Before I Let You In (15 page)

Toby grinned. ‘Thanks, Mum!’

She kissed the top of his head. ‘They’re gonna love it. Remember how hard you’ve worked and it’ll all be okay. I love you.’

‘Love you too,’ Toby mumbled, presumably in case there were hidden recording devices on the stairs.

Eleanor hauled the project over to the reception, careful not to knock any of the pieces off. There was no sign of Mrs Fenton. She wanted to leave the bloody thing there and get back to Noah – what if he’d woken and was crying? But she’d made a promise to Toby, and their relationship was fragile enough as it was at the moment. Plus experience told her that Noah would sleep soundly now until the minute they walked through the front door at home and she wanted to put her head down for a bit herself. He only ever slept in the day when they were out of the house; any time she wanted to work on her business plan or, God forbid, rest, he was wide awake and needing something. She’d never experienced this with Toby; by the time she’d become part of his life, he’d been sleeping through the night, even the loss of his mother not unsettling him for long. He’d been such an easy baby that this had been quite a shock to the system.

After what seemed like an hour – in reality a few minutes – Mrs Fenton strolled in, the smell of cigarette smoke trailing behind her like a line of ducklings following their mother. Eleanor took a deep breath, savouring the smell for a minute. Something Adam didn’t know about her was that until they had got together, she’d been a casual smoker. He’d made it clear on their first date that he hated smoking with a passion that came from having lost a parent to lung cancer, so she’d decided not to mention it, and had gradually given up altogether. Until she’d had Noah, she’d never considered taking it up again, but lately she’d been craving the feel of that rolled-up nicotine-filled paper between her fingers like she hadn’t in years.

‘Mrs Whitney, is there something wrong?’ Mrs Fenton appraised her casual Monday attire: black leggings covered in formula fingerprints where she’d wiped her hands down the sides and a loose navy smock thrown on to disguise the fact that her stomach still hadn’t completely made it back to pre-baby proportions.

‘Toby has this project for his environmental class this morning – is there someone who could help him get it there, please? I didn’t have a chance to walk it with him to his classroom; we were, um, running a bit late.’ She resisted the urge to go into a lengthy description of how stressful her morning had been. Mrs Fenton didn’t have children, and Eleanor doubted she’d understand how long something as simple as a shower and getting dressed could take when accompanied by the howls of a small human and the trials and tribulations of a slightly bigger one.

‘No problem.’ Mrs Fenton waved a hand at the dolphin. ‘Just leave it there.’

She swung to pick up the paperback she had hidden in her desk drawer, and in that second Eleanor truly believed she hated her and her simple day, and her ability to make herself a cup of tea without cringing when the kettle clicked too loudly or to flush the toilet after a wee.

‘Thank you, I have to get off.’ She barrelled back out of the school doors and instinctively looked over to the car. Or where the car had been, because now it was gone.

Part Two

31

Karen

‘So how have you been feeling since our last session?’

Jessica Hamilton raised her eyebrows at Karen. Was it just her imagination, or were they slightly less bushy than the last time she’d seen her? And was she wearing lipstick? Karen instinctively pressed her own lips together. She’d had Eleanor on her mind when she was getting ready that morning and she’d completely forgotten to put any lipstick on. She felt annoyed at herself for going to work without checking her make-up first, and for letting a patient make her feel inadequate.

‘Bored of answering these questions. Disappointed that you don’t have any insight other than ‘how are you feeling’. Stupid that I ever thought this would help.’ She leaned her elbow on the arm of the sofa and her forehead on her hand and looked thoroughly fed up.

‘And what were you expecting to have achieved by this stage?’
Patient is feeling uncomfortable at the new direction her sessions are taking, manifested as frustration at the lack of progress.

‘I thought you might have a little more insight for me, you know, on how to stop these headaches. And the obsessive thoughts. I didn’t expect to have to tell you how I’m going to fix myself.’

Karen tried not to sound as though she was pressing too urgently for details. ‘Is the relationship continuing?’

