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“My wife!” whispered Tom, waking Juliet from her contented slumber.
Juliet’s eyes snapped open like a roller blind whose cord has been pulled too hard. She struggled out of Tom’s arms, which he’d draped gently about her as she slept. For a moment, she assumed he was sounding the alarm at the unexpected arrival of his spouse, now about to catch them naked in bed together. As she pulled the duvet up to her chin, Tom propped himself up on one elbow and gazed down at her.
“Is that such an awful title, Gems? I thought you’d be used to it after all this time.” He smiled. “To be honest, there are still times when I can’t get over my good fortune at marrying you, but I didn’t mean to say it aloud.”
Juliet let go of the duvet and rolled over to face him, snuggling into his bare chest, breathing in his cologne. Rob always wore an old t-shirt and trackie bottoms in bed these days. The closest he ever got to cologne was shower gel, on a good day.
“Nor can I,” Juliet murmured truthfully.
“Many girls wouldn’t have waited for me to finish my studies and get my first job in practice before I proposed. Still, it could have been worse. If I’d trained as a doctor, you’d have had to wait even longer, and my working hours would be much more anti-social.”
Juliet wasn’t sure what to say. He took her silence as a signal to continue.
“Not that I mind doing one weekend a month on the emergency rota or the odd locum duty. It would have been selfish not to cover for George Allsop today. He’s been waiting months for that hospital appointment, and it was easy enough for me to fill in for him, what with my treatment room being out of action while the new chair is being installed.”
Tom wriggled up into a sitting position, rested his broad back against the nut-brown padded leather headboard and gazed across at the huge bay window. Immediately above the study, it gave on to views of gently rolling hills beyond the top of the holly hedge.
“Oh well, back to the grind among the dreaming spires tomorrow.” He grinned at his dental pun. Juliet wondered whether he made it every working day.
So Oxford was where he usually worked. No wonder she’d not seen him around Cirencester. She guessed his house must be in some posh remote hamlet near Witney or Burford. Very nice too.
As Juliet sat up beside him, Tom lowered an arm around her shoulders.
“You know, sometimes I think it would be nice to spend a whole day together midweek while the children are at school, but my budget won’t quite run to that yet. Not until at least one of the mortgages is paid off.”
One of the mortgages? thought Juliet. Despite the unfortunate business with the taxman, she and Rob had only ever had a single mortgage, and they’d paid that off a few years before.
“On the plus side, apart from work, we’ve another twenty-four hours to ourselves.”
And another sixteen hours before I have to return Dave’s loan car, thought Juliet. Returning the car would most likely break the spell, and she didn’t want to do it before it had to be broken.
Deciding to make the most of those sixteen hours, she reached her arm across Tom’s chest and attempted to pull him back down beneath the covers. He grabbed her hand and raised it to his lips.
“I’m sorry, darling, but that’s your ration for now. Don’t forget my folks will be round at 7 for 7.30, as it’s a Thursday. And it’s gone six already. We’d better get up and get busy.”
Feeling out of her depth, Juliet glanced at the nightstand, where a small square antique alarm clock caught her eye. Its beautiful Art Deco design folded down into a tan leather case. She wondered where its original owner had taken it on her travels. On the Orient Express? The Queen Mary? The sleeper to the Scottish Highlands? It looked better travelled than she was.
She wondered what Tom meant by “getting busy”. Just heating up Eleanor’s casserole wouldn’t take much effort, or must they do more? What would Tom’s parents expect of her? She couldn’t remember much about them from their few brief encounters in the school car park, other than a general impression of their affluence. Their elite saloon cars made the teachers’ hatchbacks look shabby and small. She’d only ever seen Tom’s father in an immaculate business suit, and his mother always looked as if she’d just stepped out of the hairdresser’s.
Watching Tom swing his sturdy legs out of the bed and heave himself upright distracted her. How did a dentist develop such strong thigh muscles? Dentistry wasn’t exactly sedentary, but nor was it physically demanding, not in a bodybuilding way. Maybe wheeling himself about on that funny little stool all day, from computer to treatment chair, helped develop his leg muscles. Maybe that was why he did it, rather than from laziness.
From the mirror-fronted wardrobes that lined the left wall of the bedroom, Tom pulled white boxer shorts, soft buff chinos and a shirt patterned in a tiny pink sprig that would make the rest of him seem all the more manly. Rob would have died of embarrassment if she’d made him wear a floral shirt. T-shirts, jeans and fleeces were all the clothes he possessed.
“Come on, Gems, look lively. If you get dressed quickly, we’ll have time to enjoy a cocktail on the terrace before Mother and Father arrive.”
Whistling jauntily, with the clean clothes draped over his arm, he headed for their bathroom – a rather nice en suite, Juliet noticed with satisfaction.
Listening to the shower drumming as loud as a tropical rainstorm, Juliet leaned back against the headboard to think. If Tom was convinced she was his wife, it was an illusion she was willing to humour, at least until she had to return the Mini to Dave the next day. First she was looking forward to getting to know his parents. Tom must have got his easy charm from them.
But wait! Why hadn’t he mentioned filling her tooth, even if only to check she was OK? She’d half expected him to take advantage of her being horizontal again to admire his handiwork. Surely he hadn’t forgotten?
