The Trapped Wife: An absolutely gripping psychological thriller with a mind-blowing twist Read online

  ‘Oh, Jen, I’m sorry.’

  Jen shrugs. ‘You weren’t to know. The kit cost me a fortune, but apparently I’d got the wrong stuff, not the brand he liked. He went on and on about it, making me feel terrible.’ She shakes her head and grabs one of the black sacks, virtually slinging it against the back wall so it lands near the ski equipment.

  ‘Couldn’t you have returned it for a refund?’ Rhonda asks, handing Jen some more bags.

  ‘I suppose, but it’s not exactly been a priority.’ Jen’s expression immediately shows remorse for her sharp tone. ‘He must have hired kit out there. Or maybe… maybe he borrowed some of her kit.’

  And it’s when Rhonda sees the tears welling in Jen’s eyes again that she decides to change the subject.

  Sixteen

  Jen

  ‘It’s like Lenny’s been speaking to me, Doctor,’ Elsie says, patting the photograph album resting on her lap. She squints through milky eyes. ‘Not in a ghostly way, I’m not into all that claptrap,’ she adds in her matter-of-fact voice. ‘But I can’t bear it. I’ve not been able to look at these pictures for years, but something drove me to get them out the other day. It’s like I heard his little voice, even though he was barely old enough to talk when he died.’

  This is as emotional as I’ve ever seen Elsie. Usually, she doesn’t engage when it comes to her feelings, the huge guilt she harbours for what happened to her grandson having eaten away at her over the years.

  ‘There’s no harm in remembering the good times,’ I say, wondering if that’s more for my own benefit than Elsie’s.

  ‘Aye,’ she replies, stroking a photo of the little boy with her finger. ‘There weren’t time for many memories. None of us ever recovered from it. Least of all Sharon.’

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear that, Elsie. But it wasn’t your fault. The monster who did this to little Lenny took advantage of a vulnerable child. And you were a good nan, just as Sharon was a good mum. It could have happened to anyone.’

  I can’t imagine how hard it has been for her over the years – which is why she’s ended up in this state, I think, glancing around her unkempt living room. The place is a reflection of her mind. There’s more dog mess in the corner of the room, I notice, making a mental note to clean it up before I go.

  ‘Easy for you to say that,’ Elsie says, her face crumpled. ‘But I should have had a proper fence put up, and I shouldn’t have gone inside to answer the phone. I left Lenny playing outside.’ She waves a hand towards her back garden. ‘I’ll never forgive myself, so why should Sharon? She hasn’t contacted me in years. I used to tell myself it’s because she couldn’t face coming back here, to where it happened, but it’s not that at all. It’s because she hates me. I let her down. I let Lenny down.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s time to shift the blame off yourself and onto the person who did it. He was caught, he was punished. A life sentence.’

  At the time, the case was all over the news for weeks and, before the trial, the murderer’s identity was revealed because it was deemed in the public interest. The killer was a boy. A child – the same age as me and my friends – his blank face staring out from the front page of every newspaper. We talked about it at school as we tried to make sense of what had happened, how ‘one of us’ could do such a thing. It was a long time before we were able to move on, with special assemblies given by the head teacher, counselling offered, pupils off sick for no apparent reason.

  That summer, Lenny’s death had thrown an ugly spotlight on the fragility of our superficial lives. It rocked our community, stealing many other childhoods too – parents not allowing their kids out to play, children too traumatised because they knew of the killer or had sat next to him at school – our school – or glared at him, ridiculed him, tormented him.

  We were all questioned by the police – the teachers, too. They focused on those in his class, as well as anyone who knew him – however superficially – with specially trained officers determined to eke out any snippet of information from our young minds. It seemed to go on forever. But we all sat there either crying quietly or shaking our heads, kicking our feet against the chair with no one able to provide answers.

  We wondered if it was catching, like a disease, something in the local water. I remember feeling too terrified to leave the house for months, partly because I was frightened someone would be lying in wait, but also because in some way we all felt guilty, me and my friends. That we hadn’t known there was evil amongst us. We wondered if it was our fault, if we had made that little boy into the monster he was.