Jessica regarded her with keen curiosity, and not for the first time Karen felt as though the girl was trying to look inside her for answers to questions she wasn’t ready to reveal yet. As though she was the one under the microscope and Jessica was here to dissect her.

‘If you had the chance to go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler, would you do it?’

Not the answer she had been expecting. Karen hesitated.

‘I think most people would say they would, that one act of murder would be justified to save thousands of lives.’

Jessica smiled, as though she’d already known what Karen was going to say. ‘It’s interesting you avoid giving an answer by talking about what you think most people would do.’

Interesting. Like she was an experiment, a butterfly in a jar flapping its wings despite knowing there was nowhere to fly to.

Jessica paused for a few seconds, giving the impression of someone contemplating their next sentence, but even then Karen got the impression that every word she said was already planned. She didn’t speak unless she was reading from her inner script.

‘What about if you had the chance to go back and kill Hitler’s
mother
? Would you do it then? Sacrifice an innocent life so that thousands would live?’

‘Are you interested in questions of morality in general, or just my position on it?’ Karen was trying not to let her see she was rattled, but she could feel her face burning and felt sure Jessica must be able to see it too, hear the sharpness her voice had taken on.

‘I’m interested in people.’ If Jessica could tell she was feeling uncomfortable, she didn’t care. ‘And how they claim to have one set of beliefs but then act very differently. It fascinates me how we can quote our own moral code and yet completely disregard it when it doesn’t fit with how we want to live our lives. Talk about cognitive dissonance.’

If blood could freeze in veins, Karen was certain that hers would have turned to ice. Those words … cognitive dissonance … had she mentioned them to Jessica? It was her initial diagnosis of the girl’s tension headaches – headaches that she’d yet to see or hear any evidence of – and yet she didn’t believe in sharing early diagnoses with patients: if she was wrong, it could send the wrong impression, and often people took her first answer and refused to listen to any other possibilities.

Could it have been a coincidence?

Of course it was possible – but that wasn’t what it was. Jessica Hamilton knew the diagnosis she’d already assigned to her and was using it to taunt her.
I know you,
she was saying.
I’m one step ahead of you.

‘Tell me what you know about cognitive dissonance.’

Jessica smiled as though Karen had read from her script.

‘It’s the disparity between our thoughts and beliefs, and our actions. Like, I might think that sleeping with married men is wrong in general, but in reality I’m still carrying on my affair.’

‘In that case—’

‘It’s like those people who were on an underground cave tour when the heavily pregnant woman in front got stuck in the mouth of the cave. The tide was rising, and soon the only person who would be safe was the woman stuck in the rocks because her head was out of the water. The cavers had a stick of dynamite and a choice. They could choose to blow up the innocent woman and save the rest of the cavers, or let her live and condemn everyone else to drowning.’

Jessica told the story as if it were a real case, when in fact it was an entirely fictional anecdote Karen had heard a million times – variations had been discussed in ethics papers since her days at university, a tool to debate utilitarian versus deontological ethics.

‘And what did they do?’ she asked. She was rooted to the spot waiting for Jessica’s answer.

‘They blew her up.’

Karen heard a hiss and realised that she was sucking air between her teeth. Jessica smiled at her discomfort, then lifted her feet on to the sofa and tucked them underneath herself. It was usually a classic sign of self-comfort, but not with her. With her it was dominance, and Karen had never known someone feel comfortable enough to do it in her office before. She felt a flash of irritation at the thought of her patient’s filthy pumps grinding into the fabric as she shifted around. Would she put her feet on the sofa in someone’s home?

Jessica spoke again.

‘Let’s talk about Adam.’

Adam? This was it. This was where Jessica admitted the real reason she was here. Karen attempted to plaster on a poker face.

‘Adam?’ She was getting so good at keeping her tone neutral in these sessions, she was starting to sound like the speaking clock.

‘Huh?’ Jessica looked confused. ‘Who’s Adam?’

