Page 75 of The Women

It is Monday morning. Three weeks later. Samantha is standing in the kitchen, the handwritten letter she has collected from the doormat open in her trembling hands.

Dear Samantha,

You know by now that my name is Charlotte not Suzanne and that it was me that took your beautiful baby girl. By now little Emily is hopefully back safe in your arms and your life has returned to normal. I know I don’t have any right to ask you for any of your time but if you can read this letter just once I would really appreciate it.

Samantha gasps, rests one hand on the counter. From upstairs comes the rumble of water flowing through the pipes. Peter has gone for a shower after his morning run. She reads on.

First off, I am so sorry for what I did and I hope one day you can forgive me. I am not well. I haven’t been well for a long time but that’s no excuse.

As I say, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you pain. I didn’t mean to do what I did, but I just did it and no one else did it but me – trust me, I do know that. When I saw you at the nursery with Emily and you let me hold her, I thought you were so nice, but by then I think I was already on a terrible path.

Anyway, I’m sorry I wrote the horrible poems as well. I didn’t know you at all then; all I knew was what I saw on Facebook, which is that you were with Pete and you had a baby together. You looked so pretty and happy, and I suppose I let jealousy get the better of me. I’ve been following Pete for a few years. I did run away to London once a long time ago to find him, but when I got to Euston everything was too big. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, so I just turned around and came home.

I’ve done all sorts but I got a job in an estate agent’s in town, just doing filing and that at first, but eventually they let me show a house because someone was off sick and I must have been all right at it because in the end I became an estate agent proper – in fact I have won the Nash and Watson Regional Agent award eight years running. Anyway, so I got a desk and then one day in the office I googled him and there he was. He was on LinkedIn and I recognised him straight away. He hasn’t changed that much. Then I found him on his university profile and then on Facebook.

Then last year he tagged you in a post and I looked at your page and that’s how I found out you had a baby, and that made me feel like killing someone. I didn’t, don’t worry! Then you posted that you were going to teach the course at Richmond College and you posted a link to it. I pretended I lived in your house so that I could enrol, but you might know that already. That was wrong too. I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t know what I was planning to do, to be honest. If I’m honest, I’d say I wanted to see what you were like, see what he went for in the end type of thing, but then I wrote that mean poem and then I wrote more. I was trying to mess with your head and get to Pete that way. But I know Pete is too clever for me. I never had a chance against him. I know that. I never had a chance. It was easier to mess with his wife.

The kitchen walls swing away and back.

‘Holy shit,’ Samantha whispers.

This is surreal; it’s all surreal. Above, the rumbling water stops. The squeak of the shower door.

She reads on, lips pressed tight.

But I’ve got all ahead of myself, sorry. Pete was my history teacher at school. When he first touched me, I was fourteen. It was after school and I was helping him tidy up and he put his hand on my face very gently and said, ‘Thanks for collecting the books, Lottie.’ My name, like that. He was very handsome and all the girls were in love with him at our school. I was so proud he’d chosen me. After that, I stayed after school regularly and helped him, and we started kissing and a bit more in the stationery cupboard. He took me out to an Italian restaurant in Liverpool for my fifteenth and made me promise to keep it a secret, which I did.

He took me to other restaurants, then to hotels. I went to a girls’ school so we didn’t know many lads, and the ones that went to the disco weren’t anybody I was interested in, not when there was Pete. I’d only ever been to Burger King and a Harvester before I met him, and I’d never been in a hotel. Pete had a Ford Fiesta and he had his own flat. That sounds silly but he did, and all the girls thought he was the business. He had money and he knew where to go and what to do. He knew everything. He was so clever and he was so funny – he was hilarious. We started having full-on proper sex the night of my fifteenth birthday even though we’d done everything else by then. Sorry to say it like that. I wanted to wait but he said it was all right and he would look after me as long as I didn’t tell anyone. He was nice about it.He wouldn’t wearHe told me he would do the withdrawal method, not to worry, he knew what he was doing. I trusted him because he was older. He told me he loved me and that we would get married once I turned sixteen. He said that on my birthday he would go and see my dad and ask. I believed him, every word.

A sickness has started up in Samantha’s belly, a heavy brick of a feeling. Her forehead is damp.

