Chapter 36
The car ride to London mostly passes in total silence.
For the first few minutes, Teddy and Ivy try to ask questions – what’s going on? What did Pauline mean? What happened with the passport? – but Audrey and Pauline both refuse to speak. They exchange looks but neither of them says another word until they pull up outside Teddy’s apartment building.
Audrey stops in the foyer to greet the security concierge by his first name. Pauline watches carefully as this old woman she doesn’t really know asks after the man’s wife and newborn. She reaches for a hug as they pass. It is very Audrey, thinks Pauline.
Or it would be very Audrey, if Audrey were really Audrey.
Upstairs, they file into Teddy’s oversized living room and take a seat, the energy around them edgy and confused.
The room feels too big, everyone sitting too far away from each other.
Pauline wants to reach out and hold all their hands, but there’s too much distance, too much she doesn’t understand.
Instead, her gaze moves from Ivy to Teddy, landing on the woman she knew before today as Audrey Swift.
But she’s not Audrey Swift, is she? There is no Audrey Swift. None who is a part of The Lottery Winner Widows Club, at least.
This eighty-something woman sitting across from her, her back straight and tall, her white hair pinned back – her real name is Audrey Meredith Woodbead.
She watches Audrey carefully now, as the older woman takes a deep breath.
‘So,’ she begins, then pauses. ‘Actually, I’m going to get a cup of coffee. Does anyone else want a drink?’
‘Let me,’ Teddy says, standing up and crossing the room.
There is more silence as Teddy jabs at her fancy coffee machine, slotting pods and positioning mugs.
Audrey stares at the ceiling, fiddling with her fingers, as the machine hisses into life.
She’s nervous, Pauline suddenly realises.
She’s never seen Audrey nervous before. But then, she doesn’t know this woman at all, does she?
How many times has she openly lied? How many times has Teddy pointed out she’s a sociopath?
‘Here,’ Teddy returns with a tray, handing out steaming mugs that, one by one, they each immediately put to one side with disinterest.
‘Audrey?’ Pauline nudges after another moment.
‘I just need to pop to the loo—’ Audrey starts to stand up.
‘Audrey!’ The sharpness in Pauline’s tone stops her.
‘OK, my darling, OK!’ Audrey says, sitting back down.
‘Though you forget I’m over eighty; my bladder isn’t what it was.
’ She takes a deep breath. ‘My surname – as you now know – is not Swift. Or, at least, it was Swift a long time ago, before I got married. My real surname is Woodbead and has been for fifty-seven years. My real name is Audrey Woodbead.’
‘What?’ Ivy shakes her head, her face slack and baffled. ‘I don’t understand, why would you give us a fake name?’
Audrey doesn’t reply. She’s still looking directly at Pauline. ‘And my husband was Harold Woodbead, as you now know.’ She dips her head but maintains the eye contact. ‘But you probably mostly knew him as Harry.’
Pauline stares back. After a moment, she whispers, ‘Handsy Harry.’
Teddy looks between Pauline and Audrey. ‘She knew your husband?’
‘I did,’ Pauline confirms, swallowing. ‘I looked after him at the care home, where I work.’ She pauses.
‘ Did work.’ She sighs a big, shaky breath.
‘Harry was a resident there for many years. He died at Christmas.’ She swallows again.
‘I knew he had a wife – we all knew he had a wife – but we only ever heard about Mrs Woodbead from Harry. She never visited. Neither did his two daughters. He didn’t talk about them often, not about any of them.
He said there had been a falling-out – a family rift.
’ Pauline shakes her head, remembering something.
‘You said this,’ she wheels on Audrey. ‘You told the truth! That day my children, Tilly and Seb, turned up here and wanted to know who you all were’ – she shakes her head again, unable to look at Audrey anymore – ‘you told them I’d worked with your husband at the care home and that’s how you knew me.
I thought at the time it made you a good liar. ’
Audrey says nothing.
After a moment, Pauline continues, ‘And when Harry died, I was the one who found him and called an ambulance.’ She swallows again. ‘And the police, since it was unexplained.’
‘I did go to the care home once,’ Audrey suddenly speaks. She directs her words at Teddy but she’s still talking just to Pauline. ‘The day I dropped him off. But I suppose you weren’t on shift.’
Ivy shakes her head in pure confusion. ‘I don’t . . . So why . . .’ Ivy can’t find the right words.
‘When he died,’ Audrey continues, and now she is looking at Pauline.
