The End of Her

‘You miserable, lying bitch,’ he seethes. ‘You’re so caught up in your own fantasies that you actually believe them!’

‘In case you haven’t noticed,’ she says, ‘I’ve got you in a tight spot. If your cheapskate wife dies now, before I go to the police in Colorado, no one has to suspect a thing, if you do it right. You’ll be free of her, and you can split her money with me – there’s plenty of it.’ He glares at her, speechless with rage. Erica says coolly, ‘The alternative is being investigated for the murder of your first wife. Once that happens, regardless of the outcome, you’d never be able to get rid of Stephanie, would you? You wouldn’t dare.’ She waits a beat and adds cruelly, ‘And maybe she’d divorce you and take her money with her.’

‘You selfish, amoral, greedy bitch,’ he snarls.

His opinion doesn’t bother her in the least. ‘So what are you going to do?’ she asks.

He looks back at her, his face so close to hers. She can see a vein throbbing with tension in his temple. She waits for his answer.

‘You’re assuming I’m a killer,’ he says, in desperation.

‘Aren’t you?’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

ON THURSDAY MORNING, Hanna decides to invite Stephanie and the twins over for a playdate. She’s grown increasingly concerned about her neighbour. Stephanie is clearly exhausted, and Hanna can tell she’s finding it hard to cope. Who wouldn’t, with colicky twins and no mother of her own around to help? Hanna is more grateful to her own mother, who lives nearby, than she ever thought she’d be, and Teddy is an easy baby.

It had been upsetting, the other day, finding Stephanie’s door wide open and seeing her in such a state. Theirs is a nice neighbourhood, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be robbed if you leave your door open. With the rise in internet shopping, there’s been a rash of thefts of packages left on people’s doorsteps, and probably more opportunists about.

There’s something else that’s bothering Hanna. A couple of days earlier, she’d seen Stephanie talking on her front porch with the woman who’d looked at the house for sale two doors down. Hanna remembers her friendly chat with the woman when she first came by to check out the neighbourhood. But from where Hanna was – glancing out of her living-room window, while walking around and burping Teddy – it didn’t look like she and Stephanie were having a pleasant conversation.

Hanna isn’t nosy; she doesn’t like to pry. And she’s discovered that Stephanie is a private person, not quick to disclose personal information, so she’s not sure she should bring it up. But if this woman is thinking of buying that house …

She picks up the phone and soon the two women and three babies are comfortably ensconced in her living room. Hanna notices that Stephanie looks worse than the last time she saw her.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ Hanna says sympathetically, ‘but you look terrible.’

‘I feel even lousier than I look,’ Stephanie admits.

Hanna offers her a cup of coffee and asks casually, ‘Who was that woman you were talking to on your porch the other day?’

Stephanie averts her eyes, accepting the coffee cup. She takes a sip, and says, ‘Just an old school friend of Patrick’s.’

‘Oh.’ Hanna considers the information and says, ‘Is she still interested in buying the house?’

‘What house?’

‘The one for sale two doors down from you. I spoke to her early last week, and she’d just been in to see it.’

‘Oh no, I don’t think so,’ Stephanie says. Then she changes the subject.

Hanna thinks to herself, Something here isn’t adding up.

Nancy tries to learn everything she can about E. Voss. She does the obvious things – Google searches, Facebook – but she doesn’t find anything helpful. She keeps an eye on the Tesla app. She’d seen her husband driving out to Newburgh when he was supposed to be working on Sunday afternoon, but she’d been trapped at a birthday party for one of Henry’s little friends. She has taken to following her husband whenever she can – after all, Niall could be meeting this woman anywhere – but on a time lag. When she sees where he’s gone and parked, she goes there later, sometimes with Henry with her in the car. So far he’s only been to legitimate job sites.

But on Thursday afternoon, she sees the little blue dot on the move, heading to Newburgh. She’s overcome with rage. At him, and at herself for not confronting him. At home they continue to act as if nothing is different. He’s pretending he’s not having an affair, and she’s pretending she doesn’t know about it. They could both win Oscars.

