can live up to your faith in me.

  Thanks also to my editor, Christine Macpherson, for her insightful comments and suggestions, all of which make the book the best it can be.

  About the Author

  Deirdre lives in Brighton, a seaside city on the south coast of England. After a career in public sector administration, most recently at Brighton University, she decided it was time to stop dreaming about being a writer and do something about it.

  Whilst writing her first novel, subsequently published by Crooked Cat, she took a creative writing course at Brighton University, and entered writing competitions with some success, achieving fourth place, in two different years, in the Mail on Sunday novel competition.

  ‘The Wife’s Revenge’ is the fifth novel published under her own name, and her first in the psychological suspense genre. Deirdre also publishes shorter fiction under the name Zara Thorne.

  Find out more or get in touch here:

  http://deirdrepalmer.com/

  https://www.facebook.com/deirdre.palmer.735

  https://twitter.com/DLPalmer_Writer

  The Wife’s Revenge

  Prologue

  October 2015

  If this was a film or television drama, this is the moment when there would be a blood-freezing scream, or an air-splitting yell. At the very least, a short, jagged cry. The sound, whichever form it takes, would collide with the rockface and fling its echo around the valley.

  But there is no echo, because there is no sound.

  Mildly surprised by this silent departure – her voice had split the skies only moments before – I move closer to the bitten-off edge and peer down into the inky chasm of the chalk pit. Tree-tops shimmy in the darkness, a branch pops. Then all is still, the silence complete.

  I spend a few minutes standing on the cliff edge, gazing out. It’s fully dark now, the horizon mashed into invisibility. The lights of a plane flash white as it passes overhead, heading into Gatwick, reminding me of summer and holidays. We should go somewhere next year. Portugal, perhaps. Or Italy. We always said we’d go back there one day.

  Turning away from the rising shelf of turf, I cut across the grass, through the scrub of gorse and walk back down the path. On the cinder patch that serves as a car park, there are two cars: mine, Maria’s. Hers has one of those scented things dangling above the windscreen. I can see its bottle-shaped silhouette.

  I never doubted she’d come tonight, that she wouldn’t be able to resist. Her car was already here when I arrived, and I found her standing on the crest of the clifftop. Her back was to me as she waited, and I held back for a moment, watching, enjoying the delay. Then, when she turned and saw me, the look on her face was almost reward enough.

  It didn’t have to end like that. Had she seen sense, accepted who was in charge here and that it wasn’t her – and never had been – there might have been a different outcome.

  But there, it’s done now.

  I get into my car and start the engine. At the bottom of the hill where the track meets the main road, I don’t pull out immediately. I’m tempted to take the left-hand turn onto the road which winds around the foot of the hill and passes the floor of the chalk pit, but with the darkness and thickness of the undergrowth, I doubt there’d be anything to see. And I’m not sure I want to. Besides, it’s well out of my way and I need to be home. I said I wouldn’t be long.

  I turn right and head back towards the village, filling the silence in the car with a phone-in programme on Radio Sussex.

  One

  May 2018

  FRAN

  Our front door swings back violently, clunking against the coat stand and pitching me into the hallway, cartoon-style. In my hurry to be indoors I must have leant too heavily on it as I put the key in the lock. Righting myself, I paste on a send-up grin in case anyone’s watching, but the hallway is empty and nobody comes out to see what the noise was.

  I take a few moments to gather myself. My face in the mirror looks heated from the warmth of the day, but otherwise normal. I often take the short cut home, leaving the vets’ practice where I’m a receptionist by the back way and following the public footpath. It zig-zags between the houses behind the high street, then cuts across the point of the V-shaped woods, emerging conveniently at the end of our road, Woodside Villas, which is a dead-end to traffic. The footpath is well used by the locals; even in winter when the woods are dark, I have never felt unsafe.

  Different today. A strapping, gum-chewing teenage lad walking an incongruously tiny dog swaggered towards me on the path through the woods – he lives in our road. He gave me a nod as he passed. I saw no-one else, but sensed a pressure from behind, as if somebody was on my heels and wanting to pass in a hurry. When I glanced round there was nobody, but my pace quickened of its own accord. After what happened earlier today, it’s not surprising that my imagination pitched into overdrive, and I’m glad to be home.

  For once, the girls are all in the same place at the same time, lined up on the living room sofa in front of a favourite film on DVD; Kitty and Hazel elbow-to-elbow, Caitlin a studious nine inches away from Hazel, with Miss T, our tortoiseshell-and-white cat, doing duty as a furry barrier between them.

  A few more minutes’ respite in mind, I sidle past to the kitchen-diner and lump the bag of shopping I picked up at lunchtime onto the table littered with abandoned homework and jam-smeared plates. The laptop is open on the counter-top, its face stamped with fingerprints.

  ‘Mum? Here!’

  Obediently I trot back to the living room. No use asking if Kitty could not have dragged herself up and come to me.

