The Secret Wife: A captivating story of romance, passion and mystery

Anna agreed she would help with the choice, following Dmitri’s advice. She seemed thrilled to be part of the secret.

Two days later, she stopped by his bed to whisper that the breeder had a perfect pup and she had placed the order but that it would be another week before it would be ready to be taken from its mother. Dmitri was frustrated by the delay. He saw Tatiana every day and as well as their morning visits, she and Olga now came back in the evenings. They had a lesson with Dr Vera Gedroits at six o’clock, after which they sterilised the instruments for the following day. If there was time after that, Olga would play piano and they would sing along to some well-known songs, like the Latvian favourite ‘Kaut Kur’. Tatiana sang quietly, but Dmitri could hear she had a pure, tuneful voice.

On the day the puppy was ready to be handed over, Dmitri gave Anna Vyrubova his final instructions about purchasing a basket in which to transport it, a collar, some food, a water bowl and a litter tray, and he gave her the money to pay for it. When she returned an hour later with the precious cargo in a box, Dmitri glanced in and grinned: it was perfect. Anna went to find Tatiana, who was in the annex.

Soon she arrived in the ward, looking flustered. ‘Anna Vyrubova said you needed to see me.’ She noticed the box. ‘What is this?’

He held it out: ‘A gift, to thank you for your patience with me.’ Snuffly panting sounds were coming from within.

Tatiana took the box and opened it warily. A tiny black face leaned out to lick her hand and she squealed in delight. The dog fitted easily into her cupped palms and she examined the pointy ears, the frown line between the eyes, the wrinkled snout, then bent and kissed the top of its velvety head.

‘Malama …’ she began, looking up at him, but could say no more. She was overwhelmed, virtually speechless, but it didn’t matter because Dmitri could see it written in her eyes that she loved him. And now she must know that he loved her too. His heart swelled with such profound happiness he could scarcely breathe.

Chapter Four

October brought chill winds from the Arctic, along with showers of blustery rain. One day, when the rain had eased off, Tatiana found a wheelchair and pushed Dmitri into the beautifully manicured formal gardens of the Catherine Palace so they could start training the little Bulldog she had named Ortipo, after Dmitri’s cavalry horse. Dmitri showed Ortipo a titbit of chicken then held out his palm, loudly instructing the dog to ‘sit’, while Tatiana pushed on her backside to demonstrate. But as soon as she removed her hand Ortipo leapt at the wheelchair, trying to grab the chicken. Tatiana tried again, only for the pup to jump up and leave muddy paw prints on her white nurse’s uniform.

‘I think we have an untrainable one here,’ she laughed, brushing at the marks.

‘No dog is untrainable,’ he replied. ‘But this one seems more of a challenge than most. I suspect you are spoiling her when I am not around.’

At least Ortipo had mastered the art of waiting till she got outdoors before relieving herself, which proved a level of obedience – but not much. Despite their efforts she jumped up at every passerby, barked furiously at the gardeners, and refused to come when called unless food was offered. They laughed till their sides ached as she cavorted around the lawn trying to catch leaves blowing in the wind, or chased huge seagulls, who took off into the air when she was just a few feet away.

‘What do you think she would do if she caught one?’ Tatiana asked.

‘She’d get the fright of her life. These giant gulls can be fierce.’ He felt as though they were proud parents and was delighted the dog gave them a pretext to spend time together without anyone questioning it. They didn’t even have a chaperone.

Tatiana had pushed his wheelchair as far as the limestone grotto at the edge of the Great Pond when a few spots of rain fell so they hurried into the grotto to shelter. The exterior walls were decorated with seashells, and the watery theme continued inside with masks of Neptune on the windows, and dolphins and tritons carved on the pillars that supported the domed ceiling. Ortipo scooted around sniffing corners while Dmitri and Tatiana waited by the door for the rainclouds to pass.

‘Aunt Ella was asking about you yesterday evening,’ she said, glancing at him shyly. ‘She joked that we seem to be having a romance. She teased me about it.’

He hesitated. ‘Do you think she disapproved?’

