The Other Woman

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• Jill McGown
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  

Jill McGown, who died in 2007, lived in Northamptonshire and was best known for her mystery series featuring Chief Inspector Lloyd and Sergeant Judy Hill. The first novel,
A Perfect Match
, was published in 1983 and
A Shred of Evidence
was made into a television drama starring Philip Glenister and Michelle Collins.

Melissa Whitworth shook hands and said thank you to the woman who had just told her that she was having an affair with her husband.

The powerful floodlights lent the late October sky an intense ice-blue glow; the trees that ringed the sports ground were thrown into relief, black against the almost ethereal light, still and silent.

The scattering of vehicles belonging to Stansfield Town's hardy, ever-optimistic, but limited support, were parked behind the still unfinished leisure complex in a small tarmacked area hidden from the main road by high, mist-enshrouded hedges. In the privacy of her car, Melissa blinked away tears. She was two weeks short of her thirty-third birthday; she checked herself in the mirror to see how she compared.

Her thin, oblong face was devoid of make-up save for what remained of the lipstick she had hurriedly applied before making her rendezvous; the cheeks were slightly pink, but only from the same anger that had prompted the tears. Her short brown hair was brushed back from her brow in a style that could withstand wind and weather and the office central heating. The woman she had just left was a make-up manufacturer's dream come true, a hairdresser's nest-egg incarnate, and ten years her junior.

Of course, she hadn't known that she was talking to her lover's wife; she had just been giving an interview to a local journalist. Melissa had always used a professional name, and the girl had no reason to suppose that she knew Simon from a hole in the ground. Melissa took the tape from her bag, and wrote the interviewee's name on the label, as she had done with all the others.

Sharon Smith. It had intrigued Melissa when Sharon had replied to the ad that she had placed in the personal column, asking:

Are you the Other Woman? This newspaper is doing a series of articles on marriage and morals, and would like to hear from women whose men belong to someone else. Your contribution would be held in the strictest confidence, and nothing will appear in print which could in any way identify you or your partner
.

It had been Melissa's idea. Why should the woman's page – recently retitled ‘Life' – always be about fashion and cookery, she had asked. Women had other things on their minds at times. At first, the editor had hummed and hawed, uncertain about it on several fronts. It might be seen to be encouraging immorality; it
would
encourage all sorts of nuts to contact them (it had); it was a little risqué for a local paper – more your Sunday stuff, or a TV special – Melissa had worked for too long on women's magazines, if you asked him; anonymity would have to be paramount – the paper might cover a large area, but in his opinion no area was too large for brawling women; it would have to be made absolutely clear that the paper was in no way condoning or condemning, merely examining the social manners and mores of the nineties … and so on, until he had talked himself into it.

The ad had appeared six weeks ago; to start with
only
the nuts had replied, but eventually a trickle of genuine replies had redeemed Melissa's reputation in her editor's eyes. By the time Sharon had responded, Melissa had been working on the wording for the next one:
Are you the Wronged Wife?
But her interview with Sharon had driven all thoughts of the series from her mind.

Sharon Smith. Melissa should, perhaps, have declared her interest, so to speak; Sharon might not know who she was, but she knew of Sharon. Simon had mentioned her, naturally, for she was his secretary, in the time-honoured fashion. But the universal enjoyment of a bit of gossip on which she was counting for the success of her series had made Melissa decide to see her. She was not, after all, a judge; she was more in the position of a priest. She would hear Sharon's confession, and if it was raunchy enough, bizarre enough, or touching enough, it would appear in the paper in heavy disguise; if not, it wouldn't. She would never have told Simon or anyone else.

But, as things turned out, Simon didn't need to be told. Melissa pushed the tape into the cassette recorder again out of a masochistic desire to hear her say it again, and listened to the woman whose unsuspected influence over Simon explained so many of the things which had worried and bewildered her over the past few months.

To start with it had just been another interview, different only in that Sharon did not present herself, as the others had, as the helpless victim of a doomed love; in answer to Melissa's standard query as to why a married man, she had spoken with a refreshing candour about the situation.

‘I give him what he needs, he gives me what I want.'

‘And what is it that he needs?'

The excitement. He says his life's always been too safe. Too tame. It adds spice if you risk being caught.'

