Page 47 of Perfect Wives
We fall silent as we step through the gates and into Magnolia Close. The unmarked silver car is parked outside Jonny’s house. DS Sató and DC McLachlan are back.
The drizzle has dampened the hedges and flowers. Even if it were bright sunshine and cherry blossoms, I don’t think Magnolia Close will ever look the same again. The street feels changed. Haunted. It doesn’t feel like the perfect home anymore. I can’t shake the feeling of being watched – as if the whole close is holding its breath, waiting to see which one of us willbe arrested. My gaze scans the windows. Who are the detectives talking to right now?
I want to ask Georgie and Beth what questions Sató had for them last week. But then a noise cuts through the hush. The ping of a phone. It’s followed by another and another. Three sharp sounds that seem to echo off the dripping roofs and hedges. Georgie is already fumbling with her bag, but Beth is ahead of her, swiping to unlock her phone. She gasps, the sound making Georgie and me lean in. The screen is open on WhatsApp. A blank chat. No messages yet. Just a new group name. Four words.
Strangers on a Train.
A split second later, a message appears in the chat. Two words next to a waving-hand emoji:
It’s Keira.
A creeping prickle moves up the nape of my neck, spreading outward, setting every nerve on edge.
‘What’s Strangers on a Train?’ I ask, eyes darting between Georgie and Beth as I pull out my phone and see the same message.
The others look as confused as I am. I don’t know what the title of the group chat means. Or what Keira wants. But deep down, in that part of me that never stops panicking, I know. Whatever this is, it’s bad.
Strangers on a Train WhatsApp Group
Monday, 13 October, 9.05a.m.
You’ve been added to a new group.
Tasha has been added.
Georgie has been added.
Keira
Voice note.
TWENTY-FIVE
BETH
We stand in my kitchen like we’ve done hundreds of times before. But there’s no use pretending this is just another coffee after the school run. The air is too tight. The tension in the room feels like it hums around us.
I’m glad the children are at school. Henry is like me. He doesn’t like people in his space. Even friends. I feel it too. Especially with Georgie, who always surveys my colours and homemade touches like she’s cataloguing them.
But whatever this new WhatsApp group is, we couldn’t talk about it standing in the middle of Magnolia Close. It’s been painful to watch our community fall apart. DS Sató wants us to believe that one of us killed Jonny. If her aim is to drive a wedge into the community, it’s working.
Which meant standing in the middle of the close wasn’t an option. But we couldn’t go to Tasha’s house with Marc there, looking after Lanie. It’s strange he’s not at work again, but that’s a thought for another time. And we couldn’t go to Georgie’s because of Nate. Even though Nate seems nice and always asks thoughtful questions, there is an edge to Georgie’s husband sometimes. Like he’s keeping himself apart. Like he’s observingus from the outside – animals at the zoo. And right now we need privacy. So we’re here, in my kitchen.
I stand beside the sink, trying to find calm in the scent of vanilla from the candles I made yesterday, now lining the worktop in the reused glass jars. Each one is perfectly uniform, the wick dead centre. I only had to throw one away that didn’t measure up.
‘Maybe Keira just wants to invite us for a drink,’ Georgie says, trying for breezy, but it lands wrong.
‘Only one way to find out,’ I say, unlocking my phone and tapping the play icon on the voice-note file that’s been added to the WhatsApp group.
There’s a moment of muffled sound, the clink of a glass, then Georgie’s unmistakable laugh crackles from my speaker. It hits me. I know what this is before the words come.
The pub.
That night.
The conversation we never should have had.
‘I’d stab him,’Georgie’s voice says from my phone.‘Right in the gut. Three times. One for each of us.’
