My Husband's Wife(36)

There was no doubt about it. Sarah Evans was speaking to me. What was going on?

‘I’m Lily Macdonald,’ I began, remembering at the last minute to use my new surname. ‘I’m returning your call about –’

Angrily, she cut in. ‘About my daughter.’

Relief flooded through me. Sarah Evans must have been named after her mother.

‘How can you defend that man?’ she hissed. ‘How could you?’

Relief was soon replaced by a sinking inside my chest. Wouldn’t I feel the same if I had a daughter? Until this point, I’d been more concerned with whether we could get Joe Thomas off.

But the distraught voice reminded me of my own mother’s words all those years ago. How could you, Lily? How could you?

My fingers began to sweat. Poor woman. Then I recalled the newspaper article and felt worse. She had cancer.

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Evans, but I can’t discuss the case with you.’

Then, hating myself, I replaced the receiver and went to tell my boss the bad news about ‘losing’ certain papers that were vital to Joe Thomas’s appeal.

Now, in our flat, as I read the note that has just appeared under our door, I assume it’s from her. ‘How did she find me?’ I say, shaking. ‘How does she know where we live?’

‘She?’ Ed’s mouth is grim. ‘You know who wrote it?’

Briefly I explain what happened.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because we don’t have that kind of relationship.’ The words burst out of my mouth like an angry rush of bathwater. (It’s an image which has been haunting me ever since I took on Joe’s case.) ‘You never ask me about my day. All you do when you come back is draw or paint.’

‘Please don’t argue, Lily and Ed.’

The little voice at my side reminds us that someone else is present. A child we are responsible for, if only for a day at a time.

‘Sorry, poppet.’ I put my arm around her. ‘Ed’s right. We need to see if your mother is back home now. I’ve got an important phone call to make.’

‘Can’t I stay while you do it?’

Those deep brown eyes are imploring.

‘Not today.’ Ed’s voice is firm. Then he looks at me. ‘Do you want me to call this woman?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m your husband.’

But what kind of husband doesn’t tell his wife he was previously engaged until after the wedding? Yet I can’t say any of this in front of the child. It wouldn’t be right.

‘Let’s go, shall we?’ says Ed to Carla. I hear them walk along the corridor, Ed’s slow measured step next to Carla’s little hopping ones. Then I look at the note again. It is typed with several spelling errors. It doesn’t seem like the kind of note that an educated-sounding Sarah Evans would write. But then again, you never know.

IF YOU TRY TOO HELP THAT MAN, YOU WILL BE SORY



I try to stop the shaking but it won’t go away. Ed’s right. I have to report this before it gets worse.

I’m lying in bed struggling not to think about my new reality. Someone out there wants to hurt me. It’s a scary feeling.

‘Tell me one more time what happened,’ instructed Tony Gordon when I rang the following day. So I did. Just as I had told the police and my boss. A child who was visiting heard the note being pushed under the door. No, we didn’t see the person who did it, although I had received a phone call from the victim’s mother a few days earlier. On the same day that vital papers were stolen.

The more I had to repeat it, the more I felt as though I was the accused. There was also the weird temptation to embellish it slightly; to make it more interesting or easier to be believed. Was this how criminals felt? Was this how they dug themselves into an even deeper grave? Like Daniel?

Of course, no one could do anything about it. How could they trace a typed note from an unknown sender without a postmark? All they could do was warn me to ‘be careful’, as if that might help. Instead, it has done the opposite. Even when I walk to the bus and hear footsteps behind me, I purposefully do not look behind.

I will not be scared. I will not be intimidated. That was the whole point of entering the law. I have to believe in something that has power over evil. If I allow myself to be bullied, I’ve lost.

I turn restlessly, staring at the ceiling as it’s lit up by a passing car’s headlights.

Then I hear it. Clearly.

‘Please. Davina,’ says Ed. Then, louder, ‘Davina.’ He’s talking in his sleep.

‘I’m not Davina.’ I begin to shake him. He jerks awake.

‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’

‘You called me Davina.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I’m not. You still feel something for her. Don’t you?’

‘For pity’s sake, Lily. Go back to sleep and stop imagining things.’

But I know I’m not.

This time, it’s him who is lying.

Almost immediately, a new coolness develops between us. We act like the other doesn’t exist; trying to squeeze past each other in our tiny flat and sleeping as far apart as possible in the bed as though a mistaken brush of skin against skin might kill us both.