Unfaithful: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller

  Unfaithful

  An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller

  Natalie Barelli

  Books by Natalie Barelli

  Unfaithful

  The Housekeeper

  The Accident

  The Loyal Wife

  Missing Molly

  After He Killed Me

  Until I Met Her

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Hear More from Natalie

  Books by Natalie Barelli

  A Letter from Natalie

  Acknowledgments

  One

  I wake up too early, too hot, my legs entangled in the sheet. I dreamt of something stressful, something to do with missing a flight or losing my passport. Then there was a ladder that didn’t quite get up to a top floor and was swaying dangerously.

  It’s the phone ringing that pulls me out of the dream. I reach for it quickly so as not to wake Luis, my pulse still racing.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me.”

  I raise myself on one elbow. “Alex? What time is it?”

  “I don’t know. Five? Six? I need to see you.”

  Beside me Luis stirs.

  “I’ll have to call you back.”

  “When can you come?”

  He has that urgent tone, the way he speaks when he wants my attention, immediately. It’s not even six in the morning and I’m exhausted already. “I don’t know, Alex. I have a meeting this morning. I’ll come after.”

  “No! You have to come now!”

  “Alex, I can’t. I’ll come later, as soon as I’m free, all right? What’s going on, anyway?”

  He sighs into the phone. Or maybe he’s smoking. He says he doesn’t but I’ve smelt it on him often enough. Dope, mostly. “I’ll tell you when you get here. Bring the notebooks with you.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes. It’s important, Anna. Bring them, okay?” He hangs up. I turn to look at Luis who is sleeping beside me, one arm flung above his head, calm as smiling Buddha. I bet he’s not dreaming of swaying ladders and missed flights. I kiss his bare shoulder and he doesn’t even stir. Nothing can wake up Luis, except Luis.

  “Who was that?” he croaks.

  “Sorry, I was hoping you were still asleep. That was Alex.”

  “Of course it was. Can you ask your students not to call in the middle of the night, please?”

  He turns on his side and I push playfully against his back. “It’s not the middle of the night, it’s six a.m.” I can hear the birds outside, and there’s a sliver of dawn light slipping around the edge of the blinds.

  “I was up late,” he mumbles.

  “I know.” I rub my face with both hands. I may as well get up. “You want me to bring you a cup of coffee?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Downstairs, Roxy greets me by dropping a chewed-up toy at my feet. We go through our usual routine where I stroke her head and she rolls on her back, exposing her pink belly for me to scratch. She’s a French bulldog and technically she’s Mateo’s dog. I let her out the back door and into the yard, then turn on the coffee machine. While I wait for it to warm up I empty the dishwasher, change the water in Roxy’s bowl, open a bag of dog food and scoop some into her food bowl.

  All the time I am thinking about Alex, analyzing how he sounded just now, what it might mean. Alex is my best, brightest PhD student. He’s a genius, really. I’ve never had a student like him before. He’s on the cusp of publishing something extraordinary, and my job with him is to make sure he gets there in one piece.

  Sipping my coffee, I open my laptop to go over my notes. First thing this morning is a faculty meeting. We’re facing an uncertain future, and I suggested to Geoff about getting together a fundraising committee weeks ago. I did it to make a good impression, to show that I’m a team player and full of good ideas. Geoff agreed to my suggestion—he almost always does. Geoff is the chair of the mathematics department and what Geoff thinks matters. Especially as any day now I will find out if my full professorship application has been successful. I am pretty confident. Or I’m trying to be, anyway. Part of me feels that if I don’t get it after all the extra work I’ve been doing, I may as well give up. Those of us who applied in the department expected to have heard by now, but this year there’s only one full-time position because of our budget cuts and it’s taken longer than usual. Nail-bitingly longer, you could say, but still, I’m cautiously optimistic.

  I go back upstairs to shower and get dressed into my usual meeting attire: linen skirt and pearl-colored blouse. Professional but feminine. I clip on a pair of small diamond earrings—not real diamonds, we do all right but we’re not that rich—and fasten a silver necklace with a small heart-shaped pendant around my neck, a gift from the children for Mother’s Day.

  In the mirror I catch Luis watching me from the bed, one arm bent behind his head. He’s frowning.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “You look… conservative. Like a school teacher.”

  “I am a school teacher.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I smile and reach for my lipstick—Desert Rose—and stare back at my reflection. My mother’s voice pops into my head, unbidden. Look your best to do your best!

  I close my eyes. Why did I have to think of my mother now? Now she’s going to be like an elephant around my neck all day—or is it an albatross? Whatever. A big cumbersome weight dragging me down, making me feel inadequate, reminding me that I’m not quite living up to my potential. Unless I don’t let her. Easier said than done, I think, as I run a brush through my hair.

