Killer Couples. Tammy Cohen

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СКАЧАТЬ knife still buried up to its hilt in her chest. ‘This isn’t me doing this, it’s someone else. This nightmare is happening to someone else.’

      She just caught a glimpse of Jaspal Marsh’s glassy, staring eyes before she raced headlong down the stairs, thoughts of her son and Stephen jostling through her head.

      Flinging open the front door, she ignored Bwbach’s reproachful whine as she fled without a goodbye pat, gulping in the fresh night air. Back in the car and speeding away from the house, she felt a mixture of dread and fear and exhilaration. At one level she knew she’d done something so monumental that her life would never be the same again, but on another level, she was just so glad to be free of that house, with its suffocating darkness, where spectres came flying out of nowhere, scratching at your clothes and pulling at your hair.

      Her fingers were still trembling from the adrenaline and the fear when she typed out a message to her lover, using their pre-agreed code to let him know it was all done.

      ‘She screamed and fought – I’m shaking so much.’

      Rebecca wanted reassurance. She wanted to know Stephen was pleased with her, that all she’d been through and all she’d risked had been worth it because it had won her his approval and his love. She wasn’t disappointed.

      From his friend’s house, where he’d sat up playing computer games after coming back from the pub, making sure his alibi stuck, Stephen Marsh sent her a congratulatory text message: ‘You’re a star,’ he wrote. ‘I love you.’

      In the master bedroom at 25 Howard’s Way, where Jaspal Marsh lay immobile in a pool of blood on the floor, her mobile phone beeped unheard. There was a message coming in, adding to the already crowded inbox.

      ‘Can’t believe you haven’t called me,’ Stephen Marsh had written. ‘Love you.’

      The following morning, Rebecca was still shaking, although in her mind, she was already distancing herself from what she’d done. Up by six in the morning, she’d completed three loads of washing by the time her husband woke up, but she still couldn’t shake off the feeling of being unclean, soiled.

      ‘Everything will be OK now,’ she told herself firmly, lighting yet another cigarette, although normally she rarely smoked. ‘Stephen and I will be together. I’ve done everything he asked; I’ve proved myself to him.’

      She kept thinking of the message he’d sent her. He’d be so proud of her for putting their future first. She couldn’t wait to see him. Everything would fall into place as soon as they were together again.

      But when she drove to pick him up for work as they’d arranged, it was a different story. Rather than throwing his arms around her and comforting her, as she’d hoped he would, Stephen was standoffish, distant even. Rebecca couldn’t understand it. He’d come straight from his friend’s house without going home so it wasn’t as if he was in shock from seeing his wife’s body. She just didn’t get why he was being so cold – after all she’d done, all she’d been through… Of course she wasn’t expecting them to be together right away. She knew there’d be a difficult period while he arranged the funeral and everything. All she wanted was a bit of warmth and understanding to wipe the image of Jaspal Marsh’s glazed, unseeing eyes from her head.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, miserably, as her passenger sat staring at the road ahead, his hands in his lap.

      Stephen shrugged unresponsively, refusing to meet her gaze.

      ‘Talk to me,’ she begged.

      But he wasn’t in the mood for talking. Nor did he return the pressure when she tried to hold his hand, or lean over to kiss her deeply as he’d always done before. When he finally did turn to face her, it was as if someone had switched off the love in his eyes, leaving them shuttered and illegible.

      ‘I’ll see you later then,’ he said. And then he was gone.

      Once again, Rebecca Harris was left alone with her thoughts and her memories, and the glassy-eyed ghost she was trying so hard to keep at bay. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

      That whole day, she tried to concentrate on her work, but she was like an automaton as she answered calls. She was OK as long as she concentrated on the caller and the question, but every now and then a wave of shock would come over her as she remembered what she’d done. Looking round her, she wondered how it could possibly be real. Everything else was so normal – the staff, the phones, even the potted plants. How could the world just potter on as if it were just an ordinary day when something so earth shattering had happened? Wouldn’t it all be different? Wouldn’t you be able to tell?

      ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked Stephen, when he got in the car at the end of the day, ready for a lift home. Again, he wouldn’t meet her eyes; again, he just brushed off the question, unwilling to enter into conversation.

      He was just in shock, like she was, she told herself. And he was probably steeling himself for what would happen when he went home.

      Driving towards Gorseinon, Rebecca’s hands clutched the steering wheel tightly. These were the same roads she’d driven down just the night before, and yet it seemed like a lifetime ago. Now the woman who’d sat behind the wheel while her lover bombarded her with texts, who’d had the option to pull out any time she liked and hadn’t appreciated what a luxury that was, seemed like a different person.

      Rebecca was fast realising just how much she’d lost. Dropping Stephen off near his home, she felt an overwhelming urge to grab onto him and not let go. She would force him to tell her he still loved her, to reassure her that everything was going to be just as he’d promised. She couldn’t bear the blankness in his expression. He was looking at her as though she was nothing to him, as if she was worse than nothing. Didn’t he realise how much she’d done for him, for them?

      As she watched him walk away from the car in the direction of his home, once again Rebecca felt that crushing weight in her stomach as an agonising thought occurred to her. Might this be the last time she’d ever see him? Had it all been for nothing?

      Back home with Ron and her little boy, Rebecca was taciturn and even more irritable than normal. She didn’t want to talk to her husband; she didn’t want to play at being a fun, happy mummy. All she wanted to do was sit with her mobile phone in her hand, waiting for news from Stephen.

      Would the police have fallen for his story about a burglary gone wrong? Had she been seen leaving the house? She wanted to call him so badly, but she didn’t dare in case the police were there with him.

      By now it was starting to sink in just how huge a thing she’d just done. Sure, she’d made mistakes in her life before – marrying Ron had been one of them – but never any that she couldn’t put right again. Slowly she was beginning to realise that this weight she’d been carrying around inside her for the last few weeks, and the panic washing over her in waves since the previous night were now with her for life.

      What the hell had she done?

      By the next morning, she was a nervous wreck. When the police rang the door bell, wanting to talk to her about the mysterious death of her lover’s wife she hardly had the energy to act surprised.

      ‘I went straight home after the work party,’ she told them, weakly. ‘I’ve no idea what happened to her.’

      But the police, unsurprisingly, СКАЧАТЬ