Before I Let You In (26 page)

‘At least take the rest of the day,’ Robert called after her hopefully. She was on the cusp of saying no when she caught sight of herself in the black glass-panelled door. Her complexion was paper white against the darkness of the backdrop, only the dark purple half-moon shapes under her eyes adding any colour. Her hair, usually straight and shiny, had fallen into the natural kinks it got from being slept on wet, and there was a white stain on her left breast – toothpaste. At least she’d remembered to brush her teeth this morning. The pulsing that had been strumming a rhythm in the base of her skull since she’d woken had risen now to a concerto.

‘Yes, okay, fine.’

‘What? Fine what?’ His voice was laden with suspicion.

‘I’ll take the rest of the day off. Maybe tomorrow, too. I’ll come back after the weekend, unless you and the other partners feel you have enough evidence of wrongdoing to formally suspend me. What action will you take with the board?’

He gestured to the papers on his desk, and she realised with a jolt that the file outlining the complaint was in front of him. ‘I’ll have to show them the evidence I’ve been presented with, but I suspect it will be an informal meeting rather than a hearing. We probably won’t even need you involved.’ Robert’s voice had relaxed a little; maybe all he’d wanted was for her to realise the seriousness of her situation. Maybe if she’d gone away, taken a break like he’d told her, things would have turned out differently. There was no way of knowing that now.

58

It was either falling into place or falling apart and I had no idea which. There had been times over the last few weeks when I’d felt like I’d gone too far – I’m not evil, you need to know that, I just wanted to make them see. I’d thought a lot about that concept of good and evil – what made me any better than her? The things I’d done, I had good reasons, but in the end didn’t everyone say that? The prison system is full of ‘innocent’ men. In the moments that I stopped and looked into the distance, I would become terrified of where it would all end, debilitated by the fear of what I was becoming. I could have stopped it at any moment. Couldn’t I? If I could – if I had – it would never have turned out this way. They would still be alive.

59

Karen

Karen sat staring into the still pool of water, tiny air bubbles bursting against the surface the only indication that an entire ecosystem lived and breathed beneath. It was the same thing that had always fascinated her about the mind – how so much could go on in people’s subconscious that even they weren’t aware of. So much floating unseen just out of reach until the bubble reached the top and burst.

Suspended. A forty-minute hearing with the board of the GMC and the only phrase she could remember was
suspended pending further investigation.

A big part of her wasn’t worried at all. Years of being told what a crucial part of the practice she was, before that being top of every class at university, walking through every exam as if she’d written the questions herself, had left her feeling professionally invincible. She was the teacher’s pet, clearly Robert’s favourite by a mile. There was no way these ridiculous allegations were going to stick, and Robert was just going through the motions with this formal suspension. He had his practice to think about, and she respected his – and the other partners’ – decision. She would have made the same one had it been any of her colleagues in her position.

Then there was the other part of her. The part that whispered words like
ethics committee
,
professional disgrace
,
suspended pending further investigation.
This was always going to be a blot on her copybook, a black mark against her name. Even if she was cleared of any wrongdoing and kept on at the practice, her colleagues would forever be giving each other sidelong glances when they saw her, all wanting to sit next to her at meetings to see if they could smell alcohol on her breath, second-guessing every opinion she put forward as to someone’s care. Her cases would be reassigned while she was on her imposed hiatus, and it was unlikely she would get them back even if she was reinstated. She’d be starting from scratch, all her hard work in the hands of one of the other psychiatrists. As formal as they all tried to keep their sessions, she had come to care about her patients; she had a vested interest in their well-being. Would alcoholic Gerry Young continue to stay on the wagon under the care of someone else? Would Susan Webster be forced to relive her experience from the beginning with one of the other partners? Or would they quit therapy altogether, unable to face starting again? And what would become of Jessica Hamilton?

The idea sat like a brick in her stomach. Nothing she had tried to do – not cleaning or reading or watching awful programmes with irritating hosts and guests with more problems than the whole of their patient list put together – nothing distracted her from the snowballing idea that she’d been wrong all along. That all this had been for nothing.

