The Therapist by B.A. Paris
Twenty
Leo takes a while getting ready for work the next morning, giving me time to change my mind about staying on my own. His footsteps are heavier than usual as he moves around upstairs. He’s making his presence felt, showing me how empty the house is going to be without him.
He comes downstairs and drops his bag in the hall with an exaggerated thud. It’s irritating, this over-the-top reminder that he’s leaving for several days. It was how we were meant to be living until his Birmingham contract finished, him leaving on Monday mornings and not coming back until Thursday. Now he’s perceiving it as a punishment.
I stay in bed long after he’s left for work, overwhelmed by a lethargy I can’t shake. The uncertainty of our situation has hit me hard. I’d been so full of hope coming here; a little nervous as to how I was going to adapt to living in London, but looking forward to being with Leo on a more regular basis. Now our relationship seems to be falling apart. Even in the aftermath of my parents’ and sister’s deaths, I hadn’t felt this alone.
It’s the need of a coffee that gets me to my feet. I carry it through to the sitting room and drink it standing by the window, watching the trees start a slow shed of their leaves. It’s gone nine o’clock, I’m late at my desk. A movement catches my eye, Eve coming out of her house. She’s dressed in her running gear and I’m about to knock on the window and wave when Tamsin appears behind her. I step back quickly, but I can still see them. They exchange a few words, then Eve runs across the road and into the square, leaving Tamsin standing on the drive.
Needing breakfast, I go to the kitchen, put some bread in the toaster and search the fridge for honey. A ring at the doorbell startles me; the jar slips from my hand and smashes on the floor, right by my bare feet. I stare at the shards of glass sticking to the bottom of my blue pyjamas, wondering where to begin cleaning up the mess, and the doorbell rings again. Whoever it is isn’t going to go away.
Stepping carefully over the broken jar, I go into the hall, open the door and come face to face with the one person I could do without seeing. Tamsin.
‘Hi, Alice.’ In deference to the colder weather, she’s wearing a white padded jacket and white suede ankle boots. She looks perfect.
‘Sorry,’ I say, conscious of being in my pyjamas. ‘I’m not feeling good. So, if you’re here to have another go at me, I’d rather you come back another day.’
She shuffles from one foot to the other. ‘No, I’m not, I’m here to apologise. I shouldn’t have been so aggressive. I was having a bad week.’
‘It’s fine. But as I told you, I didn’t upset Lorna, she said it was a relief to talk about Nina because nobody did anymore.’
Tamsin nods, and I ignore the image that comes to mind, of Lorna playing with her pearls.
‘I wondered if you’d like to come for coffee on Friday,’ she says. ‘In the morning, around ten-thirty. I know you work but would that be OK? Eve will be there,’ she adds, as if she thinks I might not go if it’s just the two of us.
I’m not keen on interrupting my working day but I can always work through lunch to make up for taking time off in the morning. ‘Thank you, that would be lovely,’ I say.
She looks both pleased and relieved. ‘Great! Well, goodbye, Alice, I hope you feel better soon.’
I watch her as she walks down the drive.
‘You look beautiful, by the way!’ I call.
She turns and gives me a little wave but there’s sadness on her face, as if she doesn’t really believe me.
In the kitchen, I clean up the mess from the broken jar with renewed energy. It’s the house that’s stifling me, I realise. What I need is a blast of cold air. Half-an-hour in the garden will help. I can do some weeding. I enjoy weeding, it’s the kind of task I can do on autopilot, leaving my mind free to wander.
The previous day’s rain makes the weeding easier. I’m halfway up the left-hand side of the garden when I discover a panel missing in the fence between our house and Eve and Will’s. It’s not a problem because the gap is partly covered by thick green foliage. I push it aside and realise that I could walk straight into their garden if I wanted to. Maybe Eve and Nina used it as a shortcut instead of walking across the driveway when they wanted to see each other. I make a mental note to ask her about it when I next see her.
My mobile rings. I straighten up, ease my back. It’s Ginny.
‘Hi, Alice. I’m phoning to see how you are. Am I disturbing you?’
‘No, it’s fine, I’m taking a break in the garden. It’s lovely to be outside. How are you? Did you have a good weekend?’
‘Well, I’m fast becoming a golf widow, which suits me fine. Mark and Ben spent the whole day yesterday on the golf course. Ben came back for a drink afterwards, he was asking about you.’
‘That was nice of him.’
There’s a pause. ‘I’m actually calling because Leo phoned me this morning.’
