The following day, Sam opted to take the coastal route home, the first part of which was plagued by horse-boxes. Sophie expressed a hatred of all things equine and pledged never to buy Laura a pony, not even a plastic one. Eventually, after well over an hour of frustration, Sam decided to stop for lunch at a fine hotel he had previously visited in Lyme Regis. From her seat by the window, Sophie stared out across the English Channel and tried to come to terms with the revelations of the last twenty-four hours, realising above all else that she was now faced with the burden of discovering the identity of Jonah’s other woman. The other woman that wasn’t her. She glanced round to see Sam watching her, his expression serious.
‘Sam, do you think Jonah is properly crazy?’
‘Depends what you consider crazy.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, if we were all living in caves and grunting at each other, with no names and no rules, then he’d probably be quite a catch. But because we do have names and rules, he’s a disaster. So, no, he’s not crazy, he just lacks obedience to the system we all have to live by. And a lot of people get away with that. Problem I have with those people is that their exploitation of the rules depends entirely upon everyone else obeying them.’
‘But what on earth would make him call two of his daughters the same name?’
‘OK, I’ve changed my mind. He’s properly crazy.’
That evening, Sophie did another sweep of the house to make sure that anything that might, even remotely, be regarded as Jonah’s was packed into her spare room ready to be transported away. She remembered the BMW. ‘Sam?’
He looked up from scrutinising the DVDs.
‘Why don’t you move Jonah’s car to his business premises? Then you can use his permit instead of paying for parking. His office address is on his business card.’ She put her head to one side. ‘You had one in your wallet, remember? I presume you put it back.’
‘As a matter of fact, I did. I’ll drive it over tomorrow.’
Mid-morning, Sam drove the BMW over to the Business Park. He eventually returned and discovered Sophie walking Laura around the pots in the backyard. She looked up and smiled. ‘She’s almost walking. You’ve been ages. I was wondering where you’d got to. Did you move your car to the back road?’
‘Yes. Soph, listen, I found this in Jonah’s car. It was down beside the passenger seat.’ He handed her a credit card.
Sophie looked at it, read the name on the front, knitted her brow. ‘Suzannah Kay? This was in Jonah’s car? How’s that possible?’ Sam took Laura and followed Sophie inside, watched her place the card on the table, pull out a chair and sit down to study it. She looked up at him dumbfounded, reached for her phone, opened her latest message and showed it to him. ‘She sent this, about twenty minutes ago, asking whether I was still up for feeding the ducks. We arranged it last Saturday.’
Sam eased Laura into her chair, took the phone, read the message then Sophie’s reply.
‘Soph, where did you put Jonah’s mobiles?’
‘Why?’
‘Just… where are they?’
‘In the middle drawer, with the tea towels.’ Sam fetched Jonah’s iPhone, opened text messages, scrolled down to the exchange with Heidi and laid it on the table alongside Sophie’s phone that was still displaying Suzie Kay’s text. He pressed ‘i’ on both phones. The displayed numbers were the same. Sophie shook her head in disbelief. She fetched her purse and pulled out the card Suzie had given her that day, the day of leaving. And there it was again, the same number, written in Suzie’s shaky hand. ‘I don’t understand. Two people can’t have the same mobile number, can they?’ It was a stupid question. She was just hoping the obvious explanation wasn’t true.
‘Soph, Suzie’s name’s on the card.’
‘Heidi?’ Sophie banged her fist on the table. ‘Can’t any of these sodding people use their proper names!’
The wait for Suzie to arrive was tense. Sophie practised not revealing what she knew in the first five seconds. She would talk about her trip to Exeter. No, that would introduce the subject of Jonah. She would talk about Sam. No, even that would introduce the subject of Jonah. Why was everything about Jonah? She would offer tea. Because tea introduced nothing.
As it was, when Suzie stepped into the hallway the first thing she said was, ‘Hello, Sophie, how’s Jonah?’
The moment Suzie asked that question, all Sophie’s anger fell away. She felt so sorry for this young woman caught up in Jonah’s deceit. ‘They’re going to bring him out of the coma anytime soon,’ she said. ‘Probably tomorrow or Tuesday. So, they’ll know more after that.’ She bustled Suzie into the kitchen where Sam was filling the kettle. He threw a questioning glance. Sophie nodded an I’ve-decided-not-to-kill-her reassurance, so he stepped over to shake hands.
‘Hi Suzie, I’m Sam. Shall Laura and I leave you two to chat?’
‘No,’ said Sophie. ‘You can stay and make tea.’
Sam made tea, Suzie amused Laura with two plastic egg cups and Sophie stayed on the subject of Jonah’s improvement, praised the Intensive Care Unit then, when they were all seated around the table, she looked straight at Suzie and said, ‘Suzie, was it you that phoned the hospital, pretending to be my sister?’ Suzie’s face froze for a brief flicker of time then tears fluttered onto her cheeks. Sophie pulled the credit card from her pocket and slid it across the table. ‘Sam found this in Jonah’s car. We were wondering how it got there.’ Suzie began to sob into her hands. Laura watched her. Any resentment that Sophie might have been harbouring dissolved into the space between her and this other other woman. Laura continued to watch, her mouth turning progressively further down at the edges.
Sam intervened: ‘Suzie, it would be best for us all if you told us what’s going on.’