60

Bea

When the door opened, it was Michael who stood behind it.

‘She’s not here, Bea,’ he said, his voice wary.

‘I know,’ Bea replied shortly. ‘I came to see you. Will she be long?’

‘She’s gone to get some wine and a takeaway from that place we like in Bridgnorth. She’ll only be about half an hour. She’s had some trouble at work; she doesn’t want to talk to anyone.’

‘You’d better let me in quickly then.’

Michael looked as though he was about to argue, then dropped his eyes to the floor and let out a weary sigh. Without waiting to see if she was following, he walked through into the living room. Bea pushed the front door closed and followed him.

‘I assume this is where you question my motives towards Karen, tell me I’m the scum of the earth and warn me away from your best friend or you’ll tell my wife.’

Bea’s smile was without humour. ‘And then you tell me your wife doesn’t understand you, you haven’t had sex for years and you’re only together until the children are old enough for you to leave.’

Michael raised his eyebrows:
touché
. ‘So why are you here?’

Bea perched herself on the edge of the sofa as though it was alien to her; as though she hadn’t curled up on it a hundred times, a bottle of wine at her feet.

‘I’m worried about Karen.’

‘You needn’t be. She knows exactly what she’s involved in and she can walk away at any time.’ He rubbed his hand over his chin. ‘She’s a grown-up, Bea, and what we have works. I don’t lie to her, and she doesn’t lie to me. She’s happy.’

‘Well if you honestly believe that, then you don’t know Karen as well as you think you do,’ Bea declared. ‘But I don’t mean I’m worried about her relationship status, or whether you’re going to break her heart. I’m worried about her … well …’ Suddenly she was unsure she’d done the right thing going there. But she was there now, so she had better get on and say what she’d planned. ‘Her mental health.’

She’d expected Michael to scoff, to remind her that Karen was the mental health professional and she was an HR assistant, not the other way round. But he didn’t. To her surprise, he nodded.

‘Me too. You know what’s going on with her?’

Bea sighed. ‘I’m not entirely sure, no, but I think it has to do with this patient she has. She’s convinced herself, and tried to convince me, that this girl is having an affair with Eleanor’s husband.’

‘She told you about that?’

‘That’s what surprised me at first. Karen has never spoken about her patients to me. She’s the ultimate professional. When she confided in me about this girl, I knew she must have a good reason to think we had a problem.’

‘Did she tell you her name?’

‘No. She wouldn’t cross that line unless she had proof there was some kind of danger. The thing is, it all just sounds so …’ She stopped, searching for a word that wouldn’t antagonise Michael. But she didn’t have to; Michael said it for her.

‘Crazy. It sounds crazy. That this girl is sleeping with Adam and taunting Karen with the knowledge. I know.’

‘It’s not impossible, I suppose, but why? My guess is that Karen has sensed there’s something wrong in Eleanor and Adam’s relationship and is trying to save them, just like she always does when one of us is in trouble. She’s using this girl, projecting the issue on to her.’

Michael looked as though he was trying not to laugh at her attempt at psychiatry.

‘So tell me something else,’ he asked. ‘Why does Karen have this God complex in the first place?’

Bea reached down to her handbag and opened it. She pulled out some A4 pages and passed them to Michael, who studied them, a frown crossing his face.

‘What is this?’

‘It’s newspaper articles. From thirty years ago. Karen’s mother gave them to me.’

‘You went to see Karen’s mum?’

Bea nodded. ‘I went about the birthday party Eleanor and I were arranging for her. To be honest, I’m not even sure it will be going ahead, but I’d arranged to see her mum to get family phone numbers, so I thought I’d go in case El cools down and it all still happens.’

‘I didn’t think Karen spoke to her mum. Some kind of family feud over her dad.’

‘She doesn’t, only Karen never told us that, or anything about a feud. She hasn’t seen her mum in about six years. And only once a year or so before that. Before her dad died she went quite frequently but when he wasn’t there any more it got less and less, then not at all. She speaks to her on the phone every now and then, but most of the time it ends in an argument.’

