The Replacement, page 17
Her eyes go to the freezer. ‘That’s them, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
She swallows hard. ‘We live in a scruffy little terraced house. We’ve bought it. Saved every penny for five whole years. Had a new kitchen. It’s yours and Tim’s, Tracey, I told myself. That’s all that matters, I told myself.’ Her gaze traces the underlit cupboard and the beautiful linear worktops. I see my own face when I first saw how Jem had decorated The Rosarium. Bitterness mixed with pain. ‘Nothing like this. Nothing so posh. Just some chipboard B&Q cupboards. But it was ours. But this.’ She whistles and looks around. ‘I can see why he was attracted to you. You’re so pretty. And clearly loaded.’ She snorts. ‘So don’t be under any illusions that he loves you. Tim only loves himself. Still, you seem to have slipped nicely into my husband’s life. I hope you enjoyed it, I really do.’
She goes to pick up the baby carrier. I can barely stand as the shock waves hit me so hard. I turn to her as she passes me.
‘Slipped into your husband’s life? What do you mean by that?’
But I already know before she speaks. I have already been in this particular scenario. Except I was playing a different part. Could Jem have felt like this? Could she have not known the full story about me and Daniel? I cast my mind back to that day. She certainly seemed to think we were already over. Had he told her we were living together in name only. Or separated?
Tracey turns to me. She is very close. Right in my face.
‘Life with kids is hard. Especially when you like your posh meals and hotels. He’s found another me. Someone who isn’t constantly knackered and smelling of cooking and baby sick. Someone with a posh house he can doss about at. A convenient shag.’ She starts to laugh through her tears. ‘I knew. Oh yes, I knew. But I couldn’t accept it. I told myself you were a work colleague. Or a friend. Because Tim loves me.’ She fake laughs, but her expression is not amused. Their baby laughs at her feet, a hysterical giggle, as their daughter tickles him. She looks at them.
‘I’ve watched you through your windows. I put a note through your door. You’re going to pay.’ It all makes sense now. The trampled grass. The window. It was her. ‘But you’re not, are you? You’re not going to pay. It used to be me. Now it’s you.’ She turns around and throws her tea over a pencil sketch of me hanging on the wall. She reaches into her handbag and fetches out a bundle of bank statements and credit card bills. She rips them and throws them into the air. They scatter like confetti over the stone floor and worktops. ‘Enjoy.’
She is gone. She is out of the door and I hear her car start. She is turning out of the drive and out of my life before I can move.
And all I can think of is Jem. I have obsessed about her and hated her. I have punished her and made her life difficult. All the while, I had resented her wriggling into Daniels’ heart and bed – into my place.
I stand at the lounge window and look out over the gravel drive. Lots of tyre treads from police vehicles and Tim’s car. I have judged Jem and other women harshly for stealing married men. My own standards deigned anyone who had an affair downright evil. It is slowly occurring to me I might not always know the full story.
I certainly don’t in this case. Suddenly I am the other woman; I am the person causing distress and desperation. Unintentionally, but I reluctantly admit that the red flags were there. Tim would never commit. He never took me to his place. He never let me see his phone. He always had to leave suddenly. He was unavailable for long stretches.
I am an idiot. I am the woman who he used. He was slowly getting his feet under my table. Getting me to chase him. Trying to separate me from my life. Getting a bit too comfortable with his bossiness. He’d quizzed me on my job and income, jokingly but thoroughly.
He’d suggested taking it to the next level. That was staying over more often. Yes. Tracey is right. I am mortified. I am the new woman. I am the fun. I am the sex. I am Jem.
I am the replacement.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I look around my beautiful home. The police made a messy dent in a few rooms that were reasonably okay. Now, it’s littered with a layer of white shreds. I am in shock. The past twenty-four hours have driven home just how desperate I have been. Lying to the police and stealing someone’s husband. Is that who I am? Who I have become? My God. Is that how people see me?
I slump onto the kitchen stool. I automatically reach into the space beneath the stone worktop where I keep my laptop. It’s a gap for storing chopping boards and the like, but also an ideal place to hide it from Angel and Ben so they can’t commandeer it for games. Pushing it under there has become second nature, and I feel shock that it is gone.
There is nothing on that laptop that they can’t see on my phone in any case, as they are linked. If anything, my phone offers more insight into my life through my almost constant messaging. I open my phone instead. My email account springs onto the screen, and I can see a message from Linda Tomson, the practice manager at the surgery. I click open the email.
Hi Lauren,
I’d like to meet with you as soon as possible just to find out what is going on. As you know, the police came to the practice yesterday and took away some things from your office.
Please don’t worry, we will support you any way that we can long term, but I’d like to discuss short-term options.
Let me know when you are free and I will make some space for that discussion.
Best,
Linda
I read it again. I’m not even an employee but I am contracted. I try to decipher if she’s evicting me or just asking me to come in and chat. It’s still important to me. Things have been so mixed up recently. My horrendous, desperate decision-making. My unknowingly becoming the person I have been persecuting. But one thing that reassures me and, in this moment, feels like a glimmer of warmth is that I put my work before it and completed the case notes.
