Before I Let You In

by Jenny Blackhurst

  ‘What happened to her?’ Her voice didn’t quiver; didn’t give away any of the thousand emotions she was feeling. And yet Jessica Hamilton studied her as though it had.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, her own voice devoid of any emotion. ‘Do I have to talk about it?’

  ‘No, not if it’s too difficult for you,’ Karen replied, the voice inside her head screaming, Yes! Yes, you do have to talk about it! She wanted to know what had happened – needed to know what had happened to Jessica’s sister. If there was a sister. Everything that came out of Jessica’s mouth seemed to be aimed straight at Karen’s heart.

  ‘Good. Let’s talk about him, then,’ Jessica said. ‘Or more importantly, her.’

  ‘Your lover’s wife?’ Karen was spinning again, her mind struggling to deal with the constant change in direction.

  ‘Yes, her. I think she’s going mad.’

  Karen managed to successfully pick up her coffee cup and brought it to her lips. The coffee was cooler than she’d have liked, but she needed the pause to slow the pace of the session, bring it back under her control. By making Jessica wait for her reply, she was giving herself time to appraise the rapid turn in the conversation while hopefully making her patient feel a little less like she was running the show. The fact was that she couldn’t manage to separate in her mind the woman Jessica was talking about from Eleanor. Now that the idea had entered her head, it was as clear as if she’d come straight out and said it.

  ‘What do you mean by mad?’

  Jessica frowned. ‘You know, crazy. Batshit. Lost it. Mad.’

  ‘And what makes you think that?’

  She threw her a ‘I thought you’d never ask’ smile. ‘She lost the baby.’

  Karen couldn’t help the sharp intake of breath as Jessica finished the sentence, and the iron ball of dread that had been forming since this morning seemed to grow in size and roll over in her stomach.

  ‘What do you mean, lost?’ she asked. ‘As in “I can’t remember where I put my keys” lost?’ She winced inwardly at her flippancy – an annoying habit she’d picked up from years of friendship with Bea. In reality she was in no way feeling flippant.

  ‘Exactly like that. She was at Asda and she forgot where she’d parked the car. She phoned the police and everything. He told me about it, said she was losing her mind.’

  Forgot where she parked the car. Called the police and everything.

  ‘At Asda?’ This was it. This was where she came right out and asked her if she was talking about Eleanor, demanded to know why she was targeting her like this. What was the worst that could happen? Jessica would deny it was her husband’s best friend she was sleeping with and they would carry on with this game of cat and mouse. Only then she would know Karen was on to her. That she was winning.

  ‘And you didn’t have any part in what happened to her son?’

  Jessica scowled. ‘How could I? She forgot where she parked the car – I can’t make the stupid bitch forget things. Can I?’

  It was a challenge, daring Karen to suggest she might have moved the car – daring her to ask more questions. Except Karen didn’t need to ask; she knew that Eleanor hadn’t forgotten where she’d parked the car. She knew it had been taken. What she didn’t know was why Jessica was here, taunting her with talk about mad women and dead sisters. What did she know?

  Karen leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees, and looked Jessica square in the face.

  ‘Let me ask you, Jessica, if you could speak to this woman, if you could just walk up to her on the street, what would you say?’

  Jessica considered this for a second – this question she hadn’t planned for or rehearsed, this break from ‘How does that make you feel?’

  ‘I’d tell her that she doesn’t deserve any of it, any of what she has. And that I’m going to take it all away from her and there’s nothing she can do about it. That she will know what it feels like to lose everything she holds dear. And when she asks why, I’ll tell her that someone did the same to me once upon a time, and this is my revenge. This is my turn to be someone people remember. And by the time I’m finished, she will never forget me.’

  46

  Does that strike you as strange now, now that you have some perspective?

  I don’t think I understand your question.

  You were certain that Jessica Hamilton was sleeping with your friend’s husband. She had changed diary entries to mess up Eleanor’s appointments, she had stolen her child and had her investigated by social services. Yet you were convinced that this woman was out to ruin your life.

  Touché. Maybe at that point I was internalising the problem. Making it all about me as Bea would sa— would have said. But given what’s happened since, what we know now, I’d say I was pretty accurate in thinking Jessica Hamilton’s grudge was with me.

  Would you? I mean, considering what happened, I’d say you got off lightly.

  I’d say you know jack shit.

  I’d like to talk about your relationship with your mother.

  I bet you would. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Look for where the problems begin; start with childhood.

  Do you have a problem talking about your childhood?

  I just don’t see the point. We both know what happened.

  Do you speak to your mother now?

  Occasionally. We don’t have the closest of relationships, if that’s what you want me to say. Not everyone does; there’s nothing unusual about that.

  Your phone records show you spoke to your mother the night before your first session with the woman you call Jessica Hamilton. The call lasted thirteen minutes. What did you talk about?

  I can’t remember. Can you remember every call to your parents? That was a long time ago.

  And yet you’ve only spoken to her once since, and only for four minutes. Did you argue with her the night before your session?

  Maybe. Like I said, I don’t remember. All families argue.

