by Tammy Cohen
It hadn’t been hard to befriend Laura. Her breaktimes were spent sitting alone at the cafeteria down by A&E, nursing a cup of tea and reading a novel or a self-help book she’d produce from her bag. Lonely. Desperate for love.
Laura had been impressed by Annabel’s credentials. Flattered by her interest. Annabel told her she was attached to the hospital’s psychiatry department, and Laura had never questioned it. They’d formed a relationship of sorts. At first, Annabel hadn’t known what to do with it, just that she knew it was worth cultivating the one person whose hatred of Dr Oliver Roberts outstripped her own.
But as she listened to the younger woman and encouraged her to talk about her background and heard the high-pitched sharpness of her voice when she talked about Dr William Kingsley, and commiserated with her wish to move out of nursing and become an artist, something began to crystallize inside Annabel’s mind, hard and bright as a diamond. A way to do him damage, and to relaunch her professional career in a spectacular fashion that would make all the doubters and haters sit up and take notice.
It hadn’t been easy. There had been times she’d wanted to yell at Laura, with her fatuous new-ageisms, her blessings and her peace and lights. But she’d stuck at it, offering her services as a therapist for free, out of the goodness of her heart.
Laura had been so pathetically grateful for her attention, so eager to please, and Annabel knew exactly how to play it so that she always left her craving more. It hadn’t been hard to persuade her that art therapy would be the perfect career for her, building on her nursing experience while also providing an outlet for her creativity. Getting her the post at The Meadows had been more difficult, but a phone call to Roberts with a personal recommendation had done the trick. She’d played on his guilt. He must have thought appointing this friend of his old mentor a small price to pay for appeasing his own conscience.
As if anything he could do would ever be enough to make up for what she’d lost.
He was leading the life she should have had. He had taken everything she valued and hadn’t given her a second thought. Well, that was about to change.
Alone at her desk, Annabel leafed through the manuscript that would re-establish her as one of modern psychiatry’s most glittering stars.
Everyone knew about Laura Whittaker. The public couldn’t get enough of the art therapist turned murderer. Every day the papers raked up some tiny new detail about her life.
But no one knew her better than the woman who’d treated her for the best part of a decade.
Only Annabel Dunmore could tell the real story of what had motivated Laura to use hypnosis against two vulnerable patients in order to persuade them to kill themselves. Only Annabel Dunmore knew why she’d nearly killed Hannah Lovell.
Her book, all five hundred pages of it, was the consummate study of a sociopathic mind, a masterclass in getting inside a killer’s head.
Of course, she’d left out her own role in it all. The way she’d be encouraging one day and cold the next, leading Laura on until she would do anything to win her approval.
All Laura had ever really wanted was someone to mother her and, occasionally, Annabel had done that. Not often. Just enough to leave her craving more and distraught the next day, when Annabel would return to playing the detached psychotherapist.
She’d left out how she’d planted the seed in Laura’s mind that helping Sofia and Charlie succeed at what they’d tried so many times before would be doing them a kindness, as well as destroying Oliver Roberts’ reputation. She’d left out how she’d smoothed over Laura’s doubts following Sofia’s death, and then Charlie’s, assuring her that they were in a better place and were grateful to her.
In the book, Annabel was a therapist, nothing more. And though she professed ‘concern’ about some of the things her patient had revealed in their confidential sessions, Laura Whittaker had never confessed to any criminal wrongdoing, so no finger of blame could be pointed her way.
It had crossed her mind to change her name, because of the link with Roberts during the Westbridge House days. But really, who would believe she could have had anything to do with the deaths of people she’d never met in a place she’d never been? She was planning to make a point of the connection and claim that Laura had sought her out specifically because of her past link with Roberts, though she’d hidden that from Annabel. And of course, she’d say that Laura had never used his full name in their sessions either. Revealing identities of patients or staff at the clinic would have been a serious breach of confidentiality. Annabel wouldn’t have been able to continue to treat Laura if she’d known there was a personal past connection, no matter how tenuous, but as it was, she couldn’t possibly be held responsible. The only person who could refute this version of events was Roberts himself, but she very much doubted he’d risk the publicity, particularly when he knew she’d just deny ever making that call to recommend Laura.
Who’d believe anything he said now?
Besides, changing her name would defeat the whole object. When this book was published the brightest luminaries in the field of academic psychiatric research would be talking about Professor Annabel Dunmore in hushed, reverential tones. It would be as if all these years in the wilderness were wiped out in one fell swoop.
