The Other Woman (25 page)

I am drowning in sorrow and hurt, but even though I am alone in my room in the middle of the day with the blinds closed, and even though the man I love has married someone else, I shed not a tear. I am done crying.

****

RIVAL

Dressed in black jeans, a black baseball cap, a haversack, and sneakers, I walk with my head bowed toward the house that was stolen from me. I could call it my old house, but it isn’t old; it’s only six years old.

It is
my
house. I had it built to specification. I know every nook and cranny, every floorboard that speaks to us, every sticky window, and every door lock that requires jimmying.

Sure, there are neighbours around, but the only neighbour who has full view of our property is Mabel from across the road and her two grown-up daughters.

Mabel inherited the property from her parents and has lived in that house her entire life. It’s pretty run-down, but the land it sits on is extremely valuable. Mabel refuses to sell no matter what she is offered.

During the week, her daughters work, so they aren’t a problem. Seventy-one-year-old Mabel is. She spends hours tending her garden, then sits for hours on her patio and admires her lush green lawn and her variety of beautiful roses, which are her pride and joy.

She’s a pain to everyone in the neighborhood, as she complains about everything – neighbors playing their music too loudly, cars revving too long, rubbish bins being left too long on the street on garbage day, kids laughing too loudly…a
royal
pain.

But no one can pass her home without stopping and admiring her prolific roses.

Every Tuesday, without fail, Mabel plays lawn bowls from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. After which she enjoys honey-soy prawns and egg rice with a glass of Shiraz at the in-house bistro of the local bowls club. Lunch is followed by a glass of medium-cream sherry.

At around noon, the community bus carts her tipsy butt back to her home in Wahroonga, where she naps for forty minutes before she makes her way to her patio to once again admire her flowerbeds.

I know her routine, because a couple of times, when the bus wasn’t in service, her daughters asked if I would drive Mabel to play bowls. I was only too happy to drop her off and pick her up.

Based on her unwavering schedule, I conclude that her time away from her balcony will be my window of opportunity to break into Bradley’s.

Armed with about fifteen tiny surveillance cams I pinched from Ritchie’s garage, I make my way up to the house, walk around to the side of the house, and pry open a window with a faulty lock.

I always meant to have that locked fixed, but never did. If you press against it from the outside, it unlatches, and all you have to do is push it open and you’re inside the house. Not exactly safe, but today it proves to be a blessing in disguise. I’m able to let myself into the house I built with love. The home I planned to spend the rest of my life in.

The house has undergone a transformation – all my comfy fabric couches have been replaced with black or white Italian leather couches. Even the TV room couches are now leather. The carpets downstairs have been replaced by white porcelain tiles. None of the changes are child-friendly, and the place has a coldness to it.

The kitchen is spotless and smells of disinfectant.

Just about every wall has a gilded mirror on it. All the photos in the house have been replaced with large photos of Scarlett and Bradley looking like they stepped out of a Vogue photo shoot. Photos of my kids dot passages and unseen parts of the house. The mantelpiece, however, has an array of recent family photos with Scarlett looking striking in all of them.

I had to admit, grudgingly at that, her photos are a lot nicer than mine. Mine were spontaneous, taken with a camera phone, grainy. Her photos are artful, carefully posed subjects, sometimes stiff and awkward, no doubt taken by a Single Lens Reflex Camera, heavy, and a schlep to cart around.

My instinct is to swipe these photos off the mantelpiece, slam a blunt object against those hanging on the wall, stab out her eyes in every one of the photos with an ice pick. But I have other things to think about, so I stay focused.

Quickly, with gloved hands, I race around, remove the backs of the photo frames, make tiny holes in the photos, and install the small yet wide-angle cameras. It takes a while, but with the help of the instruction leaflets on the spy camera boxes, I manage to hook up thirteen cameras, thanks to the number of photographs Scarlett has.

I also hook a camera above the safe. Bradley always kept large sums of cash there from clients who paid cash, but I couldn’t remember the combination of the safe. Imagine if I got access to all that money? I would steal it in a heartbeat.

Ms.
Nice
Girl no more.

I install one camera above the study desk, which gives me a visual on the home computer and Scarlett’s laptop.

When I am done planting all my cameras, all thirteen of them (unlucky number, sure, but imagine if it works? It would be my
lucky
number.), I carefully, without disturbing anything, leave the house and rush home to my laptop to inspect my handiwork.

Of the thirteen cameras, nine work. Fantastic! I can actually see my kids, hear their voices, listen to them laugh. At times, I long to reach out and hug them. Other times, I just cry because I miss them so much. But being able to see my children energizes me, so I put on my sneakers and go for a three-kilometer run.

I think about Scarlett as I run. Was she ever mentally ill? Did she just make up that story to get close to me? If she did, the question is, why? Why would she want to befriend me? To get access to Bradley? That had to be the reason. She was so different from me, yet I didn’t see it. Good actress. Great.

****

RIVAL

In hindsight, it was not a good idea to watch my family interact with Scarlett.

Seeing Bradley kiss the woman who stole him from me, hold her in his arms, have sex with her every night (every single night), take leisurely showers with her, call her "darling" and "love" and "honey," ripped at my fragile soul.

Seeing the ease with which my kids co-existed with my sworn enemy hurt so much that at times, I had to stop watching. The more I hurt, the more I want to strike back, viciously at that.

When I am not working on Ritchie’s house, I stay in my room and torture myself for hours with footage of them. Since it’s all recorded surveillance, I can replay, which is not always a good thing.

My silver lining is being able to see my precious girls every day and hear their delightful laughter. The most excruciating part is hearing them call her “Mum.” Each time they utter that word, fifty thousand volts of power zap through me.

