The One Who Got Away (19 page)

‘There are three gyms on Bienveneda's High Side, and for some reason, Loren chose the gym that Lyric attends. Two days into her new program, they ran into each other. The way I understand it, Loren pulled into the car park, jumped down from the SUV and strode towards the sliding doors, apparently reading a message on her iPhone. A woman coming the other way said: “Well excuse me,” because Loren had bumped her.

‘Loren and Lyric had walked right into each other. And I copped it from both of them. Within seconds – literally seconds – I was getting texts from Lyric to say what a bastard I was, and calls from Loren, saying: “I hate you.”

‘Lyric called to accuse me: “You sent her to confront me!”

‘I said: “No, Lyric, I did not. Our couples counsellor advised Loren to join a gym.”

‘Lyric was shouting: “And by chance she joined mine?” I had to move the phone away from my ear she was shouting so loudly.

‘I left the office immediately to find Loren at home, hugging a pillow. “No wonder you liked her,” she said. “She's so pretty.” So we were back to square one, with Loren saying: “You love her,” and me saying: “I don't even
like
her, Loren. I love
you
.”

‘And that was when Loren said: “I want to kill her.” And I was shocked. I said: “What did you say?” And she said it again: “I just want to kill her. I mean it, David. When I saw her there, I wanted her to die.”'

* * *

‘Your wife and your mistress ran into each other quite by chance?'

‘That's right.'

‘And your affair with Lyric resumed in that same month?'

‘That's right.'

David and I were well into our interview, and the time had definitely come to address the elephant in the room: his affair with Lyric was not over when Loren began planning their second honeymoon.

‘Tell me how it started up again,' I said.

‘Well, she basically got in touch with me at the office,' he said. ‘It wasn't long after she ran into Loren at the gym. From memory, she rang me at the office.'

‘And what did she say?'

‘She said: “I need to talk to you.” I should have said: “No.” Instead, I said something like: “I will call you tomorrow.”'

‘But why?' I asked. ‘Why did you say that you'd call Lyric? Because you knew perfectly well that you were not supposed to be in contact with her.'

‘Indeed,' said David, sighing. ‘And, as I said, it was a mistake. I should have said no, and yet I didn't. And the next day, I called Lyric. She wanted me to go see her. I wanted to know why. She wouldn't say. I got the very strong feeling that she expected me to turn up. Her tone was certainly not light. And so I went.'

‘You went where?'

‘I went to her apartment. I drove over there and shot my car into her garage, praying that nobody would see me. Lyric let me up and opened the door and she was in a very bad mood. She said there were rumours going around the town, about us, and her reputation was ruined. She hadn't been able to get a new job, and that was apparently my fault. Yet from what I could tell, she still wanted to have sex with me! And I tried to back straight out of her kitchen. But she said: “You are not leaving.” And there was something about the way she looked at me that made me think she meant business. She wanted sex but she was
angry. She mentioned the recordings. She mentioned my clients. And I formed the very strong opinion that if I didn't give into her demands …'

‘You mean her sexual demands?'

‘Yes, her sexual demands, that she would perhaps do something to harm me, or my family …'

‘You mean, she might hurt Loren?'

‘No. Well, I don't know. But I formed the very strong impression that Lyric was angry and that she had been thinking about making her recordings public. Which would be devastating for me, obviously, but it would also destroy the lives of others. Not just me. Of many people.'

‘I see,' I said, bringing my hand up to my face for the classic, somewhat-sceptical-thinker pose. ‘And so you agreed to have sex with her again?'

Did the cameraman guffaw? Maybe, but he was pretending that he'd coughed. David must have noticed, but he ploughed on.

‘Yes, I agreed to have sex with her again. Because I felt I had no choice. I was trying to save my marriage and here was somebody who was determined to wreck my life. I had to make a decision and I obviously made a very poor one. I resumed the affair with Lyric. And that was very, very difficult, because Loren was watching me like a hawk.

