Love Getting Even

1. Chapter 1

1

K atie scratched her head where the cheap brown wig was itching her scalp and scrunched down further in the seat of the borrowed car. She blinked her eyes furiously, the gloom of the wet summer’s evening making it feel later that it was. Pinching the soft skin on the inside of her arm, Katie pressed her lips together as it smarted. She had to stay awake.

Katie slurped on the dregs of her cold coffee. Good manners were not worth the effort in the confines of a car alone. She rechecked her phone. Nothing from Ryan. She dropped her phone into her lap.

Ryan, her one true love.

Or Ryan, the Big Fat Liar?

Peeling the wrapper off a mint she had found in a packet in the glove box, she popped it into her mouth and sucked noisily, the boiled sweet rattling against her teeth.

Twilight arrived early as the cloudy and rainy day hurried the onset of night. The house diagonally across the street was still in darkness.

She thought again about the message he sent her several weeks ago. A message that was clearly meant for someone else.

It had popped up on her phone lock screen.

Yes, sure, later babes. See you at the house. Can’t wait! x

Then a kissy face emoji.

She was surprised at first when she received it, out of the blue one bright Tuesday afternoon some weeks ago. She read it three times. Ryan didn’t call her babes. He called her darling on the rare occasions he used terms of endearment at all. And Ryan didn’t use emojis. And what exactly was happening later? At their house? Had she forgotten a dinner party she’d promised to cater? It wouldn’t be the first time. Katie reflected on the rather sloppy tinned tuna au gratin she had thrown together last time, much to the dismay of one of their guests, who turned out to be a vegetarian.

She had studied the message for a moment, a niggle of suspicion itching at her insides. She squashed it down. This was Ryan. Her Ryan, as in Katie and Ryan, who had been together for years, and went together like wine and cheese. People said things like, ‘Will Katie and Ryan be coming?’ Not, ‘Will Katie be coming?’ Always the duo.

Her fingers hovered over the keypad, then she tapped in the code to unlock her phone and look at the message thread. As the message app opened, the text disappeared and was replaced with something else.

This message was deleted.

The little niggle gnawed at Katie’s insides, and she felt her pulse quicken. The cheese toasty she’d eaten for lunch curdled in her stomach.

She had dropped her phone on her desk, shoving it away from her as if she wondered what it might do next. No new message came through from Ryan. Nothing to explain what he meant.

Work had saved her that afternoon. She was too busy to dwell overly much as she onboarded two new clients, both delighted that she was available to work with them, and she put her phone on do not disturb . But the meetings were exhausting, as question after question about the text pattered noisily through her mind throughout her meetings, like having the TV on in the background while carrying on a conversation. She worked hard to force life and warmth into her voice when she explained the working process and struggled more than once to make her smile meet her eyes when she laughed at her client’s jokes and thanked them for their business. When she finally closed down her computer in her home office that evening, her shoulders slumped, and she hunched forward over her desk.

Katie scowled at the memory, shook her head as if to dislodge it, and worked the plastic sweet wrapper into a tiny ball between her fingers. Another ten minutes, she told herself, and then the madness had to end.

The little semi-detached house down the street marked itself out with a hot pink front door and hanging baskets with fake pink begonias on either side that bloomed away gaudily in all seasons. Now, they swung gently as the warm summer rain patted down on them. Katie squinted through the rain-soaked windscreen, the water running down the glass distorting everything, turning her view of the little dwelling into an abstract painting of a house. The one thing she could see for sure was that the house was in darkness, save for a small porch light that had come on as the overcast afternoon slowly turned into a dim and cloudy evening.

Maybe she was mistaken about it all. It was possible, she told herself. It was likely, even, that Ryan was out there right now, on this miserable evening, diligently working away to help them to a better future together. Meanwhile, she was sitting in a car in a bad disguise and wallowing in suspicion that was slowly eating away at the foundations of their relationship like termites. She sighed heavily and the windscreen steamed up.

Maybe her instincts were right, but she had come to the wrong place.

***

‘Just ask him,’ Jess had said, for about the fourteenth time, pouring Katie another massive gin and tonic.

Katie had stewed for days on that first message. She and Ryan had been together for five years. Although they weren’t married— yet, her mother always said, with a smile—their lives were as intertwined as two people’s lives could be. Joint bank accounts, shared bills, shared rent, shared streaming accounts. They went to each other’s work Christmas parties, and their families sent each other Christmas cards. She didn’t want to rock the boat while sitting in it. Not when she might be wrong. There was a lot to lose if she went around hurling false accusations. But then one night, a couple of weeks after the deleted message, when Ryan had told her he was doing ‘evening viewings’ once again, the knot in her stomach had got the better of her, and she had finally gone to Jess’s for advice. And gin.

