The Therapist

by Paris, B. A.

  I frown. ‘Apologise?’

  ‘Yes. I feel awful about everything. We all do.’ She gives an awkward smile. ‘I don’t suppose I could sit down, could I? I’m pregnant and it’s been a long drive.’

  ‘Oh, Eve, that’s wonderful, congratulations!’ Spurred into action by her lovely news, I lead her to the kitchen and pull out a chair. ‘Here, have a rest while I make some tea.’

  She looks around, captivated.

  ‘This is lovely, Alice. I love that plate rack, and your amazing Aga – and is that a bread oven?’

  I can’t help laughing at her enthusiasm. ‘Yes,’ I say, turning to fill the kettle.

  ‘Your cottage is gorgeous, I’m not surprised you found leaving it hard. When did you move back in?’

  ‘Two months ago. I stayed with Debbie at first.’

  ‘You must be happy to be back.’

  ‘I am. I feel safe here.’

  She tips her head to one side, observing me. ‘Your hair. It suits you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I raise my hand to my head. ‘I always wanted to know what it would be like to have short hair and now I know.’ I don’t tell her that I hate it, that every time I look in the mirror, I see Thomas Grainger standing behind me, his face contorted with malice. But I’m getting good at blinking the image away; I refuse to let him carry on impacting on my life.

  I glance at her neat little bump.

  ‘When is your baby due?’

  ‘At the beginning of August.’

  ‘Wow. In four months. I’m so pleased for you, Eve. Will must be delighted.’

  She laughs. ‘He is. You’d think he was the first man to become a father.’

  I take mugs from the cupboard and milk from the fridge. ‘So, how is everyone?’

  ‘Struggling,’ she says and I nod, because I know this from Leo. ‘Maria and Tim have already left; they put their house on the market almost at once, for less than it was worth, and managed to sell it relatively quickly. Tamsin and Connor will be the next to leave. Then Will and me. We’re trying to stagger it so that the price of the houses isn’t affected too much. But we’ll still be selling at a loss.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  She gives me a little smile. ‘It’s not your fault.’ But she’s wrong, it is my fault. If I hadn’t been so gullible, it wouldn’t have come to this. Shame heats my cheeks, and I busy myself making the tea so that she won’t see.

  ‘We feel so bad, Alice, and not just because we didn’t really believe that a strange man had turned up at your party. We feel terrible about Oliver. We accepted too easily that he was guilty. We needed so much to believe that her killer had been caught so that we could carry on with our lives. We took the easy way out and that’s hard to live with.’

  I carry the mugs over to the table and sit down opposite her. I want to say something to comfort her, but I can’t find anything.

  ‘Leo said that you saw Lorna,’ Eve says, breaking the silence that has grown between us.

  ‘Yes, a few months ago.’

  ‘How is she?’

  I give a slight smile. ‘Struggling. She’s living with her sister in Dorset while she’s awaiting trial.’

  ‘They’ll be lenient with her, won’t they?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  While Eve sips her tea, my mind goes back to the day when Lorna and I were in the ambulance together. She had been so strong. A sort of euphoria had set in; she had managed to free herself, she had managed to save me. It hadn’t yet hit her that Edward was gone forever, and that she had killed her son. That although one nightmare was over, another was about to begin.

  When I’d next seen her, two months later in Dorset, it was very different. She was huddled in a chair, her sister hovering behind her. She seemed to have shrunk to half her size, and aged by ten years. It was hard to see her so diminished.

  ‘Oliver killed himself because I betrayed him,’ she whispered, her eyes blurred by tears. ‘He said I was the mother he never had and I betrayed him. I betrayed you too. John made me write that letter.’

  It took me a while to remember the letter I received, supposedly from Helen, the letter that had given me new resolve just when I was beginning to have doubts about helping solve Nina’s murder.

  I took her hand. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  She told me then, how it had all started, how even as a child John would quickly become obsessed by a particular person; first, the little girl who lived next door, then classmates at school, to the point where the mothers and teachers had worried words with Lorna before putting a distance between her child and the others. As a teenager, he developed a dangerous obsession with one of his teachers, and it had come out during his police interview – when, at fifteen years old, he’d been cautioned for stalking her – that he had interpreted innocent actions on her part as a sign that his love for her was reciprocated. One example he gave was that she would sometimes release her hair from its ponytail and let it swing around her shoulders for a moment before attaching it again, in what he believed was a secret and intimate message to him. Lorna and Edward sought help from doctors and therapists and John was diagnosed with Obsessive Love Disorder. He cleverly played along, leading everyone to believe that his obsessive personality was under control.