‘I had to source a new cell phone. I had to get it connected to a pre-paid service. I had to hide it underneath the spare tyre in the trunk of my car. And I hated myself for having to do all of that. But what choice did I have? I was under so much pressure at home, and so much pressure at work, and now Lyric was threatening some kind of blackmail. When I think about it now I can see what I was doing: I was trying to buy some time to find a solution.'

‘I'm sure it was hell, David, but I'm interested, how did the resumption of your affair fit in with the Busonne Method? Total honesty?'

‘Well, I had to give that away,' he said, as if that should have been obvious. ‘How could I tell Loren that I had started seeing Lyric again? I couldn't. And I know that plenty of viewers will be sceptical, but seeing Lyric again wasn't fun. It felt dirty and scary. We didn't text back and forth in the same type of way we had previously. The flirtatious element was gone: Lyric's texts seemed laced with malice. And so, each time I saw her, I told myself it would be the last time.'

I tapped my pen against the clipboard. ‘You did?'

‘I did. And then, I guess, after a few weeks of this I decided this cannot go on; that I'm going to have to man up and face the music. I just had to find the right moment. And that moment came when Bette Busonne ordered me to take Loren away for a second honeymoon. I thought: “This is my chance. I'll tell Lyric the affair is over and I will go away with Loren. Lyric will be furious but I will be a thousand miles away and by the time I get back, maybe she will have calmed down, and maybe she'd be able to see that I had chosen Loren, and that I would always choose Loren.”'

‘So did you tell Lyric about this cruise?'

David seemed uncomfortable. ‘Yes, I did.'

‘And how did she react?'

‘She absolutely blew her top. She called me a bastard and every other name under the sun. What stunned me though was that she was also adamant that it would mean the end of things between us. She told me straight that if I went on a second honeymoon with my wife, the affair would be over. I wouldn't be able to see her anymore. She said she'd tried to make me see that I was the right person for her, but that would be the end of it
and she was sick of being used, and so forth. And I couldn't have been happier. Because that was exactly what I wanted to hear. I wanted the affair to be over.'

‘I see,' I said, ‘and so that's how you left it? With Lyric furious with you?'

‘That's how I left it, with Lyric saying, “I never want to see you again.”'

* * *

‘David, do you know what this is?'

I had produced a document from the pile under my chair and I was holding it up.

David tilted his head as if trying to read it. His face flicked with recognition.

‘It's the statement I gave to the Chief of Police after I returned from Mexico,' he said grimly.

‘Could you take it from me?' I said, handing the pages to him.

David swallowed, but he took the pages.

‘I'd like you to read it,' I said.

‘Out loud?'

‘Yes, out loud. I'd like you to read it for our audience. I'd like them to hear exactly what you told the police when you returned to Bienveneda after that cruise.'

David rubbed the top of his right cheekbone, hard. He glanced at his image consultant from Sally & Sons, took a deep breath, and began to read:

My wife Loren Wynne-Estes and I spent the evening before our planned second honeymoon to Mexico, together at our home on Mountain View Road.

Our twin daughters, Hannah and Peyton, were not at home.

Loren had arranged for them to spend the night with my parents and my sister, their Aunt Janet, as a special treat, since they would not be coming on vacation with us.

Their absence from the house would also mean that we would have the evening to pack our suitcases and the morning to get going to the airport without the two of them crying about wanting to come too.

Loren prepared a meal for the two of us and we shared a bottle of wine, having several glasses each.

Dinner concluded at around 9pm, after which I went into our home office to try to repair the wi-fi router, which had gone down for some reason.

Loren went into our bedroom to begin sorting through the various outfits she wanted to take on the cruise ship.

‘Don't take too many things,' I said, ‘because if I have my way, you're going to be living in a bikini.'

‘But I need some nice things,' she said. ‘We will be going to the Captain's Dinner.'

‘So shop your heart out when you get there. There are bound to be boutiques galore.'

‘Oh, don't worry. I intend to shop,' she said, not too seriously.

