by Karen Clarke
‘Don’t be silly, I loved them,’ I said, though in truth, I found the musky, old-fashioned scent of the roses she favoured a little too strong indoors. ‘So, you didn’t see anyone?’
‘Only Hayley’s dad.’ Her forehead creased with a pained expression. She thought highly of Matt, and although she’d been careful not to criticise when he left, I knew she disapproved. ‘He was here last night too.’
‘What?’
‘I saw him after everyone had gone.’ She pointed to the back of the house, shielding her eyes from the sun. ‘He was sitting on the bench in your garden, looking at his phone.’
I felt a kick in my chest. ‘Did he say anything?’
‘He didn’t see me.’ Dropping her hand, she said, ‘Is he still living in that flat?’
A flush travelled up my cheeks. I knew how it looked, me in our house while Matt lived in rented accommodation a couple of miles away, albeit pleasant enough from what I’d glimpsed when dropping Hayley there once. We’d explained that Daddy had gone to live somewhere else – a fact she’d accepted with enviable ease after lots of reassurance – and I’d thought she should see it, get used to picturing him there. I’d needed to see it too, unable at first to imagine him anywhere without us, dismayed by how little effort he’d made to make it homely – as if he expected his stay to be temporary.
‘He is,’ I said to Pam, unwilling to mention it was only until we sold the house and he could buy somewhere bigger. We’d become like family to her, and I knew she’d be upset when we moved. ‘Going somewhere nice?’
‘Just into town.’ She patted her crop of white hair and smiled. ‘I’m meeting my friend Jenny for a coffee.’ She glanced down the road, where a small row of traffic had built up. ‘I’d better go or I’ll miss my bus,’ she said. ‘Have a nice day, Beth.’
‘You too.’
She hurried off, breaking into a jog as she reached the end of the street, and I backed into the house, breathing quickly, as if I’d been running too. Why hadn’t Matt mentioned calling round yesterday? And why had he been loitering in the garden?
In the living room, the sight of the brightly coloured box containing the inflatable filled me with an unnamed dread. I picked it up, hurried it out to the rubbish bin and dropped it in. It was wasteful, but I couldn’t have it in the house with everything it represented.
The back of my neck prickled. I wheeled round, certain someone was watching from the street, but there was no one there.
I felt twitchy and on edge as I showered and dressed, jumping at the slightest sound, my imagination flaring again as I ran through possible setups: a figure skulking in the bedroom, waiting to leap out, or someone breaking into my car and hiding in the back, ready to strangle me as I drove.
As I made my way to Fernley House, hands clenched around the steering wheel, my gaze snagged on a black Kia, a couple of cars behind, as shiny as a beetle under the early sunshine. It had been there since I turned out of my road, seamlessly slipping behind a red sports car whose driver was clearly impatient with the traffic, revving loudly as we joined a line of commuters on the ring road. Or was I imagining it, my mind playing tricks, looking for danger where none existed?
‘For God’s sake,’ I muttered, as the traffic started up and the sports car shot past, allowing the Kia to slide up behind me, too close. Was this how it was going to end? In some film-style car chase, resulting in me being shoved off a bridge into thundering water below? Except, there was no bridge and I was thankfully nowhere near the river Thames, which flowed through Oxford.
Even so, my heartbeat tripled at the thought, and my palms were slick with sweat as I deliberately slowed the car to just under the speed limit. There was a clear stretch on the other side of the road now. A white van overtook, followed in quick succession by a motorcyclist and a silver SUV, the driver flashing an angry look, but the black car behind stayed put.
I peered into my rear-view mirror, trying to get a clear look at the driver, but the sun was glancing off the windscreen and I couldn’t see inside.
I sped up, pressing my foot down. All I had to do was get to Fernley House. No one could hurt me between here and there without risking their own life too. Someone was trying to frighten me, that was all.
Taking a shaky breath, I flicked on the radio, keeping my eyes fixed on the road. I tried to focus on a discussion about the economy, and when the flat-fronted red-brick exterior of Fernley House came into view, my body deflated as if someone had opened a valve and let all the air out.
