What Goes Around: A chilling psychological thriller (35 page)

I go to bed that night thinking about Francis’s journey from Maybanks to the waste ground. It’s a journey of almost three miles and I imagine him walking there, bleeding, in pain, knowing what he’d done and deciding that he would rather die than seek medical help. Perhaps he thought he deserved to die. I don’t know and I try not to care, Leila’s death being by far the greater tragedy.

Chapter closed, I think, although that thought is closely followed by doubt. Is any chapter ever closed?

The day of Leila’s funeral I rise early and stand at the window, watching the horizon break open into a deep red seam like spilt blood. Rain is expected and that feels fitting for a funeral. I have spent the last week organising the details with Alex. He has chosen the music and the prayers and white roses to cover the coffin. Several of Leila’s friends and clients have been in touch and there will be time for them to talk about what Leila meant to them.

‘Lots of people have come,’ Alex says to me as we arrive at the crematorium. Tom has bought him a new suit and I smooth the collar flat as we climb out of the car. There are at least a hundred people waiting to follow the coffin inside. ‘My mum was really popular,’ Alex says, crying and smiling at the same time. ‘I never knew that.’

The eulogies are moving and I learn that, while Leila didn’t have many close friends, she was well respected as a therapist. A couple called Mark and Alison step up to the podium together and talk about what she meant to them.

‘Leila was always patient with us,’ Mark says.

‘No matter what,’ Alison adds.

‘She understood us.’

‘And she helped us to understand one another.’

‘She didn’t judge us.’

‘She was wise and forgiving.’

‘We will never forget her, Alex,’ Mark says, staring down to where Alex is seated in the front row next to me. He gives a formal little bow. ‘Your mother was a wonderful woman.’

When we are leaving, I notice an elderly man standing slightly apart from the crowd, leaning on his stick. ‘Do you need a lift back into town?’ I ask him.

‘I have a taxi booked,’ he tells me.

‘I’m Ellen Linford.’ I hold out my hand.

‘Maurice van Burren.’

He takes my hand and holds on to it. He’s comfortable with eye contact too and as he looks at me I remember. ‘Leila gave me your number.’ I take a breath and seize the moment. ‘I’m sorry to ask now … not the time and place but, ‘I wonder whether you might be able to take me on as a client?’

‘Yes.’ He smiles a sad but knowing smile. ‘Why don’t you call me this week and we can arrange a time?’

‘I will. Thank you.’

He releases my hand and we both turn at the sound of an engine coming to stop at the pavement opposite. ‘My taxi,’ he says. I hold his stick as he settles himself in the seat and then step back as the cab drives off.

Alex, Ben and Chloe are standing about twenty yards away saying goodbye to the mourners. Ben has his hand on Alex’s shoulder and Chloe is saying something that makes Alex smile; then she gives him a hug and I can see he feels supported, pleased to be part of a sibling group.

‘We’ll look after him, Leila,’ I say quietly. ‘We will get this right. I promise you.’

We spend two weeks getting Maybanks ready to sell. Tom takes his share of the contents and I take the rest, most of it going into storage until I decide what to do with it. I scrub and dust every square inch of the place then I stand in the kitchen and stare at the floor tiles, moving my head right and left to catch every angle of light. I imagine I can still see a blood stain where Leila’s head lay but, in truth, there’s nothing there. For four days in a row I have washed the tiles with a weak solution of bleach and now all physical traces of Leila’s death are gone.

Alex and Ben tackle the garden, going at it with great gusto, chopping back more foliage than I would normally allow, but I say nothing because Maybanks no longer feels like my home. While Leila’s physical body is gone, her presence still lingers and I’m determined to try to move on. I’m still checking and counting and worrying about house fires but I think I’m over the worst. It’s something I discuss with Maurice at my weekly sessions, sessions that I look forward to like a child looks forward to Christmas. He’s helping me find a way through my anxiety and my compulsion, and I’m sure that my work with him will make my recovery possible.

‘Mum!’ Ben is at the back door, clippers in one hand and a water bottle in the other. ‘Come and see.’

‘What is it?’

‘There’s an animal skeleton under the big bush at the back.’ He tips the bottle upside down and runs a stream of water into his mouth. ‘It’s wearing a red collar. I think it might be Bruiser.’

‘Really?’ I follow him to the bottom of the garden where Alex is on his hands and knees in front of a newly cleared area of ground.