  ‘You missed Nan. She Skyped.’ Her eyes remain glued to the TV screen.

  ‘Did she? But it’s five o’clock in the morning in New Zealand. Are they okay? Has something happened?’

  ‘Yes,’ Caitlin says, looking up at me. ‘The birds were singing so loudly in the garden they woke her up.’

  ‘That’s not what Mum means.’ Kitty lifts her eyes theatrically. ‘She means, has anything bad happened.’

  Caitlin removes her glasses, polishes them with the hem of her school dress and puts them on again. ‘That isn’t what
Mum said. She said has something happened and it has.’

  ‘Birds don’t count as something happening,’ Kitty says.

  Hazel looks from one to the other of her sisters. ‘Caitlin knows what she means, and we know what Mum means. End of. I am trying to watch this film.’

  These roundabout conversations are commonplace when Caitlin’s involved. They’ve become so much a part of the way this family works it’s pointless trying not to have them.

  ‘Nan Skyped for a chat then. That’s nice.’ I feel disappointed that I missed my mother’s call. ‘Did you give her all your news?’

  ‘We would have done if there was any,’ Kitty says.

  ‘The everyday stuff, I mean. Nan likes to know how you’re all getting on at school and what you’ve been up to.’

  ‘I showed her my chart.’ Caitlin’s eyes are bright behind their lenses. ‘It tells me what sweets I ate on each day going right back to Christmas. Every kind of sweet has got a different coloured square. There’s a key on the back.’

  ‘You eat too many sweets. You don’t need a chart to tell you that. It’s pointless,’ Hazel says.

  Caitlin pouts. ‘It’s not pointless. Nan thought it was very organised of me.’

  ‘Nan would say that because she’s Nan.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense…’

  Kitty springs up from the sofa. ‘That’s it. I’m gone.’ At fifteen, there’s only so much verbal sparring she can take from twelve and nine-year-old sisters, even if she was the one to kick it off in the first place. ‘Unless you need me to help with the dinner, Mum?’

  ‘No thanks, love. I’ll do it. Where’s Dad, by the way?’

  Kitty follows me to the kitchen, slip-slapping along the hallway in her scuffed, half-on, half-off, ballerinas. ‘He went back out. He’s gone to measure up somebody for a staircase or something. He said he won’t be long.’

  Hector is a carpenter, bespoke; it’s his own business. He has a workshop ten miles from our village. Working for himself means he’s fairly flexible and, traffic allowing, can get home easily enough if need be. With me working just along the road, it means at least one of us is on hand to deal with any family crisis. It needs to be that way, mainly because of Caitlin. Hector picked Caitlin up from school today. That’s usually my job, as I normally leave work around two-thirty, but today I stayed on as Evelyn, who shared my shift, went to the dentist.

  Kitty is about to leave the kitchen when she stops and turns in the doorway.

  ‘Tessa rang for you. I asked if there was a message, but she said no, she’d ring back later.’

  The bottle of orange juice I’d unpacked almost slips from my grasp.

  ‘Tessa Grammaticus?’

  ‘Is there another one?’ Kitty’s gone.

  ‘You don’t like Tessa, do you?’ Hector says, as we’re getting ready for bed.

  I take some clean pyjamas out of the drawer. ‘That’s a bit random, isn’t it? Why do you say that?’

  If Hector knew how my heart rises to my throat every time Tessa’s name is mentioned, even two years on, he might be asking a different question.

  ‘You didn’t seem keen to get involved with her project.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean I don’t like her.’

  Hector flings back the duvet and gets into bed. ‘No, but it was more the cagey way you spoke to her.’

  ‘Cagey.’

  ‘Yep.’ Hector thumbs his Bernard Cornwell until the till receipt he uses as a bookmark reveals itself.

  ‘I was surprised she asked me, that was all.’

  A half-truth. Quarter, even.

  Setting aside the link between us of which, fortunately, Tessa is entirely ignorant, she and I would never be close friends. With some people, you just know, don’t you? Naturally, we come into contact through her daughter, Zoe, being friends with Hazel, and the various school and village activities, but that’s as far as it goes.

  Tessa has a measured way of speaking, as if she’s rehearsed what she has to say beforehand, which makes me slightly fearful of what I say in reply in case I get it wrong. Grace knew exactly what I meant when I mentioned it to her. Knowing it’s not just me makes my constant wariness of Tessa slightly less exhausting.

  As far as Tessa’s social circle is concerned, I sit somewhere on the outer perimeter, so, yes, I was surprised that she’d phoned. Most of my information from that quarter arrives second or even third-hand. Hazel and Zoe make their own social arrangements, checking in with one or other parent that whatever they want to do is okay, and cadging lifts if necessary. I was therefore not expecting Tessa’s call to be about anything of that nature, and I’d been on pins all evening wondering if she would phone back and, if so, what for. The fear never leaves me. It’s part of who I am, and no more than I deserve.

