Obsession: A shocking psychological thriller where love affairs turn deadly

by Amanda Robson

  ~ Rob ~

  She steps outside and tries to kiss me, a real snog like teenagers do, putting her tongue in my mouth. The scent of patchouli oil engulfs me. She runs her hands across my back and pulls me tightly against her, pushing her leg against the crotch of my jeans. For a second I am overcome with surprise and respond a little, enjoying the feel of her, enjoying her desire for me. But this is wrong and I know it, and even though I have been tempted for so long, I stiffen, close my mouth and step back from her. Toffee brown eyes attempt to draw me in.

  ‘Come inside,’ Jenni whispers in my ear, pulling me into the hallway by my tie, still trying to kiss me as I continue to close my mouth and resist her. She leaves the door wide open and attempts to remove my jacket and tie, whispering, ‘I’ve glued the children to a Muppets film.’

  I close the door and stand firmly in the hallway.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I ask. ‘You rang the surgery and asked me to come round quickly because you were feeling rotten.’ I pause. ‘You’ve obviously made a full recovery.’

  I put my arms on her shoulders.

  ‘Jenni, please, Jenni, stop it. I need you to leave me alone. I’m not the unfaithful type.’

  ‘Not like your wife.’

  I still can’t bear to think about Carly and Craig.

  ‘Leave it, Jenni. I need to move on.’

  ~ Carly ~

  He’s leaving, kissing her again. If I had a gun I would shoot him in the side of his head by his temple. If I had cyanide I would make him swallow it. If I had a knife I would slice it through his jugular.

  Getting into his car, the bitch-whore standing on the pavement next to him. My mobile buzzes. He’s texted me.

  On the way home with a takeaway.

  On the way home with a takeaway, his car pulls out and he passes through the traffic lights, out of sight, leaving his bitch-whore to return to her brothel. His bitch-whore in her skinny jeans that emphasise her fragility. A woman with no breasts. A woman with anorexic, pre-pubescent attractiveness. How unhealthy is that?

  I drive home like an automaton, pushing through the traffic; if anything requires a higher thought process there will be a fatality. Fortunately no one steps onto the zebra crossing in front of me, no cyclist overtakes me on the inside across my blind spot, and I arrive home without causing any damage to find children’s car seats, sports bags stuffed with clothing, and a box of toys, and books, waiting by the doorway. The children are in the kitchen jumping up and down with excitement, raiding the treats cupboard. Of course. Off to Nana’s caravan for the half-term holiday. In my anger I had forgotten.

  ‘You look pale, Mummy, are you all right?’ Pippa says, her long blonde hair wound around her head in plaits.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say, holding on to the kitchen counter to stop myself from fainting.

  My mother enters the kitchen, car keys in hand.

  ‘Do you want to come with us?’ she asks.

  ‘No. No, thanks. It would have been nice but I need to stay here. I need time with Rob.’

  I step forward to hug her, and as I do I feel a gushing sensation at the base of my neck, blood leaving my brain, forcing me to cling on to her, hoping I’m not going to faint. I feel hot. I feel sick. But I hold on to my mother, with her rolling-pin arms and solid breasts, and slowly, slowly, everything comes into tighter focus. But she has felt me falling against her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asks, voice scratched with worry.

  I straighten up.

  ‘Course I am, yes.’ I pause, letting go of her and stepping back in the hallway. She stands in front of me, eyes burning with concern.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ I say, trying to reassure her with a bombastic raising of my voice.

  ‘All right then, I’ll phone you later,’ she says. ‘But remember, if you need me at all, just call.’ A pause for a final concerned stare and then she lets go. ‘Come on, children,’ she says, opening the front door.

  We load the car. We fix the children into their seats. Sitting in the driver’s seat ready to leave, my mother winds the window down and blows me kisses. They all blow me kisses.