‘Don't you worry about being caught?'

‘Me? Why should I? I'm not answerable to anyone.'

‘But his risk is real?'

Her own voice, still just interested because it was her job to be interested.

‘Oh, yes. He doesn't want to lose what he's got. It's a bit like kids playing chicken. You have to be running a real risk. And you have to wait longer and longer each time before you run across the road. It's like a drug, really.'

‘So … what's in it for you? What is it that you want?'

‘Him.'

Sharon had smiled then. Melissa could see that smile again.

‘
But he wants to hang on to his marriage
?'

Melissa heard her own voice, so confident and glib, asking the right question at the right time, looking for the offbeat, the interesting answer, the piquant situation that would make a good column.

‘
Oh, that's all right. I prefer married men. Single men think they own you
.'

The silence was Melissa's now, hissing from the tape, as she had formulated her next question.

‘Love doesn't come into it, then?'

He says he loves me.'

‘And how do you feel about him?'

Not a breath of wind stirred the still leaf-laden branches of the trees as the fog began to collect and gather and weave its way through the harvested fields with their regimented bales of corn, round the hedgerows, heavy with berries, rising up from the earth and the grass and the wide flat streets on the outskirts of Stansfield, insinuating itself through the semi-constructed buildings of the sports and leisure centre, to where Melissa sat reliving the moment, as though this time it might not happen.

‘I want him. And he needs me. He does have a problem with that. He wishes he didn't need me. I think sometimes he hates me.'

‘Do you mean that? Sometimes he hates
you?'

‘Hates the need, anyway.'

Melissa could see again the thoughtful look, then the brisk nod.

‘
Hates me. Yes, sometimes. And himself. I don't know which of us he hates more when he feels like that. He feels guilty, I suppose.'

‘And that doesn't bother you?'

She could see again Sharon's shrug.

‘
It gives him a high. And you come dawn off a high, don't you? That's when he feels guilty. But it doesn't last
.'

The conversation had been taking place in Melissa's car; it was as though Sharon hadn't left, as though she were still sitting there beside her. Melissa had asked her next standard question then.

‘
Why did you reply to the advertisement?
'

‘
I just wanted to talk about it to someone. That's the drawback with married men. I don't like the secrecy. Not being able to mention him to your friends, or have him at the house
.'

‘
I wondered about that. When you agreed to this interview, you suggested that we meet here – does that mean you can't have privacy at home?
'

Melissa listened to the silence which had followed her question as the fog curled up at the car windows, like some silent creature trying to come in.

‘I live with my mother, and my sister.'

‘So where do you go for privacy?'

The office, usually.'

Melissa switched off the tape, the pain even sharper now than when Sharon had originally said it.

The
office. Not his office, or my office.
The
office. The shared office. It explained everything that she had found so baffling and so hurtful about Simon's attitude to her lately, all the things that had started going so disastrously wrong between them. And she felt foolish that it had never occurred to her, not once, not even after Sharon had answered the ad.

Sharon had said that she didn't know who Simon hated more, her or himself. But Melissa knew where she stood. Especially now that she knew, having had time to get her breath back, exactly what Miss Smith had really done.

‘Yes, well,' said Mac, acutely aware that his landlady was listening to every word. ‘ It can't be helped.'

Donna apologised again, and he ran an embarrassed hand through thick but greying hair. ‘Yes, right,' he said. ‘ Well, fine. I mean – don't worry about it. See you.'

He hung up, his hand resting on the receiver. If she hadn't wanted to come, why hadn't she just said? Damn it, he'd only asked her out for the evening. Easy enough to say no thanks. Well, that was that. He had to go; it was work. He left just as his landlady came to enquire if everything was all right, and closed the door behind him, affecting not to have heard the question.

The dampness invaded his bones as he walked along the quiet side-street to the main road, but he checked his automatically raised arm as the taxi went past; he wanted to walk, despite the weather. The first woman he'd asked out for years, and she'd stood him up. Well – as good as. He'd forgotten how to ask a woman out, that was the problem. He should have taken her for a drink at lunch-time or something first. But damn it, it was only an invitation to the opening of the new leisure and sports centre – hardly a big seduction number. Anyway, lunch-hours weren't long enough to go anywhere decent, not when you didn't have a car.