‘No, not at all,’ Tatiana said quickly. ‘She said she knows your mother and that you come from a good family. Olga is sweet on an officer called Mitya – do you know him?’ Dmitri nodded and bit back a retort; he found Mitya rather crass. ‘She talks about him all the time. Even little Alexei teases her, but I suspect she enjoys being teased.’

‘And you do not?’

Tatiana hesitated. ‘I am a private person and prefer to keep my feelings for my journal instead of being the subject of gossip.’

‘How I would love to read that journal,’ Dmitri twinkled. ‘Could you bring it to the ward later?’

‘Never!’ she exclaimed vehemently, making him laugh. ‘Do you think this rain will pass soon or should we dash back and risk a soaking?’

‘Let’s linger a while. I might try walking a few steps, if you will lend me your arm.’

He pushed down on the arms of the wheelchair to raise himself then swung the injured leg to the ground, wincing slightly as it took his weight. Tatiana steadied him, and for a moment they were so close he could feel the warmth of her body and hear her breathing. He longed to put his arms around her. If only he dared!

She stayed close as he hobbled a few steps to the opposite window then paused to recover.

‘I don’t want you to get better so quickly,’ she cried mournfully. ‘They will send you back to the front and then you will forget you ever knew me.’

He spoke with passion: ‘Tatiana, I will never forget you. Never. If I should be mortally wounded on some foreign battlefield, I swear your name will be the last word on my lips and your face the last image in my head.’

Tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked them away, turning her head to the side. ‘But might the story have a happy ending?’ she asked quietly.

‘I will do all I can to make sure it does,’ he breathed. Her face was so close that he could have kissed her by leaning forward just a few inches, but it would be presuming too much. He was sure she could hear how hard his heart was hammering in his chest, because he was certain he could hear hers too.

By mid November, Dmitri could walk across the ward unaided and he wasn’t surprised when he received a letter informing him that he had been passed fit for duty and must report to his regiment by the 12th of December. He kept the news from Tatiana for a while, not wanting to distress her. The thought of causing her pain made his chest tighten and a lump form in his throat, but at the same time he hated to keep such an important communication from her. When there were just two weeks to go, he took her for a walk through the park, past the pyramid where tiny gravestones marked the burial places of Catherine II’s three dogs. Ortipo nosed the frozen earth as if she could detect something, most likely the scent of a fox.

‘I knew this day must be close,’ she said bravely and turned her head away, but he could hear that she was choking back tears. ‘I have some gifts for you. You will be surprised how busy I have been.’

‘Really? What kind of gifts?’ He glowed at the thought.

‘I have knitted you a muffler, gloves and several pairs of thick socks. I don’t want to think of you freezing in some bleak, windswept tent.’

He was so touched he could barely speak. Was this the moment to kiss her? He hesitated too long and she had turned to call Ortipo, who was chasing a squirrel.

‘We must take some photographs,’ she said. ‘I’ll bring my Box Brownie to the ward this evening.’

‘You have hundreds of photographs of me already–’ he smiled ‘–and I look ugly in all of them.’ She and Olga were keen photographers.

‘Will you write to me?’ she asked, her tone a little plaintive.

‘Of course! You shall have a letter every week, which is at least ten times more than my mother gets.’

‘I shall write to you every day,’ she declared, her eyes glassy.

Impulsively he took her slender hand and pressed it to his lips, lingering to savour the sensation and inhale her precious scent. She did not pull it away.

Dmitri dressed in his navy and yellow uniform and set off early on the morning of the 12th of December, along with two other officers and a dozen soldiers all heading for Poland, where the remnants of the Russian First Army were attempting to hold the German Ninth at bay. Dawn had only just broken but Tatiana appeared in the palace driveway, looking pale in the wintry sunshine, and stood by the gate to wave. As their truck passed Dmitri saw her eyes were red with crying and his heart felt as though it were breaking in two.

