His Other Woman

By Sarah Edghill

Her husband is with another woman—but it’s not who she thinks it is, and the results may be more devastating than an affair . . .

Lucy’s husband has been missing for days while she tries to pretend to those around her, including her distracted teenagers, that everything is normal. In desperation she uses a phone app to track him—and discovers he’s with another woman.

As her life falls apart, Lucy realises nothing is as it seems. There is another woman in her husband’s life, but it’s someone she has known—and hated—for twenty years.

As the story unfolds, including in the national press, the family must pull together before lives are destroyed . . .

“Sarah Edghill knows how to pinpoint what goes on in families.” —Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry on A Thousand Tiny Disappointments

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781504075794

Sarah Edghill

Sarah Edghill worked as a journalist for many years, writing for a range of newspapers and magazines, before turning her hand to fiction. She is an alumna of the Faber Academy Novel Writing course, and her work has won prizes and been short-listed in novel and short-story competitions.

Book preview

1

Lucy heard the text ping as she was standing in the cheese aisle at Sainsbury’s. A packet of cheddar in one hand, her phone in the other, she read the words, not understanding what they meant.

I need to go away. Please don’t try to get in touch. I can’t explain right now

It must be some kind of joke. When she’d left the house, a couple of hours earlier, Tom had been sitting at the kitchen table, his hands around a mug of coffee, the newspaper open in front of him.

‘I’m going to Boxercise at the leisure centre,’ she’d said, filling her water bottle from the tap.

‘Okay.’ He hadn’t lifted his eyes from the paper.

‘Don’t really want to go, but I haven’t done any exercise all week.’

He’d sipped his coffee and turned over the page.

‘I’ll pop to the supermarket on the way home, pick up something for supper.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Right, I’m off then. Tom, please can you tidy up in here at some stage?’ She had sighed heavily enough for him to hear, grabbed her bag and walked out of the kitchen.

Everything had seemed normal. He had seemed normal.

But now he’d sent this bizarre text.

Please don’t try to get in touch

Standing beside her supermarket trolley, she read the message again, then a third time. Maybe Maisie had got hold of Tom’s phone and was playing a trick on her? But that wasn’t likely. Their daughter would be still in bed, hand curled around her own phone, hopping from one Instagram account to another: liking, posting, hashtagging. Even if she had managed to drag herself out from under the duvet, she didn’t know the passcode for Tom’s phone.

Lucy read the text for the fourth time, a strange, rolling sensation in the pit of her stomach. She put the packet of cheese back onto the shelf and dialled his number, her fingers shaking. It went straight to voicemail.

‘What’s going on, Tom?’ she asked, after his recorded voice. ‘What’s this about?’

People were tutting as they moved past her, and one man shoved her trolley to the side. She knew she was in the way, but didn’t care. She tapped out the same question in a text and watched as the message whooshed away and turned blue.

He rarely replied to texts immediately, but she stared at the screen anyway, willing him to do so. However many times she read the words, they made no sense.

I can’t explain right now

Half a minute passed, then she dialled his number again.

‘I don’t know why you’re messing around like this! Come on, Tom, pick up. Please?’

‘Excuse me, is this your trolley?’ A woman was standing in front of her, hands on hips. ‘It’s in the way.’

Lucy stared at her. The woman was wearing a brown skirt, so creased that the material looked like furrowed earth.

‘This trolley!’ the woman said, pointing. ‘It’s blocking the butter! You don’t seem to be doing much shopping. If you want to make calls, why don’t you go outside?’

Lucy turned and walked away, clutching her phone to her chest.

‘Honestly!’ she heard the woman say, behind her. ‘Some people.’

Outside, the April sunshine was dazzling. Lucy shaded her eyes and looked back down at her phone, which stayed silent. She called him again: it went to voicemail. She realised her hand was shaking.

This was all some ridiculous mix-up. Tom would be at home, still sitting at the kitchen table – a smile on his face suggesting this had been his idea of a joke. A bloody bad one, for sure, but a joke all the same. A couple of years earlier, he had left her a message at the last minute to say he wouldn’t be home in time for her birthday meal. It wasn’t true: he and the kids were standing outside, waiting to burst through the front door and surprise her. But she had never forgotten how hurt she’d felt, as she listened to the message. Even when they all came in, laughing and shouting, a little part of her was angry: it hadn’t been funny.

