The Ex-Boyfriend: A completely addictive and shocking psychological thriller

by Rona Halsall

His expression was stony, eyes glinting. He’s still angry with me. Her heart flipped.

  ‘Sorry about Dad,’ she whispered. ‘And sorry I got all uptight and shouty.’ She reached for his hand, but he snatched it away as if she was contagious, making her flinch.

  His lips were clamped together. ‘I need to show you something,’ he said before he turned and walked downstairs, Becca following in his wake.

  Her laptop was open on the kitchen worktop. She swallowed, dread swirling in her stomach. This wasn’t about Frank. This was about something else entirely.

  He brought the sleeping computer to life and she saw her Twitter account. Her conversation with Connor. Her stomach lurched as she remembered everything she’d said to him, her outpouring of all the things that were making her sad and anxious. How she felt about her marriage and Dean and work. Mia’s sickness. And the very last message in the conversation was hers, telling Connor that she missed him too. She squeezed her eyes closed, as if that would make the situation disappear.

  ‘I see you’ve been chatting to Connor,’ Dean said in a voice that suggested he didn’t mind.

  She opened her eyes, and saw that his voice had been lying. He was seething. Properly furious.

  ‘He just popped up on there, and…’ She spluttered to a halt. Pathetic.

  ‘You didn’t have to reply, did you?’

  ‘You’ve been reading my messages.’ It was a pitiful form of attack, given what was in the conversations, and she could feel herself shrivelling up inside, her face aflame.

  ‘Well, it was good to have a read.’ His voice was scathing. ‘Because at least now I know what you think about me and our marriage. I understand that what I’m doing, busting a gut for you, isn’t good enough.’ His hands clenched and unclenched by his sides, his face taking on a reddish hue as his voice grew louder. ‘And your ex needed to know all our private business, didn’t he?’

  She bit her lip, tears clouding her vision. There was no excuse. ‘I’m sorry. I know it looks bad. I shouldn’t be telling someone all those things, but on social media it’s like talking to yourself, really. Especially with someone who’s in Australia.’ She blinked at him. ‘I just needed to talk to someone. I’m on my own so much and you’re always too busy to talk, or when I do try and discuss things, your mind is somewhere else and you’re not really listening.’ She swallowed. ‘I’m sorry, it was wrong of me. But—’

  ‘But what?’ he snapped.

  She hesitated, looked at his angry face. ‘Can’t you see how lonely I am? And I’m worried about Mia, and on Wednesday morning you… you called me Alice.’

  He looked stunned.

  Furious tears pricked at her eyes. ‘And that wasn’t the first time you’ve called me Alice. It’s happened a few times now.’ She covered her face with her hands as the tears trickled down her cheeks.

  He sighed, and a few moments later, she felt his arms around her as he pulled her into a hug. She laid her head on his chest and he stroked her hair, and she remembered all those times when she’d been distraught with grief after her mum had died and when she’d had the miscarriages, and he’d always been there to comfort her. Always. She felt awful now for being disloyal and confiding in Connor.

  ‘Do you…’ He hesitated, his voice thick with emotion. ‘Be honest with me, Becca. Do you ever regret staying with me instead of going back to him?’

  ‘No, Dean. No.’ She leant back to see his face, her eyes scanning his. ‘How could I ever regret Mia?’

  He shook his head, slowly. ‘That wasn’t what I meant. Do you regret being with me? Would you rather be with him?’

  She pulled away, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘No, sweetheart. Please don’t ever think that. I’m just feeling a bit… lost. I miss you. I miss us. Being a couple.’ She glanced at the laptop. ‘All that chat with Connor… it’s me looking through rose-tinted glasses. We’d broken up before I came back. It was over. But, in a way, talking to him… it’s helped me to understand how I feel. I love you, Dean. Really, I do.’

  He gently wiped away her tears. ‘It came as a shock, I have to admit. Seeing everything laid out like that.’ His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. ‘I know we had a quick chat earlier, but I hadn’t understood how my work has put a lot of pressure on you. And you’re right that we don’t spend enough time together. I’ll try and rein things back, how about that?’

