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

  I veer off the lane and climb over the gate, heading into the woods and slowing my pace as the track becomes less visible the deeper in I go. Each time I come, I take a different route between the trees – picking my way between the knotty trunks of beech, ash and silver birch. The undergrowth is thick, almost impenetrable in some areas, and I pick my way through hawthorn and elder bushes in a half-jog, half-walk, snagging my sweat top on a thorn.

  ‘Damn,’ I say under my breath, swinging round to unhook it. The fabric pulls, leaving a visible loop. I don’t care. I’ve got loads of running tops – most of them ruined in the same way. I set off again, my eyes scanning around. Not much light gets into Bowman’s Wood these days; it’s grown up so much over the years, making it seem far more sinister than it really is. But I love it for the solitude, the fresh and earthy air, and the stunning view of the surrounding countryside. It’s why I come up here.

  Suddenly, I stop again. A crow claps out of a tree above followed by three pheasants flying vertically out of the bracken and ferns up ahead. I’ve disturbed their cover. I turn slowly, scanning behind me, my eyes tracking for the slightest movement, the tiniest hint of an unnatural colour – clothing, skin, the glint in an eye. Though surely if anyone was following me, they’d have the good sense to wear dark colours. The February sun has not long risen, with the street lights of the village still on, twinkling through the trees in the dip below.

  There. A different light. Small and orange.

  The tip of a cigarette?

  My heart kicks up, pounding in my chest. I try to convince myself that it’s just my imagination playing tricks, that I’ve been fuelled by adrenaline and anxiety since Jeremy’s death. With my loss and what happened at the conference, I’ve not been myself.

  Then I think about the baby growing inside me – that I must protect her at all costs, that I couldn’t stand for anything to happen to her if someone is following me, trying to scare me. Or worse.

  Her… I think instinctively. It was like that with Kieran. I knew instantly I was having a boy.

  I swallow down my fear, convincing myself I’m being ridiculous, that no one wants to follow or harm me. Stress, grief and anxiety will do that – transform sense and logic into a bubbling pot of catastrophe. But even so, I walk briskly out of the undergrowth, back onto the rough track that loops through the woods, glancing over my shoulder a couple of times before cutting my run short and heading back home – the only place I feel truly safe.

  Eight

  Then

  ‘Wanna play?’ the pale-faced kid standing over him says.

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ he replies, putting down his hand and scuffing his feet on the tarmac as he gets up. No one’s ever asked him that before. ‘Er, yuk,’ he says, staring at his palm. ‘Bug blood.’ He grimaces to make out he’s tough, that he doesn’t care about a bit of squashed insect on him.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the other kid says, looming two or three inches taller now they’re both standing face to face.

  ‘Evan,’ Evan says, still staring at the mess on his right palm. His mum’ll kill him if he wipes it down his trousers. She’s always moaning she has enough washing to do for Rosie, his new baby sister. Things turned bad after Griff, and then Rosie came along. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Mac,’ Mac says. ‘Lick it off,’ he adds, his face remaining deadpan.

  Evan wrinkles his nose.

  ‘Go on, lick your hand clean. What are you, a baby or something?’

  ‘No,’ Evan snaps back, scowling. He stares at his palm a moment before sticking out his tongue and running it over the heel of his hand. It tastes disgusting and bitter, but he doesn’t say anything as he fights down a retch.

  ‘Funny,’ the other kid says with a laugh. ‘C’mon.’ He walks off and Evan follows. He’s seen Mac around school, but they’ve never spoken before. They’re in different classes and don’t have any lessons together, though he knows they’re the same year group.

  ‘Where we going?’ Evan asks, trotting along behind Mac. The other boy’s blue anorak is grubby, torn and a bit too small. But that just makes him look cool. As if he doesn’t care what people think of him.

  ‘It’s a secret,’ Mac says, glancing over his shoulder.

  He’s not like the other boys, Evan thinks, feeling the pressure swelling inside him. Mac’s skinnier and paler for a start. And his skin looks too soft and smooth and doesn’t even have a single spot yet. Not like Evan’s. He’s constantly got a dot-to-dot of scabby zits around his mouth. His mum says it’s ’cos he keeps licking and picking. Griff says it’s because he’s dirty.

