DEAD TO HER
Sarah Pinborough

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Copyright © Sarah Pinborough 2020

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover photograph © Mohamad Itani/Plainpicture

Lyrics by Amanda Palmer.

An excerpt from the song “Runs In The Family”, taken from the album “Who Killed Amanda Palmer”.

Sarah Pinborough asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008289072

Ebook Edition © August 2020 ISBN: 9780008289096

Version: 2019-12-20

Dedication

For the real Marcie and Jason (and their cat collective …)

With much love.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Part Two

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Part Three

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Part Four

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Epilogue

Keep Reading …

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Sarah Pinborough

About the Publisher

PART ONE

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here …

The Tempest

William Shakespeare

1

The candle burns.

Crisp paper. A pen.

WHAT HAPPENED TO JONNY?

Envelope.

Seal.

Whisper.

Wait.

2

You can’t tame a wild thing.

The thought bubbled up from some place deep inside Marcie, a ripple in the stagnant water that had become her life. She could feel Eleanor’s appraising eyes on the guests, looking down from the gilt-framed portrait that still hung on the staircase wall, overshadowing them all. Dead less than a year. What would she make of this turn of events?

A hubbub of quietly spoken comments from the tight circle of people among whom Marcie stood fluttered in the warm air. Elsewhere, the tension of repressed snickers and sideways glances.

‘Well my, will you look at that.’

‘The old dog.’

‘Has he lost weight? Sure doesn’t look like a man ready to retire.’

‘I didn’t know what I was expecting, but she is something … else.’

‘And so young.’

She was young, this newcomer amongst them, this second Mrs William Radford IV. What, twenty-two? Younger? Twenty-three at the most. Eleanor had been forty years older than that when she died.

‘There’s no fool like an old fool.’ Iris. Ever dry. Eleanor’s close friend since they’d been young together a different world ago. It was Iris who’d done her best to keep Eleanor the elegant Savannah belle she’d long been, even when the cancer had ravaged her to skeletal. By the end her make-up was so thick Marcie had thought Eleanor looked like Baby Jane, but what could she say? She’d said the same as everyone else did, My, you’re looking so well, Eleanor. Always so lovely. Can I fetch you a sweet tea?

This new wife, though, this black second wife, was ravishing, not ravaged. Her skin shone with health and strength. She was sleek and proud with strong, slim limbs, and perfect curves at hip and bust. Hair, straightened and glossy, was pulled back tight. A small belly that promised a steak indulgence rather than a rabbit salad. The kind of belly men loved in women and women hated in themselves.

She came down the sweeping staircase smiling with her chin held high, eyes alight with pride as if the man on her arm was a handsome movie star, not a sixty-five-year-old with vein-purple cheeks, who may have lost some weight, but on whom years of indulgence had still taken their toll. William Radford IV was the epitome of indulged; wasn’t that why they were there after all?

Neither bride nor groom looked towards the painting of the last wife whose influence lay like a film over the magnificent house.

Eyes scanned the new wife’s gold dress – Versace maybe – figure-hugging but an inch too short for this society crowd. The heels – half an inch too high. The jewellery, thick coils around her neck and hanging from her ears, impressive but attention-seeking. Each of the women – nearly all over fifty – would be making the same assessment: She’s not one of us. Marcie knew how that felt.

‘Her name’s Keisha.’ Elizabeth bustled over, dragging Marcie’s attention away. Staid office wear had been abandoned for the night in favour of a green dress that looked new – although certainly not Versace. Elizabeth’s short dark curly hair, run through with wiry grey, had been fluffed up so she looked like an ageing poodle. Did Elizabeth feel it too? This frisson of excitement – of change? Their feathers being ruffled by the sudden arrival of this cuckoo?

‘She’s just turned twenty-two and is from London,’ Elizabeth continued, leaning in closer, eyes twinkling with as yet unspilled gossip, happy to have snippets of information to share that might make her feel part of the set. There was a fondness for her, but it was the kind of affection you might give an old dog simply because it always wanted to please you.

Elizabeth may have been Eleanor’s assistant forever – and then William’s when Eleanor got too sick – but she was still only staff. William said she was family but Marcie knew better. Real family mattered in this circle of friends. Your blood. How far back your name went. There was pride in history. Elizabeth had no eminent cotton or sugar ancestry and no style. She’d been stillborn into the waters of this society.

‘That’s where they met: London. Four months ago. A whirlwind romance. William wanted to keep their early return as a surprise, but someone had to get them home and arrange all this,’ Elizabeth wafted a hand around as if she’d been spending her own money on the occasion. ‘He swore me to secrecy. But thank the lord for Julian and Pierre. They truly do organise the best parties.’ She smiled again.

‘Here come the happy couple,’ Emmett muttered – William was always going to bring her to them first, his best friends, the club set – and then it was a flurry of exclamations and smiles and wafts of perfume as each of the women leaned in to air-kiss the pair. Marcie, the other second wife, the older second wife, took a few steps backwards as the rest crowded in. Close up, Keisha was even more magnificent. Her skin was a deep rich brown. She glowed. Eleanor had glowed once too.

Marcie watched her friends chirruping their joy – the queen is dead, long live the queen – vying to be the happiest at the new union. Iris, bird-like and papery old, but elegantly preserved, and her husband Noah, the judge, portly, red-faced, and yet somewhat regal, the two of them cornerstones of Savannah society. Virginia, constantly smiling, her body starved to slim, but her full face, under her Stepford wife blowout, forever betraying the larger size her God had meant her to be. She was a stalwart of the church where she was adored almost as much as Jesus himself for the size of her charitable donations. Beside her was her foppish husband Emmett, slight and short and impeccably dressed. Also somewhere in his mid-fifties, he brokered various stocks and shares to pretend to himself that he didn’t simply while away his life on inherited wealth, using the club as an easy pool for investors.

Sometimes, in the increasingly frequent bad moods that struck when this life threatened to suffocate her, Marcie wondered if she’d reach menopause early just by being around so much middle age. But now, in the wake of poor Eleanor’s demise, here was youth among them, a shard of obsidian glistening in the staid, patted-down chalk. Freshness. Excitement.

And twenty-two. Four years younger than Marcie had been when she’d met Jason. An affair, a year or so of melodrama, an unpleasant divorce – goodbye, Jacquie – and by twenty-nine, she had been the young second wife taking careful steps to find her place in this world.

Now she was nearly thirty-five with Jason coming up on fifty-three and she was cemented – stuck – into the set. But Jason wasn’t like the others in many ways. Not quite of the same stock, though his family had been around for generations. And then there was the business with his father. He’d had to rise above that; no mean feat in this world. He’d crawled back onto the social ladder while married to Jacquie. It was something they had in common, this tenacity to achieve more, and Marcie was determined they’d keep climbing. She looked at the chattering, gushing wealth embodied in her friends. How wonderful it must be to be born an Iris or a William, where people hung on your every word, wanted to please you. Royalty. Shame they didn’t have anything of note to say, but then they didn’t have to.

She glanced towards Jason, wanting to share a quick secret smile at the ridiculousness of all this, but her husband’s eyes were on Keisha. Marcie watched as his hand half-stroked the young woman’s bare arm when he leaned in to kiss her cheek, as if he couldn’t resist touching her.

Unlike the women’s, this was no air-kiss. Did his lips linger against Keisha’s flawless skin a fraction too long? He wasn’t smiling, not amusedly dazzled like the others, and she noted his Adam’s apple dipping as he swallowed. She knew that look too well. Lust. It was the way he’d looked at her in the first heat after they’d met. He hadn’t looked at her like that for a while. She felt her stomach constrict, her champagne suddenly sour.

Once a cheat, always a cheat.

‘Jason, introduce your wife, where are your manners? Oh, these boys …’

‘Yes, Marcie, what are you doing back there? Come on in!’

‘Marcie?’

For a moment she didn’t recognise her own name, still feeling the sting of that heated expression in Jason’s eyes, and then the huddle parted as William’s thick fingers touched her arm and she automatically smiled, all worry hidden away.

‘Congratulations,’ she said softly. ‘I’m so happy for you.’ She turned to Keisha, tall and glorious in front of her, suddenly feeling old. ‘And of course, lovely to meet you.’

Their eyes stayed locked for a moment too long, rich, deep brown on her watery blue, and Marcie knew she was being appraised – judged – in a way the other wives hadn’t been. They were in a different age bracket. They weren’t competition. But maybe Marcie wasn’t so old, after all.

‘I feel like I already know you all.’ Keisha’s English accent was hard and clipped; strangely captivating. You all. Two words. Even Marcie now automatically drawled them together in that southern liquid way. ‘Billy’s talked about you so much.’

Billy? Eleanor would turn in her grave. William Radford IV was no one’s Billy. Or at least he hadn’t been. Times were changing. Keisha turned her attention back to Jason. ‘Especially you. The great Jason Maddox, the brains of the firm, and all-round great guy. I hope you don’t disappoint.’ She winked, flirtatious and friendly, at ease with being the centre of attention, and then laughed, a surprisingly brash sound, or perhaps just uninhibited, and they all dutifully joined in, a tinkling of politeness. When Jason winked back at the new star in their firmament Marcie wasn’t sure if she wanted to rip this breathtaking woman’s eyes out or go and scream in a corner.

‘I know this has all been sudden and you may think we’re crazy.’ William took two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter, handing one to his new bride, and then letting his fingers slide down to the curve of her back. ‘But when you know, you know. Keisha brought life back into my heart. I didn’t think that was possible.’

‘You didn’t want to take the other six months as a honeymoon?’ Jason asked, at last looking at William. ‘You were so adamant you were going for a year.’

‘Plans change, Jason. Plans change. And how could I stay away from my wonderful friends for so long?’

‘Well, I know you’re retiring but …’

‘No work tonight.’ William slapped Jason hard – maybe a little too hard – on the arm. ‘Now come on, let’s go eat. I want Keisha to see what she’s been missing out on over there in London.’ He leaned into Jason. ‘And I should thank you. If you hadn’t told me all the best places to go on my trip, I’d never have found her.’

As they walked away, friends following in their wake, Marcie noticed that this time it was William who Jason was watching. A dark, thoughtful expression. It seemed Keisha was upsetting the apple cart for both of them.

Once the champagne and cocktails had washed away their polite shock, and the band had struck up on the terrace, the party turned out to be less of a bore than Marcie had been expecting. The guests kicked off their shoes and danced in the night air, care for expensive dresses forgotten, and even Iris and Noah took a turn on the grass. As they swayed, Marcie thought she glimpsed the ghosts of the teenage sweethearts they’d once been.

Marcie watched as Jason chatted loudly to some of the other guests. She couldn’t get the look he’d given Keisha out of her head. He’d been pulling away for a few months, but she’d put it down to work – the responsibility of running the partnership while William was away, gearing up to take the next step of buying him out.

Their sex life had dwindled down to occasional drunken screws and she wondered if those were only to fulfil his need for a child, an heir, a social accessory they could send to County Day and expand their affluent network.

Looking at him now, the same questions swirled in her head as they had for weeks. Had he grown bored of her? Was she a challenge completed? Now, here, in that look that whispered thoughts of betrayal, there had been the first clear fracture in the structure of their marriage. She’d never seen him look at another woman that way. Never.

Keisha had come to join them once or twice, increasingly unsteady on her feet but still trying to twirl and shimmy to the music, head thrown back, laughing that raucous, fascinating sound. She lingered too close to where Jason and Marcie were sharing a lounger later in the evening, and although Jason did snatch the occasional glance her way, if Keisha was looking for further flirtation she was disappointed. But all the same, that look. William, following constantly in his young wife’s shadow, finally led her away and they didn’t see her again. Given her state, he probably had Zelda, his housekeeper, put her to bed.

Virginia was all raised eyebrows, even though she wasn’t beyond having one or two drinks too many when the mood took her, church or no church, but Iris pointed out that it must be hard to move across the world and be expected to live up to someone like Eleanor when you were so completely different. Completely different. What she meant was young, crude and, the most unspoken word of all, black. Anyway, Keisha hadn’t seemed awkward, just a drunk girl who didn’t care what people thought of her because she’d won the jackpot. A rich old man. Not that it was a prize Marcie would want to win. The thought of William heaving away on top of her … God, no wonder Keisha had been draining the champagne and flirting with someone else’s husband.

3

She and Jason finally got home around one, and before they’d even turned on the lights he was kissing her, catching her by surprise.

‘You wanna have another go at making a baby?’ He grinned, his mouth all lopsided charm, made somehow more attractive by the beer haze in his eyes, and before Marcie could answer he was pulling her up the stairs and tugging at her clothes. She couldn’t help laughing. Yes, he was drunk, but she wasn’t exactly sober herself and it was good to feel him wanting her again. To be close to him. To be something like they were before. Maybe she was wrong to worry earlier. Keisha was beautiful, but he loved her, his wife.

They fell on the bed, only half-naked, a mess of panting urgency. She sought out his eyes in the gloom as he pushed her arms over her head, holding her wrists down with one hand. She tried to nuzzle at his face to get him to look at her, to kiss her. As her legs gripped his waist, Jason thrust himself inside her. She gasped – she always did, there had never been a man who could come close to Jason at turning her on – but his face stayed pressed into her shoulder, his breath dampening her skin as it quickened. He’s not with me. The thought was a cold shower between her thighs. He’s not thinking of me.

He finished fast and when he flopped over to his side of the bed, Marcie stayed breathless. It was one thing that they rarely fucked any more, but until now, when they had, she’d always felt he was present. Not this time. Had he been thinking of her? It was nothing. It meant nothing. People fantasised all the time. She was over-reacting. What was it about Keisha that unsettled her so?

‘I love you,’ Jason said, perfunctorily, his hand reaching across and resting on her thigh.

‘I know,’ she answered, and let out a chuckle she didn’t feel. She couldn’t make a thing of it. She wouldn’t.

‘Oh so funny, Mrs Maddox.’ He let out a long, contented sigh. Marcie’s heart was racing.

‘I think she likes you,’ she said, the words blurting out. At least she sounded mildly amused, not jealous or insecure. His eyes were no longer shut. He was staring at the ceiling.

‘Who?’

‘You know who!’ Why hadn’t she kept her mouth shut? She felt stupid. Obvious. ‘Keisha.’

‘Ah, that she.’ He stared at the ceiling a moment longer, expression unreadable in the dark, and then rolled back on top of her, and smiled. ‘Your old man’s still got it. You’d better work harder to keep me.’ He kissed her, slow and soft, and she kissed him back but she felt hollow. She’d worked hard enough to get him, she didn’t want the rest of her life spent working hard to keep him. Was he even worth it?

