‘Thank you.’ I feel a sudden surge of panic and force myself to breathe calmly, because I can’t afford to crack at this stage of the game. But the fact is, even though I’ve thought about nothing else since Margaret saw me through passport control at the airport in Bangkok almost twelve hours ago, I still have no idea how I’m going to play it when we finally land. Diane and Adam will be there to meet me and take me back to theirs so I need to think very carefully about what I’m going to say to them about my last hours with Jack, because whatever I tell them I’ll have to repeat to the police.
The seat-belt sign comes on and we begin our descent into Heathrow. I close my eyes and pray that I’ll end up saying the right thing to Diane and Adam, especially as it is Adam who has been liaising with the police since Jack’s body was found. I hope there aren’t going to be any nasty surprises. I hope Adam isn’t going to tell me that the police think Jack’s death is suspicious. If he does, I don’t know what I’ll say. All I can do is play it by ear. The problem is, there are so many things I don’t know.
The euphoria I felt when Mr Strachan told me that Jack had taken his own life—because it meant that my plan had worked and I had got away with murder—was quickly tempered by the fact that he’d used the word ‘seems’. I didn’t know whether he’d decided to be cautious off his own bat or if the police in England had intimated that there was room for doubt. If they had already started questioning people—work colleagues, friends—maybe they had come to the conclusion that Jack was an unlikely candidate for suicide. The police were bound to ask me if I knew why Jack had taken his own life and I would have to convince them that losing his first court case was reason enough. Maybe they would ask me if there’d been problems in our marriage, but if I admitted that there had been, even if I gave them all the details, they would surely consider murder, rather than suicide. And that is something I can’t risk. Mr Strachan told me that Jack had died from an overdose, but he didn’t give me any more details so I don’t know where his body was actually found and I hadn’t thought it appropriate to ask. But what if Jack had a way of getting out of the room in the basement, what if there was a switch hidden away somewhere that I hadn’t found, what if, before actually succumbing, he’d made it up the stairs and into the hall? He might even have had time to write a note implicating me before he died.
Not knowing means I’m ill prepared for what is to come. Even if all went to plan and Jack was found in the basement, the police are bound to ask me why the room existed, what its purpose was, and I can’t work out if it’ll be in my interest to admit that I knew about it all along or deny all knowledge of it. If I admit that I knew about it, I’ll have to make up some story about it being the place Jack used to go to before he went to court, to psyche himself up and remind himself of the worthy work he did as defender of battered wives. I’d rather deny all knowledge of it and profess shock that such a room could exist in our beautiful house—after all, as it was hidden away at the back of the basement it’s feasible that I hadn’t known about it. But then I’m faced with another dilemma—if, for some reason, the police have fingerprinted the room, they might have found traces of my presence there. So maybe it would be better to tell the truth—but not the whole truth because if I portray Jack as anything other than the loving husband everybody thought he was, if I tell them the real purpose of the room, they might begin to wonder if I murdered him to protect Millie. And maybe a court would be sympathetic—or maybe they would make me out to be some kind of gold-digger who had killed my relatively new husband for his money. As we begin our descent into Heathrow, the importance of making the right decisions, of saying the right thing, weighs me down.
It takes a while to get through passport control. As I go through the double doors, I scan the faces of the people waiting, searching for the familiar faces of Adam and Diane. I’m so tense that I know I’ll probably burst into tears of relief when I see them, which will be in keeping with my role as a bereaved wife. But when I see Esther waving at me, rather than Diane, a feeling of dread comes over me.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she says, giving me a hug. ‘I didn’t have anything to do today so I offered to pick you up and take you to Diane’s. I’m so sorry about Jack.’
‘I still can’t believe it,’ I add, shaking my head in bewilderment, because the shock of seeing her waiting for me has dried up the tears I’d been hoping to shed. ‘I still can’t believe that he’s dead.’
‘It must have been such a shock for you,’ she agrees, taking my case from me. ‘Come on, let’s find a café—I thought we’d go for a coffee before we start on the journey home.’