I was being ridiculous, I chastised myself, slowing to turn into the small gravelled car park in front of the building. I fully expected the black car to have gone when I flicked a look behind me, and fear leapt when I saw it was still there.
‘So what?’ I said out loud, my voice defiant. Plenty of people came to Fernley House. Just because I didn’t recognise the car didn’t mean it had no business being there.
All the same, when it pulled up beside mine, I switched off the engine, grabbed my phone and pressed 99 with clumsy fingers, ready to press the third 9 as I got out. I was hardly breathing as I stood by my open car door, waiting for my follower to emerge.
‘Marianne!’ It came out as a heartfelt cry of relief that made my colleague’s mouth drop open and her eyebrows rocket up to her hairline.
‘Who were you expecting?’ she said, locking the car with the click of a key-fob. ‘You look like you’ve seen the ghost of a long-dead murderer. Jack the Ripper perhaps, though I doubt you’d recognise him, not having a morbid fascination with true crime, like I do.’
It was such a typical and reassuringly Marianne thing to say, I found myself laughing as I locked my car. ‘I didn’t realise it was you.’ Shaking off the impulse to have a final look around, I walked with her to the entrance, where a cluster of youths were bantering good-naturedly.
Fernley House was an impressive, three-storey Georgian building that had been donated to charity by its owner in the Seventies, and run as a therapy and trauma centre ever since. Marianne had been there for years, in charge of the small team of psychotherapists, counsellors and occupational therapists. My services formed a small part of the treatments offered. I’d undertaken a work placement there during my therapy training, after leaving college, and was offered a permanent part-time job that left me time to paint, and to collect Hayley from school most days.
‘It’s Carl’s car,’ Marianne was saying. ‘Mine’s in for a service today so he let me borrow it.’
Carl was Marianne’s adult son, living back at home after breaking up with his girlfriend of five years.
‘I thought he didn’t drive.’ I recalled her mentioning that Carl had failed his test four times and probably wasn’t fit to be on the road.
‘He doesn’t.’ She shook her head. ‘He’s hoping the car will inspire him to try again.’
Freshly alert to nuances, I detected an underlying tension in her voice. ‘Everything OK?’ I asked, relieved to focus on something – anything – but my own jangled nerves, but Marianne merely nodded and released her infectious smile. With her frizzy, dyed-red hair, rich, warm voice and eccentric clothes, she was a popular figure at Fernley House, dedicated to helping people rebuild their lives. There was a waiting list for her creative writing classes and she hardly ever took time off, but sometimes I thought she was a bit too close to her job, that she cared too much.
I privately thought it was because she felt more in control here, able to help the people who came through the doors, whereas – she’d openly confessed – she’d struggled for years to parent her twins. At twenty-seven, Carl still bounced back home, looking for handouts every time he lost his job, and his sister Gemma, a single parent, was a convicted shoplifter.
‘It’s because they’ve never had a good male role model growing up,’ Marianne had said, though she blamed herself too, for not being stricter when they were toddlers. Their father had died not long after they were born and, rather than waste energy – as she’d put it – on me
eting someone new, she’d thrown herself into her job so she could provide for them and make herself feel better in the process. Something I understood all too well.
‘Hey, what about you?’ She swung her gaze towards me, a question in her small, grey-green eyes, her lashes spiky with mascara. ‘You seemed distracted last night,’ she said. ‘Not yourself.’
‘I did?’ So much for trying to hide how I was feeling. Normally, I’d confide in Marianne. She had a way of drawing people out and was famously level-headed, but something held me back. Maybe it was her reference to Carl, a hint that things were worse than usual at home, or perhaps I didn’t want to give voice to my swelling anxiety. ‘It was the whole surprise party thing,’ I said. ‘I had a bad headache too.’
‘Probably the hot weather.’ Marianne paused in the reception area, hugging the leather satchel she carried everywhere. ‘You were right about your parents,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘They barely took their eyes off you.’
