What Goes Around: A chilling psychological thriller (13 page)

The radio blares on the drive home, filling my head with sound that doesn’t allow me time to think. I bring the car to a stop in the driveway and at once Mrs Patterson appears. She’s in her nineties, stick thin and gimlet-eyed. ‘Leila!’ She waves a blue-veined hand at me.

‘Hello, Mrs Patterson.’ I smile. ‘How are we today?’

‘Well, I don’t know about you, my dear, but I’m feeling quite
spooked
.’

‘And why is that?’ I say.

‘There’s been a
man
hanging about. I noticed him yesterday along at the park but I thought nothing of it. Then
today
he was there again and he doesn’t have a
dog
. Or a
child
.’ She pauses to let this significant information sink in. ‘And your young housekeeper let him in.’ She pauses again, triumphant this time. ‘And I’m not sure that’s what you would want.’ She leans on the front gate and the cat climbs up beside her. He fixes feline eyes on me, daring me to knock him off.

‘Let me go inside and find out who he is,’ I say.

‘He’s gone
now
,’ Mrs Patterson says. ‘But I thought you should know!’ she shouts after me.

‘Thank you!’ I unlock the front door and close it firmly behind me before calling out, ‘Katarina!’

‘I am in here!’ She’s in the living room watching television. She stands up when I come in. ‘It is only news. Good for English.’

‘Yes, I know.’ I smile, and register the falseness in my expression when I catch sight of my face in the mirror above the mantelpiece. ‘I bumped into Mrs Patterson just now. Apparently she spied a man hanging about at the end of the street today and you let him into the house.’

‘That is David!’ Katarina says, smiling as she says his name, imagining that I’ll be pleased.

‘David?’

‘Your brother.’

‘Okay.’ I hold up a finger. ‘Did he touch anything? Did you leave him alone at any point? How long was he here for?’

Katarina’s eyebrows collide and then she says, her tone a feeble whine, ‘He is your brother.’

‘I asked you three questions. Please answer them.’

‘He was here ten minutes. He is alone when he go to toilet—’

‘Are you an idiot?’ I grab her shoulders to shake her but she instantly becomes a dead weight and I’m not strong enough to hold her upright. So I drop her. Her head catches on the edge of the coffee table and she lets out a wail. ‘Never, I repeat, NEVER let anyone, especially my brother through my front door again. Do you understand me?’ I’m towering over her and she stares up at me, quietly weeping. ‘Do you understand me, Katarina?’

‘You cannot treat me so bad!’ she whimpers, her face a crumple of flesh.

‘I can treat you however I like,’ I say quietly. My right foot is inches from her head and it takes a supreme effort of will not to kick her, but then she’s already down so why would I need to? Instead I squat down beside her. ‘Do not tell Tom about this,’ I say. Her eyes are wide and wet with tears. ‘He doesn’t know about my brother.’ I stroke her hair back from her face. ‘You understand, don’t you?’ She nods. ‘Some things are better kept just between us.’ My fingers are gentle as they circle the bump on her forehead but still I feel her shiver. ‘You need to put some ice on your head.’ I stand up. ‘And there’s some arnica cream in my bathroom cabinet. Help yourself.’

I go straight to the garden hut and smoke three roll-ups, one after the other. The early-evening air is damp and fresh. I breathe deeply and then cough as the air and cigarette smoke mingle and fight deep inside my lungs. David? … In my home? … My instincts were right but still, so soon? What the fuck does he expect from me? Haven’t I given him enough already?

Thank Christ Alex is already at the Bridge, in an environment of no phone calls, no Internet access and no visitors. Who would have thought there’d be a silver lining to him taking drugs again?

There is a rustling in the bushes to my left and when I swivel round I see the cat, as bold as brass, casually grooming himself. ‘You again,’ I say out loud. He glances up at me and gives a soft meow before resuming his grooming. I swipe at him with my foot and he crawls under the bush. ‘Fuck off and die,’ I say. ‘If you know what’s good for you.’

I finish smoking and call David. He answers at once. ‘Leila, I know what you’re going to say.’

‘You do?’

‘I was passing and—’

‘Were you passing yesterday too?’ Silence. ‘My neighbour is a watcher and she told me that you’ve been loitering, and if you do it again she’ll call the police. But you won’t be doing it again – why would you? – unless you want to aggravate me and why would you want to do that?’

