The Delusionist

by Rachel Mathias

  “Thank you I’ll be fine. It all looks great.”

  “If there’s anything you need, I’m just across the road, and here’s my number.” She pointed to a post–it on the hall table. “I’ll be back in the morning to sort out the dogs, but don’t worry, they have a dog flap, and they don’t go upstairs." She pulled the heavy door shut behind her and I was alone for the first time in many weeks.

  The cottage was as you might expect, thatched, low-ceilinged, with rooms that led to rooms that led to rooms. I set my things down on the floor in the hall, taking in the smell of woodsmoke and wet dog, the slow ticking of a grandfather clock. Two fat Labradors came wagging to meet me, then waddled back to their beds, tails still thumping, big brown eyes expectant. I stood there for what may have been minutes or seconds, just being still.

  At some point Harry was going to know I had contacted Paul about the work experience, and if he hadn’t managed to get there in time for my first message, it wouldn’t be long now. It was Wednesday night. Paul said we could speak on Friday. I had 36 hours till I found out who Harry Dawson really was. And that still seemed possible, even as I finally drifted off to sleep at three in the morning.

  Chapter 22

  Thursday 1 June

  I was woken at eight by the ping of WhatsApp. Messages arrived thick and fast, panicky, furious, vitriolic and reeking of revenge.

  I know you emailed Paul. I know you’ve been going behind my back. How dare you contact a man who is basically family after what you have done to me? Have you absolutely no shame?

  Then

  You have no idea what you have set in motion here. Paul is going to know everything about you and your disgusting behaviour. You will be sorry.

  The phone rang and rang until I blocked his calls and then he tried another angle.

  Call me baby, just call me. I’ll never stop loving you.

  Then more declarations of love, getting more and more urgent, more desperate, and when I didn’t reply to any of them, he sent me this.

  If you don’t call me, I’m on the warpath, and when I am, I don’t stop. You deserve everything you get.

  Then, I know where you are.

  It's the first day of June. I don’t remember any other firsts of Junes, but I will remember this one.

  The sun has set, the garden is in darkness. Cathy and Jen left an hour ago. I have double locked the front door and kept the curtains drawn tight.

  There’s a knock at some point but I stay quiet and whoever it is goes away. I breathe again, but I don’t sleep.

  The next morning I call Paul as we had agreed, but it goes to voicemail. Then he texts me.

  “Sorry Rachel, I’m at A&E at Westland Eye hospital. Will have to chat next week. My day screwed.”

  Whether it was threats, lies or violence, Harry Dawson had got to Paul Rathbone before he could tell me who this man really was. I never heard from Paul again.

  PART 5

  Chapter 23

  Friday 2 June

  I took myself back to bed and stared at the ceiling. My mind raced with the questions I had wanted to ask - who is Jonathan or Harry Dawson? Does he own Hasam? Why is there no record of it online? Is he really developing a ticketing app for the FA? Who is Sam? Is Harry married? Do they live in Sunningdale? Why did he lie about the house? Does he have a car, a bike, a house in Spain? Is it true he is a gardener for the council? Is he homeless? Where does he live?

  Where does he live? I had never actually asked myself that question. At some level I had been assuming he lived with his parents in their house in Godalming, but Julie had said he was hardly ever there. I went back onto Companies House website, where the registered office of the business was listed as his parents’ house. Previously, and for one day only, it was listed at another house in the same road with a fake, or mistaken postcode. That address, it turns out, didn’t exist. There was no number 74 on that road. The registered address before that, and the current correspondence address for Harry Dawson was listed as 5 Roseway, Sunningdale. The other business registered there was a massage therapist. There was no actual link between that business and Samantha Brize, the second shareholder of Seatseller. I could find no trace of Hasam. Seatseller Limited had no website or any other online presence, it had a share capital of £2 and had yet to file accounts. The FA had not bought shares in Harry Dawson’s company. It was a shell, a hoax, perhaps a vehicle for something more sinister.

