What Goes Around: A chilling psychological thriller (19 page)

I feel light-headed. My heart is drumming against my ribcage. I don’t waste any time. I speed-walk along the pavement and turn into Maybanks’ driveway. I slide the key into the lock at the back door and I’m inside the kitchen before I give myself time to think.

I close the door behind me and stand stock-still, listening. Apart from the fridge motor humming quietly to my left, I can’t hear anything. I wait anyway and count slowly to a hundred. Still nothing so I start to move. By this time on a golfing Friday morning I’d have made a cooked breakfast and the kitchen would smell of bacon and eggs but there are no discernible cooking smells, not even toast, only the scent of sandalwood from perfumed sticks on the windowsill.

I look inside the fridge as I’m passing. It’s full of the stuff of healthy eating: coconut water, mackerel, spinach and avocados. I’m surprised: Tom is every bit the meat and veg bloke – but perhaps he’s changed. Perhaps he always wanted to eat like this. I don’t know and I don’t really care.

I tiptoe through the hallway and into the living room. Neither space has changed very much apart from the walls. I removed so many pictures and photographs when I left, exposing bare, rectangular patches, but most of them have already been covered with elegant prints and photographs. There are three photos of a smiling Tom and Leila: outside a restaurant, on a ski slope and on a beach. (They haven’t wasted any time.) This I do care about and I feel the sharp stab of hurt feelings – Tom barely took any holidays when we were together and he certainly wouldn’t have been willing to spend thousands on a ski holiday.

As I climb the stairs I see that there are several photographs of a boy growing into a young man, who I assume is Alex. He appears to be fun-loving, smiling at the photographer in an open manner, and I wonder about what took him down the drugs route. There isn’t even one photograph of Ben and Chloe. Tom is someone who lives in the present or the future, so he was unconcerned when I removed the family photos but not to have wanted to keep one? Not one photograph of his own children. It beggars belief.

At the top of the stairs is Chloe’s old bedroom. Gone is the wall design she loved so much – an expanse of musical notes, ‘Amazing Grace’, painted by a friend of mine who teaches music. There is nothing of Chloe left in here at all. Curtains, carpet, walls have all been revamped and a purpose-built wall cabinet runs the length of two walls and houses all of Tom’s textbooks and files.

Ben’s bedroom is as it was, although empty of his stuff as he brought it all to the rented house with me. The spare bedroom is sparse but lived in and I take it to be Alex’s. There’s an electric guitar in the corner and sheet music lying about the floor. The fifth bedroom is in the attic and Ben told me that Katarina sleeps up there.

I open the door to the conservatory that sits directly above the kitchen and am upset to see that most of the cacti have been removed. The room is almost completely empty apart from the odd plant and a couple of wicker chairs. I feel angry at the sight of it, all the love and effort that went into making a restful room wiped out by a few months of neglect.

I hesitate at the door to my bedroom, but only for a few seconds; then I turn the handle and force the door open. My insides lurch as if I’m riding on a rollercoaster. My bedroom no longer exists. The room has been completely revamped in much the same way as Tom’s study has been. The king-size bed has been replaced with an extravagant four-poster affair that dominates the space. The carpet has been replaced with wooden flooring and the lush, velvet curtains have given way to airy muslins. (A pretty choice but not a practical one – the room will be freezing on winter evenings.)

The walk-in wardrobe has been fitted with drawers, shelves and rails, most of them commandeered by Leila’s clothes, which hang neatly according to item and colour: silks and cashmere and merino wool, ranging from black and white to colourful blouses and tops. I touch each and every one of her items of clothing, enjoying the fact that I’m here, uninvited, and she’ll never know.

As I thought, she wears stockings not tights, and silk underwear in black and red: basques, negligees, suspenders. She’s spoilt for choice.

One drawer contains two types of vibrators, dildos, handcuffs and a selection of balls and plugs laid neatly in a row. I have never before considered myself naive or unadventurous but perhaps I am. I don’t know whether to feel sad or foolish, so I close the drawer quickly and look for my black lacquer jewellery box. It’s nowhere on display but it doesn’t take me long to find it, inside the walk-in wardrobe on the floor behind Leila’s shoes.

I slide the box inside my backpack and am about to leave when I have a thought that makes me stop. A sneaky, spiteful, naughty-child thought.
Why not, Ellen? Why not?
Doesn’t she deserve it? Hasn’t she caused you more damage than you could ever cause her?

