Before I Let You In (30 page)

‘Had he been at yours often?’

‘No, we usually went out on dates. I don’t think he’d been there before that night.’

‘So it couldn’t have been him who filmed you.’

Bea’s eyes snapped open. ‘It must have been. Who else could it have been?’

‘Come on, Bea, I know you’ve had a shock, but you have to be a bit smarter than that. That video started before the pair of you came into the room. Unless he had already been into your bedroom and set up a camera, there’s no way it could have been him.’

Bea let this sink in. She was right, of course she was. Paul hadn’t been in the flat five minutes before she’d suggested going to the bedroom to get it over with, although she hadn’t put it quite like that.

But if he hadn’t filmed them, who had? The video had been close up; the camera must have been on her desk, probably right next to her …

She shot upright. ‘The laptop.’

Fran looked confused. ‘What do you mean?’

Bea crossed the room and stepped around her laptop gingerly, as though it was a bomb waiting to explode. Standing behind it, she bent down and lifted it slowly, carried it in her outstretched hands into her bedroom and left it on the bed, closing the door on it softly.

‘The fucking laptop,’ she announced, marching back into the front room. ‘That’s how it was filmed. On my own laptop. It must be bugged.’

Fran’s eyes widened. ‘Do you have any idea how mental you sound?’

‘I know, Fran, but it’s the only way! Like you said, that guy hadn’t been anywhere near the bedroom before we went in together, and we were already being filmed. I sure as hell didn’t set up a camera, and if there had been a tripod in front of my bed, I probably would have noticed.’

‘I don’t know, the amount of alcohol you looked to have had, David Attenborough could have been sitting at the end of the bed narrating the session and you wouldn’t have noticed.’

‘Thanks, Fran, that’s exactly what I need right now, your goddam humour. I’m telling you, it could only be the laptop.‘

Fran shook her head. ‘It just sounds so
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
. Why would someone bug your computer? It’s not like you’re hiding government secrets. And who exactly? Who would have access to your laptop to do something like that?’

‘I hate to even think this, let alone say it, but …’ Bea closed her eyes as though just the thought caused her physical pain. ‘I think it might be Karen. She had access to my computer whenever she wanted. I think she’s having some sort of breakdown. She’s obsessed with this patient of hers … She sent me on a date the other night and …’ She covered her face with her hands, feeling her cheeks heat up with the shame of what her best friend had said about her to this random stranger.

‘Clearly there’s a lot you’re not telling me about what’s going on with you and Karen, and as soon as we’ve sorted this, I want to know everything. But for now we need to deal with this. I was having a think on the way here, and there’s one thing we can try.’

‘What, what can we do? Please tell me you can hack into people’s accounts and delete the email.’

‘Not quite,’ Fran replied grimly. ‘But we don’t need to delete it; we just need to make sure no one opens it. Do you have email on your phone?’

Bea nodded. ‘It’s where I first saw that one.’

‘Okay, great. I need you to write an email to all the people who received that last one. Put in the subject line “Virus warning: do not open emails from”, then type the address. Put it in capitals.’

Bea did as her sister instructed. ‘Fran, you’re a genius. Do you think it will work? Will people really not open it?’

‘It’s our best shot.’ Bea could have kissed her for using the word ‘our’.

‘Okay, now lay it on thick in the body of the email. Make it sound like if they open the email their whole computer is at risk. Then you’ve just got to hope people open yours first.’

Bea wrote what Fran had instructed and pressed send. She sighed. ‘I just can’t believe this is even necessary. Why would anyone do something so cruel? I don’t want to believe it’s Karen; she’s supposed to be my best friend. I mean, I can almost understand a threat, after what’s happened, but this isn’t a threat, she’s actually tried to ruin my life. All because I found out about her and Michael.’

‘I think you have a lot to tell me,’ Fran said, sitting down next to her on the sofa. ‘Why don’t you start at the beginning?’

