Jane Asher - The Question - A bestselling psychological thriller full of shocking twists

Back in the kitchen she walked over to the kettle and plugged it in, only half aware now of the reflection of the whitened face that stared back at her. There could, of course, be a perfectly rational explanation for this, she told herself. She was getting it all entirely out of proportion. But then why did her whole body tell her something was so dreadfully wrong? Going over it again she tried to work out just what it was that was making her feel so threatened. If Ruth had been away till Friday night then there was no possibility of her having seen the new tie, that was incontrovertible. But perhaps there was another tie? She must have meant a different one. Was there another tie she could possibly have seen that might just have fitted the description of swirly things on yellow? That she could describe as ‘new’?

As the water in the kettle began to mutter and growl around the heat of the element, Eleanor struggled to remember what tie she had seen John wearing as he had left in the morning. She could see him coming out of the bathroom, his thick grey hair still wet, brushed neatly back as always. In her mind’s eye she watched him walk out of the bedroom, his tall figure slightly stooped in the white towelling dressing gown. They had been chatting about the week ahead of them, as they always did on a Monday morning, shouting to each other from bedroom to dressing room, Eleanor sitting at the dressing table carefully sponging beige foundation onto her moisturised face.

‘So I’ll stay up till Thursday, darling,’ John had called out to her, ‘probably. It depends how it goes. I might leave it till Friday, but I’ll see. Abbotts are nearing finishing the plans on Devon and I want to work through them before they’re finalised. And year-end reports are getting horribly close. Have we anything on?’

‘Not really, although I told Amanda we might drop in on them for a drink at some point, but the weekend’ll be fine. Is Devon going to have more ghastly whirly ceilings?’

There was a silence. Eleanor knew John found it particularly irritating when she criticised the inferior plaster finishes on the housing estates, but there was something about the depressing combed half-circles of thick white plaster applied quickly and cheaply to their ceilings that she found objectionable and dishonest and she could never resist saying so. To her eye, combined with the sprayed-on roughcast exteriors, the ceilings gave the houses the impression of shoddy goods covered quickly with an unattractive veneer of mock sophistication.

‘John?’

‘Yes. Probably. Well, of course, yes.’

She could hear the annoyance in his voice but went on, enjoying the predictability of the marital friction that she knew she was inflaming, puffing powder over her face as she talked. ‘I’d just love to see you live in a house like that, that’s all.’

John didn’t bother to reply, but continued dressing next door in silence. Eleanor could hear the slight squeak of hinges as he opened the old mahogany wardrobe, and the faint clink of metal as the hooks of the clothes hangers were pushed together as he sifted through his jackets.

The hinges squeaked again as the wardrobe was closed. Eleanor brushed brown shadow across her eyelid as she half listened to the rustle of cellophane as John took a shirt from its laundry wrappings, and then to the whip of cloth as he briskly shook it free of its folds. She was waiting for the moment when he would come back into the bedroom to proffer first one, then the other arm for her to do up his cuff links. Until she saw his face she felt unable to judge his mood, and unsure as to whether it was worth pursuing the ceiling conversation or whether the annoyance factor was too great to be overcome. Not that she felt particularly strongly about the poorly finished ceilings, but it had become an interesting and long-running challenge to get John to admit that he thought them as ugly and vulgar as she did. The unspoken words that were passed via the briefest of looks on both sides during such discussions were as revealing as those that were actually uttered. A quick glance from beneath John’s raised eyebrow silently asked Eleanor why she couldn’t appreciate that everything that she now enjoyed in the way of lifestyle was paid for by the very ceilings that she so abhorred. Eleanor’s returning smirk conveyed that she was, indeed, only too aware of just what it was that paid the bills but didn’t he realise that there existed men who could provide for their women to a standard as high – or higher – than he did without having to compromise on moral or aesthetic standards? The toing and froing of question, answer, recrimination and impatience would often continue for some time, the silent conversation bouncing between them like some invisible ball.

The click of the kettle’s switch as it came to the boil snapped Eleanor back into the present as she still struggled to picture John as he had walked back into the bedroom. However hard she tried to remember, the tie he had been wearing refused to materialise, but it was quite clear to her that he must have worn one of the relatively limited choice of safe, striped ones that he tended to revert to unless pushed by her into something else. His natural instinct was to quiet conformity, and she would certainly have noticed if he had worn anything even remotely similar to the brightly patterned yellow of the one still pulsing its terrifying implications from the couch upstairs.

She made the tea automatically, hardly glancing at the plastic jar of tea bags, the carton of milk or the bowl of sugar as her hands found what they needed by feel, programmed by years of having made these same movements in the same way day after day to be able to judge precisely and unconsciously the distance from kettle to cup, spoon to bowl and carton back to fridge. While her body moved calmly and routinely, her mind was flying, darting back and forth over days, looks, months, expressions, smiles, phrases, excuses, years, laughs, absences – anything that might now be possibly construed as a clue. Some memories and images came back relentlessly over and over again: the times she had rung the flat and had no answer; the smile he gave her every time he drove off to London; messages from the office to say he couldn’t get back to the country as expected; his voice blowing a kiss down the phone at the end of his regular evening call. The pictures in her head were crescendoing to a visual scream of unbearable misery that battered on her mind’s eye from within. She picked up the mug and took a gulp of scalding tea that burnt her mouth and shocked her into a moment’s respite from the mental cacophony.

But, like a red ant crawling over a stretched white sheet, a single, relentless image crept into the stillness and clarity of her emptied mind. Hair. Red hair. Long red hair curling over a receiver.

Ruth’s hair.

That Monday morning George didn’t get his walk after all. Eleanor shut the puzzled black Labrador in the kitchen, grabbed her bag from the hall table, locked the front door and drove the Range Rover down the A3 towards London. She had no idea what she would do when she got there, realising after just a few miles that the potentially perfect excuse of the yellow curtain material was lying neatly folded on her desk in the study.

‘Idiot!’ she shouted out loud at herself, then, ‘Idiot!’ again at the very thought that she should need an excuse at all; she, the wronged woman, as she was now convinced she was: the innocent.

‘He’s the one who needs the excuse. Bastard!’

She turned on the radio and listened for a few seconds to the Classic FM jingle played on a harp, wondering, in spite of herself, how many versions of the miniature theme existed, and whether the composer could possibly receive royalties every time it was played.