  She rang just after nine, sounding as if she’d raced up two flights of stairs. Her normal voice slides like chilled cream from a spoon, and again I felt the barbs of anxiety at this small difference.

  ‘It’s about my coffee morning in aid of the hospice. I’m short of volunteers and I wondered if you would join my executive team?’

  Only Tessa could label a group of mostly willing volunteers as her executive team. It was a good job she couldn’t see my smirk, which arose from relief as much as mild amusement. But the charity events she runs always raise buckets of money for whatever cause is flavour of the month, and I can’t help but admire her flair and organisational skills. Tessa, of course, has plenty of time for these things; she stopped work when they moved to Oakheart – whatever sort of work it was. Ben never said, and I never asked him. The less I knew about Tessa, the better.

  ‘Me?’ I wondered for a second whether she’d meant to ring me or whether she’d mixed up the numbers.

  ‘Yes. It would be good to have you on board, Fran.’

  I must have agreed to help, despite my apparently cagey tone, because Tessa went on to give me details of the ‘inaugural meeting’ of her team.

  After the call, needing something to do with my hands, I texted Grace: Did Tessa contact you?

  Her reply flew back: God, yes. More bloody good causes. Wasn’t fast enough to think up an excuse.

  That made me feel better, knowing I hadn’t been singled out. Tessa’s executive team will consist of the usual suspects and I’ll be corralled like a nervous pony.

  It’s not until I’ve made a last check on the girls, the lights are out, and Hector’s breathing slows in sleep, that my thoughts reel back to this morning at work. I’d been chatting to the worried elderly owner of an equally elderly spaniel in the full waiting room and hadn’t noticed a delivery arriving at the reception desk. A curvy basket, handle as big as a skipping rope, spilling with pink roses and white gypsophila, was sitting in front of my keyboard.

  ‘Somebody’s popular.’ Evelyn lowered her glasses on their pearl-studded chain and shone a meaningful smile at me.

  ‘Yes, right. Who are they really for? Rowena?’

  Apart from the occasional locum, Rowena is our only female vet, and therefore the most likely recipient. I picked up the basket by its handle and plonked it on the table behind me. Grateful animal-owners often leave presents for the vets. Chocolates and tins of biscuits are favourite, which we don’t mind at all, as most of them end up behind reception. Flowers are taking things a bit far, in my opinion.

  ‘Nope. The florists’ girl definitely had your name on her clipboard.’

  I swung round on my chair and frowned at the flowers. ‘I can’t see a card.’

  ‘Let me look.’ Evelyn wheeled her own chair across the space, picked up the basket by the handle, and rotated it full circle. ‘You’re right. No card. I expect whoever sent them forgot to put one in, or the girl managed to lose it on the way.’ Evelyn lifted her shoulders and grinned. ‘Hubby getting all romantic, is he?’

  I laughed at that. Hector is loving and considerate, but expensive romantic gestures are not his style. ‘Shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘Well, then.
’ Evelyn wheeled herself backwards to her computer and resumed work on the invoices, interest in my mystery gift forgotten.

  Envisaging the shrill reaction of three daughters and Hector’s placid grin, I left the basket of flowers at the surgery, wedged on the narrow sill of the high window behind reception.

  The flowers are not the first anonymous gift I’ve received, although the previous one was hellishly sinister in its nature. A month or so ago, there was a cake – a single red velvet cupcake topped with soft white icing and sparkly with sprinkles. The discreet white box – no shop name – had found its way onto the reception desk when I came back from lunch. It had my name in pencil written in tight little letters on the lid.

  I was alone at the time and Evelyn said nothing later, so presumably she hadn’t noticed its arrival. It seemed odd, but not so odd as to stretch my brain cells to any great extent. We were busy, with nearly every chair in the waiting room occupied, and it was only when I was about to go home that I remembered the cake, which I’d transferred to the shelf below the counter. I popped it in my bag and took it home, feeling somewhat as if I’d taken possession of stolen goods. But it had my name on it, so clearly it wasn’t meant for sharing.

  Arriving home, I had twenty minutes spare before I needed to leave to collect Caitlin – just time for a cup of tea, and the cake. The first few bites set my taste buds alight. Expensive chocolate, meltingly soft, sweet sponge – delicious. Then, with half the cake left, my tongue encountered pure fire.

  I spat the mouthful out in the sink, but my lips, the inside of my mouth, and back of my throat were already tainted with the unmistakable searing heat of chilli. As my throat closed around a fire-pit of pain, I reached for a glass and filled it with water before I remembered that milk was required, not water. I went to the fridge, poured myself half a glass of ice-cold milk and downed it in one. I sat at the table until I’d recovered, then threw the rest of the cake in the rubbish bin, but not before I’d examined it. I found a miniscule piece of red matter that could have been chilli, although the cake being red in colour, I couldn’t be sure.