The Therapist by B.A. Paris

Four

‘I’ll see you on Thursday,’ he says the next morning, lifting me off the kitchen chair and giving me a kiss. ‘Be careful, won’t you? Make sure you lock the doors at night.’

‘There was no-one there,’ I remind him, pressing my face into his shirt and breathing in the scent of him. ‘We checked.’

He rests his chin on the top of my head for a moment. ‘I know. All the same, be careful.’

I pull at his tie, bringing him down for a last kiss. ‘Love you.’

In the hall, he picks up his bag and with a wave, disappears through the front door. It slams shut behind him and I listen to his footsteps receding down the drive until I can no longer hear them. For a moment, the silence is absolute and my mind flicks to the thought of someone here; a stranger watching us as we slept. It’s only as I stand there, shrouded in perfect stillness that a thought slams into my head.

I don’t like this house.

I’d been on holiday in Venice with Ginny when Leo phoned to tell me about a house he’d visited.

‘It’s perfect,’ he said, and I could hear the relief in his voice, because we had viewed at least twenty by then. ‘Tell Ginny she was right about Ben. He’s brilliant, he’s found us exactly what we need. The perfect house.’

Ginny looked up from the magazine she was reading and I gave her a thumbs-up. Before we’d left for Venice, Ginny had told Leo to go and see Ben, the estate agent who had found her and Mark their dream home a few months earlier.

‘In what way is it perfect?’ I asked Leo, because it seemed too easy. Too good to be true.

‘I took some photos, I’ll send them to you now.’

‘It looks big,’ I said a couple of minutes later. And way too expensive, although I didn’t say it aloud. I carried on swiping through photos of a large white house with a front garden that opened onto a private road. It was at the polar end to my little cottage in Harlestone.

‘It has four bedrooms, three upstairs and one down, and two bathrooms.’ Leo explained.

‘Four bedrooms! Leo, we don’t need four bedrooms.’

‘Yes, but there’s stuff we can do, like use the downstairs one as a second study.’

I looked at the next photo. ‘Aren’t there any fences between the houses?’

‘Only at the back. Take a look at the other photos. It’s a gated estate of twelve houses so it’s really secure. And there’s a lovely square in the middle, the houses are built around it.’

I swiped through more photos, showing Ginny as she sat next to me. Each house had been built to the left of its plot, with a garage and driveway on the right separating it from its neighbour. The square, enclosed by black railings, was beautifully laid with flowerbeds, benches and paths, with a small play area in a corner for children. It looked better than anything we’d seen. But it was light years away from what I knew – and what I was comfortable with.

‘I’m not sure I want to live on an estate,’ I said, stalling.

‘It’s not your ordinary estate; it’s quite exclusive.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Near Finsbury Park.’

That puzzled me. We had previously excluded Finsbury as being out of our league.

‘Isn’t Finsbury too expensive for us?’

‘That’s the thing. The house has been unoccupied for a while, so Ben thinks I could get it for the same price as I’d get for my flat. It means you wouldn’t have to sell your cottage in Harlestone, Alice.’

‘I don’t mind,’ I protested. ‘I expected to.’

‘I know. But I also know how much it means to you. That’s what I’ve wanted all along, to find a house that I can buy without you having to sell yours.’ He paused. ‘You could rent it out for say, six months and then if you find that you don’t like living in London, you’ll still have your cottage in Harlestone to go back to.’

‘That sounds a bit ominous,’ I said, moving away from Ginny and walking into the bedroom. I waited until I’d closed the door behind me. ‘What are you saying, Leo? That you don’t think we’ll last more than six months?’

‘No, not at all. It’s just that I know you’re worried about moving to London and I thought it might make it easier for you if you knew your cottage was there, waiting in the background, in case you ended up really hating it here. A safety-net, so that we could re-think our future plans, if we had to.’

Tears had filled my eyes. The thought of selling my cottage had been heartbreaking, and I’d tried desperately to keep those feelings from Leo, obviously without success. And he was right, it would make it much easier for me to move to London if I still had my cottage.

‘Why are you so good to me?’ I asked.

‘Because I love you. So, shall I go ahead and make an offer? I’d like to get it in today.’

‘I’ll call you back within the hour,’ I promised.

I took my time scrolling through the photos again. Ginny loved the house and pointed out that it wasn’t far from where she and Mark lived.

‘At least you won’t have to cross the whole of London to come and see me,’ she said, reaching for her wide-brimmed sun hat and cramming it on her head. ‘Come on, let’s go for a glass of wine to celebrate you finally moving to London.’

‘I haven’t said yes to the house yet,’ I reminded her. Because there was something that was niggling me. If I didn’t sell my cottage, it would be Leo’s house, not our house. Did it matter, though? I thought back to what he had said about us not getting married. Would we love each other more if we co-owned a house? The answer had to be no, so I phoned Leo back and told him to go ahead.

I finally saw the house a week later. I realised what Leo meant by exclusive when he had to type a code into a pad to open the black wrought-iron gates that stood at the entrance to The Circle.

‘Each house is linked to the entrance by video, so no unwelcome visitors can get in,’ Leo explained.

The first house, number 1, was on the left of the main gate and the last, number 12, was on the right. Ours – number 6 – was halfway around, directly opposite the gate, with the square in between.

‘What do you think?’ Leo asked as we got out of the car.

I’d taken in the white walls, the red-tiled sloping roof, the neatly cut lawn, the concrete driveway, the paved path that led from the drive to the front door. It looked the same as all the other houses.

‘It’s like a clock of houses,’ I said, smiling to hide the uncertainty I felt.

There was a spacious hallway, a rather grand dining room on the left – which I earmarked at once for a library – which led, through double doors, into an open-plan kitchen that ran the length of the back of the house. To the right of the hallway, there was a spacious sitting room and behind it, a ground-floor bedroom with an en-suite shower room. A staircase to the right of the front door led upstairs to an open landing with three bedrooms, a bathroom and a study.

‘I thought we could turn the downstairs bedroom into a second study, then we’d be able to have one each,’ Leo explained.

‘Good idea, as long as I can have the one downstairs,’ I said, kissing him. ‘I love the idea of being nearer the kettle.’

‘No problem for me to have this one.’ He opened one of the doors on the other side of the landing. ‘This is the biggest bedroom.’

‘Nice,’ I said, looking round the bright and airy room.

‘Yes, but the room next door has the en-suite. Come and have a look.’ I followed him in. It was a little smaller than the previous one but still large. ‘I thought we could knock the two bedrooms into one to make one big bedroom and an en-suite,’ he explained. ‘It would still leave us with a guest bedroom for when Debbie comes to stay.’

‘Sounds good,’ I said, moving to the window so that I could see the garden. It was early May, and a beautiful Laburnum was in bloom. There was also what looked like a cherry tree and I could see raspberry canes along the left-hand fence.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, captivated. ‘Really lovely.’

He came to stand behind me and wrapped his arms around me. ‘I can see us sitting out there on a summer evening with a glass of wine,’ he murmured.

His breath was warm on my neck and I instinctively tilted my head. ‘Me too.’

He turned me in his arms so that he could see my face. ‘Does that mean you like it, then?’ he asked, his brown eyes searching mine.

‘I love it,’ I said, mentally crossing my fingers, because I didn’t love it, not really. But I would learn to love it, for his sake. It would grow on me.

Except that it hasn’t.