Even though it’s now obvious that Natalie is deranged, I am appalled. ‘Fun? Emily was pregnant! You killed her, killed her baby, framed Roy for murder . . . for fun?’
‘Don’t be so dramatic. Of course it wasn’t for fun. And it wasn’t about Roy. Or Emily. Or her goddamn baby. It was about you,’ she says, reaching out to run a finger along my cheek. ‘Everything has always been about you.’
I jerk back. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I saw you in the park in Bristol, years ago. You were having one of your panic attacks. I was going to come up to you to help, but before I could, your sister and her boyfriend got there and you drove off with them. I knew I had to see you again, so I tracked James down at a conference, introduced myself, made sure we rubbed shoulders. Fast-forward a couple of years, your previous therapist left,’ she smiles, ‘and I stepped in.’
She leans forward, her face inches from mine. ‘This, however, is all about fun. So let’s slow down, shall we?’
‘You know it always annoyed me how ungrateful you were,’ she says. ‘You had it all, a family, a job, a husband, a good life. But you weren’t happy, were you? All these people, things, and you still weren’t happy. Always playing the victim. Always moaning. Even the first time that we met, at James’s fundraiser, you were completely off your face and still, all you could do was moan. James had to practically carry you out of his own event, and that useless sister of yours, faffing about, trying to make light of it.’
I wince but I don’t say anything. She knows I don’t like thinking about that.
‘But even after you gave up the drugs, it just didn’t stop, did it? I mean, I should know, I’ve had a front row seat to the Mia show for years now. They aren’t giving me a promotion. He’s cheating on me. She’s selling the house. They’re leaving me behind. It was infuriating, having to sit there and listen to you go on and on. Some people don’t have any of that, you know. They don’t have anyone in their lives to complain about.’
‘So that’s it then?’ I say, my patience wearing thin. ‘You were jealous of me?’
‘No,’ she scoffs, ‘I wasn’t jealous. I was intrigued. I wanted to know everything about you. I wanted to understand how someone who had everything could hate her life that much.’
She walks back the few steps to her spot by the kitchen counter and picks up her tea. She looks at me coolly. ‘I’ve always been fascinated with that little brain of yours. I mean, you’re practically the reason I became a psychotherapist.’
My head is spinning. ‘How long have you—’
‘Known you?’ she finishes for me. ‘Ever since you were a baby.’
‘So you see, as I was saying . . .’ she continues, and for a second I have a vision of her presenting at a conference or seminar. She speaks with such authority, she could convince anyone she’s an expert and I wonder if that is how she lured James in, how she convinced him without a shadow of doubt that she was an excellent therapist. ‘I’d been observing you for years, before we ever met each other, and I became obsessed with understanding how someone who had it all could be so unhappy. I wanted to see what would happen if I took it all away. I wanted to see for myself how unbreakable you were.’
Natalie paces in front of me, buzzing with a frantic energy. Her words bounce around the room, dizzying me as I try to make sense of them, until a single word centres me.
Unbreakable.
I never told her that. I never told anyone that.
My eyes flick back to the picture and I remember coming across another one just like that not so long ago.
My gaze settles on her and the realization hits me in my stomach even before the thought completes itself. Of course. It all adds up.
‘Who are you?’ I ask, even though I know the answer already.
Something passes over her eyes. The slightest shift in the dynamic as my words settle in. Her smile creeps off her face and sends shivers through my spine.
‘Why, Mia, I’m your sister, sweetie.’
MIA
Monday, 21st December
‘You’re Laurel’s . . .’ I stutter.
‘And she finally gets it.’
‘Laurel?’
