Epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER
Reese
Can I go to Caitlin’s house after school today? Her mum says I can.
‘Sorry,’ I tell the baker, where I am tasting cakes in the hope of adding her to our list of suppliers because she has a huge array of vegan options. ‘I just need to answer this.’
My daughter has embraced the use of her new phone with gusto and will message me whenever she gets the chance, about anything.
Any thought that pops into her head seems to be worthy of a text message and I’m grateful she has what is now called a ‘dumb phone’.
She can’t access the internet but she can contact family and friends.
The phone stays in her bag during lessons but she has it at recess and lunch.
Okay, but please send me her mother’s number. I don’t have the class list on my phone. I need to check for myself.
Kayla sends back a heart emoji. She has made friends so easily at her new school, it seems as if she has always been there.
But I knew she would be fine. I was more worried about Max because he struggled at his last school.
The new school is bigger and he does seem to have found a little group quite quickly, which I’m really grateful for.
The fact that my kids are happy has made everything so much easier and I’m really pleased that they have both settled in so well.
I sold the move to the kids, both the house and the school, as a new and exciting start.
We are an hour away from where we used to live. An hour and a half away from where Victoria and her boys live. Too far to see each other often. Too far to really be in each other’s lives all the time.
We could be in touch every day if we wanted to. But it seems that both of us have entered into an understanding. We are no longer friends.
It happened without either of us saying anything. There was no big announcement, no discussion. We just gradually contacted each other less and less.
Lawrence’s death was ruled as self-defence.
She and I stuck to our stories and we were consistent.
The room filled with pictures of us was something the police were mindful of, as was Lawrence’s search history on how to buy a gun and how to shoot one.
Everything pointed clearly to someone who wanted to hurt us.
Camilla’s sister, Sophie, is the one who is selling the house and she had no idea that he’d broken in, no idea that he was planning to use it.
I contacted her after it happened even though I know the police had already informed her.
I didn’t know what I was going to say. Her fifteen-year-old daughter, Rebecca, answered the phone at her florist shop, and called for her mother.
The conversation was brief, stilted and after Sophie told me she had nothing to do with what Lawrence did, she said, ‘Don’t contact me again,’ and hung up.
I don’t blame her for never wanting to hear from either me or Victoria again.
I try to imagine Lawrence in the days before we went to Camilla’s old house. I see him putting up the pictures and muttering to himself about how Victoria would pay for what she did. He was quite clearly crazy.
On the day we were told that the police were closing the investigation, I thought about calling Victoria and maybe meeting her for a coffee, a drink, some kind of celebration because we were finally allowed to move on with our lives. But somehow, I never did and neither did she.
She’s judging me for what I did, for what I said to Camilla back then. But I know Victoria did more damage. There are things she did that I may never know about, and I’m fine with that.
A few weeks after we had been cleared, I was trying to get back into my work, worrying every time I picked the kids up from school that I would run into Victoria or Ed, but working on it. And then Nick announced he had a new job.
And I saw the chance to change my life.
He works from home a lot because he works with the UK and so has odd hours.
He’s more engaged now, happier and more present at home.
I think what happened with Lawrence gave him quite a shock.
The idea of someone watching me and our kids was frightening.
The fact that Lawrence is dead is a relief to all of us, although I feel terrible for his family, of course.
Nick was really supportive about moving and about getting the kids to change schools, which surprised me but perhaps he was ready for a new start as well.
I’m just glad to have put this all behind me.
By the time I had finished with the police, the story that I told was cemented in my memory from the constant repetition.
Lawrence, bitter at the end of his third marriage, contacted Victoria and me pretending to be Camilla. He lured us to the house that Sophie and Lia are selling now that their mother has died.
And there he held us hostage.
He was holding the gun and lunged for us and Victoria, somehow, got the gun from him and then it went off.
I didn’t see Lawrence lunge for her. But I have said I did, over and over again. He wasn’t holding the gun, but I have said he was.
My fingerprints shouldn’t have been on the gun but I have said I picked it up after Victoria dropped it, just to move it out of the way.
It seemed the simplest way to deal with everything.
Was it the truth? No.
But was it a lie?
Would Lawrence have actually hurt us?
I don’t know. I thought I had gotten through to him. He had handed over the gun. I was backing away. We could have walked out of that room. But maybe he could still have hurt us if he really wanted to. Is that true? Does it matter?
Maybe there are no concrete truths and lies when it comes to human beings. Maybe it’s all somewhere in between because we all have our own versions of events.
I am grateful to be here; to be safe and to be living in a lovely new home with my husband and children. Right now, that’s a truth I need to hold onto.
‘Let’s try the chocolate one,’ I say as I return to the baker who willingly cuts me a slice.
‘You’ll love this,’ she says. ‘My clients think it’s the best and that’s the absolute truth.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ I say with a smile as I pop a piece in my mouth. ‘I’m sure it is.’
Victoria
I still pick up my phone, meaning to call or text Reese at least once a day. But I’m better than I was because it used to be many times a day.
I don’t quite know how it’s happened that we no longer speak. We never had a discussion about it. And I’m not sure who stopped talking to who first. I guess we ghosted each other, but slowly, gently, calmly.
I could have confronted her, brought it out into the open and demanded we have a real discussion but I’m not certain how she would have reacted because I’m not actually certain who Reese is, not anymore.
