The Stepmother (2 page)

Matthew always assures me the odd noise is quite normal; just the creaks and groans of old timber – but I’m not so sure. It makes me horribly uneasy.

It makes me feel someone else is here. And it’s too soon for that.

Isn’t it?

A
bout six weeks
ago I was woken from a deep sleep in the early hours by a noise I couldn’t distinguish. The twins weren’t staying that night. They’d been here earlier in the day, and we’d gone to the cinema to see
The Maze Runner
before taking them back to their mother’s after tea.

Lying awake in the dark, my heart pattering, something moved near me. The swish of material against wood – a skirt, a petticoat, a curtain, I wasn’t sure – but it was enough to force me bolt upright in bed.

‘Listen!’ I clutched Matthew’s arm. ‘I can hear someone…’

‘It’s just the wind,’ he muttered, without opening his eyes. ‘Lie down, hon.’ He threw a protective arm over me and fell straight back to sleep.

I lay awake for at least an hour that night.

And are there voices here too, I wondered now, in the stairwell? Today? Behind these cold walls…

‘Jeanie? Are you coming?’

I jumped slightly, despite myself. Then I went on up to marvel along with Frank at his new bedroom, which was complete with a sound system beyond his wildest dreams, speakers attached to the walls.

‘Is this a Sonos?’ he was crowing. ‘Linked to the whole house? God, that’s amazing!’

T
here was only
one tiny blip during the ‘tour’ – and probably it was only my imagination again anyway; what Marlena would call my ‘over-thinking’ – and what I might just term slight anxiety. Frankie had put his hand in mine as we climbed the turret stairs, and as Matthew turned at the top, a slight frown crossed his face, his eyes flicking towards my son’s hold on me. I felt it like a dart.

My eighteen-year-old son, it has to be said. The thing was we were used to having to hold onto one another, Frankie and I, but maybe now, maybe it had to change a bit – and that wasn’t a bad thing, given what we’d been through in the past few years. Frankie was growing up and away from me, and it was time for a new time.

I slipped my hand out of Frank’s and moved up the last few stairs to join Matthew in the circular room.

It was his daughter’s bedroom: girly in the extreme, frilly and pink. The sickly smell of rose and vanilla pervaded the air – from cheap candles on the windowsills, I thought. Carefully, I avoided looking at the display of family photos on the ledge. I looked out of the other window, towards the town.

‘Blimey.’ Frank opened a casement and leaned out. ‘It’s like Sleeping Beauty’s castle or something. You wouldn’t want to get an attack of vertigo up here.’

‘Careful,’ I couldn’t help myself saying.

‘It’s quite something, isn’t it?’ Matthew clapped his hand onto Frank’s shoulder, leaning out too to survey the view with a trace of pride. I was glad Frankie had shown his approval, and I was sure it would be all right between them; this might even be the beginning of a bond. ‘Makes all the long hours at the office worth it.’

The creepers creep-creep-creeped around the windows – the red roses didn’t make it this high – and peering through the window behind them, down at the street, where a small figure was running towards the fields, onto the Chiltern Hills, I thought Matthew and Frank were quite right. It was magnificent: the views were immense.

I looked at my son and my lover standing together, gazing out, and then Matthew turned and smiled at me – a smile full of what I could only read as love, and I felt my skin tingle.

Or was it tingling because of the figure I’d seen scurrying away down the road?

I turned to Matthew.

My husband-to-be.

This time on Saturday, I would be Mrs King.

My home.

If you’d told me six months ago I’d end up here, the day before I met Matthew at Jill’s terrible office party, I’d have said you were a fantasist. I’d have said the same the week after. Two weeks after.

But here I was.

In the distance a motorbike revved, and then it sped away.

I
meant
to make the wedding. I did, really.

Oh come on! I bet you’ve had to miss an important occasion for work; we all have, haven’t we?

What?

All right, it wasn’t
entirely
work. I mean, it was, but it was kind of more like a hunch, and I was hoping it would lead to bigger, better things, as I inched my way out of the wilderness I’d found myself in four years ago. I had a lot of ground to make up, a lot of apologising to do, a lot of proving myself journalistically, all over again.

The wedding photos looked lovely, really. She looked gorgeous, so gorgeous, my Jeanie, and I could see why exactly, despite all his money and his posh house and flash car, Matthew would’ve fallen for her.