Half an hour later, when he was sprawled out and snoring, Marcie got up and padded into her dressing room beyond the his and hers bathrooms. Under the glare of the light, she looked at herself. She remembered how proud the new Mrs Radford had been, coming down those stairs. How beautiful. The way she’d danced, so drunk. She didn’t care, that was it. She reminded Marcie of someone she herself used to be a long time ago, back before she’d met Jason. Before she had entered this world.

When had she started to feel so small? Was it when the house – much as she adored their new home – got so big? Or was it after the boutique failed and they – Jason – quietly decided that a life in business wasn’t for her? No more expensive hobbies. When had she stopped being hungry for excitement? When she’d become a good southern wife? Was Keisha a reminder of all she’d given up for this life and was that why she felt so untethered around her?

Too much time for self-reflection, she decided as she opened her small chest of creams and toiletries.

She’d have to wait and see how it all panned out. No doubt Keisha would be in a nice prim dress and pearls – full submissive wife – before the first whisper of fall, and Jason would be back to his normal charming attentive self. Keisha was just a small bump, a momentary distraction. Marcie was determined to get their marriage back on track – after all, wasn’t this everything she’d ever wanted?

The thought didn’t bring her as much comfort as she expected. Was she angry at Jason for getting bored with her because she knew deep down that she, in turn, was growing bored of him? Maybe this had been what she wanted, but that was before she’d gotten it. Now her wants had changed. She was tired of being so goddamned dependent. Grateful. Even surrounded by luxury, she felt like a second-class citizen. The other wives might tolerate her, but she didn’t have any of their respect, and these days she wasn’t too sure she had Jason’s. She’d hoped money would bring that, to finally be a person of merit, no longer looked down on, but apparently it wasn’t enough.

You wanna have another go at making a baby?

The thought of bringing a child into this made her stomach tense. If they divorced and she was saddled with a kid, then what? No man here would want her with baggage.

She worried at her lip as she looked in the mirror. After making sure the door was locked, she carefully pulled away the inner lining of her vanity case and took out the strip of pills hidden inside. She stared long and hard in the mirror and her eyes hardened as she popped one free.

No, Marcie thought, looking up at the air-conditioning grille on the ceiling as she swallowed the secret contraceptive. No, I don’t want to make a fucking baby.

4

Marcie wished they’d had this late lunch at the house rather than on Iris and Noah Cartwright’s boat moored at the end of the jetty. Perhaps then she wouldn’t be forcing a smile through her nausea from the slight movement of the creek beneath them. Although it was a still day the air was humid and heavy with the endless heat suffocating the city, and even the water was lazy in its wake. Iris knew Marcie got motion sickness, but Noah loved his boat and they always entertained on it in the summer. It was a tradition and it had been clear from the start that they wouldn’t change for Marcie.

‘You have to get used to it,’ Jason had said when they’d first got married. ‘Water’s in the veins as much as blood here. We grow up on it. But I guess you’re all landlubbers back in Boise, Idaho.’ He’d smiled as he teased her and she’d wanted to point out that they had water in Boise too, but he wouldn’t have cared. That was one thing she and Keisha had in common. They were both from elsewhere. Boise could be as far away as London. Only the South mattered. In the main, Marcie liked it that way.

Thankfully, this would be the last of the boat for a while. Noah and Iris were going away to the Hamptons to visit their beloved daughter, Heather. The only girl out of their four children. She was a few years older and frumpier than Marcie, and had recently produced their latest grandson whose name Marcie couldn’t remember, though she’d dutifully bought gifts of booties, baby grows and bears for him and gushed over photos. Babies all looked the same to her and given Jason’s recent urge to reproduce she was always happier when the subject changed.

She leaned her head against her husband’s broad shoulder and breathed slowly as the queasy moment passed. Across the table, Keisha clearly wasn’t bothered about the movement of the water. She had a half-empty margarita in one hand while biting into a plump king prawn plucked from the platter of iced seafood in the middle of the table. It wasn’t her first. She ate with gusto while Marcie, Iris and Virginia sipped chardonnay and let their stomachs gnaw on their own lining, Iris occasionally feeding Midge their old tabby cat a fishy tidbit as if it made up for her barely eating herself.

‘They don’t come like this in Tesco,’ Keisha said, and Virginia, primly dressed from church, laughed, although she probably didn’t know what Tesco was any more than Marcie did. Keisha was wearing a thin summer dress and as she leaned over to kiss William on the cheek with her wet glossy lips, the curve of her breasts was clearly visible. Jason had his aviators on, and when Marcie glanced his way – was he looking? – all she could see was her own distorted face reflected back at her.

Keisha showed no signs of a hangover from the previous night’s party – if anything she was glowing with health – but William looked tired. Poor old fool. Marcie heard the words in Eleanor’s voice. Always so forgiving of her man.

‘More wine, Virginia?’ Noah refilled the glasses, wine never in short supply here, and Virginia took it gratefully. She’d had an exhausting morning at the church, she’d told them. So much to help with. Charity events to organise. She was alone; Emmett had a prior engagement with some investment client. The amount of times he took meetings on Sundays was a clue to everyone bar his wife that he wasn’t as keen on prayer as Virginia. Marcie imagined that the endless hours of fundraising and work at the homeless refuge that filled her hours could grate very quickly.

‘I called you this morning, William,’ Jason said. ‘Zelda told me you were on the treadmill.’

‘She didn’t mention it.’

‘It wasn’t important. But jogging? I’ve never known you to do more than stroll around the golf course.’

Jason had called William? Marcie hadn’t known that. When? Had she been in the shower? Had he hidden himself in one of the many empty rooms in their new house? Why would he need to speak to William on a Sunday morning when he knew they’d be seeing each other later? A thought curled like dark smoke. Had he been hoping Keisha would answer?

‘Never too late to get in shape,’ William said. ‘My new routine. Up early, down to the treadmill and then a coconut water to raise my energy. I tell you, I feel twenty years younger.’

‘Are you sure that’s the jogging?’ Iris, ever the dry wit, raised an over-plucked eyebrow and glanced at Keisha.

‘She sure helps,’ William conceded and everyone smiled. Marcie tried to imagine him on the running machine. It wasn’t a pretty image. The state-of-the-art home gym had been Eleanor’s and she’d used it religiously. Fat lot of good it had done her in the end.

‘Do you jog too?’ Marcie asked. She imagined Keisha in tight gym gear and regretted asking the question immediately. That was not an image she wanted in Jason’s mind.

‘No, I’m a night owl. Nothing wakes me before ten. Sometimes midday. But I’m trying to change. I know I’ve married an early bird.’

Marcie couldn’t imagine Keisha changing. Conforming. But then, she had. It was amazing how you could contain yourself – imprison yourself – if you really tried. If you loved someone. She looked down at her sweet summer dress from that new expensive little boutique on Broughton that all the club wives loved so much. Cuff sleeves, buttons down the front, deck shoes on her feet. Six or seven years ago she’d have been wearing cut-off denim shorts that showed a hint of her ass and wouldn’t be seen dead in something as old as this. Probably why her own store had failed. She hadn’t known back then how sedately her customer base dressed. Well, that and all the bad-mouthing from Jason’s ex-wife. Marcie should have let the dust settle before trying to do something for herself. Now she was trapped in expensive cotton and reliant on her husband’s credit card.

‘Although I draw the line at coconut water,’ Keisha continued. ‘It’s disgusting. Tastes like sperm. No wonder Billy drains the carton in one go.’ Iris nearly choked on her wine at that. Combined with the appalled look on William’s face and the flush on Noah’s, Marcie couldn’t help but laugh. Jason joined in and then so did Iris.

‘I’m so sorry! I have no filter!’

Keisha clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes suddenly nervous as they glanced at William. For a moment he looked like he might implode and then, seeing that his friends weren’t offended, his face relaxed slightly into a taut grin.

‘I’ll take your word for it on the taste.’ He squeezed her knee and looking at his fat white hand on Keisha’s young dark skin made Marcie think of that English king, the one with all the wives she’d watched the TV show about. Old and obese and with a beautiful young girl he believed loved him. Didn’t end well for the women, if she remembered correctly.

‘It’s so hot,’ Keisha said, when the titters stopped. She leaned back in her chair and looked out over the water. ‘And muggy.’

‘Welcome to the South,’ Noah drawled. He’d been virtually dozing for the past hour or so, an old beached walrus splayed on his seat, but now he picked up a piece of cornbread and tore away a corner to eat despite Iris’s side-eye. Noah could do with losing more than a pound or two himself. ‘Storms that come in fast and clear away as quick. Heat that clings to you like a needy child.’

‘You’ll learn to move slower,’ Virginia added, fanning herself with a coaster. ‘In this weather, you don’t get a choice.’

‘Oh, I love it. I can feel my whole body relaxing. But,’ Keisha said, unfurling from her chair like a languid cat, ‘I also can’t resist the water.’ She kissed William, chaste on the cheek, and then her shoulders were slipping free of her sundress, which slid to the floor, revealing a string bikini beneath it.

‘I’m going in!’ She was already pushing the ladder over the edge and climbing over the side, oblivious to the eyes on her body, William calling her back, and the look of disapproval on Virginia’s face as she declared, ‘Oh my!’

Keisha jumped from the boat’s edge, arms in the air, a whoop of joy carrying her down into the splash and by the time the others were on their feet and at the railing she was breaking the surface, treading water, face full of delight.

‘Be careful!’ Noah called, leaning over the side. ‘We get ’gators sometimes!’

Keisha ignored him and ducked under the water again, childlike in her joy.

‘She’s quite the live-wire, isn’t she?’ Iris said, but there was no hint of disapproval. If anything, she sounded surprisingly impressed. What would Eleanor make of her best friend embracing her replacement so quickly?

‘She needs to learn to control her urges,’ William grumbled.

‘Oh, she’s just young,’ Iris said. ‘So much energy. I can see why she caught your eye, William.’

Marcie could see why Keisha had caught William’s eye written all over Jason’s face. He’d pushed his glasses on top of his head and was looking down at the glittering water and the woman in it. Marcie slid her arm through his, the feel of his cotton shirt and the taut arm under it both familiar and exciting, but he didn’t respond. It was as if she wasn’t there.

Keisha, squinting in the sun, one arm shading her eyes, was looking up at him. ‘You guys should come in! I dare you!’ No one said a word, and Marcie, hot and queasy, thought how nice it would be to strip to her underwear and jump from the godawful boat, but she wasn’t a novelty like Keisha, the new pet, the unreal girl in their midst, and Virginia would have it all around the club that Marcie Maddox was basically naked on Judge Cartwright’s boat and trying to compete with William Radford’s gorgeous new wife.

‘Never mind the alligators,’ Keisha said. ‘I’m surrounded by chickens!’

William looked around the group, disgruntled and in no shape to strip and swim in the creek. ‘I’ve done my exercise for the day. One of you will have to entertain my wife.’ His eyes fell on Jason, who, as if he needed no more encouragement, pulled his arm free from Marcie’s and started to unbutton his shirt.

‘What are you doing?’

‘What does it look like I’m doing? Someone has to go in.’

‘This isn’t the office,’ Marcie hissed. ‘You don’t have to do what William says.’

‘Until he officially retires I do. It’s fine. Don’t make a deal of it.’

Marcie bit her lip. She wasn’t making a deal of it. She just didn’t see why it had to be him. ‘Maybe I should go in instead.’

‘Don’t be stupid. You hate the river. And I’m half-undressed now.’ He was unzipping his pants, kicking them away and leaving only his black Calvin Klein boxer shorts, a trail of dark coarse hair spreading from his flat stomach up across his broad tanned chest. How must he look to Keisha next to William? Desirable.

She caught Virginia’s sharp eyes registering her displeasure and she quickly turned her frown into the grimace of a smile as they joined the others.

‘I’d go in myself,’ she said, ‘but I’m not wearing any panties.’ No one laughed, all watching Jason as he dived over the side, splashing Keisha and making her squeal. ‘I’m kidding.’ Marcie picked up her glass from the table and leaned over the railings. ‘Of course I’m wearing underwear.’ She was smarting. If Keisha had said it, they’d all have found it funny. What was so different?

She drank some more wine, large swallows, as they gathered, crows on a wire, observers of the sport below. Jason ducked beneath the surface, invisible for what seemed like forever as Keisha twisted around looking for him, and then, finally, she shrieked as he pulled at her feet.

‘You bastard!’

He popped back up, laughing and coughing as she splashed water into his face. It was like watching teenagers. What was William thinking of this display? Jason was at home in the water in a way that Marcie never could be. She liked to see what was around her. The creek could be murky and that word, alligator, was never far from her thoughts. Keisha and the potential alligator merged in her mind, a predator waiting to consume her husband. She drank more wine, her thoughts hardening. Keisha might learn the hard way that Marcie was hardly prey herself.

As it was, Keisha didn’t stay in the water much longer and was soon back on deck and wrapped in a robe Iris spirited up from a cabin below, yawning happily. Jason sat beside Keisha – Don’t want to get creek water all over you, honey. ‘You should have come in,’ she said to Marcie, all nice as pie. ‘Jason’s like a fish, isn’t he?’

Yes, slippery, she wanted to answer. ‘I prefer poolside to creek water. You never know what you’ll catch in there.’

‘Or what will catch you,’ Virginia murmured with a smile. She’d been drinking steadily since she’d arrived and was now on the tipsy end of sober, her hamster cheeks shining in the heat. Was that a snipe? Hard to tell. Virginia was Marcie’s friend because she and Emmett had known William forever, and so also, by default, Jason, but there were twenty years between the two women. Marcie could fake the church thing for the sake of appearances, showing up once a month or so and helping out at the soup kitchen, but she was never going to buy into God, whatever she put in the plate. Virginia, who could be so patronising but who’d never worked a day in her life.

No, maybe they weren’t friends. Maybe they only tolerated her for Jason’s sake. For all she knew, they still spoke to Jacquie regularly. She looked at the beauty opposite her, fighting jet lag, but whose yawns were signalling the end of the afternoon. Keisha had a lot to learn about their set. Suddenly Marcie felt very alone. Out of place.

‘Home time, I think,’ she murmured.

No one disagreed.

5

It was with relief that Marcie closed the heavy front door behind them and stepped into the cool of their house, her sanctuary. Her head ached with the remnants of her seasickness, too much heat and this awful fear that she was losing her grip on everything. Plus the wine, she conceded. It was still early, but all she wanted was a shower and to go to bed. The car ride had been quiet after she’d closed down any conversation Jason tried to start. His good mood had been bubbling over, his enjoyment of the afternoon in direct opposition to how dark she now felt.