  When they’re gone I lie on the sofa and try to relax. I’m finding breathing difficult, my chest struggling as if there was a weight on it, so that every breath I take is deep and over-considered. My left arm is going numb and I know I’m having a panic attack. I find the paper bag they gave me at the hospital, and walk around upstairs on the landing trying to breathe into it, trying to increase or decrease my carbon dioxide levels – I’m supposed to know which but I can’t remember now. Anyway, it’s beginning to work, the pains in my arm are subsiding and my breathing is easier. Breathe, breathe, breathe without thinking. Breathe, breathe, breathe.

  Rob is here. His car pulls into the driveway. He is whistling. Doesn’t he even feel guilty? His key turns in the front door lock, and his footsteps resonate across the hallway. The smell of an Indian takeaway. Footsteps in the kitchen. Then I am behind him, punching him all over, throwing the takeaway on the floor, at the ceiling. Screaming. Like a wild animal in pain. There is curry everywhere, like blood at a crime scene.

  He is holding me, trying to calm me, but the more he tries to calm me the more I hit out. In the end I stop screaming, I no longer have the energy to continue hitting him, although I want to. Oh yes, I want to. I pull away from him and we stand in the midst of our curry-splattered kitchen, staring at each other.

  ‘I was there. I saw you,’ I shriek. ‘You can’t deny it now, can you?’

  ‘Carly, let’s sit down and talk.’

  I sit down, right there on the kitchen floor in a pool of chicken tikka masala. I don’t care about anything. I don’t care about my clothes. He sits too, cross-legged opposite me. His biscuit-coloured Gant chinos will be ruined, but I don’t care about that either.

  At first we do not speak. We sit, eyes locked. Rob’s eyes are usually an indeterminate colour somewhere between blue and green, pale and not particularly reminiscent of the sea. In certain lights I even wonder if they are hazel. Today, maybe the last day I ever speak to him, they look grey and speckled with worry. His usually easy-going face is tinged with a hardness that I have never noticed before.

  ‘I was waiting outside her house.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was following her and I saw you together.’

  ‘She made a pass at me. I pushed her away.’

  I feel as if I am moving through a dream scene that is not really happening, but somehow through the watery air I can speak.

  ‘I knew. I always knew. I told you, but you wouldn’t admit it.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. I love you so much, Carly. She’s been coming onto me since we found out that you had been having an affair. Since I found out about you and Craig.’

  Found out about you and Craig. Found out about Craig and me. His words echo in my head. Is my world about to stop turning, just when I was managing to hold on to it?

  ‘You found out about Craig?’ I pause. ‘And didn’t tell me? How? When?’ My heart has gone into overdrive.

  ‘The messages on your phone – just after you were taken into hospital,’ he says.

  I feel shaky.

  ‘But …’ I splutter. ‘I slept with Craig when I was ill.’

  I die inside. This will be the beginning of the end of our relationship.

  ‘Whether you were ill or not, it took some getting over it. I wouldn’t want to do the same to you. Carly, we are two of a kind, meant to be together. Please, let’s forget about Craig and Jenni. I love you. I can’t bear to lose you. Especially now, when you’ve fought so hard to get better. When you have been so brave.’

  Rob takes me in his arms and holds me against him.

  ‘Does Jenni know?’ I ask.

  He is stroking my back. I can’t see his face.

  ‘I’ve not said anything.’

  I rest in his arms and my body begins to calm.

  ~ Carly
~

  I’m at an emergency consultation in Dr Willis’s private room in Harley Street. Harley Street with its elegant Georgian houses, faded brick and arched doorways. Dr Willis didn’t want me going back to hospital, because he didn’t want me to feel trapped. So I came here, coped instead with the silence of the waiting room, a silence so heavy that even turning magazine pages felt conspicuous. And now I have been summoned and am sitting in his traditional room, with its wood panelling and leather-topped desk, winged chairs and thick pile carpet. I am sweating. The oil painting behind Dr Willis’s desk is overwhelming me, swirls of colour masquerading as clouds moving closer and closer.

