The Perfect Widow

Chapter 13

Now

Becca

Becca threw her biro down onto her cluttered desk. It ricocheted off yesterday’s sandwich wrapper and rolled onto the floor. She grimaced as she rooted for it, but a decision had been made all the same. She needed to sort this out. There was no other way. She’d been worrying at this puzzle for what seemed like forever, after what she’d found online. She’d been going through the motions here, doing her job to the best of her abilities, but her mind was always … elsewhere. All right, on Louise. Checking up on the woman was becoming a habit. Too much of one, people would say. But she knew there was something there. It wasn’t imagination. Nor obsession. Not this time.

She still didn’t have quite enough at her fingertips to dare to confide in anyone else, though. She stared away from her screen, accidentally catching Burke’s eye. His sandy hair was plastered down today, his usually mild blue eyes giving her a shrewd glance. She bobbed her head back. She could just imagine what he’d say if he knew what she was spending her time doing.

She yawned and drooped back over the latest report, struggling to fill it in. Registering all this stuff had never seemed so pointless, when she knew that, not more than ten minutes’ drive away, sat a woman who was literally getting away with murder.

Becca knew Louise Bridges was a bad ’un, she could smell it on her. There was no doubt in her mind that there was more to the whole business than it seemed. So what if the coroner had taken one look at the grieving widow and rubber-stamped everything? So what if no one else seemed to bat an eyelid at the way Mrs Bridges was carrying on with her life as though nothing had happened?

As usual, the thought of Louise filled her vision and she stood up abruptly. At the desk opposite, a colleague stopped scratching behind her ear with a pen and ran their eyes up and down her, then turned away. Becca felt more conscious than ever of the soft rolls straining against her uniform trousers. Across the way, Burke tutted, then went back to his in-tray. He’d be happy doing paperwork forever. Routine, structure, block capitals on the dotted line. This wasn’t what she’d joined the police for.

Why had she joined? It was partly something that her mother couldn’t reproach her for. She was never going to get a job doing anything her mother really rated. The sort of glamorous career celebrities dabbled in, between interviews with Hello! The police, though, that was solid, respectable. Her mother could see the point of it. It seemed to cancel out that one brief wobble Becca had had, the depression. She’d been ill, but she was better.

Unfortunately, it turned out that she didn’t want to do the bits of the job that Mum thought would keep her nicely out of trouble. She wanted to do the tricky stuff. Search out the hidden. Make deductions. And, above all, make sure people didn’t cheat justice.

One person in particular.

It was going to be a slog, she could see that. So far, no one had ever seen her potential – apart from poor old Dad. She’d have to claw her way up alone. But this Louise Bridges business could help her. Becca would just have to prove them all wrong about the woman, simple as that. Shatter some illusions.

And no, it wasn’t going to be like last time. She was perfectly fine now.

She was just a person who liked to focus.

Chapter 14

Then

I blush to admit it, but at this point I hadn’t really got as far as saying two whole consecutive sentences to Patrick, unless you count stammering and stuttering as conversation.

At first, Patrick seemed determined to keep a constant distance of three metres from my orbit. Perhaps he sensed that if he got any closer, he’d be sucked into my gravity like a hapless meteorite. I mooned over him twice a day, more often if he was getting a sandwich. I had failed to move up to his floor, though the big bosses hadn’t quite told me no. It was just not yet. I wondered if they were stringing me along. I should have wondered the exact same thing about Patrick, but I was too much in love.

Because all of a sudden, he was sauntering over. He’d always had a bit of a chat with Jen, and sometimes winked at me. But now he was coming over just for me. Me.

The first time, I felt like a flower singled out by a bee, every cell of me was alive and producing nectar at a prodigious rate. From a single word, ‘OK?’ we were soon up to a sentence, ‘How’s it going?’ Then, one day, he smiled properly, right at me, and we actually had a real conversation. It was a red-letter day.