Natalie’s lips tighten. She turns around to look out of the window and for the first time in all the years that I’ve known her, I hear her voice quiver. ‘She died. Less than a year after Dad. You ruined my life,’ she says, her back still to me. ‘My father had always been my secret. Mama, Dad and I, we weren’t like any other normal family. We couldn’t just go for a film or a picnic anytime we wanted. He was the most amazing father, but in hiding. Before the start of the new term, he’d sit with me and help me cover all my new notebooks. When I did well in a test, he would bring every ice cream flavour in the shop home so I could have whatever I wanted. Once, when I was upset because he’d missed the school play, he spent the entire weekend setting up the house like an auditorium so that the three of us could put on our own show. He was perfect.
‘But then, a couple of years later, it was like he just lost interest in me. He’d be gone weeks at a time. He even missed my birthday once. Mama said he had forgotten about us because he had a shiny new daughter. You. And for a few years, that was all there was to it. I kept trying to make him stay, but he kept leaving. Then one day, he announced that everything was going to be different. He said he was going to leave your mother and marry Mama. We were going to be a real family. No more hiding. And then, he finally left and came home. To us. Brought his clothes and everything. This is it, he said. I’ve left her, I’ve done it. Mama and I . . . we were ecstatic. The next day we went to the beach. All three of us. He said he wasn’t worried about being seen with me anymore. The waiter at the cafe commented on how much I looked like him, he said I was a spitting image of my father,’ she says, the memory filling her face with pride.
I look at her properly. The pale skin, the wide mouth, the flecked grey eyes. The resemblance is uncanny. She resembles him more than Addi and I put together. How had I not seen it before?
‘For years, the girls at school had teased me. I hated it. But everything was going to change. I couldn’t wait to take him with me to all the school events, shut those girls up for good.’ She starts pacing. ‘But then, of course, you had to ruin everything. Your mother had always tried to come between Mama and Dad, but she’d never dared to ring the house. But you. You found the number and called . . . and when I answered the phone, you just demanded to speak to your daddy. Your daddy. As if you owned him. He hadn’t even wanted you. Mama told me – you were an accident. But there you were, howling down the phone, lying, saying you’d taken a tumble down the stairs, that you’d had stitches. He was livid with guilt, kept telling you that you were unbreakable. He’d been drinking already. He made a big speech about how it was your birthday and he had to get you your perfect doll’s house. I begged him to stay, to pick me, but of course he picked you. He always picked you,’ she spits out.
Even now, that brings a smile to my face. I hide it away quickly. He picked me! Then I remember that phone call. I had forced Addi to do it. Told her if she didn’t find Daddy and make him speak to me, I would go out and find him myself. And then when I spoke to him, I had lied so he would come back. All these years, I had blamed myself for that. Perhaps I always will.
‘Mama tried to convince him to stay, to wait till he sobered up at least, but he wouldn’t hear of it.’ She pauses to steady herself. ‘He stormed out.’
I hold my head in my hands. I know the rest of it.
She grabs my hair and yanks me back, my spine crashing into the wooden chair with a thud. ‘Look at me,’ she screams, bending over so her face is inches from mine. ‘When Jane called the next day, Mama refused to believe that he wasn’t coming back. At the funeral, your mother and William, they didn’t let us near him. We were his real family, the one he loved, but we had to watch from the car. Your mother didn’t give a damn about what he would have wanted; all she cared about was you. Protecting y
ou. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. For months afterwards, Mama just sat there on the sofa, drinking herself into a stupor. There was no room for my grief. I was only eleven years old, and I was looking after my mother, who had gone, in one week, from being the most wonderful mama to a drunk who couldn’t even wipe her own snot. I bathed her, I cooked for her, I did everything I knew how to do, but none of it helped. I’d come home from school and find her lying in a pool of her own piss. But even that was better than having no one. When she died . . . I was eleven. I was eleven and I was alone. They called William and Jane, but they refused to even look at me. Just left some money and drove off, like I was some filthy little secret, not their niece.’ She takes a breath and for the first time, I see a flash of genuine emotion in her eyes. My father’s eyes.
‘I lost both my parents,’ she says, ‘because of you.’
‘Where did you—’
‘Foster homes, five in as many years. No one wanted me. I was too sad, too angry, too broken. I couldn’t wait to leave, to start training as a therapist.’