The most pure of heart, my dear Jeanie. Wouldn’t hurt anyone; really, truly, wouldn’t refuse anyone. Would always manage to be kind, even when times were hard.

As she learnt to her huge cost.

But she’s paid for that shit, hasn’t she? More than once.

This was her once upon a time all over again. This was the happy ending she’d been longing for since Simon’s worst betrayal had lacerated her. Since the days of Uncle Rog and his pissed-up paedo mates at the Star & Garter off Peckham High Street. Since the subsequent inflicted damage. Jesus.

Let’s leave that for another time, yeah? It sours everything.

Happy endings? In my book, they’re what you get down the massage parlour on the Old Kent Road. They are
not
real life.

I
stared
at the wedding picture my big sister had just emailed me.

Jeanie in her white velvet dress and big fur hood, eyes shiny and huge with hope; Matthew very debonair in an undoubtedly expensive dark suit, looking down at her with – I couldn’t dispute it – something definitely akin to love. Not that I’m an expert though.

Still, there was something about the picture I didn’t like: something I couldn’t quite put my finger on immediately.

Something about the look on his daughter’s face, perhaps – a teenager whose name escaped me, whom I hadn’t met yet. Slinky, skinny little thing: too much black eyeliner, wearing a long, tight purple dress and wedge-heeled boots.

Pudding brother, not nearly so handsome as his twin, but at least his smile was benign.

And lanky Frank, freckled and mop haired, in his borrowed suit and old black Converse, grinning lopsidedly. Probably dying for a roll-up if I knew anything about the boy.

I looked at the twins, these kids that Jeanie had met only a few months ago, who were taking a while to warm up, apparently, despite all her best efforts. Well the girl was, by all accounts. The boy was quite chilled, at least. But they weren’t ready for a stepmum, it seemed.

Jeanie had even bought a book, bless her, when we met in London in September for a lunch soon interrupted by a call from my new editor. (I dare not leave work calls unanswered these days.)

After I’d hung up, I’d accompanied my sister to the self-help section in Piccadilly’s Waterstones and watched her root the book out from the bottom shelf.

How to be the Best Step-parent
or some crap – that’s what she chose. ‘Confront the challenges head-on,’
read the tag line
.

She’d been worried about Frank too. Worried he’d feel left out and not the ‘only one’ any more. Worried that the twins wouldn’t accept her; worried they would compare her to their mother. Hoping to make a ‘new family’.

What did we know about family though?

I’d told her to stop over-thinking – as usual.

‘Just get on with it,’ I’d instructed again, a fortnight ago, over Jeanie’s hen-night cocktails in the Covent Garden Hotel, when she said it was still ‘a bit sticky’ with the girl. ‘How can anyone not like
you
, Jean?’

‘Quite easily.’ She ate her olive morosely. ‘I can’t get Scarlett to smile at me at all. I offered to take her clothes shopping last week, and she just left the room without speaking.’

‘Horrible age, babe,’ I reminded her, licking the salt from my hand and downing my tequila. ‘Think what we were like at fourteen.’

Not helpful, actually, that last comment. We were hardly today’s typical teens, my sister and I. Too busy fending for ourselves to have hissy fits about potential step-parents.

Too busy with the business of survival.

M
atthew came
to meet Jeanie after our cocktails. They were going to stay the night in the hotel – and when I saw him scoop her off her feet outside the main doors, her cheeks flushing with pleasure and excitement as she disappeared into his embrace, at least I could relax a bit.

This man was besotted by my sister – that much was obvious.

Strange match they might seem, but then stranger things have happened. He treated her like she was made of glass; he seemed to see her as precious.

And she is. Infinitely precious.

W
hen I couldn’t make
the wedding at the weekend, when I texted to say I had to follow up a lead on a story about corruption in the back benches – Cameron’s lot and their sense of entitlement – that if I didn’t, my job would be on the line – Jeanie insisted it was fine. But I knew it wasn’t really. I sent the biggest bouquet of flowers Interflora did, but I still felt shit about it.

Especially when my ‘big story’ turned out to be a complete dud. Maybe I should have examined my own motives for not attending the wedding more closely. Maybe.

