FRAGMENTED SOULS
FRAGMENT No. 01
’Til Death
NOVEL · PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER · WORK IN PROGRESS
An extract from Chapter One
By Kay Hart
BEFORE YOU READ
Three days into her marriage, Emma discovers her husband has been making plans on her behalf — and finds something in their suitcase she was never meant to see.
Content note: This story contains child endangerment, violence and themes of religious persecution.
CHAPTER ONE
Three days after marrying Oliver Hale, Emma discovered that her husband had called her boss and arranged for her not to go to work.
He had also booked Paris.
It was the second discovery that complicated her reaction to the first.
For several moments, Emma stood in the bedroom doorway with one hand still resting on the frame, looking from Oliver to the open suitcase on their bed and trying to decide whether what she felt was delight, irritation, or the particular kind of disbelief that occurred when somebody did something so outrageous that objecting immediately seemed almost impolite.
Oliver, who had apparently anticipated none of these possibilities or all of them, was folding one of her jumpers.
“You called Claire?”
He glanced up. “Good morning to you too.”
“My boss, Oliver.”
“I know who Claire is.”
“You called her.”
“I spoke to her.”
Emma stepped farther into the room. “Without asking me.”
Oliver considered this while smoothing the sleeve of the jumper before placing it into the suitcase. “Technically, yes.”
“There is no technically.”
“There often is.”
“Not here.”
A smile threatened at the corner of his mouth.
Emma pointed at him. “Don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re doing the face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you think if you look charming for long enough, I’ll forget I’m annoyed.”
His smile widened.
“That one.”
It was difficult to sustain anger at Oliver when he looked pleased with himself, and he knew it.
Emma had discovered that early in their relationship. He possessed the deeply irritating ability to turn an argument sideways without ever quite dismissing it. He would listen, concede exactly enough, make her laugh when she did not want to, and somehow leave her feeling as though the two of them had solved something together.
Usually she loved that about him. This morning, she was trying not to.
“What exactly did you tell Claire?”
“That I was stealing you for a few days.”
Emma stared at him. “You told my boss you were stealing me?”
“She laughed.”
“That does not improve it.”
“She said you haven’t taken proper leave in months.”
“That sounds like Claire.”
“She also said you check emails on annual leave.”
Emma folded her arms.
Oliver raised an eyebrow.
“That is irrelevant.”
“It seemed relevant to Claire.”
“Oliver.”
“All right.”
He stopped smiling. The change was subtle but immediate, his expression settling into the attentive seriousness that always made Emma feel, sometimes against her will, as though the rest of the room had fallen away.
“I asked whether you could take the rest of the week,” he said. “I didn’t demand anything. I didn’t pretend to be you. I asked. She checked. She said yes.”
“And at no point did it occur to you that I might be involved in that conversation?”
“It did.”
“But?”
“But then it wouldn’t have been a surprise.”
Emma opened her mouth, prepared to explain that surprises traditionally involved flowers or dinner reservations rather than unauthorised negotiations with one’s employer.
Then she noticed the airline confirmation on the bedside table.
PARIS CHARLES DE GAULLE.
She looked at Oliver.
He waited.
“When?”
“Tonight.”
The irritation did not disappear. It merely found itself competing with something warmer.
“Tonight?”
“Our flight’s at eight.”
“You booked Paris.”
“I did.”
“For tonight.”
“Yes.”
Emma looked around the bedroom as though evidence of a hidden camera might explain why her life had suddenly become the opening act of a romantic comedy.
Three days earlier, they had been standing beneath an arch covered in white roses while everyone they loved watched them promise permanence to each other. Since then there had been relatives to entertain, gifts to open, photographs to respond to, flowers slowly dying in every available vase, and the persistent awareness that they had somehow managed to get married without taking anything resembling a honeymoon.
They had agreed they would travel later. In Emma’s mind, later had meant several months.
Oliver’s definition was apparently Thursday.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“I’m still angry about Claire.”
“You can be angry in Paris.”
“That isn’t how principles work.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Shame.”
Emma tried not to smile and felt herself fail. Oliver saw it, and his own expression softened.
There were moments when the speed of their relationship still startled her. Eight months ago, she had not known Oliver Hale existed. Now his toothbrush stood beside hers, half the cards downstairs were addressed to Mrs Hale, and her wedding ring caught the morning light whenever she moved her hand.
Her mother had called eight months fast. Lucy had called it unhinged. Claire, with characteristic practicality, had asked whether Emma was pregnant.
She wasn’t.
There had been no emergency, no external reason to hurry, nothing Emma could point to when people asked why so soon except that being with Oliver had made waiting feel strangely artificial.
He had never made her guess.
That was what she had loved first.
Before Oliver, Emma had become accustomed to the small humiliations of modern dating: conversations that vanished without explanation, affection offered generously one week and withdrawn the next, the careful calculations around how quickly to reply to a message so that wanting somebody did not become embarrassing.
Oliver had seemed almost old-fashioned by comparison. He called when he said he would. He made reservations rather than asking where she wanted to go and then rejecting every suggestion.
On their fourth date, he had told her plainly that he was not seeing anybody else and did not want to.