  ‘Here,’ Mac says, drawing to a halt at the far end of the playground by the caretaker’s old shed. He heads round the back and pulls one of the low planks aside. Behind it, there’s a padlocked metal tin the size of a shoebox. He slides it out and puts it down on the mud.

  ‘Wicked,’ Evan says. ‘What’s in it?’

  He watches as Mac takes a key from his pocket and undoes the lock.

  ‘Ta-da!’ Mac says. ‘Impressed?’

  ‘Ye-ah,’ Evan says in awe. ‘Like, all that stuff is yours?’

  ‘My stash,’ he says. ‘You can pick something, if you like.’

  Evan stares inside. There’s every kind of chocolate bar imaginable, plus a couple of packets of crisps. It might as well be buried treasure. ‘Anything?’

  Mac nods. His smile is kind, Evan thinks. Not like the other boys, whose faces are pinched and mean.

  Evan pulls out a packet of Monster Munch. He’s never had them before, though he’s seen them in the shop when his mum buys Griff’s fags. ‘I can’t pay you,’ he adds, about to tear the packet open. He doesn’t want to get a belting.

  ‘Nah, they’re free. I nicked them.’ Mac takes out a Bounty Bar before locking the tin and hiding it away again. ‘Mum’d go mental if I kept it at home.’

  Evan bites into a crisp. ‘I nick stuff too,’ he says, his cheeks burning. Truth is, he’s never stolen anything. Well, apart from a bit of loose change from Griff’s pockets here and there. He’d got a steel toecap in the shin for it, and later found his piggy bank smashed beside his bed, all his savings gone. Four pounds eighty-three down the pub in Griff’s pocket.

  ‘Where d’you live?’ Mac asks, licking the chocolate off one half of his Bounty bar.

  ‘Westbourne estate,’ Evan says in a way that’s almost an admission. Or a confession.

  ‘Tough luck,’ Mac replies, shrugging. ‘I’m in the village, down Stanley Close.’

  Evan rarely goes into Harbrooke. He knows Westbourne has a bad reputation, sitting between the posh houses in the village and Shenbury, the local town, with the main road skirting around it, as though the rows and rows of council houses are being corralled, kept separate.

  ‘I could come round to yours one day,’ Mac says, licking his lips. ‘I’ve got a bike.’ His pale-blue eyes open wide, glinting with something Evan doesn’t recognise – something that gives him a feeling in the pit of his tummy. Mac’s messy dark hair hangs in waves around his face. He reckons he’ll get spat at by the other boys if he doesn’t get it cut soon.

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ Evan lies, knowing there’s no way Griff will allow anyone round to theirs. ‘But it’s really hard to find,’ he adds in the hope it might put him off.

  Mac laughs. ‘Mum’s a community nurse and visits patients there. She’ll tell me how to find it.’

  All Evan knows is that Westbourne seems to go on forever. One identical street endlessly leading to another, with alleyways joining the tightly packed houses. Him and his mum used to live in a flat in another town – a drab grey low-rise block that had black stuff growing on the walls, especially in the bathroom, no matter how much his mum scrubbed it. It felt safe, just him and her – but when Griff and then Rosie came along after his dad died, they all got moved into an actual house with three whole bedrooms on Westbourne. It even has a garden, though he has to watch where he treads. Griff’s Staffie poos all over it and no
one ever clears it up. And there’s always that crying noise coming from over the fence next door. The constant wailing does his mum’s head in, she says. Gives her migraines. He loves his mum with all his heart, but since she’s got with Griff and had Rosie, he isn’t sure she loves him back quite as much any more.

  ‘Want to make a gang, then?’ Mac asks with a sideways look, snapping Evan out of his thoughts. He savours another Monster Munch, enjoying it as it melts on his tongue.

  ‘Yeah, go on then.’ Evan wipes his nose on the back of his hand. He can’t believe his luck. Like, in one playtime he’s made a new friend, got some crisps and he is now in a gang. ‘Who’s leader?’