  ‘We’re the ones left with the real life sentence,’ Elsie says, her expression turning sour. ‘Me and my daughter.’ She shakes her head slowly and her top lip twitches. Her hands shake as they clutch the album.

  Elsie is right. While she has been left suffering – will always suffer – the boy who killed Lenny, as a juvenile, was detained in custody for years until he gradually faded from people’s minds. Though was never quite forgotten. After a decade of rehabilitation, word was that he was released and given a new identity, relocated to a different area. But his clean slate didn’t last long when it was reported that he had reoffended – indecent exposure, car theft, pictures of children found on his computer and worse – and he was sent back to prison. No one really knows what happened to him after that, though his identity will always be protected. Evil seeping amongst the innocent yet again.

  ‘He was beautiful. Look.’ Elsie thrusts the album towards me. A little blond boy wearing shorts and a stripy T-shirt grins out of one of the photographs. ‘I never watched the news back then. I didn’t want to know anything about the person who took my grandson – what his life was like, if he’d had troubles at home. I didn’t want to be able to forgive him, for there to be a reason for what he did. I didn’t want him living in my head.’

  ‘Lenny was beautiful indeed,’ I reply, knowing she has no one else to talk to. His pudding-bowl cut frames his chubby, angelic face. In another picture, he’s naked apart from his underpants, standing ankle-deep in an inflatable paddling pool in his grandmother’s garden. The same garden from which he was snatched only a few months later, trotting happily off to the reservoir with the temptation of sweets. It was nearly a week later when police divers found Lenny, swollen and pale, in the water.

  ‘What kind of mother raises a boy capable of killing a toddler, Doctor?’ she asks. ‘What woman doesn’t notice that her thirteen-year-old son has blood on his hands?’

  ‘Elsie,’ I say, taking her hand gently. The old woman is trembling, her leg twitching beneath her dark-blue skirt as she drums her slippered foot on the carpet. ‘Let’s focus on some positives, shall we? I have some good news. The care agency are able to send someone three times a week to help you. They’ll provide assistance with bathing, cleaning, cooking and shopping. And it’ll be company, too. How does that sound?’

  Elsie stares at me, though it’s as if she’s looking straight through me to another place, another time. ‘How does it sound?’ she whispers eventually. ‘It sounds as though you’re sticking your nose in again, Doctor. That’s how it sounds to me.’

  It’s dark when I turn off the lane leading out of Harbrooke and head down my drive. Kieran is staying over at Oscar’s house tonight for a much-needed gaming session with his mates, and in the morning he’s going straight from there to Rhonda’s place to begin the extra study sessions with Caitlin. It’s not as if Caitlin needs them, but Rhonda was correct in her assumption about Kieran jumping at the chance to spend time with her daughter. And if it helps get him back on track for his GCSEs this summer, then I’m all for it. I’m not sure how I’d have got through these last few weeks without Rhonda.

  Instinctively, I jam on the brakes when I see an unfamiliar car parked in front of the garage – a boxy, black Mercedes. I stare at it for a moment before driving into the wide turning area, my headlights arcing over the red brick of the barn. Then the driver’s door opens and a man gets out.

  ‘O
h Christ, what the hell does he want?’ I say under my breath. I yank on the handbrake. This is all I need on a Friday evening – especially when I’d planned on sorting through Jeremy’s study while I was alone for the night. Once that job is taken care of, I’m hoping it’ll be one less thing weighing on my mind.

  ‘Jennifer,’ Scott says cheerfully, opening the back door of his car and pulling out a holdall bag. ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling round like this. I should have phoned, but I don’t have your number yet.’

  I take a couple of paces across the gravel then stop, my eyes flicking from the bag then up to his face, then back to the bag again. ‘Scott,’ I say as politely as I can manage. ‘To be honest, it’s not a great time. I thought I’d made it clear the other night that it’s best we don’t see each other again.’

