The Missing Husband: a tense psychological suspense full of twists

That was literally the last thing she ever wanted to do. To deprive their children of a father was unforgivable, no matter what he had said or done to her. But she had been so incandescent with rage at the horrible vitriol that was coming out of his mouth, the way he had described her, the way he had suggested that this whore would be a better mother than her and in that moment she just wanted to hurt him. That was all – to hurt him like he had hurt her with his words. It was like she’d finally exploded after years of bubbling under, and she was temporarily out of control, a maniac with one sole purpose – to punish the person who had caused all her pain. It was only for a few seconds but it was enough. Horribly, horribly enough.

She’d found out about the affair a few weeks before. To be fair to him, he’d played it out well because she hadn’t suspected a thing before that. It was probably testament to what a sham their marriage had become that she didn’t even notice her husband had been cheating on her for months.

But then one Sunday morning when he’d taken the girls swimming, she heard a phone beeping and out of curiosity she followed the sound to the coat rack. Rifling through his coat, she found his phone nestled in a pocket. He must have put it in there before he left and forgotten about it when he decided not to bother with a coat. Looking at the screen she saw a message from someone called C. It was a link to a website and, underneath, the words:

Three weeks tomorrow x.

The message itself was fairly innocuous but her interest was piqued. Before she could stop herself she’d entered the password to his phone, which she’d known for years. When it came up as incorrect, she frowned. When had he changed his password? She felt a growing sense of unease as she stared at the phone and was suddenly determined to get into it somehow. Taking it back into the kitchen she looked at the clock. She still had another forty-five minutes before Pete would be back.

Staring at the phone she ran through some ideas for passwords. How about the girls’ dates of birth? She tried a combination of them both but again she got the incorrect password message. She tried his favourite football club. Wrong. She tried again with the number one at the end. Wrong. She tried her own name. Wrong. She would run out of attempts and lock the phone if she wasn’t careful. She scanned through the list of possible options in her mind.

Then she remembered an old password he used to use, years and years ago, way before marriage and children. A combination of the name he’d given to his first ever car, Diana, and his year of birth. She’d laughed so hard when he’d told her. ‘Who calls their car Diana?’ She tentatively typed the password in and, to her relief, the home screen appeared. She was in.

She immediately opened WhatsApp, reading the message from C and clicking on the link that she had sent. It was for a hotel in Paris. Was C his PA? she wondered, was this a business trip? But she already knew deep down that it wasn’t. She scrolled right up to the beginning of the message thread, past months and months of messages until she got to the top. Then she started reading.

Twenty minutes later, she reached the end. She hadn’t even realised that she had been clutching her chest with one hand the whole time. Her heart was pounding, her hands were clammy, and she struggled to catch her breath as she tried process what she had just read. The bastard, the absolute bastard. The messages had started off brief – just random days and times but as time went on they had become longer and more explicit.

She didn’t have all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle but she had enough to see the general picture. He was having an affair with this ‘C’. And they were planning to go to Paris together in three weeks. Was it a dirty weekend away or something more? When she saw how long ago the first message was she felt sick. They’d been at it for months. She couldn’t believe this was happening, yet the evidence was right there in front of her.

What do I do now? She looked at the clock and realised that she had to decide because Pete would be back soon. Closing her eyes, she took a few deep breaths to calm herself down and made a snap decision – she wasn’t ready to deal with this right now, she needed time to get her head around it. If she confronted him now, she’d have to do it with the girls around and she knew she’d absolutely lose it. No, she needed to calm down first and to work out how she was going to approach this. She’d put the phone back, she decided, and pretend like nothing had happened for now. Standing up quickly she had to clutch the back of the chair to steady herself. But then Pete would know that she’d read the message, she thought. Shit shit shit. Could she mark it as unread? She pressed a few buttons and breathed a sigh of relief when it worked. Then she put the phone back in his pocket.

There were hours left to go before the girls went to bed. After that, she could have it out with him but until then she’d have to act normal. How the hell was she going to do that when she knew what she did? She wanted to scream and yell, to throw every insult under the sun at him the minute he walked through the door. The bastard, the utter bastard! How could he have done this to her? And to their children?