All right, he was only asking if a courier had left a package for him. They hadn’t. If they had, I would have been on the phone to him like a shot. I didn’t say this, of course. I just stammered and blushed like a stupid idiot, shaking my head as though I had some sort of neurological misfortune, while he looked at me, amused blue eyes running over every inch of my overheated face and body. It was a wonder I didn’t spontaneously combust.

After this, the wink and a little ‘hello’ became our regular thing. I spent hours, at home and in the ladies’ at work, practising responses, acting cool, trying desperately to develop some vestige of nonchalance.

Then, for no reason that I could divine, things went backwards again overnight. He started passing me by. The whispers and winks dried up. Days and weeks passed and I was in the desert. He still walked by, regular as clockwork, sometimes with his little coterie of admiring colleagues, sometimes on his own with that brisk, purposeful stride I loved, but he didn’t glance over anymore. I was distraught. Had I done something to put him off? Smiled too widely, given myself away somehow?

I tried everything to lure him back. New perfume. Undoing another button on my blouse, then rapidly doing it up again when I attracted the others instead. I straightened my hair, then plaited it, then put it in a bun. Finally I left it hanging down, as dejected as I was, though I carried on smiling my merry smile.

But just when I wasn’t expecting it, just when I was resigned, there he was again one fine morning, leaning towards me. I almost swooned into his eyes, they were so blue up close. Even the pores in his skin were beautiful. I was concentrating so hard on not hyperventilating that I forgot to listen.

‘Sorry, what?’ I was flustered.

‘Just asked if anything had been dropped off here for me? It was supposed to be in the post, but it hasn’t come.’

The mail was sorted elsewhere and delivered by various spotty youths with red trolleys. I did my best not to be aware of their presence in the building, just as Jen had shown me. Now it seemed as if Patrick, for all his years in the firm, was equally ignorant of the workings of the post room.

‘Um.’ I looked frantically under my desk, and then wondered why I was doing it. There was nothing there, except my box of tampons, and though I might be discombobulated by his presence, the scent of his clean shirt and the slight citrus waft of his aftershave, I wasn’t far gone enough to get those out. ‘I’m so sorry, no,’ I said, my eyes pleading. Had I let him down in some way? Was it my fault? I felt as though the world might easily come to an end.

‘Don’t upset yourself, darling,’ he said with a wink. ‘I’ll get them on the phone. Bang a few heads.’

My eyes opened wider and now I knew I wasn’t imagining it. A current ran between us for an electric moment. I loved his voice. His gaze. I basked in the way he looked at me, as though we were equals, as though we were seeing each other for the first time. As though I was really worth the time of day. But then he was off again, and that was that. He sauntered away with me watching every step, wishing I could call him back but with not a thing to say for myself. Then I subsided, a tulip deprived of water.

God, I was hopeless. I cursed myself. Other girls would have known what to do, would have quipped back at him, would have stretched that moment like bubble gum. They would have had him snapping back to their desks time and time again. But no, not me.

I kept up my façade but underneath, depression rolled over me like a sea fog.

If I hadn’t filled my non-working hours with my quest to get on (I was now taking evening classes in French), my life would have been totally empty. The continuing squeeze on the business meant a freeze on promotions, or so they’d told me. So I was still stuck at my desk, likely to take root in the marble.

It was clear, now, that Patrick would never make a move of his own accord. He knew who I was, vaguely, but didn’t care nearly enough. Yes, he gave me that twice-daily twinkle, when it suited him, but what was that worth? He’d done the same to Jen, until she’d left. Then he’d moved his twinkling on to me. It was just a reflex – the kind of low-level acknowledgement that a cocksure man with everything on his side felt he owed to subordinate but attractive women. ‘Hi, I’m busy and successful, you’re lowly and unimportant, but if we had world enough and time, I’d probably give you one.’