  “Where are you off to, anyway?” Luis asks.

  “Faculty meeting, remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” he says, but I know he doesn’t. I pick up the bottle of perfume he bought me for my birthday, Lancôme’s La Vie est Belle, and I spray a cloud at the base of my throat.

  Geoff at work commented on the scent once: “Is it you who smells so delish?”

  Delish. It seemed so suggestive. Sometimes I think if I were willing—which I’m not, at all—but if I were… I used to think he was kind of handsome for an academic, with his dark gray messy curly hair, swept back and reaching down his neck. He wears glasses, thin-rimmed ones, and has a graying beard that makes him look like Neil Gaiman.

  Luis rubs his knuckles over his head and throws off the covers.

  “Why don’t you stay in bed?” I say.

  “That’s o
kay.” He yawns. “I’m awake now. I’ll be in the shower.”

  On the way downstairs I pass by Mateo’s room. He’s still fast asleep, his Batman-themed comforter thrown onto the floor, his arms and legs spread out like a starfish. I turn on the light, kiss his hair. “Come on, Matti, time to get up, honey.” He stirs, yawns and his eyes pop open. I pick a sweatshirt up off the floor and put it on the back of his chair, then tell him to get ready and make sure to pack his gym bag.

  In Carla’s room, I find her at her desk doing some last-minute revision.

  “Morning you, did you sleep well?” I ask, kissing the top of her head.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  She barely moves, one elbow on the desk, her head propped up on her hand. I kiss her again, smell her long soft hair. At thirteen she’s as tall as me already. “Come and have breakfast.” She nods, mumbles that she’ll be down in a minute.

  In the kitchen, I’m preparing school lunches for my children when they bounce in arguing, jostling each other at the fridge, for the milk, over the box of cereal. They work around me, all of us anticipating each other’s movements. Cupboard doors fly open and sometimes get closed again. Bowls are dropped on the kitchen table with a clatter and are filled with cereal and milk, fruit and yoghurt. I try to keep up, put things away as needed, scolding them half-heartedly for making a mess but secretly loving how noisy they are, the chaos they create, and the sense that I’m at the center of it, bringing order to their lives.

  Luis joins us, dressed in jeans and a white shirt, his hair still damp from the shower. He grabs a yoghurt from the refrigerator and slowly spoons it into his mouth, leaning against the kitchen counter. Mateo has gone back upstairs and shouts down that he has lost a sneaker and it’s really bad! because he has soccer practice today. I go up to his room and locate the shoe under his bed along with a bevy of dirty socks and underpants. I add them to a load of washing and turn the machine on.

  “Will you please fix the tap today?” I ask Luis. Every day I bring up the dripping tap in the kitchen, and every day, Luis says he’ll fix it. Every day I say something like, If you don’t have time, I can get the plumber in, and every day he assures me that’s a waste of money and he’ll do it himself.

  Today is no exception.

  “And since you’re up early, would you walk Roxy, please?”

  He drops the yoghurt container in the trashcan and kisses the top of my head. “Sorry, I have to get back to the gallery. I’m under the gun.”

  I put my hands on his chest. “I know, I remember.” Luis’s upcoming exhibition is a very big deal. He’s been stressed about it for months and my job is to support him when he’s like that. It’s my favorite job, actually, looking after my family. I run my hand through his dark hair, still as thick as ever and always falling over his forehead. Whenever I picture Luis in my mind’s eye, it’s with one hand pushing back a lock of hair between his thumb and forefinger.

  “You’ll be fine. Do what you have to,” I say.

  Carla reappears, dressed and ready for school.

  “Will you put the washing out on the line when you get home?” I ask her.

  “Why can’t Matti do it?”

  “Because he’s got soccer practice and you’ll be home way before him.”

  “Okay.”

  Luis hugs the kids, kisses me goodbye. I remind him to pick up Matti from soccer practice this afternoon. “And please don’t be late,” I plead. Mateo gets very anxious when people are late. One time Luis and I had a misunderstanding about who was where when and no one picked up Matti. He sat on a bench at a bus stop and waited for twenty-six minutes—that’s what he said, twenty-six minutes, repeatedly—and by the time I got there he had wet himself. It took over an hour to console him. Luis and I had a huge fight afterwards about who was supposed to pick him up, and we never agreed on it, although to this day I know it was supposed to be Luis.

  “And don’t forget tonight.”

  “What about tonight?” he says.

  “Ha ha, you’re so funny you should have been on the stage.”

  “I tried. They wouldn’t even let me audition.”

  I laugh. It’s an accidental joke because tonight the kids are putting on a show. Carla has written a play for the Young Playwrights Competition and she is staging a special preview performance for us, having roped in her little brother to play various roles, all in our very own living room. I think I’m as excited as they are.

