My Husband's Wife(116)

Cases involving murder or theft or bankruptcy or money laundering – all of which I dealt with at the London practice – now seem a long way back in my memory.

But here I am. Showing proof of identity to the policewoman at the desk. Still not sure why I am here. Why I’m not at home with Tom (the head has given him a week off school in view of ‘the circumstances’). Why I’ve left Mum to console him (although Tom has been remarkably matter of fact, asking questions like, ‘What will happen to Dad’s brain now he is dead?’). Why I’m in a police station.

About to see my husband’s wife.

A great deal has happened since that night in London when I found Carla and my husband outside the hotel. The divorce. Ross’s news that Carla was expecting. Their daughter’s birth. Ed’s death. It sounds so unreal that I have to repeat it again.

The timescale is neat. Agonizingly so. Almost as if the whole thing had been planned with one of those clever little fertility charts. Birth. Death. Two opposites which have more in common than we realize. Both are beginnings. Both are ends. Both are miracles which we cannot fully explain.

And that is, I suddenly understand, exactly why I am here. I’m not here because of Carla’s demand. (She’d actually called Ross after I hadn’t picked up. Presumably she’d been the ‘Caller Unknown’.) No. I’m here because I want to look her in the eye. Want to ask why she did it. Want to tell her that she’s ruined three lives. That she’s a bitch. A bitch who had her eye on my husband from the minute she saw him. A child with the heart of an evil adult.

Yes, I wanted Ed to be punished, but I never meant this. Murder. I grieve for that sandy-haired man who took me by the hand at the party all those years ago. I can’t believe he is dead. Or that it took his death to show me that I still – dammit – love him, even though I don’t know why.

There was a woman at my old office who came in red-eyed one morning. ‘Her ex-husband has died,’ one of the secretaries had whispered. Back then I couldn’t understand why she was so upset. But now I do. The fact that you no longer have a right to grieve for someone you once shared your life with makes the pain even worse.

We go down a flight of stairs. Stone stairs that make my high heels ring out. When I first started making police station visits, cells were no more than a stained mattress on the ground; a window slatted across with iron bars; and – if you were lucky – a plastic cup of water.

This cell has a window without bars. A water cooler. Sitting on the bed, swinging her legs and looking for all the world like a bored model waiting her turn to go on the catwalk, is Carla. I say ‘model’, yet her hair is matted. Her usually glossy lips are pale, devoid of lipstick. She smells of sweat.

Even so, she still has a certain something. A style which rises above her squalid surroundings. A presence which suggests she has far better things to do than be here.

‘I didn’t do it.’ Her voice is low. Husky. Challenging.

‘Thank you for coming, Lily,’ I say, as if I’m reminding a sulky teenager of her manners. ‘Thank you for driving all the way up from Devon to see the woman who murdered your husband.’

She tilts her face at a certain angle, again reminding me of a difficult adolescent. ‘I’ve told you.’ Her eyes are on mine. There isn’t a blink. Her voice is calm. More confident than it was a second ago. ‘There’s been a mistake. I didn’t do it.’

I laugh out loud. She sounds for all the world like the child I first knew. The little Italian girl with the big brown eyes and innocent smile. Mamma is at work. The pencil case belongs to me.

Lies. All lies.

My anger bubbles up, spitting itself out of my mouth. ‘Surely you don’t really expect me to believe that?’

She shrugs, as if I’ve suggested she’s taken the wrong turning on a road. ‘It’s true.’

‘Then who did do it?’

Another shrug, followed by an examination of each one of her nails as she speaks. ‘How should I know? I think I saw someone – a man.’

A prickle of unease runs through me. Is this one of her stories again?

I sit forward on the edge of my chair. ‘Carla, my husband is dead. Tom is distraught because his father has been murdered.’

Then she looks up with that same cool, cat-like stare. ‘You’re wrong.’

A beat of hope springs up inside. Ed isn’t dead? Someone, somewhere, has got it all wrong?

‘He’s not your husband any more. He’s mine.’

I make a ‘pah’ noise. ‘I was married to him for fifteen years. We’ve brought up a child together.’

For a minute, I stop, remembering the paternity test. I squash the guilt back into its box. Then I continue. ‘You were a plaything. A nothing. You were with him for the blink of an eye. That’s no marriage.’

‘It is in the eyes of the law. And you’re forgetting something. We have a child.’ Her fists clench by her side. ‘They’ve sent my daughter to foster-parents. I need you to help me get her back.’

I try to bury a small stirring of sympathy. ‘A baby,’ I spit. ‘You’d only just started. You haven’t had to go through what I have. Haven’t had to give up everything to look after a demanding child while Ed –’

‘Ha!’ Carla breaks in furiously. ‘Don’t be so self-righteous. I’ve paid my dues too. Ed wasn’t an easy man to live with. The drinking, the lies, the mood swings, the jealousy, the so-called artistic temperament …’