Your Neighbour's Wife

Tony Parsons

Your Neighbour’s Wife

Contents

About the Author

Tony Parsons is a bestselling novelist and an award-winning journalist. His books have been published in over forty languages and his multi-million selling novel Man and Boy won The Book of The Year prize in 2000. Most recently, he created the Max Wolfe crime series. Tony lives in London with his family.

Also by Tony Parsons

The Murder Bag

The Slaughter Man

The Hanging Club

Die Last

Girl on Fire

Digital Shorts

Dead Time

Fresh Blood

Tell Him He’s Dead

#taken

For Jonny Geller and Selina Walker,

who helped me tell the story

Shopping for Pain

They call it shopping for pain.

My husband leaves the room with our son in his arms and I snatch up the phone that he has left on the coffee table and I start scrolling through all the secret corners of his life.

His text messages. His WhatsApp. His email. I quickly ransack them all. The possibility of pain – real life-wrecking, heartbreaking, how-could-you, tears-of-rage pain – is everywhere. There are so many places now for him to leave the evidence of betrayal. Or the thought of betrayal. Or the flirtatious foreplay of betrayal. Or the sordid sweet nothings of real betrayal. All the damning, undeniable proof of his secret life.

Soft voices crackle on the child monitor. Christian, my husband, is reading Marlon, our five-year-old, his bedtime story.

‘Buck was neither house-dog nor kennel-dog,’ he reads. ‘The whole realm was his …’

The Call of the Wild, I think. Our son loves that book. But a five-year-old is far too young for Jack London. I should go in there right now and tell Christian to read something more age-appropriate. Five years old is the time for The Tiger Who Came to Tea and not The Call of the bloody Wild.

But I don’t. Instead I carry on scrolling through Christian’s phone.

The ball of my right thumb moves faster but it’s thin pickings in the pain market today. Christian’s old texts scream with innocence. The only unread WhatsApp message is a reminder to bring the car into the garage for a service. His inbox contains a dozen unread emails but they are all junk from mailing lists.

Christian gave up work to look after Marlon – although perhaps it would be more accurate to say that work gave up on Christian – and his phone is not stuffed with the urgent pleas for attention that constantly fill my desktop. But then I have the inbox that never sleeps, the inbox of someone with a growing business to run. Christian is spared all of that.

On the child monitor I hear his calm baritone. ‘He plunged into the swimming tank or went hunting with the Judge’s sons. He escorted Mollie and Alice, the Judge’s daughters, on long twilight or early morning rambles. On wintry nights he lay at the Judge’s feet before the roaring library fire.’

I shake my head. I mean, I love that book, too. But not now. Not at five. And yet I can’t help hoping that Christian plans to read Marlon the whole chapter. Because his phone just beeped importantly.

A new message!

But it is only his friend – our friend, Spike – confirming tomorrow’s appointment at the gym.

And then I remember Instagram. My husband bloody loves Instagram.

And as I am scrolling through Instagram I feel the first sharp stab of guilt. Because, you see, unlike some people I could mention, my husband’s life is good.

Christian’s timeline abounds with all of his favourite things – physical fitness and electric guitars and images of amusing animals being unselfconsciously adorable. This is what my husband has lurking in the secret corners of his phone.

A skateboarding French Bulldog. And vintage Fender Telecasters. His personal posts are full of family, full of us. Christian, Marlon and me and not forgetting Buddy, our yellow Lab. I am shopping for pain but the shelves, I see now, are all empty. Christian’s phone comes with a delete button, of course. Any keeper of secrets with any kind of experience knows that you do not leave anything on your phone that you would not want written in letters of fire.

And you can always have a second, secret phone.

That’s what I did.

But in my heart, I know that my husband has not been compulsively pressing his delete button or conducting his extracurricular activities on a second phone. Because some people have nothing to hide.

Some people are simply – that word again, because there is no other word – good.

Look how casually Christian leaves his phone lying around for his wife to secretly plunder. In my experience, the truly innocent, the good souls with nothing to hide, are never suspicious because they live with the delusion that the rest of the world is as honourable as them. It is only the guilty who are tormented by suspicion. It is only the guilty who ever go shopping for pain.