At her desk, Annabel picked up the stack of pages and held them in her hands. So pleasantly weighty. She felt an immense swell of pride. And what made the feeling even sweeter was knowing there was no chance of Laura surfacing to give her side of the story.
It was always going to be a risk that, when Laura was finally caught – or rather, when Annabel, apparently fighting with her conscience, turned her in – she’d turn against her mentor, just as Roberts had done. Annabel had prepared for that, of course, made reams of notes showing Laura as a deluded fantasist, obsessed with her to the point that, if she thought she’d been rejected, she’d do anything to get back at Annabel. Even accuse her of murder.
Still it was a relief when Laura killed herself, rendering all of these contingency plans redundant. The most popular theory was that she couldn’t live with herself after the third murder. While she’d been able to square the deaths of Sofia Redding and Charlie Chadwick as mercy killings, Drew Abbott had been nothing but a cold-blooded assault carried out in a panic to save her own skin when she realized he was about to call the police. Faced with the enormity of what she’d done, she had hurled herself off the cliff at Beachy Head.
Only Annabel knew that, before she got there, she had made a call from a phone box. To the pay-as-you-go phone Annabel kept only for Laura. Only Annabel knew just how devastated she’d been to be told they would not be able to see each other any more. Ever.
Poor Laura, dead. Oliver Roberts ruined. And her own career on the brink of an astonishing revival.
Really, it was hard to see how things could have worked out better.
57
Louise
Louise Bradford stepped off the bus and made her way slowly along the main road, largely abandoned at this time of night apart from a man, hood up against the rain, smoking by the pub door and a straggle of teenagers outside the fried-chicken shop. She was wearing a cheap, beige mackintosh which strained across her broad shoulders, and her swollen legs were crammed into flat, brown boots.
It was a dark night, and the street lights illuminated the damp, litter-strewn pavements. Louise frowned as a gust of wind blew an empty polystyrene burger box across the road. People had no respect.
As she turned left into a side road, a white van drove past, throwing up a spray which spattered over her mac, leaving dirty drip marks. She took a deep breath in. Counted to five. And then let it out, again for a count of five.
Coleridge Court was in the middle of a cul-de-sac two roads down to the right, a drab, grey building with rows of small, mean windows and a sign outside that was partly broken so it read ‘IDGE COURT: RESIDENTIAL CARE HOME FOR THE ELDERLY’.
Louise made her way around the side of the building, entering a code
into the keypad by the back door and letting herself in.
She advanced along the corridor to the staffroom. ‘All right?’ said Joy, the night manager of whom Louise often thought no one could less live up to their name. Joy was slumped on the boxy, brown two-seater sofa watching a reality-TV show on her laptop.
Louise opened her locker and folded up her mac and put it inside. Then she took a nylon pinafore from a hook and fastened it over her shapeless brown dress. The buttons strained across her chest.
‘Diet not going too well then?’ remarked Joy.
‘Not really. No willpower,’ said Louise.
‘You don’t want to put on any more. That’s the largest size we can get.’
There was a note of disapproval in the night manager’s voice, as if she regarded Louise’s expanding girth as a mark of character weakness.
There was a small round mirror attached to the inside of the locker door and Louise caught a glimpse of herself in it, though normally she avoided her own reflection whenever possible. The soft, floury folds of cheek and chin seemed to belong to someone else, just like the badly permed hair. It had been a wrench letting the mousy brown grow back after all those years dyeing it lustrous black.
‘You’ll do the dining room first, yeah?’ said Joy, eyes once more fixed on her computer screen. It wasn’t really a question. ‘And then the activities room. Mr Turner had an accident in there, just as the day shift was knocking off. They did what they could, but the carpet will need a thorough going-over.’
Louise went into the back hallway and opened up a full-length cupboard, extracting the vacuum cleaner and the trolley of cleaning products. She was already wheezing. She wasn’t used to carrying around so much weight. She made her way first to the dining room, as instructed. It was a cheerless room, painted a drab institutional beige and lit by a sickly, greenish light. The only things on the wall were a laminated copy of the fire regulations and the stunted remains of a home-made paper chain left over from last Christmas and fixed to the wall with yellowing tape.
After she’d finished, Louise wheeled the trolley to the activities room, instantly spotting the site of Mr Turner’s accident, a large, dark brown stain on the grey carpet. She sighed. But instead of getting to work, she went back to the doorway and looked up and down the corridor, even though she was sure she was safe. Joy never came out of the staffroom if she could help it. And the night carers weren’t due to show up for another hour. It probably wasn’t legal for only one permanent member of staff to be on the premises, but the care home’s owners were cutting corners wherever they could. Slashing employee hours, turning a blind eye to cleaning staff who didn’t exactly meet the requirements for the DBS check but were prepared to accept below minimum wage, cash in hand.