‘Like Daddy,’ I say. Despite everything, I feel a swell of emotion for her. No child should have to go through that. ‘In therapy, you kept asking me if I felt guilty . . .’
‘I was trying to give you a chance. But you’re just an entitled little bitch, aren’t you? If you hadn’t insisted on seeing him that very night, he would be here. I would have had a family, a life. You stole everything from me,’ she hisses.
‘So you took everything from me,’ I say, finally understanding what this has all been about, why Emily had to die and Roy had to become collateral damage. Affairs dwindle but a life sentence is forever.
‘You and Roy . . . did you two . . . did you have . . .’
‘Sex? Of course we did. We spoke about it beforehand. Planned it. He wanted it to be meaningful, poetic; he wanted us to make love,’ she sneers.
I picture them together. Making love. He was like that with me, once. Kind. Gentle. So, so romantic.
‘Of course he never hit me. That was reserved only for you. Because he could see you for what you really were.’
I close my eyes. I try to mute her out.
‘Still listening to those voices in your head, are you?’
‘How long have you and Roy . . . I mean . . .’
‘Not long, a couple of weeks, if that. Surely you’ve heard that the most intense loves are the ones left incomplete? I first met him when he was going to Paris, on the Eurostar.’
‘But how . . .’
‘His emails,’ she shrugs. ‘And yours.’ She looks at my face and scoffs. ‘I just told you I’ve been observing you for years, and hacking isn’t exactly rocket science. Keep up, will you?
‘You led me right to him. By the time I met him, I knew everything about him, what he liked, what he craved, his trigger points. He thought we were soulmates. I played hard to get to begin with, but I didn’t have to do much, not really; he was so sick of you, he was happy to do all the chasing. He was already feeling torn up about Emily, so when he told me he wanted to be with me, I asked him to choose – empty sex or true love. You know what he chose, don’t you?
‘I was counting on Emily not to let him go easily. But the pregnancy, that was sheer luck. When Roy told me she was having second thoughts about an abortion, I played the supportive girlfriend. I encouraged him to meet her straightaway; said we could delay our own date by a few hours. I even suggested the hotel he booked her into – the Seaford Head. The barmaid there owed me a favour. I met Roy at our hotel in Brighton and made him a drink after we, you know, made love. When the Temazepam kicked in, I texted Emily from his phone. I dressed in his clothes, took his phone and car and drove there. I smeared the licence plates, made sure it looked like he was trying to cover his tracks,’ she says.
‘The barmaid had slipped Emily a sedative as well. By the time she came outside, she was already pretty out of it. She got in the car without even checking who was in it. All I had to do was wrap the string around her neck,’ she continues, her words becoming more and more animated. ‘She fought for a bit, but she died easily, the poor girl. I put her in the boot, made sure they would find her DNA there, and then dropped her off the cliff.’
She stops pacing and looks at me. Her expression turns sour. ‘That’s when things got complicated. The barmaid was supposed to report her missing the next morning, but she chickened out. She ran away, didn’t even turn up to collect the rest of her money.’
‘So you tipped the police off. You were the caller who identified her on the train,’ I say, finally catching up.
‘Bingo. But even then they took too long,’ she continues. ‘By the time they started the search, the tide had washed her too far out. But I had other things going on. Your marriage was only one part of your life.’
It takes me a moment to grasp what she means.
‘The Eastside order. I told you about the tests . . .’
‘You always did talk too much for your own good,’ she smiles. ‘Next came the situation with your family, but all you needed there was a little nudge. You destroyed that one all by yourself. The only thing left to tackle then was your – what do you like to call them? – episodes. After I rejected you too, I knew it wouldn’t be long till you crawled back to drugs, and of course, you didn’t disappoint.’
‘I trusted you,’ I say. ‘I thought you were trying to help me.’
‘You killed my father.’