Chapter Five

London, April 2016

At first Kitty thought the letter was junk mail and was about to toss it in the bin. It was written on expensive-looking watermarked paper from a company called Inheritance Trackers Inc., and as she skimmed the first paragraph her eye was caught by the name Yakovlevich. She was pretty sure that had been her Grandma Marta’s maiden name, so she went back to read it properly. It said that she was the great-granddaughter and only living descendant of Dmitri Yakovlevich, who had died in America in 1986, and that his estate had not been claimed. Should she wish Inheritance Trackers to reunite her with this fortune, they would handle all the legal work and would take a fee of only fifteen per cent. There was a thirty-year deadline for claiming lost estates and if she did not act soon, the property would be forfeited to the government.

Kitty was instantly suspicious: this was an era of scams, when you were offered millions of pounds if you would only advance a couple of thousand to help get someone through customs in an African country; when boiler rooms located in the Bahamas claimed they could quadruple any investment within a year. Besides, Grandma Marta had been alive in 1986, so why had she not inherited Dmitri Yakovlevich’s money? Why had Kitty never even heard of him?

Marta had been a fun grandmother, who kept delicious sweets in her pottery rabbit candy jar, and was always happy to get down on the floor and play Hungry Hippos or Mouse Trap. Kitty couldn’t recall her mentioning her father, but then Marta had died when Kitty was eight. She would probably find pictures of him in the old suitcase of family photos she had stowed in the bedroom closet after her parents passed away. She must take a look some time.

She rang the number on the company’s letterhead and was put through to someone called Mark, who told her that the inheritance concerned was worth over fifty thousand dollars in cash. There was also a cabin on Lake Akanabee in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York state, which had been uninhabited since her great-grandfather’s death, and royalties for some books he had written. He was an author! How intriguing.

‘So what do I have to do to claim it?’ she asked carefully, picking up a pen.

‘We’ll send you some forms to fill out,’ explained Mark, ‘and you return them to us, along with a copy of your birth certificate – and a marriage certificate if you’re married – and we’ll do the rest.’

‘Do I have to pay anything upfront?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Legal fees or anything?’

‘No, we take our cut when the money and the ownership papers for the cabin come through,’ Mark told her. ‘Do you want me to send you the information?’

‘Why not?’ she agreed.

She forgot to tell Tom that evening, but when the paperwork arrived confirming the totals, she showed it to him. He didn’t seem particularly impressed.

‘Fifty K minus fifteen per cent is forty-two and a half thousand dollars and at today’s exchange rate that’s about twenty-seven thousand quid. Better than a poke in the eye. Do you want me to give you the number of a financial advisor who can give you some ideas on investing it?’

She looked at him across the table and wondered about this stranger she had married. The Tom she had known back in college would have suggested blowing the windfall on a round-the-world trip for two, or perhaps buying a yacht and learning to sail. They were only in their mid-thirties, they had paid off the mortgage thanks to the inheritance when her parents died, neither of them wanted to have children, and now all Tom could think of was saving for the future? She felt she was seeing him through different eyes than she had a decade ago; or maybe she was the same person and he was the one who had changed. It was hard to tell.

Back then he’d wanted to be a composer and had spent most days writing songs on his keyboard and sending demos to record companies. After they failed to leap at the chance of buying his creations, he chucked it all in, took an accountancy course and was now working as an auditor for the City Council. He had become serious and precise, leaving home at the same time every morning in a neat predictable suit, the kind of outfit no one would ever notice. If he committed a crime and witnesses were asked to describe him they’d struggle to come up with anything because he was so nondescript: short brown hair, hazel eyes, medium height, grey-blue suit, no unusual features.

Kitty made fun of him for his plain ties that were always in the same shade as his plain socks, for his trousers that were hung in a trouser press overnight so the crease fell in exactly the right place. It made her want to raid his drawer and leave only mismatching socks; or to get him drunk and drag him to a tattoo parlour to have a gothic emblem etched on his forearm. She found it irritating that he drank sensible decaf coffee and brushed his teeth for exactly two minutes; she was bored with the weekend sex routine of an orgasm for her, one for him, invariably achieved the same way.

He was a good provider – they were lucky not to have money worries – but at some point they had stopped having fun and she couldn’t think when that had happened. The holiday in Costa Rica the previous autumn had been glorious; Christmas with his extended family had been nice. But since then life had felt monotonous, with nothing interesting on the horizon.

