Peter James - A Twist of the Knife

All the occupants of The Foresters lived, it seemed to Clive Marples, high on the hog. In winter there were plentiful drinks and dinner parties. In summer, a constant round of barbecues and pool parties. All the residents took regular, expensive holidays. And, Clive assumed, they were all getting plenty of sex — until the kids came along, of course.

His problem was an increasing belief that everyone on the estate was actually having a better, happier and more fulfilled life than himself. As well as all the other members of his golf club, where he played a regular game on Sunday mornings.

Driving home from the station some days, he found himself starting to envy his neighbours more and more. Not their houses or their cars — his large, hybrid Lexus was up there with any of them, and so was Shirley’s convertible Mercedes SL — no, it was what seemed to him to be their contentment. Couples actually happy to be with each other. In truth, he did not look forward to coming home very much.

It tended to be much the same most nights. Shirley, in some shapeless tracksuit or onesie, lying back on the sofa, stroking the cat, which had become as fat as her, watching some rubbish on the box and stuffing her face with some confection from a chocolate box lying on the sofa beside her, and swigging it down with Chardonnay.

She’d raise a hand, as if to warn him to be silent and not interrupt her programme, and say, ‘Dinner’s in the microwave — give it three minutes.’ Then she’d pop another chocolate in her mouth, take another swig of wine and return her intent gaze to the screen.

Once a week they made love. A perfunctory, clinical function of mutual relief that rarely involved kissing, more a quick groping around each other’s erogenous zones, the right movements discovered and fine-tuned over two decades, then it would be done and she would return to watching the television and he to the papers or a book.

On Saturdays in winter he went to watch his football team, The Albion, when they were playing at home, or else he watched television. On the days at the stadium when it wasn’t his turn to drive, he’d enjoy a few beers with his mates, and then a few more, inevitably arriving home later than he had promised, to be greeted by an angry Shirley, all dolled up, tapping her watch, telling him they were embarrassingly late for some dinner they were going out to.

Up in the bedroom, getting changed to go out to dinner, frequently with Shirley’s closest friend and her husband, neither of whom he particularly cared for, he would think to himself, dismally, is this it? Is this my life? Is this how it’s always going to be?

Is this all it’s ever going to be?

And increasingly, late on Saturday night when they returned home, while Shirley went to the bathroom to begin her ritual of removing her make-up, and then putting on her bedtime war paint, he would nip into his den and go online. To the DreamWife website.

And read, and dream.

DreamWife Corporation will genetically engineer the perfect wife. All you have to do is describe every detail of your perfect woman, have your brain scanned and downloaded, and DreamWife.com’s computerized technology will do the rest. Using advanced, accelerated genetic development, your woman will be created at the age you specify, and come to you complete with all the memories of your actual married life implanted in her brain, but with the bad stuff edited out by cunning search-and-replace technology. She will be everything you had hoped your wife would be, but never was. Delivery is just twelve months. Full refund if not satisfied.

At a mere £550,000, it was a bargain. Or would be, if he happened to have a spare £550,000 sitting around — and no wife.

Then late one Saturday night, Clive had a light-bulb moment. He realized that the two things could, actually, be elegantly combined — and how it could be done. While Shirley slept, looking like a ghost, with her face caked in anti-wrinkle mask, he lay awake, thinking, planning, scheming, hatching.

First thing on Monday morning, in the office, he phoned his IFA and told him he felt it was sensible for him to have a life-insurance policy. He did his best to make it sound innocent and altruistic. If anything happened to him, he wanted Shirley to be able to continue in the lifestyle she currently enjoyed. So the policy should be big enough to pay off the mortgage, and provide her with a continued decent income.

‘Well, Clive, if you are going to do this, might I suggest you also take a policy out on Shirley. Just in case, you never know...’

‘Well that’s a thought,’ Clive replied.

‘You share the house. If anything should happen to her, you’ve no idea how you might react. You might be too grief-stricken to carry on with your work. It happens. You’d be wise to take precautions.’

Clive knew what his IFA’s motivation was. Simple. The fat commission. And that suited him down to the ground. It was a small price to pay for the benefits to follow. He decided to follow the sound advice and take precautions.

A month later, after he and Shirley had completed all the forms and been visited by a doctor from the insurance company for medical examinations, the policy was in place. Both their lives were now insured for two million pounds. Now all he had to do was bide his time. Idiots got caught by not waiting long enough after taking out a policy on a loved one, before killing them. He had read about that in newspapers and in crime novels, and had seen it in crime shows on television. He had to give it plenty of time. Allow clear water between taking out the policy — and then claiming on it.

Clear water.

Another light-bulb moment!

The more he thought about clear water, the more he liked the idea. Water. The sea. Big, deep oceans. And it was their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in a little over a year’s time. What better way to celebrate than by going on a cruise? Shirley would like that. She could eat all day long. And all night long. What better place for a sloth?

A really nice, long cruise. In a nice big ship. Across a big, deep ocean.

Perfect!

Shirley was thrilled to bits when he told her it was all booked. In fact he could hardly remember a time when she had looked more pleased. Within minutes of springing the surprise on her, she was on the phone to her friends, telling them all about the fantastic cruise he was taking her on. One of the best cruise lines, all around the Caribbean. Utter pampered luxury. An hour later she was on the internet, starting to buy her cruise wardrobe. Even though it was still almost a year away.

Without telling Shirley, he remortgaged the house, giving him the extra money he needed to pay the DreamWife deposit. When he had completed the formalities, he received by courier a large, heavy wrist-watch. It contained a micro-scanner and camera, which, he had been informed, would download all the memories from Shirley’s brain and implant them in his new wife. It was accompanied by detailed instructions on when to activate the camera — in the presence of any woman he met or saw, either in the flesh, on television or in a movie, whom he fancied; elements of her would then be incorporated in the manufacture of his dream woman. You just had to remember to switch it off after the download was complete or else it would continue to download going forward.

It was a very long year, in which Shirley talked about the cruise almost daily until he was heartily sick of it. They would be visiting twelve islands, including Barbados, St Barts, St Lucia and Antigua, and she regularly showed off to him, with her increasingly fat and dimpled body, the twelve different daywear outfits she had chosen and the twelve different evening dresses. With, of course, the twelve different pairs of shoes and the utterly essential matching handbags. And with each new outfit, he stared with increasing gloom at the monthly credit card bills. Within the first six months she had spent more than the entire cost of the cruise on her bloody outfits.