The Girl Behind the Lens: A dark psychological thriller with a brilliant twist

‘Too late for that now, isn’t it?’

‘He’s being released tomorrow. The funeral’s on Tuesday if you want to tell her … I don’t expect you to come.’

‘No, I’m sure you’d rather I didn’t.’

The woman said nothing to deny it, and the next sound Joanna heard was the woman’s shoes on the tarmac before her mother closed the front door. Joanna waited for her to call her, to say something, to explain, but there was silence from downstairs and when she looked down through the banisters, the hall was empty.

Slowly, she descended the stairs. Her mother was sitting in her armchair in the living room with her head in her hands.

‘Are you all right, Mum?’ Joanna said.

Her mother shook her head and looked at her hands clasped in front of her.

‘How did you know this Vince then?’

She waited for an answer. Her mother cupped her hands to her mouth and exhaled a breath that she must have been holding. It hissed through her fingers and a sound like a sob broke from her throat.

‘He was your father,’ she said.

THREE

Oliver picked up one of his wife’s blouses and folded it carefully before tossing it in a bin liner. He had taken all of Mercedes’s clothes from the wardrobe and they were strewn in a pile across the bed and in the black bags that lay scattered at his feet. He picked up a sweater and held it to his face. It smelled of Mercedes’s perfume – a rich, woody fragrance that had seemed always to linger in the room long after she’d left it. It was that scent as much as the sight of Mercedes’s clothes that evoked, unbidden, the memories that tormented him. He threw the sweater in an almost full bin liner, and knotted it tightly, trapping the scent of his wife inside.

That morning, when he had opened the wardrobe to take out a clean shirt, he was accosted, as he had been every morning for the past three weeks, by the sight of Mercedes’s clothes. He had decided at that moment that the only way for him to move on was to rid the house of any sign of her. Immediately after breakfast, he’d begun the clear-out. Apart from her clothes, which he would donate to a charity shop, Mercedes had owned few possessions. There was a music box that had belonged to her grandmother and a collection of porcelain dolls that she’d had since she was a child. Both had been of sentimental value to her and, because of this, he didn’t have the heart to pack them away with the rest, so he left them on a shelf in the living room where they had always been.

When the phone rang, Oliver clambered across the bin liners to reach it, but then seeing the international number on the display screen, he let it ring out until the answering machine clicked in. His heart beat wildly as he heard the voice at the other end, that husky Spanish accent that had fascinated him so much in the beginning and, if he were completely honest with himself, still did.

‘Mercedes, soy yo. Te sigo llamando y llamando …’

He got the gist of Carmen’s words. She wanted Mercedes to call, they could sort things out, she said. There was a pause as she considered what to say next, and clearly deciding that there was nothing else she could say that would make any difference to her sister, Carmen hung up, leaving Oliver staring at the phone. He’d lost count of the number of messages she had left. Sometimes she phoned and hung up before the machine had kicked in. He wondered how much longer he could avoid her. He expected her to call his office any day. She had already tried his mobile, but he hadn’t answered. He suspected that she wanted to speak to Mercedes before she spoke to him. It must have been killing her not knowing the result of the bomb she had dropped on her sister.

Well, he would not alleviate her anxiety. He suspected that eventually she would turn up looking for answers. Carmen was not the type to shy away from any situation. She would pay no heed to the fact that she had been the instigator – that she had been responsible for everything. He didn’t trust himself to meet her. What she had done was stupid, unforgivable, and he didn’t know what he might do if they met. If it hadn’t been for Carmen, that horrible night would never have happened. He and Mercedes may have grown slowly apart as so many couples did, but it would not have ended like it had. He would never forgive Carmen for that.

He pressed the button on the machine and erased Carmen’s message. Then he looked at the bags at his feet and decided that it would be better to leave some of her things hanging in the wardrobe. Should Carmen arrive unannounced, he would have some explaining to do if everything that belonged to her sister had vanished. It was unlikely that Mercedes would have taken everything with her so fast had she simply moved out.

Oliver untied one of the bin liners and pulled out a silk skirt. As he did so he imagined the cool swish of it against Mercedes’s tanned and shapely legs. She had worn that skirt to a wedding they’d attended in Barcelona just months after they’d met. He remembered slipping his hands beneath it later that night on a beach lit only by the lights of the fishermen lined up along the shore. Her legs were bare and he had run his hands along her silky thighs and pulled her to him as the fishermen, oblivious to the lovers, stared out at the black sea and waited for the fish to bite.

