What Goes Around: A chilling psychological thriller (11 page)

‘Do you?’

‘I don’t think so, but then I was in therapy for years as part of my training and I still see my therapist once a month. I never forget that I’m a work in progress. We all are.’

We lapse into silence for a minute. I sip my tea and David eats more cake.

‘Our childhood wasn’t easy,’ he says.

‘You’re right.’

‘Have you let go of it?’

‘Mostly.’

‘Leila.’ He leans forward. His expression is animated. ‘I want to confront Gareth.’

I nod. ‘I understand that. But remember we agreed to put Gareth behind us.’

‘An unspoken agreement maybe but—’

‘It wasn’t unspoken,’ I counter. ‘I distinctly remember us discussing it.’

That makes him hesitate. He finishes the cake and then says, ‘Who does Alex think his dad is?’

He already knows the answer to this but I tell him again. ‘I told Alex his father was a man I loved but had lost touch with. That was when he was about ten. He hasn’t asked me since then.’

‘Do you think it was good to lie?’

‘Of course it wasn’t good to lie! But he was ten years old. Do you think I should have told him the truth?’

‘I could have helped you break it to him.’

‘I would never have agreed to that! Truth can destroy people.’

‘If I had known …’ He shakes his head and pushes the plate away. ‘I just … I’ve wasted years! Years and fucking years. Gareth’s cruel, crazy shit … and it’s like I’m just waking up. I’ve let stuff hold me back and— Fuck, Leila!’

‘David, I understand. I do.’ His eyes are full of tears. He’s my little brother and I want to comfort him. ‘When you begin therapy, you experience an opening-up and it feels both good and bad, especially if you’ve felt trapped or stuck for some time. You want to instantly act upon it, take a short cut, jump forward to where you want to be.’ I look around the room for inspiration and find it in a poster about world ecosystems. ‘It’s like you’ve glimpsed a new way of being, but as yet the picture is incomplete. Just imagine that there’s an elephant behind a curtain and you’re only allowed to view a small section of the elephant and what you see is its trunk and nothing else. You won’t have a sense of the whole beast. You haven’t seen the tiny tail or the huge ears. So if you were to act on that understanding you would be limited. Do you see what I mean?’

‘You’re saying I should wait until I see the whole elephant?’

‘Yes. Exactly. You need to be patient. You will have realisations and you’ll want to act upon them at once, but you mustn’t.’

A muscle twitches on the right side of his face, pulling at the corner of his mouth. I gently touch his cheek and he leans into my hand to rest his face in the cup of my palm. We sit like this for a moment and then our attention is caught by a group of young children jostling for seats at the table next to us. ‘I’m so sorry!’ a young mother says as her son elbows me in his rush to sit down. ‘He’s overexcited.’

‘No problem. We were just leaving.’ I stand up. ‘We’ll give you some more space.’

David and I hug and agree to meet again soon, and this time I watch him as he walks away. Three times he turns round and we both wave. He is reluctant to leave me and part of me is reluctant to let him go. My maternal instinct was activated at such a young age and I feel the pull of that now. I want to run after him, invite him home, care for him like I used to.

But I can’t, because I know that giving him too much sympathy will validate his choices, and David is on a trajectory that will cause a shitstorm of pain. The can of worms he wants to open will bring our stepfather crawling out and I need to protect Alex, and also myself. I think about how I can do this on the drive home but don’t come up with anything – and then the answer presents itself, via Katarina of all people. She is lurking in the hallway when I come in the front door. ‘Is everything okay?’ I say.

‘I need to talk you, please.’

‘To you,’ I say. I drop my keys on the hall table. ‘What about?’

‘Alex.’

‘What about Alex?’

She hesitates, then visibly swallows down her nerves. ‘He is drink and drugs. Too many.’

I walk towards her and she backs away as if she expects me to hit her. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘I see him. He behave … strange. And now he is on bed.’

We both go upstairs – I’m rushing because I’m afraid of what I might find. I push open his bedroom door and am met by the malty smell of spilt beer. Alex is wearing jeans and a T-shirt and is lying face down on his bed, crashed out like a felled tree. At first I think he might be unconscious and panic rises inside me like vomit. ‘Alex! Alex!’ I shake him repeatedly and he makes no sound until finally his arm comes up to push me away and he mumbles a string of incoherent sounds.