It didn’t help that her own career had stalled. She’d studied journalism at college and always imagined herself flying first-class to LA to interview celebrities for Vanity Fair, or breaking the story that David Cameron had a secret lover in a Guardian exclusive, but instead she reviewed theatre for the local paper in their part of north London. She earned a pittance and had to sit through dire shows at least three evenings a week then churn out five hundred words of lively copy that didn’t betray how deeply disenchanted she was with theatre as an art form.

Her mother’s oft-repeated view that writing was a hobby, not a reliable way to earn a living, kept echoing in her head. She’d wanted Kitty to study law, but memorising all those endless judgements sounded unbearably tedious. Should she have listened? Or should she push herself harder to succeed as a writer? There seemed no urgency when Tom earned enough for them both. She kept planning to write a book but changed her mind about the subject before managing more than a few thousand words. If she couldn’t maintain an interest, how could she expect to hold her readers’ attention?

‘You’ve always had a lazy streak,’ her mum used to say. ‘You get it from your dad’s side.’ Perhaps it was true.

She wondered what kind of books Dmitri Yakovlevich had written. She vaguely remembered that Grandma Marta had Russian roots; the surname certainly sounded Russian: perhaps his work was all in his native language. She’d find out when the royalty statements came through.

There was nothing that seemed suspicious in the Inheritance Tracker forms so she signed on the dotted line and sent them back with the required certificates. She and Tom vaguely discussed what to do with the cabin in upstate New York, and he was in favour of selling it.

‘After it’s lain empty for thirty-odd years, the level of repairs needed to make it habitable would cost more than the thing is worth,’ he said with his business head.

‘It might be a good investment,’ Kitty maintained. ‘We could renovate then rent it out through a local agency.’ She had a flair for DIY. Her father had taught her carpentry skills and she had already done up three properties in London: two she sold on at a profit and one in which they still lived.

‘We’d only be able to rent it three months of the year,’ Tom said. ‘No one wants to holiday in the Adirondacks in winter, and it wouldn’t cover its annual costs on the summer rental alone.’

Kitty yawned. He didn’t seem to see the romance of owning a cabin in the American wilderness. Why had Dmitri bought it? She imagined it must be very beautiful. And then it slipped to the back of her mind over the next few weeks as she wrote her theatre reviews, had lunch or an early-evening drink with friends, took her yoga classes and ran the household she shared with her sensible, risk-averse husband.

Chapter Six

London, 18th July 2016

Kitty could not put her finger on what made her pick up Tom’s mobile phone when he went for a run one Saturday morning, leaving it on the hall table. She’d never done that in all the years they’d been together, even though she knew his password and he knew hers. It wasn’t a conscious decision to check his texts but the phone was lying there, she was standing looking at it, and somehow she found herself flicking through his messages. Almost immediately she found a photo of a naked woman with huge breasts and a message that read ‘Want more of this, baby? How about my place, 11 on Saturday morning.’ It finished with a heart emoji.

Kitty’s throat seemed to close up and she could feel the blood pumping in her temples. The sender of the text was called ‘Karren’, with two ‘r’s, and when she scrolled down she found several more texts, telling Tom he was the hottest lover she’d ever had, and making arrangements for other trysts. It appeared they’d been having an affair for at least two months; he hadn’t even bothered to delete the evidence.

She glanced at the clock: ten to eleven. He would be at Karren’s any moment now. What should she do?

Her closest friend, Amber, lived two streets away so Kitty jumped in the car, revving the engine as she raced round there. Amber was breastfeeding her youngest, only six weeks old, while her husband played with their two toddlers in the garden. Kitty didn’t bother with any preamble, simply handing her the phone with Karren’s nude photo on the screen.

‘Can you believe it? Look what Tom’s been up to behind my back! The utter bastard!’

She expected Amber to be shocked or perhaps try to think of innocent reasons why he might have such a picture on his phone. Instead she hesitated a fraction too long, not meeting Kitty’s eye, and the penny dropped.

‘You knew about this?’

Amber looked up miserably, and handed back the phone. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought I had persuaded him to knock it on the head without you finding out. I didn’t want you to be hurt.’

