by Sarah Rayne
Sort things out? What kind of things? A new nightmare rose up to confront Donna, but surely whatever else Don might do, he would never betray her. He would never say, ‘Well, actually, doctor, my sister and I screwed each other one summer, and our parents tried to separate us, so she murdered them. She murdered them for me, you see, but when I found out, it turned me on…and I don’t think I can live with any of it.’
Of course he would not say anything like that.
But Donna still had no idea if Don had genuinely meant to die that night, or if it had been one of his melodramatic gestures, or even if the whole thing had been staged with the intention of teaching her a lesson. She thought him capable of that. Knowing it, did not affect the strength of her love for him.
Afterwards he seemed oddly happier, as if the suicide attempt–whether it had been serious or not–had provided some kind of catharsis, and as if all the complex self-hatred had drained away. After a time Donna dared to trust this new mood; she began to hope that they might be Donna and Don again, within reach of that enchanted life together she had imagined for them. Don attended the pyschiatric clinic faithfully, although he said it was all a bit of a nuisance; you had to wait around for hours and the chairs were uncomfortable, and there was only the gruesome machine-coffee and tattered magazines to pass the time.
Donna said at once that she would come with him. It would be company, and she could always arrange her hours at Jean-Pierre’s to fit. Perhaps the doctors would like to talk to her as well. Had he told them he had a sister?
But Don said he preferred to go by himself, thank you. No, he had not told anyone he had a sister; they had asked about family of course, but he had not wanted a lot of fuss, so he had said he was on his own. Well, he was sorry if Donna found that hurtful, but that was the way he wanted to play it. Take it or leave it, said his tone, briefly returning to the old defiance. And while they were on the subject, would she please stop watching him all the time, as if she thought he was about to fly for the pills or a cut-throat razor. It was unnerving. He was perfectly all right now, mostly thanks to the doctor he was seeing–he was sorry if she found that hurtful as well, but it happened to be the truth. No, it was not a man who was treating him, it was a woman and she was very nice, very helpful. And now could they forget the matter.
After a while he began to go out again in the evenings, always around the same time, sometimes taking the car with or without Donna’s permission, sometimes walking. He was not especially late in returning home, and he never seemed to be the worse for drink. He did not say where he had been or who he had been with, but Donna knew it was a girl, and bitterness engulfed her all over again because she knew–positively and definitely–they had been about to regain those magical years when they had been growing up. And now some cheap little tart had ruined everything.
She began to follow him when she could–when her hours at Jean Pierre’s could be switched, and when Don did not take the car. This was not prying, it was just making sure he was all right. Because if he really had swallowed sleeping pills and vodka, he had not been just playing with the idea of a romantic death at all; he had been serious.
She was discreet and careful and she was sure he did not know what she was doing, and by dint of being patient she finally found out where he went. He went to the hospital, and he waited for an unknown female who apparently worked there.
From the safety of her car, Donna saw quite clearly the eager adoration on Don’s face, and she saw, as well, that the woman he stared at so longingly was not some doe-eyed teenager, or some breathless young girl of whom he would quickly tire. A scalding jealousy filled her entire body.
When she was sure Don was not around to see, she followed the woman a few times on her own account. From there, it was easy enough to make a vague inquiry at the busy hospital reception desk. She needed to put a name to this creature. But when she had the name the entire thing turned itself around 360 degrees, because the woman was the doctor who had treated Don on the night of the suicide bid, and whose out-patients’ clinic he had been attending ever since.
Dr Antonia Weston. A qualified pyschiatrist. Successful and clever.
Donna studied Weston as closely as she dared. She was a few years older than Donna herself–perhaps late twenties–and she had unremarkable brown hair, and an ordinary sort of figure. She did not dress very strikingly, and at first Donna could not think what Don could see in her. Don liked people and things to be unusual or rare, or to be beautiful and glossy, and Weston was not even especially good-looking. But then she began to see that the woman had a certain quality–a way of looking at people. Would you call it magnetism? Charisma? Donna did not want to call it either of these things, but she would be fair and admit that there was something indefinable about Antonia that drew you to her.
She made sure Weston did not see her, and she did not stay around to see Weston and Don actually meet or try to find out where they might go, because she could not have borne seeing them together. She supposed they met somewhere discreet–some tucked-away bar or restaurant, because of Don being Dr Weston’s patient. But whatever they did and wherever they met, this doctor, this Antonia Weston, had snatched Don away from Donna.
Bitch. Bitch. It did not matter if she was all the sex goddesses of the world rolled into one or if she looked like the back end of a bus; she would be a far more formidable foe than some adoring little eighteen-year-old.
So did this bitch return Don’s feelings? Or was it the other way around: was she leading him on, secretly amused at the age difference, boasting to her friends that she had a toy boy? Getting a kick out of having an affair with a patient, seeing herself as a femme fatale…
Fatale. It was a good word. Things always sounded more dramatic in French. And it was a fatale situation all right, in fact it might be very bloody fatale indeed for Antonia Weston if she did not take her claws out of Donna’s beautiful boy.