  ‘Carly, how’s it going?’ he asks.

  I retract my eyes from his painting, lower them and fix them on his face. As impassive and hard to read as ever. Eyes that are cold but not unkind. Rob calls them his squirrel nut eyes. Rob. Thinking of Rob makes the knots in my stomach spasm more tightly. I put my hand on my stomach, wince in pain and bend forward a little in the hope it will ease.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Dr Willis asks frowning with concern.

  ‘I told you. I should have stayed in hospital,’ I reply, straightening up because the pain is easing a little.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It happened.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘My catastrophising came true. I saw them together. He denies it. He says he was just checking on her but I saw them kissing.’ I pause. ‘Kissing,’ I repeat, almost shouting now. Dr Willis stares at me, head tilted to one side. His frown is deepening.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last night. I was following her.’ I am watching his hands, his fingernails resting on his Harley Street desk. I see his fingers rise in exasperation.

  ‘Why were you doing that?’ he asks, his face now almost overwhelmed by his frown.

  ‘Because I don’t trust her. That’s why I need to be re-hospitalised,’ I tell him slowly.

  ‘You’ve been hospitalised for three months. You’re not ill enough to spend the rest of your life in an institution, Carly.’ His voice is stern. Funereal.

  We sit looking at one another. His frown has stabilised. Perhaps it is even reducing a little. His marble eyes rest on mine. He is using silence to force me to speak.

  ‘I’m going to see Jenni tonight. She’s asked to talk to me,’ I tell him.

  He taps his pen. ‘Well, surely that’s a good thing?’

  Dr Willis’s face is moving away from me, instead I see Jenni and Rob locked in an embrace. Embracing right in front of me.

  ‘I don’t think so. Talking won’t help.’

  ‘Talking always helps,’ Dr Willis says, his voice piercing through the image in front of me.

  I laugh. ‘You’re a therapist. You have to say that.’

  Now, Jenni and Rob are really ramping it up, fucking on the floor beneath Dr Willis’s desk as he makes notes on a pad in front of him. He looks up.

  ‘Tell me, Carly, if talking won’t help, what will?’ he asks.

  ‘Never seeing her again.’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘You can’t just erase people that annoy you. Jenni’s your friend. Your husband’s friend. You know that. This is your first hiccup since you came out. I’m sure you can deal with it.’

  ‘Hiccup? My husband kissing her?’

  ‘Carly, calm down. You know you suffer from paranoia. It could have been a greeting kiss, or a kiss of friendship?’ He pauses.

  The image of Rob and Jenni fucking in front of me bursts, like a balloon, it just pops and goes. Dr Willis continues speaking, his words push towards me.

  ‘You’ve had couples’ therapy with Rob. He has reassured you that he loves you.’

  Dr Willis’s words are spiralling in my mind.

  ‘He loves you. Rob loves you, Carly. Be strong, be confident. He loves you, believe it and you will move away from the circle of suffering you are trapped in.’

  Dr Willis’s words set off in my mind like fireworks. They mean something this time.

  ~ Carly ~

  I’m sitting on the sofa at your flat, bitch-whore Jenni. We’re sharing a bottle of wine, surrounded by candles and incense; something incendiary on every surface. Tibetan monks are chanting through the sound system. You look rather weird in your red kimono embroidered with gold thread, hair clipped up in a bun with a wide ivory hairgrip, eye-liner painted on in a thick slant. Your dog and your children are nowhere to be seen, all tucked up in their bedroom asleep. The chanting of the monks is growing louder. You smile at me, stretching your bright red lipstick towards me, from the sofa opposite.

  ‘So,’ you say, sipping your wine. ‘Did Rob tell you he’s in love with me?’

  Of course he fucking didn’t, bitch-whore, because it’s not true. I’ve finally found the strength to stand up to you, Jenni. To push away my fantasies about you and my husband. I’m having my husband. Not you.

  ‘No. Quite the opposite,’ I say calmly.