  She nodded, too choked up to speak.

  ‘Like I said, I’ll be able to start delegating more to Alice once we get her an assistant to help, and I’ll work more behind the scenes.’

  She could see the concern in his eyes.

  ‘Would that be better?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You’ve got to block him, though. Delete all that conversation. He’s the past, Becca, and he needs to stay there.’

  He dropped his arms and she realised he meant now. Right now. She had to delete Connor from her life, and he was going to watch to make sure she did it. The idea of something so final caught her unawares, making her heart skip. But this felt like a pivotal moment, and she wanted to reset the tone between her and Dean, wanted to feel that their relationship was still strong. If she did as he asked, there was still a chance they could get back to how they’d been at the beginning, when she was Dean’s world and she’d felt loved and secure.

  Dean tapped the laptop back to life.

  Becca swallowed, her hand shaking as she blocked Connor from her Twitter feed and left the conversation, while Dean watched, his hand on her shoulder. ‘There, he’s gone,’ she said, a tremor in her voice.

  ‘Sounds like he still wants you.’ She couldn’t look at him, didn’t want to see the question in his eyes.

  ‘That’s not the same as me wanting him, though, is it?’

  And she tried to convince herself that was true, while a part of her heart yearned for what might have been.

  She closed her laptop. That’s it. Finished.

  20

  They made love that night, for the first time in months. It should have been a moment to rejoice in the reconnection, but Becca couldn’t revel in the closeness, her mind too fixed on her worries to allow her to relax.

  Mia’s cries were an almost welcome disturbance, and she wriggled from her sleepy husband’s arms, slipped on her robe and dashed into her daughter’s room. It was happening again, the poor child sitting in a pool of vomit. Dean appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, and between them, they once again managed the clean-up operation.

  When Mia was finally asleep, Becca put all the soiled clothes and bedding in the wash while Dean made cups of tea for them both.

  ‘Another tummy bug,’ Dean said as he sank into a chair at the kitchen table.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a virus.’ She sat opposite him and sensed now was the time to tell him her theory, talk it all through.

  Dean blinked, then frowned. ‘What? Well, what else can it be?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to work it out, eliminating all the possibilities, and the only thing I can think of is…’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve researched the life out of it, been through it so many times in my head, and the only conclusion I can come to is… someone is poisoning her.’

  Dean’s jaw dropped.

  ‘I know how it sounds.’ She held up a hand as if to protect herself from the disbelief which was surely heading her way. ‘But I’ve ruled out everything else.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Becca,’ he scoffed. ‘That’s ridiculous. Who’d want to poison a child?’

  ‘I don’t know. Honestly, I haven’t got that far. But her symptoms fit.’

  ‘Is it something in the house that she’s getting her hands on, do you think? What about those washing pods? Or the dishwasher things. They look like jelly sweets. Could it be either of those?’

  Becca sighed. ‘There’s nothing in the house within reach. I’ve checked the whole place, top to bottom. I keep all the cleaning stuff on the top shelf of the cupboards—’

  ‘But you have to take them do
wn to use them. Perhaps that’s when it’s happened, and you’ve just nipped to the loo or something. Have you been watching?’

  Becca was starting to get annoyed now, frustrated that he didn’t believe her. She laid her hands flat on the table, calming her voice. The last thing she wanted was an argument – she just needed him to understand they had a real problem and she had no idea how to deal with it.

  ‘I never leave anything out that could poison her. I always put it back as soon as I’ve finished using it. After all the problems at the hospital, I’m paranoid about that stuff.’

  Dean frowned. Becca cringed, remembering that he didn’t know.

  ‘At the hospital? Where you worked all those years ago? You’ve never mentioned problems. You said you left because you were stressed. Went to Australia to take some time out.’

  Becca sighed, her heart sinking. I’ll have to tell him now. She took a deep breath, her hands finding each other on the table, fingers interlinking, holding tight.