‘We cut the bush right back,’ he says. ‘And look what we found.’

‘Oh my goodness!’ There is a small animal skeleton about two feet long lying on the ground close to the back wall. I take one of the gardening gloves from the wheelbarrow and put it on before I feel around the top of the bones, prizing the collar out of the soft earth and wiping off the surface dirt. I show both boys the name engraved on the small metal tag.

‘It is Bruiser,’ Ben says, his eyes wide. ‘Should we tell Mrs Patterson?’

‘Yes, we must,’ I say. ‘Otherwise she’ll always be waiting for him to come home.’

I wash the collar clean in the kitchen sink and then we go next door to break the news. ‘But that wasn’t his favourite bush,’ Mrs Patterson says, tears forming in her eyes. ‘It wasn’t, was it?’

‘No, you’re right,’ I agree, my arm around her shoulders. ‘He preferred to lie further into the garden where it was sunny.’

‘Perhaps he knew he was going to die,’ Ben says. ‘They say that animals know that sort of thing, don’t they?’

Mrs Patterson nods her head and clutches the collar close to her chest. ‘Well, thank you, my dears,’ she says. ‘Perhaps you can bring his bones to me?’ A tear slides down her cheek. ‘I’d like to bury him in my garden. I can chat to him then, you see.’

Alex is the least squeamish of the three of us so he gathers Bruiser’s bones into a shoebox and we return next door to where Mrs Patterson is waiting for us with a couple of Bruiser’s toys and his collar to add to the box. Both boys dig a hole in a sunny patch of garden and Mrs Patterson places the box inside it. When the earth has been put back, we all stand in a circle around the small mound and Mrs Patterson says a few words.

‘Gone but not forgotten,’ I say, hugging her as we leave.

I don’t think anymore about it until a few days later when a courier delivers a solicitor’s letter and a large cardboard box addressed to Alex. Ben is staying in university accommodation and Alex is out until around ten in the evening. When he comes home, he opens the letter.

‘My mum’s stepfather, Gareth Thatcher, has left me some stuff in his will,’ he says, reading the letter. ‘She would normally have inherited his things but because he was killed on the same day as she was everything comes to me.’ He’s silent as he reads the second page of the letter. ‘I don’t know why she never told me about him.’ He glances up at me. ‘And now I’m the last living relative.’

‘Sometimes families lose touch,’ I say, keeping my tone as light as I can. ‘I’m sure your mum had her reasons.’

‘I wonder what’s inside here,’ Alex says, lifting the end of tape that secures the packaging on the box. It comes off in one long strip and he screws it up in his hand then tosses it into the bin. He pulls back the cardboard flaps and we both look inside. The box is full of journals and drawings but what really draws my attention is a clear plastic bag full of animal collars, at least three dozen of them, far too many to belong to family pets.

My gut tells me that examining the contents of the box will not do Alex any favours. ‘Why don’t you go through these tomorrow?’ I say.

‘I’ll just have a quick look.’ I watch him skim through a couple of the journals, frowning as he sees the way each section is laid out: the date, a description of the animal, sometimes the animal’s name – Cheeky, Buster, Poppy – and then a detailed drawing of the dissection, with notes in the margin.

The writing is straight and neat and my eyes are drawn to the title at the top of one of the pages: Leila’s First Kill. That’s what I think I see before Alex slams the book shut and puts it back in the box. I feel a chill inside my chest. ‘I honestly think you’d be better off leaving these journals just now,’ I say, reaching across to take the box from his hands.

‘Will do.’ He pulls the box across the table away from me. ‘I’ll take them up to my room.’

‘You could leave the box down here?’

‘I want to keep it in my room.’

‘Alex, please. I’m not sure this is a good idea. Why don’t you sleep on it and then we can go through the journals together?’ I follow him up the stairs. ‘Better still, why don’t we call Rob?’ He closes the bedroom door behind him. ‘Alex, I really don’t think you should be looking at this stuff on your own.’ My heart is racing.
What happened in that house?
‘Please, Alex.’

‘Just leave me alone, Ellen.’ His tone is flat. ‘I’m not going to look inside the box again. I’m tired.’

I hesitate, my hand resting on the door handle. ‘Okay. But you won’t upset yourself, will you?’ I step back from the door and see the strip of light at the bottom go out. ‘You’re going to sleep now?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘See you in the morning.’

