Chapter 49

HEIDI COLE

Heidi couldn’t muster the strength to hate her husband any longer –

much of it had been used up when she first learned of his double life. And after the emotional battering of the last two hours, the fight had been knocked out of her. She didn’t even have enough energy to release the tears gathering behind her eyes.

Alone in her car, it was the first time since discovering Sam was leading a double life that she felt something other than the need to make his life as miserable as he had made hers. It was grief. She was beginning to mourn the loss of the man she thought she knew inside and out.

Being held against her will was a great leveller. It gave her the clarity to see what she had done was a foolish and irrational move and completely out of character. If she could go back, she would have confronted Sam, kicked him out of the family home and removed him from her life the moment she first found out. It was the advice she’d have given her friends had they been wearing similar shoes. Instead, she had gone on the attack with a burning desire to hurt him. Where had it got her? Here, facing a very public death.

With two votes to her name, there was still a chance she might survive the ordeal. But then she would have to face a different set of problems including dismissal from her career. The Independent Office for Police Conduct would discover a corrupt police officer who was attempting to gain money by fraudulent means and who had used official resources for personal benefit. They wouldn’t care that she had been driven to it because she was hurting.

Discovering Sam’s second family had happened quite by chance. It was a day that began like most others. Sam was working two hundred miles away and Heidi had taken annual leave, looking after the children while the school closed for teacher training. She had strapped them into her car and programmed it to drop them off at an activities day in a country park. As she awaited their return, she sat in their neglected conservatory, cursing its leaking roof and broken panes of glass. Using her tablet, she logged on to Facebook and a forum where local posters recommended reliable

tradesmen. But an innocuous flick through her friends’ video clips changed everything.

It involved a viral craze to raise money and awareness for a mental health charity. Participants had buckets of water thrown at them followed by bags of flour to create a ‘sticky snowman’. ‘Over my dead body is that happening to me,’ she muttered as she watched a friend picking sticky glue-like lumps from her hair. Suddenly, she spotted the name ‘Samuel Cole’ had been tagged in a video under the heading ‘People you might also like to watch’.

It puzzled her. Months after their wedding, Sam had made a big song and dance about deactivating all his social media accounts. ‘These companies know too much about us,’ he moaned. ‘It makes me uncomfortable. Besides, I don’t have time to read about everyone else’s lives when I barely have enough time to be a part of my own.’ She couldn’t argue with that. However, Sam must not have understood that while his Facebook profile was no longer active, he could still be tagged by other users.

Curious, Heidi clicked on his name and a handful of thumbnail videos appeared. They had been uploaded by a Josie Cole, and each with Sam’s name attached. Heidi couldn’t recall a family member with that name, at least not one whom she had met. The first video featured her husband along with a boy and girl she didn’t recognise. They giggled as they threw cups of water at him before caking him in flour. ‘I’m a sticky snowman and I nominate Andrew Webber and Darren O’Sullivan,’ Sam spluttered.

‘Do you want a towel, Daddy?’ the girl interrupted. ‘Yes, please,’ Sam replied.

Heidi froze – she must have misheard. She rewound and watched it again. ‘Daddy,’ the girl said. She played it again. And again. And again.

Heidi repeated the word at the same time as the child. ‘Daddy.’

It didn’t make sense. The man on the screen can’t be Sam, she thought.

She played the video at half speed, her eyes dissecting each part of his physicality. But his face, frame, slight paunch, pattern of chest hair, mannerisms and voice were all identical to Sam’s. How could it be him? If he’d had a family before they met, she’d have discovered it before now.

However, this video was recent because he had the Sam of now’s appearance. Has he got an identical twin he doesn’t know about? No, that’s ridiculous. But so was her thinking the man on her screen was her husband.

The camera angle made it difficult to see the tattoo of Beccy and James’s names on Sam’s left arm. Nervously, she turned to the other videos he’d also been tagged in. They featured the same two children in a garden, although this time, a woman accompanied them. And in the penultimate clip, her arm was wrapped around his waist before she kissed him on the lips. Heidi was struck by their similar appearances from hairstyles to their smiles. Then in the final clip, the family were holidaying in a caravan park she immediately identified as the one in which she and Sam had first met in Aldeburgh.

And when he stretched out his arm to steady himself as he walked across the pebbled beach, her greatest fears were realised. His arm featured the tattoo. There could be no other explanation – Sam had a second family.