Katarina is watching me, her hand over her mouth. ‘We call ambulance?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Unfortunately, we’ve been down this road before. He needs to sleep it off, that’s all.’ I rearrange his limbs and manoeuvre him into the recovery position so that if he’s sick, he won’t inhale it.

‘I will clean up mess,’ she says. She picks up the fallen beer bottle and goes to fetch a cloth.

I look down at my son and feel the heavy weight of irritation piggyback a mother’s love. ‘Okay, Alex,’ I say out loud. ‘It’s rehab for you.’

Two birds, one stone.

A timely solution.

I walked away from my first therapy session feeling angry but strangely elated. I was waiting for it all to go wrong, for me to be ejected from the house with a flea in my ear, but it never happened. Instead, I left Maybanks with a fresh perspective. I realised that while my anxiety was linked to Tom leaving me, I was making it worse by being so passive. A whole year of going along with whatever he said, bending in the face of his demands. And look where it had got me – out of my home, short of money and anxiety-ridden.

The absence of the oak tree has been enough to catapult me from anxiety to anger. The therapy is already working … Not in the way that Leila intended it to, but here I am, with a gear shift that I’m convinced will reverse the slide in my mental state. I am going to be well again. I say this to myself a couple of times, standing in front of the mirror.

I am going to be well again.

I am going to be well again and I am going to live in Maybanks again.

I watch my lips as I say this. I see the light in my eyes and I know that it’s true.

Going back inside my home made me remember how much the house is mine. A house is just a house until it’s a home, and all my love and effort went into the very walls of the place. We bought it when we were newly married and hard up. An elderly couple had lived there for decades and the house needed complete modernisation. We didn’t have the money at first. It took us five years to afford to have it rewired and the heating installed. With my dad’s help, I learned how to save us money on hiring tradesmen. I was a dab hand with a drill, I could tile, I could change the washers on the taps and wield a paintbrush, hang wallpaper and build shelves.

Tom was establishing his career and, apart from the times I joined him in his study, he was often pre-occupied. His work was important, that was a given, so I rarely complained. Once I mentioned Tom’s lack of attention to my parents and my mother reacted at once. ‘He’s an important man!’ She was scandalised. ‘You should feel lucky to be married to a man who is such a good provider.’

I could see her point but still I often felt like a single parent, sensing at times that he used his work to avoid being with the family. So as the months went by I adapted. I got on with the job of raising Chloe and Ben, and when Ben was six I went back to teaching. We were a happy unit of three, and when Tom was between cases and we were a family of four, we were happier still.

Now I glimpse a possible future where I am living with my dad in Maybanks and my children and Molly visit regularly: Sunday lunches, laughter and games, Molly playing on the grass. The tree house is gone but we can build her a playhouse towards the rear of the garden, a hideaway for her to call her own.

I’m impatient to get on with my plans and I can’t wait for my solicitor to get back to me, but I’m even more keen for Tuesday to come round again. As a therapist Leila was sound. As a woman, she needs to pay for being a home-wrecker and I worry that my resolve will lessen as the days go by and I’ll return to being overwhelmed by anxiety again.

I’m not wrong. Within twenty-four hours, anxiety creeps up on me, stealthy as a cat. A permanent change will take a while, it will take practice, I tell myself, as I rush to check the sockets again. Everything is fine – of course it is – but it takes time for my body to catch up, my pulse racing and my breathing ragged.

I make myself a cup of tea and decide not to unplug the kettle but to practise the exposure therapy Leila described to me. Usually I can’t relax and enjoy a cup of tea if I know that the kettle is still plugged in. Leila instructed me to sit it out, write down what I’m feeling, let the anxiety build but don’t be a slave to the feeling – watch it, as if it’s something separate from me, because when it reaches a peak, the anxiety will simply recede again without me doing anything.

I’m working through this process when the doorbell rings. I’m glad of the distraction and go to answer it at once. A man I don’t immediately recognise is standing on my doorstep, under an umbrella, the rain dripping off the spokes of the brolly and down his sleeve. ‘Hi, Ellen.’ He holds my blue scarf out towards me and I take it from him. It’s the one that I left at the group meeting and it prompts me into realising who he is.

‘Francis. Hi.’ I smile. ‘Thank you.’

‘Sharon was going to post it but I offered to drop it off – I was passing your door anyway.’