  Not like yours, though, do they, Karen? Not all mothers say the things yours said to you. The things she’s been saying to you since you were a child.

  My mother is troubled. You can understand why.

  I can, certainly. Can you?

  I’d like to take a break, please.

  47

  Karen

  She was still shaken up by the session the next day, so much so that she cancelled her other patients and declared it a ‘personal growth’ day. She knew it sounded a bit tree-huggy, but they were encouraged to take these days often, although they were never encouraged to ditch patients for them. She put it in her calendar and hoped no one would realise it was a new development. In the last month she’d started to take more days off, and longer lunch breaks, and it was only a matter of time before one of the others noticed and started questioning her commitment. Ten years of dedicated, devoted service, working through lunch and writing notes at weekends, would count for nothing if one of the others made a complaint – her money was on Travis.

  They were present in the office for their personal growth days, although they were encouraged to use their flexitime to take longer lunches, come in later and leave earlier, to set up a relaxed atmosphere while they reflected on their professional development, any challenges they were confronting and any goals they were setting for the future. They were expected to keep diaries of their time over these days for a development portfolio. Needless to say, on this particular day she did none of that. What she did instead was spend the entire morning searching the internet for any sign of Jessica Hamilton.

  Her absence was what made her so conspicuous. There were plenty of Jessica Hamiltons on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but none of them resembled her Jessica. When she drew a dead end at every avenue she tried – Google Images, even Myspace in case sixteen-year-old Jessica had been more internet savvy – she searched their patient records for more information.

  She’d already read the referral notes before their first session and not come up wit
h a whole lot of information, but now, given Jessica’s behaviour and her unusual fixation on Karen’s personal life, the lack of detail in her records was alarming. What they did have, however, was an address. She was so shocked to see it there, a nice, normal-looking address, just as you would expect to see in patient records, that the first time she skimmed through she missed it completely. Once she’d seen it, though, it was impossible to un-see. A quick Google search told her nothing except that the house was ex-directory and belonged to a Mrs Beadle – probably a landlady, as she didn’t expect Jessica would own her own home at her age. It had been purchased in 1996, when Jessica would have barely been out of nappies.

  You are not going round to a patient’s house, she told herself even as she was picking up her pen to write the address down on a pad next to her computer. It would be madness. Career suicide if Jessica complained. Which was probably exactly what she wanted. Karen had no idea why, but by this point she was utterly convinced that Jessica Hamilton was trying to ruin her life.

  By a quarter past twelve, she couldn’t stand being in her own company any more. There was no one at work she could talk to without risking them thinking she wasn’t fit to do her job; Michael didn’t want to know about some whingeing rich girl who thought she had a right to complain about a situation she had brought on herself – besides, he thought Karen’s problem with her was more than just an issue with a creepy patient, and the last thing she needed was someone psychoanalysing her. She needed to talk to someone uncomplicated, someone who would just listen, maybe crack the odd inappropriate joke, but who knew her well enough to know that if she was concerned, there was a good reason for it.

  When Karen walked into the office, Bea was surprised to see her. Maybe she thought something had happened to Eleanor, because the first words out of her mouth were ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Everything is fine,’ Karen replied, trying to stop her hands working over each other, straining not to pick at the skin around her thumb the way she knew she did when she was agitated. ‘I just wondered if you wanted to go to lunch? My treat?’

  Bea’s brows rose in suspicion. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’

  Karen tried a smile, forcing a casual air she didn’t feel. ‘Even psychiatrists have to eat.’

  Bea nodded and checked the time on her computer. Then she turned to the girl at the desk next to hers. ‘Do you mind if I head out for lunch? I’ll only be an hour or so. I’ll divert my phone to reception.’

  The girl nodded without even looking at them, and Karen knew this show was for her benefit: Bea wanted to make it look as though it mattered if she was in the office. The sad truth was, she could have left and not returned for the rest of the day and it only would have been noticed when it was her turn to make the tea. That was the problem with big organisations: no one was as indispensable as they liked to believe.

  ‘So, where are you taking me?’ Bea grinned as she slid into the passenger seat of Karen’s car, but she looked nervous, on edge.

  ‘Let’s get a sandwich and park up,’ Karen suggested, ignoring the disappointed look Bea threw her.

  Karen stopped outside a park across the road from Subway and they collected their lunch in tense silence, like lovers after a jealous row. When they were back in the car, Bea unwrapped her sub, then turned to look Karen in the face.

  ‘What’s this about? Is it Eleanor? Because I can see how stressed she is at the moment. I just don’t know what to do to help her.’

  ‘It’s not about Eleanor.’ Karen picked at the corner of her wrap, not feeling like eating in the slightest. ‘Well, I suppose it is, in a way. It’s about Adam. I think he’s having an affair.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bea’s hand freeze halfway to bringing the sub to her lips. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I think he’s been sleeping with one of my patients.’

  Bea had always known never to ask about Karen’s patients. She knew she was working with Susan Webster, one of the most high-profile cases their county had ever known, but she’d respected the boundaries of her work and her professional and personal ethics and never asked for a single detail of any case. She would know that for Karen to be even saying as much as she already had, she wasn’t messing around.