I’d thought about it, of course I had, in the long lonely hours of my empty nights, and had come up with every possible answer as to why he’d started speaking to me, only to stop again. A few times now, he’d sought me out. It meant something, didn’t it? It had to. Sometimes, in my fevered daydreams, it was the gateway to a wild romance. But then, in my nightmares, I decided it meant nothing at all, except an interest in getting his hands on his post. I could easily drive myself mad, seesawing between the two. I needed to get out of the theoretical realm, gain some concrete knowledge of the man.

Maybe he didn’t repeat his visit to my prettily polished counter because he wasn’t after a receptionist. He probably had his sights on higher things, a personal assistant, even a fellow account executive. His colleagues weren’t so fussy. They flocked to me. Lounged around, telling me jokes, reporting on the weather outside, as if I didn’t have floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass right in front of me giving me better minute-by-minute coverage of the elements than most TV weather girls had. Some did that general boasting men indulge in, every story coming back to their terrific prowess in football or DIY and therefore, by implication, between the sheets. My smile was a fixture, as shiny as the firm’s nameplate on the door, but it meant nothing. I didn’t dislike these lads, but they were puppies, frolicking at my feet.

Picture an old-fashioned musical – a girl on the desk with shiny blonde hair, and a knot of admirers around her dressed in black and white, showing off frantically with their dazzling leaps and spins. Then the hero saunters past, in grey suit, magenta tie, winks briefly at the girl, and the admirers freeze in mid-dance. She sighs and leans her head on her hand, tracking him with her eyes.

I was that girl and the lads were the cardboard cut-outs prancing around me. I indulged them, while feeling twinges of annoyance at their elbows wrecking the patina of my counter. Their attempts at flirtation didn’t even bore me, I just watched them like someone parked in front of a screen, letting the images flick across my irises, not taking anything in. Yet any one of these boys would have done me fine as a boyfriend, husband.

Who was I kidding? They were all way, way above me. If they could have seen how I’d been brought up, they’d be running for the hills, no question. But my indifference was as powerful as catnip. Cracking me became their game. I gave them the shortest shrift I could, while remaining polite and cheery. It didn’t do my status any harm for Patrick to see me as hugely popular, though I had to be very careful that he didn’t get a whisper that I was the office bike. But act too cool, and maybe he’d be scared to approach me properly himself. I didn’t want to give the impression that I’d freeze him off. On the contrary, I felt like Vesuvius, primed and ready, in the strange stillness that came before an eruption powerful enough to obliterate a thousand Pompeiis.

And, all the time, I had to conceal my passion. I knew my eyes caressed him as he sauntered through the marble hall to the lifts and back. I tried to stop myself. When he flicked his smile in my direction, I had to make sure I wasn’t already gawping at him as though he was a juicy steak and I was a big cat waiting to pounce. It was hard. And it wasn’t getting any easier.

The worst days were those when he was on his phone while he breezed past, hunched into the call in that way he had. Phones were smaller back then – didn’t some wag make the joke that until you started getting porn on the internet, phones were getting tinier and tinier? Once filth was only a download away, the screens magically started growing again.

Well, Patrick’s then was a titchy thing, the latest must-have gizmo, and when he was schmoozing a client, I could have been invisible. If it was one of those days when I’d planned my appearance down to the last eyelash, had on the carefully laundered, lovingly ironed blouse that had seemed to elicit more of a response when I’d worn it last week, I’d be gutted if he didn’t even look my way. To some extent, it made me admire him more. Look at the way he gave his all to his work! Mind you, for all I knew, he could have been chatting to his bookmaker, his mum or even, banish the thought, a girlfriend.

I told myself he was just a really hard-working guy, but I couldn’t shut myself off entirely from the possibility that Patrick, unlike me, had a life outside these glossy walls, that yes, he did have a girl or even a fiancée waiting somewhere in the wings, a significant other that he did all the fun things with.