Now I closed the wedding photo down to read the directions to the sixth-form college I was visiting this afternoon. I was giving a talk on social media, responsibility and digital journalism. I was trying to do my bit; trying to make amends.

I also had to tell Jeanie I wasn’t going to their New Year’s Eve party. Matthew might be good for my sister, but wild dogs wouldn’t have dragged me to mingle with his money-market mates. I was a little hazy on what exactly his job was, but bankers really didn’t do it for me. Bankers had nearly been my own professional downfall.

Maybe, though, maybe I’d leave telling Jeanie that till tomorrow.

T
he party is starting
in less than four hours. I’m behind already and horribly anxious as I arrive back to find an elderly lady hovering just outside the drive. Our drive, I should say.

Except nothing feels like ‘ours’ to me yet, whatever Matthew says.

The lady ignores my polite beep, refusing to move more than an inch, but eventually I manage to squeeze carefully around her, parking my old car behind the phalanx of shiny, far grander vehicles.

Trying to avoid her eye, I drag Matthew’s dry cleaning out, along with a big box of wine glasses I bought this morning, before my cursed trip to the hairdresser’s.

My hairdo, as my Nan would have called it, is truly awful. I don’t know why I let the girl keep going when I could see the disaster it was becoming – but I just grinned at her manically in the mirror as she turned me into a bouffant Miss Piggy.

Or rather, I do know why I let her carry on. It’s because I didn’t want to upset her. Can’t say boo to a goose me.

And it was because I was distracted.

Whilst the girl cut and curled, I had a cup of tea and scanned a copy of something glossy – maybe it was
OK!
magazine; I’m not sure. Mid-read about Kylie’s love life, I sensed eyes on me – but it was just a couple glancing at the price list in the window. They walked on.

I finished the magazine and looked for something else to read. I avoided the newspaper rack – I don’t like newspapers any more – but I did catch the
Daily Mail
’s front-page story – about that girl who’d disappeared from London on Christmas Eve. Apparently they thought she’d quite likely flown to Turkey, planning to travel on to Syria in what they call ‘hijrah’: jihad by emigration.

Then I opened yesterday’s post that I’d stuck in my bag earlier.

At first I thought the hard-backed envelope was a late Christmas card, and I studied my name written in swirly black writing across the front, wondering which friend had tracked me down so soon.

But of course I was wrong.

After I saw what was inside the envelope, I couldn’t move for a bit. The hairdresser’s that had seemed so noisy a moment ago suddenly seemed very quiet, and everyone in my peripheral vision seemed to be moving in slow motion.

I sat staring at the picture. It wasn’t a good picture of me anyway, and it had been doctored with black biro: the artist had had to go over his ‘work’ a few times, by the looks of things, to make the noose really stand out.

The noose around my neck.

When I’d calmed myself a little and put the horrible picture away, I realised what I had to do.

Something I should have done weeks ago. Something I should have done before the wedding.

N
ow
, on the driveway, all I want is to get inside and make sure the scary caterer’s doing all right on her own before I take Matthew aside.

I need to talk to him quietly and tell him the truth. Before all his smart friends – I imagine they’re smart anyway – before they all turn up and see me for the fraud I am.

Before it all implodes.

But before I reach the front door, the elderly lady, who I recognise now as Miss Turnbull from next door, bears down on me like a Rottweiler on a squirrel in the park.

‘Hello there.’ My jolly smile’s meant to say:
please let me go; I’m sorry, but I’m pushed right now
. ‘Just dashing inside to see—’

‘I think these are yours.’ The stolid lady is already halfway up the path. She extends a woolly-gloved hand; she’s holding something.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘The postman must have gotten the house numbers confused.’

Or maybe it’s because Miss Turnbull lives in a bungalow called ‘Heaven’s Gate’, and the postman doesn’t recognise that celestial address as being located in suburban Hertfordshire.

She waves a wodge of envelopes held by an elastic band. My redirected mail. I see the handwriting on the top one.

I don’t want the letters, but I don’t want her to have them either. I stick my hand out as best I can, given I’m holding a box of glasses under one arm and trailing a man’s suit from the other.

Reluctantly Miss Turnbull relinquishes her cargo.

‘Thanks,’ I say as I move off. I refuse to look at them this time. Later. Later will do.