‘Leo?’
‘Yes. He said that you don’t want him coming home this week, that you told him he could stay in Birmingham. He wanted me to check that you’ll be alright on your own.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I say, sounding braver than I feel, because I do have a niggling apprehension about being on my own tonight.
‘Would you like me to come and stay?’
‘That’s lovely of you, but honestly, it’s fine. I need to do this, Ginny, I need to see if I can stay here. We’ve only been here a month, I don’t want to give up yet.’
‘I think Leo’s afraid you might give up on him.’
I sigh. ‘To be honest, I don’t know how I feel about him anymore. I still can’t get my head around him lying to me.’
‘How about we have lunch this week? I’ll take a longer lunch hour.’
‘That will be lovely. When were you thinking?’
‘Either tomorrow or Friday.’
‘Tomorrow,’ I say, remembering coffee at Tamsin’s on Friday morning. ‘Shall we go to the restaurant in Covent Garden where they serve that delicious monkfish. It’s not too far for you, is it?’
‘Neptune? I can walk there in ten minutes. I’ll phone and make a reservation for half-twelve.’
‘Great, see you there.’
The two invitations, plus the weeding, make it easier for me to get back to work. I love the story I’m translating and I become so absorbed in it that it’s three o’clock before I stop for something to eat. The sun has come out and rather than head straight back to work after a sandwich, I decide to go for a walk in Finsbury Park and translate this evening instead. With Leo not coming home, I’ll need something to take my mind off being alone in the house.
Half-an-hour later, I’m on my way, glad to be away from The Circle, from its cloying, claustrophobic atmosphere. It’s the gates, I decide. They make it feel a bit like a prison. If they weren’t there, The Circle would be just another street in London.
The park is glorious in its new autumn colours. I walk for an hour, trying not to think of anything much, then sit down on a bench and watch the world go by. A few people stride along, in a hurry to be somewhere, but most stroll leisurely, especially the mums with young children, or the older couples, some hand in hand. I smile, then feel a pang of melancholy. Will Leo and I ever have children, grow old together? Is it strange that we have never talked about having children? Or was it a conversation we were waiting to have once we’d settled into our new life in London?
‘Alice!’
I look up and see Eve jogging towards me.
‘You’re not still running, are you?’ I ask in pretend alarm. ‘I saw you leave at nine this morning.’
She laughs and sits down on the bench, taking a moment to catch her breath.
‘No, I ran with a friend, then went to hers for lunch. Now I’m jogging back to blog. What about you? Did you have a good weekend? Leo said you were away.’
‘Yes, I went back to Harlestone and caught up with some of my friends there. I felt bad about cancelling on Maria at the last minute, but I needed a change of scene.’
‘Don’t worry, she understood.’
‘Also, I had a bit of a run-in with Tamsin so I thought it better to keep my distance.’
Eve wrinkles her nose. ‘Yes, she told me. If it helps, she’s feeling bad about it.’
‘I know, she came and apologised this morning, which was nice of her. And invited me for coffee on Friday.’
‘Oh, good, she said she was going to. Don’t think too harshly of her, Alice. Nina’s death hit her hard.’
‘It must be dreadful to lose your best friend in such a terrible way,’ I say, watching a little dachshund sniffing around a pile of leaves.
‘It was all the harder for her because – well, there wasn’t a row, or anything like that, but I think that when we moved in next door, Tamsin felt a bit pushed out.’
‘In what way?’
‘The thing is, I only knew that Tamsin and Nina were best friends, or had been best friends, after Nina died, when Tamsin came to see me. She was distraught, she wanted to know if she had upset Nina in any way. I asked her what she meant and she said that until a few months before her death, she and Nina had been best friends, always popping in and out of each other’s houses, having supper together at weekends. Then, suddenly, everything changed. She said she’d go past Nina’s house and see me chatting to her through the window, and wonder why Nina hadn’t invited her to join us. I told her they were usually spur-of-the-moment coffees – you know, Nina would see me coming back from a run and shout “want a coffee?” But there were the suppers too. We went around to Nina and Oliver’s a few times with Maria and Tim, but Tamsin and Connor were never there, which was why I didn’t know she and Nina were supposedly best friends. I asked Maria about it recently, asked if she knew what had happened between them and she said that she didn’t. Nina had stopped coming to yoga too, and Tamsin suspected it was because she didn’t want to see her.’ She pauses. ‘I really liked Nina but it bothered me afterwards, to think that she was being – well, maybe a bit mean.’