‘Because of this?’ He gestured to the article. ‘Because her mum thinks she let her sister die? But that happened thirty years ago, not six.’

Another nod. ‘Nettie, that’s Karen’s mum, said she tried and tried to get over what had happened, but Karen wouldn’t forgive her for being a terrible mother. It became unbearable for them all. Karen moved out when she went to university and never went back. She never told us any of it. Isn’t that weird? I mean, we knew her mum wasn’t like ours, she didn’t have friends over for tea or whatever, but everyone was always at mine anyway. Our house was like a gathering point for everyone on our street, so it didn’t seem that strange.’

‘And you’re sure this is our Karen in this article? Karen is the kid who caused her sister’s death?’

‘Of course not, her mother caused it. Karen was barely four years old! But I’m sure she blamed herself.’

Michael let out a breath and read the article again. ‘No wonder she feels so strongly about being the protector of the group. She still carries the guilt of what happened when she was four years old. Poor thing.’

‘Nettie said she’d only left them alone for a few minutes, but it must have been longer. Karen had been playing with her sister, and she’d always been so good with her, her mum said; I think she forgot she was barely more than a baby herself. I suspect Nettie had post-natal depression, although that’s not an excuse for the way she treated Karen. She blamed her for what happened to the baby. She told me she tried not to, but she couldn’t help it: every time she looked at Karen’s face she saw her baby sister. She started drinking, heavily. She wasn’t there for Karen when she needed her, she couldn’t function enough to be a proper mother.’

‘And where was her father in all this?’

‘He was away a lot with work. Back then the mothers practically brought up the children on their own, remember? After the accident he couldn’t bear to be at home – he probably blamed himself for not being there, so he stayed away more and more, became the useless father he thought he was anyway.’

‘So they were on their own, just the two of them.’

‘Yes. Both blaming themselves, and blaming each other at the same time. It must have been horrific.’

‘Poor Karen. But what does this have to do with what’s going on now?’

‘I don’t know. All I know is that this is why she feels like she has to spend her life looking after people. Fixing them. She’s making amends for what happened to her sister.’

61

I’d spent a whole evening signing up to some of the dating websites I’d found online – okay, not so much dating as glorified Tinder sites. Some of the things these guys opened their conversations with … well, put it this way, I could see why they were looking on the internet for their kicks. Within minutes of putting a random photograph from Google on to a profile and filling in a few sparse details, I had three messages from blokes looking for hook-ups. I scanned a few of their profiles, but none of them were quite right. I’d read about this woman online – a catfish, the article called her. This woman hadn’t been fishing for herself; she had managed to set up a relationship between a model and a famous American basketball player, acting as a go-between so that each person thought they were talking to the other when in reality they were talking to her. A tricky undertaking, but she had proved it could be done, and in doing so had given me an idea.

I had to find the exact right person for this to work. And even then it might not. On the internet you could be whoever you wanted to be, so it was amazing that so many people chose to be complete idiots.

It took nearly a week and over seventy messages to find the right guy. He’d started off his message extremely charming, but his profile made it clear what he was looking for.

I find it hard to believe that someone as beautiful as you has to look online for a date, he sent. I waited a while before replying.

I’m so sorry, but this is a really old profile. I only reactivated it so a friend could take a look at how many normal guys are out there looking for fun.

Shame. You and I could have had fun. Did your friend find anything she liked?

Maybe she has now ;-)

The messages continued in that way for a while, harmless flirting as I explained about my friend Bea and how she was out for a good time, no strings attached. I told him in a roundabout way just how up for it she was, and how she always gave the men in her life a night to remember. How she didn’t have time for a real relationship but how I didn’t think that should mean she missed out on the benefits. The guy, who told me his name was David, was clearly interested regardless of which woman he was being offered, and when I sent him a photo of Bea stolen from her Facebook page, it had pretty much sealed the deal.