Until Death (36 page)

‘You’re a sadistic, cruel—’

‘Yes, I’m a perfectionist, yes, I expect and demand total dedication. I’m not going to apologise for that.’

‘Bullshit,’ Kelly spat. ‘You love Sylvie because of how she’s prepared to change herself, bend herself to your every whim. That’s not a wife, that’s not even a mistress – that’s a living doll.’

‘I want what every husband wants – attention. But yours was always elsewhere, locked in your grief and the what-ifs of the past. It was a little rebuke to me every single day of my life. However successful I was paled into insignificance next to my dying marriage.’

‘Oh you’ve got attention all right. Sylvie creeps around our apartment at night, examining every aspect of our lives, she stands over the children – your children – in the dark. If you’ve ever dreamed about her, it’s because she’s really there.’

‘I know. I like it that she’s there in the flat at night.’

‘She’s sick, Christos, she’s sick in the head—’

‘She just has the guts to go all out to get what she wants. She’s ballsy and fun and there are no limits to her ambition.’

‘If she wants you she can have you. Let me go.’

‘That’s the problem, that’s what you can’t see. Men don’t like to be made to feel it.’

‘Feel what?’

‘The failure. This way I’ll never have to face that failure. The failure of our marriage. I won’t be reminded of it.’

‘What way? What way, Christos?’

‘This way I’ll never have to let you go.’

‘Christos?’

But he turned away and walked out of the kitchen.

K
elly rummaged through drawers, trying to find something she could use to prise open the handcuffs. She pulled baking trays to the floor from overhead cupboards that were within her reach. She shouted for a while, until she heard footsteps on the metal of the corridor.

Sylvie appeared. She walked forward and regarded Kelly while leaning provocatively against the stainless-steel kitchen island, then used a second pair of handcuffs to chain Kelly’s free hand to the safety rail. ‘You know, I always wanted to be an actress,’ Sylvie began. ‘I got out of the ’burbs and moved to New York. I was focused, I really put a hundred per cent effort into it. And I was good, really good actually. But I had one weakness, I was told, I didn’t work well with other people. I didn’t like it when they stole the limelight, when I had to let them shine. The best show I ever did was a one-woman performance where the spotlight was always on me.’

‘Let me go.’

‘I’m a good actress because I’m good at imitating other people. I’m good at getting inside their heads. It’s a challenge.’

Kelly looked at Sylvie in surprise. Her voice had suddenly changed. The American accent was gone, replaced by a flat London tone.

‘I really get at what makes them who they are.’

Kelly backed up against the island as Sylvie came towards her and began to undo the top button on Kelly’s dress. Kelly squirmed, but Sylvie didn’t stop. She undid the next one.

‘I’ve studied you in detail, Kelly—’

‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ Kelly retorted. ‘Creeping round my house at night, trying on my clothes, invading the privacy of my kids, I’ve seen it all. You’ve got an obsession, things have gone too far – get off me.’

Sylvie had unlocked one of the handcuffs and was pulling Kelly’s black dress over her head and down her arm, before locking her to the rail again and starting on the next handcuff.

‘I’ve been to your flat, I’ve seen how much you’ve studied me.’

Having removed Kelly’s dress, Sylvie folded it and put it on the counter. She knelt down in front of Kelly as Kelly tried to kick her. Her pump flew off as she did so. Sylvie smiled. ‘One less job to do.’ She grabbed Kelly’s ankle and began gently to pull the tights down Kelly’s thighs.

‘Stop that right now.’

‘I’ve only just begun. Of all the parts I’ve ever played, this is the one I think I’ll relish the most.’

Kelly felt the cold of the ship seeping into her bones. ‘Don’t you need to be with the surrogate mother of your child? I’m sure you wouldn’t want to miss the birth. Maybe once you become a mother you’ll start to have some feelings.’ Sylvie narrowed her eyes at that. ‘You need to enjoy your last days of freedom. A new baby takes it out of you. It changes you, Sylvie. Are you ready for that?’

Sylvie smiled again. ‘I like that. I really like that idea.’

Kelly snorted. ‘God, you’re dumb. There’s something you don’t know so I’ll tell you, one mother to another. Christos demands total dedication. Your attention is going to be on your new baby, not on him. He won’t like it. He won’t like that at all. You think
I’m
standing in the way of your perfect relationship. But it’s your son who’s going to do that, and he’s never going away.’