The aftershock is fury. Unbridled fury.

I take comfort in the knowledge that the second part of my plan is coming up soon. All I need is another Tuesday. That would be the day to carry out my plan.

To my frustration, it rains two Tuesdays in a row, which means Mabel isn’t able to leave the house. My plan has to be shelved. For now.

Meanwhile, my torture continues. Bradley and Scarlett are loud and feral during sex. It makes me sad and even embarrassed to think I couldn’t please Bradley that way. He seems so happy with his current life, so satisfied in every single aspect. When I re-enter his life, will I able to make him this happy? It is a troubling thought. I mean, what if I can’t? Well, no time to worry about that. I will have to take things as they come.

Finally, a clear and sunny Tuesday arrives. I’m alert and antsy.

When I hear Bradley and Scarlett make plans to attend a meeting at Holly’s school at 9:45 a.m. and learn that they will be travelling together in Bradley’s Mercedes, I shiver with excitement.

After making certain Mabel is out playing bowls, with a haversack on my back, I steal toward Mabel’s backyard, past her rows of velvet roses, remove the fly screen from an open window, and slip into her dilapidated house.

I work fast and with ease, since I know my way around the house, having been inside a couple of times to help Mabel. My rifling through Mabel’s cupboards yields an outdated Sony Instamatic camera, a tablet with a broken screen, and a small iPhone dock that doesn’t look like it’s working, all of which I place in the haversack.

After opening a few more drawers and cupboards and leaving them in disarray, I exit through the back door, which I leave ajar.

Walking briskly, I make my way over to my house across the street, past Scarlett’s BMW in the driveway, and enter once again through the faulty window.

The first thing I do is walk over to the floor safe installed in the walk-in closet, kneel before it, and, holding my breath, try the combination. It works!

Inside the safe is a fair bit of Scarlett’s jewelry, and two pieces of jewelry that belong to me; a string of pearls with a gold pendant, and a gold brooch.

Also in the safe are stacks of dollar bills Bradley stashes away when clients pay with cash, which by the way, he doesn’t declare to the taxation office. There is no time to count the money, so I just shove bills into the haversack.

Now for the jewelry. I need a little bag to store it. Above my head on a shelf is a row of handbags. All varying shades of black. Seems like Ms. Scarlett doesn’t like color in her wardrobe.

I pick out a floppy velvet evening bag with a drawstring and open it. To my surprise, the bag contains a stack of pills – Cerocal and Lithium.
What the…?

What could Scarlett be doing with this kind of scheduled medication? She’s denied suffering from mental illness, so why does she have so many packs of pills? For a few moments I stare at the blister pack of pills. Confused, I take about six packs and slip them into my haversack. I will worry about them later. The rest of the pills I transfer into another black purse.

I remove all jewelry from the safe and tip it into the black velvet pouch. Even though I am really tempted to take my pearls and the brooch, I don’t.

The pearls were given to me by Bradley after he had won his first major case. It was a huge deal for us, as he wasn’t able to buy me much jewelry before that. He had the pearls specially made for me. As for the brooch, it isn’t something I’d buy, but it was given to me by my late mother-in-law, who I loved, and who loved me in return. With a heavy heart, I kiss both the pearls and the brooch and place them in the black velvet pouch along with Scarlett’s jewelry.

As I said, Scarlett has taken
everything
of value from my life. After taking a deep breath to rid myself of sentimental feelings, I remove a hammer and screwdriver from my haversack and bust out the lock of the safe.

When I study my handiwork, I conclude it looks feeble and amateurish. As if someone was staging a robbery. Perfect.

Finally, I remove the spare key to Scarlett’s BMW from the safe, stick the key in my bra, and make my way to the spare room.

Carefully, I pull back the linen on the bed, slit a hole in the side of the mattress with a knife I brought along, and bury the velvet pouch of jewelry, along with Mabel’s stolen goods, deep inside the mattress.

When I am sure they can’t be seen, I remove a large sewing needle and black thread from my bag and spend the next few minutes stitching up the mattress.

I take great pains when replacing the linen, ensuring it is smooth and neat once again.

With my breath in spurts, I run downstairs to the study and locate Scarlett’s laptop. It is probably password protected, but guess what? I have her password. All thanks to my tiny but powerful spy cameras.

I smile as I log onto her laptop with ease and I begin typing furiously, all the while listening out for the sound of Bradley’s Mercedes.

About ten minutes later, I log off, slip her laptop into my haversack, and make my way to a back window. There I slam a brass doorstopper against the window, breaking it from inside.

Using the back door, I leave the house, walk around to the front, and using her spare key, get into the Scarlett’s BMW.

Ensuring no one is looking, I drive to Ritchie’s house where I park the BMW in his garage and immediately call him.

“Hey, Ritchie,” I say, “I just talked to Bradley and he is giving me their BMW as a sort of settlement. Has no registration just yet, so I can’t drive it for a while. Would you mind if I park it in your garage for about a week? Maybe more?”

As I expected, he says, “No problem.” If he had said no, I would be in trouble. So my sigh is one of relief.

“Don’t mention it to him,” I add. “It’s a sore point with him and Scarlett.”

“Sure, no problem.”

After ending the call, I run back into my bedroom, lock the door, and empty out my haversack to count the money.

Just over fifty-five thousand dollars! I’m so excited, I feel like I’m going to faint. I jump to my feet and start pacing. If I deposit this money into my bank account, it would leave a paper trail. So where the hell do I hide this money?

After a lot of thought, I take a suitcase of mine, wrap the money in some linen, and place it in the suitcase. I stick clothes on top and around it, just in case Ritchie opens it.

Then I lug it back to Ritchie’s and stick it in the trunk of the BMW parked inside his garage.