Nor was this. But it must be some sort of misunderstanding: Tom would definitely be at home. When she got to the car, she fumbled with the keys and had to grip the steering wheel tightly to stop her hands shaking. She sat for a few seconds, making herself take deep breaths before she started the engine.

But when she got back to the house, ten minutes later, he wasn’t there. She walked through the rooms calling his name, an increased note of panic in her voice. In the kitchen, the newspaper was still open on the table, the mug of cold half-drunk coffee sitting on the open pages. She lifted it up and the paper stuck to the bottom of the mug before falling away again, a brown ring running around the list of the previous day’s Premier League results.

Upstairs, Maisie’s bedroom was empty, so she knocked on Nat’s door. A fug of stale air hit her as she pushed it open.

‘Nat?’ she called.

A lump stirred in the bed.

‘Nat, have you seen Dad?’

There was a grunt.

‘Did he say anything to you before he went out?’

‘No.’

‘Did you hear him talking to anyone on the phone?’

‘No.’

The boy tugged his duvet over his head and rolled away from her.

Lucy shut the door and walked into their bedroom. Everything was as they’d left it earlier: the duvet thrown back, half-empty glasses of water on their bedside tables, books on the floor on either side of the bed, bent open at the spine. Hers was the latest Kate Atkinson, which she was loving so much that she couldn’t wait to get into bed at night to read a few more pages before she fell asleep. Tom wasn’t a great reader; he’d been dipping in and out of the same thriller for weeks.

Earlier that morning, she had thrown her pyjamas onto her pillow when she came out of the shower; now she sat down beside them, her fingers twisting through the material before separating the top from the bottoms, shaking them out and folding them without thinking about what she was doing. She placed them on her lap and ran her palms backwards and forwards across the soft cotton until she’d got rid of every wrinkle.

Her head was throbbing, blood pumping through her skull so fast it sounded like wind howling around the corner of the house. Maybe he was ill? But surely, he would have called her – or told Nat. If he’d collapsed, there would have been signs of it downstairs: spilt coffee, an overturned chair. But why else would he go away and not tell her what was wrong?

This whole thing was bloody crazy. Lucy stood and walked across to the window. Staring down at the road outside, she could see how badly she’d parked her car, the back wheel up on the kerb. Someone else could be ill, his mother maybe? She suddenly realised that Maisie wasn’t here either – what if something had happened to her? No, Maisie was going to Primark today to meet some girls from school. She’d mentioned it earlier.

Lucy read the text again: I need to go away. Please don’t try to get in touch

Her mind was whirring: maybe Tom had issues at work – a client who was causing problems? He could have gone to meet someone and got into trouble. There’d been a fight and he was lying dead in a ditch somewhere. She hugged her arms around her chest; she was being ridiculous, things like that didn’t happen in real life. Anyway, he’d sent that bloody text, so he was definitely living and breathing – somewhere. The most confusing thing was that he’d asked her not to contact him. Why would he do that?

Turning back towards the bed, she dragged the duvet across it and plumped the pillows, then picked up the glasses of water and turned over the corner of the page in her book, closing it and putting it back on the bedside table.

Whatever this was about, it sounded as if it had been planned. But if that was the case, he must be in some kind of trouble. It just seemed so unlikely. Tom wasn’t the sort of man to attract trouble. He was law-abiding, responsible – sometimes verging on overly moralistic: he told off the kids for dropping litter, paid his bills on time, railed against lying politicians and fraudulent businessmen. She couldn’t even remember him getting a parking ticket. It seemed unimaginable that a man like him would get involved in anything dishonest or illegal.

On the other hand, she would never have dreamt a man like him was capable of sending her one shitty little text, then disappearing.

For an hour or so she walked aimlessly around the house, checking her phone every few minutes, even though it hadn’t made a sound. She turned on the television, but as she flicked through the channels it was all too loud, too inane, too bloody pointless.