‘Leila—’

‘Stay the fuck away from my house, David. I am warning you.’

I end the call and stand stock-still for a minute, thinking … thinking about the violence I witnessed as a child, and not all of it perpetrated by my stepfather. Some of the violence was mine. Some of it was David’s. We were both capable of so much more than I care to remember.
Give as good as you get.
What could possibly be wrong with that? We were children: young, impressionable, mouldable children.

When I go back inside, Katarina is nowhere to be seen. I climb the stairs to my bedroom and open up the walk-in wardrobe where I keep the jewellery that used to be my mother’s. She gave them to me ‘to look after’ when I was still a child. The set comprises earrings, a necklace and a bracelet – gold inlaid with precious stones, including sapphires and diamonds. I had the pieces valued a few years ago and they were worth over twenty thousand pounds. The design is dated, and I’ve never worn any of the pieces, but I’ve always kept them because they belonged to her. My father bought them for her. ‘That was when I was at my happiest,’ she told me and, true or not, I choose to believe her, hanging onto the fact of my DNA, my father a good man who died from a rogue cancer that stole him away from us before I was old enough to even make a memory of him.

Since I’ve been living with Tom, I store the set in a black lacquer box with several drawers and a lid that bends backwards at an angle to reveal a secret space in the base. The box and the rest of its contents must have belonged to Tom’s mother, although I’ve never got round to asking him; it’s not the sort of thing he’s interested in, the minutiae of life bores him.

Tom and I have separate finances. With my university teaching and my therapy practice I earn a good salary, but not enough to afford Alex’s treatment. Converting Tom’s study into my practice room cost me a small fortune and I now regret insisting on paying for it myself. I have enough money saved to cover one treatment week but after that I’ll need to come up with another plan.

I hold the necklace up to the light and watch the stones dance. I’m not sure I will be able to part with the pieces. My mum is long dead and most of the recollections I have of her are poor ones; this is one of the only positive memories that remains. However, while the thought of selling the pieces makes me feel disappointed, I’m not prone to sentimentality and if it’s a case of making ends meet then so be it.

First, though, I’ll ask Tom. If I catch him at the right moment and use all my powers of persuasion to make him understand how much I need the money, he might just come through for me. And for Alex.

We’ll see.

I wake up in the early hours of the morning, my pulse racing as it always does. I immediately get out of bed to do my checks. I begin at the front door: it’s double-locked and the chain is firmly in place. The hallway has one double socket: empty. I walk through each of the three bedrooms, looking behind bedside tables and chairs. The kitchen preoccupies me for a while. I touch each of the knobs on the hob; they are firmly in the off position. The hob light is off and the rings aren’t even remotely warm. The kettle, the toaster, the blender and the microwave are all unplugged. I’ve stopped using my tumble dryer – it’s permanently unplugged – and I only use the washing machine if I’m in the house and able to watch it.

Fires caused by white goods: three and a half thousand last year. Deaths: twelve. I’ve become someone who googles – my searches stack up in my browsing history like prophecies of doom: causes of fires in the UK, death by fire, fire service reports, electrical fires, the overwhelming effects of smoke inhalation. The results both fan and dampen my obsession. Dampen because house fires are unusual and in our modern world of smoke alarms people rarely die. But my obsessive flames are fanned by bad-luck stories where, for example, a plumber uses his blowtorch to bend the pipes servicing a radiator and a spark from the blowtorch finds its way into the insulation between the plasterboard inside walls and the brick exterior. The house burns slowly, as the family sleeps, the fire smouldering inside the very skin of the building until the whole structure collapses inwards and ignites the bedsheets.

Over an hour has gone by when I climb back into bed. I’ve been there about three seconds when my feet hit the floor again and I recheck the front door. It’s still reassuringly double-locked. I release the chain and redo it, sliding the metal along the bar until it connects with the round slot that keeps it anchored.

I’m wide awake now and I prop a couple of pillows up behind my head. Chloe bought me a Kindle for my last birthday and I like to keep up with the books she reads for her book club. I spend ten minutes trying to get into the novel she recommended to me, and despite normally preferring fact to fiction, I’m soon swept up in the story.

