Chapter Three
On Wednesday morning I woke to the sound of James slamming around in the lounge and smiled, knowing he was looking for his keys, which I had hidden behind the stereo cabinet.
“Daisy, help me look,” he shouted and seconds later we were both marching around the flat, upending cushions, peering behind cases and stands, which is quite a boring activity when you know the object you’re looking for isn’t there, although I did find a scrunchie that had gone missing a year or so before.
Later, when he got home that night, he would find the keys in a jacket pocket, which he could have sworn he’d looked in.
Eventually, he went to the small cupboard that housed the keys for his classic cars, along with a spare for the garage.
“I haven’t got my house keys,” he shouted as he left.
“Make sure you’re in when I get back.” I would be.
“And don’t forget we have to be out by eight tonight!
” was his parting shot as he raced out of the front door.
We had one of his networking events that night.
“And you need to look like you’re married to a successful fucking businessman. At least shave your fucking legs.”
The door slammed shut, then opened again. “And make sure you’re wearing something that was bought in a shop!” The door slammed once more and he was gone.
I pulled the bed foward and added another line to my tally of days.
Like any good prisoner, I kept a countdown to the day I could be set free.
I’m twenty years into this marriage, but I didn’t start the tally until after the first decade; it took me some time to fully fathom my situation.
I have to wait for the end of my sentence because we have a prenup.
When James first mooted the idea of a prenuptial agreement, not long after we got engaged, I found it rather hurtful, as if he thought I was in it for the money.
But he said, “It’s for both of our benefits.
So that if the worst happens—and I’m sure it won’t—we both know what to expect and it can all be dealt with without acrimony.
We’ll have children by then; it would be good for them if everything went smoothly.
It’s like insurance: It’s there in case the worst happens, but it’s usually a waste of money. ”
I still wasn’t keen—it felt like admitting defeat before we’d even started—but I took his point about the insurance and I was excited about children, so I agreed to it.
When I told Mrs. Billings what we were doing, she suggested I have my own solicitor go through it, instead of relying on James’s.
“It’s not that Lord James would do you wrong,” she said, “but those solicitors can be sly foxes. They could stitch you up good and proper, and there’d be nothing either of you could do about it.”
I didn’t have money for my own solicitor.
By then I’d moved into Langley Hall and sold my mum’s house, and all the money from the sale was tied up in James’s cryptocurrency.
I didn’t want to ask James to pay—it would make it sound as if I didn’t trust him—but Mrs. B was very set against me signing it without advice.
“I told Lorna I’d keep an eye out for you,” she kept saying of my mum; Mrs. B lived across the road from us when I was growing up, and she and my mum had been friends for as long as I could remember.
In the end she persuaded a lawyer who lived in one of the new houses on the outskirts of the village to look at it for free.
He read it over and he didn’t think it was nearly as good as James’s lawyer had thought. He sent him an email.
“This document gives everything to Mr. Dixon from the beginning to the middle to the end. It leaves Miss Langley in an unfair position and treats her as no more than a lodger.”
My blood ran a little bit cold when I read that. It felt critical of James himself, and I hoped this could be sorted out between solicitors without him seeing it.
My solicitor continued and asked for various changes, including a clause that if at any time I chose to leave, I would get at least the market value of my mum’s house at that time.
James’s lawyer rejected all of them except one I had asked for, whereby I could choose the decor when the bedrooms were renovated.
In particular, they objected to the idea of giving me the market value of my house.
James’s lawyer said that would be unfair to James because if he had to provide me with that amount from the investment, it could be at a time at which the value was low and he would have to make up the difference.
Plus, why would he give the market value?
I could wait until property values were high, then jump in and make a killing; it would be like signing a blank check.
I didn’t like that either; it made me sound like a gold digger.
Then my lawyer said, “He’s meant to be a billionaire, for god’s sake! Why is he quibbling over a few thousand?”
And this went back and forth for a while, until James’s solicitor said they could write in the clause about the house, but for the amount I sold it for, not the market value, and only after twenty-five years of marriage, take it or leave it.