Sickening how little priority was given to the elderly.
Making her way along the corridor, Louise avoided the cramped lift, where she knew there was a CCTV camera trained on the doors, and slipped up the back stairs to the second floor.
There was a low groaning noise from behind the first door she passed, and she made a mental note to look in on her way back. Mrs Goldstein was in constant discomfort now. It was nearly time.
Like all the rooms, the third door on the left had a laminated notice on it with the resident’s name printed in heavy black type. Mrs Barbara Whittaker. In an instant, Louise had turned the handle silently and slid inside, quietly closing the door behind her.
‘Hello, Mum,’ she whispered to the twisted shape under the sheets.
‘Did you think I wasn’t coming?’
She lowered herself heavily into the armchair next to the bed and reached across to take hold of one of the tiny, clawed hands.
‘You know I’ll never leave you, don’t you, Mum?’
Through the semi-darkness came a low moan, like an animal in distress.
‘Don’t be upset. There are a few little things I need to sort out, a few wrongs to be righted, but we’ll be together soon and, wherever they move you, I’ll find you.
‘We’ll always have each other. Aren’t we blessed?’
Acknowledgements
They All Fall Down is my ninth novel, and the more books I write the more I realize how much publishing is a true team effort. What a stroke of luck, then, to have the best team in the business!
At Curtis Brown, I’d like to thank first and foremost my brilliant agent, Felicity Blunt, to whom I owe so much. And Melissa Pimentel, whose name in my inbox always means good news. Thanks also to Luke Speed, Jessica Whitlum-Cooper and Enrichetta Frezzato.
Transworld continues to be the most supportive publisher a writer could wish for. Thanks to my editor Jane Lawson for her insight and enthusiasm and for always being in my corner. And to Alison Barrow, Becky Hunter, Alice Murphy-Pyle, Richard Ogle, Larry Finlay and all the others who make it such a special place.
Writing about mental illness is a responsibility and I give heartfelt thanks to consultant psychiatrist Dr Mark Salter for taking time out from his busy schedule to answer my (occasionally ludicrous) questions. Thanks also to Dr Roma Cartwright for her valuable input. As always, any mistakes are completely down to me.
Thanks to all my writer and blogger friends who make this weird, wonderful job infinitely more weird and wonderful, including Amanda Jennings, Lisa Jewell, Marnie Riches, all the Killer Women, the Prime Writers, Anne Cater and Tracy Fenton.
Finally, a huge thank-you to the readers who keep buying my books and writing reviews. None of this would be possible without you.
About the Author
Tammy Cohen (who previously wrote under her formal name Tamar Cohen) has a growing backlist of acclaimed novels of domestic noir, including The Mistress’s Revenge, The War of the Wives and Someone Else’s Wedding. Her break-out psychological suspense thriller was The Broken, followed by Dying for Christmas, First One Missing and When She Was Bad.
She lives in north London with her partner and three (nearly) grown children, plus one badly behaved dog. Chat with her on Twitter @MsTamarCohen or at www.tammycohen.co.uk.
Do you love Tammy Cohen’s books? Try these:
THE MISTRESS’S REVENGE
Her sharp debut novel written as a journal addressed by a former mistress to the married lover who dumped her.
‘Gasp in recognition at this cracking tale’
Grazia
THE WAR OF THE WIVES
A happily married woman whose husband dies unexpectedly is confronted at his funeral by a woman who claims that she was his wife.
‘Moving, funny and completely absorbing’
Prima
SOMEONE ELSE’S WEDDING
The story of a wife and her grown-up family whose secrets come shimmering to the surface at a wedding: told in real-time over thirty-six hours.
‘Utterly gripping’
Lisa Jewell
THE BROKEN
A couple are sucked into their best friends’ bitter divorce with devastating results for all.
‘A work of near-genius’
Daily Mail
DYING FOR CHRISTMAS
A young woman is held captive over the twelve days of Christmas.
‘Packs a killer twist’
Prima
FIRST ONE MISSING
The parents of missing children club together for support. But all is not as it seems.
‘Astonishingly good’
C L Taylor
WHEN SHE WAS BAD
Nasty things are happening at work. Can they figure out who is the guilty co-worker, before it’s too late for all of them?
‘Unsettling, tense and utterly unputdownable’
Woman & Home
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First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Swan
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Copyright © Tammy Cohen 2017
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Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473542648
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