Once a cheat always a cheat. Thrill seekers seek thrills and that’s all there is to it. Just be careful, dear.

The words – said by a near-stranger, one of Jacquie’s friends, in the club’s restrooms when she and Jason first ‘came out’ as a couple – hadn’t lost their sting. Not long after the divorce Jacquie had met a retired orthopaedic surgeon and moved to Atlanta. She no longer had cheat worries, though. Her second husband had died of a massive heart attack not long before Eleanor passed away. Jacquie was now off in Florida somewhere on an extended vacation on his insurance. It almost gave Marcie a pang of envy. All that freedom.

‘I didn’t know you’d called William this morning,’ she said, kicking off her shoes, the cold tiles delicious on her hot feet.

‘Does it matter?’

‘You didn’t mention it, that’s all. Is everything okay?’

‘He wasn’t due home until after Thanksgiving. I wanted to see if he was going back to work or not.’

‘Couldn’t you have asked him this afternoon?’ She got herself a glass of water and swallowed two Advil from the cupboard. This throbbing head wasn’t helping her mood, and her stomach was tight, nervy. Did she want a fight? No, she didn’t. So why was she pestering him?

‘No business when socialising, remember? William hates that. Anyway, why does it matter? What’s wrong with you today? It was work.’

‘Like jumping in the creek was work.’

There was a long pause after that and her heart raced. Finally, Jason put his beer bottle down on the counter and stared at her. ‘Why are you acting like this?’

She stared right back at him. ‘I think you like her.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He looked so appalled she very nearly believed him, until he uttered the death knell of denial. ‘She’s not my type.’

The words were a slap in the face. He did want Keisha. And not just in a Yeah, she’s hot, I so would jokey way.

‘Really?’ The word dripped from her, heavy with sarcasm.

‘For God’s sake, Marcie, am I never supposed to look at another woman, ever? Is that how you’d like me? Castrated?’

‘That’s not what I’m saying!’ What was she saying? ‘This seems different, that’s all. It makes me feel odd and I don’t know why.’ She suddenly felt teary. She was making it worse.

‘I don’t want to sleep with her,’ Jason said, softened by her upset. ‘I find her … refreshing, that’s all.’

‘Refreshing?’

‘You know,’ he shrugged. ‘A bit wild. Young. Different from our friends.’

Your friends, is what she wanted to snap at him, but she bit it back. They weren’t Marcie’s friends, they’d simply absorbed her into them. Scrubbed her up and made her respectable. She hadn’t fought it because she loved him. She’d allowed it.

‘I’m not boring,’ she said, and he burst out laughing.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, you’re not. A bit crazy maybe, but not boring.’ He reached out and pulled her close, kissing the top of her head. A sterile kiss. ‘She’s young, that’s all,’ he breathed hot on her scalp. ‘Too young for me.’

Thought no man ever.

Later, that night when she snuck away to take her no baby thank you very much pill and had locked the dressing room door, she stood on her vanity desk chair and carefully removed the overhead vent cover. Up on her tiptoes she reached as far as she could and pulled out the small tin sandwich box she kept hidden there. She calmed a little just running her fingers over the surface.

Why was she feeling the need to look inside? Keisha Keisha Keisha, that was why. Remembering how Jason had looked at her in the water, how desperately eager he’d been to abandon Marcie and jump in to join her, Marcie wanted to kill him. It was what men never understood. The small slights hurt the most. The shift from adoration to feeling comfortable. Taken for granted. Disrespected. She had never wanted that. She didn’t want that. Her blood ran too hot in her veins.

She stared at the box. Her reminder of how far she’d come. Her anchor. Whenever this life she fought so hard for made her feel suffocated, all she needed was to look at the box. Yeah, life wasn’t the perfection she’d hoped for, but things could be a lot, lot worse. She didn’t need to open it to know that the first item, the one that covered all her other memories, was a photo of her and Jason, her arms around his neck, both laughing. Free. Back when they’d first met. When everything was passion and they’d have died for each other. God, how she missed that passion.

Thrill seekers seek thrills and that’s all there is to it.

No, she thought, that’s not true. People can change. People do change. Everything was going to be fine. Marcie and Jason Maddox were meant to be.

Weren’t they?

6

Keisha couldn’t get back to sleep. She wished she could turn off the air conditioning and feel the night heat, which might help soothe away the ants in her brain that were keeping her awake. The worries. The sense of isolation. The anxiety and dark muddled thinking that had plagued her since she was a child, now threatening to return.

Her eyes kept glancing to the corner of the room where the shadows stretched longest. When she’d woken she’d been sure she’d seen him there. A ghostly boy emerging from the gloom, as if he’d followed her from her childhood and her dreams to this place so far away from home. She’d shivered, repeating the words that had been her mantra all her life – there was no boy there was no ghost – until her breathing evened out. The panicky feeling didn’t go away though, lying motionless and awake in the night. Billy wouldn’t sleep with a night light on. He’d laughed at her when she’d asked him. He laughed at her a lot. Or shouted.

Don’t fuck this up, she told herself. Fuck. Billy didn’t like it when she swore and she’d tried hard not to speak like she had at home, where cursing was part of the vernacular. Despite the Egyptian cotton sheets, soft against her naked skin, she was consumed with a longing for home. The traffic noise, the dirt, the tiny flat on the tenth floor of a building where the lift mostly didn’t work. Where the stairwells stank of piss and the corridors were filled with broken old people trying to hold on to their dignity in a changed, uncaring world, while teenagers tried to sell you crack.

Everything was different here, and not just the way of life and the quiet, still nights. In London, her family and all the other girls at the club had laughed at Billy’s pathetic romantic overtures until they realised what he was worth and then it didn’t matter that he was old and fat. Then they’d all made sure his pursuit of Keisha was serious. The dollar signs were lit up bright in everyone she knew.

Think of the money, her Uncle Yahuba had said, eyes flashing sharp with endless greed. Dolly had said the same, teeth gritting with envy and all the other women nodding along. They were hard girls at the club, no goodness in them, grifters, graspers, making hundreds of pounds by night and none of them with the sense to save a penny. Smile, dance and take the money. Drink your way through it. More fool the men.

But Keisha, Keisha with her odd moods and erratic behaviour, had not been like that. The dancing she could do, the feeling of being lost in music under a spotlight, real life forgotten, but not the men, and so she’d become a drinks waitress, her tight clothing staying on, no hands allowed to paw at her. She certainly didn’t do afters, despite knowing she could have made so much more, enough to break free of her uncle’s control perhaps, to pay her family back what they said she owed them for raising her, and then enough left over to run somewhere her awful dreams couldn’t find her.

The air-con clicked and started to hum again, the sound enough to keep her awake without the addition of Billy’s sleeping pig grunts and snuffles beside her.

Her sleeping prince, her hero, she had hit the jackpot with him. Her. Everyone had seen. A rich lonely American widower. She’d have been stupid not to grab at it, and once her uncle and auntie had seen the gifts he’d bought her she’d had no choice. Back then, at the beginning, she hadn’t minded. Billy was kind. He was fragile almost. He was saving her and maybe she could help with his fear of being old. Dying. Rotting away like his first wife. He was a man who had been forced to look in the mirror and realise that time was no longer on his side.

Auntie Ayo had told him there would be no lingering cancer for him, after the long and awkward wedding celebration where Keisha had been forced to take him to Peckham and watch her relatives circling like sharks. They’d both drunk too much to get through it, Auntie Ayo had said he wouldn’t die in his own shit. People believed her, said she had a gift, a knowing – it shone through – and Billy was no exception, although Keisha could see that Auntie Ayo slightly scared him too.

He’d fallen for Keisha harder after that, seeing himself as her knight in shining armour saving her from her wicked relatives. He’d said she was his lucky charm. She made him feel young, as if there was clean new breath in his lungs, and she’d thought a life with Billy, even with everyone else clamouring for her to clean him out, could be good. An escape.

Her past wouldn’t haunt her. Perhaps no more dreams of the boy who was never there, the ghost boy who cursed her. She couldn’t wait to get here. But now she was living it, and everything was different.

He’d changed too, in this hot alien place that was his comfort zone. He was shedding his lonely widower skin.

‘Don’t ever embarrass me like that again,’ he’d said on the way back from the boat this afternoon, his warm smile dissolving as soon as they’d got in the car, his whole demeanour suddenly colder than any chill the AC could put out. ‘This isn’t some trashy part of London, and my friends aren’t your revolting family. You can’t talk like that here.’ She was so stunned at the sudden shift in his mood – only seconds earlier he’d been holding her hand as they said their farewells – that it took her a moment to realise he’d meant her comment about the coconut water.

‘Everyone laughed,’ she’d answered softly. ‘It was a joke.’

‘You sounded like a whore.’ His words were bile, raw acid hitting her.

Only after she’d burst into startled tears, full of apologies, did he pat her on the knee, as if reassuring a scolded child, and tell her he loved her. It was a moment of revelation. Now she’d married him, all the things he’d said wouldn’t matter, actually did. He was well respected. He had power. He didn’t want to be embarrassed, not even by her. Maybe especially not by her. He wanted her to be perfect.

She took a deep breath. She could do this. He’ll be dead soon enough, Dolly had said when they’d hugged goodbye. With you riding him every night. They’d laughed at that too, but it turned out the sex was harder work than she’d expected.

It went one of two ways. If he was feeling sweet and sentimental and hadn’t taken a Viagra he simply laboured for hours with his head between her thighs, checking she was happy, while she fantasised until she finally came or faked it like a porn star, her sex chafed from his crude mouth. Either way she made sure she climaxed noisily. A man like William would never understand a true female orgasm. Quiet. Intense. Private. What validation would there be for him in that?

Then there was the other sex. The Viagra sex. Reclaiming his youth. All the things he’d never done with his saintly first wife he wanted to do now. With her. And she had to let him while finding the fine line between agreeing and not behaving like a whore. He wouldn’t like that.

Tonight had been that kind of sex and she felt bruised and hollow. She wished her friends from the club – Dolly, Ange, and Sabena – were here. They’d know how to play this better than her. It had all sounded much easier in London.

She pushed the sheets back and reached for her robe, pulling the thin silk around her strong body. She was too restless to go on lying there, corpse-like, as the hours ticked around until dawn. She needed to move, to remind herself of what she’d won, to shake off this feeling that she’d been duped into imprisonment so far from home and that it might break her.

Downstairs, she went to the kitchen first, draining milk straight from the container to settle the acid burning her chest from an afternoon’s drinking. She stared at all the stupid individual cartons of coconut water that Billy somehow thought would make him young again. It did taste like sperm, however much he may not have liked the comment. She wanted to twist one open and spit in it. She closed the fridge and padded out into the vast hallway.

Eleanor stared down at her in the gloom, her expression unreadable, and Keisha shivered. There was no space for the boy here. It was Eleanor’s ghost who stalked this house. The dead mother of the dead son. Keisha could feel her. She was on the walls and in the walls, her energy the blood that ran through the veins of this mansion. Her clothes were still in the closets of the master bedroom – Billy and Keisha used a different room for now – and the drawers were filled with her trinkets and memories.

Keisha had looked, of course she had. Her need to know about what came before had been overwhelming. Tucked away in a cabinet against one wall were so many framed photos of Lyle, the dead son and heir, that Keisha had been afraid they would tumble out and her nosing around would be discovered. Lyle had died before Eleanor and William had moved into this house – his death and Eleanor’s grief the cause of the move – but it was strange to Keisha that all his pictures were hidden away, from kindergarten and school friends to the proud young man in his military uniform, the uniform he’d die in, serving in Afghanistan, shortly after. Billy had said he’d been killed fifteen years before. If he’d lived, he’d be older than Keisha. Would she have liked him more than she liked his father? He had a sweet face, she thought. Shining eyes. No wonder Billy still couldn’t bear to talk about it. No wonder they’d hidden their grief away.

On the dresser were more photos, displayed this time, old pictures of Eleanor and her friends, or siblings, as children, and also of the happy couple – Billy barely recognisable as a young man and Eleanor aloofly elegant, and then in the drawers, hidden amidst various items of carefully folded clothes, she found some jewellery and a small box containing far more interesting treasure: a bag of grass and cigarette papers, and a sealed packet of syringes alongside a vial of morphine. That was a revelation. Perhaps Eleanor had kept a lot of her pain from Billy and her nurses or Iris and Elizabeth and whoever else looked after her. Maybe there had been more to the saintly Eleanor than met the eye. Everything about this world felt like an act.

Keisha wandered through the house, resisting the urge to go back upstairs and dip further into the dead wife’s possessions, instead taking comfort in the endless rooms and fine furniture. Her domain now. The demands of her family were an ocean away. Just the one man to take care of. Keep him happy, she thought. He’s nearly seventy. He’ll be dead soon. It was a harsh and horrible thought, but she couldn’t help it. There had been no pre-nup. It had all moved too quickly for that, her family pouncing while he’d been intoxicated by her, but he’d made her sign a post-nup as soon as they’d landed, the first clue that her knight in shining armour wasn’t so soft. She knew that, even when he died, she wouldn’t get everything, but she’d get enough. Plenty to get her family off her back and then flee somewhere wonderful where none of them could find her.

Her stomach fizzed as she passed a wall of photographs, black-tie events at the country club with various politicians or local celebrities. There were a few now familiar faces smiling out from some of the pictures, and as her eyes lingered on one, a hand subconsciously floated up to her neck, teasing the skin there, imagining a touch as her heart raced. This was the bright light in her new life. She thought back to the laughter on the boat. Their eyes meeting. The excitement of a flirtation. Never had Billy seemed so old and ridiculous beside her. She’d felt breathless. Girlish. Giddy. Alive. An overwhelming surge of lust.

She needed to be careful, she knew that. She couldn’t put all this at risk with one of her wild emotional obsessions. She had to keep her head straight. To concentrate on Billy. And that meant not getting distracted. She took a last glance at one of the photos before turning away. She had to keep those feelings boxed up for private moments. Something to fantasise about while Billy wheezed and slobbered all over her.

She turned the alarm off and went out onto the terrace, the night a wall of heat to penetrate, no hint of a breeze. It calmed her though. She had to think kinder thoughts about Billy. He had rescued her from a life she hated and a family who scared her. This was a beautiful place. She had to find a way to enjoy it until it was all hers.

