The Therapist(35)

Lorna eyes dart, as if she’s looking for a way out. Then she nods and squares her shoulders in acceptance of my request.

‘She was lovely,’ she says. ‘So was Oliver. He was like a son to us, he would help us in the garden, cut the hedges, mow the lawn, that sort of thing. That’s why I still don’t understand what happened, why it all went so wrong between them. One minute they were the happiest couple in the world and the next – we heard them arguing one evening, it was awful. Oliver sounded so angry, which was strange, because I’d never seen him get cross about anything. But they say that, don’t they, that sometimes, when easy-going people explode – well, they really explode. Edward and I didn’t know if we should go over, or call the police. We were so worried for them.’

‘And did you? Call the police?’

‘No, because everything calmed down. Oliver was still angry but he wasn’t shouting.’

‘Did you hear what they were arguing about?’

A frown comes over her face and I realise that, like with Tamsin, I’ve crossed some sort of invisible line.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say hastily. ‘I don’t mean to pry.’

Lorna’s internal struggle is visible on her face as she tries to work out how much she should tell me. Her shoulders sag.

‘Edward said I shouldn’t talk about it, but nobody does and somehow, it makes everything worse.’

‘I can understand that,’ I say gently. ‘When my sister died, people stopped talking about her, they thought it would upset me. But it upset me more when nobody mentioned her at all, as if she’d never existed for them.’

‘I’m not allowed to talk about our son, or have photos of him anywhere in the house.’

‘That must be hard.’

‘It is.’ Tears fill her eyes but before I can say anything, she blinks them away. ‘But back to Nina and Oliver,’ she says, giving me a wobbly smile. She pauses a moment to recall everything. ‘I went to see Nina the next day, the day after we’d heard them arguing. I waited until Oliver had gone to work. She was in a dreadful state, very tearful. She was mortified that Edward and I had heard them fighting. She said it was her fault, that she’d been having an affair and that Oliver had found out.’

‘Did she say who she’d been having an affair with?’ Appalled that I’ve been so brusque, I rush to apologise. But she takes my question at face value and carries on talking.

‘No, but she said she was going to break it off with him. And then, that night, just hours later, Oliver—’ She stops. ‘I still can’t believe it.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t Oliver,’ I suggest carefully. ‘Maybe it was the man Nina was involved with. You said she told you she was going to tell him it was over. I’m sorry, but why couldn’t he have been the one to have killed her?’

She fishes a tissue from her sleeve. ‘Because Oliver lied to the police and that proved his guilt,’ she says, wiping her eyes. ‘I wish I’d known, I wish I’d known what he was going to tell them because – I know I shouldn’t say this – I would have lied – not lied exactly, but I would have told the police I hadn’t seen anything. But when they came to see us that evening, I had no idea that Nina had been murdered and they didn’t tell us. They wanted to know if we had seen or heard anything and I answered truthfully, that I saw Oliver come back just after nine o’clock and go into the house. I knew it was just after nine because we’d sat down to watch the news on the BBC news channel, like we always do at nine o’clock – they say old habits die hard, don’t they, and anyway the News at Ten is on too late for us now – and when we heard Oliver’s car, I got up and looked out of the window. I wouldn’t normally have done that, not in the winter when the curtains are already drawn but we were anxious because of the argument we’d heard the night before. I waited a moment, hoping they wouldn’t start arguing again. But I didn’t hear anything so I went back to the news.’ She stops a moment. ‘It must have been about half-an-hour later, because the news was ending, that we heard a lot of cars pull up and when I looked out, I saw it was the police. We thought that Oliver and Nina had been arguing again and that one of them, or maybe another neighbour, had called for help. To tell you the truth, we were relieved that the matter had been taken out of our hands because if we had heard them arguing again, like the previous night, I think that this time, we might have phoned the police – or at least gone round to try and calm things.’ She twists the tissue in her hands. ‘The next thing we knew, the police were knocking on the door, asking their questions. We only found out the next morning that Nina had been murdered.’

‘It must have been such a shock,’ I say gently. But lost in the past, I’m not sure Lorna hears me.

‘Oliver told the police that he hadn’t gone into the house, that he’d gone to sit in the square for a while. But it wasn’t true.’

‘Could he have gone into the house and then gone straight back out again, to sit in the square?’ I suggest.

Lorna shakes her head again. ‘If he had, he would have told the police. If I’d known he was going to say he’d gone to sit in the square, I wouldn’t have mentioned seeing him go into the house. But I didn’t know, I didn’t know he was going to lie. And why would he have gone to sit in the square at nine o’clock at night, when it was cold and dark?’