It's at times like this that I appreciate my work. This is a huge crisis and there have been others. Difficulties coping with a newborn and a toddler. My separation from Daniel. Any time I felt less than a good mother or a not good enough wife. My work was reassurance that I am not completely useless.
I know that I never took a job to match my qualification. I was encouraged to carry on and study for a doctorate, but I wanted to get on with helping people. And I know I have. With the police and with the surgery. There are so many people suffering. The people I see are either recovering from a mental health problem or were clawing their way out of a huge life event. People for whom medication is not the answer. “They need someone to talk to” is a huge oversimplification but that relationship they form with me – holding the problem between us – is the first step on their recovery journey.
I think about getting therapy. I should have before. I had mentioned my issues with Daniel to my supervisor, but never my issues with Jem. It seemed disloyal to talk about another woman like that. Weak, somehow.
I email her back and tell her I will be at the surgery at 10am tomorrow morning. I completely understand that police traipsing through their workplace is not ideal, and I can’t promise it won’t happen again. I revisit the spectre of the worst possible scenario and shiver. But I do know that whatever happens I will be fine. Me and the kids will be fine. I know this is playing out now and it’s inevitable my past actions will surface. But I didn’t do this to Jem. I can’t think about Tim yet. No. I can’t conceive that he has done something like that.
I take my own advice. The advice I could have taken sooner, but I didn’t. The advice I give to all my clients. To those people who are desperately looking back and punishing themselves, or in pain from past hurt. To those people who are predicting the future based on the past in the worst possible way. I stand in the warmth of a streak of sunlight streaming through the window. In this moment all is fine for me. And it will be again.
The light doesn’t last for long. I look around me and consider clearing up the mess. Things need to change. I can’t carry on like this. I sweep all the papers into a neat pile and push it into a bin bag. The obsessive side of me wants to pick up the statements and letters and see what Tim has been spending his money on. But deep down I already know. Hotels. Those two tiny children aren’t enough for him. Tim wants the thrill of the chase.
He’s suddenly no longer a distraction. The other night, right here in the kitchen, was bordering on his two worlds meeting. Made worse now by my knowledge of Tracey. His phone beep, beep, beeping while he stood there awkwardly. His breath on my face while she messaged him asking where he was.
I doubt I will ever see him again and relief surprises me.
What I want now is my children. I tidy up the mess that the police have left and push the sofa cushions back into place. It’s time to face Daniel and Belinda. I call them both, but it goes to answerphone. So, I message Daniel.
Daniel. I would like the children back, please. As you know, Jem’s disappearance has nothing to do with me. I would like to come and collect the children. If you haven’t replied by 5pm, I will ring my solicitor.
I hope Bekah Bradley is monitoring my phone. I hope she sees that my biggest concern is getting my children back where they belong. Despite feeling like I have committed the biggest crime ever known to man, I have nothing to hide now. Everything will be straight down the line from now on.
Of course I care about Jem. A little part of my heart wobbles every time I think she is in danger, or worse. Despite my utter dislike of her and what she did to my family, I can’t bring myself to even think that she deserves whatever has happened to her. The likelihood of her having walked away is narrow now, and even Bekah Bradley admitted she wasn’t optimistic.
Daniel hasn’t taken Jem, but I can’t shake the image of him in bed with another woman while the police search for his partner. That he is not the person I thought he was slowly permeates my soul. I’m in the awful position of knowing this, but still having to deal with him as we share two beautiful children. The knowledge that he will play on the fact I won’t want to upset them so he can continue his behaviour unchecked stings me.
But, along with millions of other wronged partners, I will have to put up with it. That is behind the line, where all the domestic wrongdoings can never be brought to justice. I seethe at the injustice of it all and how emotional hurt and torture go completely unpunished, even though it’s often the lever for revenge. My revenge.
That was the huge elephant in the prison cell. Bekah had those cameras. She’s smart. I knew I’d said too much in temper in the interview, and she went away looking for how I knew so much about Daniel’s life. In detail. Not watching from a car.
She put it together and asked me for help. I pace around, asking myself what I should do. I’ve been in situations when I’ve walked into a crowded restaurant and seen two people I know on the other side of the room. Usually seated in a shadowy corner for privacy. Two people who are married to two other people I know. Heads too close. Hands entwined. They don’t see me because they are completely involved in each other, oblivious to the world.
But all the while, it turns over and over in my soul. Do I tell their partners or not? Do I tell the truth and cause pain, or take part in lying by omission and hope it’s just a flash in the pan?
I’d even spoken to Daniel about it. He’d looked at me earnestly. ‘Just leave it. Someone else will tell them.’
I’d wanted to point out that my job was to ease that sort of pain. Salve the distorted world of people who are hurt into something more liveable. That it was part of me. But I didn’t tell them. He must have been laughing inside. Congratulating himself that he was getting away with it.