Tiny yellow bulbs twinkled on strings in the trees, leftovers from the party. A light was on in the apartment above the garages where Zelda lived. She must be a night owl too. What time was it? One in the morning? Two? The light went out as she stared up at the window and she smiled. Maybe Zelda had the right idea. It was too late to be awake. She should have taken a pill or something to help her sleep. There was only so long Billy would put up with her sleeping half the morning and the less time she could spend in bed the less chance there was of him pawing at her more.

She took a last look at the glittering trees and then went back into the cool house. Her skin had goose-pimpled as she crept back under the sheets, and for a while she just lay in the dark, lost in her heated thoughts of eyes meeting, before finally, she fell into a fitful sleep of lustful dreams and family memories she’d rather forget.

7

It was ten when Keisha woke, the sheets tangled between her thighs like a drained lover, and she squinted against the light that streamed through the large windows. It made her feel good. A fresh start. Today, she would be a good wife. She stretched for a moment before grabbing her robe and heading downstairs. Coffee. She needed coffee. Strong, lovely American coffee.

She filled a mug from the machine in the kitchen and then followed the trail of noise to Billy’s office. Her nose crinkled as she passed several large vases full of pungent flowers, a cacophony of colour and scent saturating the hallway and hitting her with a wave of cloying nausea.

‘Jesus, Billy,’ she said, as she drifted into his office, and went to kiss him dutifully on the cheek. ‘Where did all those awful flowers come from?’

‘Morning, honey.’ He was leaning against his desk, face red from the treadmill, a carton of coconut water in hand. She should be glad he was making an effort, but the sight of him in his sportswear, so pleased with himself, only made her want to cringe. Youth was for the young. His was gone. No matter how often he got on the treadmill, he couldn’t run from old age and death. He’d be better off making his peace with it.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ the voice came from behind her. Elizabeth, sitting demurely on the leather couch, notebook and diary open on the coffee table. ‘Old habit. I used to get them for Eleanor every few days. She loved all the perfumes. I did it without thinking.’

‘Oh no, I’m sorry,’ Keisha said, feeling entirely not sorry. There was a brief glint in the secretary’s eye that made Keisha wonder if the flowers had been bought to remind her once again that she was simply a poor replacement. ‘Of course. Eleanor.’ She spoke the last word softly. The dead wife who wouldn’t be laid to rest.

‘I’ll get Zelda to throw them out.’ William squeezed her waist and she gave him her sweetest smile.

‘Only if that’s okay,’ she leaned in, pressing her body against his. Think of the money. The big prize. The inheritance. All those voices in her head, hers only one amongst those of others she knew, family, friends, lover. ‘I know it’s hard for you.’

William took another sip of his drink. ‘No more flowers unless you’ve chosen them.’ He paused. ‘And I’ll have that portrait taken down too. You shouldn’t have to look at that every day. This is your home now.’

‘Thank you.’ She kissed him again, this time on the lips. Was he having the portrait taken down for her or for him? Did he feel guilty that he’d moved on so quickly? Either way, it didn’t matter. She knew men. She’d seen enough at the club. Out of sight was out of mind. Whatever lingering feelings he might have for his first wife, they’d vanish with the painting. Maybe that’s why all the photos of Lyle were hidden away too. Men weren’t very good at feeling was what she’d learned in life. It was too hard. Too real. She was the opposite. Sometimes she was sure she would be overwhelmed by reality.

‘I’ll get it put in storage.’ Elizabeth scribbled herself a note. ‘And I’ll speak to the kitchen designer about that faulty drawer you mentioned, William. I have no idea how things are falling down the back into the space there, but best that you don’t keep your glasses or passport in there any more.’

‘Thanks.’ William turned to Keisha. ‘Will you be okay if I go into the office for a couple of hours?’ he said. ‘I’ve got to start your green card paperwork and there’s no point paying another lawyer to do it when I have a firm of them.’

‘That’s okay, I’ll be fine. Take as long as you need.’

‘I also want to get a new life insurance policy. And finalise those changes to my will.’ His eyes shone. Today he was in a good mood, her adoring puppy, not an old dog baring its teeth. ‘Now, I’d better go shower and change.’ Elizabeth took that as her cue to disappear and leave them alone.

‘You sure you’ll be all right?’

Keisha smiled. ‘I’m a grown-up. I’ll be fine. Why don’t I meet you somewhere for lunch when you’re done?’

‘That’s a great idea.’

‘Hey, why don’t you ask Jason and Marcie to join us?’ The question was light, as if a momentary afterthought. ‘I should get to know them better.’

He held her tight and she didn’t flinch at the cooling sweat in the grey hairs of his barrel chest as they rubbed on her skin. Life insurance. Will. She luxuriated in those words instead, using them to build a hard shell around herself.

‘Good idea.’ He kissed the top of her head. ‘I’ll speak to Jason and let you know where to meet us.’

‘It’s a plan. Now, shower. Go!’ She pushed him playfully away. It was a plan. Four months of Billy had left her aching for something else, something for her heart, and there was no crime in looking. She waited impatiently for William to dress and leave. A few hours to herself would be blissful. She’d take a Valium, keep the demons in her head quiet, play loud music, and have an hour-long bath to relax.

First though, once he was finally gone, she found herself back in Eleanor’s room, carefully picking through the dead woman’s jewellery boxes. She wasn’t going to take anything but she wanted to see if the pieces Billy had thus far given her – expensive as they were – were not just trinkets in comparison. How was her worth measuring up?

‘Are you looking for something, ma’am?’

Keisha nearly dropped the string of pearls she was examining. ‘Jesus shit, Zelda, you made me jump!’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t know that Mr Radford was happy for people to come in here yet. I must have been wrong.’

Keisha looked at the diminutive black woman in the doorway. There had been definite disapproval in her tone. A slight distaste in her expression. Keisha’s hackles rose. There were too many people controlling her life. There always had been. She wouldn’t take it from a housekeeper. Who was she to judge?

‘Billy won’t mind,’ Keisha said, breezing out of the room. ‘He’s – we’re – only waiting for Iris to get back from vacation, then this will all be sorted and cleared out.’ She paused and looked down at the housekeeper. Why was she explaining herself? ‘And anyway, it’s my house now, I can go where I want.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Zelda said.

‘I’d like some tea – English style – and bring it to my bathroom.’

She didn’t want any tea. But she did want to be respected. No one had respected her at home. That wasn’t going to happen here. Zelda was going to have to change her tune, or Billy would be looking for new staff.

She ran the hot water, swallowed a Valium, and tried to shake off her irritation, even managing a thank you when the drink arrived. Lunch, she thought, as she slid naked into the vast bath, submerging herself into the bubbles. Relax and think about lunch.

8

In Southside, it always felt ten degrees hotter to Marcie and her hands were slick with sweat under her plastic gloves, but she had no intention of taking them off. The community centre that served as the Mission’s soup kitchen stank of stale summer sweat and the thick meaty stench of the paper mills, as if any breeze that passed over the city dragged it here to settle away from the polite squares and strollers through Forsyth Park … There were worse smells too, ones that emanated from the warm bodies, and there was no way she was going to touch any of the shuffling line of homeless degenerates queuing up for stew and dumplings and a beaker of cherry Kool-Aid.

Unlike the other volunteers, who chatted together, Marcie kept herself to herself. They were all fully paid-up Baptists and she didn’t want to get absorbed into the inner congregation by accident. Another set. Savannah was full of sets.

Out amongst the tables Virginia was in her element, touching shoulders, relishing the gratitude. It was different for Virginia. She’d never been poor. For all the time she spent here, these people weren’t real. She didn’t see them as whole, good, bad, ugly or somewhere in between. They were simply unfortunate, as if none had ever been part of his or her own downfall. Marcie didn’t like being around the homeless, but at least she didn’t diminish them.

She glanced down the line to where an old man, Harold, was slowly moving forward. His face was a portrait of etched unpleasantness and although she never acknowledged it, she was aware that his free hand went down to the crotch of his pants whenever he looked at her, a move designed to make her feel uncomfortable, a way to take a little power back.

She slopped the stew over the side of the bowl, spilling some on him.

‘Oops, silly me.’

‘Dumb bitch,’ he muttered.

It’s not me who’s going to die on a street corner one day, stinking of my own piss, though, is it? She wanted to hiss back. Instead, she handed him a biscuit, as they glared at each other.

‘Over here, Harold,’ Virginia called. ‘Lawrence saved a seat for you.’

Lawrence and Harold. The most ridiculous names for two old drunks, if those were their names at all. It’s not like anyone here checked IDs. Crude and foul though, both of them. The worst of the clients, as Virginia insisted the tramps were called.

Jason couldn’t understand why she always went back. Whenever she’d gone home from helping she was bitching about Harold this or Lawrence that. How could she explain it to him? She wasn’t here to cosy up to Virginia or fill a few hours with something after the embarrassing failure of her boutique, it ran deeper than that. She liked to remind herself of how life could change on the turn of a dime. One bad deal at work, one divorce, a couple too many drinks and then you’re sleeping in a square all day with everything you love in a brown paper bag. Life changed. And it could change fast. It never hurt to remember that.

These raggedy shells of humanity disgusted her on a visceral level but she needed her disgust. Jason would never grasp that. Sure, he’d had problems with his father, but he’d never been poor in his bones. He’d come from the right blood and the right blood rallied around and helped pick him back up when Maddox Senior had done the honourable thing in his disgrace and killed himself.

She caught herself. That was blunt, even for her. Everything was setting her on edge. She felt claustrophobic. The plastic gloves on her hands felt too tight, suffocating her skin. The weight of this life, one she’d done so much to secure for herself, had at some point settled around her neck like a noose.

Jason. She was embarrassed by her behaviour of the day before. It wasn’t like her to either feel so weak or to show weakness like that. To allow the jealous paranoias of a younger woman. She cringed when she thought about it. Maybe she’d go and surprise him. Yes, that’s what she’d do. Take him somewhere lovely for lunch, somewhere decadent and not like this. Try and get some of the good of their relationship back.

As soon as her shift was done, she freshened up in the staff-only restrooms and then rushed out to her car, eager for this run-down part of town to evaporate behind her – out of sight, out of mind.

Jason was her husband. Hers. Thoughts of that little bitch weren’t going to sour that. She’d make it right. Keisha was no one. Jason might want her physically, but no matter who she was married to, Keisha didn’t fit in and she never would. As Marcie put the car in drive, she tried to ignore the quiet voice at the back of her mind that whispered, But why would she ever want to?

‘He never goes for lunch before two.’ Marcie frowned, quietly fuming. It was only one thirty and there was no sign of Jason in his office. She’d tried his mobile, but it was going straight to answerphone. So much for her big romantic gesture. Where the hell was he?

‘He’s with Mr Radford,’ Sandy, the partners’ assistant, told her. ‘They left about thirty or forty minutes ago I guess.’

‘Did he say where they were going?’

‘No, just lunch. Did you try his cell?’

‘It’s been a bit glitchy. I can’t get through.’ How stupid did Sandy think she was? Or was she enjoying seeing Marcie on the back foot? Damn you, Jason, for embarrassing me.

‘Oh, Elizabeth was here earlier!’ Sandy exclaimed. ‘She probably made the reservation since I didn’t. You could try her?’

Back out in the heat, annoyed and sweating, Marcie wondered if she should leave them to their boys’ day, but after the morning with Virginia, immersed in the grime of the city, she had wanted to see Jason. To settle any choppy water beneath them. To feel like she belonged again, not a cuckoo in the nest like Keisha. And what else was she supposed to do? Go home and drink wine alone? She dialled.

‘Hey, Marcie!’ Elizabeth’s voice crackled, distant, as she answered. Still chirpy though. Ever chirpy, that was Elizabeth. ‘What can I do you for? You’ll have to talk loud, I’m in the car and this hands-free thing doesn’t work so good.’

Typical Elizabeth. Surely, she could afford something better, or get William to pay for it? She probably didn’t want to be a bother. Elizabeth survived in this luxury jungle of theirs by not being a bother. ‘I’m looking for Jason. Wanted to surprise him. But Sandy said he’d already gone for lunch.’ Why did she feel so ridiculous asking? It’s not like she normally knew where Jason went at every minute of every day. It hardly screamed problem in marriage. In fact, if she did know where he was all the time, that would be more of an issue.

‘You’re not with him?’

‘Obviously.’

‘Sorry, sorry.’ The irritation in Marcie’s voice must have been clear even if the line wasn’t. ‘It’s just that I thought you would be. I booked the table for all four of you. The Terrace at Carmello’s. For one o’clock? They’ll be there now, I imagine, if you want to go find them. The food is great but the service is slow, but William said to book somewhere nice to sit out.’

Marcie was barely listening and muttered a thank you before hanging up. She was supposed to be with them? So why hadn’t Jason called?

All her unease. Her gut feeling that Jason was pulling away, wanted someone who wasn’t her. She was right. There was something to it. Heat rose through her. She looked at her watch. It was nearly two. All four of you. Jason and Marcie and William and Keisha. Keisha, Keisha, Keisha. Sandy hadn’t mentioned her though, so maybe the men had decided to go on their own? She dithered by her car until the heat got too much.

Perhaps she was overreacting. There was a reasonable excuse. It’s only lunch, she told herself. Stop making a deal out of it. Just go. If the men were on their own she’d be charming for one drink and then leave them to it.

9

The men weren’t on their own.

‘Ah, there she is. The wife!’ That blunt, strange accent.

Marcie’s blood chilled, turning her stomach to ice water. Keisha was sitting between William on one side and Jason on the other – a very startled Jason, Marcie noticed as her face flushed pink in a surge of something she couldn’t blame on the weather. He quickly leaned back in his chair but a moment too late to hide that he’d been leaning in, hanging on every one of Keisha’s words, so much so that he hadn’t noticed his own wife standing by the table. Splinters of her heart broke off and she wanted to stab him with them. Stab both of them.

‘I thought I’d surprise you for lunch.’ She ignored Keisha and tried to smile at Jason. ‘Elizabeth told me where you were.’

‘I thought Marcie couldn’t make it?’ William said to Jason, who hurriedly got to his feet to pull out her chair. She barely moved as he kissed her on the cheek. Contain yourself, she thought. Don’t show weakness. Not where this gloating pig-in-shit stranger can see you.

Keisha’s hazel eyes, perfectly made up, naturally, darted sharply between Marcie and Jason. Could she pick up on the tension between them? She looked beautiful. A low V neckline in her cream sleeveless pantsuit accentuated her bust and the red sash tied at the waist made her look slimmer than she probably was and Marcie once again felt her own beauty fade in comparison.