  ‘That’s the truth,’ she said, carefully, avoiding his gaze. ‘But there was more to it than that. The ward I worked on noticed a problem… A number of the patients were having relapses, strange symptoms. They concluded that someone was deliberately altering medication for some of the patients.’ She hesitated, knowing how bad it sounded. ‘I was suspended while they investigated.’

  Dean’s expression had changed now. Eyes narrowed. He was listening hard.

  Judging.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ she said louder than was necessary.

  ‘The investigation found you innocent?’

  She swallowed. This wasn’t going to sound quite as definitive as she would have liked, but she wanted to be truthful. ‘Initially, they did find a correlation between the onset of symptoms and the times when I was on shift. They did all sorts of psychiatric assessments on me – would you believe they thought I had Munchausen’s by proxy? I think they call it factitious disorder these days. Usually it’s mums harming their kids, but it does crop up in medical settings at times. I suppose because doctors and nurses have the knowledge and the means…’ She shook her head, trying to get her thoughts back on track. ‘Anyway, new information came to light and the ward manager was arrested.’

  He hesitated before speaking. ‘So… you were fully exonerated? You didn’t do anything wrong, even unknowingly?’

  She scowled at him, her hands squeezing each other so tight her knuckles were white. ‘I’m telling you, I did nothing wrong.’ Anger burnt in her chest. ‘You can make statistics say all sorts of things which aren’t true. It was just coincidence that I happened to be on duty. That and the fact I was the one who ended up doing CPR on two of the patients.’

  ‘So, you saved the lives of people who’d been intentionally overdosed?’

  She nodded. ‘I did. Then they decided to point the finger at me. Suggesting I had some sort of attention-seeking mental illness.’ She huffed. ‘To be fair, there was another investigation in the news at the time, and it had got everyone jumpy. It was close to being a witch-hunt, people coming to ridiculous conclusions.’

  ‘But you were cleared?’

  ‘That’s right. I was.’ She glared at him. ‘Nobody died because of me. Nobody was harmed. But you know what… a lot of procedures were improved because of that investigation, and a number of staff had to be retrained on certain aspects of care. So the end result was positive. Except… the whole thing had a really bad effect on me. Completely shattered my confidence and… well, as you know, I had a bit of a mental health crisis.’

  ‘A breakdown.’ It was a statement, rather than a question, and it irked her.

  ‘If you want to call it that.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I had to move back home. Mum didn’t get it at all. She was all stiff upper lip, “just get back on the horse” type of thing. But Dad was great with me. It sort of left things strained between us all. Split loyalties. That’s when I went to Australia.’ She shook her head, wanting to forget about that dark time in her life. ‘Anyway, you know all that.’

  He frowned at her. ‘No, I didn’t know most of that, actually. I knew you had a crisis, but we’ve never really talked about it. And I definitely didn’t know about the hospital investigation.’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Do you feel differently about me now that you know?’

  He looked dazed, her question catching him unawares. But if he could be direct with his questions about Connor, then she could be direct about this. She had a horrible sense of déjà vu about the whole thing. And she was starting to feel she was being undermined, the conversation hinting at something in a way that made her feel distinctly uncomfortable.

  It was time to bring everything back to the facts. He couldn’t argue with that.

  ‘Look, this is how I see it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I know I can catastrophise at times, if I’m feeling stressed. And I know I’ve bothered the doctors before when I’ve worried about Mia’s health issues. But basically… this is not normal for her. Agreed?’

  He rubbed the back of his neck, silent as he considered her question. ‘You’re right. We’ve never had anything like this.’ His eyes met hers. ‘What did the doctor say?’

  ‘She thinks it’s a virus.’

  His shoulders relaxed. ‘Well, then. And have you spoken to anyone else about it?’

  ‘Yes, I spoke to Carol.’

  ‘And what did she say?’

  ‘She thinks… she thinks if I’m worried, I should trust my instincts. I left a sample with her on Saturday, so we should have results from that. I also got blood tests done this morning. Just to make sure there’s no underlying condition.’

