Adam

ADAM

I pick up the envelope, and Amelia tries to snatch it from my hands.

“It’s addressed to me,” I say, holding it out of reach. Then I walk into the kitchen, slide into one of the old church pews beside the wooden table, and open the letter. There are several pages all penned by Robin. I might not be able to recognize faces, but I’d know her handwriting anywhere. Amelia sits down opposite. I try to keep my face neutral as I read, but the words don’t make that easy.

How well do you really know your wife?

I lift the letter higher, so that she can’t see it.

It was no coincidence that Amelia started working at Battersea …

When I reach the second page, my fingers start to tremble.

Your paths had crossed almost thirty years earlier, but you couldn’t recognize her face.

“What does it say?” Amelia asks, reaching for my hand across the table.

I pull back. Don’t answer.

The police questioned her about a hit-and-run …

I feel sick.

The car they caught her in was the car that killed your mother.

It’s hard not to react when you read something like that about the woman you are married to. Amelia seems to sense that something is very wrong.

“What is it? What has she written?” she asks, leaning closer.

“Some of it is difficult to read,” I reply. It isn’t a lie.

When I get to the end, I fold the letter and put it in my pocket. Then I get up and walk over to one of the stained-glass windows. I can’t look at Amelia’s face now. I’m scared of what I might see.

I knew this affair was a mistake from the start, but sometimes small mistakes lead to bigger ones. Robin wasn’t just my wife, she was the love of my life and my best friend. I didn’t just break her heart when I cheated on her, I broke my own. The errors of judgment lined up like dominoes after that, each knocking the next one down. When people talk about falling in love, I think they are right, it is like falling and sometimes when we fall we can get very badly hurt. It was never really love with Amelia. It was a simple case of lust in love’s clothing. Until I made matters even worse than they already were, by marrying a woman I had nothing in common with.

Maybe it was a midlife crisis? I remember feeling so down about my work. My career had stalled, I couldn’t write and I felt … empty. My wife seemed just as disappointed with me as I was with myself. But this beautiful new stranger acted like the sun shone out of my middle-aged arse, and I fell for it. She came on to me, and I was too flattered and pathetic to say no. My ego had an affair and my mind was too muddled to know it should never have been anything more than that. It should never have happened at all.

It was Amelia who wanted to move in as soon as Robin moved out.

She found the engagement ring that Robin had left behind, and dropped endless hints about how much she wanted to wear it, even though it was never a perfect fit for her finger. Always too tight. She bullied me into signing the divorce papers as soon as they arrived, and she booked the registry office—the same one where Robin and I got married of all places—for a quickie wedding without even telling me first. The woman delivered emotional blackmail like a conscientious postman. A second marriage was the ransom I should never have paid.

Something felt wrong, right from the start, but I thought I was doing what was best for everyone involved: cutting off the old loose threads that can cause a new relationship to unravel. I was too stupid or vain to pay attention to the alarm bells sounding inside my head. The ones we all hear when we’re about to make a mistake, but sometimes pretend not to.

I never stopped loving Robin and I’ve never stopped missing her. I’d actually already spoken to my solicitor about my options if I wanted to leave Amelia. But this letter. The idea that she was in the car that killed my mother, then spent all these years spying on us, trying to get close to me … that can’t be real. Surely Amelia isn’t capable of that?

“Have you ever been in trouble with the police?” I ask, still staring out the window.

“What was in that letter, Adam?”

“Did you used to live on the same council estate as me as a teenager? Go to the same school?”

She doesn’t answer and I feel sick.

The memory of that night comes back to haunt me, as it has so many times before. I remember the rain, almost as if it were a character in the story. As if it played a part, which I suppose it did. The sound of watery bullets hitting the tarmac is ingrained in my mind as a result. The road my mother was walking along was like a snaking black river, reflecting the night sky and the eerie glow of streetlights, like urban man-made stars. It all happened too fast and was over so soon. The horrifying screech of tires, my mother’s scream, the awful thud of her body hitting the windscreen, and the sound of the car driving over the dog. The noise of the crash was the loudest thing I’d ever heard. It only lasted a few seconds, but seemed to play on repeat. Then there was only a terrible silence. It was as though the horror I had seen turned the volume of my life down to zero.

I still can’t look at Amelia. My mind is too busy filling in the blanks her words won’t.

“Did you used to steal cars?” I ask her, in a voice that doesn’t sound like my own.

Amelia doesn’t reply, but her breathing is getting louder behind me. I hear her little sharp intakes of breath, as she stands and starts coming closer. I wish she wouldn’t, but I turn to face her.

“Did you get arrested for death by dangerous driving when we were both thirteen?”

“I think you need to calm down,” she wheezes, twisting my mother’s ring round and round her finger. A nervous tic. A tell. I stare at the sapphire, twinkling in the dim light as if to taunt me. A small but beautiful blue rock. That ring should never have been on Amelia’s hand.

“Did you go for a joyride in the rain one night?” I ask.

“We both need to stay calm and … talk.”

She starts to sob and gasp at the same time, but I still can’t look her in the eye. I just keep staring at the ring on her finger.

“Did the car mount the pavement?”

“Adam … please—”

“Did it crash into a woman wearing a red kimono while walking her dog? Did you leave her for dead and drive away?”

“Adam, I—”

“Did you think you’d get away with it forever?”

I look up and stare at Amelia’s face. For the first time, it looks familiar to me. She takes the inhaler from her pocket, and starts to panic when she realizes that it is empty.

“Help me,” she whispers.

“Were you the person in the car the night my mother was killed?” I ask, fighting back the tears in my eyes.

“I love … you.”

“Was it you?” Amelia nods and starts crying too. “How could you keep something like this from me? Why didn’t you tell me who you were? This is … sick. You’re sick. There’s no other word for it. Everything about you, us, it’s a … lie.”

She can’t breathe. I stare at her, no longer knowing what to do, or say, or how to react. This feels like one of my nightmares: it can’t be real. Despite everything, my instinct is to help her. But then she speaks again, and I only want to do one thing: Shut. Her. Up.

“I’m … not the only one who … lied.” I don’t know what my face does when Amelia says this, but she takes a step back. “I’m sorry. I only ever … wanted to make you … happy,” she whispers, gasping for air.

“Well, you didn’t. I was never really happy with you.”

Then I see Amelia’s face clearly for the first time. And as soon as I do, it changes, darkens into something ugly and unfamiliar. Her eyes are suddenly wide and wild as they dart around the kitchen. It all happens so fast. Too fast. Her hand drops the inhaler, and reaches for the knife block instead. She’s coming at me with a shiny blade. But then another face appears behind my wife, and I see another flash of metal, and this time it’s a pair of extremely sharp-looking scissors.