  “Do I need to get anything for dinner?” Luis asks.

  “No, all done.”

  It’s pizza night tonight. One day, when my children are old enough to go to restaurants by themselves, they will realize that real pizza tastes like heaven, drips with oily, melted cheese, has very few vegetables on it and miles of pepperoni. Pizza, here, chez Sanchez, consists of homemade wholegrain sourdough spread with homemade low-salt tomato passata, truckloads of seasonal vegetables and low-fat cottage cheese. Sometimes I wonder how much of what I do to look after my family will end up as a discussion on a therapist’s couch.

  Luis gives me that lovely smile of his that still makes my heart flutter, then with another kiss he’s gone.

  I hug my children goodbye, tell them I love them to bits, accidentally mess up Carla’s hair—“Mom!”—and, after they’re gone, I grab the leash and the roll of dog poop bags from the hook behind the door of the laundry and let Roxy out for a quick walk around the block.

  Two

  “Good morning, everyone.”

  Geoff is standing at the white board. We don’t use screens or projectors for small meetings like this, just good old-fashioned magnetic boards. He shoots me an annoyed look over his shoulder.

  “Hey, there you are,” he says.

  “Yeah, sorry. Dog walking. Lost track of time.”

  There are five of us in this committee. Geoff of course, as the department chair, and the other two mathematics professors: Rohan and John. Then there’s Mila, the youngest in the faculty—as she likes to remind everyone on a regular basis—and me.

  We’re here because our future funding is tenuous at best. Our generous endowment has been frittered away by our so-called investment advisors who managed to get a return at about a third the rate of everyone else, and now we have to come up with new sources of income. That, in a nutshell, is the meeting.

  I nod at each of them and set my laptop on the table.

  “So, where are we up to?” I wake up the laptop and open a new document while surreptitiously checking out Mila. She’s wearing a loose top that droops over her bare shoulder in a can’t keep it up, it’s too big sort of way, revealing a thin silver bra strap—at least she’s wearing a bra—over a fine collarbone. I look down at her skinny jeans, fashionably torn at the knees and cut off above her delicate ankles.

  I don’t know. She’s obviously smart—after all, she’s an associate professor at twenty-six—but she’s also very pretty, with shiny black hair and olive skin, and eyelashes so long I suspect they’re false. Being sexy shouldn’t be a disadvantage in this job, but I think it is. I’d never dress like that for a business meeting. What was it Luis said this morning? You look conservative. I catch Mila looking at me looking at her and I quickly return to my laptop, my finger poised over the keyboard.

  “Since you’re here, will you take minutes, Anna?”

  “Sure, happy to.” I always take minutes. I may as well have it tattooed on my forehead. Team player, no job too small or too menial. Then Geoff adds, “I know I always ask you, but you’re the only one I can trust to do it right.”

  I smile. Then I think I’m blushing. Am I blushing? I sure hope not. “It’s no problem,” I stress. Of course, it’s not really my job to take minutes. He could have asked June, the department secretary, to sit in, but the truth is, I am the only one who can be trusted to do it right. That’s one thing everyone always says about me: I am dependable. I will always step in and help, and often make things right. Which is probably why I’m always in meetings. When I’m not teachi
ng, I mean. I seem to always put my hand up for things: committees, student support, fundraising, grant applications, acquittals. Sometimes I end up on committees I don’t remember signing up for. But, if the work needs to be done, I am ready. I rally when the going gets tough. I’m a rallier.

  “Ideas,” Geoff says now. “Let’s hear them. Anyone?”

  At the top of my document, I type: “New Funding Opportunities—Staff Suggestions” and bold it.

  Mila takes the pencil she’s chewing out of her mouth. “We could contact our alumni? Organize a fundraising dinner?”

  “Good. Thank you, Mila.”

  Geoff writes down Mila’s suggestion on the board, like it’s a very valid one and I’m thinking, Really? Is that the best you can do? Then he says, “Anna, will you organize it?”

  I blink. I’m about to say, Why doesn’t Mila organize it? It’s her idea. But being a team player, a rallier, I just nod. Although I do ask: “Don’t we do that already?”

  “No, we don’t. So let’s.”

  “Okay.” Anyway, as a member of the teaching staff, I don’t think he actually means for me to organize it. I make a note to mention it to June.

  “Let’s not beat around the bush here, people,” Geoff continues. “This faculty will not get bailed out again by the executive. At this rate, we’ll be lucky if we make it to the end of next year. We are in early talks with a number of philanthropic institutions—June and I are handling that—but I’ll be blunt, it doesn’t look good. So if you have any bright ideas… What’s going on, Anna?”