‘It’s not funny, Tom!’ she yelled into the phone, as his answerphone cut in, yet again. ‘I’m really pissed off now.’

Dragging out the ironing board, she started to attack a basket of crumpled clothes, thrusting the steaming metal down onto the material with more force than was necessary. The third item she pulled out of the basket was one of Tom’s shirts. Her heart raced again as she ran her thumb and finger around the freshly laundered collar. This was one of his favourites; he’d had it for years and the pale blue check suited him. She lifted it to her face, burying her cheek in the soft cotton, breathing in the familiar floral smell of the conditioner she always used.

Footsteps thundered down the stairs and she heard the front door open.

‘I’m going out, Mum,’ Nat called. ‘Back in a bit.’

‘Nat…’ she started, but the door slammed and her boy was gone. Don’t leave me, she wanted to call after him. Stay and help me deal with whatever’s happening here. I can’t cope with this on my own. She thumped the iron down hard on one of Maisie’s school shirts, the nylon hissing and scrunching into grooves in the heat.

Half an hour later, Lucy had almost worked her way through the towering pile of ironing, when there was a click from the hallway, then the sound of the front door opening. Her heart launched itself into her throat and she moved towards the door as Maisie wandered into the kitchen, threw her coat on the floor and opened the fridge.

‘Why is there never anything nice to eat or drink in this house?’ the girl grumbled, pulling a can of Diet Coke from the fridge then emptying a packet of biscuits onto the worktop. ‘I hate Bourbons.’

‘Maisie, have you seen Dad today?’ Lucy asked. Her voice was shaky and she took a deep breath. ‘Was he here when you got up?’

Her daughter’s face screwed itself into incomprehension. ‘Nope. Why?’

‘It’s just that, he isn’t answering his phone.’

Maisie shrugged. ‘So?’

‘I wondered if he’d left me a message, said where he was going?’

Maisie shook her head and filled her mouth with biscuit before walking out of the kitchen and stomping upstairs. As her bedroom door slammed overhead, Lucy collapsed onto a chair and burst into tears. It was such a relief to cry. For hours she’d been telling herself to stay calm, to think rationally; there would be an explanation for all this and she wouldn’t have to wait much longer to hear it. But her shoulders were aching with tension and the stabbing pain in her head felt like the point of a knife. As she let the sobs flood through her body, it was as if the tightness was pouring out with them, leaving her exhausted and empty, but strangely calmer.

After a few minutes, still sniffing, she stood and grabbed a piece of kitchen roll, dabbing her eyes, wiping trails of snot from her upper lip.

Another woman; it had to be. He was having an affair. The realisation caused the ache of worry that had lodged itself in the pit of her stomach to churn again, as if there were stones there, digging into her ribs.

But who? Someone from work possibly. Please don’t let it be a mutual friend. Outside, late afternoon was turning to early evening, and she went around the house, turning on lights, pulling curtains, running through mental checklists of women who might – inconceivable as it seemed – have run off with her husband. Neighbours, work colleagues, long-standing friends from college, mothers they’d met through school when the children were young.

Lucy tried to remember who they’d socialised with over the last few months, whether any of those women had behaved differently towards Tom. There was that irritating girl who worked in the computer repair place, or the one from the garage who called to remind him their cars needed servicing? But it didn’t make any sense – the more Lucy tormented herself with possibilities, the more unlikely it seemed that her husband could be having an affair with anyone she knew.

She read the text over and over: I have to go away

‘Why do you have to go away, Tom?’ she yelled into the empty kitchen. ‘Who are you with?’

Things hadn’t been great over the last few months. They’d both been working long hours and money was tight; they were struggling to pay extra bills – a broken boiler and Nat’s university fees – and they’d had to scale back plans for a big summer holiday. She knew she was often prickly and short tempered, but he was no saint either. He’d been grumpy that morning, and hadn’t cleared up his things in the kitchen – even though she’d asked him to. But while a few dirty plates and bowls were irritating, it didn’t mean their marriage was in crisis, for God’s sake. They’d been together for more than twenty years, of course things weren’t going to be the same; they’d both changed, their lives had moved on.

