My Husband's Son: A dark and gripping psychological thriller (16 page)

While Jason packed up his classroom, I went to wait in the car. I got into the passenger seat and pulled out my purse. I’d forgotten all about Mark’s business card until he’d mentioned it this afternoon. I found it tucked between my driving licence and Tesco Clubcard.

Jason had just appeared through the double doors of the college when my phone began to ring. Thinking it might be something to do with work, I answered quickly.

‘Heidi Thursby speaking.’

‘It’s me.’

Tommy.

‘I hadn’t heard from you. I wanted to check you were OK?’

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘Heidi the busy bee.’ He laughed to himself.

Jason would be getting into the car at any moment. But then, when I looked, I saw that he was still standing outside the college. He’d been accosted by the poodle-jumper woman from his class.

‘I’d like to see you,’ continued Tommy. ‘Pick up where we left off.’

My breath caught in my throat. I had thought that, after the way I’d behaved the other night, he’d want nothing more to do with me.

I checked back on Jason’s progress. He had his head cocked to one side and seemed to be genuinely interested in whatever it was the woman wanted to talk about.

‘What do you say?’ pushed Tommy, a wobble to his tone I hadn’t picked up on first time around. ‘Shall we arrange another get-together?’ And there it was again, that giveaway lilt. ‘Heidi?’

Jason had extricated himself from the poodle woman and was back on the move. It would be only a matter of seconds before he was at the car. I kept the phone pressed to my ear, Tommy’s breath crackling down the line.

I left it as long as I dared. Holding out until the very second Jason appeared at the driver’s door. And then with that, I pressed the red button, cutting Tommy off, and turned to Jason with a smile.

‘Thanks again for coming today,’ said Jason as he stowed his teaching materials on the back seat. He got in beside me and, after hooking his arm around the back of my headrest, reversed out of the parking space. ‘I need to make a quick stop.’ He pulled onto the main road. ‘I’ve got to drop Barney’s fire engine at Vicky’s.’

I shook my head, not sure I’d heard him right.

‘You’ve got the fire engine with you?’ They usually exchanged the toy every other Monday, like clockwork. Today was Tuesday.

‘I’m late getting it back,’ he went on, ‘and she’s not best pleased.’

We pulled up outside Vicky’s house and Jason went to retrieve the toy from the boot. I’d just relaxed back into my seat when I noticed Jason beckoning for me to join him. I raised my hands in the air to signal my confusion. I’d never been into Vicky’s house before and she had never been into mine. It was an unspoken rule and, I felt, quite normal, in fact, for the divorcée and the new wife never to enter each other’s territory. Right now though, Jason seemed to feel differently. He marched back round to my side of the car and opened the door.

‘I want you to come with me,’ he said, unable to meet my eyes.

‘What? Why?’

‘Please. I’ll explain later.’ Reaching in, he undid my seat belt, helped me out and began pulling me down the garden path.

‘Jason, what is this about?’ I asked as he rang the doorbell.

Before he could answer, Vicky appeared.

‘You’re a day late,’ she said. ‘A whole day.’

She had yet to notice me standing behind him.

‘It’s not fair,’ she said. ‘We agreed.’ She had lost weight in the weeks since we’d last seen her that time in the curry house, and there were pale grey smudges underneath her eyes.

‘I left a message. I got held up yesterday,’ said Jason, quietly. ‘Then I had to work.’

He handed her the bag with the toy inside and she pressed it to her body. After a few moments she looked up and it was then that she registered my presence.

‘Don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cup of tea?’ asked Jason, as though me being there was the most normal thing in the world. ‘I’m parched.’

Open-mouthed, Vicky looked at him and then me, like this was some kind of trick. I held my breath, waiting for the insults to fly, but it seemed Vicky had decided to go with whatever was happening, however strange. Still clutching the bag to her chest, she headed to the kitchen.

As Jason crossed the threshold, I turned around, intending to bail and go back to the car, but he held my hand firm.

‘Heidi, no.’

‘But …’

‘Heidi, please.’

I let him lead me into the living room. He sat down on the sofa but I remained standing.

‘What’s going on? This is weird.’ I was about to continue but was silenced by Vicky coming into the room.

‘The kettle’s on.’ Seeing me, she stopped for a moment, as though she’d forgotten I was here, but within seconds she’d righted herself and slumped in the armchair. Realising I had no choice but to sit this one out, I took my place next to Jason.

‘Were you teaching today?’ Vicky asked. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and now she took a section of it between her fingers and began twisting it tight like a rope.

‘Yes, I’ve been putting in the hours.’ He looked at the room as he spoke. ‘I need to practise for my assessment and the extra cash is good. Especially as we’ve got the holiday round the corner.’

‘Holiday?’ asked Vicky. She twisted the hair even tighter; it started to pull at the white of her scalp.