‘You knew!’ Kitty repeated. She couldn’t believe it. This was the woman with whom she shared her innermost secrets. They discussed everything from their most embarrassing sexual experiences to their fake-tan disasters, from their career dissatisfactions to their secret celebrity crushes. She was the one who had said the right things after Kitty’s parents’ deaths, the only person she could bear to discuss them with. Amber’s face was a study in guilt.

‘Kitty, I …’ she began, but Kitty shook her head, mouth open in astonishment and held up a hand to stop her. There was nothing to say. Amber had known and hadn’t told her. She turned and rushed from the house, knowing that Amber would never catch up with a baby in her arms.

She got back in the car and drove home, ignoring the persistent ringing of her phone on the passenger seat. Tom would be back soon, with a false smile and another woman’s scent clinging to him. The thought made her stomach heave. She didn’t want to be there, couldn’t face confronting him and all that would entail. The life she thought she was leading had fallen apart in an instant. Every plan she had made for the future, every dream assumed that Tom would love her forever and now it was clear he didn’t and wouldn’t. It felt like a double betrayal that Amber had known and not told her. She had to get out of the marital home, but where could she go that he wouldn’t find her?

And then it came to her: the documents making her the owner of the cabin on Lake Akanabee had come through just a few days earlier and the cheque had cleared in her current account. Why not fly out to see it? It felt like a suitably dramatic gesture in response to such a huge betrayal.

She grabbed a suitcase and threw in whatever came to hand: outdoor clothing, a sleeping bag, some toiletries, a few basic tools, all the paperwork relating to the cabin. Tom would never remember the name of the lake. Now she thought about it, he’d been distracted these last few months. Perhaps he was in love with Karren. Tears pricked her eyes and she shook herself, before picking up her laptop and mobile phone, leaving Tom’s phone in the middle of the kitchen table. She debated leaving a note but decided against it. Let him work it out for himself.

She drove to Heathrow, parked the car in a long-stay car park then went to the British Airways desk and booked a ticket on a six o’clock flight, which would land in New York at nine o’clock the same evening, due to the five-hour time difference.

‘You need a return ticket within ninety days if you don’t have a visa,’ the carefully made-up saleswoman explained, beige shellac nails tapping on a keyboard.

Kitty ran her finger along the desk calendar and picked a date just before the ninety days would be up. She was paying full price so she could always change the flight if she decided to come back sooner.

In the departure lounge she used her laptop to book an airport hotel room in which to rest on arrival, then organised a hire car for the next ninety days, which cost an eye-watering sum. By focusing on practicalities, she tried to stop herself thinking that Tom would already be home. He’d probably be wondering why she wasn’t there to prepare lunch – unless Amber had called to warn him that Kitty knew his secret. What would he do next? Which friends would he phone? Would he notice that her passport was missing?

On the flight she drank four miniature bottles of white wine, ate a re-heated dinner and dozed off in front of the new Ridley Scott movie. The time passed quickly, although she felt nauseous with sleep deprivation when she queued to get through customs in John F Kennedy airport. She conked out in the anonymous hotel room and slept for a few hours, waking as dawn broke outside the hermetically sealed windows.

She went to collect her car from the rental agency, typed the zip code of the cabin into the Sat Nav and let the woman’s confident voice guide her off Long Island and due north towards the Adirondacks. It was 254 miles, she was told, and would take over four hours. Kitty was a confident driver, and she hoped to get there around lunchtime to give her time to decide in daylight whether the cabin was habitable.

The traffic thinned after she left the interstate and for a while the road skimmed the shores of Great Sacandaga Lake before heading up into the mountains. It was warm and sunny and the views were glorious: hills covered in forests like plush green velvet, a flash of blue denoting a lake between the trees, a few white clouds against a bright sky. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding though. She tried to find a music station on the radio but the reception was too crackly. She hadn’t eaten breakfast and her stomach growled, but she was pretty sure she would throw up if she ate anything. You bastard, Tom, she thought from time to time, but mostly she tried to keep her mind blank and focus on the driving.