70

Eleanor

Eleanor backed gingerly out of the room, her shoulder hitting the door with a soft thud, making her cringe. Noah didn’t stir and she let out the silent breath she’d been holding. She pulled the door closed behind her and hesitated for a second, waiting for the screams that didn’t come. Maybe things were looking up. This was the third time this week Noah had slept in his cot during the day – yesterday she’d even managed a power nap without her Xanax.

She had to move fast if she wanted to make the most of her new-found energy. There were piles of washing in the kitchen, last night’s dinner and this morning’s breakfast to wash up, and if he slept long enough she might grab a cup of tea and watch some
Broadchurch
– she was falling behind with her TV viewing now that Noah was sleeping longer at night and she had finally agreed to leave the house again after the incident with her hair. Bea had turned up one evening with an armful of beautiful hats she’d borrowed off a woman at work, and Eleanor had spent a good hour googling YouTube videos of side-parted hairstyles.

The house was strangely silent without the noise from either of the children. Not that it had been that much noisier the last few days, what with Toby barely speaking to them ever since his birthday and Adam out as much as ever. Her stomach hurt when she thought about the look on poor Toby’s face as he’d walked in on her and Adam discussing whether to tell him about his real mother. As it turned out, they didn’t have much choice, and she’d called her mother to take Noah out for a few hours while they sat down and told Toby the truth. Or most of it, anyway.

He’d been silent throughout as they took turns to try and explain why they’d never told him before that Eleanor wasn’t his real mum, but how did you explain a decision that was entirely based on selfish reasons? The fact was that if Eleanor hadn’t been so desperate for her family to be perfect, so obsessed with making sure there were never any problems, never any obstacles to overcome, they would have told him the truth from the start, and he wouldn’t be feeling so betrayed now.

It could have gone so much worse, she knew that, and however painful this was for Toby now, he would come to understand one day that all they had ever done was love him and try to protect him. At least now the secret wasn’t hanging over their heads any longer, and the dread that had sat in Eleanor’s chest ever since Toby’s mother had walked out of his life had started to dissolve.

Kneeling on the kitchen floor, she shoved one of the piles of washing into the machine, pushing it as far back in the drum as it would go to cram it all in. In spite of the fact that Toby hadn’t run away from home – hadn’t even shouted that he hated them – Eleanor still refused to be grateful to Karen for sending him the letter that had forced them into this position. She’d always known that Karen thought they were wrong to keep the truth from Toby – her and her
morals
, which were now basically a joke. But if all she had been trying to do was drive a bigger wedge into the gulf that was Eleanor and Adam’s relationship – well, to use a child to do that was just sick.

She’d been trying not to think about it too much; she had no proof other than some late nights at work that Adam was having an affair with anyone. Was this Karen’s way of breaking them up because her claim hadn’t worked? Why would she do that? Because her own relationship was doomed to fail? What Karen had done with Michael didn’t have to be the end of their friendship, despite how furious Eleanor had been when she’d first found out. Doing one bad thing didn’t make someone a bad person, and maybe Karen didn’t realise the damage she was doing; she had never been married, after all. If Eleanor was crossing things off her Reasons To Hate Karen list, that one was a question mark – she still didn’t know if they could ever be as close unless Karen ended things with her married lover.

That just left the letter to Toby. Eleanor didn’t want to lose someone she had been close to for her entire life over it, and maybe if Karen had replied to even one of her furious voicemail messages or missed phone calls, there might have been a chance that in time she would have accepted an apology from her friend. But there had been no apology, just one text message the evening before:
I didn’t send that letter. I know who did and when I can prove it I’ll come and explain xx

Eleanor hadn’t even bothered to reply. It was a pitiful attempt at shifting the blame, and not even a convincing one. Karen must know how devastated she would have been for Toby to find out about his real mother that way. It was almost as though she had made a conscious decision that Toby’s birthday would be the end of their friendship, the letter the death knell at the funeral of their lives together. Maybe Karen was fed up of the drama that came with a close friendship like theirs, the petty disagreements, the self-justification that she wasn’t even going to try and apologise, just a feeble denial so she didn’t look like the bad guy. Maybe this was the end of them all – maybe it was for the best. Heaven knows they were at the age where friendships should be trinkets to be picked up and admired, then put back on the shelf until someone noticed they were getting dusty, not dishwashers constantly in need of refilling and emptying daily.