‘We’re going to Gran Canaria for two weeks.’ He grabbed my knee. ‘Winter sun. All-inclusive.’

‘Gran Canaria.’ For the first time since she’d entered the room, Vicky looked me in the eye.

‘We go away on 20th November. The 20th for two weeks, isn’t it, Heidi?’

He turned to look at me for affirmation and it was then I realised why he’d wanted me to come and watch him teach today. He must have planned it all along. If I came with him to his class then I’d be with him when he dropped off the fire engine.

He cleared his throat.

‘So, Vicky, the two weeks we’re away would normally be my two weeks with the truck,’ he explained. ‘What do you want to do? Do you want to keep it for a month and then I have it for a month?’ I could tell he was working hard to keep his tone casual.

Jason had realised the date clash a few weeks after we’d booked the holiday. He’d been looking at the calendar and when he worked it out he had seriously considered taking the truck with us to the Canary Islands. But then he’d worried about it getting damaged in the suitcase or being stolen from the room and soon he’d decided that the best solution would be for them to adjust their custody arrangement. This, however, required Vicky to play ball. He was terrified Vicky would insist the two weeks we were away were his, whether he was around or not. I’d assumed he’d cleared it with her ages ago, but now I realised he must have been putting it off for as long as he could. Today, he must have hoped that, if he brought me here, she’d be less likely to make it an issue.

‘What do you think?’ asked Jason.

Vicky smiled sadly to herself in a way that I didn’t understand. She was about to reply when there was a loud rapping at the front door. We all started.

‘Vicky! Vicky, are you in there?’ shouted a woman through the letterbox.

Vicky stood up and sighed. She tugged at her skinny jeans and I noticed how much they gaped at the waist.

‘What does she want?’ She went to leave the room, but then, remembering we were there, took a few steps back to explain. ‘It’s that Margaret from the end of the road. I won’t be long.’

As she went into the hall to see to Margaret, Jason and I remained where we were.

‘Are you all right, Maggie? What’s the matter?’ She sounded only mildly concerned.

‘It’s my hair dye. I thought I’d try the Magenta Sunrise this time, but I think I left it on too long and it’s burning my scalp. Can you help?’

‘You silly mare,’ laughed Vicky. I could hear her putting on her jacket. ‘Won’t be long,’ she shouted back to us and then we heard the front door slam.

Out of the window we saw Vicky running down the path behind a woman with a towel round her shoulders, purple dye dripping from her hairline down the sides of her face.

I waited for Jason to do something. When he didn’t, I decided to take the bull by the horns.

‘Shall we go?’ I stood up. I was glad this woman Margaret had come knocking. It gave us the perfect excuse to leave immediately.

‘I don’t know,’ said Jason relaxing into the sofa. ‘I’m not sure if Vicky took a key.’ He tucked a few stray strands of hair behind his ears.

I looked at the toy, still in its bag, centre stage on the coffee-table.

‘Why were you late with the truck?’ I asked. ‘Surely you want to get in Vicky’s good books so that she’ll be nice about the holiday arrangements? She’s not likely to accommodate you now, is she?’

Jason hung his head.

‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘I just needed one more night with it.’

‘You should explain that to Vicky. She’d understand.’

‘Maybe,’ he shrugged. ‘Maybe not.’

He got to his feet.

‘Are we leaving?’ I moved towards the hallway, happy to be on our way.

‘What? No. Sit down.’ He directed me back to the sofa. ‘You stay there. I need to check something. I won’t be a minute.’ And with that, he went into the hall with the ease that only comes from having once inhabited a place.

‘Check what?’ But it was too late. He’d already disappeared up the stairs.

Alone in Vicky’s house for the first time, I looked around, trying to imagine her and Jason in it together, living here as man and wife.

A three-piece brown leather suite, and a beech sideboard and coffee-table dominated the room. The walls, meanwhile, were skimmed plaster, painted magnolia. The cream colour scheme continued around the bay window, where Vicky had hung thick cotton curtains from a chrome pole that had twisty spiral flourishes at each end. I sniffed the air; there seemed to be a Glade plug-in freshener in every available socket and they gave the room a rich, sickly smell. Apart from a grey vase on the sideboard containing three decorative sprigs of wood, the only other ornamentation were the framed pictures of Barney.

Curious for a better look, I got up and traced my thumb along the mantelpiece, lined with photos three deep. A few of the pictures had Jason in them. I picked one and took it over to the window so that I could study it in more detail. It was the kind you get taken at a professional studio and it featured Vicky and Jason against a white background with a baby Barney in a nappy on the floor, two milk teeth peeking out of his bottom gum. Jason’s hair was shorter than he wore it now and he was as skinny as a colt.