‘That’s kind of you.’

‘No worries.’ He gives me a brief wave. ‘Sorry to have disturbed you.’

He walks off along the path, and I watch a gust of wind blow rain underneath his umbrella. It feels mean not to invite him in. ‘Hold on, Francis!’ I call out. ‘Would you like to shelter from the rain until this shower passes through?’

‘Well …’ He glances up at the sky towards a patch of clear weather in the distance. ‘Maybe just five minutes?’

‘Of course. Come in.’

He leaves his umbrella and coat in the porch and follows me along the hallway, manoeuvring his way past the boxes. ‘I don’t normally come to this part of town but I’ve been visiting my mum in the hospice.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘Is she very ill?’

He nods. ‘She has cancer but she’s not in any pain. And the staff are fantastic.’ He stares off into the middle distance. ‘They really are. She’s kept very comfortable.’

‘I’m just having a cup of tea. Would you like to join me?’

‘That would be great.’ He rubs his hands together. ‘I could do with the warming up.’ He looks around the room. ‘I’m not disturbing you, though?’

‘Not at all. To be honest I’m glad of the interruption.’

‘How come?’

‘I’ve started seeing a therapist and I’m learning cognitive behaviour therapy. So far I’ve managed not to unplug the kettle. Five minutes and counting.’ I glance at my watch. ‘Hang on. We’ve been talking for two minutes thirty-three seconds so that makes it close to eight minutes and counting.’

He cheers. ‘Well done you!’

‘It’s early days but—’ I let out a laboured breath ‘—I’m hopeful.’

‘And so you should be,’ he says.

‘Have a seat and I’ll make us some tea.’

He’s easy to talk to. The afternoon slips into early evening in a flow of relaxed conversation. We talk about everything from our childhoods – mine spent in the country, his in town – to our careers. He asks me about my job and I tell him what it’s like to teach chemistry to teenagers. He works in a bank but is hoping for a career change. ‘I’ve applied for the police but my CV isn’t up to scratch. Volunteer work helps.’ He smiles. ‘Hence the reason I’m one of Sharon’s little helpers. I shepherd people in and out. Try to make sure no one feels uncomfortable.’

‘That’s why you spoke to me in the cafe?’

He nods. ‘I’m glad you’ve not been put off therapy altogether. We all felt bad after the group meeting. I went back to the cafe but you’d already left and I was worried you’d be put off for life.’

‘There was no need for you to worry. I was fine.’

‘Well … It was insensitive of us. You didn’t want to come and I think Trish, Pam and I more or less forced you.’

‘You didn’t.’ I smile. ‘But after I’d run out on the group, I couldn’t stay in the cafe. I had visions of the whole class coming across to lend their support.’

‘You have a point. But you know everyone means well?’

‘I do. And I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I just don’t like being the centre of attention.’ I think for a moment. ‘It was useful going that night, though. You remember the young girl, Gemma I think her name was?’

‘The one whose house was burgled?’

‘Yeah … well, something she said really struck me.’ I remind him what she said about there being three types of people. ‘I realised that over this last year I’ve become someone who lets life happen to me.’

He nods. ‘We’ve all been there.’

‘You seem pretty sorted to me,’ I say. And then I remember.
My name is Francis and someone tried to kill me.
I sit forward. ‘Didn’t you say at one of the meetings that someone tried to kill you?’

‘Not quite. I was stabbed with a kitchen knife, four-inch-long blade.’ He lifts up his shirt and I see he has a scar running at an angle across his side, between his ribcage and his pelvis.

‘That’s awful!’ My hand goes up to my mouth. ‘How did it happen?’

‘I wasn’t the intended victim. It was when I was in my first year at university. I was on a night out and was drunk. I’d gone outside to be sick and two men were fighting on the street. I ended up being caught up in their path and …’ He shrugs. ‘It’s ancient history now but for a long time I was angry and I blamed myself. I had some medical complications so I spent several months in hospital. It was a difficult time.’ He stands up. ‘Okay if I use your loo?’

‘Yes, it’s just at the top of the stairs.’

While he’s gone I take our mugs into the kitchen. I don’t unplug the kettle but I do stare at it. Seventy-two minutes! A record. ‘Congratulations, Ellen,’ I say out loud. ‘See? You really can do this.’