She’s still hovering. I realise she’s waiting, her whiskered chin quivering with some sort of emotion I can’t quite make out.

‘It’s odd, you know.’

‘What is?’ I am bright, fumbling for the key.

‘I thought I recognised your name…’

‘Oh it’s a common-enough name,’ I say, trying for breezy. ‘Well thanks so much. I’d better get inside before I drop this lot.’

It’s not enough apparently.

‘
Where
exactly did you say you moved from?’ the old woman asks.

Nowhere.
I moved from nowhere
, I want to shout.

But she knows already, if she’s looked at the forwarded mail. And I’d bet my last pound she has.

‘Sussex,’ I mumble.

Please go away now
, I think fervently. God, I wish I was more like Marlena. I’d just turn my back, forthright and assertive with my boundaries.

But I am not like my sister. I am the least assertive person I know – except with my students. The only place I ever came into my own was in front of my class.

Back then.

Pushing the thoughts down, finding the key, I move to the door – but she’s still there.

‘Thanks again,’ I say.

‘Having a do?’ Miss Turnbull glares at the catering van parked next to the bashed-up old Fiesta Marlena bought Frankie for his eighteenth. The only other rubbish car parked on the curved drive.

I couldn’t afford to get Frankie anything much last year – but at least Marlena saw him proud.

This year I can do better.

‘I don’t know why people bother seeing New Year’s in,’ Miss Turnbull sniffs. ‘I do hope it won’t be too loud.’

‘I’ll make sure we keep a lid on it.’ The key’s in the door now, thank God. ‘It won’t be too noisy, I promise.’

A rash promise to make, if my Frankie has anything to do with it – but we’re so detached in this big old house, I doubt The xx will reach Heaven’s Gate.

The New Year’s Eve bash was definitely not my idea. I don’t know anyone locally, not yet, and I’ve invited no one apart from Marlena and Jill. Honestly I’d be happier nodding my head along to Jools Holland with my new husband, accompanied by a glass of Cava and a tube of Pringles – but my new husband (God, how odd that still sounds!) has different ideas.

‘I want to show you off,’ Matthew said when he first mentioned the idea, ever the gallant – and secretly, despite my innate shyness, I’m bursting with happiness. Despite knowing that, at the grand old age of forty-two and a half, I’m hardly a young bride worthy of being flaunted.

Second time round the block for him, and a lot of water under bridges. Whole oceans full, in my case.

And of course, I’m slightly ashamed to say, Miss Turnbull’s not invited – not as far as I know anyway. Matthew said something like, ‘That old bat will never darken my door again,’ when we saw her outside one day, sweeping up non-existent litter.

I vaguely remember a story about her complaints to the RSPCA, saying Scarlett’s puppy barked excessively; so much so that the RSPCA had come round and checked on the Kings.

What
is
that expression on her saggy face as she looks at me now?

Concern?

No – it’s worse than that. It’s disapproval.

‘I mean we don’t want any more shenanigans, do we?’ Miss Turnbull says. ‘I really don’t want to be calling the police again.’

‘
Again
?’ I stop, key in door. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Less said.’ She purses bloodless lips now as I gaze at her.

‘Please
do
say,’ I prompt. ‘
What
police? When?’

The old lady glances up at the house and then away. She’s not going to tell me anything else; she’s decided apparently.

‘Well I don’t want to be out here in the dark,’ she harrumphs, although it’s a pleasant, if cold, afternoon: there’s even a glimmer of sun in the washed-out sky. ‘You never know who might be around.’ She shoots a look down the road, as if we were in downtown LA, the Bronx – or even central Peckham, where I was hauled up. Here I’d hazard a guess a couple of dog walkers are the worst she might encounter.

‘Thanks so much, Miss Trunchbull—’ Horrified I stop, thinking of Roald Dahl’s horrid old headmistress – and my last boss.

‘
Turn
bull,’ she corrects crossly. ‘I must say’—she gives me a final once-over—‘you’re quite different to the last one.’

Last round to her then.

I watch her sensible lace-ups squelch through the last leaves, not cleared from the foot of the drive, disintegrating in all the rain we’ve had recently.

Glancing down at the mail, I feel a familiar squeeze of fear.

I shove the lot into my coat pocket and lug the wine glasses and the suit into the house.