Suzie lowered her hands and managed to splutter out a few words. ‘I… I think I’m going to be sick.’ Her hands flew back across her mouth.
Sophie hurried round to her. ‘Another baby bug is it, Suzie?’
‘Not really, Sophie. I’m pregnant.’
‘Ah!’ declared Sam. ‘Another Laura!’
Suzie resumed sobbing. Laura started to whimper in sympathy. Sophie flashed Sam a look of desperation, asked if he would take Laura to the lounge for a while. Give her and Suzie a chance to sort things out. Sam said nothing. He just lifted Laura out of her chair and carried her towards the lounge. Sophie heard her daughter’s distress lessen the further she was taken away from the tension that now had to be dealt with. ‘Suzie, I’m not cross.’ She handed her some tissues. ‘Tell me about you and Jonah. He was Jonah, was he?’
Suzie wiped her face. ‘We’ve been together about three months. And, yes, he was Jonah. Sophie, I didn’t know about you and Laura. He told me he’d been with this abusive woman for years and he was desperate to leave. I said he could move into my flat with me.’
And bring my TV and freezer with him, thought Sophie.
‘I came with him to pick up his case that day. We were going to go straight to my place. In Guildford. He told me to wait on the corner, but I walked along to see what your house was like and that’s when I saw you falling down the step and the case pushing him over. He said terrible things about you. But, as soon as I met you, I knew they weren’t true.’ She choked out a flurry of sobs. ‘Then Laura cried and I realised how much he’d been lying to me.’
Sophie pulled her chair round and sat close. ‘Listen, Suzie. Sam and I went to Exeter to visit Jonah’s wife…’ She gave as accurate an account as she could of the picture that Rosemary Perrin had painted of her faithless husband, of her initial desolation and her subsequent survival strategy.
Suzie listened in clear disbelief. ‘Has she visited him since the accident?’
‘No. And I’m not sure she intends to. Suzie, you have to stop caring about him. He’s a serial adulterer. He moves from one unsuspecting woman to another and then, after a few months, when the fancy takes him, he moves on again.’
‘But he was with you for more than a few months, wasn’t he?’
‘Yeh.’ She gave a quick little laugh. ‘But that’s because I’m so damn interesting. How did you meet him?’
‘My company commissioned him to set up a new mailing system. We got chatting about all sorts. He told me his job took him all over the world. He said he’d just been in Africa setting up the internet in village schools.’
‘God, he has a real saviour complex, doesn’t he? How many weeks are you?’
‘Only six, nearly seven. I was going to tell Jonah that evening. I thought he’d be happy he was going to be a father.’
Sophie thought it best not to comment because there was no comment that could fail to be hurtful. Instead she busied herself collecting up the mugs, but as she was loading them into the dishwasher a rather obvious question tumbled into her thoughts. ‘Suzie, Sam and I read Jonah’s message to you. On his mobile.’
‘God, I’m so embarrassed.’
‘Don’t be. It’s just… why did he call you Heidi?’
‘It was our joke.’ Fresh tears started to squeeze their way onto her cheeks. ‘Jonah said we should take a holiday together. Stay in a hotel with a nice view and just get used to being with each other. And I said the Swiss Alps were quiet and very beautiful in the off-season. And inexpensive because there was no skiing. And he said skiing was the last thing he wanted to do with me and he’d rather go somewhere in the UK. But he was going to call me Heidi from then on. We were booked to go to Edinburgh at the beginning of September. I’ll go to my mother’s instead. Break the news that she’s going to be a granny.’
Sophie stared at her. ‘What a bloody sicko! I’m sorry, Suzie, but how on earth do women like us fall for that kind of crap?’
Suzie stayed for the rest of the afternoon. Sam and Laura joined them in the kitchen and the conversation actually strayed away from Jonah, thanks to Sam’s various Far-East anecdotes. Sophie watched Suzie allowing herself the occasional bright-eyed laugh at Sam’s jokes, and felt the stirrings of possessiveness, which she instantly suppressed. She even invited her to stay for supper but Suzie confessed that she needed to be in work early the following morning and getting ready to leave the house took longer at the moment, due to the need to retch into the toilet. She ought to catch the next train. She hadn’t driven over because she felt too nauseous. Sam offered to drive her home and, after a brief and courteous refusal, she accepted his offer. Sophie instantly feared that Suzie might, on the journey back to Guildford, decide to revisit her role as replacement mistress. But good sense told her to pull herself together. Her fears were reawakened when Sam failed to return home after an hour. Then two. When she finally heard the front door open, she was ready for confrontation.
Sam stepped into the kitchen. ‘Sorry I took so long. I nipped back to the attic for some bedtime reading.’ He handed her a beautiful leather-bound book. ‘And a chat with Jesse about tiles. He said he’d like to cook supper for us. Next Friday. Is that OK?’
‘I think so. What bedtime reading?’ She read the gold lettering pressed into the volume in her hands: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
‘I thought we’d start with the Romantics and then work our way through the Laureates.’
Sophie flicked through some of the gilt-edged pages. ‘You might have mistaken me for one of your students, Mr Barnes.’
He took the book and placed it on the table. ‘Miss Denham, if I was discovered doing with one of my students what you are only too keen for me to do with you, I’d lose my job.’