Her One Mistake

by Heidi Perks

  “I think he’s said enough today, don’t you?”

  Her husband chews on the corner of his lip but doesn’t look up at her as he stands, turning the other way to reach for his jacket.

  “Do you ever wish you’d never asked a question in the first place?” she says quietly as she follows me to the door.

  “Do you?” I ask her.

  She moves her head, but it is so slight I can’t tell if it’s a nod. “I can’t not know it now, can I?”

  I shake my head. No, she has to face the fact her husband once slept with someone else. I consider telling her to come back and see me on her own, but already she is talking to Tanya, fixing a date for them both the following week.

  When they’ve left, I lock up my room and wander over to the desk, where Tanya is pushing her thick glasses higher up her nose and tapping furiously on her keyboard. She doesn’t look up until I’m almost on top of her. “I’m off, then,” I say. “Sorry I was a little late.”

  The phone rings and she checks the line before answering, “Stella Harvey’s office.” I still feel a tingle of pleasure every time I hear her say those words. As she explains the pricing structure of my family counseling sessions I wonder, not for the first time, how much I could save if I didn’t have to pay a share of Tanya’s salary. I’d had little choice when I’d rented the room with the others in the building. Next to me is a physio and farther down the corridor a podiatrist and a Reiki healer, but none of us work full-time and I don’t believe we really need a receptionist.

  Tanya hangs up and turns back to her keyboard. A few more taps and she closes down the computer. “Prospective clients,” she tells me. “A young couple having problems with their daughter. They’re going to call back next week.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “Are you up to anything nice this weekend?”

  “Mike and I are visiting his parents. What about you?”

  “I’m having lunch at my sister’s tomorrow,” I tell her.

  “And how is Bonnie?” She raises her eyebrows.

  I laugh. “She’s fine. Her husband’s away this weekend,” I say, though I’m not sure why I mentioned it. I don’t even know whether this means Bonnie will be happier or more pissed off.

  Tanya nods, her lips pressed into a thin line, and I imagine her thinking back to the one and only time she met my sister. I know she wasn’t all that impressed, but I stopped bothering to defend Bonnie long ago. At some point I got past caring what anyone else thought or feeling the need to explain that, with so little family left, can anyone blame me for wanting to cling to what I have?

  Besides, no one has ever been able to understand our relationship. Not even I could explain all the intricacies that tie us together. In most ways we are polar opposites. But I’d made an unspoken promise soon after Danny left that I would always be there for my sister. That was when I began to wonder if it wasn’t all Bonnie’s fault she was the way she was.

  Mum used to whisper to me at night sometimes. When she thought I was sleeping, she’d creep into my room, pulling the duvet back over me where I’d kicked it off. I’d liked her kneeling on the floor beside me, her warm breath on my face, the smell of her perfume washing over me, which lingered long after she’d left the room.

  “My everything, Stella,” she would whisper as she gently stroked my hair. “You’re the only baby I’ll ever need.”

  I always used to wonder if that left no room for Bonnie.

  • • •

  Tanya and I leave the offices together. She turns left as I cross over toward the park, a cut-through on my twenty-minute walk home, past the cathedral and to my flat that sits just on the outskirts the other side of Winchester.

  I like the walk home, even in January when the only light is from the streetlamps and the cold air bites at my skin. It gives me a chance to mull over my client list for the following week and, as I always do on a Friday, vow to invest more time in building up my business.

  Making a decision to set up on my own as a family therapist hadn’t been done on a whim. I was never one of those children who’d decided early on what job they would do. When I was young, I’d thought I’d most likely end up drawing pictures for books just because my best friend, Jill, wanted to be an author, though I didn’t have an artistic bone in my body. Even after A-levels, I still had no idea, and it took ten unhappy years in recruitment and a satisfying severance package for me to make the break.

  It was eleven months ago that I signed up for the training and obligatory therapy I had to undertake myself before I could counsel others. My therapist had underlined the importance of the latter early on. Carrying childhood scars or unresolved issues from previous relationships could make my advice biased.

  I’d tried to decline the opportunity, but it was clear this wasn’t something I was going to be able to get out of and I knew if I pushed much harder I would raise suspicion. I was sure they’d think it highly unusual that I didn’t want to dig into my own family dynamics. But I had filed away most parts of my life into a neat little box and hidden it deep. We were very good at that as a family. I had learned from the best, even if it did go against everything I expected from my clients.

  So why are you interested in family counseling? was the first question I’d been asked in my introductory session.

  I told the therapist how lucky I’d been growing up. That I’d had very loving parents and my upbringing on the island of Evergreen has been idyllic. I said I was interested in familial relationships and always thought I had an ability to listen and help. I told her the truth to a point. The point where we left the island. Or maybe just before that.