  ‘Well, then?’ He looked at her as if she was being thick. ‘Let’s assume the doctor knows what she’s doing and wait for the test results.’

  ‘But, Dean, I think I’m right. The symptoms fit. And if someone is harming our daughter, I want to find out who it is.’

  ‘Why would someone be poisoning Mia? Honestly, Becca, you need to listen to yourself.’

  Her whole body tensed, her voice curt. ‘I do. I do listen to myself, and that’s why I’m worried.’

  ‘And I’m worried because you sound like you’ve lost the plot and yet you’re in charge of our daughter.’

  His words hit her like a blast of shotgun pellets, every one of them leaving a little indentation in her mind, a wound that would take time to heal.

  She clamped her jaw shut. There’s no point telling him anything else, she cautioned herself. He thinks I’m losing it.

  And she had to stop for a moment and consider. If it had happened before, could it be happening again?

  21

  Becca couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning as the past and the present merged together until she no longer knew what was the truth and what might be imagined.

  The next morning, she felt robotic as she went through her routine, Dean quiet and wrapped up in his own thoughts. She was too angry to want to talk to him anyway so just let him do his own thing. It was only as she was getting Mia dressed that she remembered she had no childcare organised. The situation with Ruth had been left up in the air, no definite arrangements made, but she was supposed to be at work and couldn’t let Carol down.

  Quickly, she gave Ruth a ring.

  ‘Hello, Becca.’ Ruth’s voice was precise and measured. ‘I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.’ There was silence for a moment.

  ‘I… um… I just wanted to apologise. Not just for the upset with Frank and Dean but I’m so sorry about Saturday. I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything. I got myself all wound up and I know you wouldn’t deliberately harm Mia.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’ There was a tremor in Ruth’s voice and the line went dead. She’d hung up.

  Becca stared at the phone, shocked.

  She rang Frank, her words tumbling out in a panicky rush. ‘Is it okay if I bring Mia over this morning? I’ve no childcare organised, and Ruth… um, she’s not available.’

  ‘No problem, lov
e.’ He sounded delighted. ‘I’m sure we can manage to entertain each other.’

  ‘Is Kate there?’

  ‘Yes, she’s working at home today, so there’ll be the both of us.’

  Somehow that felt better, and Becca checked her watch and speeded up. Then she called Carol to tell her she’d be half an hour late because she had to get to Bangor and back, but she’d stay as late as was needed to get the round finished.

  By the time she got to work, she felt like she’d already done a full day.

  ‘You’re still looking peaky,’ Carol said when Becca pushed through the office door to get her list of patients for the morning.

  She sighed. ‘Mia was sick again last night. Same thing.’

  Carol pursed her lips, thinking. ‘Hmm. Just a thought, but are there any plants in the garden she might be eating?’

  Becca shook her head. ‘We’ve just moved into a brand-new house, and the back garden is grass. Just a rectangle of lawn. Same at the front. We haven’t got round to doing anything with it yet.’

  ‘Well, that’s a mystery, isn’t it?’ Carol’s frown deepened. ‘Did you say you had a sample for testing?’

  ‘I gave it to you on Saturday, remember?’

  ‘What? Are you sure?’ She clicked on to her screen, frowning as she scanned the record of lab tests. ‘It’s not on the log.’ She looked on her desk, then checked the basket where they kept samples ready for sending off. ‘Nothing here.’

  Did I give it to her? Becca rummaged in her bag, just in case she’d forgotten, but it wasn’t there.

  ‘Let me ring the lab. Just in case I forgot to log it in.’

  Becca waited, watching Carol’s face, knowing as soon as she put the phone down that it hadn’t been sent.

  Carol shrugged, a little sheepish. ‘It happens, doesn’t it? Things going astray, especially after the weekend. Hopefully, it’ll turn up, but just get another sample if it happens again.’

  I did give it to Carol, didn’t I? She couldn’t be 100 per cent sure – she was so distracted there was a chance she’d forgotten. Or got it mixed up with samples for her patients. To be honest, her focus hadn’t been as sharp as it should have been this past week.