I hear Marlon yawn and stretch and protest that – honestly, Daddy – he is not even remotely sleepy. And then much scuffling as the dozing dog is lifted from the bed.

‘Just rest your eyes,’ Christian says, his smile in his voice.

In our family we are always telling each other to, ‘Just rest your eyes.’ Just resting your eyes means there is no pressure to sleep. And without the pressure to sleep, you inevitably sleep. It works for us.

I hear Christian kiss Marlon on the top of his blond mop and I take one last look at our happy faces on his phone, his loving witness of us.

This is his world, I think, a sob of real grief buried deep in my heart.

Me and Marlon and Buddy. This is Christian’s life.

Which makes him sound much duller than he is.

Christian may be a stay-at-home-dad but he is still a major dude. He is tall, lean, muscular, a natural athlete who hones his genetic blessings in the gym three times a week under the watchful eye of friend Spike. In those long hours when I am slumped in my office chair, over-caffeined and carbed-out and work-stressed, Christian is clocking up the high-intensity cardio.

Women look at him. I’ve seen them. Not staring so much as taking a second glance. Or a first look that lasts a moment too long. In the street, in a restaurant, at the school gates (those mums really should know better). He wears glasses – big black-rimmed things, more Buddy Holly than John Lennon – but that just seems to add to his allure, and they look at him as if he is Clark Kent, undoing the top button of his shirt.

And he doesn’t even notice.

But this is really the true measure of how good he is – when he comes back into the living room holding the Puffin Classics edition of The Call of the Wild, Buddy the yellow Lab padding behind him, Christian sees that I am holding his phone.

And he doesn’t flinch.

How many men can you say that about? How many women?

Christian is still smiling as he puts The Call of the Wild on the coffee table.

I gently place his phone on top of the book and then I go to him and find his mouth with my mouth. He laughs when I squeeze him tight. He hugs me back, and I melt into him, enjoying the sweet warmth and hard bulk of him, as familiar to me as what I see in the mirror every morning.

‘Love you,’ I whisper.

‘Love you too,’ he returns.

We do not say it all the time but God knows I need to say it tonight. I feel what is between us and it is the bond that only comes with time. You can’t get it in a bar. You can’t get it in a club. You will not – trust me on this one, for I am a bit of an expert – find it swiping through the gallery of a dating app.

Having a child together. Having a dog together. Sleeping side by side for hundreds – thousands by now – of nights. Watching your parents grow older. Watching them getting ready to die. Knowing another human being in a way that only all those shared experiences, big and small, can bring.

I embrace him too hard. I kiss the side of his face, his end-of-the-day stubble sandpaper rough against my lips. I knock his big Buddy Holly glasses slightly skew-whiff.

‘Tara,’ he chides, laughing, straightening his specs. ‘It’s not even Saturday night!’

It’s not you, I think, suddenly on the edge of weepy exhaustion.

It’s me.

His smile fades when he sees my eyes shining with tears.

And I decide that it’s time.

I must tell him tonight. I must tell him now.

Frankly, I have no choice. He is about to discover that everything he thinks he knows about our life together is wrong.

His phone begins to ring.

‘Don’t answer it,’ I tell him.

He holds me at arm’s length.

‘Tara?’

His phone stops ringing.

‘What? Tell me? Come on, I want to know.’

I look at his face and I take a breath.

Then I hear the sirens and I feel my husband pulling away from me, and there is a look on his gorgeous face that breaks my heart, because it shows that he really does not understand what I have brought to our little family’s door, and into our home, and into our good life.

The blue lights of the police cars fill the room.

And I know that they have come for me.

Wanting

10 DAYS AGO

1

Christian

‘Fancy a bottle of Prosecco?’ Tara said, smiling.

All married couples speak their own language and, in our home, this translated as – you up for a date night, big boy?

In the morning Tara was going away for three nights. One night in the air, two nights at a conference in Japan. We were not a family that was often apart and so the moment definitely demanded Prosecco.

‘I’ll chill two glasses in the freezer,’ I said.

Which translated as – A date night? You bet, beautiful.

Our home buzzed with excitement. An adventure was about to begin and Tara’s suitcase was packed but still open, a copy of The Rough Guide to Tokyo sitting on top of her clothes, as she stood in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom, sheaths of scrawled notes in her hand, trying out her speech.