Of course, I could cash my investment in at any time, but I may get back less than I invested if I did that too soon.
Although that was not what I remembered James saying to me when he took my money.
Next, my lawyer gave me some advice.
“If I were you,” he said, “I’d walk away from the whole thing. Run, actually, don’t walk.”
But I was young, I was in love, and I wanted to get married. Plus, I had no money and nowhere else to live. And anyway, we were going to start a family. The terms became much more favorable then.
So, that was the length of my sentence, twenty-five years. At that point, if my investment was worth the same, or more, as my house, I would take that. If it was worth less, James would have to give me the amount I had sold the house for.
Tally done for another day, I made my way to my sewing room and set to work taking in James’s jacket.
It took me well into the afternoon and my back was stiff by the time I finished, but it would be well worth it to see James later, standing up straight, sucking his stomach in, surreptitiously testing the give around his shoulders, which I had left as they were because I wanted him to think his stomach had expanded, not the rest of him.
He would eschew food and would look sheepishly at a glass of whiskey in the moment before he slugged it down.
Then I went for the required shower and grooming processes.
It was especially important for me to look the part that night because this was a crowd James had been trying to get in with for a long time.
Many of them would be from the far end of Somerset, almost Devon, and we didn’t see them in this neck of the woods very often.
James thought they were the gateway to an untapped seam of business from the South West and the south coast, if he could only pin them down long enough to get their investment.
Once washed and groomed, my flyaway hair straightened into submission, I opened my wardrobe and chose a dress.
I went for a sleeveless gray silk creation; I knew James would approve, simply because it cost nearly two grand and I’d never worn it before.
It was rather tighter than it had been when I first bought it; I should’ve let it out when I was taking James’s suit in.
Finally, hair and makeup complete and a suitably expensive pair of earrings in place, I added the finishing touch: a delicate gray-blue scarf, made from a tablecloth I found in a cupboard here when I first moved in.
“Love your scarf!” I imagined the other women saying. “Who’s it by?”
And James would try to control his apoplexy as I smiled sweetly and said, “Daisy at Dunelm Mill.”
James was later home than he had planned to be after work, which was all the better for me. It meant he would take the first shirt he was handed and wouldn’t swap them if he didn’t like the fit.
“Your shirt’s gaping,” I said to him as we were about to leave, admiring the way the buttons were straining. James stood up straighter, breathed in, and pulled his jacket around his middle, struggling to bring both sides together. I might have gone a bit too far with that.
He stared at me and held the car keys out. “You’re driving.”
I knew it was coming, but I still felt the pang of a woman condemned to a long evening of small talk and mineral water.
“Why don’t we get a taxi?” I asked. But the one and only village taxi driver finished for the day around seven o’clock, and to wait for one from town took so long you could usually have walked more quickly.
“Sorry, darling.” James shrugged, but he wasn’t sorry at all.
We drove with a retro station on the radio. James was engrossed with his phone, so he didn’t comment on my choice of music, but as we reached the outskirts of town he put it away and looked at me.
“I’m really concerned about your weight,” he said.
“I can go and get some tests,” I said. “For my glands.” A trip to the doctor’s would at least be a trip out of the house.
“I think there’s more we can do ourselves first,” he said. “We can have a look at some lifestyle tweaks to see if there’s anything you could be doing differently.”
Come to think of it, it wouldn’t do me any harm to go for a walk now and then, I could live with that, but James continued.
“I’m going to get some cameras set up around the house, to see what you’re doing, and maybe we can get to the bottom of what’s causing you to put on so much weight.”
“You’re going to watch me in the house?”
“I’m just going to keep an eye on things. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation for your weight gain, and once we know what it is we can deal with it.”
Yes, there was a simple explanation and that was the problem. Not only would he find out about the snacks, but he would find out about Mrs. B’s stealing, and it would be the end of her employment.
“You’re putting cameras in all the rooms?” I asked.
“All the ones you use, to start with.”