I was hazy about what these might be, never having had what you might describe as a sunny life thus far, but I’d read my share of romances, hadn’t I? And I’d walked around my hometown, seeing the happy couples, like a child, nose pressed up against the sweetshop window. Strolling in parks, boating on lakes, feeding each other spaghetti. That sort of thing. Though if it applied to other people, I found it a little revolting. It reminded me of my mother, throwing herself all over the latest scumbag. But the idea that it might, one day – one day soon – be me and Patrick mooning around, hand in hand, brought a smile to my face. And that’s how he caught me, one day.

‘Hey, gorgeous? Hope you’re thinking about me?’ He sauntered past, that wink perfectly timed to flip down over his blue, blue eye just at the end of his jaunty line. I was so startled that I sat up, bolt upright, like a total idiot, and lost the misty, smiling gaze that had finally tempted him into speech again, so long after those cursory enquiries about his post. Thank God I just managed not to spill my coffee. That would have killed all my attempts at insouciance stone dead. As it was, the sound of his heels faded away and all I could hear was the blood pounding in my head. If he’d turned around, he’d have seen me looking poleaxed, nothing like the girl of his dreams after all.

That episode convinced me that I had to get a grip, somehow. Give up. Get him out of my system. Or change something. At the moment, I might as well have had a sign above my head reading, ‘take me, I’m yours,’ every time Patrick walked past.

He was blind to it, but my dread was that someone else would see my yearning for what it was – and would tell him. The shame, the humiliation, didn’t bear thinking about. I had to make myself less vulnerable. And I had to be a lot less available. There’s nothing people like more than a bit of a challenge. Watch kids in the playground. They all want the same toy. One picks it up, and it’s suddenly the hottest thing in the sandpit. Meanwhile, a hundred identical toys, just as good, lie unwanted and unseen.

At the moment, I was like a discarded plastic bucket, aching for Patrick to pick me. I needed to stir things up, make him see me, realise that I was a must-have. And feel that he had to fight to get me.

Or I had to contemplate something much more difficult. Something terrifying.

I needed to accept defeat and move on.

Chapter 15

Now

Becca

Becca stared straight ahead, kept her eyes on the sitcom, just the way her mother liked her to. She could sense her mother’s gaze coming to rest on her occasionally when the canned laughter rang out, checking she was smiling. Becca stretched her mouth obligingly, but inside, she was thinking. She’d have to stir things up. If she was right about Louise – and she was – she’d have to make others see it. Because at the moment they were blind.

This was the easiest way to be with her mother. Let it all wash over her. And if Mum wanted to have her say about Becca’s life, the telly was the referee. All points were made via the set. ‘Doesn’t she just look lovely?’ Compared with the state of you. Her mother sighed as a 20-year-old with a size-six body wafted across the screen.

‘That mother is so kind, isn’t she?’ Why can’t you stop being a bitch? Becca countered, as the cosy TV matriarch poured out more tea, apparently without the whiff of martyrdom hanging over her every action.

They sat in a silence that passed for companionable for a while, then Becca burst into speech. ‘Would you ever think that she’d be capable of murder?’ she asked, jabbing a biscuit towards the sitcom daughter.

‘Murder?’ Her mother’s eyes were as round as the coasters on the coffee table. ‘But why would she need to kill someone? She’s got everything, hasn’t she? Look at that boyfriend, he worships the ground she walks on, you can tell.’ Why haven’t you got one? Her mother was tutting, shifting in her chair. Becca knew the signs, realised glumly she ought to go. These Saturday nights were never easy, at the best of times. And now, with her mind so occupied with thoughts of pulling that one trailing thread that would make Louise Bridges unravel, well, she hadn’t got the energy to play her mother’s games.

Suddenly, her mother turned to her, actually looked straight at her. ‘It’s not like before, is it, love? You know, when you got everything … out of proportion?’

Becca stared at her. She thought they had a pact never to mention those dark months, the medication that had kept her tethered to her bed, as secure as any strait jacket. ‘No. No. Of course not, Mum. Why would you say that? I’m better now, that was ages ago. All in the past.’

‘It’s just … you’ve got that expression again. You know, that look on your face …’ Her mother was still gazing at her, checking for something, Becca didn’t know what. She shook her head.

