‘Come on, love, aren’t you pleased to see me?’ She can’t bring herself to react. He squints at the screen again, trying to see past her, but the blank white of the boat’s stern behind her fills the entire screen. ‘Whereareyou, anyway? Are you on holiday? Hopefully not gone to Turkey to find yourself a toy boy!’ He laughs at this, and she feels the coldness in her chest again. It fills her lungs, travelling up her throat and out of her mouth at last.
‘What did you do? How did you . . .? What . . .’ – she gulps – ‘happened?’ Paula wants all of this to sound furious, but it comes out softly, almost grateful.
He makes a face like a naughty schoolboy who knows he’s been caught out. ‘OK, yes, I’m sure it’s pretty obvious at this point. I faked my own death. Guilty!’ He holds his hands up, then laughs. ‘No canoes were involved at least.’ He waits for Paula to say something but she can’t. She physically can’t. ‘I’ve been over in Austria, waiting for things to calm down. I was steering clear of anything I thought might be traceable for a while – y’know, phones, computers – but I was watching the news of course. Wanted to see whether my death had been reported and whether anyone was suspicious.’ He puffs out his cheeks. ‘And holy cow, I got the shock of my life when I saw we’d won the bloody Lotto jackpot! I couldn’t resist a quick look at my emails then, and you’d confirmed it all. Phew!’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘Obviously, thatchanged everything. I knew I had to come back to life. It took a bit of time, but ta-dah! You can understand that, surely.’
‘They called me though.’ Paula is shaking her head. She still can’t accept what’s happening. ‘The authorities over there, the man with the nice voice, he said—’
‘Oh yeah,’ John nods, ‘that was my mate, Danny. Good lad he is. He was great on the phone, wasn’t he? He’s always been good at accents. I bunged him a few quid.’
‘But the papers they sent over, the documents . . .’
He shrugs. ‘They were easy enough to fake. AI can help you do anything these days. Even fake your own death!’ He smiles and the sight turns Paula’s stomach. ‘Then all I had to do was post over a box of ashes.’ He chortles. ‘Don’t worry, it was just a bit of burnt wood. No actual dead bodies were harmed in the making of my dead body.’ He laughs heartily.
The questions come properly at last. Smaller ones first. ‘Where have you been, John? What have you been doing?’ Then the bigger ones. ‘How could you do this? Why did you do this?Why?’
He sighs. ‘Oh Paula, do we have to go over all of that right away? I’m alive! It’s a miracle! I’m back from the dead, and we’ve got a new chance at everything. A new life ahead of us. We have money! Millions! This is our chance to start anew, Paula. We can start again and forget everything that’s gone on before all this mess.’ He smiles that familiarJohnsmile. ‘Come on home, love, and we’ll start planning how we’re going to spend the money!’
She shifts in her seat, suddenly aware of eyes on her. Not John’s, but TLWWC’s eyes. She doesn’t have to look up to know Ivy, Teddy and Audrey are all listening and watching,just a few feet away. They are waiting for her to react to all this. Waiting for her answer.
The Old Paula would’ve accepted John’s response. She’d have waited to deal with it properly in private at home – and then never dealt with it properly. The Old Paula would’ve let him brush it under the carpet, nodded and shut up. But this newer Paula’s been through too much in the last few months. She can hear the voices of her friends in her head. Teddy’s voice telling her not to take ‘shut up’ for an answer. Audrey’s voice telling her she is worth more than being dismissed like this. Ivy’s soft, sweet voice telling Paula she deserves the truth.
‘No,’ she says at last. It’s just her own voice now, but it’s unfamiliar. Quiet and steely. ‘No, John, I need to know. You need to explain it. How long had you been planning this for?’
He laughs. ‘Quite a long time, to be honest! I can’t believe you didn’t notice! But you never did notice very much, did you, love?’ Paula burns with humiliation.
Were there signs? Did she really not see anything? It occurs to her that if he’d planned this – in detail – that means he’d planned to leave her penniless and in debt. He knew the loan sharks would be coming for her once he was gone. He could’ve taken out a life insurance policy or something, but he didn’t. He had no idea they’d win the lottery. And he didn’t care.
John sighs impatiently. ‘For God’s sake, Paula, let it go! You know very well you and me . . . we weren’t working. We weren’t happy. We hadn’t been for a long time. And Bridget was making a big stink about coming clean about it all, and I know you would’ve made a fuss about the whole thing.’