‘I did ask him,’ she insisted to Jess. ‘We were cooking dinner that night, and I asked, as casually as I could, what the weird deleted message was about earlier. He sort of stopped, looked at me funny, and said, did you read it? And I laughed and said, ‘yes, didn’t you want me to?’ She paused to slug some of the fresh gin and tonic Jess had passed her, wincing slightly as an ice cream headache rapidly formed above her right eye. She rubbed her temple. ‘And he went all strange and then just stood staring into the fridge and said it was a mistake. He had meant it for me, but he had thought he was replying to something I had asked him. I asked him, what exactly, but he was going red and got irritated and said what’s the big deal and then changed the subject.’

Jess had raised her eyebrows as she sipped her own drink. ‘Ohhh.’

‘Yes, oh,’ Katie said, frowning and studying the bottom of her glass.

‘But… you asked him, and he’s explained it…sort of, so don’t you need to move on? Aren’t relationships built on honesty?’ Jess had asked.

‘Yes,’ Katie had replied, swilling the gin in her glass as she sat cross-legged in an armchair. ‘They are. But not when one of you might have forgotten that part.’ She sighed heavily. ‘My liar-meter is off, Jess. I love him—so I don’t know if I really do believe him or if I just want to believe him,’ she had said, picking at bits of pizza crust lurking in streaks of grease on her plate. They’d ordered pizza, but Jess insisted on plates. No one was eating out of the box in her smart living room, no matter the crisis.

‘So, if you aren’t going to ask him straight out if he’s cheating on you,’ Jess had said, curling her narrow frame into her stylish cream sofa across from Katie, ‘what are you going to do? Seems to me you can either believe him about this message being a mix-up and get on with your relationship and put this behind you, or you can decide you don’t trust him, break up with him, and move on with your life.’

‘Oh ye of little imagination,’ Katie had muttered darkly into her gin.

Jess stared at her. ‘What?’

‘You know, the thing with you, Jess,’ Katie said, picking some cheese off a pizza crust, ‘is you’re just so nice and balanced and so mentally healthy. I am sure one of those things you just said is absolutely the right way to go. I could say to myself, Katie, you and Ryan have been together for five years. Five very happy years. You’ve never had cause to doubt him. You’re in this for the long haul. Stop letting your wild imagination see things that aren’t there and commit to this man who has been so good to you. ’

Jess was nodding. ‘Katie, based on what you’ve told me, that sounds like the most reasonable course of action. It seems all you’ve got to go on is a message that he’s given you an explanation for,’ Katie huffed and raised her eyebrows, ‘and a feeling that he’s not making time for you.’

Katie inclined her head. ‘Easy for you to say, with all your reasonableness and sensibleness and not being the one in the middle of this. Ness.’

Jess grinned at her and shook her head.

‘So, what then? Are you saying you’ll break up with him?’

‘No!’ Katie wailed. ‘Cos… what if I am wrong? And I’m just a horrible person with a nasty, suspicious mind who goes around sabotaging her own life? For reasons only a highly paid therapist could help me work out.’

Katie’s hand holding her glass shook, and she put her glass down heavily on the coffee table. She knew without looking that Jess would wince at that, her pristine home almost an extension of herself. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, her hands feeling sweaty and unsteady. She placed her palms on her knees, trying to steady herself, but there was a growing lump in her throat. She swallowed hard, but it wouldn’t budge. Her stomach was roiling, twisting itself into knots. ‘I just feel so…’ her mouth was dry now, the words thick on her tongue, ‘lost. And the person I would normally turn to when I feel like this is the one person I don’t know if I can trust….’

She lost the battle against the tears. Snivelling loudly and swiping at her face with her sleeve, she watched as Jess spun the cap off the gin and topped up both glasses.

‘What now then?’ Jess asked, her face a mask of concern as she slid a coaster under Katie’s glass. ‘Are you going to wait and see? It’s really only this message that’s got you worried, isn’t it? It’s not like he hasn’t done evening viewings before. Maybe things will settle down now.’

Katie was shaking her head as she grabbed the glass and took a swig.

‘No,’ she said, with greater determination than she felt.

She sniffed as Jess passed her a box of tissues, and she grabbed a handful.

‘I am going to find out what is going on. If it’s all in my head, I will know soon enough and I can let it go and my perfectly lovely life can carry on as it was. If there is something to it, I will find out and I can...’ She hesitated, unsure what came next. ‘I can….’

Big, fat tears sprung up again and rolled down her cheeks. ‘Jess…’ she felt short of breath. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m right!’

