Page 62 of Perfect Wives
TASHA
Beth’s grey Volvo estate smells faintly of vanilla and car air freshener. I’m sitting in the back on the driver’s side, wishing I were anywhere else.
Georgie can frame it any way she likes, but it’s murder.
My knees press together, hands in fists on my lap. I can’t stop shaking. My throat is tight, and tears are threatening behind my eyes. It feels like I’ve barely stopped crying for days. Every instinct in my body is screaming at me to escape. I want to say something, but the words are lodged in my throat. And what can I say now? Beth and Georgie have decided. They won’t listen to me.
They’re already suspicious. Accusing me of acting strangely since Jonny’s murder. I had to tell them about Marc’s job. Had to give them something. But I panicked and told them too much and mentioned Marc lying to me for three months. It opens the door for too many questions. Like the one I’ve been asking myself for days now – where has he been going if not to work? I couldn’t tell them what he’s really been doing. Pretending to go on business trips when really he’d been researching a vineyard in Devon and bought it without telling me. I still can’t think beyond the lies to consider our future.
From the front passenger seat, Georgie twists around, checking if I’m still holding it together. Barely. She’s wearing tight black leggings and a black turtleneck. Her blonde hair is scooped into a short ponytail at the nape of her neck, the front falling out and tucked behind her ears. I wonder how long she spent getting ready. How long she agonised over what to wear to commit this murder.
I look down at myself –yesterday’s jeans and an old grey sweatshirt of Marc’s, Lanie’s mashed potatoes from lunch smeared across my chest. I look like a mess. I feel worse. I wonder what it must be like to have time to think about clothing choices. About anything. All I ever do is pull out the first thing I find, usually grabbing whatever was on the floor from yesterday or the top of the clean washing pile.
I don’t know how to respond to the look Georgie offers. I can’t smile. Can’t speak. So instead, I drop my gaze and stare at Henry’s booster seat, wondering where the crumbs are. The rice cakes and crisps ground into the footwell and the seats like in the back of my car. And where are Henry’s toys? The ones brought for the journey then forgotten and left in a heap.
I’m glad I’m not driving. It isn’t just the mess of my car or the car seats in the back; it’s that I don’t want to do this. It can’t be right. Can it? But my car was never an option with the two car seats and one booster fixed in the back. Georgie offered to drive, but her Tesla has tracking on the app, and we couldn’t risk someone finding out where we’d been. So it’s Beth and her older-model Volvo.
The silence presses down on us as we take the turning towards Fordly Woods and the road ahead narrows into the winding country lane. Trees line both sides of the road, growing over in a canopy of browns and oranges, the shadows adding to the darkness of the evening creeping in.
The road ahead is empty, just like Keira said it would be. No houses. No people. No other cars. Just the three of us on our way to kill a man. If we don’t, it isn’t the threat of sending the recording to the police anymore or the evidence she has that scares me. It’s Keira coming back to Magnolia Close. I think of Matilda and Sofia and Lanie asleep in their beds at night. Their silky black hair spread across their pillows, arms tucked around their favourite teddies. I can’t think about that…She wouldn’t…would she?
I blink away the tears and watch the trees whip by. Then we’re slowing to a crawl and Beth is swinging into a layby between two old oak trees, their roots twisting through the earth like claws. And for a moment, a weight lifts and I can almost breathe. Because I think Beth has come to her senses and changed her mind.
‘Why are we stopping?’ Georgie asks.
‘We’re early,’ Beth replies.
Tension crackles in the air, and I think Beth must feel it too because her hands are gripping the steering wheel. ‘Are we really doing this?’ she asks.
‘No,’ I say quickly at the same moment Georgie gives a firm, ‘Yes.’
Georgie is quick to continue. ‘We know from Keira that this Richard is a bad guy,’ she says. ‘He’s a deadbeat dad, right? I know what we’re doing is terrible, but maybe he deserves this, just like Jonny did.’