I’m trying to move on, especially since I’m now a single mother.
When I asked Ed for a divorce, he seemed more relieved than anything else. From what I gather, he already had feelings for a woman on his course, a twenty-five-year-old woman. She, Samantha, gets on with the boys at least.
I wanted to be angry at him, to feel rage for what he’d done, but I knew that I didn’t have the right.
Both of us checked out of that marriage and we’re better off apart.
‘Just getting a coffee,’ I say to Monica, who works in the cubicle next to mine. She’s twenty-two and, technically, my boss at the organic marketing agency where I found a job six months ago.
I’ve had to start right at the bottom but I’m getting up to speed with how different things are now in advertising and marketing and I hope to be able to move up the ladder quickly.
Life is not easy. I share an apartment with the twins and the small space means that chaos reigns supreme. I cannot tidy or clean fast enough to create order. The lack of space makes them both crazy so I try to get them out as much as possible.
But whenever I feel bad about my situation, I remind myself that it could have been so much worse.
I could have been in prison. I don’t deserve an easy life.
I have done terrible things and I will never really pay for them, so on days when I am exhausted and lonely and worried about money, I remind myself that I am paying the price for being a shitty human being. And that I deserve it.
Lawrence sent one picture of Nick and me together to Reese.
But he had many more. Pictures that are damning.
Pictures that tell the whole sordid story of our month-long affair – although that’s hardly the word for a few bouts of sex – that made both of us feel guilty and sick.
Pretending to be Camilla, Lawrence threatened me with that evidence.
I never revealed it to Reese because why would I?
My guilt is mitigated by the fact that Reese is not exactly who I think she is. But then no one is.
It began innocently enough, with a chance meeting that led to coffee.
I complained about Ed leaving his job and how hard it made everything and Nick tried to help, to make suggestions. He even offered me money. He was just being a good friend.
And then one night we were both on work outings at the same bar and naturally gravitated to each other at the end to share another drink. We started talking about Reese and perhaps he’d just had an argument with her or he was just having a bad day but he said more than he should have.
‘She’s so uptight about mess and about routine that it makes me a bit crazy,’ he confessed.
‘Oh, she’s always been like that.’ I laughed.
‘Yeah but…’ He sighed. ‘Sometimes I feel like I’m one of the kids in the house and she just needs me to do exactly what she tells me to do and if I don’t, she always looks so disappointed.’
‘Well,’ I said, attempting to defend my friend, ‘she has a lot of stuff to do with her work and her charities.’
‘Yeah,’ he agreed, finishing his drink and signalling the barman for another, ‘but sometimes I feel like our marriage is last on her list of things to do.’
I should have left then and there but I don’t always do the right thing. No one does. And I was enjoying, just a little bit, hearing that my friend’s marriage was not perfect, especially since my own was faltering so badly.
One thing led to another, as they say. It’s all sordid and gross and embarrassing. It was only a few times over the month and then we agreed that it was done and we would never mention it again.
Camilla was a bitter jealous person who resented everything that Reese had and that’s why she acted on Reese’s drunken request years ago, to sleep with her fiancé.
But I was no better when I found myself in a position to seduce her husband. It didn’t seem fair that Reese had everything when I felt my life was falling apart. It was a terrible, ugly mistake and I hope, truly, that Reese never finds out about it.
The police must have found all those photos in evidence when they searched Lawrence’s things. But neither I nor Reese have asked to see everything, even though we could have done if we wanted. We both wanted to put it behind us, I guess.
Nick didn’t want to lose Reese and I didn’t want to lose Reese. We both talked about how good she was, how nice she was, how special she was, a lot. He loved his wife and I loved my friend and I have no idea why I betrayed her like that. Again.
When Lawrence sent me the pictures, I assumed I was talking to Camilla. I knew that she hadn’t sent them to Reese because Reese was still talking to me.
And then we found out Lawrence was behind it all. When we were in that house, I knew that if he lived, he would find a way to show them to Reese.
And then Nick and I would both lose her.
I grabbed the gun from Reese and we could have left safely.
He didn’t actually lunge towards me. I didn’t fear for my life because he didn’t seem a threat in those final moments.
Rather just a sad, pathetic man who had messed up his life.
He wasn’t going to kill us. He knew he had lost because I had the gun.
Even though he really wanted to believe Reese when she said she would leave her husband for him, I’m sure he knew the truth. He had given up.
But I needed him gone.
It was self-defence. I was defending… everything.
I’ve lost Reese anyway. My marriage is over and I’ve had to start at the bottom of the career ladder again. But at least I’m not in prison.
I belong in prison. That’s the truth.
Reese knows that’s the truth as well. She knows Lawrence didn’t lunge towards us. She felt me grab the gun she put behind her back.
But what she doesn’t know is the lies I’ve told her. She’ll never know because she never needs to know. She’s moved away and she still has her lovely husband and another beautiful home and her nice job that she enjoys.
But I’m not going to let my envy of her change me again.
That’s the truth.
I think.
***
Were you shocked by the truth about what Camilla did – and the lies these friends told each other? You’ll love A Perfectly Nice Family, another twist-filled psychological thriller by Nicole Trope. When the Kemp family move into Stephanie’s home, it’s the start of a nightmare…
Get it here or read on for an extract!