I read for an hour and then I retrace my steps through the house, checking and rechecking. When I turn off the light and rest my head on the pillow, I think back over my day and my thoughts settle on Francis, how easy he was to talk to and how refreshing it was for me to be myself. Perhaps I’ve cared too much about what people think of me. What’s wrong with admitting I need help? What’s wrong with friends and family knowing that I’m anxious? I haven’t wanted them to worry; I’ve always protected them. I’m a mother and a daughter, a teacher who knows her subject inside out, a friend who is there in times of need. I’ve never been the one who needs help.

But now I do need help and next time Chloe comments on my behaviour I’m going to try to be honest with her, let her see me as I am. Not be afraid to be vulnerable.

I fall asleep around three, dozing on and off until eight thirty when the phone rings. It’s Tom – he rarely calls me and I expect he’s got wind of my meeting with my solicitor. I’m disinclined to speak to him but just in case it concerns Chloe or Ben, I answer. ‘Tom.’

‘Ellen.’ He’s straight to the point. ‘I understand you’re meeting your solicitor today. I was hoping for the agreement to be signed but when I called him just now he told me you want to renegotiate.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not happy with it.’

‘So what’s changed?’

‘Hold on.’ I cover the mouthpiece and breathe. The sound of his voice causes conflicting emotions inside me: fondness and suspicion, comfort and dread, a smile and a frown. ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Tom,’ I say. ‘My solicitor will be in touch with you after I’ve met him today.’

‘Is that really necessary?’ His tone is soft. ‘Ellen, I know this last year has been hard on you. It’s been hard on me too. Change is never easy—’

‘How, Tom? How has this last year been hard on you?’

‘I miss our family—’

‘You broke our family.’

‘Ellen. I think you and I both know it wasn’t quite as simple as that.’

‘Wasn’t it? For six months you were leading a double life. You slept with another woman. You cheated, you lied, you left me.’

He sighs. The truth is always very tedious to Tom, especially when it shows him in a bad light. ‘What is it you want, Ellen? Half my pension?’

‘In the eyes of the law, I am entitled to it.’

‘So you want more money?’

‘You know what? Yes, I do. We were a team, Tom, you and I, and after twenty-eight years of marriage I’m pleased to say the law doesn’t support your inclination to leave me with as little as you can get away with.’

‘You agreed to the terms.’

‘And you agreed to put our house on the market but instead you moved your woman in and have allowed her free rein.’

The phone goes dead. I punch the air with a soft fist and make breakfast, humming as I do so, pleased to have the upper hand.

I’m still feeling strong and determined when I meet with my solicitor, a grizzly man called Hamish who is close to retirement. ‘I’m glad to see you’ve decided not to sign. He was getting away far too lightly.’ He shakes his head. ‘It was bothering me that we were giving in too easily and you would regret it down the line.’

‘I want the house,’ I say. I tell him that my dad is willing to sell up and come to live with me. ‘I know they’re making changes at Maybanks. They’ve already felled a one-hundred-year old tree. It was a beautiful feature in the garden. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it and in its place they’ve put a hot tub.’

He takes notes as I speak. ‘How do you know this?’

‘A neighbour told me,’ I lie.

‘There’s no accounting for taste but the fact of the matter is that he shouldn’t be making alterations to any of the marriage assets until he is sure they are part of his settlement.’ He carries on writing as he speaks. ‘What I will do is send him a letter telling him that circumstances have now changed. Your father is willing to sell his house, which means you can buy Tom out of Maybanks. I also suggest we ask for half his pension and request that he declare any further assets.’

I nod. I haven’t had the courage to do this up to now. Hamish had tried to persuade me to push for financial disclosure but I had resisted his advice because I was overwhelmed by the reality of divorce, never mind the division of the spoils. It hasn’t felt real to me until now, until I went to Maybanks and saw that time had moved on and left me behind. I’m late to the party but I’m determined to catch up.

Hamish assures me he’ll write to Tom at once and I come out into the sunshine to meet Chloe, Molly and my dad who are waiting for me in Princes Street Gardens. The castle looms large behind the strip of gardens, a once-upon-a-time moat. Chloe is sitting on a bench watching my dad and Molly, who are running up and down passing a miniature rugby ball. When Chloe sees me approaching she stands up. ‘Did you do it?’ she says.