The Masked Truth(82)

Before I can respond, he continues, “She didn’t drop it there. Later, she said she caught me ‘following’ you after a session. You went to use the toilet, and I headed the same way. Then I turned back. I could have said I changed my mind, but I was honest. I told Aimee that you’d said something in therapy, and I wanted to comment on it in private, but I chickened out. An impulse quickly stifled. Following you down a hall once—and then turning back—hardly constitutes stalking. But that’s what she suggested. I was not pleased. So she changed tactics. Rather than intimating I might have an unhealthy interest in you, she began suggesting I had a perfectly healthy one. That perhaps she could have the two of us in for joint counseling, because I might be more comfortable talking if it was only you. She made it seem like it was just therapy, but …”

He adjusts his stance, leaning on the bike rack. “It felt as if she thought I fancied you and was trying to match us up. I called her out on it. I said dating was the last thing on my mind right now, and as my therapist, she should be arguing against it, not trying to set me up. She got defensive, said that wasn’t what she was doing, accused me of transference, that I did fancy you and was putting that on her.” He purses his lips. “It may have been the only time we had an honest conversation. Certainly the first time I got a reaction out of her.”

“And then?”

“That was it. We had one more session after that, but when she brought you up, I pulled my high-and-mighty routine and told her to stick to her job and suggested your family would not be pleased to know she’d been trying to match you up with a diagnosed schizophrenic.”

There’s at least a minute of silence before he says, “Dare I ask what she said? I’m guessing you heard something up there from Lorenzo’s wife? That Aimee made some comment about me and you, presumably one that supports that manifesto rubbish?”

I tell him what Aimee’s therapy notes say. There wasn’t a moment when I thought they could be true, but if there had been, the horror on his face would have eradicated that.

“She said—? No. Just …” A violent shake of his head. “No. Absolutely not, Riley. That’s … I can’t …”

“I didn’t think it was true.”

“Thank you, because … No. Just …” He points at his mouth. “Loss for words here, which, as you might have noticed, does not happen often. I understood the manifesto rubbish—that was someone framing me, and if you’re going to explain why an eighteen-year-old boy does something daft, the obvious answer is a girl. But for Aimee to say I … Yes, I admitted I might … if the circumstances were different … But no, just no. Even if I did fancy you and even if you rejected me—which obviously did not happen—I’ve never kept after a girl who wasn’t interested. I don’t have to …”

“You don’t have to force girls to go out with you.”

“That sounds cheeky. But I’ve never needed to, and I wouldn’t, and … I don’t even know where to go with this. I have no idea why Aimee would say that. Why she’d say any of it. Including that she was concerned I’d turn violent. The worst thing I confessed to was that I occasionally want to tell my mother to clear off and leave me alone.”

“That applies to all mothers at some point.”

He manages a half smile, but it’s strained. This has spooked him, in a way the manifesto didn’t. “I don’t know what to tell you, Riley. I don’t know if it’s possible that I said something I don’t remember, that I lost the plot for a few moments and said things I can’t imagine I’d ever say, but if I did, why wouldn’t she tell me? Tell my mother? Why would she ever let me go to that overnight with you?”

“How did you end up at the weekend session?”

“Hmm?” He looks up and his eyes are unfocused, questions still swirling too fast for him to rise far from his thoughts. “How …? Right. That’s the thing. It was her idea.”

“Tell me about that,” I say. “How it came about.”

He shrugs, as if wanting to throw off the question and pursue more important ones. “Aimee suggested it. I said no. Bloody hell, no. Sleepover group therapy? Absolutely not. She went to my mother and convinced her it was what I needed—the social interaction and all that. I still argued, but then I found out you were going and—” He stops, eyes widening as he realizes what he’s said. He runs a hand through his hair, partly dislodging the band again. “Bugger it. That doesn’t help my case at all, does it? Yes, all right, I thought if you were going, perhaps I could speak to you.”

“About what?”

Another shrug, his cheeks coloring. “Just speak to you. I knew I should be making more of an effort, and you seemed like someone I could talk to. Not in the way Aimee thought. And I never mentioned to her that I wanted to speak to you, because that would have only exacerbated the situation, so …” He clears his throat and eases back. “That was it, then. My mum wanted me to go, and I decided I was not utterly opposed to the plan.”

“It wasn’t Lorenzo,” I say.

“Hmm?”

“We know they needed to have someone on the inside. That map made me think it was Lorenzo. But there was no proof it was his map and that it wasn’t planted, like that manifesto and your fingerprints. The fact he was added at the last moment seemed suspicious, but it was just bad luck. Aimee needed a co-therapist for the weekend, to make it legit.”