  Dishonesty is a spectrum. At one end of it, we deceive ourselves on a daily basis about what matters. We choose Farrow & Ball paint, Nike trainers, and pay people compliments we don’t mean so they like us and stay happy. We project a desired image to deceive others into thinking we are thinner, richer, cleverer, funnier, luckier – just look at anybody’s social media account. I am as guilty as the next person of projecting an image of myself I’d like them to have rather than who I am, warts and all. What if they didn’t like the real me? Then I’d be abandoned again. But there is a difference between the universal dishonesty we all buy into in the west, and the deliberate duplicity that aims to impress, evoke pity, or extort money. That is a far less forgiveable kind of deceit.

  Another message arrived. He wanted to know how I was, because he was struggling and he wanted to know that I wasn’t finding our separation easy. I resisted the temptation to tell him to look back at what he’d said, calling my behaviour malicious and disgusting, accusing me of lying to him and refusing to pay me what he owed, telling me he’d be sending a bill instead, threatening me that he was on the warpath. I didn’t need to refer him to his own words. If he didn’t remember them, or didn’t understand their impact then I wasn’t going to be the one to make that difference. Instead I told him I was numb, sleepy, confused, sad, that I wanted to shave my head and become a Buddhist monk, or shut myself in a dark cupboard. I had no energy any more. Everything I tried to do crashed and burned. It calmed him, as I thought it might. His WhatsApp picture changed again to a selfie of the two of us and he started asking again:

  Do you still love me baby?

  I didn’t reply, and there were a few more, repeatedly asking did I love him, did I?

  Eventually I told him I loved the real Harry, the one underneath all the lies and anger and fear. I said I had tried to pull him out but he seemed to want to stay there for now.

  What lies? You disgust me.

  Then later

  I’m coming for you.

  The picture changed back to Liverpool FC and the status to “available”. I felt that pain in my heart that you get when you hurt someone with bad news, when there’s no other way to say it.

  How’s it going?

  It was Maddie. I told her in blotchy summary what was going on, after deleting three drafts of it. I felt like a fraud, paranoid, obsessed. She asked if there was still a room in the house for her, and after checking with Susan,I told her yes, please, please come.

  There were lies, but Harry said I was imagining it, and every time he did, a part of me wanted to believe him all over again. Maybe I was wrong about all this. Maybe the house was actually his, and the move got postponed. Maybe he used to do some gardening before this app took off, and the alcohol on his breath was a one-off. Maybe he had booked Spain, rung Tabitha, genuinely lost his laptop and wallet. I had no proof he didn’t employ thirty people at his office in Liverpool Street. It was all still possible. He may well have been in a car crash, someone may have even died, but no-one in their right mind would drive on a ban. If you kill someone drink driving you go to prison, surely. I remembered my evening with Isabel, her insistence he’d been in prison, his denial, his story about hitting someone who deserved it. I wondered how often he had told that story. A quick internet search suggested that the maximum sentence for causing death by drink driving was 14 years, but that this was likely to increase to life imprisonment. Your sentence can be reduced by a guilty plea, or was that just for reckless driving? Surely drinking was drinking and death was death. How could pleading not guilty even be an option?<
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  My head hurt with the tug of war between trust and suspicion. I needed more facts. I thought back to the day he had his laptop and wallet stolen. I couldn’t remember the exact date, but looked up the Surrey police website and filled in a form asking whether there had been an incident reported and explaining why I needed to know. It must have flagged up something because an email pinged back a few minutes later saying that someone would be in touch.

  I texted Tabitha as well to see if she remembered ever actually getting the call from Harry about hiring the manor house again. I’d heard him make the call, but this would tell me whether that was another one-way conversation with nobody on the other end.

  Now there was only sitting and waiting. I wondered how Paul was doing, what he was thinking, what Harry had filled his head with, then my trusting side kicked in and said maybe that was a genuine visit to the hospital, not provoked by anything at all on the part of Harry. Perhaps I was paranoid, suffering from some mental condition that made me perceive the world as my enemy. Maybe Maddie was in on this, fuelling my suspicions and egging me on to a place where I really would be locked in a dark cupboard with a bald head and orange robes, while she rode off into the sunset with my man. Harry said there was something wrong with me, that I had trampled all over him, us, our future. Maybe he was right. I sat still at the dining table, staring out at the square where a group of cyclists were consulting the village map before setting out on the next leg of their ride. They passed round a plastic bottle, gesticulating down the hill with grins and back slaps, exuding health and vitality. Watching them in the silence of the empty cottage, I felt drained of life, an empty shell with a broken heart.