‘Don't forget we're broke,' I said, also not too seriously because although we were facing significant financial challenges at that time, this vacation was about healing our relationship, and if Loren wanted to shop, she could shop.

About an hour after I had sat down to work on the router I heard a noise and found Loren standing in my office doorway wearing a sexy new bikini.

‘What do you think of this one?' she said, striking a pose like a model, with one hand on her hip.

I could see what she was up to and since there were no children or staff in the house there was no reason not to step up to the plate. I stopped fiddling with the router and lowered Loren onto the floor of my office, where we made love.

‘If that's a taste of things to come this is going to be a great vacation,' I said.

Loren laughed.

I got up off the floor and went into the en suite to freshen up. By the time I returned, Loren had left the room.

I called out: ‘Hey, thank you, that was nice,' but Loren didn't respond.

I resumed fiddling with the router.

I cannot say for certain how much time passed but I don't think it was more than 30 minutes before I noticed that the house seemed to be very quiet.

I called out: ‘Loren?'

I received no response.

I got up from my desk and walked down the hall to our bedroom and straightaway I noticed a cell phone on the bed. It was a secret, second phone I had purchased some weeks earlier for the purpose of communicating with my then-mistress, Lyric Morales, without my wife's knowledge.

I grabbed it up off the bed, and turned it on. There was a list of unfamiliar text messages on the screen. The first message was from me to Lyric. It said:
miss u sexy
.

My cell phone, but I had not sent that text.

I'd had the phone with me while I tried to fix the home router and it must have fallen out of my trouser pocket during
the intimacy with Loren, or else Loren must have retrieved it from my pocket while I was in the en suite.

In any case, it seemed to me that Loren must have taken the phone back to our bedroom and then proceeded to text Lyric, while pretending to be me.

Lyric had replied:
miss u 2.

Loren said:
wot you doing?

Lyric replied:
missing you.

Loren said:
can i come over?

Lyric replied:
what about wifey?

Loren texted:
just one quick one before i go
.

Lyric said:
yes good come eat me.

That was it. There were no more messages.

My stomach was churning as it dawned on me that Loren must have left the house to confront Lyric.

I bolted towards the hooks where we kept the car keys, and that's when I saw that all the keys were still in place but the back door was open. It seemed that Loren had taken off on foot, through the Lemon Grove behind our house.

I tore out the back door, stumbling through the trails between the lemon trees. I snagged my polo shirt and scratched my face on sharp branches as I tumbled through the dark.

‘Lyric was dead?'

‘Right,' said David, reaching nervously for his water glass. ‘She was dead. That was obvious. There was a knife on the floor. It was a shocking thing to see.'

‘And what did you do? Did you take her pulse, call 911?'

‘No,' said David, shaking his head, ‘and that was a mistake. I panicked. I said to Loren: “We have to get out of here.” And
Loren said: “Where are we going?” and I said: “We are going on our second honeymoon.”'

‘So, let me get this straight,' I said, tapping my pen against my clipboard. ‘You've rushed into Miss Morales' home and found her bleeding on the floor, but you don't call the police? You don't call an ambulance?'

‘You're thinking I'm a monster,' said David, rubbing his forehead, ‘but I could see that she was dead. So my mind was just telling me:
get out, get out
. I was thinking: it will be two or three days before anybody finds Lyric here. She doesn't have family in California. She doesn't have a job. So we'll go to the airport, we'll leave the country, in a day or two, the police will find Lyric and her death will be a shock to me.'

‘Excuse me, but that sounds very … callous.'

‘I know it does, but I was trying to protect Loren. If I called the police, they'd surely arrest her.'

‘So you made a run for it.'

‘I did,' sighed David. ‘We both did. I got Loren to her feet. I took the dishcloth from its hook and wiped the door handles and anything else I could think to wipe, including the handle of the knife. I stuffed the dishcloth in my pocket. I pushed Loren back through the grove, saying: “We'll go to the airport. We'll get on the ship. We'll be miles away when Lyric is found.”'