I nod slowly. ‘Was it common knowledge that Nina was having an affair?’
‘Who told you that?’
Was there a slight edge to her voice or had I imagined it? ‘Lorna.’
Eve shakes her head. ‘No. We only found out after.’ She turns to look at me. ‘You can understand now why we were able to accept that Oliver killed her.’
Just like that,I want to ask, without question? ‘But why couldn’t it have been the man she was having an affair with who killed her?’ I ask instead.
Eve bends to tie her lace. ‘I’m sure the police looked into it,’ she says, straightening up again. ‘And if they didn’t think there was anything to investigate, well, who were we to argue?’
Oliver’s friends, I want to say. You were Oliver’s friends.
‘You said Tamsin was Nina’s best friend. Did she know about her affair?’
‘No, not back then. Nina never spoke to her about it.’
‘I remember Tamsin saying at lunch last week that Nina had really helped her. Did she see her in a professional capacity?’
‘No, Nina wouldn’t have been allowed to be her therapist, given that they were friends. Tamsin suffers from depression – I don’t think she’ll mind me telling you that – and I think Nina gave her advice on natural remedies, as Tamsin didn’t want to take anti-depressants. Which is why it was doubly hard for her when Nina began distancing herself. Tamsin felt abandoned, and not just physically.’
‘Did Nina work from home?’
‘No, she had an office about twenty minutes from here.’
‘What about Connor, what’s he like?’
‘Connor is Connor. He’s actually alright when you get to know him. But he can be a bit insensitive, especially to Tamsin.’
I don’t want to pry but I’m curious. Luckily, after a drink from her water bottle, she carries on without any prompting.
‘For example,’ Eve goes on. ‘After the murder, Tamsin wanted to move away. We all did; it was a natural knee-jerk reaction. A violent murder had happened in close proximity to where we were living and we were all scared. But Connor insisted they were staying and refused to even consider a possible move. If he had tried to find a middle ground, told Tamsin that yes, they could think about moving away if that was what she really wanted, she wouldn’t have broken so completely. Will was brilliant, he said that we could put the house back on the market even though we’d only been here five months. Lorna especially was in a terrible state. She wanted to go and stay with her sister in Dorset, at least for a while, and Will offered to drive her and Edward there. But the next day, Edward was taken to hospital with a heart attack, brought on by the stress of the murder next door, so they hadn’t been able to leave. Anyway, before anyone could do anything, Oliver was arrested, then he killed himself. And everyone began to feel safe again. The only people that did actually move away were the Tinsleys, who lived at number 3.’
‘Hm,’ I say, because my mind is still stuck on Tamsin and Nina’s falling out. I don’t want Eve to know that she’s given me lots to think about so I look for a way to change the subject.
‘By the way, I was in the garden this morning and I found a gap in the fence between our two properties.’
‘Gosh, I’d forgotten about that! Oliver used to lend Will his lawnmower because it was a new state-of-the-art one and they opened up the fence so they could push it through instead of having to take it around the front. You’ll probably find a gap on the other side too, because Oliver used to cut Lorna and Edward’s grass for them. Geoff does it now.’
‘He lives on the other side of them, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does he live there on his own? Someone mentioned that he’s divorced.’
‘Yes, for a few years now. I never knew his wife but Maria did, because they were neighbours. She met someone at work and that was it, marriage over.’ She stands up and stretches her arms above her head, easing her muscles. ‘Sorry, but I need to go. Do you want me to ask Will to put the panel back up?’
‘No, don’t, it’s fine. The gap has grown over anyway. And you never know, it might come in useful,’ I add with a smile.
‘Is Leo coming back each evening, like he did last week?’
‘No, I told him not to. It’s a long journey to have to make twice a day.’
‘Then do you want to come and sleep at ours?’
‘That’s lovely of you. But if I’m to stay here, I need to get used to being in the house on my own.’
‘If you change your mind, just let us know. Do you want to jog back with me?’
‘No, thanks, I’m not really the jogging kind.’
She laughs. ‘Bye, Alice. It was nice talking to you. See you at Tamsin’s on Friday, if not before.’
I watch her thoughtfully as she runs off. I’m grateful for everything she told me but it was a huge amount of information to dump on me in one sitting. Maybe it’s Eve I’m not meant to trust. And from what I’m beginning to learn about Nina – her affair, her rejection of Tamsin – maybe she wasn’t as lovely as I thought.