Eleanor grimaced at her choice of metaphor. Even thinking about her friends led her back to domestic tasks. She scanned the front room, unsure of where to start. Dusting could wait until Lesley came later in the week. She ran her finger over the top of a photo frame and shook the dust off on to the floor. That would have to do. Hoovering she wouldn’t risk until—

She stopped in her tracks, looking at the photograph she’d just run her finger over. It was a 7x5 picture of Bea and Karen holding up a gigantic bed sheet with the words ‘Welcome Home’ emblazoned across it in red, white and blue sparkly letters.
That one had been from when she’d spent two weeks in Italy on a work conference. She’d been in hysterics seeing them there, waving their banner as though she’d been on an expedition to the Amazon rainforest rather than at a
two-week conference in a five-star hotel in Florence.

‘We missed you!’ Bea had declared when she’d asked them – tears running down her cheeks – what the bloody hell they thought they were playing at. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

Now Eleanor looked at the smiling faces of her best friends and tears stung her eyes again. What had it been about this picture that had given her reason to pause? Was it just the memory of a time when she’d thought there would be nothing on earth that could tear them apart? Karen had met Michael by then – she was already keeping the secret that had the potential to tear their friendship apart. How had she felt every time they had been out together, the five of them, to be playing a part? Had she experienced the same eternal dread that Eleanor herself had felt every time someone brought up the subject of giving birth in the days when she was a mother who had never experienced it?

Glancing again at the photograph, she felt that same pull that something wasn’t quite right. There was something her mind was stretching to remember. She pictured Karen the last time she’d seen her. She’d left the café throwing one last disgusted look over her shoulder, clutching her handbag as though it was a force field against the awful revelation she’d just heard. Karen had been sitting there, her elbows resting on the table, her head in her hands, Bea blank-faced opposite her.

It still hurts, Eleanor told herself as she placed the picture back on the shelf. That was to be expected. Those kinds of lies could cut a relationship to shreds.

An insistent beeping from the kitchen told her that the washing machine had finished its cycle, and she crossed the room to tackle the next load. Still her mind kept pushing her thoughts back to Karen – her best friend and her husband, both liars. Did she even know either of them any m—

She cringed as her thoughts were interrupted by someone at the front door.

71

Karen

Karen’s mind was a whirlpool of dread and panic as she drove towards the river. What she’d done could never be undone and now someone was going to have to face the consequences. How had things gone so wrong? Everything she’d ever worked for had disappeared in a puff of smoke, all because of one woman. No one would ever trust her again. She’d probably never work again, and she and Michael would almost definitely not survive this. Her life was falling to pieces in front of her and there was little or nothing she could do to glue it back together.

The river was angry today, angrier than she had seen it of late. It was almost as if it knew that Karen had failed to heed its warnings, the swirling dark mass of water chastising her, mocking her stupidity.
How could you? How could you?

And what lay beneath it? Usually the idea of the life hidden under the water appealed to her, mirroring her own life, so much underneath the surface that people could not see. That people could not be allowed to see. The respected psychiatrist, the screwed-up mistress who used sex with nameless, faceless men to claw back some of the control she lost when she sent her boyfriend back to his wife and children every weekend. Who was she? Was she that woman who cheated and lied and used people? Or was she the loving, caring best friend who had dedicated her life to helping others through their problems, who held the hands – metaphorically, of course – of complete strangers who were at their lowest ebb? She knew she’d brought some of her patients back from the darkest places they’d ever visited. She’d saved lives. Was that the true Karen Browning? Which was real and which was the liar?

She’d spent what felt like hours sitting on the cold, wet grass that divided the icy water from the people of the town. Those banks kept them safe; when they failed, when they burst, homes and businesses were flooded with dirty, stinking river water, lives were ruined. She’d failed her friends as completely as those banks had failed their town time and time again. As soon as the rain got too much to bear, they gave in and let the place drown.