  ‘Have they said that? Have they said “I’m sleeping with your best friend’s husband?” That’s weird, right?’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’ Through the windscreen Karen could see the whole of the park. She watched as a small boy, wrapped up against the elements, hauled himself up the steps of the slide and sat stubbornly at the top, refusing to move until his mother laughed and clapped at his achievement. Then he threw himself down, his mother still acting as though it was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen. Had her mother been like that, once upon a time? Had she thought that every step Karen took, every slide she climbed, every new word she uttered was some amazing feat? She was sure life must have been like that once, but she had no memory of it. No recollection of a time when she wasn’t someone to be either snapped at or ignored.

  ‘You know you can talk to me about anything, Karen.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, Bea, it’s that I don’t know where to start. I’ve already spoken to Robert about this and he basically said I was losing my mind. Michael thinks I’m overreacting. I don’t want to tell you just for you to think the same.’

  Bea looked as though she was going to put her hand on her knee but thought better of it. Karen had never been one for physical contact between friends; she always used to make jokes about her personal space that weren’t jokes at all, but now she wished she was the type of person people felt comfortable hugging. Or someone who felt comfortable asking to be hugged.

  ‘I’m not going to think you’re crazy. You’re one of the most level-headed people I know. You’ve met my family, right? Now that’s crazy.’

  Karen smiled for what felt like the first time in weeks.

  ‘And I don’t have to remind you how confidential this is? You can’t tell Eleanor anything, not until we’ve figured it all out.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Karen knew that Bea broke confidences, because she’d broken other people’s to tell her juicy bits of gossip countless times – she just had to trust that she wouldn’t break this one.

  ‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath in through her nose. ‘This client – the one I told you both about the other day who I think has a fixation with me – well it transpires that she’s been sleeping with a married man.’

  Bea nodded but didn’t interrupt – probably in case she changed her mind and stopped speaking.

  ‘Well, like I said before, she said a few things that concerned me.’ It occurred to Karen suddenly that she couldn’t actually tell Bea the things Jessica had said, because Bea didn’t know what she herself had done. ‘Some personal things that led me to think they were a dig at me specifically, rather than at psychiatry and psychiatrists in general.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Karen went for a ‘don’t push your luck’ look and must have hit it, because Bea shrank back slightly and didn’t ask again.

  ‘Anyway, she mentioned that she was fixated on the wife of this guy, and that she’d been doing things to make her life difficult. Things like changing diary appointments and hiding letters to make her think she was losing her mind.’

  ‘She sounds charming,’ Bea snorted. ‘But I’m still not sure why you think it’s Eleanor. Just because she missed a couple of appointments …’

  ‘There’s more. She started talking about the kids. After that thing with Noah, she practically admitted she’d taken this woman’s child.’

  ‘Whoa.’ Bea held up a hand. ‘She said that? Then shouldn’t you be speaking to the police instead of me? Even if she’s not talking about Eleanor, she sounds dangerous.’

  Karen sighed. ‘She’s clever. She hasn’t said anything that I can use as strong evidence that she’s a danger to anyone. It’s all so abstract that it’s lik
e she’s goading me, like she’s picked me personally to tell her story to. Then she slipped up and I’m almost certain she said his name, even though she denied it afterwards.’ She paused, still not a hundred per cent sure that she was doing the right thing giving Bea this much detail. ‘It was Adam.’

  Bea let out a breath. ‘We have to tell Eleanor.’

  Karen had been afraid she would say that. As much as Bea pretended to understand patient–psychiatrist confidentiality, she wasn’t invested in this situation the way Karen was. If she was wrong … well, even if she was right, there wasn’t a good enough reason to break privilege.

  ‘I tried to tell her Adam might be seeing someone, but she didn’t believe me. I couldn’t tell her all the details,’ she added at Bea’s frown. ‘Unless there’s a real and proven danger to Eleanor or her children, I can’t give her the evidence she needs. That’s probably why she was paranoid the other day, and I don’t want to make that worse without proof …’

  ‘That’s ridiculous! This is your best friend’s life we’re talking about. Her child and her marriage. You might not understand that—’

  The insinuation that none of them understood lives they weren’t living angered her instantly.

  ‘What, because I’m not married I don’t know how important a husband is? Unless it’s escaped your notice, Bea, you don’t exactly have men lining up to sweep you down the aisle either.’

  Bea looked crestfallen. The remains of her sub fell from her hand and landed on the paper in her lap, a piece of lettuce dropping into the footwell. It was testament to how wound up she felt that she didn’t pick it up straight away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Karen sighed. ‘That was a horrible thing to say. I’ve just been driving myself crazy over this. Of course I know how important it is to Eleanor, but the fact is, she said she didn’t believe me. And then if J— if my patient found out I’d told her, I’d lose my job. It’s probably exactly what she wants; that’s why she’s telling me all this. I can’t believe it would be a coincidence that she sought me out.’