‘I knew I needed to find you. I only had your name from the report, but Paula Sheldon came up with about fifty million results on Google.’ She sighs.
‘I do miss the days of Yellow Pages, you know, much more convenient.’ She pauses, then smiles tightly.
‘I had no idea what to do, but then a picture of you appeared in the newspaper. You’d won the lottery and become a widow all in the same week!
And it was pretty obvious to me that you’d killed your husband.
’ She pauses and the strange smile gets wider. ‘Or so it seemed at the time.’
‘Wait.’ Ivy holds up her hands, her face screwed up. ‘Why would you need to find Pauline? What am I missing?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ Pauline says coldly. ‘Why this elaborate . . . scam to befriend me? Why all the lies? Why pretend to like me and—’
‘I wasn’t pretending!’ Audrey interrupts, looking wounded. ‘I adore you, Pauline. I love all of you. You are my friends, my dear, dear friends.’
Teddy leans closer, her expression unreadable. ‘But you only started this group – you only brought us together as The Lottery Winner Widows Club – as some kind of . . . cover to find Pauline?’
Audrey looks down at her feet. ‘That’s how it started.’
‘Did you even win the lottery?’ Ivy’s voice is barely a whisper.
‘Of course!’ Audrey is indignant. ‘But it wasn’t quite what I said. It wasn’t half a million, it was thirty-two pounds.’
‘So the Scottish castle . . .?’ Teddy’s face is darkening.
Audrey brightens. ‘That’s real! My family really does have money. I’ve been paying my own way with you all, haven’t I? I told you I didn’t win as much as the rest of you. I just . . . well, I just . . . exaggerated. I’m still a lottery winner, like you three. Technically.’
Teddy scoffs at this, furious indignation clear on her face. Ivy looks disappointed and confused.
Pauline puts her head in her hands. ‘But why ? Why did you need to find me so badly? What’s this all about?’
Audrey sighs. ‘Because, my darling’ – her breathing is ragged – ‘I didn’t really kill Harold.
I meant what I said before. I hadn’t seen him in years, not since I dropped him off.
The moment I found out what he’d done to our daughters – the abuse – I dumped him in a care home as far away from Scotland and our family as possible.
’ She nods at Pauline. ‘That meant Surrey, I’m afraid, where you had to look after that disgusting, creepy little man.
’ She shudders. ‘No wonder you called him Handsy Harry, quite apt.’ She looks down.
‘But stowing him five hundred miles away wasn’t enough for my youngest daughter, Nina.
She couldn’t let it go. We tried therapy and medication, but she couldn’t .
. . I couldn’t help her. None of us could help.
’ She nods, and it’s clear she’s trying not to get emotional.
‘I didn’t know what she was planning until after she’d done it.
She knew what medication her father was on.
She knew what too much would do to him. I don’t know how she got hold of it, but she did.
Then she went down to see him at the care home and force-fed him that overdose of Digitalis.
She’s the one who watched him die. My daughter killed him. She did it.’
There is silence in the room.
‘Your daughter?’ Teddy’s eyes are wide. ‘She . . . so you didn’t . . .’
‘But,’ Pauline is still confused, ‘how am I—’
Audrey sighs, looking at her intensely. ‘My darling, you saw her . You were the only one who knew she was there in his room that day. And you saw her leaving after she’d done it.
I needed to find you and work out what you knew.
Make sure you weren’t going to tell anyone it was my child, my Nina.
I had to be sure that no one was asking you questions. That you hadn’t told Columbo anything.’
Pauline screws up her face. ‘But I didn’t!
I don’t remember seeing anyone . . .’ She shakes her head, trying to remember that day from so many months ago when Handsy Harry Woodbead died.
They’d just lost fellow residents Vinnie and Floyd the same week and she’d been so sad about their deaths.
It was a busy day. It was always busy at the care home.
There were so many people who needed things, so many hands to hold, so many medications to check.
That day – it was a weekend when Harry died – a Sunday.
She’d been working all weekend and she was tired.
Her feet hurt. She remembered the plimsolls pinching her little toe where her socks had a small hole.
She remembered sighing when her boss, Gary, asked her to go and check on Harry.
Nobody on the staff much liked Harry. He was leery and creepy. He always smelled bad, even immediately after a bath. But, as the biggest pushover on staff, Pauline nearly always ended up being the one running around after him. She always ended up being the one groped by him.