It occurs to me now that he has been tying himself in knots with lies all this time. Instances of his philandering had floated in my consciousness for a long time, but he was always able to explain. He was pristine in his explanations, even providing a ‘and if you don’t believe me, ask’ or ‘you can check the restaurant reservations’. He made me feel guilty for asking. Just like he made me feel guilty about going over to his house to tell him about Jem’s message.
I know I have to take responsibility for my actions, and no one made me sit in the darkness of Daniel and Jem’s garden watching them feed my children stir fry and home-made pink candy floss. No one made me snap and break into his house and plant those cameras.
The house is completely still. The chaos has closed in until it is almost pressing against me. The landscape of my home is littered with the mess of people who have become involved stepping ever closer. I can hear my breath and I silently ask myself why I did it. Why did I do all those things?
I have numbed the pain down. Taken every blow of my separation. The punches were not to my body, but to my mind. The perfection of Daniel and Jem’s life. The success they made of quickly erecting a beautiful, functioning existence against the backdrop of my half-built chaos. I did all those things because I loved my family. I loved Daniel and Ben and Angel and me. The completeness of it.
When it broke, so did I. My knees buckle at the thought of it. The knowledge that we will never sit on the sofa cuddled together again or laugh together. We will never watch our children open Christmas presents together. It all seems sentimental against the possibility that Jem is dead, but it fits together in a way I haven’t worked out yet. Jem is nothing to do with me, a stranger who barged into my life. Yet she has never been more important.
My phone beeps and jolts me out of the silence. It’s Daniel. I scramble to read it.
We’re just coming back from Chester this evening. We took the children away to Dorothy’s while you were indisposed. As my solicitor tells me you were released without charge and normal access must resume, you can collect them from my house tomorrow at 3pm. But I don’t want any contact with you so please restrict any further contact to important issues about the children.
My thumbs are ready to tell him I want them now. I want to come and get them and hold them close. I want to face him and tell him I know what he is doing. I’ve always known, really. I know he has replaced Jem already. Then I remember Tracey’s hurt. Her admission of staring through my windows and dropping anonymous notes. Her haunted eyes as she looked at me.
No. I won’t do that anymore. I won’t be in the game. I will fight for my children, but I won’t fight for my marriage anymore. He will expect some smart remark about my solicitor and my access and my innocence. Something to keep this drama going and suddenly, my senses fix on something. Drama. Quiet, unassuming Daniel. His calmness and his straightforward talk, always designed to hit right at the bullseye of the matter and state his unmovable case. All the while, he is either stirring something up or hiding it.
His position statements, telling me what will happen; they are the curtains behind which he lived his duplicity. I expect doom to set in, but I feel pure joy. My realisation frees me. Daniel wants drama. I gave it to him in spades. But not anymore.
I respond to the message with one word. He has stated what he wants me to do. I shake my head. These things take time. This has been a long, long journey to understanding what has happened. But I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I tap send and Daniel hasn’t got what he wants this time.
Fine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I tidied up last night. All the debris of the past few days into black bin bags and put out for the binmen. I stood in the back garden, the long meadow grass bathed in moonlight, in the surety that there was no bogeyman coming to get me. The footsteps were Tracey. She had been the big bad wolf in my mind. I’d got carried away because I was worried about what had happened to Jem. Relief mixed with regret hit me, but there was no time for that.
I’d looked up at the stars and sworn to myself that tomorrow would be the start of a new life. I had to move forward. I went inside and made a list, a real list: handwriting on paper rather than a hastily put together to-do app prompting me for more and more tasks to complete. It is that list that greets me as I make coffee this morning.
It’s seven fifteen, and I have made some decisions. I will agree to sell the house and move into a smaller place. I don’t need all this space and this is where the ghosts of my marriage live. I tell myself I love the house, but now I realise I love the idea of it, waiting here for Daniel with all our things in it. And Tim. Bringing him here was just another shot at revenge for what Daniel did to me. I shock myself in admitting that I had used him for this – as well as fun. I need to own my sense of fun again.
Yes, I will sell up. That will free me from future Daniel – all that will be left is our divorce and co-parenting. I know his no-contact statement was to gain superiority and to bait me, but he is right. I was still running to him whenever something went wrong. Lisa saw it, and he used it. I was in his harem of women who need Daniel for something.
If I lose my space at the surgery, there won’t be enough cash to keep me going, but it will allow me to make some changes. I check to see if the booking for my service has been paused and it hasn’t. None of this is about money, really. It’s about freedom. It’s about not being reeled in by my ex. I feel anger bubble as I think about him portraying himself as the anxious partner to a missing woman while all the while he is with someone else.
This is what I must pull myself back from. That focus on Daniel’s life at the expense and detriment of my own. There will be no more revenge escapades or weekend trips to posh hotels. No more going out with Tim or sitting in the dark at weekends. Even the thought of leaving that darkness that I was so fond of pulls me back in, but I will resist. I know I have said this a million times, but now I mean it. I have to.
