What Goes Around: A chilling psychological thriller (2 page)

I slide my coat onto the back of the chair and look around the circle, taking a few seconds to catch my breath. The age range must be from about eighteen to eighty and there are both men and women. Some of them are timid, limbs held close to their bodies as they avoid catching anyone’s eye, while others are straight-backed and open-faced, communicating their encouragement to relax – we’re all friends here.

Except that we’re not friends. Our common denominator is an unusual one – we are all victims of crime: a motley crew of the sad and the frightened. Some crimes are serious, chillingly so, hence the reason I came to the meetings for four weeks before I had the nerve to say anything, the crime against me being minor by anyone’s reckoning.

Trish and Pam are both to my left while Francis is opposite me. His metal chair scrapes across the faded wooden floor with a high-pitched screech as he rearranges it to sit down on. Our eyes meet and he smiles encouragingly. Slowly, my brain makes connections and I find myself half-remembering his story –
My name is Francis and someone tried to kill me
.

Could he have said that?

‘So shall we get started?’ says Sharon. There’s a murmur of assent from half of the group. ‘We have a couple of newcomers here tonight.’ She gestures towards a man sitting close to Trish and to the girl beside me. ‘No pressure, but if either of you would like to introduce yourselves then please know that you’ll be made welcome.’ The girl nods; the man is staring fixedly at the floor. ‘The rules of the group are simple. This is a safe space where we listen and support one another. Confidentiality is adhered to within the group.’ She smiles round at us all. ‘So … who would like to begin?’

‘I would,’ the girl on my left says at once. She is sitting on her hands and her legs are shaking. ‘I’m Gemma and I need help.’ She leans forward. ‘I’m here because our house was burgled and it’s had a bad effect on my mum and dad.’ She tells us about what happened to her family. The details aren’t as harrowing as some people’s are, but I can see that for her, this event has been a watershed. ‘And I just think … well, I just think that there are three types of people.’ She ticks them off on her fingers. ‘Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those let things happen to them.’ She pauses. ‘I’m tired of feeling like a victim and just letting things happen to me. As a family we do that and I’ve had enough. I want to take charge.’ There are tears in her eyes as she sits back and inhales tense breaths. We all clap and then Sharon asks whether anyone has anything to offer.

There follows a few minutes of people supporting her with praise and with advice, and during that time I drift off into my own thoughts, worried that I didn’t look properly at the photographs, and that makes me doubt my checks. Beads of sweat break out on my scalp. I try to visualise the photographs. The switches on the hob were definitely in the off position. I’m sure of it. I’m—

‘Ellen.’ Gemma is pulling at my sleeve. She points along the circle to where Trish is staring at me expectantly.

‘I was just asking how you’ve been doing this week, Ellen?’ Trish says and everyone’s eyes are suddenly upon me.

‘I’ve been … fine, thanks.’

She nods. ‘Only, last week you were—’

‘I barely remember what I said last week,’ I say quickly, my tone flat.

‘You mentioned some obsessions,’ Trish reminds me. ‘You’d been taking photos and—’

‘Fire.’ It’s another voice, a man with long hair tied back in a ponytail. ‘You’re afraid of your house going on fire.’

An anxiety tremor begins in my toes and travels up my legs, all the way to my skull where it sets up an insistent thrumming. Gemma takes my arm. I think she’s saying something but I don’t know what. All at once I’m on my feet, lurching towards the door and out into the rain. The cold and the wet hit me hard and force a shiver right through me.

Then a coat goes round my shoulders – my coat – and my arms are pushed inside the sleeves. We’re going across the road again – myself and Francis – and into the cafe, straight into the same seats we vacated just thirty minutes before.

‘You go back to the group,’ I tell him, waving him aside. The thrumming in my ears has lessened and my vision is clearing. ‘Please go.’ He’s holding my bag and I seize it from him.

‘Will you wait here?’ he says. ‘I know that Sharon will be concerned.’

‘I’ll wait.’ I give him my look-at-me-I’m-fine-now smile. ‘I’m a private person, that’s all. Talking about myself goes against the grain.’

‘And there’s nothing wrong with that.’ He moves to the door. ‘Just wait, okay?’