Smiling to myself, I open the drawer of Tom’s bedside cabinet and take out his nail scissors. I cut half a dozen small holes in Leila’s cashmere jumpers and silk shirts, at the front of the shoulder where it can’t go unnoticed. Then I hang them back up again as neatly as I found them. She has several pairs of expensive designer shoes and I scrape the scissors across the toe of two of the shoes from different pairs and cut the strap at the back of one of them. Then I replace the shoes and put the scissors in my pocket. Before I close the door, I have one last look at the room, deciding that as soon as I get my house back absolutely everything will be chucked out, preferably on a very large bonfire.

I’m on my way down the stairs when I hear a key going into the front-door lock. My body freezes while my mind quickly considers my options: to continue downstairs means I’ll be seen at once; to go back upstairs means I might have a chance to leave when whoever has arrived home’s back is turned. I choose the second option and go quickly upstairs and sidle into the conservatory, the best place to hide as clearly no one ever goes in here.

I wait, my eyes on stalks and my ears straining to hear every small sound. I feel anxious but also excited. This is out of my comfort zone, no doubt about it, but it feels good to be behaving in a way I wouldn’t normally. Women like Leila deserve to have the fight taken to them. She thinks her home is a place of safety? Not any more.

I hear a woman humming along to a tune and then she comes up the stairs – Katarina I presume. I see her retreating back as she climbs the stairs to the attic bedroom. I count to five and then I’m down the stairs like a shot. I dart through the kitchen, almost tripping over the shopping bags that Katarina has left there, and when I reach for the kitchen counter to steady myself I knock over a bowl, which falls to the floor with a loud clatter.

‘Hello?’ The voice is coming from the top of the stairs. ‘Is someone here?’

I don’t wait for her to appear. I’m straight out the back door. I creep slowly round the corner and along the driveway, hugging the wall and ducking under the kitchen window. As I pass the living room I make the mistake of glancing inside; Katarina is coming into the room and we immediately catch sight of one another. I see her green eyes, wide and surprised, and I know that she is seeing me as clearly as I see her.

Shit. Shit. Shit!

I jog along the street and within a hundred yards I’m onto a busy road. And then I slow down, looking guiltily over my shoulder several times to see whether she’s followed me. She hasn’t and I breathe a sigh of relief. Although why does it matter? After all, Maybanks is not Leila’s house; it belongs as much to me as it does to Tom. I’ve damaged some clothing but otherwise I’ve only taken what’s mine. And who would deny me that?

I spend the morning teaching my summer class and then arrive at the park-side cafe an hour before David. By the time I’m watching out for his arrival I have a third black coffee and a second shot of grappa on the table in front of me. This is my breakfast and my lunch: this and half a dozen cigarettes. The taste in my mouth is bitter with coffee and I can feel the pop of nicotine, caffeine and alcohol in my bloodstream.

When I first spot him he’s about fifty yards away, weaving his way between pedestrians. I knock back the grappa in one shot, shudder and take a couple of long breaths. As I watch him I try to be objective and imagine how other people must view him. He’s attractive in a rugged, unshaven way that would make some women push him into the chemist to buy a razor, while others would find his swarthiness attractive. He’s wearing bargain-basement clothes that aren’t in any way fashionable or flattering but because he’s a good height, and slim without being skinny, he looks just about okay. If I was his mother I’d have a word, encourage him to smarten himself up a bit, see whether he could attract a woman worth keeping. But I’m not his mother – I’m his half-sister – and my love for him is neither endless nor unconditional.

He’s about ten yards away when he sees me. His arm lifts in a wave and his mouth in a smile. At once I see the six-year-old boy who would wait for me after school and rush towards me at full pelt to seize my hand. ‘What’s for tea, Leila?’ he’d say. Or, ‘Leila, did you know that the moon makes the sea move?’ Or, ‘Leila, Mrs Williams says that there used to be wolves in England.’ Talking and talking until we reached the front door and then he’d remember what was behind it. He’d go silent until the next day when we were free again.

‘Hey, Sis.’ He bends down and kisses my cheek. ‘You want anything else?’ He points to my drinks. ‘Top-up?’

‘I’m good, thanks.’

He signals to the waitress. ‘A beer please.’ He sits down and takes off his jacket, hanging it on the back of his chair. ‘So what’s new?’ he says.