‘You said, “Let’s talk about Adam,”’ Karen reminded her, but Jessica looked so genuinely puzzled, she wasn’t so sure any more. She could just as easily have been hearing things.
Or losing my mind.

Jessica shook her head. ‘I said let’s talk about
him.
You asked about my relationship. If anything, it’s become more intense. It’s like my life with him is real life now, and when he’s with his wife they are the ones having an affair.’

Karen couldn’t speak; Jessica’s words had hit so close to home. And she got the distinct feeling that was exactly how the girl wanted it. She wanted Karen’s mind spinning like the last sock in the tumble dryer, barely able to recover from one heart-stopping revelation before she slammed it up a gear.

Karen struggled to regain her composure. It felt as though she was in an interview in which the other person in the room knew exactly what question was coming next but she didn’t even have a clue what subject it would be on. She wasn’t going to let Jessica make her feel that way –
she
was the one in charge here; Jessica was just a girl.
Just a girl.

‘Have you thought much about his wife since you began talking to me?’

Jessica fixed her with steely eyes. ‘All the time.’

‘And what do these thoughts involve?’

She shifted around on the sofa, making Karen feel uncomfortable just watching her.

‘Different things. Sometimes I imagine that she grows a backbone and leaves him. Sometimes I imagine she comes to where I work and confronts me, hits me or screams at me or something. Other times I imagine confronting her. Telling her what her husband has been doing just to see the look on her stupid face. Last week I fell asleep at my desk and imagined taking that screaming bundle of shit and puke away from her and hiding him, just to watch her panic.’

Karen was less alarmed at these statements than she was at the rest of Jessica’s behaviour. It wasn’t uncommon for her to hear similar things on a daily basis. Most people had some kind of disordered thoughts: that fleeting image of punching your boss in the face because he’d just called you an idiot; or screaming at the woman who’d just pushed in front of you in the supermarket queue. What separated them from the Ted Bundys of the world was the knowledge that they wouldn’t act on such thoughts. Jessica Hamilton was trying to scare her. It was the why she couldn’t figure out.

‘And how do you feel after these thoughts?’

Jessica looked down at her thumbnail, picked at the loose skin around the cuticle. ‘Guilty. I mean, who has those kinds of thoughts? I felt terrible after that last one, really I did.’

And that’s what separates us from the psychopaths, thought Karen. Guilt. Fear that our thoughts define who we are, when in reality it’s only our actions that matter.

Jessica glanced up suddenly, looking Karen dead in the eyes. ‘And something else.’

‘What else, Jessica?’

‘Excited. When I thought about hurting her, I felt excited.’

32

Eleanor

Eleanor froze, her mind taking a few seconds to process what her eyes weren’t seeing. The space where she’d left the car just a few short minutes ago was empty, as though she’d never been there. Panic rising in her chest, she scanned the other vehicles; they were all still there, exactly as they had been when she’d pulled in. No traffic wardens stood waiting to tick her off for parking in the wrong spot (a spot she’d parked in a million times previously), no police officers crowded around her silver people carrier ready to quiz her about why her child had been left alone in a car park. Not one other person was anywhere in sight.

Her legs refused to move, torn between running towards where her car quite clearly wasn’t and running back inside and screaming the school down. Her heart threatening to pound through her chest, she stood helplessly on the spot, praying this was some kind of joke, or a stupid mix-up. At last she turned towards the school.

‘My car!’ She threw herself through the door of the office. Mrs Fenton looked up from her book. ‘My car’s been stolen. Call the police!’

‘Calm down, Mrs Whitney. I’ll call them in a moment. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

‘My son is in there! Noah … he’s in the fucking car!’

Mrs Fenton’s smile froze on her face and she grabbed for the phone, punching at the nines so fast she nearly knocked it flying. As she spoke to the operator, Eleanor paced the office, panic obscuring her thoughts. What should she be doing? Should she be outside, running around the streets screaming?

‘Mrs Whitney, they need to speak to you. Stay calm, the police are already on their way; they just need more details. I’m calling the head teacher now and activating our missing child procedure.’