She balled the tissues into a soggy pad in her hand and clutched at the stem of her glass. Her whole body was vibrating with the force of her shaking.

Jess was across the room in two quick strides. She perched on the arm of the chair beside Katie. Taking the gin glass from Katie, Jess placed it carefully on the coaster before wrapping her arms around her friend. Katie reached up and grabbed Jess’s arms.

‘My dearest Katie,’ she said into the top of her head, and Katie felt Jess’s soft hands smoothing down her hair. ‘I’m here for you.’ She squeezed her. ‘Whatever happens, I’m here for you. You know that, don’t you?’

She shook Katie gently.

Katie, who felt like a soggy, heaving, crying pile of a person-shaped thing, snivelled. ‘Yes.’

Jess handed her a wad of clean tissues.

‘Remember in secondary school when you fell over getting off the school bus, and that little shit Kevin Dollard told all the boys he saw up your skirt, and you weren’t wearing any pants?’

Katie, hunched over, chin pressed into her chest, Jess’s arms holding her, snorted. ‘Humph, yes.’

‘Didn’t I shove him off the wall the next day and kick him in the shins and tell him to fuck off and stop telling lies?’

‘Yes.’ Katie lifted her eyes to her friend’s, blinking Jess’s face into focus. ‘Are you going to shove Ryan off a wall and kick him in the shins?’

Jess grinned. ‘I’ll do whatever you need me to. But I think that’s plan B. I am sure there are options before we get to that point. After all, I’m a teacher now—I can’t go shoving people off walls anymore. Not unless they’ve really upset you anyway. And we don’t know yet that Ryan has done anything that warrants being shoved off a wall.’

‘Hmm. Well,’ Katie mumbled into her clean tissues. ‘That’s what I am going to find out.’

Jess leaned back from Katie, tipped her head to one side, and said, ‘What do you mean, find out? You’re not going to spy on him, are you?’ She frowned. ‘Katie, that doesn’t sound healthy.’

Jess stood, hands on her hips.

‘Ugh, do I look healthy to you?’ Katie said, spreading her arms wide.

Jess ambled back towards her seat on the sofa.

‘What about this mess,’ Katie gestured to her mascara-streaked face and tear-soaked t-shirt, ‘screams has her shit together ? I am not going to spy on him.’ She pulled a face at Jess. ‘As you put it.’ She paused and wiped her hair away from her eyes. ‘I am going to conduct a reconnaissance mission.’

Jess frowned and pressed a hand to her forehead, looking entirely unconvinced. ‘Katie, that sounds like spying by another name. A much longer name that sounds only slightly less devious.’ Jess leaned across the coffee table, her voice low and slow. ‘Katie, I think we need to pause and reflect here. Surely—’

‘No,’ Katie said, jumping to her feet. ‘I’ve been in pause and reflect mode for weeks now. Something is off. I know it. And I have asked him about it,’ she said, pacing now, stomping up and down in her socked feet on Jess’s neat oat-coloured carpet in her neat cream living room.

‘There was that first deleted message, which he tried to laugh off and pretend it was for me, but he’d deleted it accidentally, but he looked very shifty,’ she waggled her finger, ‘when I asked him about it. Then he changed the subject. Then he has been busy with work more recently. Said he has more evening viewings. Told me that, with the way the housing market is, he has to put his best foot forward, or he won’t get his commission. I thought about calling the office and asking when his evening viewings were, but Stephanie, the receptionist, was bound to tell him I called. Then he’ll ask me why I’m checking on him, and then he’ll lie. If it’s a lie. Maybe it’s not a lie. Maybe he really does have evening viewings.’

Her shoulders sagged for a moment as doubt and confusion ran through her. She was exhausted. She had never known such intrusive thoughts. She knew that, on paper, it seemed like nothing. One misunderstood text message. Some extra evening work, which wasn’t entirely unusual for an estate agent. But she couldn’t shake the pervasive feeling of unease. One tiny seed had been gusted into the manicured garden of her relationship, and now the place was overrun with weeds. Her instincts were telling her something was wrong. She couldn’t ignore them.

She pulled herself upright, shoulders back, head high.

‘I am taking matters into my own hands—’

‘Uh oh.’

‘And I am going to follow him—’

‘So you are spying on him—’

‘To check on his whereabouts to see if I am a horrible, suspicious cow,’ her lower lip wobbled, and she took a breath, ‘or a wronged woman.’

Jess’s mouth twitched. ‘A wronged woman? Have you been reading Victorian romances again?’

Katie ignored her. ‘I’m doing this, Jess,’ she said, standing tall now beside the coffee table in socked feet. She reached for her gin. ‘I’ve bought a wig and—’

Jess snorted and covered her mouth. ‘Jesus, Katie! Do you need to go that far?’