Oliver’s hands were shaking as he hung the skirt in the wardrobe. He hadn’t allowed himself to think of his wife like that for a long time. He had resented their lack of physical contact – a sex life that seemed to have petered out before it had run its natural course. Things had been strained between them long before Carmen had said anything. He tried to justify his actions by blaming Mercedes. If she hadn’t become so cold, so indifferent, would any of it have happened?

He spent the next hour sorting through his wife’s things – re-hanging some of them in their shared wardrobe and packing the others away. By lunchtime, he had finished. He took the bags and loaded them into the boot of the car. He wondered if any of the neighbours were watching – prying eyes peering from behind lace curtains. He was thankful that neither he nor Mercedes had struck up any friendships with their neighbours. They were private, passed themselves off with a ‘hello’ or a ‘nice day’, but that was as far as their contact had gone. Generally, he liked to avoid people who asked too many questions about his private life, and Mercedes had shared that feeling.

It was freezing despite the thaw. Oliver felt rather low as he drove into the city to unburden himself of Mercedes’s clothes, but he knew that it was the only way forward. Mercedes was gone, and his problem was far from over. There was Carmen to deal with. Not to mention the rest of Mercedes’s family. Soon, people would begin to ask questions and he’d better have his answers ready.

The shop was small and had a sign over it that read Mrs Quinn’s Charity Shop. He’d never been there before, but he figured that rather than going in with the stuff it’d be better to leave it outside. No point in drawing attention to himself. He pulled up close to the door and took a couple of bags out of the boot. Just as he put them down, the shop door opened and an elderly woman appeared.

‘Are they for us?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I have a few more to go.’

The woman, surprisingly agile for her age, grabbed a bag and made towards the door. ‘Bring them on in,’ she said, leaving him no choice but to follow her.

When he returned with two more bags, the woman was examining Mercedes’s clothes. She held a blouse up to the light and viewed it appraisingly. ‘This is nice stuff. Are you sure she wants to get rid of it?’ she asked.

Oliver panicked. ‘My wife died,’ he said quickly, thinking that would put an end to further questions.

The woman put down the blouse. ‘I’m terribly sorry.’ Her eyes narrowed in sympathy. There were deep lines etched at the sides of her mouth. She moved her hand as if to reach out to him and then didn’t.

Oliver nodded and tried to block out Mercedes’s voice in his head. Because of you. ‘I’ll just get the rest of the stuff from the car,’ he said.

The woman smiled sadly, and he left her sorting through Mercedes’s things, fingering the cloth, searching for any imperfections. He felt a strange sort of emptiness as he watched her examining the things that Mercedes had worn. That she would never wear again. He hadn’t expected to feel that way, as though there were a void somewhere inside him.

He leant into the car boot to take out the last bag. He’d forgotten to knot it and the contents were spilling out where it had toppled over. He was shoving the clothes back in when he heard someone calling his name.

‘Oliver. Oliver Molloy, is that you?’

He looked up. There was a woman hurrying across the street. He didn’t recognize her at first. He stood there, at the open boot, trying to figure out who she was.

‘It is you,’ she said, as she got closer. ‘My God, it’s been such a long time!’

Finally, he recognized her, but couldn’t think of her name. She was an old friend of Mercedes; someone she used to work with.

‘Hi,’ he said, as he slammed the boot closed. ‘I’m sorry I can’t remember …?’

‘Adrienne,’ she said. She smiled and extended her hand.

‘Adrienne. Of course, I’m sorry, like you said it’s been what … three … four years?’

The woman called Adrienne laughed. She hadn’t let go of his hand, and he was aware of her fingers squeezing his. ‘I know, it’s hard to believe … I mean … God, how are you? How’s Mercedes doing?’

Oliver cast a quick look at the door of the shop. ‘Yes, she’s fine. We’re both good …’ he said. ‘And you, how are you doing? Are you still at Abacus?’

Adrienne laughed, a tinkling kind of laugh that reminded him of the C note on a piano.