  She’d been curious to know more about Evergreen, as most people are. “And only one hundred people lived there?” she’d asked me, stunned.

  I nodded. “Just over. I knew all of them and they all knew me.” I told her how wonderful it was as she gaped back at me. “I honestly loved it.” I laughed. I knew some people thought it was claustrophobic, but there was nowhere else on earth I wanted to be.

  “And you didn’t find it too remote?” Another popular question, because even though the ferry only took thirty minutes, you couldn’t see Evergreen from the Dorset coast.

  “I didn’t.” I’d smiled, careful not to let cracks show. My sister, however, hated the fact that in the winter months my dad’s ferry only ran once a day. But then, my sister hated all the things that’d made me love it.

  I knew the therapist would soon be digging her fingers into the end of our last summer on the island and the years after we’d left. She would want to know what triggered my family to break down, and I wouldn’t be able to tell her. Every one of us held our secrets close, and because we’d never spoken about them, they’d cracked us apart in the end.

  I wanted to help other families talk because that’s where we went wrong, only I wasn’t going to tell her that. Instead I breezed through what happened to us after we left, highlighting only the bare facts.

  I try to banish the memories of the few sessions I’d endured, as a drop of rain splats on my head. Soon I need to dive for cover in the nearest shop before I’m drenched. I must have left my umbrella at work, I realize, as I meander toward the wine shelves of the convenience store, choosing a £10 bottle of sauvignon blanc while waiting for the worst of the rain to pass.

  Back at my flat I pour a glass and sit by the window in the kitchen, watching the rain that is now steadily drumming against the pane. Despite having little to do this weekend, and regardless of the fact I don’t work a usual five-day week, I still get that Friday feeling and have gotten into a comfortable routine: once I’ve finished this glass I’ll make a curry, then have another drink with Marco in his flat above me, while ignoring his pleas to join him clubbing.

  As it is, I don’t get back to my own flat until just before 10 p.m., but I’m not ready to go to bed. Instead I pull a blanket over me and snuggle down on the sofa, flicking on the TV and grabbing a magazine from the coffee table that I idly thumb through.
>
  The news comes on and I glance up. A reporter is standing outside a house, a large umbrella over her while the wind whips her ponytail from side to side. My eyes drift to the ticker tape at the bottom of the screen and then back again to her. I don’t recognize any of the details behind her at first and am about to turn back to the magazine, when something catches my attention.

  They’ve caught it at a funny angle, one you’d barely stop to look at, but there’s a distinguishable window on the top floor, circular with obscured glass. I inch forward on the sofa and grab the remote again, turning up the volume so I can hear what she’s saying over the hammering that’s beginning to beat in my ears.

  It’s funny that I didn’t recognize it immediately, when every detail is etched on the inside of my eyelids. When all I need to do is call up my memory and I can paint a picture of a thousand pixels in intricate detail. But then, it doesn’t look the same. Not entirely.

  The other windowsills are painted a deep teal, and now the camera is panning out so I can see more of it. There are colonial-style white fascia boards and a conservatory at the front. It doesn’t look like my house any longer. Yet unmistakably it is. The white picket fence that runs along the left-hand side is still there. Dad had put that up one summer to separate our garden from the path that runs alongside it. On the right, tall pines still drape the length of the garden.

  I feel my pulse racing quicker and I try to ignore it to focus on her words. “Clearly the whole island is in shock,” she says.

  I look back at the ticker tape reeling its breaking news, the words . . . Island last night, roll out of sight to the left of the screen and a new headline about Syria follows.

  “And are the police able to release any more details?” This comes from a woman in the studio, but the screen is still filled with the view of my house and garden, panning out farther still and exposing a white police tent that is flanked by officers. It has been erected to the right, behind the house, tucked neatly between it and the trees that separate the garden from the woods beyond.

  “Not yet, but the forensics teams have been working here all day,” the reporter says.

  I look back at the tape. Body found on Evergreen Island last night, it now reads in full. I freeze, before scrunching my hands up tightly, willing the blood to rush through them and stop the numbness from spreading up my arms.

  A body has been found on the island. And even though no one has said it outright, it’s clear it’s been buried in the garden of my old house.

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  Gallery Books

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Heidi Perks

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Gallery Books hardcover edition January 2019

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  Interior design by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

  Jacket design by Black Kat Design

  Jacket photograph © Elisabeth Ansley/Arcangel

  Author photograph © Andy Rapkins

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-1-5011-9422-1

  ISBN 978-1-5011-9423-8 (ebook)