‘I need to spy,’ she checked herself. ‘I mean, observe him, without being noticed.’ Katie grabbed a fistful of her unruly red hair. ‘This doesn’t blend in well. And some fake glasses.’

‘Christ, Katie, are you going to get a trench coat and a pipe as well?’

‘Don’t mock me!’ She glared at her friend. ‘I’m deadly serious.’

Jess’s face was pained. ‘That’s what’s worrying me,’ she muttered.

‘But I do have an old overcoat that I never wear that Ryan wouldn’t recognise…’

Jess sighed and smoothed a hand over her neatly coiffed bob. ‘Katie, this is hardly what someone in their right mind would do.’

‘I know.’ Katie nodded. ‘Which is perhaps why it seems like a perfectly logical course of action to me at this time. So there’s just one final thing…’

Jess looked at her sideways.

Katie aimed for a voice that was at once calm and yet pleading. ‘Can I borrow your car, please? He’ll recognise mine.’

Over the rest of that evening, Jess had eventually persuaded Katie into a sort of holding pattern. They agreed to no stalking, spying, or reconnaissance unless and until there was something else to cause suspicion, such as another strange message or no end to the evening work and still nothing to show for it. After all, Jess reasoned, the man might well be out there slaving away all these hours, and he didn’t deserve her character assassination. Katie had insisted on keeping the wig and glasses, but after two more gins, one good cry, and half a dozen chocolate biscuits, even Katie agreed she had a very active imagination and had probably made a mountain out of a molehill.

And so things had settled down for a week or so. Katie had shaken off her lingering doubts, buried the wig and glasses at the back of her wardrobe and life went on much as it had for several years now. Ryan was up first, out to the gym five mornings out of seven, while Katie lingered in the warm bed. She would drift back to sleep after he left, only to wake to the noise of the blender as Ryan made his daily protein shake. She never needed to set the alarm, as Ryan’s protein needs woke her up every day.

Ryan’s nickname for her was Special K. She liked it only because it was their thing and only Ryan called her by it, not because it was a great nickname. He would come into the bedroom, abandon his near-empty glass on the bedside table, give her a sweaty kiss and say, ‘rise and shine Special K!’ Then he’d jump into the shower, the congealed remains of the protein shake sitting next to her, lumpy brown liquid slowly sliding down the glass. But recently, the sweaty kisses and Special Ks had become a little more intermittent.

Katie would prise herself out of bed and pick out an outfit for the day. She worked from home but still enjoyed getting a little dressed up for video calls. Besides, what if she needed to pop out at lunchtime? Better to run down to the supermarket in her turquoise wrap dress and sequin trainers than in sagging grey jogging bottoms. She would be downstairs sipping coffee by the time Ryan reappeared, and she would smell him coming before she saw him.

Ryan liberally doused himself in the same aftershave he had been wearing for years, before they had even met. Katie still remembered how good he smelled the night they met at a house party Ryan and his housemates had thrown.

They were both only a few years out of university. The vibe of the house party was very student-ish—an old three-piece suite covered in cheap tie-dye throws, bare light bulbs in the ceiling lights, dusty salt lamps tucked in the corners, and dog-eared movie posters pinned to the walls for decoration. The house, occupied by five guys in their mid-20s, had an underlying smell of sweat and weed.

The other lads in the house were mooching about in dangerously low-slung jeans and t-shirts that were ripped and faded and cost fifty quid to buy. Ryan was different. He was wearing chinos and a carefully ironed shirt. He seemed to be trying to host the party—welcoming people as they arrived, showing them where to go—rather than just leaving the front door open and retreating to the kitchen to sit round the kitchen table and smoke like the other housemates.

Katie, who was there with a friend who knew one of the other housemates, paused as they entered to ask Ryan where the fridge was, lifting a hand holding a cheap bottle of wine. And that was it.

They had sat and talked all night, while the party came and went around them, until the morning sun leaked through the smeary windows. Over the years, they would tell people warm wine was how they met.

Ryan was entertaining, ambitious, had a good job, and was nearly ready to get his own place. And whenever Ryan moved, or leaned in to speak into her ear above the music, she breathed in a lungful of that aftershave.

All these years later, Katie was sure he was so used to the scent he could no longer smell his own aftershave, so he gradually applied more and more as time went on. Their house smelled of him all day, hours after he had left. She liked it; it felt like he was always there.

But that morning, as Ryan grabbed his briefcase and car keys and then swung back to her for a kiss goodbye, he had pressed his lips to hers and murmured, ‘Bye Mel, see you later.’