Heidi’s tablet fell to the floor. Her police career had trained her to examine all the evidence before reaching a conclusion and never to let emotion get the better of her. She took a deep breath – she must treat Sam like any other suspect.

Anxiously, she played each Facebook video again, desperate to learn more about Josie Cole. She compared the dates the clips were uploaded to the digital family calendar on the kitchen wall. Each time one appeared on Facebook, Sam had been working away from home. He spent three to four nights a week in an inexpensive bed and breakfast in Halifax, close to his office. At least that was what he’d told her and Heidi had no reason to question it until now. She ordered her online virtual assistant to call each B&B listed and find out if they had a record of him. None had. Sam must have been playing happy families with Josie Cole instead.

But why was she using Sam’s surname? Heidi visited Josie’s Facebook page but the rest of her settings were set to private. She had to expand her search and called for a taxi.

‘I thought you were off with the kids today?’ asked DS Bev Saxon when Heidi brushed past her in CID.

‘I have some admin I want to get a head start on,’ Heidi replied coolly.

She waited until the office was empty before trawling the National Identity Card and Police National Computer databases to learn more about Josie.

She discovered that she was a full-time mother, a year younger than Heidi and she worked part-time at her local Baptist church’s admin department. Hesitantly, Heidi’s finger pressed the marital status icon – Josie Harmon had wed Samuel Cole ten months after he and Heidi had tied the

knot. His name was also on both children’s birth certificates – he had even replicated his and Heidi’s kids’ names.

Breaking more rules governing the use of police data for her own means, Heidi picked a terrorism protocol as an excuse to access Sam’s business accounts. There, she discovered he was paying dividends from it into a joint mortgage taken out in his and Josie’s names. They also had joint credit cards and two bank accounts. A search of his business revealed it was based in Sheffield and not Halifax like he had claimed.

Heidi hunched forward in her chair, trying to absorb what she had learned. All at once, so many aspects of her marriage were becoming clear.

There was Sam’s mistrust of social media and his reluctance to take more than a handful of holiday days at a time; his Christmas visits to his mother’s home in the Algarve were always alone. Sometimes on his return from Halifax, he’d be wearing clothes she hadn’t seen him in before. Most nights when he was at home, he would disappear behind the closed bedroom door to answer ‘work’ telephone calls. All this time, you were talking to them.

You were talking to your other family under our roof.

Heidi alternated between fury and confusion, but she was too angry to waste a tear on Sam. Many times over the next few days, she had come within a hair’s breadth of telephoning him and screaming at him for the truth. But a man who could hide a second family from his wife was a man skilled in the art of deception. She could not expect his honesty and he didn’t deserve hers. When Sam returned home from Halifax later that week, she said nothing about her discovery.

Trying to contain how she felt and prevent it from revealing itself in words, moods or behaviour was close to impossible. Heidi was yearning to hurt her husband like he had hurt her. And this contempt spawned an idea.

Maintaining two houses, two wives and four children could not have been easy for Sam. So she was going to see what happened when she piled more pressure upon him in a series of different ways.

She began gradually, first by setting him up on extramarital affair dating apps and websites with fake profiles but using his real contact details. And as the calls and emails came thick and fast, she viewed in quiet amusement as he squirmed each time his phone rang or a new message arrived.

Eventually he kept his phone switched off when he was at home. She was sure to include the locations of Halifax, Sheffield, Dunstable and Luton – it meant someone out there knew of his secret.

Next, and knowing exactly how much money he was siphoning from his accounts to his second family, she upped the ante by making her own financial demands. A request for a new high-spec kitchen with all the fixtures and fittings was followed by suggestions for a replacement bathroom then quotes for a new conservatory. She revelled in Sam’s awkwardness as he became tongue-tied making up excuses as to why they didn’t have the available funds to afford them.

The more discomfort she saw him in, the more pressure she would heap upon him. And while her demands made for a promising start, it didn’t come close to the hurt she felt. Heidi had to up the ante by really hitting him in the pocket. She wanted to know just how far he was willing to go to keep hold of his secrets. She would blackmail him.

She plucked a figure out of thin air – a ridiculously large sum of

£100,000. He didn’t have that kind of money readily available but it was going to be enjoyable imagining him squirm via email. And she spaced her demands a week apart to maximise the discomfort. It was only when he agreed to the preposterous figure that she sat back in her chair and took a deep breath. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to keep her from discovering his lies.

But in the days leading up to the cash handover, there was one last thing on her ‘to complete’ list before bringing her campaign to a close. She wanted to see her husband’s wife in the flesh.

