The Silent Widow

Anne’s soon-to-be husband was forty-one when they met, newly married to his second wife, and a notorious womanizer. The moment he laid eyes on Anne, he knew he had to have her. And not just have her. Keep her. Hold her. Protect her. She was by no means the most beautiful girl he’d ever bedded. But never in his life had he felt such love, such instant and powerful yearning. Or at least, not for a long, long time.

Anne never stood a chance. It was like an iron filing meeting a giant magnet. The overwhelming force of his personality sucked her in like the death-star. Despite her inexperience, the teenage Anne was profoundly attracted to him from the start. Handsome, exciting, radiating sexual energy like a sun god, as soon as he came backstage and took her hand she felt a charge of desire jolt through her, unlike anything she’d known before. Except perhaps the charge she felt when she was playing, lost in her music on stage. But this was stronger. Deeper.

They became lovers immediately. As soon as Anne left Mexico, he began flying all over the world to snatch a few hours with his young mistress; although it wasn’t until two years later, the day after Anne’s eighteenth birthday, that he finally ditched his heartbroken wife and swept Anne away to Costa Rica, where they secretly married. Anne’s parents, Linda and Gerry, were appalled. ‘You’re his third wife? And this fella is how old?’ But they soon got over their new son-in-law’s past – including no less than five children from two former wives, the oldest only a year younger than Anne – after he bought them a new, five-bedroom house in San Diego as a ‘wedding present’ and then invited them out to stay at the palatial beach-house in Cabo he now shared with Anne, flying them there by private jet.

Not only did their daughter seem deliriously happy, but she was also a newly minted member of the Latino super-rich. True, Anne’s new husband was the same age as Gerry Bateman and had what might politely be referred to as a ‘checkered past’ with women. (His first wife had left him after numerous affairs, the last of which had culminated in a love child, Rico.) But really, didn’t everyone deserve a second chance? And since when should a little thing like age stand in the way of true love? The main thing was that he supported Anne’s music.

‘Naturally she must keep playing! It was her playing that made me fall in love with her in the first place,’ he told Linda, over Cristal and oysters on the beachside terrace that first trip to Cabo. ‘All I want on this earth, Mrs Bateman, is to make your daughter happy.’

‘He meant it,’ Anne told Nikki, remembering the happy times during therapy. ‘He really did at the time. He tried.’

But Anne’s husband was controlling by nature. He simply couldn’t help himself. The love he felt for his new young wife, the need she aroused in him, terrified him. It wasn’t long before he began erecting walls around her. At first it was a few, specific concerts that he objected to.

‘Let’s not do Paris this year, angel.’

‘Not do Paris?’ Anne looked perplexed. ‘But I have to. I’m committed.’

‘I’ll un-commit you.’ He waved a hand regally. ‘It’s so far, Anne. And I can’t travel with you this time. Tell them you’ll do New York in September instead. They’ll understand.’

‘But my love, that’s not how it works.’

‘You know I hate it when we’re apart. I need you, angel.’

He reached between her legs, and Anne felt her own desire overwhelm her, as it always did with him, and the fight – if it ever was a fight – was over before it began. But it wasn’t long before one concert became many. Soon all foreign tours were vetoed. Even when Anne performed locally, in Mexico City, she was tailed constantly by heavily armed guards. Before long the same guards were taking her shopping or to the gym. Lunches with girlfriends were spied on. Anne began to feel lonely and oppressed.

‘You don’t understand, angel,’ her husband would tell her lovingly. ‘You’re not in Kansas any more. This is Mexico City. Wealthy women get kidnapped every day here. Some of them are released for ransom money, but many others are raped or killed. The drug gangs show no mercy.’

He told her the story of Valentina Baden, whose sister had been kidnapped, never to be seen again, and who had founded a charity to help support families of the missing. And about the young American au pair girl, Charlotte Clancy, who had also disappeared without trace, right here in the city. Those who were found were often returned to their family cut up into little pieces and stuffed in plastic bags.

‘You don’t see it, because I try to protect you from the news, from the reality of what’s out there. But the danger is real, Anne.’

‘Then let’s move,’ Anne pleaded. ‘We have money. We don’t have to live here, darling. We could go back to the States, or even Europe. We could travel—’

‘I have to be here. For my business,’ he said, more curtly than usual.

‘But surely you could develop real estate somewhere else?’ Anne pressed. ‘It’s not as if there aren’t other markets.’

He grabbed her wrists, not painfully but forcefully, and pulled her to him, stopping her mouth with a kiss that was similarly forceful. ‘We cannot leave, Anne. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.’

Something in his eyes warned her not to argue.

That conversation marked a change in their relationship. The love was still there, on both sides. But from that point on, it went hand in hand with fear. Anne had more and more questions but she was too afraid to ask any of them. For the first time it dawned on her that she was now officially stepmother to five children. Why was it that their father barely saw them? Leaving a wife, or even two wives, was one thing, but surely it wasn’t normal to walk away from one’s own children? Anne knew her new husband

paid maintenance and school fees and the like. But she’d only met the children from his first marriage once, and the two younger ones from his second marriage a handful of times. None of them had seemed to have any real relationship with their father.

Lonely, unable to play her violin other than privately, for him, and cut off from family and friends, Anne started to panic. Life in the gilded prison of her marriage was rapidly becoming unbearable. But life without her love was equally unthinkable. He had been her world, her rock, her idol since she was sixteen years old. And he still needed her, and adored her, every bit as passionately as he had back then. Anne was physically afraid of him, yet he had never hurt her. Was she becoming paranoid? Was it all in her head?

It was only after he started pressuring her to have a baby – a sixth child he would barely know – that Anne knew she had to get out. By now estranged from her parents, who would have taken her husband’s side anyway, she managed to contact an old friend from the San Diego Youth Orchestra, who helped her book a flight and return in secret to the US while her husband was away at a business meeting. Despite arriving in California with only her precious violin, her passport and a few hundred dollars in her wallet, Anne swiftly reconnected with her old contacts in the music world and began to work again. It felt like a rebirth, and for a while the joy of performing and having her freedom back eclipsed all the feelings of loss and guilt over her abandoned marriage. By the time her husband tracked her down, about a month later, and began his campaign to win her back, she was already much stronger, almost a different person.

Almost.

The problem was, she still loved him. Still missed him, even though she knew she couldn’t go back. Even after she landed her dream job with the LA Philharmonic, the feelings of pain and regret over abandoning her marriage continued to creep up on her, to the point where she worried she might be on the brink of some sort of breakdown. She had already started forgetting things, sometimes blacking out entire evenings or stretches of the day, overwhelmed by stress.

That was when a friend introduced her to Dr Roberts – to Nikki. For the first time since the early days with her husband, Anne felt that she had someone in her corner, someone looking out for her and protecting her, only this time in a good way. A healthy way. Therapy was the answer, she felt sure of that now. Nikki was the answer. She just had to keep going, to stay strong.

Lifting her bow, she dived back into the music with renewed devotion, each note elevating her to a higher plane, to a future full of hope and promise and wonder.

Nikki checked her reflection in the rear-view mirror as she pulled into Tigertail Road.