  During his university years, Lorna and Edward rarely saw their son and after graduating in 2003, he disappeared from their lives completely. It was the start of the Gulf War, and without news, Lorna and Edward convinced themselves that he had joined the army. One night, thirteen years later, he turned up at their Bournemouth home. He told them that he had come to stay for a couple of weeks and when they asked him if he was in the army, he told them that yes, he’d been fighting in Iraq. He was charming to the neighbours, telling them that he was home on leave, and was going to build his parents the terrace they had always wanted. For three weeks, he worked long into the evenings until he left as suddenly as he came, taking their car with him and leaving his behind.

  ‘Did you have any idea why Thom—’ I caught myself, ‘John, was building the terrace?’ I asked Lorna, because after her interviews with the police, the terrace at their former home had been dug up. Human remains had been found, later identified as Justine Bartley.

  She shook her head violently. ‘We knew there was something not right but not that, never that. All the time he was with us, we hadn’t felt safe. He was aggressive, threatening, and we were frightened of him. We told ourselves it was because of his experiences in Iraq but deep down, we knew that he had never been in the army and that the darkness in him came from something else. It was a relief when he left and we were scared that he would come back, so we decided to move somewhere he wouldn’t find us.’ She touched her hand to her pearls and I was glad to see this old gesture of hers, glad that there was still something left of her previous self. ‘We told our neighbours we were moving to Devon and moved instead to London. And when we arrived, we told everyone our son had been killed in Iraq. I know it sounds terrible, disowning our son like that but—’ Her voice trailed off. ‘And then, one day, we woke up and found him waiting in the back garden.’

  ‘Is that when he began keeping you prisoner?’

  She nodded and repeated what she had already told me while I’d sat tied to the chair. ‘He kept to the bedrooms at the back of the house and at night, we could hear him moving around. He never seemed to sleep. But often, at six in the morning, he would wake us and lock us in the downstairs room and only let us out at lunchtime, so we thought that was when he probably slept.’ She paused to gather her thoughts. ‘I wasn’t allowed out of the house, only Edward was, to put the bins out and do some gardening at the front, to keep up appearances. He would put his hands around my neck and squeeze until I could barely breathe and tell Edward he would strangle me properly if he tried to alert anyone to what was going on. We were allowed to answer the door but he would stand behind us, listening to everything we said.’ Her hands moved to the pink patchwork blanket covering her knees and bega
n plucking at it. ‘The day that you came over, asking about Nina, he was listening to everything. I tried to warn you, I tried to tell you not to trust him, I couldn’t give you a name because I knew he wouldn’t be using John. I knew he’d gone to your drinks evening, he’d seen the invitation on the WhatsApp group and after what he did to poor Nina, I was scared for you.’ Tears rolled down her cheeks as she quickly dug a tissue from her sleeve.

  ‘I thought you said that I wasn’t to trust anyone,’ I told her.

  She dabbed at her eyes. ‘No, I said “Don’t trust him”. But he knew I had whispered something to you and he was so angry. I swore that I hadn’t but then he found out that I had and he hit me.’

  ‘It was me,’ I said, appalled that I had been the cause of such violence. ‘I told him you’d told me not to trust anyone. But Lorna, there’s something I don’t understand.’ I moved closer. ‘When I told you and Edward that a man had turned up at our drinks evening, why did you say that you had let him in to The Circle? Wouldn’t it have been better to deny all knowledge of him?’

  ‘I was going to, but then you said that Leo wanted to go to the police and I panicked. John was there, listening, and I was scared that if he thought the police might turn up, asking questions, he would kill us in case we gave him away.’

  There was something else that had been puzzling me but I wasn’t sure she could give me an answer. ‘I don’t understand why he pretended to be a private investigator looking into a murder that he himself had committed. It seems such a risky thing to do.’

  ‘I suppose it was the only way he could think of to hook you in, tell you that he was looking into a miscarriage of justice and ask you to help him. He would never have expected you to get to the truth. It was why he was willing to take the risk.’

  ‘But if I had told everyone about him?’

  ‘He must have known that you wouldn’t,’ she said and I blushed, realising how well he had read me. ‘And even if you had, it wouldn’t have mattered. The private detective would have disappeared into the night. But he would have found some other way to get to you,’ she added, and I wondered how he had got to Nina, if it had been a card through the door advertising his services as a therapist to therapists. ‘It was a game to him, everything was about manipulating people into thinking he was something he wasn’t, like pretending to our neighbours in Bournemouth that he was the perfect son, and that the reason he hadn’t been home for years was because he used his leave to help war orphans. He was so charming that everybody believed him. Even Edward and I believed him at first.’ She paused. ‘Perhaps that was because we wanted to believe there was good in our son, even though he scared us. But we never imagined he was capable of evil, not until he told us he’d killed Nina. I hate myself for lying for him, for telling the police that I had heard Nina and Oliver arguing, that Nina had told me she’d been having an affair. But he threatened to kill Edward if I didn’t and somewhere underneath it all, he was still my son.’ Her hands began to shake. ‘I can’t believe what I did, I can’t believe I killed him.’