My heart races, my mind running just as fast. ‘How do we know what she’s said is true though?’ I ask. ‘Look at what she’s making us do. We can’t trust anything she says.’
‘Why would she lie?’ Beth asks.
‘Why wouldn’t she?’ is all I can reply. ‘For all we know, this could be about money. Or revenge. Or maybe she’s just insane. She murdered a total stranger, remember? She’s set thiswhole thing up so we’d kill her ex while she has an alibi. And she’s threatening to harm our families. Our children—’ My voice breaks, and I don’t bother trying to fight it.
We fall silent again. I glance at the clock – 5.02 p.m. Three minutes. Three minutes until our lives change forever.
Out of nowhere, I think of Lily Gallagher. Back when she was still our friend – still one of us. I picture her in one of her floaty maxi dresses, fabric clinging to the curve of her belly, her hips, her enormous chest. She was always baking. Always arriving with a rich, sticky traybake or gooey brownies. No gluten-free almond crunch like Beth. No dry protein bars like Georgie. Just proper icing, sugar in everything. I think because Joshua was a few years older than our kids, we all looked up to her. The reassurance of hearing ‘it’s just a phase’ when Matilda would only eat toast without crusts and Oscar refused to potty train. She softened the brittle edges of our personalities with her jolliness. Georgie was less fixated on fitness and calories and mantras. Beth was less bitter, a little chattier too. Me? I was more relaxed around Lily. Freezer food again for dinner – who cares?
God, the number of times she hugged me tight and said, ‘You’re doing brilliantly, Tasha. You’ve got this.’ I felt like I lived for those hugs some days. But that was before they announced they were moving one Christmas. By January, everything had turned sour.
It was New Year’s Eve at Georgie’s where it all fell apart. We’d agreed a vegetarian buffet for the party. Andrea was on one of her health kicks, and Beth had recently become a vegetarian too. But Lily turned up with duck spring rolls we all ate before realising. Andrea called her out, of course – the first to speak her mind. Lily laughed it off, said it was a miscommunication. But then she and Kevin left early without helping to clear up or say goodbye. That’s when Georgie noticed the missing ornament – alittle burnished gold heart from her mantel. Something Lily had admired more than once.
We all leaped on it. The theft. The betrayal. Bill wanted to call the police he was so infuriated. We decided to turn our backs on them instead. No replies to messages. No greetings. No goodbye.
But sitting in this car now, seconds from doing the unthinkable – I can’t help but wonder if we were wrong. The Lily I knew wasn’t a liar, and she certainly wasn’t a thief. What if someone set her up? Their move out of Magnolia Close wasn’t the first that left a bad feeling among the residents. Beth once told me that David and Mags, who lived in our house before us had poisoned the front lawns with weedkiller after an argument over the length of grass on the close. But I remember the elderly couple who’d showed us the house on our first viewing. They didn’t look vengeful. They looked sweet. They looked nervous.
I don’t know the truth behind Lily and Kevin’s move or the couple in the house before us, but I know I’m scared to tell anyone Marc’s plans. I thought Magnolia Close was a safe place. A community where we all looked out for each other. But now Jonny is dead and someone on the close has been secretly spying on us all.
I shiver. The car feels too still, too silent. But then Beth shifts the car into gear and moves slowly away, and I’m dragged back to this awful moment. In the last few minutes, it feels like night has closed in around us the way it does in the autumn. One minute it’s day. The next it’s dark. Ahead of us, the lane is cast in gloom and still empty, but then we round a bend and the road straightens out and there he is. The man from Keira’s phone, wearing navy shorts and a fluorescent top, jogging with steady strides down the lane towards us. Earbuds in. Oblivious to what’s coming for him.
Beth taps the accelerator, and we pick up speed.
I dig my nails into my palms. It’s like being on a rollercoaster. That second when the harness locks and you can’t get out. The slow tick, tick, tick as you move up the tracks, knowing the drop is coming. Wanting to get off. Unable to move.