‘It wasn’t my fault!’ I scream out before I can stop myself. I take a deep breath. I cannot live with the guilt of his death anymore. He got into the car drunk. It was his fault, I tell myself.
‘He was my father too, you know,’ I say out loud. I get up. ‘I need the loo.’
She grabs me by the elbow and leads me up the stairs to the bathroom. It’s the only room in the house that looks lived in – a pale grey towel hangs over the bathtub, a box of paracetamol and a toothbrush sit on the sink, healing crystals and toiletries line the ledge of the bathtub. My eyes come to rest on a pair of scissors on the windowsill. I turn to close the door but she shakes her head. My heart sinks. I sit on the loo and will myself to pee under observation.
All sorts of things occur to me as Natalie escorts me back downstairs. It shocks me to think how long she must have been planning this. How ready she was when the opportunity arose and how easily I had led her into my life, my marriage. I don’t need her to tell me that if it hadn’t been Emily, it would have been someone or something else. And there I was congratulating myself on my cleverness, thinking I was going to confront her, when all I was really doing was following the breadcrumbs Natalie had so carefully laid down for me. The fact that I thought I’d be able to outsmart the woman who had manipulated me for years is downright laughable.
‘I think I should leave now,’ I say when we get back to the kitchen.
‘Do you?’
She returns to her spot by the kitchen counter, keeping watch over me. A block of knives sits behind her, next to my phone. A documentary I watched about kidnapping pops into my head.
‘You can’t keep me here, Natalie. People know where I am,’ I try.
She just raises her eyebrows, calling my bluff. ‘Do they now?’
‘What about your husband? Aren’t you worried he’ll find out?’
‘See, this is what gets me about you every single time. You’re so completely self-obsessed; it’s no wonder Roy went looking for attention everywhere else. There is no husband, Mia. Not yet, anyway. There is a fiancé, but he’s given me something of an ultimatum. Because of you. He says he can’t be with me until I’m ready to commit to him fully – no distractions, no causes, no needy, clingy patients taking over my whole life.’
It builds slowly, the dread, until I am completely in its grip. I can’t believe I thought this was going to be a simple conversation I’d be able to walk away from. I take a step back. I try to calculate the distance from the back door to the street. I notice the narrow path along the cliff edge leading d
own to the beach. Not impossible, if I didn’t fall off trying, that is.
‘Why are you telling me all this? Why now?’ I ask her.
She smiles.
‘Because you see, little sister, as much as I love torturing you, I have one shot at happiness left, and I’m not about to let it go,’ she says, slipping her hand into her pocket.
I stare at her dumbfounded as I realize what she has in her hand.
I need to get out, right now.
Addi’s words from earlier echo in my ears.
‘Don’t be stupid, Mia. If what you’re saying is true, this woman could be dangerous. We need to call the police,’ she had insisted.
‘And tell them what? That I’ve found my husband’s mistress, who happens to be my therapist, and coincidentally, my brother-in-law’s known her for years? So what? All that proves, Addi, is how gullible we are.’
‘Fine, then let me call James. Take him with you. I don’t like this, Mia. It just doesn’t feel—’
‘This has nothing to do with James. This woman has been controlling me for years; I need to see her. I need to know why she did this to me.’
Addi continued to fight me on it, but she was thousands of miles away and my stubbornness and stupidity knows no bounds.
I try to slow my breathing down as I attempt to work out how long it would take me to get to the front door, and then I remember all the locks and bolts. Even if I manage to get there, I’ll never get out. And trying to run out of the back door would be a death wish; one wrong step and I’ll be over the cliff. I have only one option.
‘You don’t have to do this, Natalie,’ I say, inching towards the table. ‘Daddy would want us to be happy. Both of us. We can work this out. I’m the only family—’
‘Don’t you dare talk about him. You have no idea what he would want.’ She pauses to pull herself back. ‘We’re going for a walk,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Now,’ she screams, closing the distance between us in two strides, her fingers wrapped tightly around a gun that’s pointing straight at me.
Your Truth or Mine? Page 26