  I held her hands between mine, stilled the shaking. ‘You saved my life,’ I told her. ‘That’s what you did. You saved my life.’ I leaned to kiss her. ‘Thank you.’

  It didn’t seem enough. But what do you say to a mother who killed her son, who severed, so violently and with such finality, the umbilical cord that bound them together, to save the life of an almost-stranger?

  She rallied then, became suddenly stronger. ‘Then if I saved your life, will you do something for me?’ she asked. ‘And for Edward, because he would have wanted it too.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Anything.’

  ‘Live it.’ I looked at her uncomprehendingly. ‘Live the life you have. You’ve spent the last twenty years living in the past. Now you have a whole life ahead of you. Don’t let guilt consume you. We all make mistakes.’

  Some more than others. I can make any number of excuses for myself. Despite therapy, I have never recovered from killing my parents and sister. The judge’s refusal to send me to jail, even though I begged him to, robbed me of my need to be punished and I’ve been punishing myself ever since. Leaving Harlestone, where everyone knew my story and came together to stop me from sinking into despair, meant that I was left without my support group. But I had Leo, the only other person I had confided in, because there were meant to be no secrets between us. He knew everything, including my anguish at not being properly punished. It’s why, when I discovered that he had served a prison sentence, it wasn’t his criminal record that made me unable to forgive him, but jealousy. I was jealous that he had been able to atone for what he did and move on with his life, while I was stuck in the past. Already floundering because he hadn’t told me about Nina, I became even more disorientated and turned to the one person I felt I could trust, the one person who represented stability when distrust and suspicion, created unwittingly by Lorna’s whispered warning, began to colour my friendships with those around me. But the only thing I can really blame Thomas Grainger for is instilling fear into me with his night-time prowling. For the rest, I played right into his hands.

  Eve and I talk a while longer. It’s almost the same as before, but not quite. And that’s OK, because I know it can never be the same, not when I haven’t told her the whole truth. It’s the same with Leo; I still see him, we are still friends and he’s made it clear that he’d like us to be together again. But how can I if I’m keeping secrets from him, when I couldn’t forgive him for keeping secrets from me?

  Sometimes, I think he knows there’s more to what happened than the version I gave him. The last time he was here, he caught hold of my hands and pulled me to him.

  ‘I would never judge you,’ he said softly. ‘How could I, after the things I kept from you?’

  Eve leaves me with a hug, promising to let me know when the baby arrives.

  ‘Tamsin would love to see you,’ she says and I wish I could tell her that I owe Tamsin a huge debt, because if she hadn’t told me about Oliver not having a sister, I doubt I’d be here. I’m sure Thomas intended to kill me that day to stop me from leaving The Circle, that he would have led me upstairs on some pretence, and I would have suffered the same fate as Nina, Marion and Justine.

  ‘I’d like that,’ I say truthfully, although I’m not sure it will ever happen. ‘Give her my love.’

  I walk slowly back to the kitchen. It’s not always easy doing as Lorna asked, but I’m glad I agreed to see Eve. I sit down at the table, happy to get back to the book I was reading, then pause. Leo will be phoning later to see how it went. I’ve already taken one huge step today; maybe it’s time to take another and finally tell him the truth about the man who turned up at our drinks evening.

  The truth, and nothing but the truth.

  Acknowledgements

  First and foremost, thank you to my amazing agent Camilla Bolton. After five books together, you are so much more than my agent. I’m proud and honoured to call you my friend.

  Thank you to Kate Mills at HQ and Catherine Richards at St Martin’s Press for your precious input and unwavering support. And to all my other editors abroad, more than forty of you now! Your continued faith in my books is humbling.

  Huge thanks also to the following:

  The teams who work with my editors to proofread, design, promote and market my books. I wish I could mention each of you by name. But you know who you are and I also hope you know how grateful I am for your hard work and enthusiasm.

  My fellow authors, who kindly take time out from their busy lives to read my books. In particular, I would like to thank Louise Candlish, Jane Corry and Tim Logan for their generous quotes in relation to The Therapist.

  The bloggers and readers, who give up their precious time to read and review my books.

  My friends, both in France and in the UK, for always being interested in what I am writing, and for buying my books when they are eventually published.

  And, of course, my thanks to the wonderful memb
ers of the Curran and MacDougall families, most of all my husband Calum and my daughters, Sophie, Chloë, Céline, Eloïse and Margaux. You hold me up.

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