  ‘Must have missed the memo,’ he replies with a laugh, following me to the front door. I unlock it and step inside, turning to block his entrance.

  ‘I’ll have to say goodbye now, if you don’t mind. I have a busy evening planned.’

  ‘Company?’ he says, his broad smile flashing in the light of the coach lamp. I go to close the door, but he puts his hand against it and wedges his foot in the doorway.

  ‘No,’ I say, trying to hide the quiver in my voice as my left hand slips inside my pocket, feeling for my phone. ‘Just busy and—’

  ‘Let me in, Jen.’ His face is cold, serious, and the look in his eyes intense.

  A hand around my throat… a face looming above… both of us naked… his eyes dead as he forced his way inside me… me screaming no, no, no a thousand times… but nothing coming out of my mouth…

  ‘No!’ I hear myself say now – almost a scream but not quite.

  Scott recoils, taken aback. ‘Jennifer, there are things we need to talk about. You’re pregnant with my child, for a start and…’ His eyes soften as a smile sweeps over his mouth, not just affecting his lips but his entire face. It changes him in an instant. Was it the same smile that kept me talking to him in the bar that night? The one that switched off my good judgement? I shudder at the thought. ‘I need to ask you a favour.’

  I stare at him, trying to overlay the man standing in front of me with the person I met in Oxford. They seem like different people – my mind telling me one thing, yet my gut screaming out another.

  ‘Jen?’ he says, slipping a hand through the gap in the door and hooking his fingers around my wrist. ‘Are you OK?’

  Something twinges inside me, as though his hand is gently squeezing my heart, not my arm. For a second, I’m back at the club, warming to the man who’d bought us three rounds of shots to share, eventually finding myself laughing with him, listening to his crazy stories, wrapping my arms around his sweaty neck as we danced to music I’d never even heard before. It was as though I’d become a different person that night – someone who was able to forget everything she was running away from. But I still don’t know how it happened – and can hardly stand to live with myself that it did. It simply wasn’t like me.

  ‘Jennifer?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, snapping back to the present. I shake my head, staring directly up at Scott’s face. He’s undeniably attractive – but it’s more than that. It’s not about what I can see on the surface but more about what I can’t see lurking beneath. In a strange way, he reminds me of me.

  ‘Jennifer, do as I say and let me in.’

  I stare at him, see it in his eyes – the rotten subtext that doesn’t require words. ‘Yes, OK, yes, come inside.’ I open the door wider. ‘It’s cold out there,’ I add by way of excuse for my actions.

  As though I’d become a different person…

  Scott puts his bag down on the hallway floor – something I’m aware of him doing, but as yet unaware of the implications. He slips off his coat and drapes it over the bannister rail of the open-tread staircase that winds its way up to the gallery above. On a clear day, the view from the landing through the floor-to-ceiling window in the side of the barn is stunning – a sweeping vista of the undulating countryside and woodland surrounding us.

  Jeremy and I hadn’t stopped talking about the place after we’d viewed what was essentially a ruin sitting in a field of mud, and had a silly low offer in with the estate agent by close of business that day. We never thought for one moment that we’d be taken seriously but the vendor had been keen to get shot of the place and it was soon ours. We were so in love, so excited about the future.

  ‘Sorry to appear rude,’ I say, beckoning Scott to follow me through to the kitchen. I justify letting him in by telling myself he’s the father of my baby. Automatically, I reach for the kettle and fill it, flicking the switch. ‘You’re right, there are things we need to discuss.’

  There’s a sudden warm feeling in my belly, as if the baby growing inside senses that both its parents are present – though it’s overridden by a feeling of guilt. I weigh that up with the consequences of it being Jeremy’s baby, which I know it’s not – the child having one dead parent. Is it somehow better this way? Or is that me trying, again, to rationalise the situation in which I find myself, making sense of whatever happened? ‘But let’s be clear, you are not my patient any more. Understood?’

  ‘If that’s what it takes,’ Scott says, sitting on a bar stool at the island. ‘You were right, by the way. My shoulder is a lot better now.’

