Her Perfect Life: A gripping debut psychological thriller with a killer twist

‘Can’t you see that makes it worse? I can’t leave, I can’t stay. Half the time I can’t even breathe.’

He moves towards her. She turns her back and he walks away, the thud of his shoes on the stairs sounding his retreat.

Her legs feel weak. She reaches for her phone and collapses into a chair, stumbling on the words as she tells Daphne what Tom has done. Daphne responds with a gutsy honk of laughter, almost choking she’s so amused.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Tom. I never thought he had it in him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s pretty damn convenient.’

‘What is?’

‘Your earring turning up just in time to get him off the hook.’

Gracie makes an odd choking noise. ‘You think Tom sent it?’

‘He’s the one with access to your things. He’s the one who started talking about copycats, and then – surprise, surprise – he’s suddenly got this girl right where he wants her.’

‘He would never do anything so horrible. He knows how much those packages upset me.’

‘Seeing his affair splashed all over the papers would upset you more.’

‘Oh God. He screwed that girl and the ripples just go on and on. I can’t take it, Daph. I can’t do this.’ She cuts the call, and clutches the phone to her chest, ignoring the frantic buzzing as Daphne tries to call her back.

The following night it’s nearly one o’clock when Gracie hears Tom come home. He hovers at her door, then moves on down the landing unsteady on his feet. Just after dawn she hears him go out again.

At dusk when the jagged geometry of Canary Wharf begins to wink and glitter in the distance she stands at the bedroom window and sees him leaning on the iron railing by the river path, staring out across the water. He lifts his head, as he always does, to catch the crimson flare of the sunset reflected on the glasswork of the house, but now, as he approaches the gate, he moves with the limping strut of a guilty man taking his last breath of freedom. The front door slams.

‘Gracie!’

She hurries downstairs, pushing her hair behind her ears. He is at the sink filling a glass with water. He turns to her as he drinks. ‘I saw Daphne last night.’

‘You don’t have to explain yourself to me.’

‘She’s worried about you. About us.’

‘I had to talk to someone.’

‘I’m not blaming you … in fact I’m glad.’ He sets the glass down and stares into the sink. ‘I’m going to sell the house. It’ll be a fresh start. For both of us. Away from … the memories.’

She stands rigid. Selling the Wharf House will rip a hole in his heart almost as big as the one he has ripped in hers. He pulls her close and wraps his arms around her. ‘But you’ll have to deal with the sale, I can’t—’

‘Tom—’ she struggles to free herself. He holds her tighter. ‘You need time to think about this. Leaving this house wouldn’t be a cure-all, just a chance to start the real work we need to do. There’d be no going back and no guarantees.’

‘I know and I want to do this, Gracie. I want to make things right.’ She feels the pressure of his chin on her skull, the ripple of his Adam’s apple as he swallows. ‘We’ll move somewhere in easy reach of the bakery and the studios, put Elsie into a school nearby and start afresh.’

Gracie closes her eyes, grateful, relieved and at the same time terrified that this new life they’re embarking on might fail to give her the security she craves.

Pauline Bryce Diary

Jan 14th

Two more of the creeps come in the shop today. These ones don’t even bother buying anything, they just hang around waiting for Robson, smoking those shitty little cigars and jangling the change in the pockets of their macs. In the end he turns up and takes them down to the cellar and a bit later they all come up together and go out. The creeps are looking shifty but Robson’s shoving a bundle of twenties into his pocket and he’s laughing and joking and saying he’ll get them a drink down the road. I wait a bit to make sure he’s not coming back then I take his keys and go down and have a look around. It’s disgusting. His ‘special stock’. I can’t believe some of the stuff. Kids, animals, you name it. It makes me feel sick. All the way home I’m thinking about threatening him – the money for London or I tell the police. But I’ve seen his nasty side, so for now that’s Plan B. I can’t see me needing it, though. Not with the Plan A I’ve come up with. Like that feature says – use what you’ve got.

11 (#ulink_32e17365-4ffd-5c84-970d-cab04eab27e7)

Gracie jumps at the invitation to spend Christmas and New Year at Tom’s sister’s rambling house outside Bristol. It’s a chance for the two of them to lose themselves and each other in the chaotic jollity of squeezing ten around the kitchen table, hunting down missing wellingtons, dashing out to pick up more wine and sharing the guest bed with Elsie and a wheezing, overweight Labrador.

As soon as they get back to London they take a couple of days off to begin their hunt for a new house. It comes as a shock to find themselves alone, facing up to the fallout from Tom’s betrayal. But somewhere, in setting the sat nav, laughing at the overblown language in the brochures, and traipsing through other people’s dreams and dirt, a little of the strain dissolves.

Gracie sifts through the pile of ‘possibles’ in her lap and takes a sip of her coffee. ‘My favourite’s still the warehouse in King’s Cross.’

Tom grunts, chewing down the last of his baguette as he swings off a roundabout. She looks up. ‘Where are we?’

‘Making a little detour.’ He pulls up on a litter-blown forecourt. With a pang she recognises the building in front of them. It’s the chapel he told her about. Without a word he gets out and stands with his feet apart, gazing at the building. Gracie stays back, her hand on the roof of the car, taking in the boarded-up windows, the angry neon tags, the bowed roof. Her eyes dart away to rest on Tom. From the tilt of his head she knows that he’s seeing beyond the graffiti, flapping posters and bubbling paintwork to the fabric of the structure, imagining light flowing in through those boarded-up windows, the stone walls scrubbed clean and those big wooden doors flung wide.

‘You’ve got to be kidding. It’s miles from anywhere and it’s falling apart. Look at it.’

‘Where else are we going to find a space with this much character and potential?’ She notes the we. The way he’s wedding himself to her new project.

‘There’s loads of parking space at the back, which leaves all this free for an outside eating area.’

‘What about the road?’

‘We’ll cut off the noise with glass panels. Come and see inside.’ He grins and holds up the keys.

He pulls her through the high double doors into a cool darkness that smells of piss and damp. The room is a long rectangle – crumbling pink walls embossed with graceful white moulding, a scarred marble floor heaped with rags and newspapers and a dark wooden balcony running beneath the domed ceiling.

‘A false floor up there would give you plenty of room for your workshops and we’d soundproof the whole thing so there’d be no problem with filming.’

‘It’d cost a fortune.’

Tom’s not listening. He’s skimming through a set of sketches on his tablet, making excited sweeps with his arm as he talks. ‘Can’t you see it, Gracie? Kitchens back there, a big counter on this side for the bakery, seating all across here and the cook shop at the end with its own entrance.’

His enthusiasm brings the damp echoey space alive. For a moment she really does see what he sees.

‘Think about it at least,’ he says.

Conscious of the wild thudding of her heart she paces slowly, imagining what she could do with this place. ‘I’d have to have a proper look at the stats for the area, and put a business case to my backers,’ she says.

‘Of course. It’s all in that research the French guy had done.’

She gazes up at the ragged holes in the plaster. ‘To get this place the way I’d want, I’d need to be totally hands on.’

‘I’d be the one managing the build.’