Marlon, our five-year-old boy, was in his pyjamas and up way past his bedtime, teaching the dog new tricks. Sort of.

‘Roll over,’ Marlon commanded, holding up a treat.

Buddy bobbed his head, grinning hopefully, that knowing Labrador grin, and slowly eased himself down onto his side.

‘Good boy,’ Marlon said, scratching Buddy behind the ears and slipping him the hard-earned treat. Our son lifted his face to us. ‘You have to watch, both of you.’

Buddy got up carefully.

‘We’re watching,’ Tara said.

‘Play dead,’ Marlon said, and Buddy gamely eased down onto his side again, keeping his head raised and his shining eyes on the treat.

‘I’m calling Simon Cowell about you two,’ Tara said, miming the telephone with her hand. ‘Hello, Mr Cowell? Simon?’

Marlon was wide-eyed at the game. ‘What does Simon say?’

Tara listened. ‘Wait a minute.’ She covered the mouthpiece of her invisible phone. ‘Simon says – I don’t like it … I love it!’

Then she stared at herself in the mirror, biting her lower lip.

I went to her and slipped my arm around her waist.

She shook her head and scrunched up her mouth. The notes for her speech hung by her side. Sometimes married couples don’t even need their secret language. ‘They’ll love you,’ I said. ‘They’ll go crazy for you. Don’t worry.’

Tara looked doubtful.

‘You made such a great speech at our wedding,’ I reminded her.

‘To a bunch of drunks who all quite like us. They don’t count. And I cried.’

‘Only a bit.’

‘Mama?’

‘Yes, angel?’

‘What does Simon say now?’

‘Simon says – it’s bedtime, kiddo!’

Marlon scowled darkly. At five, he wanted any game he loved to go on and on and on, preferably forever.

Tara placed her fingertip on the dimple on his right cheek.

‘I’m going to kiss you right there,’ she said.

A reluctant smile. He was such a sweet, gentle boy. He shyly placed a fingertip on his mum’s undimpled face.

‘And I’m going to kiss you right there.’

I took The Rough Guide to Tokyo from Tara’s suitcase and sat down on the bed. There was a young white-faced woman in a kimono on the cover. I turned the pages, and Tokyo looked like a city that had absolutely nothing to do with today. It looked like a place that lived in the future and the past all at once.

‘There’s a bar in Tokyo that only plays Led Zeppelin on vinyl,’ I read. ‘And only serves red wine. And only one kind of pasta.’

‘I’m not going to have any time for bars.’

‘Shake, Buddy,’ Marlon said. ‘Shake hands, boy.’

The dog grinned at him.

Marlon grabbed his front right paw and shook it.

‘That dog still needs his evening toilet break,’ Tara told me. ‘And you, young man, need to brush your teeth and head for bed.’

So I walked Buddy around the block, our quiet corner of Camden Town already turned in for the night, Buddy patiently checking the lampposts and the recycling bins and the bushes for the stories that lived in the splashes of a hundred dogs, a thousand dogs, for all dogs live in a world of scent.

Buddy finally did his business and I lavished praise on his handsome yellow head as I crouched with a poo bag. When we got home I set him free and collected the chilled glasses from the freezer and the Prosecco from the fridge.

Marlon had hung a new artwork on the fridge door. My Family, it was called. He had left his stick people phase behind him, like Picasso moving on from cubism, and the limbs of his figures were far rounder now, their lines softer, as if the subjects were made out of cartoon sausages. A woman – her hair an explosion of yellow scribble – holding a black briefcase was being waved off by a man in thick black glasses and a child with a dog at his feet. Who could that be? The tall go-getting, world-conquering mummy and the myopic brown-haired (OK, mousey) stay-at-home daddy holding the hand of a little boy with a dog glued to his side, the kid’s mop of blond hair exactly the same shade of melted butter as his knockout mother’s crowning glory.

That’s us. That’s our family.

I smiled at the drawing and then carried the bottle and the glasses to the bedroom.

Tara was sitting up in bed in her T-shirt and pants, Marlon sleeping soundly by her side. She grinned ruefully.

Sometimes a bottle of Prosecco doesn’t mean a date night. Sometimes it is only a bottle of Prosecco.