I stroked Jason’s face through the glass with my finger. He and Vicky both looked so young. Probably because they were. Having got together at school, everything else followed on from there. They were engaged by eighteen, married by twenty and Vicky was pregnant with Barney at twenty-two.

They’d celebrated their fourth wedding anniversary a few weeks before Barney went missing. One year later, one year of him being gone, and the marriage was over. Jason told me they’d done everything they could to carry on, but that being together meant they were never able to think or talk of anything else except Barney. It had paralysed them. While on the one hand, Vicky was the only other person in the world who could truly understand what he was going through, on the other, the fact she was Barney’s mum meant he never had any respite.

We met a year after their divorce. I was under no illusion as to why we worked as a couple. Jason needed someone who could understand his loss and pain, and I did, truly. But, at the same time, my loss was different from his and so, with me, he would always have the space to breathe.

I put the picture back where I had found it and moved over to the largest photo on display. Positioned next to the armchair where Vicky had sat, it showed Barney modelling a junior Middlesbrough Football Club kit. The shorts were way too big for him and he could barely hold the adult-sized football under his arm, but he looked so proud.

Was this the boy from the off-licence?

For a moment I considered asking Vicky for help. I could tell her what I’d seen. Ask her if she recognised the child as Barney. But no. It would be too weird. And besides, to go to her behind Jason’s back with something like this would be such a betrayal. He’d never forgive it.

I was about to go and sit back down and wait for Jason when I saw a thin line of silver poking out from the armchair’s seat cushion. Vicky’s mobile phone.

I couldn’t help myself. Wedging it out of the sofa, I flipped it open, found the envelope symbol and clicked.

Most of the messages were from her mum and friends. I opened a few but they were all fairly boring and meaningless. I went to scroll down, but I must have pressed too hard because the texts went zooming up the screen and before I knew it I was looking at messages from a few weeks back. I was about to start the laborious process of scrolling forward when I noticed a text message from someone called ‘Jason’. I tried not to let it worry me. I knew that Jason had to stay in touch with Vicky because of Barney. The text was dated Sunday 3rd October. The day after our wedding anniversary.

‘Are you OK? What Mandy said about you going back to see the doctor – is it true? Anything I need to be worried about?’

Vicky’s reply was there, right beneath it.

‘Am fine. Mandy shouldn’t have said anything. Just had a rough few days, that’s all. xxx’

It meant nothing. Of course he’d checked to see if she was OK. It was in his nature.

I closed the message and returned to her inbox. She seemed to have saved lots of messages into a separate folder. I opened it. They were all from someone she’d entered into her phone as ‘MG’. DS Martin Gooder.

I opened the most recent exchange. They were the usual texts you’d expect to see between a romantic couple. They were either busy arranging their next tryst or reminiscing about their previous time together, but then I came across an odd sequence of messages. The first was dated a few weeks earlier and was from Vicky to Martin.

‘It’s getting worse. I need to do something.’

Below was the detective’s response.

‘No. You can get through this.’

Vicky’s reply followed.

‘I keep thinking about how old my baby would be now.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. None of it.’

There followed more messages of reassurance from the detective. It seemed she was having a particularly hard time of it at the moment. It sounded like the disappointment of the Turkish sighting a few weeks ago had more than left its mark.

As I wedged the phone back into the armchair cushion, I noticed the time. It was almost three. I’d been so engrossed in my snooping that I hadn’t realised how long Jason had been gone.

‘Jason?’ I called out as I climbed the stairs. Silence. ‘Jason?’ I said again. The whole house was fitted out in a thick cream carpet that muffled the reach of my voice. ‘Where are you?’

I made my way across the landing to the only open door. Inside was a small bed with a blue spaceship duvet cover and a plastic bumblebee night-light on the table next to it. Barney’s room. Sitting cross-legged on a rug by the window was Jason, reading a well-worn copy of
Where the Wild Things Are
. It was as if I’d stumbled upon a grown-up version of Barney, come home at last.

‘You OK?’

He looked up from the book with a dreamy expression, but then went back to his reading.

Coming to sit down next to him, I began stroking his back, softly at first and then with more pressure. The room smelt of polish and the rug beneath us bore the telltale stripes of having being recently hoovered. I looked around. On a low-level brass hook on the back of the door was a small blue-and-red fleece dressing-gown.

I wanted to lean into Jason for a cuddle, but I couldn’t because of the way he had his legs crossed. Instead, I began tracing my thumb over the burn and scorch-mark scars that pocked his wrists: a hangover from his welding days. He’d explained how these burns couldn’t be helped. That, no matter how hard he’d tried, there was always a bit of neck or that thin, delicate skin on the underside of his wrists that would end up exposed to the sparks that flew back from the welding torch. He’d said that, when they hit you, they felt like tiny stings.