  I nod, sloshing water into two mugs with a herbal teabag in each. I didn’t bother to ask him what he wanted. ‘Here,’ I say, handing him his drink. ‘Let’s sit somewhere more comfortable.’

  I lead the way back through the cavernous hall and on into the equally large living room.

  ‘Who the hell has two fireplaces in one room?’ Scott says with a laugh as he walks around, inspecting everything. He runs his hands over a sheepskin draped over the back of one of two plush green velvet sofas set at ninety degrees to each other in front of the wood-burning stove. It makes me bristle inside, as though he’s assessing mine and Jeremy’s life together. To prevent myself from saying anything I’ll regret, I open the doors to the wood burner, only taking a moment to lay and light the fire. The thing is so high-tech, it virtually gets the logs in itself.

  ‘Someone who lives in a ridiculously huge and freezing barn, that’s who,’ I tell him, sitting down on the sofa nearest to the fire as it begins to take hold. ‘What favour did you want to ask?’ I need to get this out of the way, then we can move on to practicalities about the baby, what support he will offer and if he wishes to have a relationship of any kind with his son or daughter. I’ve already decided I’m keeping my baby. If he wants to help financially, that’s fine by me, and I won’t prevent him spending time with his child. I will deal with it unemotionally, only agreeing to necessary contact with him.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Scott says, sipping his tea as he leans forward, his forearms resting on his legs. He’s in jeans and a dark sweater today, and has a black scarf knotted around his neck. He unwinds it and places it on the sofa beside him. ‘I’m getting the keys to my new place tomorrow. My new job starts soon, too. This move hasn’t been without its stresses, but it’s all coming together now.’

  I give a quick nod, showing him I’m listening.

  ‘Thing is, the owner of the motel where I’m staying got the dates wrong and thought I was checking out today. And I’m afraid the entire motel is booked up now, so I have to leave my room.’ Scott sips his tea, waiting for me to assimilate what he’s saying.

  I sit there staring at him, listening to him, wondering what it is about him that terrifies me.

  A hand tugging on mine, leading me on, laughter, staggering, coaxing me back to my hotel, pulling me, pushing me, shoving me… his mouth, the weight of him. It had been exciting in the bar because I was having fun, but then came the terror masked by… by something that wouldn’t allow me to feel… something that stopped my screams being heard. Because all the screams were in my head…

  ‘Actually, to be more precise, it’s not a matter of leaving the motel
any more. It’s more a matter that I’ve already left.’

  ‘I see,’ I say, not wanting to acknowledge where this conversation is going.

  ‘And as we have things to discuss, I thought I’d stay here with you tonight. Then we get to… to reconnect. You know, kill two birds with one stone.’

  Seventeen

  Jen

  ‘Kill two birds?’ It feels as though he’s just slapped me in the face.

  Scott laughs. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to take advantage of you.’

  ‘Like you did in Oxford?’ I huff out. ‘You can’t stay here.’

  Scott’s face turns serious – a look that tells me I’ve overstepped the mark. ‘Jen, I think you’ll agree that you were up for it that night. I did nothing wrong. I had no idea you were married or had a son, and you’d had a lot to drink.’ He pauses for a second, looking smug, calm, self-satisfied. ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself. I get it – you don’t want anyone to know what happened. Especially now that you’ve lost your husband. It wouldn’t look good. Pillar of the community, a married GP shagging a stranger, getting pregnant.’

  I stare at him, frozen, my heart trying to escape my chest. I feel a twinge down low, a dull ache like period pain. Was it my fault? Did I get blind drunk and act completely out of character – or was there more to it? One thing he’s right about – it would not look good if people found out. Kieran would hate me, my friends would be horrified and I’d lose my patients’ trust. Word would spread fast around here.

  I open my mouth but nothing comes out.

  ‘Jennifer, it’s OK. I understand. The attraction between us was undeniable and—’

  ‘Are you blackmailing me?’ I ask, finally able to speak.

  ‘If that’s what you want to call it,’ he says, his smirk making me want to throw up.