Lucy realised it was dark outside, and she hadn’t done anything about supper for Maisie. She thought about phoning Debbie, knowing her friend would come straight over, put her arms around her and tell her everything would be okay. But she couldn’t bring herself to make that call, partly because the whole situation felt so unreal, but mostly because she couldn’t believe there was any need to share this bizarre news – it was going to be over soon, the mystery solved. Any minute now, Tom was going to walk back in through the door and give her a rational explanation for what had happened.

No, she wouldn’t call anyone. Instead, she went to the fridge and poured a glass of wine, draining half of it while still clutching the bottle in her other hand.

She’d lost count of the texts and voicemail messages she’d left over the last nine hours. Maybe he was deliberately ignoring them – waiting for her to calm down. If he was with another woman, they might be listening to her frantic messages together. She imagined him sitting on someone else’s sofa, with someone else’s hand on his knee: slender manicured fingers stroking his thigh, working their way up to the zip of his jeans.

‘You bastard!’ she whispered, into the empty kitchen.

2

She could track him – of course! It was nearly 9pm, why hadn’t she thought of this hours earlier? Lucy grabbed her phone and hit the green icon, tapping her finger impatiently on the screen while the app took a few seconds to load, then began to locate everyone.

She’d been dismissive when Abi signed them all up to this thing.

‘It’s called Find My and it lets us keep in touch with each other,’ her eldest daughter had said. ‘It logs our phone locations. Then any of us can click on it and find out where the others are.’

Lucy hadn’t seen the need. ‘But if I want to know where you are, I can call you?’

‘Oh, Mum. Get real. What if Nat’s away at uni and doesn’t return your calls. Or you find out Maisie isn’t where she said she’d be?’

So, they had linked themselves up on Find My and Lucy had been shown how to use it. But, although she’d been intrigued by the prospect of checking up on her family without them knowing, she had only used the app a handful of times. Once the novelty wore off, she’d forgotten it was there – just another icon cluttering up the screen of her phone.

Now she held her breath as she watched it load.

It listed them in alphabetical order, so Abi came up first. The app showed she was 10.4 miles away, at the little house she shared with Paul in Barnwood Road. Lucy hoped she was on her way to bed already, but knew it was unlikely. At thirty-eight weeks pregnant, Abi had looked exhausted when they saw her the previous week. Lucy had begged her to get some early nights, in preparation for what lay ahead, but Abi had never been good at taking advice, particularly from her mother; if Lucy suggested she cook an egg for five minutes, Abi would deliberately leave it boiling dry in the pan for ten.

Maisie’s name popped up next; Lucy already knew she was upstairs in her room. Nor did she need an app to tell her that, having noisily come back into the house an hour or so earlier, Nat was now in his bedroom on the other side of the landing, rolled up in a filthy duvet that stank of stale beer, tobacco, coffee and sweaty teenage boy. The only good thing about having her nineteen-year-old son home from university for the holidays was that he wasn’t costing them any more than the price of the pizzas he occasionally pulled from the fridge. He was going back in a couple of weeks’ time – or was supposed to be. When he found out about all this, Lucy wasn’t sure what would be happening.

Then, at the bottom of the list, there he was: Tom.

Tom was… oh God, Tom was at Stella’s.

‘What the hell?’ Lucy said out loud.

The icon blinked at her as she zoomed in. His location was printed beside his name, Lewis Close. Her immediate reaction was relief – if he was with his twin sister, then at least he wasn’t with another woman. She’d been imagining such awful things: death, adultery, corruption, financial ruin. And all the time he’d been at Stella’s!

But as the initial adrenalin ebbed away, she realised that, actually, this wasn’t such good news. It made things more complicated, because there was no way she was going to contact Stella: the mere mention of her sister-in-law’s name was enough to make the muscles in Lucy’s jaw stiffen.

She stared at the screen, trying to understand what all of this meant. What was he doing there? If Stella was ill, or she and Tom were dealing with a problem with their mother, he would have told her – or even asked for her help – rather than leaving and sending that bloody text.

Or would he.