I nod but in truth I have no intention of waiting. As soon as I’ve checked my mobile I intend to head home and never show my face at the meetings again. I scroll through the morning’s photos, checking the times they were taken, satisfied that it was just before I left the house. I check each photo once, twice, three times, ignoring the hand that’s raised in the back row of my mind, reminding me that none of this is rational, in fact it’s utterly nonsensical. I have read the statistics. Fires aren’t started by plugs being left in. Fires are started by dropped cigarettes and unattended fat fryers, by a toppled candle or the lint in the tumble dryer catching alight.

But I am beyond the point of being able to be reassured by the sensible and so I keep checking. Before I left the house this afternoon I photographed every socket in each of the rooms, for evidence that all of them are plug-free. This morning I even took the time to number each of the sockets with a black marker pen – nineteen in all – just in case I have any doubts about which one is which.

When I’ve checked the photographs for the third time, I feel calmer and make ready to leave before the meeting breaks up and I have half a dozen well-meaning people descending on the cafe.

‘So what can I get you?’ The waitress is all smiles. I can see that it’s automatic for her. She’s tired, she’s fed up, she probably has another hour of work to get through but still she has her game face on.

‘Nothing,’ I say, standing up. ‘I’m just leaving.’

The rain has lessened to a weak drizzle and I run to the bus stop, relieved to have made my escape. I climb upstairs on the bus and plonk myself down at the front to watch the city lights stretch ahead of me. The bus crosses the Royal Mile and then heads down the Mound, the castle cresting the rock to my left. I make a concerted effort to count my blessings: I have my children, Ben and Chloe, and a sweet-natured granddaughter called Molly; I have my lovely dad close by; I have a house to live in and a job I enjoy; my body is healthy; I have limbs that work and eyes that see and enough food in my belly to keep me from hunger.

You have a major problem, the voice in my head insists. And it’s getting worse. A month ago you didn’t need to take photographs. A month before that you could leave for work having checked the whole house just the once. Where will you be in another month?

This unknown quantity terrifies me, dragging at my peace of mind like a boulder tied to my ankle, pulling me underwater, knocking the air and the happiness out of me.

My mobile rings and I glance at the name.
For fuck’s sake! Leave me alone!
I let the call go to voicemail and don’t listen to the message until ten minutes later when I’m walking home. ‘I’m sorry, Ellen. I should have stepped in. I think perhaps you felt threatened?’ Sharon’s tone is apologetic. ‘You know, group work doesn’t suit everyone. Perhaps one-to-one sessions would be better for you? I can recommend some therapists, if you like?’ She pauses. ‘Tell you what, I’ll text you their names and numbers and you can make up your own mind. But do come back to the group if you feel it will help you.’

One-to-one therapy has never appealed to me; I don’t seek undivided attention because it makes me feel uncomfortable. But when her text arrives, I glance at the names and immediately my breath catches in my throat. One of the names is familiar to me and it causes the blood to pulse at my temples. It hadn’t occurred to me that
she
would be one of the recommended therapists so it’s a shock to see her name there.

Leila Henrikson.

I remember Ben telling me that she was running her psychotherapy practice from the house – my house – Maybanks. The home I spent years restoring. My children were born there, learned to walk there, talk there, milestones reached and surpassed within the walls of a family home that seemed to celebrate along with us, and all this brought painfully, abruptly, to a halt when Leila Henrikson set her sights on Tom. In a matter of months, I was out and she was in.

She holds dinner parties in my kitchen. She enjoys the benefits of my hard work: the restored fireplaces, the stained-glass door panels that I learned to make at an evening class, the tiled hallway that my dad and I worked on one Easter holiday. She basks in the sunshine of the south-facing garden. She sleeps in my bed, with my husband lying beside her.

Heat warms my cheeks as anger builds inside me and then, out of nowhere, the germ of an idea presents itself to me.

What if?

What if I were to choose her as my therapist, give a false name and get myself back inside my home? I could gain her trust, make her see me as a human being rather than just the discarded ex-wife who’s no longer up to scratch.

Ben has told me how important her therapy practice is to her, how much she values her ability to help people. She would be ashamed of herself, then, wouldn’t she? After I’d confronted her, after I’d made her see how much damage she’d done. A trusted health professional who behaves with such obvious disregard for another human being – how would she square that with her principles?