Sylvie dropped the tights on top of the dress.

‘Did you enjoy pretending to be me? Does it give you a kick? More to the point, does it turn him on? Is that what this is? Because you’ll do anything to please him, won’t you?’

When Kelly was down to her bra and pants and shivering in the unheated kitchen, Sylvie came at her with a pair of scissors.

G
eorgie wanted to climb. When things got too much for her she wanted to escape. She would go home to get her kit, get to the water tower, climb the steepest, most challenging route till her muscles burned and her bones ached and she could overlay the battery acid rolling through her body with the lactic acid of physical exertion instead. Then she would get falling-down drunk. She squeezed the bike into the garage and opened the front door to find Dad and Matt crowding round her. They’d heard about the shooting at the docks on the TV news.

Their concern for her radiated out in waves. She was made to sit in a chair, she was given a cup of tea. Dad gave her a hug, his thin arms tight around her, his worry about her safety out of all proportion to the actual risk. ‘If anything had happened to you I’d never have forgiven myself.’

When she saw his tired and line-cracked face, she understood his unbounded love for her, knew she would always be forgiven, and she broke down and cried, face down in his lap on the sofa, great jagged tears spilling out her frustration and her horror and her unwitting mistake.

There were exclamations all round, her dad and Matt urging her to tell them what the matter was.

‘I think I’ve lost my job.’

‘No, that can’t be.’

‘I’ve fucked up so badly. You have no idea.’

Matt patted her on the back with a kind of fatality, as if he had always expected this outcome. ‘Come to Fabric with Ryan and Shelley and me tonight. We’ll have a big night out, let your hair down, it’s what you need.’

She struggled out of Dad’s arms and stood up. ‘No, I need to think things through.’

They crowded after her into the kitchen, where she fired up the ancient computer that took up half the small workspace. She had typed Ricky’s name into Google before she had phoned him, but now for the first time she read all the reports of the trial she could in detail. It was then that she found reference to a woman called Kelsey Bale, a witness whose evidence put Ricky in jail. Kelly, Kelsey. It was her, Georgie was sure. She had heard that people who changed their names often kept the same initial, it was a familiarity they found comforting, a reminder of their old selves. She turned to her dad. ‘I overreached myself, I tried too hard.’

He protested loudly. ‘Nonsense! You can never try too hard. You’re good at your job, you love your job! Your mum would have been so proud of what you’re doing, Georgie.’

She started shouting at him because she was angry at herself. ‘I thought I could take short cuts, but you can’t in life, there are no short cuts.’ She had tried to overcompensate, to make up for deficiencies at home, and look where it had got her. The doorbell rang and for a horrid moment she thought it might be the police, chasing her down for an explanation. The irony of them coming here for her after the number of times they’d called at the house over the years was not lost on her. Matt went to answer it. ‘Who’s that? I can’t face anyone.’

When Uncle Ed squeezed into the kitchen she rounded on him, even though deep down she knew he was not to blame. ‘Your connections in Southampton sure turned up some toxic shit that’s landed me in huge trouble.’

‘Georgie’s worried she’s lost her job,’ Dad said to him.

‘Don’t, Dad, please.’

‘Just because you talked to someone?’ said Uncle Ed.

‘The guy I interviewed about Southampton is part of some other police case.’

Uncle Ed frowned. ‘How is that your problem?’

‘It doesn’t matter, Ed. I’m so tired, please.’

He became defensive, which immediately put him on the offensive. ‘You hear that, Matt? Your sis’s tired. Don’t put your white-collar stress on me. Brawn or brains, work is work, one job no better than another.’

She closed her eyes, trying to think through her shame. She phoned Kelly, but there was still no answer. She was beginning to be seriously worried about the woman’s safety.

‘Look at you, your little mind whirring, whirring … Trying to save your skin? I’ll tell you something for nothing. You’re not one of them.’ Ed turned to her dad, nodding as if he expected him to agree. ‘Human nature will out, Georgie. The looks you give your dad and me, and your brothers …’ He let the accusation tail off.

‘What are you on about?’

‘Your first big case, your first time working with size, and you see how they make you pay.’

‘Your conspiracy theories are boring and tedious.’