My tentative ‘I’m home!’ rings false in my ears, and although I want to see Matthew – I always want to see Matthew – I feel a surge of overwhelming relief when silence greets me.

Dumping my wares in the hallway, I stick my head round the kitchen door. The scary, super-efficient caterer waves from the central island where she’s counting something called smoked salmon blinis, and I’m just wondering where Matthew is when full-blast techno pumps through the house: The Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’, I think.

Frankie’s got the sound system up and running then.

says the note stuck on the front of the fridge with an Aston Villa magnet. Matthew’s gone to fetch the twins.

It’s not his weekend, but as far as I can tell their mother – ‘the last one’ as Miss Turnbull would have it – or the only other one, in fact, plays hard and fast with the rota.

‘It’s our gain,’ I’d reassured Matthew last night after his phone had started to ping with texts. Feeling flushed and giddy with the romance of my new life, when he’d announced that she’d asked us to have the twins for New Year’s Eve, I’d been quite happy to agree. ‘It’ll be fun to party with them.’ I’d dolloped more chicken chow mein onto his plate and topped up his glass of red. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing them.’

But actually that was a lie.

I am only looking forward to seeing one of them this weekend. Frankly the other one alarms me quite badly.

Despite my best efforts, Scarlett’s proving a tough nut to crack. I’d met the twins about six weeks in, against my slightly better judgement, but I’d never anticipated such hostility from her. And I can’t help feeling partly responsible: the speed at which Matthew and I married, almost six months to the day we met, hasn’t helped, I guess.

But I couldn’t wait. ‘Do you need help?’ I shout over the music to Julie, who shouts back that she’s fine and it’s all underway (I think, though it’s hard to tell as Keith Flint is still yelling something about a bitch someone hated), and I think how strange this is, to be in this smart, large house whose inside doesn’t match its outside at all.

Inside it’s all ultra-modern and blank, neutral tones; matching three-pieces and plush rugs and every electronic mod con I could wish for – and a few more I’d never heard of before.

How very different to where I was this time last year – entirely different, in fact. I’d never have dreamt I’d be this happy; a year ago I thought I’d never see the light of day again. I’d certainly never dreamt I’d be paying a lady to make canapés for guests I don’t even know.

All right, correction: I’m not paying her. Matthew is.

Everything’s happened so fast. The issue of my finding a job now that I live in his house, in this town, hasn’t arisen yet, and it’s another subject we need to discuss soon.

There are a few things that have been overlooked – the most important of which I know I need to rectify immediately.

The letters crackle in my pocket as I push by the kitchen counter.

But I’ve missed my chance today. When Matthew returns, it’ll be with his kids – and I can’t tell him when they’re here.

I just need to get through tonight – to pass the initiation test, I suppose…

What if I don’t pass though?

What if…

I head upstairs. When I get to the master bedroom –
our
bedroom – I close the door firmly and sit on the bed.

I stare out into the huge back garden, past the bare old apple trees, their lichened branches sprawling towards the bedroom window, down to the great lawn sloping into a cluster of old trees at the end: big oaks that provide a canopy of dark and dappled light I’ve not explored yet and other naked, December trees. Beyond them is the high wall that keeps us in.

Someone’s strung up fairy lights around the terrace this end, planted outdoor candles along the path. Silver lanterns adorn the lawn’s edges. It’s very pretty – magical almost – perfect for the theme of tonight’s party.

It’s my home – and yet I feel like a fish out of water still, and I fear my days might be numbered if I’m discovered
before
my confession.

Pulling the new mail from my pocket, I feel sick with fear.

One’s from the bank. One’s from the TV-licensing people. One’s a mail-order catalogue for clothes I’d never wear.

And then, in a rush, I tear the last one open.

It’s even worse than I feared.

F
rom the percussive
thump
, thump
through the floor, it is apparent that the countdown to the party has officially begun.

I need to hurry, or I’ll be late for our guests – but I’m dawdling. I can’t bear to leave the sanctuary of the room.

I’m terrified that Matthew’s friends will see I’m not worthy of him, that I’m not what I purported to be. Terrified of people seeing through me, thinking I’m not good enough. Terrified that I don’t match up to the great Kaye, she of the long legs and tumbling blonde mane and the hard body, honed whilst her husband was away making money – money she was very good at spending.