“Alicia, don’t say anything to Gabriel,” he said. “I mean it. I’m warning you.”
I didn’t say another word. I could taste his blood on my tongue, so I turned on the tap and rinsed my mouth until it was gone. Then I walked out into the garden.
Occasionally I sensed Max staring at me over dinner. I’d look up and catch his eye and he’d look away. I didn’t eat anything. The thought of eating made me sick. I kept tasting his blood in my mouth.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to lie to Gabriel. Nor do I want to keep it a secret. But if I tell Gabriel, he’ll never speak to Max again. It would devastate him to know he’d misplaced his trust in his brother. Because he does trust Max. He idolizes him. And he shouldn’t.
I don’t believe that Max is in love with me. I believe he hates Gabriel, that’s all. I think he’s madly jealous of him—and he wants to take everything that belongs to Gabriel, which includes me. But now that I’ve stood up to him, I don’t think he’ll bother me again—at least I hope not. Not for a while, anyway.
So, for the moment, I’m going to remain silent.
Of course, Gabriel can read me like a book. Or maybe I’m just not a very good actress. Last night, as we were getting ready for bed, he said I’d been weird the whole time Max was there.
“I was just tired.”
“No, it was more than that. You were so distant. You might have made more of an effort. We barely ever see him. I don’t know why you have such a problem with him.”
“I don’t. It was nothing to do with Max. I was distracted, I was thinking about work. I’m behind with the exhibition—it’s all I can think about.” I said this with as much conviction as I could muster.
Gabriel gave me a disbelieving look but he let it go, for the moment. I’ll have to face it again next time we see Max—but something tells me that won’t be for a while.
I feel better for having written this down. I feel safer, somehow, having it on paper. It means I have some evidence—some proof.
If it ever comes to that.
JULY 26
It’s my birthday today. I’m thirty-three years old.
It’s strange—it’s older than I ever saw myself as being; my imagination only ever extended this far. I’ve outlived my mother now—it’s an unsteady feeling, being older than she was. She got to thirty-two, and then she stopped. Now I’ve outlived her, and won’t stop. I will grow older and older—but she won’t.
Gabriel was so sweet this morning—he kissed me awake and presented me with thirty-three red roses. They were beautiful. He pricked his finger on one of the thorns. A bloodred teardrop. It was perfect.
Then he took me for a picnic in the park for breakfast. The sun was barely up, so the heat wasn’t unbearable. A cool breeze was coming off the water and the air smelled of cut grass. We lay by the pond under a weeping willow, on the blue blanket we bought in Mexico. The willow branches formed a canopy over us, and the sun burned hazily through the leaves. We drank champagne and ate small sweet tomatoes with smoked salmon and slivers of bread. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, was a vague feeling of familiarity, a nagging sense of déjà vu I couldn’t quite place. Perhaps it was simply a recollection of childhood stories, fairy tales, and magical trees being gateways to other worlds. Perhaps it was something more prosaic. And then the memory came back to me:
I saw myself when very young, sitting under the branches of the willow tree in our garden in Cambridge. I’d spend hours hiding there. I may not have been a happy child, but during the time I spent under the willow tree, I felt a similar contentment to lying here with Gabriel. And now it was as if the past and the present were coexisting simultaneously in one perfect moment. I wanted that moment to last forever. Gabriel fell asleep, and I sketched him, trying to capture the dappled sunlight on his face. I did a better job with his eyes this time. It was easier because they were closed—but at least I got their shape right. He looked like a little boy, curled up asleep and breathing gently, crumbs around his mouth.
We finished the picnic, went home, and had sex. And Gabriel held me in his arms and said something astonishing:
“Alicia, darling, listen. There’s something on my mind I want to talk to you about.”
The way he said it made me instantly nervous. I braced myself, fearing the worst. “Go on.”
“I want us to have a baby.”
It took me a moment to speak. I was so taken aback I didn’t know what to say.
“But—you didn’t want any children. You said—”
“Forget that. I changed my mind. I want us to have a child together. Well? What do you say?”
Gabriel looked at me hopefully, expectantly, waiting for my response. I felt my eyes welling up with tears. “Yes,” I said, “yes, yes, yes…”
We hugged each other and cried and laughed.
He’s in bed now, asleep. I had to sneak away and write all this down—I want to remember this day for the rest of my life. Every single second of it.
I feel joyous. I feel full of hope.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I KEPT THINKING ABOUT what Max Berenson had said—about Alicia’s suicide attempt, following her father’s death. There was no mention of it in her file, and I wondered why.
I rang Max the next day, catching him just as he was leaving the office.
“I just want to ask you a couple more questions if you don’t mind.”
“I’m literally walking out of the door.”
“This won’t take long.”
Max sighed and lowered the phone to say something unintelligible to Tanya.
“Five minutes,” he said. “That’s all you get.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it. You mentioned Alicia’s suicide attempt. I was wondering, which hospital treated her?”
“She wasn’t admitted to hospital.”
“She wasn’t?”
“No. She recovered at home. My brother looked after her.”
“But—surely she saw a doctor? It was an overdose, you said?”