‘No, I left soon after Mercedes did. I don’t know if you remember I was studying acting at the time … well, I’ve been trying to make a go of it. It’s difficult, of course, no money in it, but I get a bit of work doing ads and stuff …’

‘Really … wow … an actress.’

Adrienne smiled and he smiled back. She had a very pretty mouth; there was a dimple at one corner and her lips were coated in a shiny pink lip-gloss. He had no doubt that this girl would get parts.

‘It’s so good to run into you like this. Mercedes and I should never have lost touch … we used to have such laughs. I must get your number, maybe we can arrange to meet up like we used to …’

Adrienne began searching in her bag and took out a mobile phone.

He gave her the house number and then Mercedes’s mobile number. ‘You won’t be able to get her at the moment. She’s away in Barcelona. Her father’s not so well,’ he said.

Just as he’d said it the shop door opened behind him and the old woman came out. Christ – that had been close. Adrienne was busy saving the numbers in her phone.

‘Oh, I’m really sorry to hear that. I’ll give it a few weeks then … hopefully, everything will be okay,’ she said.

‘Yeah, it’s hard you know.’ He glanced at the old woman who was standing feet away examining the display in her shop window. He thought fast of something to say to change the topic from Mercedes. ‘Hey, what ever happened to that guy you used to bring round for dinner … did you?’

Adrienne started laughing. ‘Norman? My God, I haven’t thought of him in a long time …’

Oliver laughed. ‘I could never see what you were doing with him.’

Adrienne looked away. ‘Yeah, well, I didn’t know either in the end.’

‘And now, is there someone special?’

‘No. I’m just concentrating on my acting … trying to make it work, you know?’

Her coppery hair fell in her eyes. She flicked it back, and when she looked up there was a moment of awkwardness. He had always thought she was attractive. The old woman, to his relief, had gone back inside. Adrienne smiled at him.

‘I’m really glad I saw you. I’d better go, but please tell Mercedes I was asking about her and that I’ll call her soon.’

‘I will. It was great to see you.’

He leaned down and kissed her cheek. Her face turned a shade of pink to match her lips, and he wondered if he’d been right all those years ago when he’d suspected she’d had a thing for him, and if he should have taken advantage of it.

He watched her run across the road and get into a silver Renault Clio. She waved to him as she passed. He waved back and made as if he were searching for something in the glove compartment. When he was sure she was out of sight, he got out of the car, went round to the boot and brought the last black bag into the shop.

The woman was sitting at the counter now, reading a magazine. She nodded and got off the stool when he entered. ‘Just put it over here, love,’ she said, pointing to a pile of bags yet to be sorted. He was about to turn away when she spoke again. ‘It’s a difficult thing having to get rid of someone’s belongings. When my husband died, I couldn’t bring myself to clean out his wardrobe. I’d take out a shirt and I could smell him off it. It was like he was in the room with me. But it’s better that you do it, you have to move on. She wouldn’t want you mourning.’

Oliver nodded, solemnly. ‘No, she wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘She was full of life. That was the thing I loved most about her – her energy.’

He left the shop feeling strangely bereft. He got into the car and drove slowly away feeling as though he’d left something behind. He thought of Adrienne. Maybe he should’ve told her that Mercedes had left him. It would have aroused her sympathy and maybe they’d have acted on that spark from the past. He hated to go home to an empty house. It was lonely in the evenings and he needed a distraction; someone to keep the ghosts away.

FOUR

Joanna stared down at her mother, who refused to meet her eye. ‘So all that stuff you said about not knowing who my father was – that was all lies. Why? Why couldn’t you have told me?’

Angela looked past her and through the open door to where, minutes before, the woman had stood. ‘I honestly thought it was for the best,’ she said.

Joanna looked at her hard. ‘How? I mean, all those years you said it was a one-night stand, that you didn’t know what happened to the guy. Did you not think that at some point I’d find out, that we might walk into him in the street or that he’d come looking for me?’

Her mother shook her head. She was still carefully avoiding her eye. Joanna stopped pacing and stood before her.

‘Mother, please – give me something to go on here. I mean, what was his name even? Vince what?’

Angela stood up and tightened the belt of her robe. ‘Joanna, can we just not do this now? It’s late. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll tell you everything, but not tonight. Surely, you can understand … it’s … it’s been a terrible shock.’

