The Dead Ex(46)

I take the Tube to the station nearest to Kingston. Tanya knows something. I’m sure of it.

My old road – which still has a public phone box on the corner – screams nouveau riche. It’s not the kind of house I would have gone for, but David had persuaded me, and I’d wanted to keep him happy. It was too modern for me. Executive style. Diamond-paned windows which would have been all right if it wasn’t for the brown window sills the planners had insisted on. Triple garage. Wide driveway. The neighbours have a 4x4. Tanya has a little yellow Audi convertible.

I used to have an open-top too. David and I made love in it once in the early days. I’d never done that before. It made me feel naughty, but in a good way. No one would believe it now to look at me. I’m not even allowed to drive.

Twice I walk past the house. Three times. Partly through nerves and partly because I’m testing myself. Am I going to have a seizure? The last thing I want is to knock on the door and then collapse in a heap of rolling eyes and stiff limbs.

On the fourth circuit I tell myself I am looking suspicious. This is a small cul-de-sac. There are only eight houses: all the same on the surface. Only different if you look very carefully. A bit like those magazine puzzles where there are two pictures side by side and you have to circle the bits where there are three windows instead of four.

I take a deep breath and walk up the drive. ‘Our’ front door has one of those twirly black iron boot scrapers in an open porch. It’s shiny clean. My successor doesn’t strike me as the walking type. There’s also a notice informing cold callers that they will be reported. My old brass lion knocker has gone. Instead, there’s a bell which makes a tuneful sound when I press it.

Was that her choice or David’s? What kind of woman is my replacement? I hadn’t had many dealings with her apart from the odd conversation or dinner. In fact, it was only after everything had fallen apart that I’d pummelled David mercilessly for details. When precisely did the affair start? The date. The time. Where? Our house? Or the apartment in London? What was she like in bed?

In return, he’d fed me a million different soap-opera lines that answered none of these questions. I’d changed. He was scared of the person I’d become thanks to the seizures. (How convenient.) It wasn’t my fault, it was his. (So trite!) He was sorry but he’d fallen in love with someone else. (As though it was out of his control!) It happens. And so on.

If you love someone, you stay with them through thick and thin. He just wanted an excuse to run away with his new younger model. Well, actions have consequences. And this is one of them.

No one is answering, so I go round the back. It’s a beautiful day – really warm for April. The first thing I see is the fish pond. On the patio is a pair of smart green-striped canopy swing chairs and a rectangular wooden table with a candle in the middle. An outside heater. Sliding glass doors leading into the conservatory. The doors are ajar.

There’s a sunbed inside! Tanya is lying on it.

Dammit. I’m going to sneeze. She opens her eyes. ‘What the fuck …’

I’m inside before Tanya can close the patio doors on me. It’s really hot in here. An absolute suntrap.

‘Where is he?’ I say, grabbing her arms.

She pulls away. ‘If I did know where he was, I’d have thrown him out by now for playing around. Now get out of my house.’

‘When did you last see David? What kind of mood was he in?’

My husband was always in moods, although he’d kept that hidden at first.

Tanya was staring at me, hate shooting out from her black eyes. ‘What do you think you are?’ she snarls. She has tiny white teeth. A bit like a rat. ‘The police?’

That squeaky little-girl voice is really irritating me. There’s no way she’d been born with that. I can imagine her cultivating it as she grew up to snare the right kind of man.

‘I just want to clear my name,’ I say, trying to be reasonable. ‘The police are after me. I need to prove that I had nothing to do with his disappearance.’

What the hell is she doing now? Tanya has grabbed something from the top of a pretty cane chest of drawers. I recognize it immediately. It’s a wooden love spoon which Dad had bought Mum during their honeymoon in Wales. I’d brought it back with me after Dad’s death, revering it as one of Mum’s few remaining possessions. In the divorce, it must have ended up in David’s pile. I’d been looking for it for ages. How dare he? It wasn’t as though it was valuable. He must have known I’d miss it. Maybe that was the point. Now Tanya is waving it in front of me as if she is considering poking my eyes out with it. There are red blotches on her face and arms.

Distract! I used to be good at that. So I hold out the papers I’ve been keeping safe. It was my surety, I told myself. A get-out-of-jail-free card. One day I might need it. And now the day has come.

‘Did you know that our husband has been money laundering?’ I say softly.

‘ “Our” husband?’ Tanya laughs, putting down the spoon. ‘You’re deluding yourself, Vicki. I’m his wife now.’

Once a wife, always a wife. Did David’s first ex – Nicole’s mother – feel the same about me?

‘Look. He’s been buying houses for cash.’

I flourish a page from the deeds I’d come across when going through David’s study just after he’d announced he wanted to split. For a clever man, my husband could be rather stupid. Why hadn’t he hidden them better?