Donna began to consider what to do about Dr Antonia Weston.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
By the fourth session with Don Robards, Antonia was starting to feel very uneasy.
She could not immediately pinpoint the reason for this uneasiness, but it was a little to do with the straight blue stare he gave her when they talked, and a great deal to do with the growing conviction that there was something very dark and very complex beneath the too facile charm. It was, of course, absurd to feel this nervous apprehension, because she was very used to the strange and often twisted things that lay deeply buried in people’s minds.
On the surface Don was a model patient. He attended all the appointments made for him, and talked with apparent openness about his childhood. It had been normal and unremarkable, he said, although the death of his parents had been a dreadful blow. But he had got over it–well, as much as you did get over that kind of thing. No, there was no other family, he said–absolutely none at all. But friends had helped out; he had good friends.
No, he had not got a girlfriend at present, although there had been girlfriends over the years, of course. He had only just returned from three or four years living in France, so he was still picking up the threads of his English life.
Antonia, listening carefully for clues as to what lay beneath this apparent normality, wondered if he might be gay, and if that might be his problem. But she thought not, although you could never be entirely sure.
Don stuck to his story about finding the idea of youthful death romantic and tempting, but denied having said he had discovered something so appalling he did not want to live. Dr Weston must have misheard or misunderstood.
My good young man, thought Antonia, I neither misheard nor misunderstood. And I don’t think I’m misunderstanding that come-to-bed look you’re giving me now, and if I’m right about it, we may have a problem ahead of us.
It was shortly after the fourth session that she became aware of the dark blue hatchback with the distinctive chipped number plate. It always seemed to be around, parked near her space at the hos
pital or driving behind her as she went to or from the clinic. It was not an especially remarkable occurrence, until she realized it was Don driving the car.
‘He could be simply visiting someone in one of the wards and using the staff car park,’ she said to Jonathan. ‘But I think there’s more to it.’
‘Why?’
Antonia hesitated, and then said, ‘Because during the last fortnight I’ve seen him too many times. In the supermarket and in the street near my home. Last week he was two rows behind me at the cinema.’
‘Does he speak to you?’ said Jonathan.
‘Mostly he pretends he hasn’t seen me. I know it could all be coincidence, but it’s starting to spook me a bit.’
‘Have you mentioned it to him? When he comes into the clinic?’
‘No.’
‘Hm. Is he becoming fixated on you?’
Antonia heard with gratitude the doctor speaking, the real Jonathan who cared very deeply about people and their tangled minds, rather than the frivolous flirt which was all most people saw. She said, ‘I don’t know. It happens sometimes.’
‘Yes, it does. One of the occupational hazards. What treatment are you trying?’
‘Mostly talking at the moment–you know how it goes. Winning confidence, implanting ideas, trying to get through the layers of protective armour to the real problem. I haven’t prescribed anything, and I shan’t unless things suddenly change. I’ve had him checked regularly for drugs, of course.’
‘Good.’
‘He’s clean every time. He tested clean the night of the suicide bid, as well. So whatever triggered it wasn’t drugs. He’s covering up the real reason, and whatever it is, it’s so deeply buried I’m nowhere near reaching it.’
‘D’you want to switch him to me?’
‘Not yet,’ said Antonia, frowning. ‘I’ll see if I can get him to join a group session and you can sit in and make your own assessment.’
‘All right.’ He looked at her. ‘Have you told Richard about this?’
‘No, I haven’t. I can’t, can I?’
They looked at one another. ‘No,’ said Jonathan slowly. ‘No, you can’t, I can see that.’
‘I don’t think he’s dangerous,’ Jonathan said, after two of the group sessions. ‘And at the moment I don’t think he’s in danger.’
Antonia had not thought so either, but she was glad to have it confirmed.
‘But what I do think,’ said Jonathan, thoughtfully, ‘is that he’s heading for a full-blown fantasy with you in the leading role, and that worries me. I have an idea he’s visualizing the two of you in some close and rather emotional environment–maybe something like a humanitarian expedition to take medical aid to one of the third world countries, or something of that kind.’
Antonia supposed that as fantasies went, this might be just about credible.
‘It is credible, and that’s going to make it more difficult to dislodge. He’s only a few steps away from imagining torrid nights of passion in deserts or mountains, or one of you dying heroically to save the other from a mercenary’s bullet—’
‘You’re getting into the fantasy yourself now.’
‘It’s the black humour of the medical profession.’ He smiled, and the familiar flippancy was back. ‘I wouldn’t entirely blame the boy for wondering about a torrid night of passion with you, though. I’ve wondered about it myself more than once.’
‘Let’s keep this professional,’ said Antonia automatically.
‘Well then, professionally speaking, on present evidence I don’t think he wants to hurt you. He’s more likely focusing on some visionary Utopia or Shangri-la–roses round a cottage door, or an island retreat. Like a 1940s film, with gauze over the camera for the final scene, and the strong rugged hero going hand in hand into the sunset with the grateful heroine.’