‘That woman, who is she?’ Joanna said, ignoring her mother’s plea.

Angela put a hand to her head as though it ached. ‘Rachel. Rachel Arnold, Vince’s wife.’

Arnold. At least she had a name – assuming that the wife had taken his. ‘And did he know – about me?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, what was the deal then? If he knew, why could you not tell me? Why did you have to pretend?’

Her mother looked at her now – eyes tired, face drawn. ‘I didn’t tell you because you’d have wanted to find him. You’d have wanted to know who he was – and I didn’t want that – he didn’t want that.’

‘Was he … was he married?’

‘Joanna, please.’

‘Just tell me – was he? Is that why he didn’t want to know?’

‘Yes. Look, keep your voice down. What difference does it make? He’s gone. You heard what she said: he’s dead, Joanna. Can’t you just leave it, please?’ Angela took a few steps towards the door.

‘Leave it? Are you serious, Mum? How would you feel if you’d just found out your whole life had been based on a lie? And the person responsible was your own mother!’

‘It wasn’t like that, Joanna. I did it for your sake … would you rather I’d told you, and he didn’t want anything to do with you? Would you rather that? It was bad enough he rejected me, I didn’t want to put you through it as well.’

‘Well, I think I’d have deserved the chance to find out, don’t you? So, what … he got you pregnant and then went back to his wife, is that it?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘How did she find out?’

Angela looked up. ‘I told her.’

‘You … what did she say?’

‘Not a lot. She listened to what I had to say and then she told me to leave. I have to admit I admired her composure. I didn’t tell her in order to hurt her – I wanted her to know what he’d done. I wanted her to know that I existed.’

‘And she stayed with him despite knowing?’

‘It’s what people did back then.’

‘And that was that? No contact, nothing all those years?’

Angela lifted the end of her dressing gown and crossed the room to where Joanna’s photographs lay scattered on the floor.

‘He wasn’t … he wasn’t a bad person, Joanna. He was young, arrogant, I suppose, yes, but his intent, it wasn’t malicious. He cared for me, I know that – but he couldn’t leave her, it would have meant losing too much.’

‘What do you mean? People do it – they do it all the time. They simply decide what’s most important to them – and clearly we weren’t.’

Angela shook her head. ‘It wasn’t that straightforward. Rachel’s father was the head of the newspaper. He was the one that gave Vince his chance.’ She paused, looked up from the pictures. ‘He was a journalist – covered all the sports events. He took pictures, too. So, you see, you have inherited something from him.’

‘But you must have hated him – he chose Rachel … she was his wife, yes, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t have been some part of our lives, of mine. Did he even send you money?’

‘Sometimes. Cheques arrived – no note – nothing to ask me how I was doing, how you were. It was one of the conditions, you see.’

‘What conditions?’

‘Rachel told Vince that he would cut all contact – that it would have to be as though he and I had never met – it was that or she’d tell her father – and Vince could say goodbye to his career.’

‘What – and he was okay with that?’

Angela shrugged. ‘It was the choice he made. And now you know – I’m sorry you had to find out like this. I really am. I just hope you can understand, even a little bit, why I didn’t tell you. Protecting you was all I ever had in mind.’

Angela had crossed the room. She put her hand on Joanna’s arm, but she pulled away.

‘I can’t believe you expect me to accept this,’ she said. ‘Twenty-six years, Mum! And what’s worse, if that woman hadn’t come here tonight, you’d never have said anything, would you?’

‘Joanna, keep your voice down. The neighbours—’

‘Who cares about the neighbours? Who cares? This can never be fixed – don’t you understand that? You’ve robbed me of any chance to know my father.’

‘I’m sorry, Joanna. I know how this must seem to you now, but—’

‘It’s unlikely it’ll seem any other way, so don’t expect it to. I don’t care what kind of person Vince Arnold was – and he doesn’t sound like much of one – I should have had the opportunity to find that out for myself.’

They stood staring at each other.

‘I’m sorry,’ Angela said, again. ‘What else can I say?’

‘Nothing,’ Joanna told her. ‘Nothing you can say will put this right.’

