Sidney Sheldon’s The Silent Widow. Тилли Бэгшоу

      The gun in my hand, a 9mm Luger, feels small and harmless, like a toy. The man who sold it to me called it ‘a lovely gun for a woman’, as if I were buying earrings or a silk scarf. I tried to take my own life once before, right after Doug’s … after he died. I took pills, more than enough, but I was unlucky. My housekeeper, Rita, found me and called 911. Not this time. This time my little toy gun will get the job done.

      I’m not afraid of death. Never have been, although as a psychologist I’ve treated countless patients who are. It’s a control thing, ultimately. Fear of the unknown. The way I see it, what I’m about to do is the ultimate act of control. Leaving the world on your own terms is a luxury.

      Not everybody gets that chance.

      Too many people have died because of me. Tonight another kind, decent man lost his life. A man I cared about. A man who cared about me.

      This can’t go on. I have to end it.

      The rain is getting heavier. I wipe my hand on my jeans to dry it and make my grip less slippery. No mistakes this time. I raise the gun to my temple and turn around, looking back at the house that Doug and I built together. A white clapboard, East Coast ‘estate’, beautifully lit, with a romantic balcony off the master suite that has views all the way to the ocean. Our dream home. Back when we still had dreams. Before there were nothing but nightmares.

      I close my eyes and see their faces, one by one, like patterns on a kaleidoscope.

      The ones I loved: Doug. Anne.

      The ones I could have loved. Lou. We’ll never know what might have been.

      The ones I let down: Lisa. Trey. Derek. I’m so very sorry.

      My last thought is for the ones I hated.

       You know who you are. May you rot in hell.

      I start to cry. I know this is wrong. I wish there were another way.

      But wishing never fixed anything.

       CHAPTER TWO

       CHARLOTTE

       Ten years earlier …

      Charlotte Clancy felt the warm summer breeze caress her skin and with it a tingle of excitement. It was part sexual excitement, part happiness, and part the unfamiliar thrill of doing something illicit. Something naughty. Dangerous, even.

      Charlotte wasn’t usually the naughty type. At eighteen years old she’d always been a straight-A student at her San Diego high school, where the most trouble she’d ever gotten into was for allowing her girlfriend to crib her Social Studies paper on early Mexican civilizations. Charlotte just loved Mexico – the history, the language, the food. She’d literally had to beg and plead with her parents to allow her to work the summer in Mexico City as an au pair.

      ‘I don’t know, Charlie,’ her dad said skeptically. Tucker Clancy was a firefighter and a deacon at the local Episcopal church, about as upstanding and conservative a family man as you could hope to find. ‘You hear stories. People get kidnapped down there. And the drug gangs … you read about beheadings and God knows what other terrible things.’

      ‘That’s true, Dad,’ Charlotte countered. ‘But those things are only happening in certain parts of Mexico. Not where I wanna go. It’s El Salvador and Colombia where you really have to be careful. And this agency, American Au Pairs International, AAPI – they have an amazing safety reputation. Like, zero incidents in twelve years working down there.’

      Tucker Clancy listened with pride to his only daughter’s negotiating skills. One thing you could say for Charlie: she never did anything half-assed. As usual she had all the facts and figures at her fingertips. And she was a very sensible girl.

      In the end though, it was Charlotte’s mother, Mary, who had tipped the scales in her favor.

      ‘I’m nervous too, honey,’ Mary told Tucker over dinner at the Steak ’n’ Shake one Friday night. ‘But I don’t think we should let our fears hold Charlie back. She’ll be at college in the fall, living on her own, making all these decisions for herself. She needs some independence.’

      ‘College is in Ohio,’ Charlotte’s dad countered. ‘They don’t cut people’s heads off in Ohio.’

      Mary frowned. ‘Well, according to Charlie, they don’t in Mexico City either. And the lady at the au pair agency was super-reassuring. This family they’ve got lined up for her sound wonderful. The parents are lawyers, they live on this phenomenal estate … Come on, Tucker. Let the girl live a little.’

      That conversation had been three months ago. Charlotte had been in Mexico for two months now, and boy, had she lived a lot. She’d smoked her first joint, got drunk for the first time, cheated on her boyfriend Todd for the first time and (she could hardly believe it, even when she said it to herself) fallen in love with a married man.

      It wasn’t the dad of the family she was working for, the Encerritos. That would be cheap and tacky, and besides, Charlotte really liked Señora Encerrito, her boss, and would never do that to her. Not that what she was doing was OK. She knew it was wrong to have an affair. In fact, it was worse than wrong. It was a sin, a mortal sin. Charlotte came from a solid ‘church’ family, and there wasn’t much wiggle room when it came to morals, especially sexual morals. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, either. She cared plenty, and she felt guilty and all of that. But none of that mattered. Not when he was there. When he walked into a room, when he looked at Charlotte, when he said her name, even when she heard his voice on the telephone, everything else went out the window. Her caution, her values, her fear, her regrets. Poof. Gone. And when he took her to bed and made love to her? Good God. There were no words to describe the bliss, the absolute ecstasy. Charlotte had had sex with Todd hundreds of times, but never like this. Never, in Charlotte Clancy’s wildest imaginings, had she believed sex could be this wonderful. So she wasn’t going to heaven? Big deal. She had heaven right here and his name was … Shhhh. She giggled to herself. She mustn’t say his name out loud. Not ever. Not to anyone.

      ‘What we have is a secret, cara,’ he told her, every time they made love. ‘No one must ever know. You understand?’

      Charlotte did understand. He was married, and much, much older, and an important man. Their affair had to be discreet. What she didn’t understand was all his other secrets. The mysterious ‘meetings’ he would disappear off to in the middle of the night. The attaché cases stuffed full of US dollars that she’d seen him hand over to the local chief of police in one of the fancy hotels in town.

      ‘You can tell me, you know,’ she would whisper coquettishly in his ear in bed. ‘I can keep a secret. I just … I want to know everything about you. I want to be part of your life as much as I can. I love you so much!’

      He always smiled, and kissed her, and assured her he loved her too and that he found her little outbursts ‘adorable – like you’. But he never told her anything. ‘It’s for your own safety,’ he would say, throwing in a thrilling element of danger to the already exciting situation.

      In short, Charlotte Clancy was having the time of her life.

      And tonight was going to be even better, the best yet.

      Following the map he’d given her – so romantic! – she got out of her car and weaved her way on foot through the maize fields and down towards the river.

      She’d taken a big risk a few nights ago, following him in the little Nissan the Encerritos had provided for her use, headlamps off so as not to be seen, only a few hundred yards behind him. It was hard to see along the bumpy roads, no more than tracks really, that he turned on to once they’d left the city. She’d started to panic, wondering how she would ever get back if