Shangri-la and torrid passion in the desert did not exactly fit with Antonia’s work with the NHS which was infuriating and exhausting by turns, but which was a deep and integral part of her. They did not fit, either, with the modest social life she managed to have outside the hospital and they certainly did not fit with the presence of Richard in her life.
‘I still think you should tell Richard,’ said Jonathan, with his disconcerting trick of picking up a thought. ‘But you’re the judge of that. I don’t think Don has any paranoia or any confusing of reality and fantasy. I don’t think he believes any of his fantasies have actually happened, although I suspect he’s writing the script for them.’ He frowned. ‘But there’s no guarantee he won’t turn psychotic, or that there won’t be another suicide bid.’
‘I do know that.’ Antonia hesitated and then said, ‘Jonathan, he knows where I live.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’ve seen him outside the bungalow.’
There was no need to tell Jonathan about the silent, motionless figure standing beneath the tree outside her home, sometimes well after midnight, watching the windows with such intensity that several times Antonia was aware of a compulsion to walk out of the bungalow towards him.
‘In that case I’d better take over his treatment, hadn’t I?’ said Jonathan after a moment.
‘I think so. Yes, please.’
‘I do understand that it’s a–a delicate situation with Richard,’ he said. ‘But if Don really is going to your home, oughtn’t you to talk to the police? At least alert them in case something goes wrong.’
‘If I tell the police Richard will find out. I can’t risk it.’
‘Would you like me to tell Richard?’
‘No.’ It came out more sharply than Antonia had intended, but Jonathan only said quite peaceably, ‘All right. But what will you do if Robards breaks in?’
‘I don’t know.’
A week later she had had a drink with Jonathan after work and phoned Richard to say she would be a bit late. He had said he would have supper ready.
Antonia put the car in the garage at the side of the bungalow, locked it, and went along the path to the front door. She’d only had one glass of wine because of driving, but she was pleasurably relaxed. She had enjoyed parrying Jonathan’s outrageous flirting, which he did not mean her to take seriously but which had still been fun. It was unusual not to see any lights on in the bungalow, but Richard was most likely in the kitchen at the rear, perhaps stirring a pan of risotto–he did a terrific seafood risotto.
She was hoping he had finally managed to master the difficult fingering of the Paganini Caprice–he had been working at one of the adaptations for piano over the last week and it had absorbed him almost to the exclusion of everything else. Antonia, whose tastes ran conventionally to Mozart and Beethoven, and who often played pop music from the seventies, especially during a housecleaning blitz, knew the piece in a general way, mostly because it, or a version of it, introduced the South Bank Show. Still, since he had offered to cook tonight it probably meant the Caprice was finally sorted out and that he was rejoining the sentient world.
As she stepped into the porch, she heard and felt the crunch of splintered glass under her feet. Damn. Broken milk bottle, most likely. But a faint prickle of apprehension brushed against her. It looked as if the entire bungalow was in darkness, and unless Richard was absorbed in playing, when he was apt to forget everything, he hated the dark. He always said it became filled up with too many despairing memories. Antonia, who liked such things as firelight and moonlight, had always given way to Richard’s need for light, because she understood only too well about his bouts of despair and his memories.
There was something wrong with the front door, something different. The glass panel, was it? Oh God, the glass panel had been smashed–that was why there was glass all over the ground–which could only mean someone had broken in. Her mind went instantly to the silent watcher, and there was a moment when she thought–Don? And then the thought was crowded out in the desperate concern for Richard.
She could never afterwards recall if she had shouted Richard’s name as she stepp
ed into the hall. She went straight to the music room–Richard’s beloved sanctum sanctorum where he worked and planned and dreamed–and she knew she had not cared whether the burglars might still be in there.
There was a sliver of light in the room, because the street lamp outside shone in through the big uncurtained windows. It illuminated the overturned furniture, smashed ornaments and rucked-up Chinese rug near the fire. There was a puddle of red wine on the edge of the rug: Richard sometimes had a glass of wine around half past seven. He must have done so tonight.
Then she saw him. He was lying on the floor, near the glossily dark piano–the baby grand that had been lover and child and parent to him for as long as Antonia could remember–and it was not red wine on the carpet after all, it was blood…Someone had stabbed him, using a kitchen knife, driving it into his neck–she could see the dreadful gaping wound. She could see where blood had sprayed onto the wall, and she could see the knife lying on the floor. Richard’s hands were covered in blood, and Antonia had a swift, dreadful image of him struggling to pull the knife free, and trying to stop the spurting blood. But he would have been dead inside a couple of minutes. Even so she bent over the still form, feeling for a pulse, praying to find one. Nothing. Of course there was not. Even a cursory glance showed that his killer had stabbed straight into the carotid artery.
His killer. There was a movement from the deep bay window, and a dark figure stepped from the shadows. Antonia gasped and instinctively stepped back to the door, one hand going to her mouth. Whoever broke in, whoever killed Richard was still there. She sent a quick glance towards the half-open door. If she was quick, could she get down the hall and be out into the garden before he reached her?
The figure moved again, and Antonia saw who it was. Don Robards.