“Yes. And of course Gabriel got a doctor over. And he … the doctor—agreed to keep it quiet.”
“Who was the doctor? Do you remember his name?”
There was a pause as Max thought for a moment. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you.… I can’t recall.”
“Was it their GP?”
“No, I’m sure it wasn’t. My brother and I shared a GP. I remember Gabriel made a point of asking me not to mention it to him.”
“And you’re sure you can’t remember a name?”
“I’m sorry. Is that all? I have to go.”
“Just one more thing … I was curious about the terms of Gabriel’s will.”
A slight intake of breath, and Max’s tone instantly sharpened. “His will? I really don’t see the relevance—”
“Was Alicia the main beneficiary?”
“I must say, I find that rather an odd question.”
“Well, I’m trying to understand—”
“Understand what?” Max went on without waiting for a reply, sounding annoyed. “I was the main beneficiary. Alicia had inherited a great deal of money from her father, so Gabriel felt she was well provided for. And so he left the bulk of his estate to me. Of course, he had no idea his estate would become so valuable after his death. Is that it?”
“And what about Alicia’s will? When she dies, who inherits?”
“That,” Max said firmly, “is more than I can tell you. And I sincerely hope this will be our last conversation.”
There was a click as he hung up. But something in his tone told me this wouldn’t be the last I’d hear from Max Berenson.
I didn’t have to wait long.
* * *
Diomedes called me into his office after lunch. He looked up when I walked in but didn’t smile. “What is the matter with you?”
“With me?”
“Don’t play the idiot. You know who I had a call from this morning? Max Berenson. He says you contacted him twice and
“I asked him for some information about Alicia. He seemed fine with it.”
“Well, he’s not fine now. He’s calling it harassment.”
“Oh, come on—”
“The last thing we need is a lawyer making a fuss. Everything you do must be within the confines of the unit, and under my supervision. Understood?”
I was angry, but I nodded. I stared at the floor like a sullen teenager.
Diomedes responded appropriately, giving me a paternal pat on the shoulder. “Theo. Let me give you some advice. You’re going about this the wrong way. You’re asking questions, searching for clues, like it’s a detective story.” He laughed and shook his head. “You won’t get to it like that.”
“Get to what?”
“The truth. Remember Bion: ‘No memory—no desire.’ No agenda—as a therapist, your only goal is to be present and receptive to your feelings as you sit with her. That’s all you need to do. The rest will take care of itself.”
“I know. You’re right.”
“Yes, I am. And don’t let me hear you’ve been making any more visits to Alicia’s relations, understood?”
“You have my word.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THAT AFTERNOON I WENT TO CAMBRIDGE, to visit Alicia’s cousin, Paul Rose.
As the train approached the station, the landscape flattened out and the fields let in an expanse of cold blue light. I felt glad to be out of London—the sky was less oppressive, and I could breathe more easily.
I left the train along with a trickle of students and tourists, using the map on my phone to guide me. The streets were quiet; I could hear my footsteps on the pavement echoing. Abruptly the road stopped. A wasteland lay ahead, muddy earth and grass leading to the river.
Only one house stood alone by the river. Obstinate and imposing, like a large red brick thrust into the mud. It was ugly, a Victorian monster. The walls were overgrown with ivy, and the garden had been overtaken by plants, weeds mostly. I got the sense of nature encroaching, reclaiming territory that had once been hers. This was the house where Alicia had been born. It was where she spent the first eighteen years of her life. Within these walls her personality had been formed: the roots of her adult life, all causes and subsequent choices, were buried here. Sometimes it’s hard to grasp why the answers to the present lie in the past. A simple analogy might be helpful: a leading psychiatrist in the field of sexual abuse once told me she had, in thirty years of extensive work with pedophiles, never met one who hadn’t himself been abused as a child. This doesn’t mean that all abused children go on to become abusers, but it is impossible for someone who was not abused to become an abuser. No one is born evil. As Winnicott put it, “A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.” As babies, we are innocent sponges, blank slates, with only the most basic needs present: to eat, shit, love, and be loved. But something goes wrong, depending on the circumstances into which we are born, and the house in which we grow up. A tormented, abused child can never take revenge in reality, as she is powerless and defenseless, but she can—and must—harbor vengeful fantasies in her imagination. Rage, like fear, is reactive. Something bad happened to Alicia, probably early in her childhood, to provoke the murderous impulses that emerged all those years later. Whatever the provocation, not everyone in this world would have picked up the gun and fired it point-blank into Gabriel’s face—most people could not. That Alicia did so points to something disordered in her internal world. That’s why it was crucial for me to understand what life had been like for her in this house, to find out what happened to shape her, make her into the person she became—a person capable of murder.
I wandered farther into the overgrown garden, through the weeds and waving wildflowers, and made my way along the side of the house. At the back was a large willow tree—a beautiful tree, majestic, with long bare branches sweeping to the ground. I pictured Alicia as a child playing around it and in the secret, magical world beneath its branches. I smiled.
Then I felt uneasy suddenly. I could sense someone’s eyes on me.
I looked up at the house. A face appeared at an upstairs window. An ugly face, an old woman’s face, pressed against the glass—staring straight at me. I felt a strange, inexplicable shiver of fear.