‘I know.’ I made a despairing face. ‘Even when I was at college in London, they’d visit all the time and phone me every day, worry if I didn’t reply. It got a bit better after I moved back, but it never completely goes away.’ Marianne knew about my near-drowning. ‘They’re stuck forever with that image of me in hospital when I was seven.’
‘Why did you move back?’
She’d never asked me that before. ‘Apart from it being cheaper?’ I shook my head. ‘It felt easier, I suppose. I felt I owed it to them to be nearby, so they weren’t constantly imagining the worst.’ I gave a little laugh. ‘I know, it sounds silly.’
‘Not at all.’ Marianne’s smile was genuine this time. ‘They seem like lovely people,’ she said. ‘Even your brother was friendly.’
From past conversations, she’d no doubt expected a glowering Neanderthal, shooting dirty looks and barbed comments in my direction. I suddenly felt bad if that was the picture I’d painted of Jamie. To most people, he was an ordinary, nice-looking, hard-working man with a bit of a chip on his shoulder; the chip being me. ‘It’s the Rosa effect,’ I said, returning her smile. ‘I think he’s in love this time.’
‘Didn’t look like that to me.’ Marianne nodded to Hal Gordon, the occupational therapist hurrying past, his leather sandals squeaking on the parquet floor. ‘He looked furious with her at one point.’
‘When she was talking to me, probably. He wouldn’t want me trying to influence her opinion of him. Not that I would,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m happy for him.’
Before Marianne could respond there was a commotion at the entrance as a small group arrived together for their creative writing class, greeting each other like the friends they’d become.
‘I’ll see you later,’ I said, giving Marianne’s arm a squeeze, before making my way to the art room. As I entered, breathing in the scent of paint and linseed oil, I recalled with a spark of shock, Mum asking Dad where Jamie was, and seeing him creeping in from the garden with the air of someone hoping not to be noticed. By Rosa?
Or me?
Chapter 8
I currently had a rota of five clients – we preferred the word client to patient – either referred through the NHS, or privately by word of mouth.
At seventeen, Katya was the youngest. She reminded me a little of myself at her age, discovering that art was an escape and a solace as well as an all-consuming passion. I had no doubt that one day, Katya MacDonald would be a name that people would recognise. She had a talent as natural as breathing, yet until she came to Fernley House, she had no idea how good she was.
Abandoned by her mother at the age of eight, after the sudden death of her father, she’d been thrust into the care system and fostered but never adopted. No one wants children, they want babies. She’d emerged from school with good grades but no self-belief, her arms and thighs criss-crossed with scars from years of cutting herself.
She hadn’t done it since coming to Fernley House, she’d told me shyly. Painting had filled the void she’d felt for the past nine years – that and her growing attachment to me, which had lately begun to be a slight concern. Not enough to raise with anyone, but enough to remind me how vulnerable she was, and how easily she might interpret everyday kindness and attention for something more. It wasn’t a crush, despite the gifts I’d occasionally found pushed in my bag – a star-printed scarf identical to one of hers I’d admired, and a miniature portrait she’d painted and put in a cheap, silver frame – more that she saw me as a mother figure, or older sister.
‘Hey, Beth,’ she said, her voice high and soft, approaching my desk before I’d put down my bag. ‘Did you have a nice birthday?’
‘Yes, thanks.’ I looked at her, surprised. ‘How did you know?’
‘Oh, I remembered.’ Her fingers played with the ends of the gauzy scarf she’d tied round her high, black ponytail, which fell over her shoulder. She was make-up free as usual, dressed in pale denim dungarees and a long-sleeved T-shirt, the glitter of a tiny nose stud her only adornment. ‘July 18th?’
I couldn’t recall discussing my birthday, but must have mentioned it in passing. It was surprising the direction conversations took during a session.
‘You look nice,’ she added.
I was wearing my usual work outfit of cargo pants and sneakers, with an unbuttoned shirt over a white vest top, but I knew she felt the need to compliment me. ‘Thank you.’ I rolled up my sleeves and went to open the windows. The heat in the room felt oppressive.
‘Did you take some nice photos?’ Katya was studying me with her wide-apart eyes, the irises an ethereal shade of blue that made me think of frozen lakes.