Uncle Ed narrowed his eyes, pointed a fat finger at her. ‘The top is bent, G, never forget that.’ It was his turn to get angry now. ‘You can climb, but you can’t escape. You can get educated, you can move away from your roots, marry a Hugh, but this is who you are, Georgie, this is who you are! And you should be proud.’

‘Just leave me alone.’

‘And remember, Georgie, all I’ve ever done is try to help you.’

‘Help me? You’re the one who got me in all this trouble in the first place!’ She swore at him and marched through into the living room but he was hard on her tail, her family helpless bystanders.

He wasn’t giving up. ‘You’ll be sorry you said that. You treat your family with respect, because you’ve got no one else. Debts have to be repaid. You don’t get something for nothing. No one ever gets that!’

She grabbed her bag and ran from the house, slamming the door behind her.

S
ylvie cut off Kelly’s hair. Chopped it bluntly and quickly, in to the nape of her neck, short round the ears. Kelly watched the long strands of dark hair fall to the tiled floor. Then Sylvie swept it up and put it in a bin bag, opened a packet of hair dye and began to apply it to Kelly’s head. The smell of ammonia invaded her nostrils. After fifteen minutes Sylvie pulled Kelly’s handcuffs along the rails to the sink and used the movable arm of the catering kitchen’s tap to wash the dye down the drain. She pulled a towel out of her bag and began to dry Kelly’s hair. Kelly felt the new sensation of air on the back of her neck. Sylvie dumped the towel and the dye remnants in the bag, and got out a comb. Kelly could feel Sylvie running the comb in a sharp line through her hair, creating a parting where there had been none.

Now Sylvie began to undress, throwing her clothes in an untidy jumble on the floor.

‘Is this how you get off? Seeing who you can fool by playing the actual wife? By switching between being two people? Is this how he wants you to be – looking like his wife but acting like a mistress? Was it your idea or his?’

‘We have a connection. We came up with the idea together.’ Sylvie glanced towards the door. ‘Though it doesn’t hurt to make a man think he was the driver.’ She bent down and began to pull her own tights over Kelly’s feet. ‘Don’t struggle.’

Kelly started to laugh. ‘You’re really doing all this for him? That operation you had on your nose, that wasn’t for polyps, was it? It was to give you a profile like mine. You had surgery to look like me, studied me for hours and hours, imitated my every gesture, crept round my house for how many lost nights, and all for
him
? He’s not worth it!’ She was shouting now. ‘In a few years you’ll be as desperate as me to get away. Love has made you blind, you can’t change him, Sylvie, you never will.’

Sylvie picked up Kelly’s black dress and pulled it over her head. She did up the buttons, then picked up her own colourful dress and drew it up over Kelly’s thighs. She traced a finger round the waistband of the tights, checking for bulges. ‘Impressive, after two babies.’

‘It won’t work, Sylvie. The children will never be fooled. They know who their mother is, you can’t begin to deceive them.’

Sylvie undid one handcuff and then the other, pulling the dress into position and doing up the zip. ‘That’s our last hope, isn’t it? That the ties to our children are unbreakable. But you’re wrong, and I think you know you’re wrong. They’re heading off to boarding school. They’ll hardly ever see their mother. Women change when they have babies, don’t they, Kelly? You know all about that. They are not who they were, or who they thought they’d be. When a woman has a baby, all anyone sees is the baby. The woman who carried it and cares for it is invisible.’ She put on Kelly’s flat black pumps and looked down her front, awe and excitement on her face. ‘I never used to wear black. I look kooky!’ She bent down and grabbed Kelly’s foot, forcing her high heels on to Kelly’s feet and doing up the straps. Then she pulled a case out of her bag and flipped open a small mirror. She put contact lenses in, then rummaged in the bag, turning away from Kelly and bending over. When she turned round a wig of long dark hair cascaded down her back and round her chin. She stood and looked fully at her. ‘My name’s not Sylvie. It’s Kelly.’

Kelly stared, stupefied. Looks are not fixed. At that moment, staring into eyes that were exactly like her own, Kelly understood what Sylvie was doing, and why it would work. It was like looking at herself in the mirror. With the clothes, the accent, the haircut and the eye colour, the two women were indistinguishable. Sylvie had become her, had stolen her identity entirely.