‘Thank you, darling.’ She took her seat, as did Jason. His white shirt was open at the top button, showing a slice of his tanned, strong chest. A little but not too much. Why didn’t men fade like women? How did they get to retain some allure that wasn’t couched in ghosts of a tighter skin and past glory? How come they got to stay sexy or in fact, for a while, get sexier? Maybe that was the root of her problem. She felt her space in the group being erased. She’d been the youngest for so long. It was what she had, that quiet envy of their friends, and now it was being stripped from her by this confident younger usurper.

‘Sorry, Marce,’ he said. ‘I thought you were at the Mission with Virginia today.’

‘I was. But I was done so figured I’d find you for lunch. And here you are.’

‘Well, that’s great.’ William signalled over a waiter who poured Marcie the dregs of a bottle of Chablis before disappearing off to fetch another. They were having a good time it seemed.

‘The Mission?’ Keisha said. ‘So you’re a missionary kind of girl?’

So that’s who’d been drinking most of the wine. The barbed innuendo was obviously lost on William, who answered for Marcie. ‘It’s a food kitchen. Free lunches for the poor. Virginia organises it with the church. You help out there quite a bit, don’t you, Marcie?’

‘Beats going to church. And probably does more good.’

The waiter reappeared and she ordered a small chicken salad as he topped up her glass. Maybe Jason didn’t have an ulterior motive. She did usually do a later shift at the Mission than she’d done today, so it was natural for him to say she was busy. But still, every fibre in her being screamed that Jason hadn’t wanted her here.

‘Billy says everyone in this town loves God as much as they love a good time,’ Keisha said.

‘I’m not from here.’ Marcie was being snippy, she couldn’t help herself.

‘Bad morning?’ Jason asked. She ignored him.

‘You’re one of us now, Marcie, and no fighting it,’ William said. ‘You’re family. Part of our congregation. And anyway, everyone believes in some version of God. Don’t try to tell me otherwise. Nothing wrong with a little church-going. It balances the soul.’

‘I guess,’ she said.

‘But now that you’re here, you can help with my dilemma. Keisha’s trying to persuade me to go back to work.’

‘Bored already?’ She looked her nemesis in the face for the first time and smiled. They all laughed as if she were joking. Friends together.

‘No, of course not.’ A flash of dark eyes. The sting had hit home. ‘But you know what they say, driven men die when they retire.’

‘Thanks, honey!’

‘I’m being serious. You read about it all the time. Six weeks out of the office and then dead on the golf course. Anyway, I can’t imagine you sitting around doing nothing all day, though I’m sure we could find something to pass the time.’ Keisha gave William’s hand a squeeze, but her eyes darted to Marcie’s.

And what will you be doing all day if he goes back to work? Marcie wanted to ask but didn’t. That would put her on dangerous ground. Her one attempt at work had turned into a money pit, and Jason had snapped at her over her spending on the new house last week when the interior design quotes came in.

‘I like the idea of being a housewife,’ Keisha continued. ‘Preparing dinner for when you get home. Sweet tea out on the porch. Dinner parties with y’all. That kind of thing.’

‘Y’all can cook?’ asked Marcie, barely hiding the disbelief in her voice and mimicking Keisha’s attempts to be cute.

‘Ha! We’ll make a Southern belle of her yet, won’t we?’ William said, slapping Jason on the back and ignoring Marcie’s barb. He sat up straighter, all testosterone now with the thought of an adoring little woman waiting at home for him, and Marcie fought the urge to laugh out loud. Oh, she was good, this English gold-digger. Make it all about him when it was obvious she wanted him out of her hair as much as possible.

‘It’s true, I have missed the buzz of work,’ William said. ‘Not at first, but recently.’ He sipped his wine, thoughtful. ‘I could do a couple of days a week.’

‘No way you could,’ Jason said. ‘Before you know it, you’d be in every day, stressed as all hell and going home late to a pissed wife and a burnt dinner and a credit card she’s maxed out to punish you.’

Marcie stared at him, incredulous. Where had that outburst come from?

Jason laughed, suddenly aware of how sharp he’d sounded. ‘Unless you’re as lucky as me.’ He wasn’t fooling anyone, and Keisha glanced over at Marcie, her look a blend of humour and victory. Marcie forced her whole body to stay relaxed, as if his words had washed over her into nothing.

‘It’d take some spending to max out my credit cards, Jason.’

‘True.’ Jason gave William a rueful smile. The edge in the atmosphere softened but Marcie had definitely heard some bite there. What was the matter with him?

‘But that’s a thought for another day,’ William said. ‘Right now I’m enjoying being home and settling back in with my lovely new wife.’

‘We missed you while you were away.’ Marcie took another sip of her wine. It was going to her head, the small salad she’d ordered yet to arrive. Elizabeth had been right about the service here. Had anyone truly missed William? she wondered. Unlikely. It had all been so miserable in the months before he left. Eleanor slowly dying, elegantly at first and then getting oddly confused about things when it spread to her brain. Crying about Lyle as if he’d only recently died rather than over a decade ago. Then that awful day – my pearls my South Sea pearls where are my pearls – incessant and endless and so upset, hands fluttering, eyelids twitching, until Jason and Elizabeth finally found the necklace out by the pool house.

Iris would wheel her around the club like some reminder of all their mortality while the men played golf, everyone pretending it was going to be fine when it wasn’t. Even William started to shrink away from her towards the end, as if her impending death was contagious, flirting with some waitress at the club to cling to life. Yes, he’d been heartbroken when Eleanor died, but he’d also been relieved, and when he took his grief to Europe for the year, that had been a relief for everyone else. They could get on with living their wonderful lives. Maybe that’s why Iris and Noah had taken to Keisha. No one wanted miserable William back. Although, for Marcie at least, that would have been preferable to him returning with her.

‘Shall we get another bottle?’ Keisha asked. ‘It’s so lovely here.’

‘Not for me, I’ve got my car,’ Marcie said. She’d had too much already.

‘Lucky you. I can’t drive that big thing Eleanor had. I’m used to something smaller. Something nippy.’

‘Why don’t we go and choose you a car this afternoon?’ William took her hand. Marcie snorted quietly behind her own wine glass. Keisha was so blatant and William ridiculous for not seeing through her. How could a clever man be so stupid? They deserved each other.

‘I’ve got a few things I should do back at the office. Or,’ Jason said, before looking over at Marcie, no hint of the black cloud of moments ago. ‘I could play hooky and spend the afternoon with my own gorgeous wife.’ He winked at her. ‘A little siesta?’

She laughed and her heart melted. Even more so when she caught the downturn in Keisha’s mouth. Disgruntled. Heat flushed between her thighs, as much from her small victory as from the idea of an afternoon in bed with her handsome husband.

‘We’re lucky men, Jason Maddox,’ William said, holding his glass up to toast this moment of male pride.

‘Amen to that.’ Jason clinked and they both drank. Despite the sudden lift in her mood, Marcie had never felt more like a trophy. Bought and paid for rather than won.

The sex they had that afternoon was wild and urgent. Aggressive and mutually demanding. Nothing was off limits, like in the old days of illicit thrilling meetings in hotel rooms. They were absorbed in each other, the heat and the wine and the late-afternoon decadence bringing out the beasts in their blood as they laughed and panted and bit and wrestled. By the time they had finally finished, she stank of him and he of her, and they were filled with the taste of each other. She ached deep in her muscles, but it was a pleasant pain, a reassurance that her marriage was fine. He wasn’t bored. She wasn’t bored.

Jason rolled onto his side and up on one elbow, gazing at her for a long moment, not studying her body, but looking her right in the eye.

‘What?’

‘I need you to be her friend.’

Goosebumps prickled across Marcie’s skin. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Keisha.’

‘I know who you mean. But why?’

‘This business of wanting William to go back to work. Change her mind.’

She was fully alert now, all sense of relaxed joy evaporating like the dregs of a glorious dream. Was this what the afternoon together had been leading up to? Sex was a woman’s tool – had it just been used against her?

‘He was supposed to be gone for a year.’ Jason’s eyes had moved away from her, staring out towards the French windows at the far end of the bedroom, focused on something she couldn’t see. The chessboard of his mind moving pieces around.

‘So?’ She needed more information.

‘I started making a few changes already. I don’t want him coming in and trying to keep us as stagnant as we are. When I buy him out – if he doesn’t change his mind on that – I was going to reach out to Bardon and Briggs in Atlanta. See if they still wanted a merger with us. It would be a massive step forward.’ He paused. ‘And make a lot of money.’

Her heart pounded in her chest so hard it echoed in her ears and throbbed in her hot feet. Was this why he’d been distant? Because of work? Was it why he’d been making such a fuss of Keisha too? To get her on his side? Of course, of course, of course. It all made sense now. She had been a fool. It was all Jason, being his ambitious self.

‘You never told me any of this.’

‘It’s delicate. Yes, William verbally agreed he’d retire and I’d buy him out, but I know him, he’s doubting his decision. If he sees I’ve started making changes – well, you know how he can be about change. He likes that we’ve always been a boutique partnership, as if it’s a hundred years ago and nothing exists outside of the South.’ He chewed his bottom lip, thinking. ‘I’m going to work on him from the inside. Take him to Charleston or Atlanta for a late bachelor party. I’ll get Elizabeth to find somewhere he’ll love. Vegas, maybe. Show him how he could be spending his time. You work on her. Be her friend.’

It was Marcie’s turn to be thoughtful. ‘She’s using him, you know that, don’t you?’

He shrugged.

‘You don’t care? You’re one of his closest friends and she’s a gold-digger. All that stuff about a car at lunchtime. And the money he’s spending on her. She’s probably in his will by now. Shouldn’t you warn him?’

‘She is in his will. He drew up the changes this morning with Brody. When they got back, she signed a post-nup, in case they divorce, but he’s leaving her pretty much everything if he dies. If I try to warn him about her, he’s going to turn on me and all my work plans will be screwed. No one likes to be told they’re being stupid. Let his gorgeous wife be a distraction for now.’

‘Is that why you’ve been flirting with her?’ Marcie asked.

‘I haven’t been flirting with her.’ He bristled and she felt her regained shield of confidence crack again. He must have seen something in her expression because he relented. ‘Well, maybe a little, but only to keep her on our side.’

Too late, babe, Marcie thought. The denial came first. There’s always guilt in denial.

‘Just do it,’ he said, pushing back the sheet and striding naked to the bathroom. ‘For me.’

10

Marcie didn’t have to reach out to make the first move. Elizabeth had called to say she was going to show Keisha a few of the sights and asked if Marcie wanted to come along. Want was a strong word, and it was turning out to be a long, hot morning.

They’d done the Davenport House, where Elizabeth pointed out various supposedly interesting details of history and Keisha and Marcie had trailed behind, listless, both obviously bored by the commentary. It might have made Marcie warm to the young woman if everything she said didn’t seem to be related to Jason. So, how long have you been married? Did you know his first wife? He must work long hours, how do you keep busy? Don’t you want children? Does he stay away much? I have to come and see your new house. Jason said at lunch that it’s amazing. You must be so happy.

‘Yes I am,’ she’d answered. ‘Blissfully so. We both are.’ Keisha had faltered at that and changed the subject. God, she was so obvious. And only just married. What was that old saying? Someone who marries for money earns it. Did Keisha really think she could get away with a flirtation on the side?

She was messing with the wrong woman if she thought she could pull the wool over Marcie’s eyes with this sugary sweet routine. It might work with the others, but Marcie wasn’t filled with that ingrained, unspoken racism born in the blood of their wealthy, classist generation that made them fall over themselves to be nice by way of embarrassed apology. Marcie wasn’t like them. She saw Keisha for what she was – a serpent in their midst. But she’d play along for now.

As they strolled through the quiet squares, scented with citrusy, honey-sweet magnolia perfumes, pausing en route to gaze up at wrought-iron balconies on beautiful painted houses and the pretty old-fashioned street lamps under the boughs of Georgia oaks, Elizabeth seemed so enthralled by the quaint charm she may as well have been a tourist rather than a late middle-aged woman who’d lived here all her life. Savannah sure was a beautiful city, Marcie knew that, but she wondered how it compared with the hustle and bustle of a cold place like London. An alien land no doubt. Keisha didn’t strike her as someone who’d travelled beyond Europe a lot. There was too much city grit in her eyes. Marcie’s used to have it too.

‘What’s that stuff?’ Keisha was looking up.

‘Spanish moss,’ Marcie said. ‘It’s everywhere in Georgia.’

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Elizabeth joined in. ‘So gothic against the architecture.’

‘I guess.’ Keisha didn’t sound convinced. ‘It gives me the creeps. They’re like the kind of cobwebs that would come at the end of the world. Shrouding everything.’

‘Maybe that’s appropriate. After all, this is a city of live oaks and dead people, that’s what they say. Which brings us to our next location on the tour,’ Elizabeth continued, breezily.

‘Colonial Park Cemetery,’ Elizabeth said as she led them through an arched gateway. ‘Opened around seventeen hundred and fifty, so pretty old for the States. There are hundreds of gravestones here but about ten thousand buried bodies, so do the math on that one. Those with the stones are the lucky ones. There’s a mass grave for seven hundred yellow fever victims, and we’re probably standing on some other residents; in fact they spread right out under the streets.’

Keisha didn’t look too impressed as she took in the vast space of tended lawns, paths running through them, littered with scattered gravestones. The heavy heat had driven sensible people inside, and Marcie could see only a solitary visitor, a large black woman with umber hair sitting on a bench in the distance, her walking stick beside her, under a wall of old grave markers. Keisha’s mouth pursed. ‘Is this where Eleanor is buried?’

‘Oh no, there’re no new graves here. Eleanor’s in Bonaventure with Lyle, God rest that boy’s soul. Eleanor was born to end up there, if that doesn’t sound too strange. It’s so full of beauty and grace, same as she was. A lot of the old families have plots and mausoleums, bought up years ago. That’s a place you really should visit – not Eleanor’s grave, if it makes you feel too uncomfortable – but the cemetery. This one has historical significance, but Bonaventure has a life of its own, if you’ll excuse the pun. So much atmosphere. People come from all over to wander through it. So peaceful. And the monuments and statues are definitely to see.’

‘Not for me,’ Keisha said. ‘I don’t like to spend time with the dead.’

‘That’s a shame. It’s quite the wonder. I like to go sometimes and just sit and think. I’ve seen Zelda there too on occasion. All walks of life are welcome in Bonaventure. Death is a great leveller, isn’t it?’

