Her Perfect Life: A gripping debut psychological thriller with a killer twist

10 (#ulink_4aee6c4f-a7da-5e6c-96bf-bd84e3949a68)

‘The traffic was a nightmare. Two hours it took me to get to the school.’ Gracie pulls a bruised apple out of Elsie’s school bag and tosses it into the compost bin. ‘The boy’s mum was very nice about it but he had a hell of a mark on his arm.’

Tom bounces a pen nervously between his palms. ‘All kids scrap in the playground. How do they know it wasn’t him who started it?’

‘Her teacher says she’s been acting up for a couple of weeks.’

‘Why?’

‘Kids pick up on stuff. Elsie knows things aren’t right between us. It’s making her feel insecure.’

‘What’s she been doing?’

‘Getting moody, refusing to share. Let’s face it, she’s never found that very easy.’

‘You’re saying we spoil her.’

‘A bit.’

‘It’s you as much as me.’

‘Yes!’ She strains for calm. ‘It’s something we both need to work on but that’s not what we’re discussing right now.’

‘OK. OK. So what do we do?’

‘Whatever happens between us,’ she sees him flinch, ‘we have to reassure her that being parents comes first. That we can still function as a proper family.’

‘A proper family.’ He says the words slowly, as if he’s weighing their meaning.

Outside the wind picks up, hurling rain against the glass wall. He gets up very deliberately and closes the blinds.

‘Yes,’ Grace says. ‘And that’s going to take more than putting on a front when she’s around and sniping at each other when she isn’t.’

‘All right then!’ He pivots round, red-faced and angry. ‘Let’s have another child. That’s what proper families are about.’

His words pinch an old bruise, an injury inflamed by weeks and months of persistent arguments from him and tearful insistence from her that she doesn’t need another child, she has Elsie. But this time she doesn’t cry. Instead she meets his anger with a flinty fury of her own. ‘Are you insane? We can’t use a child to mend our marriage.’

‘People do.’

‘Not me, Tom. I can’t believe you’re using this as an excuse to bring it up.’

‘For Christ’s sake. I shouldn’t need an excuse.’

She turns away, tears welling. ‘This isn’t about you. It’s about Elsie. About making her feel secure enough to cope if that girl’s story hits the papers.’

His hands flail helplessly. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry. You’re right.’ He gazes at her, lost, boyish, bewildered. ‘I just want things to be right again, to put this behind us and move on.’

‘It would help if you weren’t away so much. Right now Elsie needs to see more of both of us.’

‘It’s difficult. After the Bristow’s fiasco I’m not exactly man of the moment at work and if—’ He exhales softly, unable to go on.

She looks away and says briskly, ‘We need to make it a priority. I’m going to try and pick her up from school at least twice a week. But it’s impossible on filming days and when I’m at the bakery I practically have to leave after lunch to get there in time.’

‘All right. I’ll do it when I can. But it’ll mean going back to the office in the evening.’ He gets up. ’I’ve got emails to catch up on.’

She watches him go and releases her tension by ripping parsley for a seafood broth that she knows neither of them will have the heart to eat.

When Tom comes home the next evening there’s something different about the way he moves to the fridge to get himself a beer, a lightness that Gracie hasn’t seen since she’s been back from New York. He holds up the can. ‘Want one?’

She shakes her head, wrists rocking the dough in front of her, pushing and pummelling. He leans back against the worktop, snaps open the can and takes a gulp of beer. ‘I talked to Alicia.’

‘Oh.’ I can do this. I can have this conversation.

‘I told her you know everything and that we’re putting our marriage back together.’

A lump turns in Gracie’s throat.

‘Then I told her about the earring. I said the police wanted to interview everyone who’d visited the house as part of their on-going investigation into the stalking and that we’d given them her name.’

Gracie wipes her hands and pulls on the oven gloves. ‘And?’

‘She was shocked. Genuinely so. She didn’t even know you’d been stalked.’

‘Mind out.’ She shunts him aside and opens the oven. The heat hits her face and she feels an overwhelming urge to crawl inside and curl up with the sizzling beef.

He looks down at his beer. A silence grows. He’s gearing up for something. She can tell. She slams the oven door. ‘No more confessions, Tom. I can’t take it.’

‘No, no. Nothing like that. It’s just, well, I’m not proud of this, but I told her if she went to the press with her allegations it would make her the only person on the police’s list who had a motive for harassing you.’ He takes another swig of beer and wipes his mouth.

Gracie looks away, shaken by an unexpected pang of sympathy for this girl her husband slept with and spurned. In his selfish, thoughtless way he’s hurt them both. ‘What did she say to that?’

‘She got angry. She said she didn’t do it and that a motive wasn’t evidence. So I told her the media didn’t care about evidence. One sniff of a rumour like this and there’d be Celebrity cook stalked by husband’s crazy ex lover storiesall over the internet and I couldn’t see future employers counting that kind of publicity as much of a plus on her CV.’

‘And then?’

‘She walked out. But she knows I’m right, Gracie. She’s off our backs, I promise.’

Gracie wedges a clove of garlic into the crusher and squeezes hard. ‘Oh, great, so that makes everything all right. It’s like you never slept with her.’

He puts down the beer and takes her by the shoulders. ‘I’m not saying that. But you’re right about what the publicity would do to you. To Elsie. To us. We need privacy to work this out.’

She twists away and throws the crusher into the sink. Steel on steel it clangs like a fractured bell. She stabs two fingers into her brow, her breath coming fast and erratic. ‘What about what’s in here, Tom? Inside me? Shutting Alicia up won’t wipe that away.’

‘So what will?’

‘I don’t know.’ She’s sobbing now.

‘I love you, Gracie. I want to make this right.’