Page 51 of Perfect Wives
I look between my friends. I think of Beth’s quiet determination and the way she makes sure everything is always perfect. And Tasha and the way she keeps going, even when she doesn’t want to, even when it all feels like too much – she never gives up.
This is about survival.
I keep my voice steady as I speak. ‘I’m suggesting we do whatever it takes to protect our lives.’
PRESENT DAY
TWENTY-SEVEN
TASHA
INTERVIEW ROOM 2
The yellow top is gone. Taken away in a sealed evidence bag.
How was this the only way?
If only Marc hadn’t confided in Jonny. There’s so much about his betrayal that stings. Borrowing money from Jonny. Asking him to block our planning permission. I’ve turned it over and over in my mind, trying to make sense of it. Why trust Jonny and not me? That’s what I keep coming back to. Not just the three months he pretended to go to work, drinking coffees alone in cafés. Sitting in parks and bars, leaving me to feel like I was being buried under the weight of everything I had to do. But that he’d trust Jonny over me.
All he had to do was talk to me. Yes, the summer was chaotic. Yes, I was short-tempered and distracted. But I’m still his wife.
My eyes sting with fresh tears. I draw in a breath of stale air. I miss my mum. Not the frail, worried version of her that I care for everyday – the one who won’t walk to the shop on the corner anymore because she’s too scared she’ll fall. But the mum who raised me. Who took me to London once a month to ride the red buses and wanted me to know I should never be afraid.
‘In this country, Natasha, you can be anything you want to be.’
Except, however hard I tried, I didn’t know what that was. As a teen, I thought I’d be a children’s book editor, even write my own stories one day. But then I met Marc when I was seventeen.
When it came time for university, he chose business in Bath and I chose English at Edinburgh, and the distance felt impossible. Still, I went. Everyone on my course seemed so together, so sure of themselves. The old feelings surfaced. I wasn’t like them. I didn’t belong. The feelings I’d felt my whole life, except when I was with Marc. He’d made the world make sense in a way it didn’t when I was on my own.
I dropped out after one term, moved home, took a job as a receptionist at a dental practice and visited Marc in Bath every other weekend. My dream changed. It became about being needed. Belonging. A wife. A mother. A family of my own. I have it all and yet, instead of contentment, I feel burdened – buried alive.
The door opens again. Sató returns. There’s a pinched line between her brows, and as she takes her seat once more, the air feels heavy, hard to breathe.
It must be gone lunchtime by now. Lanie will be rubbing her eyes, trying to fight her afternoon nap. She needs to be rocked when she gets overtired, cradled against my chest with her warm cheek resting against my skin. I sing her favourite nursery rhyme, quietly, the hum of my voice soothing her. Will anyone know to do that?
I wonder if all three girls are crying for me now. The thought causes a hurt to crack open in my chest and a pulsing need to escape. Except I can’t.
Sató opens her notebook and fixes that all-seeing gaze on me. ‘Do you have a key to Jonny’s house, Tasha?’
The conversational tone throws me. I blink back the tears. Try to focus. ‘No, I don’t.’
The next question comes a little faster, like a move in the games of chess I used to play with my dad. ‘How did you get into Jonny’s house the night you murdered him?’
‘I…’ My thoughts scramble. ‘I knocked on his door, and he let me in,’ I say, trying to make my tone sound less like I’m asking a question.
Sató’s expression remains focused, but there’s a new gleam to the look in her eye.
‘I don’t think you did,’ Sató replies with that same casual tone. ‘You see, the coroner has told us that Jonny ingested a high dose of prescription sleeping pills around two hours before his death. He would not have been capable of answering the door to anyone. In fact, he was likely unconscious, in bed, at the time of his death.’
Sató allows her words to settle – a smothering blanket. Hot and scratchy.
‘I look at you sitting here,’ she continues. ‘And I see a woman who is exhausted and scared. So here’s what I think, Tasha. I think you’re covering for someone. And then I have to ask myself who?—’
‘This isn’t just about Jonny,’ I whisper, not liking the direction Sató is taking us, how easily my lies are crumbling.
Suddenly, I’m pulled away from the interview room, thinking of the day in Beth’s kitchen after Keira’s voice note. The details she gave us about her ex. What she wanted – murder.
Georgie never said she wanted to do it. But she didn’t say she wouldn’t either. But for once, Beth took a stand.