‘How did you know I’d been taking photos?’
Her smooth, pale cheeks flushed raspberry pink at my tone. ‘You said you were going to take some pictures, for inspiration?’ Her voice rose, turning it into a question.
‘Sorry, of course I did.’ I softened my tone, pulling my mouth into a smile. I had mentioned it, when Katya asked what I was doing over the weekend. ‘Yes, I took lots. Mostly of buildings.’
‘Buildings?’ She wrinkled her nose, looking a lot like Hayley did when presented with a plate of vegetables. ‘Is it for a new project?’
I knew she wasn’t keen on some of my painting exercises, designed to challenge my clients’ perception of themselves and explore their creativity.
‘I know you prefer painting people, but it’s good to try different forms.’
‘Like you do?’
I hesitated, aware of my hypocrisy considering I mostly painted Oxford landscapes these days. Buyers seemed to like my pastel images of the city’s medieval buildings and colleges, the Bridge of Sighs and botanic gardens, and I’d discovered I enjoyed painting them. ‘You might discover you love it,’ I said, dodging the question. ‘Buildings are a good way to practise precision.’
‘I’m happy to give it a try.’ Katya’s tone was touchingly eager to please – too eager, perhaps. ‘Did you get that for your birthday?’ Her gaze slipped to my bracelet, one slender hand reaching out as if to touch it.
‘Yes, it’s from my daughter.’ I’d debated leaving it at home. I never normally wore much jewellery, but now I had on the ruby necklace as well as the bracelet from Hayley.
‘It’s really pretty.’ Seeing sadness cloud Katya’s face, I could have kicked myself. The last thing she needed was me thrusting my loving relationship with my daughter in her face. Though she had a good bond with her foster mum, Dee, she could never forget being abandoned by her birth mother. ‘I got you something.’ Brightening, she dipped her hand into her Aztec-patterned tote bag, and something about the movement and flash of colour made me stiffen.
‘Katya, did you come straight here this morning?’
She raised her head, her eyes wary. ‘What do you mean?’
I hesitated. Even if Katya had been outside my house earlier, it was unlikely she’d admit it. Anyway, I was certain she didn’t have my address. ‘Oh … I just, I thought you might have gone to Nell’s,’ I said, ref
erring to the community café down the road, where my paintings hung for sale alongside some of my clients’ work. ‘I know you love her pastries.’
‘No, I didn’t go to Nell’s.’ She lowered her gaze and pulled out a lilac tissue-wrapped gift. ‘Happy birthday for yesterday.’
She hadn’t answered my question, but I took the gift, trying not to betray my reluctance. It was the third time that morning I’d been handed a package I wasn’t expecting. ‘You shouldn’t have,’ I said as I pulled at the silver ribbon around it, wondering whether I needed to set some boundaries.
‘It’s OK, I wanted to.’
Perspiration beaded my forehead. I glanced at the windows again, where a listless fly was buzzing. The sun pressed against the glass, slanting beams across the wooden floor and up the wall, decorated with rows of artwork.
‘Do you like it?’ Katya’s anxious voice drew my attention to a book nestled in the delicate wrapping. I froze for two, three seconds, staring at the cover.
‘Beth?’
I dragged my gaze from an artist’s impression of leaping waves, crashing against granite-black rocks. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s a book of famous seascape artists.’ Her brows hardened into a line above narrowed eyes, reminding me for a second how her usually mild expression could suddenly switch to rage. ‘Don’t you like it?’
‘No, I mean yes, it’s lovely.’ I turned the book over to look at the description on the back, but the words jumped and distorted. ‘You shouldn’t have, Katya. It looks expensive.’
‘I thought you’d like it.’ Her voice flattened into disappointment. ‘You said you used to love painting the sea. I thought it might inspire you.’
Struck by the oddness of our exchange, which was almost identical to the one I’d had earlier with Matt, I said, ‘I’m happy doing what I do now,’ injecting my voice with an authority I didn’t feel. ‘But it’s a beautiful book.’ I let my eyes graze the cover again, a tremor passing through me. ‘I’ll treasure it.’