  My melancholy reverie was interrupted by the phone ringing. I looked at the screen. No caller ID. I ignored it. I didn’t need Harry’s wrath anymore. I was done talking to him. Every so often he’d say he was done as well, flinging finality at me before coming back for one last go, one last stab at getting me to hate him, love him, answer him, anything. The caller left a voicemail. Surrey police asking me to call 101 urgently for the purpose of “safeguarding myself”. I decided that the best safeguarding available was right here in the village square, with the chain on the door and two fat Labradors for company. They were following protocol, I got that, but all I needed to know was whether a crime had been reported that day at Godalming station or not. I opened my email and the response to my query was that no report had been received, but that I should contact the Transport Police, which meant another email, which in turn generated a reply informing me that my enquiry had been passed to the data protection team. I cursed protocol. Everywhere I turned was more uncertainty. Everything pointed to lies but the level of proof hadn’t been reached. Despite everything I knew in my heart to be a lie, there was still a sliver of doubt cutting through my case where Harry could slip through unscathed. I needed more evidence.

  Chapter 24

  Memories of a deleted proposal

  Maddie arrived that Friday night. I was so happy to see her. I hadn’t warned her about the shabbiness of our accommodation because there was a bit of a conflict, seeing as she had organized the joint present of 4 days here. To my amusement, she seemed just a little aghast at the sight of the boarding house set up in the dining room and the pervasive odour of mothballs that permeated the upstairs. It was all even more of a let-down after her torturous 5 hour drive during which the map app used all her phone battery, leaving her stranded at Exeter at the mercy of road signs and basic sense of direction, both of which were in short supply.

  “My mother wouldn’t be able to handle this.” She looked around at the tupperwares of crackers and mini jam pots.. In the corner, the electric massage chair I had barely noticed looked suddenly jarringly out of place. And that was all she needed to say. I got it. It was good to have my friend back, special agent Maddie was back on the case.

  We ate salad and drank wine, not too much – we mustn’t be alcohol hypocrites – and Maddie flipped open her laptop. She had been doing some digging as well.

  “One thing that’s been on my mind is this Sam.”

  “Samantha Brize of Hasam fame?” She had been on mine too. After all, I may have been sleeping with her husband.

  “Yes, but there’s something else.” Maddie was adept at flipping open a number of tabs at once, so we had the whole Dawson clan on the screen and could flick between them like reports in a filing cabinet. Jonathan (Harry) had 156 friends, mostly women with east European names. His mother chose to keep her friends secret but as we had noticed before, his father was very open with his posts, privacy and contacts, which was strange for someone so clearly involved in the underworld. Instead of looking for specific names as I had, Maddie just searched his friends for “Dawson” and that’s where she appeared. Sam Dawson.

  “It could be another Sam, a cousin?”

  “It could, but look, here are the cousins, and she’s not on their list of friends.”

  “A random coincidence? Or she doesn’t look at Facebook much?”

  “Always possible, but if we go down that route we go nowhere.”

  I didn’t want to go somewhere just for the sake of it. And I didn’t want any more lies to be uncovered. With each one I felt a new wave of self-doubt, followed by guilt, pity and shame at my role in this, and at my lack of trust. But Maddie was pushing this one.

  “You’re thinking he’s married.”

  “It would make sense, he got married, set up a business with her, then they split up, and she is still a shareholder but not a director.”

  “But Harry hasn’t been married.”

  “That’s what he said, but he asked you to marry him after 2 weeks didn’t he? So maybe she said yes when he asked her.”

  I wasn’t kidding myself that I was the first person he’d asked. It was perfectly possible, and the more I thought about it, the more likely it was. Harry had asked me just last week. He was cleaning out my car while chatting to the neighbours, winning them over with his well-practised charms, and I brought both of them a beer. He asked me, and then later he said,

  “Actually, let’s not get married. You don’t want to get married again do you?”

