Behind Her Eyes(85)

My hands are shaking so much I have to hide them under the table. Oh Adele. What games have you played with me?

‘He persuaded me not to press charges. He said he knew Adele and it would be my word against hers and she could be very convincing. That beauty of hers works for her. But he told me I’d never have to worry about her again. He’d make sure of that. He said he’d make a payment to the Cat Protection League. He basically begged me not to call the police, and I was too tired and emotional to argue. I just wanted them both out of my life.’

‘So you didn’t report her?’

She shakes her head. ‘No. I closed the cafe for a few days and stayed at home, grieving and also jumping every time the doorbell went in case it was her. But she didn’t come back, and I never saw him again.’

‘And that was it?’ I ask. ‘They vanished?’

‘I got a letter from David a few weeks later, sent to the cafe. He said he’d found a new job and they were moving away. He thanked me for my friendship and said he was sorry that it had been so damaging for me, and that he would never forgive himself for that. It made me feel sick to look at it. It went straight in the bin. I wanted to forget all about them.’

‘I’m sorry I’ve brought it all back up,’ I say. ‘And I’m sorry about your cat. But thank you for talking to me. For telling me. You’ve really helped. More than you can know.’

She gets up from the table and I do the same, my legs weak beneath me.

‘I don’t know how you’re involved with them, and I don’t want to know,’ she says. ‘But get away from them. As fast as you can. They’re damaged goods and they’ll hurt you.’

I nod and give her a weak smile and then rush out into the fresh air. The world seems too bright, the leaves too green on the trees, their edges too sharp against the sky. I need somewhere to think.

I order a large glass of wine and take it to a corner table, obscured slightly from view of the businessmen and early lunch customers who are slowly filling up the Blackheath pub with laughter and conversation. I barely hear them. Only when I’ve drunk half my wine does the white noise of panic in my head abate, and I’m left to face the stark realisation I can no longer avoid.

I believed everything Adele told me so easily. I sucked it all up. And it was all lies. Suddenly I see all my rows with David so differently. There was fear in his anger. When he told me to stay away from them, he wasn’t threatening me, he was warning me. His aggression was to protect me. Does he really care about me after all? Did he mean it when he said he was falling in love with me?

Oh God, I’ve been a stupid, stupid fool. I want to cry, and the wine isn’t helping. I’ve been best friends with a psychopath. Friends? I rethink the word. We haven’t been friends, not at all. I’m a fly caught in her web, and she’s toying with me. But why? If she knows about me and David, why didn’t she just hurt me?

I need to talk to him. I need to talk to her. But how much does she actually know? Does she know I’ve come here and spoken to Marianne? And why did she teach me about the dreaming if she knew about me and David? Why help me like that?

With no answers there, I flip my thinking to David. The pills, the phone calls, the money. Is it all containment? Trying to keep the world safe from her? Or is he protecting himself as much as her? I still don’t know what happened to Rob. He made a mistake in his past. No, I correct myself. That’s not what she said. She said he’d done something wrong thinking he was protecting the woman he loved. Something wrong is bigger than a mistake.

I get my phone out of my bag and find the clinic’s number in my contacts, and my finger hovers over the dial button. What if he did kill Rob and then I tell him about the letter I’ve sent to the police, then what? What will he do? Should I trust him and tell him everything? My heart races at the thought. Fuck it, I think. Trust your heart. For once in all this, trust David. Deal with Adele afterwards.

I hit the dial button and press the phone to my ear. Sue answers and I make an attempt to disguise my voice. I tell her my name is Marianne and I must speak to Dr David Martin as a matter of urgency. She tells me she’ll see if he’s free and to hold.

He’ll agree to meet me. He has to.





50


THEN


‘Fuck, I’ll be glad when this visit is over,’ Rob says, reluctantly peeling the potatoes and putting them in a pan of cold water. ‘Polish this, clean that, throw that away, hide this.’ He looks over to where she’s pouring boiling water into the stuffing mix. ‘He’s just a bloke, not the fucking pope.’ Adele sticks her tongue out at him, and he throws some wet potato skin at her.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll pick it up!’ he says, gently mocking her once more.

‘I want things to be nice,’ she says. ‘For all of us.’ She’s so excited about David coming that she could barely sleep at all last night even though they’d got pretty stoned. Rob, however, has got moodier and moodier about the visit, even though he’s promised to be nice. She’s pretty sure it’s nerves. People aren’t his thing, and no matter how much she tells him he’ll like David she can see that he’s not at all convinced.

‘It’ll be fine,’ he says, his dark hair flopping over his face as he returns to his task. ‘Well, if you don’t poison us all with that chicken, anyway. And make sure you rub plenty of butter into the skin.’