  ‘Both of us,’ Mac says. ‘Then it’s fair.’ Mac takes off his anorak, exposing his school shirt with the outline of what looks like a vest beneath.

  ‘And it’s a secret gang, right?’ Evan says, getting that feeling inside again. ‘We can catch more bugs to kill.’ He sniffs his palm to make sure there isn’t any insect smell.

  ‘Yeah, a secret one,’ Mac says back, popping the last of the Bounty Bar into his mouth. He laughs, tipping back his head to expose his neck. Evan thinks it looks thin and brittle. Snappable, almost.

  ‘Way better than stupid football,’ Evan says, staring across the playground to where the popular boys have formed two teams. On the other side of the playground are several groups of girls huddled together. Evan doesn’t like the girls, either. They’re mean, too. Sometimes worse than the boys. He catches sight of that girl from earlier, his stomach knotting when he sees her.

  He’s seen her around before, tries to keep out of her way. He doesn’t know her name, though she’s in his year group too. Long dark hair hangs in two bunches down her front and, coupled with the knee-high white socks she wears on her stick-thin legs, plus the short skirt she’s hitched up at the waistband, she seems taller than she really is. Like a piece of string, Evan thinks.

  ‘Oi, Fathead,’ she’d called out as he’d gone to get something from his locker first thing that morning. The girl and her friends were loitering in the corridor, so he was going to keep on walking, but she’d stuck out her foot, making him stumble and fall to his knees. There was a ripple of giggles around him.

  ‘Watch where you’re going, loser,’ the girl had said, sneering down at him.

  Evan had frozen, looking up at her. He’d never been this close to her before and he reckoned he could even smell her – something floral and sickly. She had pale freckles on her nose that looked as though they’d wash off and, when she opened her mouth, her teeth were black from metal braces.

  As he’d stood up, Evan suddenly felt a pain in his shin as she kicked him.

  ‘Oww!’ he’d cried, hopping about, rubbing the front of his leg.

  ‘Get out of my way, stupid,’ the girl had said, causing another raft of giggles. ‘Can anyone else smell shit?’ She’d leant forward, sniffing the air around Evan. More laughs, and then they’d sauntered off, pinching their noses as they went.

  ‘What shall we call the club?’ Evan says, shuddering at the memory as he looks up at Mac standing above him.

  The other boy peers down, his hair suddenly seeming darker and his eyes blacker, and his skin looking as though all his blood has drained away.

  ‘I know,’ Mac says. ‘Let’s call it Kill Club.’

  Nine

  Now

  Jen

  ‘Dr Miller?’ a voice behind me says. Something touches my shoulder briefly. A hand.

  I freeze, gripping the shopping trolley handle until my knuckles turn white. I’m almost waiting for the warm breath on my neck, the whisper in my ear. Bright lights, thumping music, free-flowing drinks… all of it flashing in front of my eyes as if I’m not really standing in the fresh produce aisle of the supermarket at all. Rather, I’m back at that club after the conference. The night when everything changed.

  I snap myself back to the present and swing round, my training automatically kicking in – a hardwired skill to remain professional when bumping into patients outside the surgery.

  ‘Hello, Mr Shaw,’ I say, reaching for a packet of vine-ripened tomatoes and dropping them into my trolley. Head down again, I walk towards the peppers, not caring if I need them or not. I grab a pack of three – a traffic light of colours. It’s the red one that screams out at me.

  ‘I had a feeling I’d bump into you today,’ Scott says, drawing up beside me with a lopsided smile. He has a basket in his left hand, nothing in it as yet. ‘Must be fate,’ he adds in a voice that conjures up much more than the words alone.

  ‘I don’t believe in fate,’ I say, waving the peppers at him. ‘Just science.’ It’s a small community and I bump into patients outside the surgery often. Yet for some reason, encountering Scott feels different – and it certainly doesn’t feel like fate. Perhaps more like karma. I grab an avocado, pressing my fingers into it to gauge its softness.

  ‘My shoulder’s no better,’ Scott continues, tracking beside me as I slowly browse the salad aisle. There’s probably a bag of rotting leaves in the fridge at home. I should grab another.