‘You’ve got it wrong, Mum. Just busy. Busy at work, you know. But it’s great to be here. So relaxing after a hard week.’ Her fingers gripped the armrest.

Her mother subsided. So willing to be reassured, so glad to have her fears laid to rest. She didn’t want that trouble again. Becca didn’t blame her. It was … well, it was a hole that she had fallen into. But she had crawled out of it, too. This wasn’t the same at all. Back then, she obsessed about anything. Everything. Light switches, lampposts. Yes, she could see now that it wasn’t healthy, she’d needed help. But this time was different. She was looking into something, legitimately. A concern. A desire to protect the public. And this time, she was right.

On the screen, the soundtrack erupted into guffaws again, then a smattering of applause. Becca chuckled obediently, felt her mother’s eyes rake her face again, smiling this time. Becca slumped back in her chair, forgot about escape. She let the evening wash over her. She’d play the game her mother’s way, for once.

Chapter 16

Then

I assessed the rest of the herd. Yes, they all played at wanting me. But it was just a game. They were little boys, compared to Patrick. I sensed, though, that Patrick would only make a move – say a few more words, even – if he thought there was real competition.

There were possibilities, all right. So many men, and all of them apparently so single. While Patrick remained immune to my charms, the rest of his floor was mine for the asking. But that gave me pause. Did I really want to foul my own nest? Risk a recommendation scrawled in the gents? I, of all people, knew what men could be like.

At the moment I had an ice queen reputation. That gave me an odd kind of status, that I surely didn’t deserve by virtue of birth, education, or anything else much. If I unbent enough to date one of his cohort, would Patrick forever see me as tainted? I thought he might. Men can be territorial. I’d seen that often enough with my mother. It was fine for them to stray, make it clear they’d lost whatever interest they’d had, but if she put a foot out of line, started sizing up the next Mr Oh-So-Wrong, well … It was never pretty.

I wasn’t saying that my lovely Patrick was anything like the scum Mum chose to hang about with. But still. I wanted everything tidy, above board. Letting him see me with another guy from work was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

I decided, instead, to try to get a little bit of practice elsewhere. For now, I’d accept that things were going nowhere with Patrick, that he was just out of my league. Instead, I’d make the day of one of the blokes in my French class, just by trying a bit of light ooh-la-la flirtation. Because, despite having seen enough rounds of the battle of the sexes to write the book on it, thanks to my mother, I actually had no direct experience.

This was in pre-Tinder times, when dating advice ran along the lines of, do an evening course or die alone. Do you know anyone who met their life partner learning to upholster or gleaning the basics of car maintenance? No, of course not. But still the advice got dished out, as though there was something deeply erotic about adult education centres. There wasn’t. They were basically schools used after hours, and most of the time we were all sitting on those piddly orange plastic chairs that are big enough for you to swing your legs like metronomes in Year One but pretty well cut off the circulation in grown-ups. How could anyone think of sex while scrunched up like an old crisp packet? Must have been desperate. I know I was.

True to form, I would hunch there once a week, vacuuming up information. I was always trying to claw my way up. But there were a couple of guys on my course who’d already sidled up to chat, and not just about whether dimanche came before lundi. Perhaps they’d been given the ‘join an evening class’ spiel by a well-meaning parent or friend. The next time one of them came over, I told myself I’d try not to blush, stammer or freeze. Instead, I would chat. Heaven knew I could do with a few more moves, which would hopefully stop me needing a defibrillator every time Patrick spoke to me. If he ever did again.

The first of the likely lads was Mike. A nice enough boy. He’d read somewhere – or been told by his mum – that humour was the way to a woman’s heart. All those personal ads with ‘GSOH essential’ had a lot to answer for. His jokes were terrible. But it was sweet of him to try. I couldn’t help smiling up at him after one of his better efforts, not wanting to encourage him too much – after all, he wasn’t fit to lick Patrick’s boots – but grateful all the same. It felt good to be seen, for once.