  I had forgotten it immediately, deleted it from my fairy tale, but Maddie had remembered. It was weird to change your mind about something like that so quickly. Unless of course you suddenly remembered you were already married.

  There was a WhatsApp ping, and I glanced at my phone. In the three lines of the message that were visible, he was telling me this was the last message I would get from him, and that it was my last warning. I swallowed hard, fought back a rush of tears that had sprung from nowhere, and looked back at Maddie’s laptop. She had looked at the likes on Sam Dawson’s handful of photos, clicked on the names of the likers and searched for more photos of her on their timelines. We found more Sams on LinkedIn, although most turned out to be men. By midnight we were flagging, and nowhere nearer the answer.

  I was making us camomile tea to take upstairs, when I blurted out, without any sort of intention, “We’re okay, Maddie, you and I, aren’t we?”

  “What?” She put her head on one side. “Of course we’re okay. What makes you ask?”

  I couldn’t back out now, so I let the words step tentatively forward. “It’s just that, with all the Harry stuff, you know, staying at your house. It crossed my mind, occasionally, that I might be missing something.” She frowned, nodded slowly, and I took it as a sign to carry on. “You know. I’ve been so blind to the obvious recently, and if there’s anything I need to know, please tell me, won’t you?” I was stumbling now, thrashing around blindly in my clumsy attempt to reach out to her. Reassure me I was screaming inside. “I can’t stop thinking about what Harry said in that conversation with you, about you wanting to get your own back.”

  I was regretting trying to say any of this, but Maddie just laughed. “Sorry, I don’t mean to smile, or laugh. Of course I don’t. But it’s crazy to say that stuff. Of course there’s nothing to
know. I’m a hopeless liar, and what on earth would I see in some psychopath lunatic like Harry? I mean, give me some credit! And as for the past – it’s the past.”

  And all I could think was that the more someone denies something, the more it’s true. She was protesting too much.

  “And you know it was a terrible mistake, and I’m sorry, and I was drunk, and…”

  “It’s forgotten.”

  I had dived into the murky lake and swimming to the other side felt easier than turning around. So I went on, and now it was me protesting too much. “I honestly thought, with what little thinking I was doing, that you and he were over, and that you had moved on, but I realise that I was making assumptions I had no right to make.”

  “Okay, have you finished now?” She looked me in the eyes but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

  “Yes, sorry, but this makes you crazy, never knowing anything for sure.”

  “I know. But you’re not crazy.”

  And I believed her.

  I was woken in the morning by the phone buzzing on my pillow. New Malden Police station had had an urgent message to contact me to establish my safety. I felt numb listening to the officer on the line, as she took a note of where I was, whether I was alone and when I would be back in London. I agreed to come to the station when I was back, but in my mind I was racing through possibilities: that Harry was known to police and had been reported by other women, that he had committed some awful crime and they were looking for any clues as to his whereabouts, without wanting to frighten the public.

  I climbed back into bed and slept for four hours. Maddie came in to wake me, worried I had died or something probably. At this point anything could happen. I laughed it off, dragged myself downstairs and smoked three cigarettes in the garden. My phone went again and I jumped. I took it back upstairs and switched it off, hiding it under my clothes in the top drawer. Creaking back down the stairs, I sat down at the piano, asking my fingers to remember pieces learnt some thirty years ago, which they did, falteringly, giving a new edgy tempo and random speedings up and slowings down to a Brahms waltz, a Chopin nocturne, and a piece by Clementi I could only remember half of. Having exhausted my repertoire, I moved into the massage chair. Invisible robot hands pounded up and down my back, and the chair arched and curled me up to a rhythm of its own. As it worked on me I felt tears gather in my eyes and roll down my cheeks, first just one or two, then pouring down until my face was wet. I stared at the ceiling and for a second I was a baby, waiting for someone to come and pick me up and take me away, hold me until I was calm again. As my muscles reluctantly softened, they released tension I didn’t know I was holding, leaving me helpless, hopeless, without fight or flight, good for nothing but weeping for everything I had ever lost.