The thought of biting back, of orchestrating an act of revenge, brings me a bitter pleasure. And later, when I’m in bed, I turn off the bedroom light and lie back on the pillow, enjoying a brief let-up from worry and fear as I stare beyond the shadows on the ceiling into a world where we play by my rules, and my rules dictate fairness and respect. Leila Henrikson has wilfully stolen from me. She has taken my husband. She has moved into my home. And she deserves to be right royally punished for it.

I concoct a scenario where she is made to feel small, weak, beaten. I play around with the idea, imagine her humiliated, in tears, mascara running down her face, her cheeks an ugly, blotchy red. She would beg my forgiveness – but I wouldn’t give it to her. I would show no mercy. I might even slap her.

And then as my thinking crowns a dizzy, revengeful peak, so it begins to fall back to earth and my confidence falls with it. Me? Is someone like me capable of humiliating a woman like Leila? Capable of taking a woman like her to task? A woman who could steal another woman’s life without shame or regret?

I turn over in bed, discounting the whole idea as ridiculous. I’m not that sort of person. I’m someone who plays by the rules, doesn’t deceive, doesn’t wilfully set out to hurt someone.

And more to the point, she’d recognise me. Of course she would.

She would, wouldn’t she?

David has started calling me again, three times already this week, and just when I finally have my life in order:

Tom and I are living together – check.

Alex has completed his first year at university and scraped a pass in all of his exams – even economics – miracle! – check.

I’m finally living in a property – Maybanks, grey stone Victorian villa – where I have the room to practise psychotherapy without having to travel, no arm-and-a-leg costs, no having to kowtow to another therapist’s idea of what makes up a therapeutic environment. My space. My way – check.

And then David has to raise his head again. A phone call, on Sunday evening, in the middle of me trying to make Tom’s children feel welcome. When I saw his name flash up on the screen I considered ignoring him, but I knew that would only make him double his persistence.

There was no ‘hello’, no ‘how’s it going?’, just, ‘It’s important I see you,’ he said, his tone strangely formal.

‘David, hi,’ I said. ‘How are you?’ I had drunk three glasses of prosecco and realised my voice was raised. I pulled the door shut behind me and stood in the pantry. ‘Where are you?’

‘In Edinburgh. We need to talk.’

‘Okay, sure … David.’ I couldn’t help but sigh. ‘What do you need to talk about?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Let’s not talk about the past again. We don’t have to keep going back there, you know?’

‘Yes, we do,’ he said. ‘You’re a therapist, for God’s sake! You know how damaging this stuff can be long-term.’ He continued on for several minutes, telling me what he wanted, what he needed, and I listened because I’m his sister and that’s what I do.

I agreed to meet him. I know that I’ll need to make some effort, prove my sincerity, in order to win him round to my way of thinking, but I’ve been doing that for years after all. Three o’clock this afternoon in the cafe at the Portrait Gallery. I met him there eighteen months ago when he returned from his extended trip to India. He likes the scones – date and walnut – no cream, but lots of butter and jam.

Before I go I have a full morning of clients and I check through the names in my diary while I’m having breakfast: Susan, a divorcee with abandonment issues, Alison and Mark who are wrestling with infertility, and Tobias, a long-term client who was sexually abused as a child.

‘Three clients this morning?’ Tom says, looking over my shoulder.

‘Yes, and then afterwards I’m going into town.’ I take a last bite of toast. ‘I have a meeting about the class I’ll be teaching next year.’

‘Will you be able to collect my suit from the dry-cleaners?’ he says.

‘I’ll ask Katarina to go.’

Tom shakes his head.

‘Why can’t Katarina do it?’ I say.

‘She’s likely to lose it.’ He picks up a car magazine from the rack and takes a seat opposite me. ‘She only has to leave it on the bus or on a park bench. The girl is barely conscious.’

He has a point. Katarina is a dreamy girl, distant, sometimes sullen. I don’t think she’s taken to life with us. She spends many an evening Skyping her family at home in the Czech Republic, probably wishing herself back there. ‘Maybe so,’ I admit. ‘But I’ve known worse.’