FIVE

Oliver leaned forward at his desk and tried to focus on what the woman was saying. Her mouth was moving, but he couldn’t concentrate on the words that were coming out; instead, he was hearing fragmented bits of speech floating on the air thick between them. The woman sat back and crossed her black-stockinged legs. The action caused him to shift his gaze momentarily from her face. She was not beautiful, but she gave the impression of a woman convinced by her own attributes. Her small face, framed by a thatch of dark hair, was too pointed at the chin, and her narrowed blue eyes gave her the look of a small, but fierce animal. It was her full lips, startlingly red against her pale skin, that captured his attention. And there was something else, too, something that despite their physical dissimilarities reminded him of Mercedes. He couldn’t quite figure what it was, but it bothered him.

‘So, what are my entitlements? I’m still his wife, so that must mean I’m entitled to half of this new house despite the separation? I mean, I’m not the one that walked out on the marriage.’

If he hadn’t been feeling so ill, he may have commented on that. The fact that this woman had had an affair with her husband’s friend – a lover who, from what he had gathered, had long since departed the scene – seemed to escape her memory.

Oliver pulled at his tie. She was staring at him, waiting for an answer, but the air in the room seemed to have evaporated and a nauseous feeling was rising from the pit of his stomach. Something in the atmosphere, maybe the woman’s perfume, seemed to exacerbate it, and when he looked again at her expectant face he found that it was partially obscured by splotches of yellow light.

‘I’m sorry, but could you excuse me for a moment?’ he said.

He felt rather than saw her eyes follow him from the room.

In the men’s room the nauseous feeling overcame him and he leaned on the sink with both hands and retched acid-tasting bile. Perspiration broke out on his forehead, and he loosened the knot of his tie and tried to breathe, but he couldn’t calm the frantic beating of his heart. The woman who sat in his office was nothing like Mercedes. And yet in every woman that he’d met since that terrible night he had seen something to remind him of her. It would have to stop.

He examined his face in the mirror. Beneath the fluorescent light his skin was opaque and the dark circles beneath his eyes screamed of his sleepless nights. He turned on the cold tap, cupped his hands and doused his face several times in icy water. Eventually his heart resumed its regular beat, but his legs felt weak and he couldn’t still the trembling in his hands. It was the panic that he felt in his dreams, but in daylight it was far more frightening.

To distract himself, he thought of the woman who sat in his office awaiting his return. It was a divorce case that he’d been working on for the past year. She was the sort of woman that he despised, intent on taking her husband for everything she could get, but he couldn’t afford not to represent her. Business had been slow, and it was an easy case to win.

He took a deep breath, grabbed a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser and blotted his face dry. The woman was his last client of the day. He would simply have to get through it.

‘I’m sorry about that. Haven’t been feeling very well all day,’ he said. His legs were still shaking as he sat back down in his leather chair. The woman leaned forward at his desk.

‘So,’ she said, ‘what are my rights here?’

If it was sympathy he’d been after, he’d miscalculated. The woman, who seemed to have forgotten that it was her infidelity that had instigated her husband’s divorce proceedings, was interested only in money. It pained him that the law, albeit to his advantage, was on this woman’s side. He gave her a long, silent look in which he hoped his distaste was evident and then, putting his personal feelings aside, forced himself to enter legal mode.

When the woman had left, he closed and locked the door behind her. His partner, who worked in an adjoining office, had gone to the courts and wouldn’t return that evening. Oliver sat down but, not feeling like working, he picked up the newspaper from his desk. He’d read it briefly that morning. The body in the canal had made the front page. The man, named as Vince Arnold, had worked as a sports journalist for one of the national papers. Arnold. It wasn’t such a common name. He’d known an Arnold once – sat his bar exams with him at the King’s Inns. He wondered if there was any connection. Putting the paper down, he typed the man’s name into Google. The obituary came up. Oliver clicked on it, read: ‘Sadly missed by his wife, Rachel, brother, Patrick …’ Patrick Arnold, that was it. The name of the guy he’d studied with. He’d often wondered what had become of him. Rumour had it that he’d been struck off – found guilty of fraud, something to do with a land deal. He couldn’t remember the details. He looked again at the notice – the Removal Mass was to take place the following evening in a church not far from the office. Curious about the dead man, and wondering if it were the same Patrick Arnold he’d known, he decided that he would go along to find out.