‘Nothing much. You?’

‘A bit, yeah.’ He gives me a significant look. ‘I spoke to Gareth.’

‘Oh?’

‘I’ve arranged to see him on Wednesday.’ There’s a beer mat on the table and he balances it on its end then spins it around. ‘I’m hoping you’ll come with me.’

I stare out over the beer garden. A mother and father and two small children are sitting in a circle on the grass playing clapping games. They are teaching each other the rhythm, and laughing. They practise over and over again but always someone goes wrong so they start from the beginning, full of good humour. I think about Alison and Mark and whether they will ever resolve their differences sufficiently to become parents. I’m still feeling concerned about myself for shouting at them and know that Maurice is right – I need to cancel all of my clients next week.

‘Leila?’

I switch back to David. ‘Is there a point?’

‘Is there a point to seeing Gareth? Sure there is! It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s about returning to the scene of the crime, laying the ghost to rest so that we can move on.’

‘I have moved on.’

‘Maybe it’s just me then.’

He gives me one of his appealing grins; I don’t soften. ‘There’s no maybe about it.’

‘Okay.’ He sighs. ‘So you’re all sorted, but why won’t you help me?’

I pretend to consider this and I even manage to make my tone regretful. ‘Not at the expense of my own peace of mind.’

‘Gareth’s sick, Leila. He’s in an old folks’ home. I think it would do us both good to see him powerless.’

‘Speak for yourself.’

‘Okay – it would do
me
good.’ He points his finger to his chest. ‘Me, Leila.
Me
. Am I allowed to think about me occasionally or do all our conversations have to revolve around you?’

‘David.’ I look down at my hands. My fingers are interlocked, and that’s good because my right hand wants to form a fist. ‘Did you really speak to him?’

‘No, but—’ He holds up a finger ‘—I spoke to a care assistant and she said he’d be happy to see me … to see us.’ The waitress brings his beer. He thanks her and takes a gulp. ‘He doesn’t get many visitors, that’s what she said.’

‘He doesn’t get many? Or he doesn’t get any?’

‘One or the other. What difference does it make?’

‘I’m just trying to form an accurate picture.’

‘Okay, okay.’ He drinks a mouthful of beer. ‘I called the home. I spoke to a care assistant. She said he never gets any visitors. She thought he would be glad to see us.’ A further few mouthfuls. ‘And he’s compos mentis. I asked her that and she said he’s of sound mind; it’s his body that’s fucked.’

‘She said his body was fucked?’

‘No,
I’m
saying his body is fucked.
She
said he’d had a stroke.’ He shrugs his shoulders and makes a what’s-with-you expression. ‘Anything else you want to clarify?’

‘If I come with you to see Gareth, will it stop there? Or do you want more? Do you want a piece of me? A piece of my life?’ He laughs and shakes his head. I tap on the table in front of him. ‘Answer me, please.’

‘Sure, Leila.’ He drains the glass and bangs it down on the table. ‘I want a piece of your life.’

I hold his eyes and take a breath. ‘Why?’

‘Because you took a piece of mine.’

‘And there we have it,’ I say quietly.

‘Can I get you anything else?’ The waitress is back. She’s young and sweet-looking with a bouncy ponytail. She’s exactly the sort of girl I never was: trusting, smiley, with just the right amount of confidence.

I shake my head at her and David says, ‘I’ll have another.’ He passes her the empty glass. ‘And my sister will have …’ He picks up my empty shot glass and smells it. ‘What was this? Whisky?’

I don’t reply. He looks up at the waitress and says, ‘And a double whisky.’

Close relationships are so often about power. We think they’re about love but, in my experience, it’s more complex than that. They’re about the constant give and take of power and influence. Love is proven when we relinquish our power and say, ‘Okay, let’s do it your way.’ I love you enough to put you first. I love you enough to let you have centre stage while I stand in the wings. I love you enough to suffer for you.

‘I’ll come with you to see Gareth,’ I say. ‘I’ll come with you against my better judgement because—’ I give him a sad smile ‘—you’re my brother and it’s what you want.’ He reaches across the table and tries to take my hand but I pull it out of his reach. ‘I will go with you on the condition that afterwards you accept I’ll need some time on my own.’ I pause. ‘There’s a lot going on in my life at the moment, some of it challenging. I can’t be at your beck and call.’