‘Bridget?’ His secretary? The one wailing for hours on end at the funeral?
His next sigh is even more put upon. ‘Yes, yes, come on, Paula, let’s not play games. I know she must’ve told you about us after I . . . well, died. Sort of.’ He’s not looking at Paula as he continues, examining his watch instead. ‘Me and Bridget, we’d been having . . . you know,a thing. Anothing, really. Very casual. It barely went on for a few months. It meant nothing. But Bridget wouldn’t let it go. She was obsessed and desperate! Crazy psycho. Kept saying we had to come clean to you and her husband. But I know you would’ve overreacted, and I bet you would’ve told the kids. I couldn’t face any of it – you, Tilly, Seb. Never mind Bridget’s husband! Brick of a man he is! Never out of the bloody gym. And . . .’ – he huffs a deep breath – ‘well, there was also a bit of snooker debt I hadn’t exactly dealt with.’ He doesn’t pause to dwell on this. As if she wouldn’t know about the debt by now. As if those awful men wouldn’t have come for their money even after he’d gone. John continues blithely. ‘It seemed easier to have a clean break.’ He chortles. ‘That wasn’t a snooker pun by the way!’ He waves his hands. ‘It was easier to just . . . you know, disappear. I had this international bank account I’d kept quiet, so I just thought we could all start again. Fresh start for you, fresh start for me. Everyone’s happy.’ He pauses. ‘But now we can have a fresh start together! With twenty million!’
Paula blinks hard, trying to take all of this in. John was cheating on her. John was sleeping with that poor woman. No wonder Bridget was so upset that day at the funeral. She wasn’t trying to steal her grief thunder after all. There were no grief tentacles. John lied and cheated andfaked his own death. And now he just wants to return to the family home like nothing’s happened, to start all over.
She still hasn’t said anything, so John gets going again. ‘You know, you should be thrilled I’m back. There are some hilarious rumours about you online! Have you seen them? Everyone thinks you’ve offed me!’ He laughs like this is brilliant. ‘At least me returning to the land of the living will shut them up.’ He wrinkles his nose, looking mischievous. ‘I have to admit, I had a bit of fun on social media, winding those armchair detectives up. I told them I knew you and hinted that it was all true! Isn’t that funny?’ Paula doesn’t answer, so he adds, ‘C’mon, Paula love, I didwantto tell you I was alive! I tried dropping a couple of hints. I sent you a few text messages asking for money.’ He catches her horrified expression. ‘You don’t have to look so grumpy about it, Paula; it was meant to be funny! And I changed our regular lottery numbers so you’d know I was still around. I thought that was a dead giveaway.’ He chortles again. ‘Another great pun. I should save all these for my memoir,All Cued Up.’ He shrugs again. ‘To be honest, it was mostly a bit boring being dead, I had to entertain myself somehow! But I’m back now and we have the world at our feet. It’ll be great. We’ll tell everyone the death thing was just a mistake. You got sent someone else’s documents, or I had amnesia. Something like that. No one’s going to look too closely. It’s not like I had life insurance or anything like that. And we can get my little bit of debt paid off. Bob’s your uncle. New life for us.’
He smiles, waiting for her to answer, but she can’t. She can’t process any of this. Instead, she reaches for the laptop lid, slowly bringing it down and closing it. The video disconnects and she breathes out, realising she’s been holding her breath. He’s gone. John is gone. Again.
Except he’s not gone.
There is silence and at last Paula looks up.
Teddy, Audrey and Ivy have all been sitting across from her, listening and watching. They all look as shell-shocked as Paula feels.
Teddy clears her throat, staring at Paula penetratingly. ‘Oh my God,’ she says at last. ‘Oh my God. So you really, actually, totallydidn’tmurder your husband. Oh my God!’
‘No,’ says Paula, shaking her head. ‘But I should’ve done.’
33
They don’t really talk properly until they’ve docked. From the boat –yacht– they walk slowly to a quiet nearby café. They hold hands in a row, upsetting passers-by who want to use the pavement.
‘That was a lot,’ Teddy comments quietly, after they’ve bought expensive hot drinks and taken a seat in the corner.
‘I can’t get my head around it.’ Paula is barely audible, her mind racing. ‘He’salive.’ She takes a deep, shuddery breath.
‘I’m sorry we didn’t believe you,’ Ivy murmurs. ‘About murdering him, I mean.’