Anyway, this is what I really want to tell you and it’s something I’ve never told a soul. I’m only telling you because I want to try and make you understand why I did that terrible thing, writing the poems and taking your lovely baby. I’m not asking you to forgive me, but I just want you to understand something about me because I feel so terrible.

The thing is that I fell pregnant. I was fifteen and I was scared stiff, but I thought it would be OK because Peter had always said we would get married when I was sixteen. But he told me to have an abortion. He was really angry. He shouted at me and told me I was stupid and a slag, and I thought he was going to punch me. It was horrible. I remember it like it was last week. I could not believe it. It was like all my dreams getting flushed away down the toilet, but I still thought he loved me and that we’d be together once I left school. He organised everything and he took me there and drove me to the corner of our road after, and he told me if I told anyone he would kill me.

I didn’t want an abortion. I just really hated the idea of it, and I’ve always wanted kids. I wanted to have like three or four. I thought he loved me and we would be a family. But he made me get rid of her. He told me if I didn’t, he would never marry me and we would never have a family together. So I did it. And I didn’t tell anyone, only myself, and to myself I said I’d had a real baby and I called her Joanne. I still call her that – I call her Jo for short – and I talk to her most days, take her to view the houses and that. I know I’ve taken this fantasy too far but it was all I had. She’d be not too much younger than you now. Funny that, isn’t it? Only, then I got really sick. I had a fever and I was rushed to hospital and I had to tell the doctors what I’d done in the end otherwise who knows what would have happened? They told my parents because I was still a child when he got me pregnant, legally. I didn’t think I was, but I know now that I was. I really was. I was a stupid child.

My parents were devastated. I nearly died of the shame. My dad was going to kill Pete with his bare hands but I begged him not to. My school was a Catholic school, St Catherine’s. My parents had a meeting with the headmaster and they made Pete resign. No one wanted any scandal. It would have reflected badly on the school and my parents, what with gossip and that. We moved to Ormskirk soon after and by then my GCSEs were a waste of time. I left school with a few Cs and that was it, but I’m not stupid. I just couldn’t concentrate. Pete went away. No one knew what had happened. I got better slowly and then years later I did get married, but we found out that I was infertile because of the infection. I suppose that’s when my depression really started. My husband couldn’t cope and we got divorced.

I’m not trying to make you feel sorry for me, Miss; I’m just trying to explain. I did some mean things, but I think you’re really nice and every time I think about what I did, I feel terrible. I’m returning the key to your house. I took it when Pete and me stayed there one time when his dad was on holiday. I’m sorry for sneaking in. That was wrong as well. It’s a beautiful house. It’s a palace really. I sell houses myself, I think I said that, and once I get better I’m hoping to go back to it. As I say, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me; I just want you to understand because maybe then you’ll feel better about everything and you’ll know it will never happen again.

Pete isn’t a bad man. He just wasn’t ready to have a family back then. He doesn’t know what happened after he left. I wanted him to know but now I don’t anymore. What’s the point? I’m glad you’re happy together now. I know I will never be a mum but I can tell you’re a lovely one and that is a nice thing for me to think about.

It would mean the world to me to know you forgive me. I know you’re not my daughter, but I like to think she would have been a nice person like you. One day maybe you’ll forgive me, but I’m not asking you to or anything. Sorry again. If I could turn back time, I would. Look after yourself, Samantha – I mean that.

Lottie

xx

Samantha folds the letter and slides it back into the envelope. She puts the envelope in her bag and sits at the kitchen table. She is desperate to cry, desperate. Her eyes and throat ache with the pressure. But Peter’s footsteps thud on the stairs and she knows that in a few seconds he will appear at the kitchen door. Which he does.

‘Coffee?’ he says. He is not asking if she would like one; rather if she’s made it.

‘On the stove,’ she says, getting up to pour a mug for him. ‘I made a fresh pot.’

Thirty-One

She is still sitting in the kitchen when her phone beeps. In front of her on the table lies Lottie’s letter. It has been more than an hour since Peter left for work. She has read the letter over and over, must have drifted into some kind of catatonic state. She lifts the letter. Her phone is underneath, a message from Aisha on the screen.

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