The Man She Married: A gripping psychological thriller with a heart-pounding twist(13)

Dominic takes little interest in my plans. He is not, he confesses, a very Christmassy person, and besides, he is flat out at Ellwood Archer financing a huge development in Qatar. I’m not unduly put out. Everyone knows it’s women who take the brunt of the festive donkey work, and besides, I rather like the idea of surprising him with a cosy yet opulent celebration, one which will make him a Christmas convert. And next year, perhaps there’ll be a third stocking for us to hang up. Perhaps I’ll be pregnant.

I invite David and Melanie to stay the night after the Christmas drinks do and then spend Christmas Day with us, envisaging a cheery but very grown-up affair, with midnight mass, champagne cocktails for breakfast and a relaxed evening meal, followed by exchanging gifts in front of the fire.

In the end, things don’t work out quite as I’d hoped. The curtain company make a mistake with their order, so the new curtains aren’t up in time for the drinks party. Though nobody seems to notice the bare windows: they’re too busy enraging Dominic by spilling mulled wine and grinding mince pies into the brand-new carpet. David has terrible flu and spends most of Christmas morning in bed, and Melanie wants to visit her own family, so we end up having to move our relaxed and grown-up evening meal forward to the middle of the day.

So, when evening falls on Christmas Day, it’s just Dominic and I who collapse in front of the fire with glasses of Baileys, having first dug out our presents to one another from under the tree. Dominic hands me a small square package tied with a silver ribbon.

‘For me?’ My eyes widen.

‘Of course.’ He kisses the side of my neck. ‘Silly coot, you didn’t think I’d forget, did you?’

I pull off the ribbon and the paper, revealing a red Cartier box. Inside is one of their signature white-gold love bracelets, studded with diamonds. My eyes widen even further, and I look up at Dominic with my mouth half open.

‘You like it?’

‘Of course! I’m just… This is amazing, thank you.’ I throw my arms round his neck and hug him, hard. ‘I’m afraid it craps all over my present.’ I walk over to the tree and pull out a plain envelope. ‘Here.’

Dominic opens it, staring down at the contents. His expression is hard to read.

‘This is…?’

‘First-class train tickets, for the day after tomorrow. And a reservation for a night at a smart hotel in Newcastle. I thought we could go up and see your mum, given that she missed the wedding and wasn’t here with us for Christmas. I figured it would be a nice surprise for her.’

I decide against mentioning that, after nine months of marriage, I still haven’t had the chance to meet my in-laws. Something which bothers me a lot, but apparently doesn’t trouble my husband at all. I wanted to invite her for Christmas, of course, but apparently she was spending Christmas Day with Simon and their cousin’s family.

‘Babe…’ Dominic runs his hand through his hair. ‘This is so sweet of you, but I can’t, not on the twenty-seventh. I’ve got to go into the office.’

‘But it’s Christmas week, surely—’

‘We’ve got a big consultation on the Bellweather project: the client’s flying in from the Gulf, and he doesn’t celebrate Christmas, so…’ He shrugs, then looks back at the vouchers in the envelope. ‘But you’ve booked open-ended tickets, right? So we can just change the hotel reservation and go another time. In a few weeks, when the weather’s a bit better. We could even make it a special trip for our first anniversary.’

‘Or I could go up there on my own,’ I suggest. ‘Have a bit of one-on-one girl time with your mum?’

But Dominic is shaking his head. ‘She’s not really the girltime type. It would panic her if you turned up there alone, and with her cardiac issues…’ He trails off, letting my imagination supply the rest of the scenario that might be caused by an unexpected visit. ‘Better we go together in spring.’

‘No problem,’ I smile at him, but inwardly I’m feeling thwarted. ‘I’ll email the hotel tomorrow and cancel the reservation.’



As soon as Dominic leaves for the office on the morning after Boxing Day, I fill a tote with a book, a bottle of water, some crisps and an apple and take a cab to King’s Cross.

I cancelled the hotel booking, as Dom suggested, but decided to use one of the train tickets and visit my mother-in-law anyway. Some indefinable instinct makes me keep my plans to myself, for now at least. It’s probably that, having decided to make the trip, I don’t want to give Dom the chance to talk me out of it. But I will tell him eventually, of course. I’ll send him a happy, smiling selfie with his mother, captioned ‘Surprise! #girltime’, or similar. And he will indeed be surprised, but also delighted that the two most important women in his life have finally got together. How could he not be? After his mother’s heart problems, it’s a good thing that one of us can go and check on her. We can still head up there together in March for an overnight trip, if we want to. We could even purchase an extra ticket next time and bring his mother back with us to spend some time in London. Dom needs to understand that as I have no mother of my own, this relationship is hugely significant to me.

Yesterday while he was at the gym, I made a cursory search through his desk to see if I could find his mother’s address written down anywhere, but he doesn’t seem to own a diary or an address book. In fact, he has no personal paperwork at all in Waverley Avenue. ‘Easier to keep it all in the office,’ he told me when he moved in with just a couple of suitcases of clothes. But I know from the table plans for the wedding that his mother is called Patricia Gill, and a quick search of the 192.com online address search engine throws up an entry for a Mrs Patricia Gill in Ponteland. She’s the only one in the Newcastle area, so I reason that must be her.