‘Does your family have a tomb there too?’ Keisha asked and Elizabeth let out a tinkle of amused laughter.

‘No dear. My family isn’t originally from this part of the South. And we’re not really mausoleum people.’

Marcie could imagine. Elizabeth had a mother somewhere – she’d gone visiting her for a while when William was in Europe – but her father’s grave was probably in some gaudy cemetery, like those ones that advertise ‘a whole afterlife package’ on late-night TV.

‘I don’t think I need to see any more gravestones,’ Keisha said as Elizabeth’s phone began to ring. ‘My Auntie Ayo says it’s bad luck to disturb a dead man’s bones.’ She smiled, but there was a definite sense of unease in her confidence. A crack in her armour, perhaps.

‘Then let’s go and wander along River Street and see the Waving Girl statue. There’ll be more of a breeze there too and you’ll love the cobbled street and all the stores and restaurants. But oh my, the steps. With those shoes you’re wearing we may need to ride the elevator down. Just let me get this – it’s William.’ Elizabeth smiled apologetically, turning away to answer and leaving the two women standing in awkward silence as she talked behind them.

‘God, I need a drink,’ Marcie muttered eventually.

‘Hell yes.’ Keisha flashed a grin at her, and Marcie was once again struck by her youthful beauty and she ached with envy for that power. She’d been as glorious as Keisha at that age. Before she’d started to fade.

‘So sorry,’ Elizabeth said, tucking her phone back into her sensible purse. ‘I’ve got to go run an errand for William that can’t wait. Virginia and Emmet are at the house and he’s organised a late lunch for y’all, so Marcie, why don’t you drive Keisha back and I’ll meet you when I’m done? I’m so sorry to cut our tour short. We can pick it up another day.’

‘Can’t wait,’ Keisha said, droll, and much as Marcie didn’t like her, she almost laughed.

Marcie watched as Elizabeth bustled off, untouched by the humid heat, and then pointed down the street. ‘My car’s about five minutes away.’ They started to stroll, Keisha’s hips rolling confidently with every stride. Even the way she walked made Marcie feel inferior, awkward. Be her friend, Jason had said. Like it was that easy. Men knew nothing about the tricky waters of mutual mistrust women swam in. After a few minutes’ awkward silence, Marcie forced herself to talk. ‘I take it you’re not a great fan of museums and history?’

‘Am I that obvious?’ Keisha asked. ‘I’ve lived in London since I was five years old and never made it to the Tower of London. Only seen it from outside.’ She shrugged. ‘I guess that must seem pretty ignorant.’

‘Oh, I’m the same. I’m all about the present and the future, not the past.’ It was pretty close to the truth, Marcie thought as she led them into Wright Square. ‘You’ve moved to the wrong city if you don’t care about history though. “The most haunted city in America” is on the tourist advertising. And apparently this is our most haunted square. Jason brought me down here one night when we first met and we picnicked at midnight. It was very romantic.’ Jason. My husband. Never to be yours. Keisha needed to learn that Marcie wasn’t the sort to give up her possessions easily, that she was a force to be reckoned with under her newly acquired demure exterior.

‘Why’s it haunted?’ Keisha asked. ‘Who by?’

‘The first woman executed in the city was hanged here for murdering the farmer who employed her. She was Irish. They left her up there for three days after she was dead.’ She gazed up at the trees. ‘The story goes that Spanish moss doesn’t grow here because it won’t grow where innocent blood has been spilled.’

‘She didn’t do it?’ Keisha asked.

‘Who knows? Probably. Maybe he deserved it. Anyhow,’ she continued, ‘tourists say they’ve seen her spirit running through here looking for her baby. But then if you believe everyone who says they’ve seen a ghost here, there’d be more dead people on the streets than live ones.’

‘Don’t you believe in ghosts?’ Keisha asked.

‘No,’ Marcie said. ‘No, I do not.’ She paused. ‘Only the ghosts of our past selves, and even they stop breathing when we do.’ She hadn’t meant it to sound so weighty, but she noted Keisha’s face tightening. Marcie had put her past in a box where she could control it. It looked like Keisha carried hers inside. What secrets did she have?

A deep, throaty chuckle from behind cut between them, the sound like a sudden breeze in the still air, and both women turned. An elderly black woman with umber orange hair was standing behind a bench to their right, in the leafy shade of the overhanging trees. Laid out across the wooden seat were various trinkets and candles, as well as little charm bags, like Marcie had seen in New Orleans. Marcie stared. The woman was tall, over five eleven, and with the barrel of fat around her stomach she appeared vast and formidable. How had they not seen her as they strolled past? Marcie frowned. She looked like the woman who’d been sitting in Colonial Park Cemetery, but it couldn’t be the same person. She couldn’t have gotten here so fast and set up her things.

‘Ghosts,’ the woman said, slapping her thigh and laughing harder, wiping her eyes, before looking up at them. ‘Ghosts indeed. Ghosts you may be, but I can see you,’ she said. She raised one hand and pointed a fat finger. ‘I see both of you, light and dark and dark and light. All your secrets. I see all to come, and I see what will become of you. I dreamed you. Oh my,’ she laughed again, shaking her head as if in wonder at something. ‘Ghosts right here. Oh my.’

She picked up her cane from where it rested against the bench and gripped it, the handle carved like a snake’s head, before banging it against the ground three times. The oddness of the movement made Marcie shiver, and beside her Keisha had stiffened.

‘Oh my,’ the old woman repeated, before turning and starting to stroll in the opposite direction, abandoning her wares and leaving the two women staring after her.

‘Well, that was … odd,’ Marcie said, eventually.

Keisha was staring at the items laid out on the bench as if one might leap up and bite her. ‘She sounded like she knew you. Knew who we were. What was she talking about?’

‘I have no idea,’ Marcie said. ‘I guess that shit is her sales pitch. Freaks people out and then gets them to part with their money for all this trash.’

‘It’s not trash,’ Keisha said softly, eyes scanning the objects.

‘Well, if it isn’t, why did she walk off and leave it here? Maybe she’s drunk.’

‘Maybe.’ Keisha didn’t sound convinced and her eyes darted over to where the woman was strolling away. Was the new Mrs Radford afraid?

‘Do you want any of this?’ Marcie looked down at the strange bags and vials and strings of coloured beads and small wax carvings laid out on a large patterned scarf. Only now that she was closer could she make out the small chalk markings under the bench, symbols etched in white on the ground. This old woman took herself seriously, or perhaps it was all for any passing tourists’ benefit.

‘No!’ Keisha looked shocked. ‘I wouldn’t buy it, let alone steal it. Those charm bags could be for anything.’

‘It looks like a heap of cheap tourist crap, if you ask me. Jason and I bought some like it back from New Orleans a few years ago,’ Marcie said. She was quite enjoying seeing Keisha so unsettled. ‘But if she doesn’t come back someone will steal it.’

‘Then they’d be a fool. My family are from Nigeria. They call this juju. Do good get good, do bad, get bad. And bad can get really bad. It’s all about karma. These bags and stuff protect you from it.’

Marcie smiled. ‘She’s an old drunk conning tourists out of a few dollars when they stray from their road trips and think they’ve found some Louisiana voodoo. And if she is drunk then she’s ahead of us.’ The overhanging trees suddenly felt claustrophobic. She was trying to laugh it off, but Keisha was right. The woman had talked like she knew them. This crazy city full of crazy people made crazy by the heat and too much liquor in the sun. ‘Let’s get to your place and fix that.’

11

Keisha had been stuck between Virginia and Emmett ever since they’d got back and she hadn’t gotten to talk to Jason and Marcie at all. Virginia had swooped down on her and that was that. The diamond glinting against her surgically-enhanced bosom was a match for the sparkle of gossip in her eyes, she hadn’t shut up. First, she’d whittered on about her children, one in Paris studying fashion, one graduated from Harvard and living in New York, and the youngest, Richard, still here in Savannah sharing an apartment downtown with three others and setting up an Internet start-up that Virginia laughed about not understanding even though she was paying most of the bills for the venture. After that she was fawning about how nice it was to see William happy again, asking a few questions about London, but then going on about the sainted Eleanor – whose portrait was still on the wall, Keisha noted – and how tragic it was she’d been lost so relatively young.

Relatively young was right. People in Keisha’s tower block back home died young. If it wasn’t the teenage gang stabbings, it was drugs or drink or the weariness of poverty; a government that squeezed the poorer members of society while the rich got richer. Keisha came from society’s disposable stock. At least Eleanor had had the best care and a wealthy life. She’d had a family who no doubt treated her like a princess and gave her everything she wanted, before handing her over to William, who then did the same. Eleanor hadn’t had to pay anything back. She hadn’t been held accountable for anyone else’s failings like Keisha had been. As if it had been Keisha’s fault that her mother drank herself to death when she arrived in England, forcing Auntie Ayo and Uncle Yahuba to raise her little girl, now wanting every penny they’d spent on her returned and then some. It was hard to feel sympathy for Eleanor.

‘But she knew she was loved and that’s important at the end, don’t you think?’ Virginia was still talking. ‘Iris kept her beautiful and Elizabeth kept her comfortable. Emmett would play cards with her, and Jason would come and read to her in those last days too. An hour every afternoon. Soothing her when she was so confused and getting herself upset about things.’ Virginia looked down to the other end of the table. ‘You were very good to Eleanor, Jason. She knew that, even when she was fading.’

At last the conversation had opened up and there was an opportunity for a glance and a secret smile. Something to store away for later. Something alive. She’d felt smothered by the dead today, and although they’d made a joke of the mad old woman in the square by the time they’d reached Marcie’s car, there was something in her tone, her confidence, that reminded Keisha of Auntie Ayo and her dark secrets. She’d google later about Louisiana voodoo, or whatever Marcie had called it. Seeing those trinkets had left her feeling on edge. She’d thought that kind of stuff was only in New Orleans. She had hoped to be out of reach of Auntie Ayo’s long shadow here, but maybe she hadn’t run far enough. Even in the sunshine, it seemed that ghosts fought for breath.

‘That’s very kind,’ Jason said. ‘But I’m sure Keisha doesn’t want us talking about Eleanor all the time.’

‘Jason’s right,’ William said. ‘It’s time to focus on the future. Speaking of which, when do you two leave us? Grand Cayman again, Virginia said?’

‘Wednesday morning,’ Emmett answered. He smiled, the expression strained. Keisha wondered if he’d had Botox. He must be nearly sixty, and the skin on his small face was unnaturally still, no movement in his forehead or around his eyes, making smiling seem like an effort. ‘It’s only for a couple of weeks. Some work, some pleasure. We may do some island-hopping.’

‘It’s such a relaxed way of life,’ Virginia crooned. Her face was stretched smooth from her full cheeks, but she too, no doubt, had rid herself of any unwelcome wrinkles. It seemed the way of life here. Sure, plenty of girls Keisha knew in the club back home were Botoxing in their twenties, but the look on firm skin was more subtle, less like the preservation of the dead. The tissue-thin skin around Iris’s eyes spoke of work even she’d had done in the past when youth had been close enough to try to grasp at.

‘So much less hectic than here. I’m always so busy. Between the club, my charity work, Richard’s start-up, the church and the Mission … Well.’ Virginia shrugged as if her short list explained some kind of daily exhausting routine.

Keisha wondered how she’d cope in London. The pace of life here seemed so luxuriously slow in comparison, each day like a cat’s stretch. It would be blissful if it wasn’t for Billy. Her irritation with him was heightened by the proximity of Jason and Marcie, she knew that. It bubbled constantly under her skin. Why was desire so hard? Why was the danger so alluring? So self-destructive? She needed to rein in her impetuous heart. Thank fuck for her Valium. She’d take one later. How many did she have left? Fifty maybe? She’d brought as many as she could get her hands on, but at some point she’d have to tell Billy she’d taken them for years to calm her anxieties and needed more, but not yet. They weren’t his business.

‘We should have a party here when you’re back,’ William said. ‘Something for Fourth of July. Noah and Iris will be home then too. It’ll make a change from our usual dinner at the club.’ He smiled at Keisha. ‘New wife, new traditions.’

‘Great idea,’ Emmett said, raising his glass. ‘We’ll be back before you know it.’

‘You’ll still do Monday and Wednesday lunchtimes at the Mission, won’t you, Marcie?’ Virginia asked.

Marcie shrugged. ‘I’ll try. But I’m quite busy myself. The house and everything.’

‘When I bought that house I thought it was pretty perfect.’ Jason rested his elbows on the table as he leaned in, talking as if Marcie wasn’t there. ‘But apparently it needs a full re-model. Who knew?’

Marcie’s perfectly made-up face tightened as Jason laughed, turning the comment into a joke, and Keisha’s stomach fizzed with intrigue. There was definitely some discord between them. She could almost taste it. She could use it. A quiet throb started down between her legs even as she told herself once more not to let her loins fuck this sweet situation up for her. Oh, but she loved the longing. The distraction from the craziness that threatened her head. The itch of lust was almost as good as the act. Almost.

‘Miss Elizabeth is outside, Mr Radford, sir.’ Zelda had silently appeared in the doorway. She didn’t so much as glance at Keisha, though she nodded at the other guests. Keisha tried not to let it sting.

‘We’d better go and see what she wants, honey.’ William heaved himself up out of his chair. His eyes were shining as he came and took her hand, his palm sweaty despite the AC, and she couldn’t stop herself suddenly picturing his damp, salty crotch, and the line of wet skin under the overhang of his belly. ‘Y’all coming?’

They dutifully traipsed out front into the thick heat, designer sunglasses dropping quickly in front of eyes so that any injected skin wouldn’t fight back and wrinkle further from squinting in the sun.

‘Voila!’ Elizabeth said as they rounded the corner to the drive in front of the garage. She was holding her hands out sideways like a magician’s assistant introducing an act. Not that the gift needed pointing out. Keisha’s heart leapt as she let out a squeal of delight. Freedom.

‘A little runaround to tide you over until the Mercedes arrives.’

‘Oh Billy, it’s wonderful!’ She kissed him without hesitation, pressing her lips against his red cheek. ‘Thank you, thank you!’

‘It’s not new but only one owner. Low mileage. The best I could do at short notice.’

Keisha traced her fingers across the hood like she would a new lover’s skin. It was sleek and low, a proper American convertible sports car and the metallic red shone bright and clean. Even second-hand it must have been at least forty grand’s worth of car, and in a few weeks her delicious $150,000 Mercedes would arrive. The sums added to the tingles in her body. She’d have to make sure all the paperwork was in her name. She couldn’t stop smiling, giggling like a child. Dolly would just die. Keisha hadn’t called her back yet, ignoring the texts that had come in while she was sleeping. Maybe she should totally ghost her now. Dolly would only find some way to pull all of this down. She was too jealous to be happy for her.