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ I say, glancing up before checking the date on a packet of rocket. I switch it for a newer bag. ‘Make an appointment to come and see me again,’ I finish, hoping that will be the end of it. ‘I’ll refer you on to a physio.’ Anything to get rid of the strange sense of unease this man gives me.

  But Scott positions himself right in front of my trolley, his free hand placed on the front of it. I can’t go forward and, when I try to pull it backwards, he prevents it from moving.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say through a surge of adrenaline, gently pushing against him with the trolley.

  Scott stands firm, staring at me, those intense blue eyes boring into my soul. That’s what it feels like, anyway. As though he’s delving deep inside my mind.

  ‘I just need to get to the sweet potatoes,’ I say, adding a smile in the hope it appeases him.

  ‘How very… middle-class,’ he says. ‘Sweet potatoes.’

  I think it’s a joke but can’t be sure. ‘My son likes them,’ I say, trying to sound casual.

  ‘You have a son?’ Scott shifts his weight onto one foot, cocking his head. ‘Who would have thought?’

  ‘Sixteen,’ I say, kicking myself for engaging with him, let alone giving out details about my personal life. And worse, about Kieran.

  ‘You and your husband must be very proud,’ Scott says. Anyone else listening to our stilted conversation wouldn’t think it odd or sinister or unnerving or notice any of the heart-thundering feelings I’m experiencing right this moment. Yet there’s a layer of… of something in this interaction that’s not right. Something threatening I can’t yet place.

  A hand on my shoulder…

  ‘Hello, Jennifer,’ the voice had growled in my ear. I shouldn’t have been able to hear it above the din of the music that night, but I did – almost as if his words were being beamed directly into my brain. His breath was warm and moist against my skin.

  I’d turned, confronted by a man’s face close to mine. I didn’t recognise him, and it didn’t even occur to me how he knew my name. I’d had a few drinks already and supposed he’d clocked my name badge at the conference. He was taller than me by a good six inches, which made him taller than most of the men in the club. And striking, too, with his piercing blue eyes that almost looked frozen they were so icy. Strobe lights flashed around us and, somehow, I found it in myself to continue my walk – my stagger – to the free table I’d spotted. The table with thankfully just one bar stool next to it.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ he’d said, following me.

  ‘Free country,’ I’d replied, thinking I was being clever.

  I took a glug of my drink and set it down, sliding onto the stool. I’d lost count of how many I’d had, didn’t even care. I was off duty, away for the weekend and in dire need of forgetting. Already Jeremy, Kieran, work and home felt like a million miles away. Perhaps if they hadn’t seemed
so distant, perhaps if I’d phoned my husband or even bailed out of the evening meal earlier and driven home a day early, none of it would have happened.

  ‘Normally, I’d say something like “How’s your evening going?” or “You look stunning in that dress” or some other banal chat-up line,’ the man had continued. ‘But I’m not actually chatting you up.’ He stood beside me, one elbow leaning on the bar-height table. ‘Just for the record.’

  ‘And normally I’d tell you to fuck off,’ I’d replied, still believing I was being clever, in control, when actually I was neither.

  ‘Spirited or just in a foul mood?’ he’d asked, one corner of his mouth curling up.

  ‘Both.’

  ‘As I expected,’ he replied, to which I turned up my nose and sipped on my drink, glancing around the bar as if I wasn’t bothered. But I was. I remember my hackles were raised and my skin prickled with tension.

  ‘You’re with the medics?’ the man had then asked, not giving up.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I’d replied without looking at him.

  ‘Actually, I already knew that.’ He laughed – a confident laugh that somehow drained me of my power in this ridiculous play of what, at the time, I’d assumed to be flirting. I wasn’t game for it. Not at all. There were other things on my mind. I’d swear he told me his name then, but I can’t remember it. In fact, I don’t remember much else about the evening at all.

  ‘Watch my drink, will you?’ I’d said in a slightly bored way. ‘I need to pee.’ I’d cringed inwardly at my choice of language, but had already decided I didn’t care what he thought of me. I’d never see him again. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts, with my drink, and was hoping he’d be gone by the time I came back from the toilets.