I spend over an hour doing my checks trying to reassure myself that in the clear light of day everything will be manageable. Alex’s light remains off and when I listen at the door I can hear the steady sound of his breathing. I go to bed and drift in and out of nightmares where Leila is crying for help and I try to reach her but every time I’m close enough to touch her the landscape changes and I’m further away than ever. And Francis is chasing me, his hands dripping with Leila’s blood. When he catches up with me, his hands close around my throat, and that’s the moment I wake up, gasping for breath, my heart racing like a runaway train.

The third time this happens I glance at my bedroom clock: 5:10. Not long until the morning, thank God. I get up and go to the loo and on the way back to bed I listen again at Alex’s door. I need to take the box out of the room. He won’t like me interfering but I’ll tell him he can have it back when he’s in Rob Mooney’s company.

I turn the door handle ever so slowly and step into the bedroom. The bathroom light is still on and it illuminates enough of the space for me to make out shapes and shadows. In a split second I see that Alex isn’t in the room. I snap on the light. Alex is gone; the cardboard box is empty.

‘Alex?’ I stand at the top of the stairs and call down into the darkness. ‘Alex, are you there?’

He’s not in the kitchen or the living room or anywhere else in the house. I call his mobile but there’s no reply. I send messages to Ben, Chloe, my dad, Tom and Rob telling them that if they hear from Alex to please get in touch with me immediately. I’m teaching all day and in between lessons, I try his number, leaving frequent messages, ‘Please get in touch’ ‘Please let me know you’re safe’ ‘Alex, I’m really worried now. Please call me back.’

He doesn’t call me back. And he hasn’t contacted anyone in my family either.

My appointment with Maurice is at four and the first thing I say when I’m sitting in the chair is, ‘Alex is gone.’ I tell Maurice about the delivery and the contents of the box. Maurice’s face normally gives very little away but now he sits forward, listening intently. ‘He always answers his mobile. I’m worried he’s upset, wandering the streets. Should I call the police?’

‘Did he take the journals with him?’

‘Yes. He left the animal collars, though.’ I shake my head. ‘I can’t help thinking about Bruiser lying dead in the garden, right at the back, next to the wall.’ I swallow but there’s no saliva in my mouth and my throat hurts. ‘Could Leila have killed him?’ I say quietly. ‘I mean, I know you’re not allowed to break a confidence but …’

Maurice gets to his feet and crosses the room, his gait awkward. He stares through the window and then turns back towards me; his face is drained of colour. ‘I would like to speak to Alex when he comes home,’ he says. ‘Would that be possible? Could you bring him to me?’

‘You think he’ll come home?’ I say, not sure that I want that, realising in the space of one clear second that I could very easily be afraid of him. I think about Ben and Chloe and Molly and how important their safety is to me. I think about the violence perpetrated by Alex’s mother and father. Expressions ‘like father like son’ ‘genes will out’ go off in my brain like tiny grenades.

‘I’m going, Maurice,’ I say. ‘I think I should be at home just in case he turns up.’

Maurice accompanies me to the door. ‘You must be careful, Ellen,’ he says. ‘I suggest you report Alex as a missing person.’ He clears his throat. ‘I also suggest that you are not in the house alone with him.’ He raises a hand. ‘I’m not suggesting he will harm you but I think that, bearing in mind what happened to his parents, you must err on the side of caution.’

‘Thank you.’ Our eyes meet and I sense that his anxiety is as urgent as my own. ‘I’ll be careful.’

When I return home there is still no sign of Alex. I spend two hours doing my checks, repeating them over and over again. The front door is locked and bolted. The downstairs windows are also locked and bolted. All the sockets are empty. The hob and the oven are off. I count the steps from bathroom to bedroom, from front door to kitchen, satisfied that the numbers are always the same. And always odd. They have to be odd.

Then I sit at the upstairs window and watch for him. Midnight comes and goes. One o’clock … two o’clock … I fall asleep in the chair, and when I wake at six, sunrise is still an hour away. My neck is stiff and my feet are cold; the street is eerily silent. I stare along the length of it and I imagine I see Alex coming towards the house, stealthily, moving through the shadows like a burglar. He has his hood up and he is wearing a heavy backpack. My breath falters when he stops in front of the house, directly underneath a street light. He removes his hood and looks up at the window. He can’t see me because I’m sitting in the dark but still I pull back a little.