There was something intoxicating about being chosen without ambiguity. Perhaps that was why his certainty could make her own hesitation feel unnecessarily complicated.
Oliver lifted her passport from the dresser.
“Four nights,” he said. “You and me. No wedding questions. No relatives. No one asking when we’re having children.”
Emma groaned. “My aunt asked once.”
“Your aunt asked me twice.”
“She likes you.”
“She asked whether my sperm count was healthy.”
Emma covered her face. “I had successfully forgotten that.”
“I never will.”
She laughed, the last of her indignation loosening despite herself.
Oliver crossed the room and kissed her forehead.
This was what loving him felt like most of the time: not dramatic, despite how dramatically their relationship had progressed, but easy. He noticed things. He remembered them. After years of being the person who remembered birthdays, booked restaurants, chased appointments, and carried the invisible list of what had to happen next, there was relief in occasionally letting somebody else hold it.
Still, she thought, looking at the suitcase, there was a difference between being looked after and being managed.
She was not entirely certain where calling Claire sat.
“You know you could have just asked me whether I wanted to go to Paris.”
“I could.”
“And?”
“You would have said you had work.”
“I do have work.”
“Claire disagrees.”
Emma gave him a look.
Oliver laughed quietly and returned to packing.
She came closer. He had done most of it already. Jeans folded neatly. Toiletries sealed inside a clear bag. Chargers coiled rather than thrown into the bottom as Emma would have done. A pair of heels she had not worn since their second date sat beside trainers and a small evening bag.
“You packed my underwear.”
Oliver looked at her. “We’re married.”
“That does not appoint you Minister for Knickers.”
“I’m almost certain it was in the vows.”
She nudged him with her hip. He caught her hand, pulled her towards him, and kissed her temple.
For a moment, Emma let herself lean against him.
Then she saw the blue dress draped over the chair.
“You’re taking that?”
Oliver followed her gaze. “You look beautiful in it.”
“I was going to take the green.”
“The blue photographs better.”
Emma looked at him. “Are we honeymooning or producing a catalogue?”
“I like the blue.”
“Well, I like the green.”
Something in Oliver’s face seemed to close.
It lasted perhaps a second.
Then he smiled.
“Of course. Green it is.”
The moment passed so completely that Emma felt faintly foolish for having noticed it.
She opened the wardrobe and pulled out the green dress. Oliver took it from her, folded it carefully, and placed it in the suitcase without further comment.
“You know,” Emma said, watching him rearrange the clothes, “you don’t have to organise everything.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
“I can pack my own suitcase.”
“I know that too.”
“You keep saying you know while continuing to do the thing.”
Oliver looked up.
“I like doing things for you.”
The answer disarmed her because it sounded so simple.
Emma looked away first. “All right. But I’m choosing my own shoes.”
“A dangerous amount of freedom.”
“I’ll try to cope.”
Oliver reached for the toiletry bag, then stopped.
“Your iron.”
“My what?”
“Tablets.”
Emma frowned. “Kitchen cupboard.”
“I’ll get them.”
“I would have remembered.”
“I know.” He kissed her cheek as he passed. “That’s why I’m reminding you.”
Emma watched him leave, listening to his footsteps move down the stairs and into the kitchen.
She stood beside the bed, looking at the open suitcase and thinking of how the morning would sound when she told Lucy about it.
He called your boss?
Yes.
He booked an international trip without asking you?
Technically.
He packed your underwear?
Apparently marriage had come with administrative services.
Lucy would make the face she always made when Emma defended Oliver: lips pressed together, eyebrows raised, waiting for Emma to hear herself.
But individual incidents never seemed to explain him properly.
Lucy didn’t see him remember that Emma hated coriander after hearing it once, or check the weather because she never remembered an umbrella, or keep the cereal she liked in his flat before she had officially started staying there. She didn’t see him set an alarm after Emma mentioned forgetting her iron tablets or quietly change restaurants when he realised one was too noisy for her to enjoy.
Oliver noticed, and then he acted.
Sometimes, apparently, in that order only loosely.
Emma picked up the blue dress and returned it to the wardrobe. When she turned back, she noticed a piece of paper protruding from beneath the suitcase.
Only a corner was visible.
She assumed it was a booking confirmation and bent to retrieve it before Oliver accidentally left it behind. The paper had been folded once.
There was no airline logo. No hotel name.
Instead, at the top of the page, in plain black type, were the words:
PATIENT COMPATIBILITY ASSESSMENT
Emma frowned and unfolded it fully.
The page contained columns of figures, abbreviations, and terminology she did not understand.
Some looked medical. Others might have been laboratory codes. Percentages appeared beside categories whose names meant nothing to her.
She read from the top again, slower this time.
Patient compatibility.
Compatibility with what?
Her first thought was that it belonged to Oliver.
The possibility produced an immediate, unpleasant jolt. She scanned the page for his name but could not find one. There was no hospital heading she recognised, no obvious date, nothing that made the document easier to place.
At the bottom of the page, one line had been printed in bold.
OVERALL COMPATIBILITY: 87%
Emma stared at it.