‘Well aren’t you the lucky girl,’ Emmett said. ‘A little red Corvette.’

‘It’s very showy.’ Marcie, as ever, loitering at the back as if she didn’t want to be seen.

‘I like showy.’ Keisha plastered on a huge smile as she grabbed the keys from Elizabeth and pulled open the driver’s door. The seats were low and the perfect leather smelled new. A rich, wealthy scent. This was why she had to keep Billy happy. She pushed the seat back to accommodate her long legs and through the windscreen she could see the others looking on, expressions unreadable behind their shades. Keisha wasn’t fooled. They – well, all except one – only liked her because Billy did, but she didn’t care. Billy was the bank account. Her shot at freedom. He was all that mattered.

She started the engine, enjoying its throaty purr vibrating through the leather beneath her. ‘Can I take her out? Just for a minute? Get a feel for her?’

‘If someone goes with you. She’s got some bite – and remember you drive on the wrong side of the road in England.’

‘Get in then, hubby!’ He was the Billy she’d met in London again, kind and generous. The car was glorious. The fact that he’d buy her something like this on a whim just to tide her over was also glorious.

‘If I get in that, you’ll need to call the fire department to pull me out again.’

‘I’ll go with her.’ The volunteer had spoken before Billy had finished his sentence. Jason. Of course it was.

Outside, William slapped him on the back. ‘Good work, wingman. Take care of her.’

‘Come on.’ She revved the engine. ‘And buckle up!’ She laughed.

She was still laughing as they pulled away, wheels screeching on the tarmac, one arm waving out the window at those they’d left behind.

12

The car, the car, the sleek shiny car. That, and the numbing buzz of the half-Valium and wine was enough to keep Keisha pliant while Billy’s tongue pressed against hers as he panted into her mouth. His saliva was thick and unpleasant, his lips cold and rubbery – old man mouth – and rather than squirm her head to one side she pushed his head down to her chest and arched her back as if it was desire and not revulsion that made her shiver. His weight shifted as he followed her silent command, his fat fingers kneading her breasts, twisting one nipple while sucking at the other.

That was better. She could get into her zone now, close her eyes and drift into a fantasy of younger hands and warmer lips pressing her back onto the hood of her new red sports car. She pushed Billy’s head down further. She’d come fast tonight. She was too full of heat. She hadn’t had such a crush in ages. It would keep the darkness at bay.

She moaned as his tongue worked at her and he groaned and grunted in reply. She wished he’d stay silent. She didn’t want him shattering her fantasy, not now, not while she was so close. She concentrated harder, blocking him out. It didn’t take long after that, and this time there was nothing fake about the orgasm that shuddered through her, expelling its excess energy in a loud gasp.

Billy clambered back up the bed and lay beside her, his chest heaving as if he’d fucked her senseless for an hour. She rolled onto her side to face him and smiled despite her inner revulsion, before reaching down to his semi-erect cock. The car, the money, the future. She tried to think like Dolly. His skin was soft, no hint of tautness there, and she realised that semi-erect was a flattering exaggeration. He was pretty much flaccid.

‘Is it me?’ she asked, wide eyes hinting at insecurity. Like fuck was it her. She could make a man rock hard from fifty paces when she put her mind to it and she knew it.

‘No, no, don’t think that. You have no idea how much I want to. I didn’t take … you know … the pill. Thought I could do without it.’ He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Embarrassed. How strange it must be to be a man. So much of their self-worth wrapped up in that tiny odd-looking appendage. No amount of time on the treadmill or foul coconut water could get the blood pumping to the right place.

‘You did just fine without it.’ She curled up into his chest, happy in his impotence. None of his games tonight. No ‘trying new things’.

‘I thought I’d feel younger with you,’ He stared up at the ceiling, and she knew his thoughts were swirling towards death and decay. Maybe he needed the Valium. ‘But somehow you make me feel twice as old.’

‘Don’t say that,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t take it all so seriously. You’re fine. Who cares if you have to take the pills? That’s what they’re there for.’ She sounded calm, but her unease was growing. What if he changed his mind about her? What if she had to go home empty-handed?

‘I want you to be happy,’ he said. There was an edge of disgruntlement, of irritation in his voice. Embarrassment in a man could be dangerous.

She leaned up so she could look at him. ‘I am happy. You know that. You’ve made me so happy. And safe. And that’s more than anyone else has in my whole life. I couldn’t be any happier.’ She was amazed at how earnest she sounded given the enormity of the lies. ‘And,’ she continued, ‘little blue pills or not, you satisfy me.’

He smiled at her then and she relaxed. Crisis averted. If there was one thing she understood about Billy it was that he’d never abide any hint of pity.

‘Jason’s booked us a boys’ weekend in Atlanta,’ he said. ‘Delayed bachelor party.’

‘That’s nice.’ She kept her tone neutral, though her heart tripped slightly.

‘Something’s up with him and I can’t figure it out,’ Billy continued. ‘And if he thinks I don’t notice that he can’t keep his eyes off you, then he’s crazy.’

She laughed aloud at that. If only he knew. If only. ‘He’s your friend. I think he’s just being nice,’ she said. ‘And I guess if he’s been in charge or whatever while you’ve been away, it must be a bit weird for him if you’re changing your mind.’

‘That’s true. I don’t know. Maybe I’m imagining it.’

‘Go on your boys’ trip. You’re a smart man. You’ll figure it out.’

‘You’re right,’ he said, pulling her close to kiss her. ‘You want me to do that again?’

‘I don’t think I’m ready.’ She kissed him back, chaste, mouth closed. ‘That was amazing. How about we just snuggle?’

‘Deal,’ he said, chuckling. He reached over and flicked out the light, plummeting them into darkness. ‘Damn, it was a lucky day when I met you.’

As it was, although William was snoring within ten minutes, Keisha couldn’t sleep, not even after the wine and the Valium and the orgasm. It had satisfied her immediate lust momentarily, but the terrible desire for someone else remained. She got up and headed down to the warm night air of the terrace, taking her old UK mobile with her. The cicadas were chattering, echoing the buzz of thoughts in her head. There had to be a way for her to have her cake and eat it, too. She couldn’t live like this for much longer; with no excitement. It had only been four months with Billy and already she was suffocating. If this went on too much longer all her old anxieties would come back. She was never good when she felt trapped. Never.

When she’d met him, she’d wanted the rich life far away from home so much she hadn’t thought long term. The same old man every night. Keeping him happy while waiting endlessly for him to die or until she’d got enough hidden away to leave him. How much would be enough? Enough to satisfy Uncle Yahuba and free her from fear of Auntie Ayo. But also enough for her. She understood greed, it was a family trait, and greed took people to dark places. She wanted as much as she could get, what was wrong with that? She’d have earned it. And after that she never wanted to be under someone else’s control again. All her life she’d felt owned. No more.

But despite her hard and mean thoughts, she ached. Lust had always been her downfall and always would be. Pretending to love someone day after day was so difficult, when someone she was sure she could love, who made her body hum, was so close at hand. Why couldn’t Billy just die?

She looked down at her old cellphone, chewing her bottom lip, before looking up again, hesitant, thoughtful. She froze. Zelda was at her window, a motionless figure against a backdrop of light. She didn’t move as Keisha stared up at her. What was she doing? Was she spying on her? A strange unsettled feeling, a slight fear, prickled at her skin, as if Zelda had been standing there for hours waiting for her to appear. As if she could see into the darkness of Keisha’s thoughts. How did she appear from up there? As guilty as she felt? Box clever, she thought. Don’t show how unsettled you are.

She raised one hand to her forehead as if squinting in sunlight instead of darkness and then flashed a smile and waved. For a long moment Zelda remained so still Keisha began to wonder if the housekeeper had fallen asleep standing upright, and then the figure stepped out of sight before a blind dropped down. She hadn’t waved back.

Fuck you, Zelda, Keisha thought, returning her attention to her phone, her fingers flying over the keys. I’m going to have the last laugh for once, just you wait and see.

13

Jason’s phone was on silent beside the bed but when the text came in the flash of screen light was enough to wake Marcie without the quiet vibrate. If he hadn’t moved, she’d probably have fallen straight back to sleep, but as it was, she felt the mattress shift as he rolled over to check it. That wasn’t like Jason. He usually slept like the dead. His body tensed and then he very carefully pushed the covers away and got up.

She closed her eyes and kept her breathing slow and steady. First there was only silence, a long pause in which he was probably making sure she was sleeping, and then came the quiet sound of his tread as he crept, secretive, out into the hallway.

She opened her eyes in the dark, her heart thumping. Why hadn’t she just asked him who it was from? What instinct had kept her quiet? It was probably a work text. People don’t text about work in the middle of the night. Unless it was an email. Yes, maybe one of the junior partners was working late and wanting advice on something. Not that she knew whether that was likely or not. She wasn’t interested in Jason’s work, mainly because she didn’t understand it. Legal language was designed to make people like her not understand it.

But still, that pause. The furtiveness of his movement. Another layer of unease cloaked her. What was so urgent he had to deal with it at – she lit up the screen on her own phone – two in the morning? She sat up in the darkness, wide awake, and looked over at the grainy shadow of the bedroom door that he’d so carefully closed as he left.

Despite the cool whirr of the AC, sweat prickled her hairline as she got up and went after him, and her mouth was dry. Why was she so nervous? So what if he found her looking for him? That’s what wives did, wasn’t it, if they woke up and their husband wasn’t in bed? Checked he was okay?

It wasn’t him she was afraid of, she knew that. It was whatever secret thing he was doing. What she might find out. More strands of the rope that tied them together fraying in her hands as he pulled away. Rope like his father hanged himself with. The creaking, that’s what Jason said haunted him most after finding the body. That terrible sound that told him he was only moments too late. The stillness of death hadn’t completely settled after the frantic movement of dying. Had Jason now echoed his father and put a noose around their marriage, choking the love out of it?

He was in her dressing room. She could see the light through the crack under the door. Her heart thumped harder and she almost laughed – albeit slightly hysterically – at the irony. The dressing room was where she housed her secrets. No. Not exactly secrets. Her private things. Stuff that had never and would never impact on Jason. Nothing he needed to know about. Reminders of how far she’d come for those moments she found it all so overwhelming. And her pills. She felt a twist of guilt. Those did concern him. But right now, as she pressed her ear against the door and heard his voice, almost a whisper, too infuriatingly quiet to make sense of, she was glad she had them. Why lock himself in her dressing room to make a call? Why not go to his study? This was not a work call. There was too much urgency in his tone.

She stayed a moment longer, goosebumps rippling across her skin, and then turned back, resisting the urge to push open the door and demand to know who he was talking to. It would be pointless. He’d lie, they’d fight, and she’d end up feeling bad and paranoid and still be none the wiser. She was smarter than that.

The five or so minutes between rearranging herself into a sleeping position and Jason creeping back into bed felt like forever. As he pulled the sheet back over him she murmured, as if only half-awoken, ‘You okay, baby?’

‘Just needed the bathroom,’ he said quietly, as he lay with his back to her. ‘Go to sleep.’

She rolled away slowly to her side of their vast bed, her breath surprisingly slow and steady as she faked sleep, and she could almost feel the tension in him as he pretended to do the same. She was numb. Shell-shocked. Just needed the bathroom. He’d blatantly lied to her. She felt sick. She felt hot. She didn’t know what she felt. Betrayed? Lost? Fucking angry?

Her fingers gripped the edge of the pillow, the only outlet to her pounding emotions as they both lay there, in a farce of sleep. Who would want to speak to him at this time of night? Who would he take a call from? Who?

Keisha is a night owl.

The thought had been bubbling since the flash of light had woken her, but finally she gave it voice. Keisha stayed up late and got up late. William would be asleep, like Jason had thought she was. Her stomach turned to water. Surely she was being paranoid. It was one thing to suspect flirting and a little bit of want, but this was affair territory. Did she really think that was what they were doing? How would Keisha have gotten Jason’s number anyway? They hadn’t – her stream of thought stopped dead. The car. Jason went with Keisha in her flashy red car. They were gone for what, fifteen, twenty minutes? A lot could be said in that time. Even if they didn’t do anything, how easy would it have been to find a reason to exchange numbers? Especially if you wanted to.

Once a cheat, always a cheat.

Her love was evaporating in the heat of her jealousy and she wanted to turn over and flay him alive with her nails. She forced herself to lie still, trapped under the blanket of night, alone with her dark thoughts. What was Jason thinking on his side of the bed? Quietly planning how he could escape her? Was this how Jacquie, the first wife, had felt? When had her moment come, that second when trust slid into mistrust and love cracked wide, emptying, leaving only the brittle shell?

Jacquie had confronted Jason, and he’d told her it was all in her imagination, stringing her along until he was finally ready to leave. That wouldn’t happen to Marcie. She wasn’t going to let loose with hysterical accusations. Evidence. She needed evidence. There’d be no gaslighting her. She was way smarter and tougher than that.

Of course, the caller might not have been Keisha. Now that Marcie had opened the door of suspicion in her mind, other shadowy suspects emerged onto the stage. Sandy, the secretary? No, surely not. If Jason had wanted to bang her, he’d have done it years ago. Someone at the club? A waitress from the members only – which meant men only, given that wives were members by association – games nights at the club? Everyone knew William had been quite taken with one girl when Eleanor was dying. What was her name? Michelle, wasn’t it? Yes, Michelle from Michigan who was only there for a short while and then went back home to study. It hadn’t been a serious thing, an old man cheering himself up, but what if William’s actions had given Jason an itch for something new or a little something on the side that was now getting out of hand? He’d been behaving oddly – closed off – for a while.

But again her mind returned to Keisha. Beautiful, strong Keisha. A different kind of beauty from hers, just as her own blond delicate look was different from Jacquie’s brunette sophisticated one. Jason wanted control of the firm, did he think he could have William’s wife too? It was almost too audacious, but Jason was nothing if not ambitious.

Her thoughts whirled around and around until she was sure she’d drive herself to a fever of madness, but instead she exhausted herself into an hour or two of fitful sleep, the past and present colliding in her dreams in which she screamed in frustrated rage at her faithless husband and Keisha and Jacquie and others she thought she’d forgotten, until she woke, breathless and sweating, at first light.