I didn’t hear the footsteps behind me until too late. There was a bang—a heavy thud—and a stab of pain at the back of my head.
Everything went black.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I WOKE UP ON THE HARD, cold ground, on my back. My first sensation was pain. My head was throbbing, stabbing, as if my skull had been cracked open. I reached up and gingerly touched the back of my head.
“No blood,” said a voice. “But you’ll have a nasty bruise tomorrow. Not to mention a cracking headache.”
I looked up and saw Paul Rose for the first time. He was standing above me, holding a baseball bat. He was about my age, but taller, and broad with it. He had a boyish face and a shock of red hair, the same color as Alicia’s. He reeked of whiskey.
I tried to sit up but couldn’t quite manage it.
“Better stay there. Recover for a sec.”
“I think I’ve got concussion.”
“Possibly.”
“What the fuck did you do that for?”
“What did you expect, mate? I thought you were a burglar.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“I know that now. I went through your wallet. You’re a psychotherapist.”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out my wallet. He tossed it at me. It landed on my chest. I reached for it.
“I saw your ID. You’re at that hospital—the Grove?”
I nodded and the movement made my head throb. “Yes.”
“Then you know who I am.”
“Alicia’s cousin?”
“Paul Rose.” He held out his hand. “Here. Let me help you up.”
He pulled me to my feet with surprising ease. He was strong. I was unsteady on my feet. “You could have killed me,” I muttered.
Paul shrugged. “You could have been armed. You were trespassing. What did you expect? Why are you here?”
“I came to see you.” I grimaced in pain. “I wish I hadn’t.”
“Come in, sit down for a second.”
I was in too much pain to do anything other than go where he led me. My head was throbbing with every step. We went inside the back door.
The inside of the house was just as dilapidated as the outside. The kitchen walls were covered with an orange geometric design that looked forty years out-of-date. The wallpaper was coming away from the wall in patches, curling, twisting, and blackening as if it were catching fire. Mummified insects were hanging suspended from cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling. The dust was so thick on the floor, it looked like a dirty carpet. And an underlying odor of cat piss made me feel sick. I counted at least five cats around the kitchen, sleeping on chairs and surfaces. On the floor, open plastic bags overflowed with stinking tins of cat food.
“Sit down. I’ll make some tea.” Paul leaned the baseball bat against the wall, by the door. I kept my eye on it. I didn’t feel safe around him.
Paul handed me a cracked mug full of tea. “Drink this.”
“You have any painkillers?”
“I’ve got some aspirin somewhere, I’ll have a look. Here.” He showed me a bottle of whiskey. “This’ll help.”
He poured some of the whiskey into the mug. I sipped it. It was hot, sweet, and strong. There was a pause as Paul drank his tea, staring at me—I was reminded of Alicia and that piercing gaze of hers.
“How is she?” he asked eventually. He continued before I could reply, “I’ve not been to see her. It’s not easy getting away.… Mum’s not well—I don’t like to leave her alone.”
“I see. When was the last time you saw Alicia?”
“Oh, years. Not for a long while. We lost touch. I was at their wedding, and I saw her a couple of times after that, but … Gabriel was quite possessive, I think. She stopped calling, anyway, once they got married. Stopped visiting. Mum was pretty hurt, to be honest.”
I didn’t speak. I could hardly think, with the throbbing in my head. I could feel him watching me.
“So what did you want to see me for?”
“Just some questions … I wanted to ask you about Alicia. About … her childhood.”
Paul nodded and poured some whiskey into his mug. He seemed to be relaxing now; the whiskey was having an effect on me too, taking the edge off my pain, and I was thinking better. Stay on track, I told myself. Get some facts. Then get the hell out of here.
“You grew up together?”
Paul nodded. “Mum and I moved in when my dad died. I was about eight or nine. It was only meant to be temporary, I think—but then Alicia’s mother was killed in the accident. So Mum stayed on—to take care of Alicia and Uncle Vernon.”
“Vernon Rose—Alicia’s father?”
“Right.”
“And Vernon died here a few years ago?”
“Yes. Several years ago.” Paul frowned. “He killed himself. Hanged himself. Upstairs, in the attic. I found the body.”
“That must have been terrible.”
“Yeah, it was tough—on Alicia mostly. Come to think of it, that’s the last time I saw her. Uncle Vernon’s funeral. She was in a bad way.” Paul stood up. “You want another drink?”
I tried to refuse but he kept talking as he poured more whiskey. “I never believed it, you know. That she killed Gabriel—it didn’t make any sense to me.”
“Why not?”
“Well, she wasn’t like that at all. She wasn’t a violent person.”
She is now, I thought. But I didn’t say anything. Paul sipped his whiskey. “She’s still not talking?”
“No. She’s still not talking.”
“It doesn’t make sense. None of it. You know, I think she was—”
We were interrupted by a thumping, a banging on the floor above. There was a muffled voice, a woman’s voice; her words were unintelligible.
Paul leapt to his feet. “Just a sec.” He walked out. He hurried to the foot of the stairs. He raised his voice. “Everything all right, Mum?”
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