She read the number again, as though repetition might reveal what it measured.
The bedroom, which minutes earlier had seemed pleasantly chaotic with half-packed clothes and the remains of wedding life, felt subtly altered. Not threatening. That would have been ridiculous. It was still their room. Oliver was downstairs. They were going to Paris.
But the paper did not belong to any version of the morning she understood.
She turned it over.
Blank.
Perhaps it was work. Oliver dealt with enough private documents that Emma had learned not to ask questions about every unfamiliar piece of paper left near his laptop.
Except this one had been beneath their suitcase.
And the word compatibility made her think of donors.
Transplants.
Blood.
She looked down at her hand. Her wedding ring flashed in the light.
“Emma?”
Oliver’s voice came from the doorway.
She turned.
He stood there holding the small white bottle of iron tablets. His gaze moved from her face to the paper in her hand.
For the first time that morning, Oliver did not smile.
Emma waited for recognition to become explanation.
Instead, he became very still.
Someone who knew him less well might not have noticed. His shoulders remained relaxed. His expression stayed composed. But Emma had spent eight months learning his face, and something had happened behind it.
“What is this?” she asked.
Oliver looked at the page again. “Where did you find that?”
“Under the suitcase.”
He placed the tablets on the dresser, then held out his hand.
Emma looked at it. “What is it?”
“Let me see.”
“You know what it is.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
The answer unsettled her more than denial would have.
Emma lowered her eyes to the page. “It says patient compatibility assessment.”
“I can see that.”
“And eighty-seven percent.”
Oliver’s hand remained between them.
“Emma.”
“With what?”
He did not answer immediately.
The silence was not long, but now she was paying attention to it.
“Oliver?”
He stepped closer and took the paper.
Not roughly. He did not snatch it or pull it from her grip. His fingers closed around the edge and, after a second in which Emma could have resisted, she let go.
Oliver folded it along the existing crease, carefully.
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
Emma stared at him.
Something changed in his expression.
“That came out wrong.”
“Yes.”
“I mean it isn’t—”
He stopped.
Oliver was rarely lost for words.
“Is it medical?”
“Yes.”
“Yours?”
“No.”
“Mine?”
He looked at her.
There it was again: that fraction of a second.
Not enough to accuse someone of lying. Enough to make the question feel answered.
Emma’s stomach tightened.
“Oliver.”
“I’ll explain.”
“When?”
He glanced at his watch. “In the car.”
She almost laughed.
“The car?”
“Our flight’s at eight.”
“I’m aware of the flight.”
“We need to leave in forty minutes.”
Emma stared at him.
“You called my boss, booked a holiday, packed my clothes, and now I’ve found some medical assessment in our suitcase that apparently has something to do with me, but we have to postpone the explanation because you’ve scheduled it for the drive to the airport?”
Oliver exhaled. “Em.”
“No. Don’t ‘Em’ me.”
“I’m not trying to avoid the conversation.”
“It looks remarkably like avoiding the conversation.”
He glanced down at the folded paper.
For the first time, Emma noticed how firmly he was holding it.
Then he looked at her again.
“I promise you there is an explanation.”
She searched his face.
This was Oliver. Her husband. The man she had stood beside three days ago and promised to trust with the rest of her life.
Trust was not supposed to evaporate because of one unexplained document.
But neither, Emma thought, was marriage supposed to make questions impolite.
“Is it about me?”
Oliver did not move.
A second passed.
Then he slipped the paper into the inside pocket of his jacket.
“We’ll talk in the car.”
Something cold settled beneath her ribs.
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“I know.”
He picked up the suitcase.
There was no anger in him. No threat. If anything, his voice was gentler than it had been all morning.
“We’re going to miss the flight.”
Emma watched him walk towards the door.
At the threshold, he stopped and looked back.
“You coming?”
She should have insisted.
Later, she would wonder why she hadn’t.
Perhaps the document was old. Perhaps it involved work. Perhaps Oliver had arranged something medical after she had mentioned being tired.
That possibility irritated her, but irritation was manageable. Irritation belonged to the same Oliver who called Claire and booked Paris and remembered tablets.
It was easier to be annoyed with a husband who overstepped than afraid of one she might not know.
Emma looked around the bedroom after he left.
She knew how Oliver took his coffee. She knew he hated coriander and loved terrible crime documentaries. She knew he had attended St Edmund’s, a boarding school somewhere in Yorkshire, although she could not remember him ever saying much about his time there. She knew he slept on his left side and disliked having the bedroom door open at night.
She knew the scar beneath his ribs came from an operation when he was young, though she could not remember what operation. She knew he remembered everything she forgot. She knew he loved her.
At least, she had never before understood those things as questions.
“Emma?”
His voice travelled up the stairs.
She looked towards the doorway, then at the shallow indentation the suitcase had left on the duvet.
The unease remained. It was not fear. Not yet. Only the peculiar sensation that Oliver knew something about her that she did not.
Emma picked up her handbag. Her wedding ring caught briefly against the strap.
Then she followed her husband downstairs.
— END OF FRAGMENT —
This is an extract from ’Til Death, a work in progress by Kay Hart.