Heidi’s car pulled up against the kerb on the opposite side of the road to Josie’s house. It was a home not too dissimilar to her own. Same kids names, similar-looking wives, same house … at least he’s consistent, she thought. She remained in her vehicle watching from a distance as, one by one, Sam’s second family left. First came his son when friends came to call, then his daughter who left on a motorised scooter. There were more than passing resemblances to her own children. Finally, Josie appeared. Heidi turned on the privacy windows and watched intently as her opponent passed the car.

Suddenly, a fleeting glimpse of the enemy wasn’t enough. Heidi needed more. Without thinking, she began following her by foot, trailing her for twenty minutes before reaching the grounds of Calderdale Royal Hospital.

As Josie entered the doors to the Breast Screening unit, an awkward Heidi hesitated outside. Her head told her to abandon this fool’s errand and return

home, but her heart demanded she stayed. She listened to the latter until almost an hour later, when Josie eventually reappeared.

Immediately Heidi noticed the paleness of the woman’s skin, the redness in her eyes and the sweat patches on the underarms of her top. Josie hurried along the corridor towards the exit as if being chased. But she hadn’t shut her handbag properly and, in her haste, it slipped down her arm and the contents poured across the floor. As Josie crouched to pick them up, Heidi broke her cover to assist.

‘Thank you,’ said Josie and then burst into tears.

‘Are you okay?’ Heidi asked hesitantly. Josie shook her head.

Behind her, Heidi spotted a café. ‘Let’s sit down,’ she said, and helped Josie back to her feet.

What the hell are you doing? Heidi asked herself as she returned from the counter with two cups of tea. This isn’t part of the plan!

‘I’m sorry,’ offered Josie and blew her nose into a tissue.

‘Have you had some bad news?’

Josie nodded and spoke quietly. ‘I received some test results that …

weren’t good.’

‘Is it treatable?’

‘It’s one grade away from being the most serious cancer. The specialist said they need to test if it’s a secondary tumour that’s spread from elsewhere before they start treatment. I need to come back for more scans.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Heidi replied, and to her surprise, she meant it.

‘It’s just come as such a shock,’ Josie continued. ‘I lost my sister to it so I can’t help but think the worst.’ She buried her head in her hands and cried again. Without thinking, Heidi reached out to hold Josie’s hand. Josie grasped it firmly and the two women remained in a contemplative quiet.

‘You must think I’m mad unloading my problems on a complete stranger,’ Josie said eventually.

‘Not at all. Do you … do you have a family who can support you?’

Heidi asked.

‘Yes, my husband and two kids.’

Heidi bristled at her use of the word ‘husband’. ‘Does he know?’

‘No. He works away from home a lot and I’d rather tell him about it in person but I don’t know how to. He’s been under so much pressure at work lately, he’s not eating or sleeping properly and I don’t want to make things any worse for him.’

Heidi knew she was likely to blame for his angst and suddenly, revenge didn’t taste so sweet. ‘Is he a good man?’ she asked.

‘He does his best. Money is tight, he’s a hard worker and I know he loves us. There’s my mum too. She’s in the early stages of dementia and I’m her carer. I don’t know how I’m going to look after her and fight this at the same time.’

‘Sometimes we surprise ourselves, we don’t realise how strong we actually are until we’re pushed.’

Heidi had dealt with enough bad people in her career to recognise the best and worst of them, her husband aside. Her instinct was that Josie was one of the good ones whose only mistake was to fall in love with a man she hadn’t known was already married. She didn’t need to know the truth, at least not now.

By the time Heidi’s car pulled out of the driveway the morning of the

£100,000 handover, she had made a decision. She’d met a woman who needed her husband more than Heidi did. Revenge no longer mattered; for Sam to watch Josie fighting cancer would be more punishment than Heidi could ever inflict.

When she was to confront him later at the locker in Milton Keynes where he was to leave the holdall, she would tell him their marriage was over, but wouldn’t mention that she had met Josie or that she was unwell.

That was for his other wife to decide.

On her return home, she would, however, tell the children the truth about their father. She was not going to lie to them; they deserved to have at least one honest parent.

Now, Heidi’s plan was in tatters, and to all the world, she was as deceptive and secretive as her husband. The realisation was sudden and the emotion hit her hard. And for the first time since discovering the truth about Sam, she released the grip on her tears. The woman her colleagues had nicknamed Elsa the Ice Queen was starting to melt.