She arranges for her mother to pick Henry up from afternoon pre-school and keep him until she returns. And then she takes to the highway, seething. When she arrives at her destination, she parks across the street again, and then spots her husband’s Tesla in the parking lot. She wants to take a sledgehammer to it.

Instead, she sits in her own car and waits, her eye on the front door of the building. Eventually, Niall comes out, alone. She waits for him to get into his car and drive away. She takes a deep breath and gets out of the car, walks into the building and presses the buzzer for apartment 107. She wants to see this homewrecker for herself.

When Nancy hears a woman’s voice on the intercom, she suddenly doesn’t know what to say. What if she refuses to let her in? At that moment, a man comes out of the lobby and Nancy slips past him and inside, without speaking into the intercom.

Nancy walks down the corridor until she finds apartment 107. She stands there for a nervous moment. Will the woman who’s sleeping with her husband answer the door, or look out the peephole and figure out why she’s there – the angry wife? She steels herself and knocks.

The door opens. ‘Yes?’

Nancy stares at her. She’s not as young as she was expecting, but she is certainly beautiful. Blonde, where Nancy is dark. Anne O’Dowd was blonde too. Nancy wonders at her husband’s sudden penchant for blondes. She feels envy, insecurity and anger in equal measure, looking at the slim, shapely woman in black leggings and a clingy T-shirt.

‘What do you want?’ the woman asks.

‘I want to talk to you,’ Nancy says firmly. ‘Can I come in?’

The other woman gives her a bemused look. ‘Who are you?’ she asks.

Nancy glances past the woman to the barely furnished apartment. She pushes her way in.

‘Excuse me … who are you?’

Nancy glances down at a small table piled with mail. She sees the name Erica Voss on one of the envelopes and looks up. ‘I wanted to meet you, Erica. You’ve been sleeping with my husband – I just saw him leave – and you are going to stop.’

‘Ah,’ Erica says, and smiles. ‘You’re the neglected wife – I thought so. You’ve been following him, have you? How pathetic. And you think you can come here and tell me what I’m going to do.’ She adds, ‘How very … confident of you.’

Nancy can tell that Erica thinks her confidence is misplaced. ‘Consider this a courtesy call,’ Nancy says in a hard voice. ‘I’m going to tell my husband that I know all about you and he will break it off immediately.’

‘What makes you so sure?’ Erica asks, folding her arms under her perfect breasts.

Suddenly Nancy’s not so sure. This woman is different from Anne O’Dowd. She’s no pushover. ‘Just stay away from him,’ she warns.

‘Or what? What are you going to do to me?’ Erica looks at her, arching one eyebrow. Then she adds, ‘He’s a big boy and he can make his own decisions.’

Nancy throws her a look of contempt and turns away, reaching for the door. ‘You’ll see I’m right.’

‘Drive carefully,’ Erica calls after her.

Niall stays late at work to make up for the time he took in the middle of the afternoon to see Erica. He knows his wife won’t be happy, but she doesn’t complain too much about his working late. She knows he works hard, and she’s proud of his success. They have a good lifestyle. Long hours are the price you pay for that.

When he gets home, he parks in the driveway and enters the house. Nancy doesn’t greet him at the door like she normally does. Maybe she’s in the kitchen, he thinks. She’s probably kept something warm for him, she always does. He realizes he’s starving. But the house is unusually quiet. He walks through the house on the way to the kitchen, calling, ‘Nancy, I’m home.’

He stops suddenly when he sees her sitting quietly in the living room on the sofa. ‘Hey,’ he says.

But she’s looking at him in a way that makes his insides collapse. Her face is grim – reproachful, furious, hurt – and he knows she knows. She’s found out about Erica, she must have. All at once he’s furious. Has she followed him? Can he have no freedom at all? But those feelings are gone in an instant, a momentary burst of childishness, and then reality washes over him. He’s been a fool. He’s going to lose her … He feels his face fall. Still, neither of them has spoken.

Finally he says softly, ‘Where’s Henry?’ He doesn’t want their son to overhear what happens next.