She’d hoped to check his phone when he went to take a shower but her breaking heart sank when he took it with him. Another tick in the guilty box. She wasn’t deterred. She’d had plenty of time to think while he dozed before getting up. Jason didn’t stay so good-looking without any effort. He was a man who groomed. He never spent less than fifteen minutes in the bathroom and fifteen minutes might not be long for what she wanted to do, but it was better than nothing. As soon as she heard the water start to run, she scrambled out of bed and darted into his study where his laptop sat on his desk.

The leather seat was cold on her thighs through her thin robe as she quickly flipped open the lid and typed in his password – Atlanta_Braves89 – and the home screen came up. She let out her breath, relieved he hadn’t changed it. She moved the mouse to the bottom of the screen to find the iMessage icon. He may have taken his cell to the bathroom but all his messages would show up here. After a quick glance out to the corridor, she clicked on it. She frowned. Nothing. No messages. How could that be? He was always working in here, having left his phone tossed on the kitchen island or by the bed. He didn’t need it. He could make calls and answer texts from his laptop.

He’d disabled it. That was the only answer. His phone was no longer connected to his laptop and he’d deleted all his message threads. Why would he do that? Secrets. He was keeping secrets from her. New secrets. Maybe Keisha wasn’t the first woman to text him and it had only now occurred to him to remove all trace from the laptop. Cleverer men than Jason had been caught out by messages popping up on iPads and computers.

She’d try WhatsApp. Not that Jason ever used it, but Keisha looked like that kind of girl. A girl about town with various groups like the awful tennis set at the club or the self-proclaimed yummy mummies who spent their days at the spa and then in the bar after leaving their precious children at County Day.

She searched his applications folder. No WhatsApp. That was gone completely. Her heart thrummed faster. That didn’t mean anything in and of itself. He could have been cleaning up his computer and decided he didn’t need it – but combined with iMessage being empty? An app she knew for a fact he used? The whole thing stank of guilt and secrets.

Shaken, she looked at the photo that filled the background of the screen. Jason and Marcie a few years ago, her arms wrapped around his neck, cheeks pressed together, both grinning for the selfie, determined to capture that perfect moment of happiness. She remembered exactly when he’d taken it. Out on a boat. He’d just proposed. Jacquie was finished. Marcie had won. She was still new to all this then – this fascinating life of expensive clothes, nice cars, eating out whenever you felt like it, never looking at the price of things. She was in love – totally and completely – with Jason and everything he could bring to her life. Safety. Security. Respect. Well, despite her recent longing for financial freedom, she didn’t feel very safe or secure any more, and the respect had never been forthcoming. The happy couple in the image, smiling smugly out at her, were like strangers now. What had brought them to this?

She was about to close the lid when she spotted a folder in the corner of the screen. Untitled Folder. That wasn’t like Jason. He was neat and organised. A lawyer. Everything in place and a place for everything. She double-clicked, and it opened. Her stomach lurched in expectation of being presented with awful images of spreadeagled women smiling up at her husband from some awful motel room bed. Just like she used to. Stop it, stop it, stop it, she told herself. This is a path to madness.

Her heart slowed and her face flushed as the dullness of the actual document presented itself. It was only a spreadsheet of some kind. A list of numbers allocated to letters that meant nothing to her. Probably some shorthand for something to do with work. She needed to get a grip.

But still, she thought, as she closed the lid and left his study as she’d found it, heading downstairs to put on the coffee, there was still the phone call.

There was still the lie.

14

Keisha was wide awake and, for once, in a great mood. It was barely eight thirty and she’d only had four hours’ sleep, but the phone call before she’d crept back into bed had put a smile on her face and there was a spring in her step as she grabbed the rose gold MacBook Billy had bought her and headed downstairs. Why shouldn’t she be happy? She just had to be careful, that was all.

‘Would you like some breakfast, ma’am?’ Zelda was over at the walk-in refrigerator, having somehow already been to the store, unpacking individual cartons of odious coconut water, lining them up in the side shelf in pride of place. ‘I’m going to make Mr Radford some eggs and home fries.’ She was behaving perfectly normally, no hint of how she’d stared down at Keisha the night before. Keisha’s skin prickled as she remembered her motionless shadow. The brazenness with which she’d been watched.

‘It’s too early for me.’ She looked at the housekeeper as she meekly emptied the bags. ‘How did you sleep?’

‘Oh, I always sleep like the dead.’

‘Really?’ Keisha poured herself coffee from the machine. ‘I was sure I saw you last night. At your window. It was late. I went into the garden for some air. Cream, please.’

‘You must be mistaken, ma’am. I was in bed early.’ Zelda put the carton of cream on the large island. ‘Would you like a jug?’

‘This is fine.’ You lying spying bitch, Keisha thought, as she said, ‘It must have been a trick of the light then.’ She flashed her best razor smile. What was the woman’s problem? She didn’t like Keisha? So what? It wasn’t her job to like her.

How old was Zelda? she wondered. Old. Fifties, at least. Maybe over sixty. How long had she worked here? Billy probably had told her, but Keisha often found her thoughts drifting away when Billy was talking. She tried to remember. Twenty years? Or was it more? Had she loved Eleanor too? Did she think Keisha was an insult to the first Mrs Radford’s memory? Eleanor, Eleanor, Eleanor. The wife who would not be forced from this house, even in a coffin.

But Eleanor was gone and Zelda would get used to it. Now that it was morning and the sun was shining gloriously bright, Keisha was feeling too zesty to let the housekeeper and her night-time antics bother her, so she took her coffee and her laptop out to the sunroom by the terrace.

She opened a tab to her Gmail with dread, knowing what she was going to find. There was a message from Dolly sent a couple of days before – ‘Hope you’re having fun! Is he dead yet?’ followed by a couple of cry-laugh emojis and then Miss ya!’ and some kisses. There were three emails from Uncle Yahuba. All wanting money. She had to be a good niece. She knew what she had to do: various levels of implied threat. She sighed and closed them down. How was she supposed to send them money? She had a new credit card, true, but it wasn’t as if Billy was filling her bank account with cash. Why couldn’t they be patient? Why couldn’t they all just leave her alone?

They knew how to play her, how to draw on her insecurities and her dark, confused moods. As ever, the echo of Auntie Ayo’s words, spoken when Keisha was only six years old, not long after they took her in, when she’d seen the ghostly boy, haunted her. You got yourself cursed blood, KeKe, it’s there in the cards, no good will come of you.

KeKe. Her mother’s nickname for her, all she remembered of her really. Keisha Kelani, my KeKe. Auntie Ayo and Uncle Yahuba had even taken that from her, and now it was synonymous with her cursed blood. Had Auntie Ayo meant what she said, or was it purely to stop her blabbing her mouth off at school about the boy? She didn’t want to think about the boy. He’d never been there. She knew that. They’d told her. The boy was an error of her crazy mind. The boy was the first sign that she was wrong, a bad seed, unbalanced. She deleted the emails. Her family were thousands of miles away. She didn’t want to think about them today. They could wait. They didn’t have a choice.

‘Honey?’ Billy’s voice, master of the house, echoed through to her. ‘Hey, honey?’

‘Coming!’ she answered, light and frothy. A good wife. Keep him sweet. She grabbed her coffee and went to the breakfast room where she found him drenched in sweat from the treadmill.

‘You’re up early,’ he said, through his mouthful of eggs and fried potato.

‘It’s such a beautiful day.’ Keisha took a seat opposite him. ‘Shame to miss it.’ Zelda brought her some orange juice and a croissant even though she’d said she didn’t want breakfast, and then disappeared off again, taking the empty carton of coconut water away. Billy always downed it in one long swallow, Keisha noted. Maybe he didn’t much care for the flavour of it either, no matter what he said.

She peeled off the edge of her croissant, not sure what to do with it as there was no butter or jam on the table, and ate it dry while watching him shovel food into his mouth. His cheeks were flushed redder than normal, bursting veined beetroots on his face – had he run further and faster to make up for his inadequacies in the bedroom? Trying to recover his masculinity?

‘You’re supposed to dip it in your coffee,’ he said, staring at her as crumbs fell down her top. ‘Like the French do. That’s how Eleanor did it.’ He returned to his plate for a moment, easing his irritation with another mouthful of eggs. The pastry stuck to the roof of Keisha’s mouth, and she cringed once more with her ignorance and the hurt of the open comparison with Eleanor.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered, before tearing off another piece and carefully dipping it into her drink.

‘You’ll learn. Anyway, we need to think about our Fourth of July party.’ Billy finally rested his fork. ‘You want to organise it?’ He smiled at her as if this was some great offering of trust in her wifely abilities.

‘I can try,’ she said, eager for his approval. Kind Billy was always preferable to mean Billy. ‘You’ll have to help me with invites. I only know about five people.’

‘That’ll change, honey.’ He reached for his coffee. ‘Oh, that reminds me, I’ve booked you in for some tennis lessons at the club. We can go down to the pro shop and get you kitted out this morning. Maybe try the driving range too? Work on your swing. The girls here love golf and tennis as much as the guys. You’ll meet some wonderful people. Soon you’ll be running charity galas like it’s second nature.’

‘Sounds wonderful.’ Her heart sank. Golf and charity galas. He was already trying to shrink her into Eleanor’s shape. Who was he trying to kid? Her or himself? She wasn’t like Eleanor and never would be. He was displaying her like a piece of art he picked up on his travels. And calling his friends girls and boys was laughable. They were all so old.

But, she thought as she ate some more of her croissant, she’d play the game for the time being.

She had no choice.

15

It had been a bad couple of days. Alone in the house, Marcie stared into her box of private things. She’d tossed the photo of Jason and her over the side, resisting every urge to tear it up and flush it. While she’d tried to keep her suspicions to herself and behave normally, he’d been coming home late, snappy and distracted. He’d rarely had his phone out of his pocket and when it was, he put it face down. Casually, as if accidentally, but she knew better than that. This wasn’t his first rodeo. You’d think he’d have learned not to be so obvious. He hadn’t even mentioned trying for a baby or wanting sex, which until she turned up had been the only addition to their new house he seemed interested in.

She thumbed through the various pieces of old paper, all folded tightly, reluctant to be examined. Things she wished she could throw away, but knew she had to keep. Documents she might need one day. Relics of the past. This ritual of hers was normally a comfort, a reminder of how far she’d come – now she was trying to find her old strength in it. Maybe she’d have to be that person again. Someone who had the power and resolve to start over from nothing. And do it fabulously. But this life had softened her. The very thought of what she’d done then was exhausting. She no longer had the balls she’d had in her twenties. A couple of weeks ago she’d been feeling suffocated and quietly longing for some freedom and now she was terrified of losing this smothering safety. No, she realised. She wasn’t afraid of losing it. What she couldn’t stand was the thought of someone else daring to take it from her. She hadn’t changed that much in the past decade.

She closed the lid and hid the box in the ceiling before taking a deep breath to pull herself together. She looked in the mirror. There were dark rings under her eyes but nothing that some carefully applied concealer wouldn’t hide. She had to keep a cool head. She would not become the paranoid wife – at least not visibly. Whatever he was doing, Jason wouldn’t divorce her. Certainly not yet. It had taken long enough to make him picture a life without Jacquie, and where one divorce could be forgiven in this polite world they inhabited, she wasn’t so sure he’d get away with two, however many people might privately gossip that she was getting what she deserved. Not combined with what his father had done. The fine families of the South would start to withdraw. Jason came from good stock, but certainly not the best.

How far back could the Maddox name claim heritage? A century? Longer? Certainly not as far as William, Noah, Eleanor and Iris’s families. They were American blue bloods. Never a shameful moment of history with their ancestors, if the way they told it was to be believed. No doubt anything that might harm their good names had been smoothed away with cold hard cash. Maybe that was the shackle that bound them. All that virtuous goodness constantly on show. Not like her own tribe.

She started to brush brown shadow onto her eyelids, highlighting her blue eyes. There had been no virtue in her family. Scrabbling for dollars. Living on welfare. Looked down on by everyone. Resenting every new accidental mouth to feed as if it were the baby’s fault rather than that no one had thought to stick a rubber on his dick or get some birth control. Never enough money to go around. She imagined William’s blood to be a rich red wine. Hers would stink of rust. Name had never counted for anything good in the trailer park in Boise.

As each layer of make-up went on, she felt better. She drew some satisfaction too from her small act of revenge yesterday while Jason was at work; she’d ordered three divine new pieces of furniture for the second dining room out at the back of the house. They were one-offs and handmade to order. Eye-wateringly expensive for a room they’d probably never use and which Jason had been insistent they didn’t need to furnish straight away. Her stomach clenched at the thought of the argument to come when he got the bill, but she reminded herself he deserved it. He’d lied. He was lying, constantly, about something. Or someone.

She dressed in a slim-fitting pantsuit, consumed by the memory of that lie.

Just needed the bathroom.

The few words that had forced the widening cracks in her marriage to finally shatter. It hadn’t helped that over the past day or so she’d come to the lonely conclusion that she didn’t have a friend she could call and confide in. Someone to reassure her and calm her down. Iris was away, and although she could be snooty she was sage. There was no one else Marcie could trust to listen sympathetically without then blabbing to all and sundry that Marcie Maddox thought her husband had fallen out of love with her. People might be endlessly polite face to face here, but one thing she’d learned was, good lord, this city loved to gossip.

Shopping, she decided. She’d go shopping. Buy herself some new clothes. Revamp her look. Something less middle-aged. Something cool like the stuff the kids wore at the club. The kids. They were only a year or two younger than Keisha, most of them. Shopping always made her feel better – adding to her possessions so she didn’t have to face how lonely she was. Jason had brought her into this world, and all she had now was him. She didn’t share the years of friendship the others had. She didn’t have co-workers to laugh with. She really had nothing of her own any more except Jason, and now they were broken.

She wanted to wear her vintage Hermès scarf tied around her throat like a Sixties’ movie star. She loved that scarf. It made her feel bold rather than a pale ghost of a beauty who once was. Where had she put it?

She groaned. The last place she’d worn it had been to the mission. Her heart sank. And it was Wednesday today. If she went to pick it up the other volunteers would all side-eye guilt her into staying for her two-hour shift, the one she’d promised Virginia she’d do.

Just needed the bathroom.

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to go and do the hours. There could come a time when she’d need these friends on her side and as much as there was something snide about Virginia, she’d make a better ally than an enemy if Jason was doing the dirty. Women tended to rally in those situations in a there but for the grace of God go I kind of way.

The mission then, she thought, leaving her glorious new house that now felt like a paper castle, and then she’d shop. Build a protective wall of expensive clothing around her damaged heart.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.