Page 43 of My Husband's Wife
She reaches for the shiny object in the fruit bowl. It’s a wedding ring. Not only is it a ring, but it’s half covered in mud.
Thirty-Four
Madison gently lifts Emily up even though she knows it might wake her but she has to get out of the house. After popping the ring in her pocket, she hurries out through the back door, and heads to the cabin.
‘It’s booked. We’re now getting married on the tenth of May.’ He gets up out of his office chair and comes over.
He fails to see the frown lines on her forehead as he brushes one of her red curls from the corner of her mouth.
‘Theo, I think someone has been in our house.’
He furrows his brows. ‘When?’ He runs to the door and she follows.
‘I don’t know. I was feeding Emily in the lounge and I saw someone outside.’ She doesn’t tell him that it was only a fleeting something out of the corner of her eye, that in the absence of a car it may have even been a bird. She’s so sure that it was a person and that they left the ring in their kitchen. ‘The door was on the latch.’
‘Damn, I must have left it like that earlier when I went to the car.’
As they trudge through the house, she goes to tell him about the ring but he’s already outside, using the torch on his phone to check out the bushes with Buster excitedly following. Several minutes later, they’re back and he locks the door. He runs upstairs and she hears him going through each room before he runs back down. Then he heads into the other two rooms, the one that contains his gym equipment and the large room that has become a dumping station for all Emily’s things. ‘Nothing. Are you sure you saw someone?’
She pulls the ring out of her pocket. ‘They must have left this.’
He takes it from her and holds it up to the light. ‘Love you forever,’ he mutters as he reads the inscription. ‘Where did you find that?’
‘In the fruit bowl.’
He runs his fingers through his hair again, the ring still in one hand. He’s been doing that a lot lately. ‘No one has been here. I found it in the garden the other day. It must have been there for years.’
He never mentioned finding a ring. And when did he put it in the fruit bowl? She’d been in the kitchen earlier and it wasn’t there. She rubs her eyes and yawns. ‘But you’ve been here years.’
‘Well longer than me.’
‘It wasn’t here earlier.’
‘It was. Maybe you didn’t notice it.’ His Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows.
‘Theo, what aren’t you telling me?’
He’s going blotchy, the way he does when he gets anxious. She has a feeling he’s lying but she doesn’t know why. If she hazarded a guess, it would be that he had no idea that ring was in the fruit bowl until the moment she showed it to him.
Thirty-Five
Time ticks by quickly today at the salon. Madison checks her messages. It’s probably because Eva is booked in for a trim. Madison contemplates whether to go home and leave Orla and Tammy on their own but there are too many customers coming in today. It wouldn’t be fair on them. She checks her emails again and almost lets out a happy shriek as she peruses the offer on the salon again. The new owner will also keep the staff. She’s been honest with Orla and Tammy, and they’re happy for her, even though they’ll miss her. Madison has already checked out small commercial premises around the area they’re looking at moving to, and there are some great opportunities. This time, she wants to invest in a wellness centre, get something bigger and grander than the salon. She wants a pool, a sauna and a yoga room, and she’ll have a worthy deposit and a winning business plan to present to the bank for the loan she needs.
Damn, Eva will probably be waiting. She finishes Kellis’s brows and shows them to her in the mirror. ‘I love them. Thanks, Madison, and I’ll see you again soon.’
Kellis has left and it’s just her in the treatment room on her own. The panpipes play as she lies on the treatment table enjoying the calming vibes of the music and the scent of rose petals floating in a bowl of water. After taking a few minutes to build up enough momentum to continue, she stands and leaves the room.
‘Eva, it’s so lovely to see you again.’ Eva is nervous too because she flinches as soon as Madison mentions her name. After a bit of chit chat, she leads Eva to the third chair along. The woman with the foils in her hair is still happily reading her Kindle as she waits for the colour to take. ‘I think we have you down for a dry trim, is that right?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ Eva replies.
Madison pulls a cape over Eva’s head and begins to comb and spray her tangled blonde curls. The situation feels awkward since the cancellation. ‘Once again, I’m really sorry about letting you down, but we had to take the other venue when the cancellation there came up.’ She asks Eva if she’s okay about it, and Eva reassures her that it’s all fine. After a few minutes, she’s cut the fringe that Eva also asked her to do and she’s dried it straight. She talks about her life and Madison mentions that her baby keeps her awake at night, all the usual banal conversations she has a million times a day. Same conversations, different people. Madison wonders if she prejudged Eva a bit harshly. She seems quite friendly and pleasant, not all confused and weird like when they had their meeting. Theo’s reaction to her had maybe been due to his anxiety. Madison finds herself opening up to Eva and wondering why she also felt uncomfortable around her. ‘After the wedding, Theo wants to move to Scotland. He said that was his dream. We’re looking at houses near Loch Ness actually. We feel it would be good for the little one.’ She pauses, wondering if what she’s saying to Eva is remotely interesting, but Eva looks keen to hear more. ‘It’s big progress for Theo. He’s been doing so well getting out and about, and I no longer feel as though we’re stuck here forever. I have a buyer lined up for the salon. She’s a brilliant hairdresser so I know you’ll be in expert hands when you come again.’ Madison knows she’s wittering on now.
Eva’s smile has turned into a frown. She’s staring in the same way she did during the meeting and, all of a sudden, Madison feels a nervous flutter in her stomach. Why did she say so much and let her guard down? Eva is still a little strange; she should have stuck to talking about something safe, like the weather but it was easy to get carried away. It’s time to end this appointment and get Eva out of her salon.
‘Well, what do you think?’
‘I love it. Thank you,’ Eva replies, a more relaxed expression spreading across her face.