Lucy went into the kitchen and pulled the wine from the fridge, topping up her glass and splashing a few drops as she slammed down the bottle onto the worktop. If she was honest with herself, she knew Tom wouldn’t have told her if he was going to see Stella. Even if it was some kind of emergency – the sort of family crisis where, as his wife, she would usually be the first person he’d turn to – in this case he wouldn’t have said anything, because he would have known how she’d react.

Back in the sitting room, she made herself go over her options. Right, so she knew where Tom was; this was good. She didn’t know why he was there, or why he hadn’t got in touch, but she didn’t have to worry about him lying dead somewhere. Although, thinking about it, just because he was at Stella’s, didn’t mean there wasn’t something else going on in his life. He could be staying there while he sorted out whatever it was. He could still be having an affair; he could still have left her. He might be waiting for her to calm down enough for him to drop the next bombshell.

Lucy gazed at the print on the wall opposite. It was a black-and-white picture of Paris, where they’d been on their honeymoon; such a long time ago. They had stayed in a dark, musty hotel, with a central staircase that got narrower as it wound upwards towards the cheapest rooms under the eaves. They had lain together in the small, creaky bed, staring out at the night sky, listening to the sound of strangers singing drunkenly in the streets below.

One evening, she remembered crying with happiness: being there, being with him – it had been so special. Tom had laughed, teasing her about her raging hormones as he leant forward and kissed the already solid bulge in her belly.

She rarely cried, which must be why she remembered times like that so well. But now her eyes were still puffy and itching from that afternoon’s tears. She rubbed them with her palms; it was as if invisible grit was scraping inside her eyelids.

She needed to appeal to his better nature. Whatever had happened, whatever he’d done, this was still Tom. He was a kind man, a good man; he cared about her. She would leave one more voicemail.

‘Tom, it’s me again. I have to speak to you. I have no idea what’s going on, but please phone me. I know you’re at Stella’s – I checked on that app thing. But I’ve been so confused by your message and I’ve been going out of my mind with worry, so let me know you’re okay.’

She didn’t care whether he called back out of pity or guilt, she just wanted the phone to ring.

But it stayed silent.

There was only one more call she could make. She took a deep breath and scrolled through her phone’s contacts. She had saved the number as Stella Brent. It seemed silly to have put her full name – she didn’t even know anyone else called Stella – but she’d never had any desire to put her sister-in-law into the same category as close friends whose contact details only needed to be saved by their first name. It was so many years since she’d dialled this number that she didn’t recognise the pattern of the digits. No surprise there, they’d never been on each other’s frequent caller lists.

She listened to the phone ring, her hand shaking. What was she going to say? It would be an effort to sound normal and friendly, as if nothing had happened – that would be too weird: Hello, Stella. We haven’t spoken in ages! Have you got my husband tucked away there with you?

Although they hadn’t talked for so long, she could still hear Stella’s voice in her head; she could remember her exact tone, the way she laughed, the way she would raise one eyebrow as she said something sarcastic.

The phone rang and rang.

Hello, Stella. How have you been? And what’s so bloody important that Tom has dragged himself away from all of us to be with you?

Still no reply – and no answerphone. In a way Lucy was relieved; she wasn’t sure her voice would have sounded natural if she’d left a message.

She ended the call. So that was that. The last thing she wanted to do was have to speak to Stella; the very thought made her pulse race uncontrollably. But even though she had dreaded that call being answered, if Stella wasn’t going to pick up the phone, it felt like another door had been slammed in her face.

3

Lucy had hardly slept: every time she closed her eyes, Tom’s face was in her head. Even when exhaustion allowed her to doze off for a few minutes, her brain would jolt her body awake again, and she lay, flinging herself from one side to the other, her mind taking her to so many different places. Whenever a floorboard creaked or a car braked on the street outside, she was instantly awake, wondering if it was him coming back. She had watched the digits on the radio alarm click forward, staring into the darkness, knowing she’d be wiped out when light started to creep under the curtains.

She must have finally drifted off just before dawn, her dreams full of terror. She was in a corridor, running after a man. Although she could only see

Reviews for His Other Woman

[Jess · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It started off really interesting & wanting to know what the secret was. Then it just dragged on & abruptly stopped for the ending. The author didn’t finish the ending, just stopped.