Perhaps there had been a leak in the gas cylinder in George Allsop’s surgery. (Dentists did still use anaesthetic gas occasionally, didn’t they?) As Tom was only standing in for the day, he might not have been familiar with the set-up. It would be all too easy to inadvertently switch something on that should have been off. An influx of gas might muddle his thinking, even if it didn’t knock him right out. It was a miracle that he’d driven his Lexus home without mishap.
Was she also a victim of the gas leak? That would explain her confusion after the appointment. What she’d taken for watercolour images on the Mini’s satnav might really have been psychedelic hallucinations. Exposed to the gas leak for just the duration of her appointment, Juliet would have got off lighter than Tom, whereas he might have been inhaling it all day.
The effect of the gas would also account for her lack of self-consciousness, first in standing up to Dave, and then in taking her middle-aged body to bed with Tom. There was at least half as much again of her as there had been when he had last seen her on A Level results day.
Sliding her hands defensively down to her waistline, she found, to her astonishment, that it felt much trimmer than usual. Gone was the circling roll of flesh that Rob liked to call her life-preserver. It wasn’t just the effect of lying down, either. Where on earth had it gone? She pictured a roll of discarded fat lying in a ditch by the side of one of the lanes she’d driven down, like an abandoned mattress in a lay-by, or a pair of knickers with snapped elastic whose owner had stepped out of them and walked away. She hoped it hadn’t fallen out on the drive when she’d opened her car door, or she’d have some explaining to do to her in-laws.
No, not her in-laws. Tom’s parents. She was finding it harder and harder to resist the scenario he had painted for them. She’d always been easy to hoodwink. That’s how she’d come to marry Rob.
She put one hand to her mouth for a comforting chew of a fingernail, but withdrew her finger in surprise at the unfamiliar smooth sensation against her tongue. She stared at her nails. Usually bitten down to the flesh, they were now neatly shaped and flawlessly painted rose-pink with the durable finish that comes only from paid-for professional manicures. A hand model would have been proud of them.
Tom emerged from the bathroom, damp hair neatly combed, still buttoning his floral shirt.
“Come on, lazy bones!” He tickled her toes as he passed. “I’ll go and get the drinks in. Gin and tonic or margarita?”
His voice was relaxed and warm.
“Margarita, please.”
Juliet waited until he was padding down the stairs before flinging back the duvet and getting out of bed.
So where did the Mini come in? She couldn’t imagine that as Tom’s wife, she’d be a customer of Dave’s scruffy backstreet garage. Perhaps this was a ruse after all, and Tom had bribed Dave to send her to his house via a high-tech kind of kidnapping using the fancy satnav that spoke with his voice.
But Tom couldn’t have known she was going to turn up at Mr Allsop’s surgery. Her appointment was a last-minute emergency, not an advance booking. Even if Tom wanted to kidnap her, would he take the professional risk? He had always been a sensible, responsible type. He had been Head Boy. Seducing a patient, no matter how willing, would be professional misconduct and could cost him his career.
Or had she dreamed the Mini up too – and Rob and Jessie and Jake? Desperate now for evidence of her former life, she darted to the window to check on the forecourt. The Mini glinted back at her. Well, at least that was real.
The touch of the cold windowpane against her palm reminded her she was naked. Whether Tom was deranged, drugged or simply criminal, and whether either or both of them had amnesia, getting dressed could only help matters. And if his parents were coming to dinner, she’d better put on a smarter outfit than the one she’d arrived in.
She slid open the mirrored doors of the wardrobes lining the right wall to reveal an array of beautiful outfits arranged in rainbow order. At least if Tom’s real wife turned up and Juliet got arrested for impersonation, she’d look good in the police mug shot.
Selecting an olive linen shift, she checked the label: two sizes smaller than her usual purchases, but when she tried it on, it was a perfect fit. As she slipped on peach-soft grey mules, she noticed with pleasure how well they set off her professionally pedicured toenails. Feeling more confident, she started down the stairs, lured by the tinkle of ice cubes in crystal glasses and Tom’s footsteps heading through the dining room and on to the terrace.
Settled once more into his teak steamer chair, Tom had turned his face to the late evening sunshine. The tang of lime cut through the still air. Juliet licked her lips as she sat down beside him and picked up her drink from the coffee table.
The glass was halfway to her lips before she realised she hadn’t seen Tom mix the drinks. Supposing he’d slipped in a sedative to erase her short-term memory? He’d probably have access to that kind of drug at work for clinical purposes.
Or the drink might be drug free, but very alcoholic. From her nights as a barmaid when the kids were small, she knew a standard sized margarita was two measures of tequila and one of Cointreau. This one was at least a double. Delicious, but enough to prevent her driving home.
“Cheers,” Tom was saying, clinking his glass against hers.
“Cheers,” she replied automatically.
If the drink was meant to loosen her inhibitions, wouldn’t refusing it be rather shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted into the bedroom? Did it even matter? Dave had said she needn’t bring the car back till the next morning.
Of course it mattered. She’d been unfaithful to Rob. It may have been a mistake to have married him in the first place, but he was her husband.
Furtively, she glanced at her partner in crime. He couldn’t have looked less threatening if he’d tried. No, more so, his lean face having matured as much as his body, gaining character and expression, no longer a blank slate for his future to etch. The fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth and the faint mesh of lines across his forehead gave him a stronger, more masculine air than in adolescence.
It seemed such a long time since she had married Rob. And even a murderer got time off for good behaviour.
She raised the margarita to her lips.