  ‘He’s not telling you the truth then.’ There is a pause. ‘I’ve held him off for as long as possible. But you need to know, Carly, we’re in love.’

  I am laughing inside, Jenni, because you are so ridiculous.

  I take a slug of wine. You continue.

  ‘We need to be friends, Carly. We always used to be. Our children will be spending so much time together.’

  I believe Rob. I believe Rob. Bitch-whore, I am just playing along with you. Friends? Now I really know that you’re mad.

  ‘Do you mean you’re going to live with him?’ I ask, ice-calm.

  You nod your head.

  ‘How dare you?’ A little outrage to floor you, to make you think I believe you. By the way, your cowpat eyes look like shit.

  ‘I could have said the same to you about Craig,’ you almost spit in reply.

  I hold your eyes in mine.

  ‘You knew about me and Craig?’

  You don’t reply.

  ‘That’s the first time you’ve had the honesty to come clean about it,’ I say. I take another sip of the wine. It tastes bitter. ‘I never intended to take him, just borrow him for a bit.’ I neck a large gulp of the wine, to help me relax. ‘I wasn’t well at the time.’

  ‘You use your mental health as an excuse for everything. I just want you to know, no one “borrows” Craig for a bit,’ you reply.

  Your cowpat eyes are becoming larger and larger. Your words are spinning around me.

  I need to go to the toilet. I stand up. The room starts to spin, like the words. Your face has become a blur of red. Is it the drink? Is it the diazepam? I head to the bathroom, or try to. But walking is difficult. I can’t co-ordinate my movements. The room spins so fast. Faster and faster. I am falling. Falling and falling. Tumbling off a precipice, still spinning. Falling and spinning, into black upon black.

  ~ Jenni ~

  Another sip of wine and then you stand and ask me where the bathroom is. I gesticulate towards the right of the sitting room, past my tiny kitchen. Two steps and you fall, sideways in slow motion.

  I turn to stone. Paralysed. I cannot move towards you to help you. You land and it looks as if you have stopped breathing. The paralysis has gone and I am free to move again. I turn you into the recovery position and administer resuscitation, pressing on your nose and breathing into your mouth. I pump your chest and work up a rhythm. Suddenly you gulp for air and now you are breathing. I cannot rouse you but your chest is moving and air is passing between your lips. I abandon you to dial 999.

  Four minutes seem like four years before three paramedics, two men and one woman, are clumping up my stairs in heavy black boots, the sort of boots that mean they can kick a door in if they have to. They check your pulse, your vital signs. They attach you to a machine. They give you oxygen. The men lift you onto a stretcher, and carry you downstairs. The woman hangs back.

  ‘Can you tell me exactly what happened?’ she asks.

  ‘We were drinking wine. We’d had about a glass each when she stood up to go
to the toilet and collapsed.’

  Through the window I see you disappear into the ambulance. The doors are closed. Lights flash.

  ‘Could she have taken something else?’ the paramedic asks.

  My insides jump as if I’ve been electrocuted.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘The rigor in her body. Her pupils.’

  Oh, Carly, what has happened? What have you done to yourself now?

  ‘She has a history of overdosing.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Her prescribed medicine – diazepam, anti-depressants, sleeping tablets. She’s just come out of hospital after a major breakdown.’

  The paramedic’s eyes sharpen with concern.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she tells me. ‘I’ve got her phone, so I’ll ring her husband. You stay here. I want the police to check the scene.’

  ‘Why?’ I splutter. ‘What on earth are you thinking?’

  ‘We need to be as certain as we can about what she might have taken.’ There is a pause. ‘About what has happened to her.’

  I taste salt in my mouth and realise I am crying. The paramedic leaves my flat and the ambulance drives off, siren wailing. Sobbing softly, I tidy up the room. Everything back in its usual place, I change out of my red kimono, into my jeans and a white embroidered shirt. I sit on the sofa and wait, bracing myself for a call from the hospital to tell me that you are dead. Bracing myself for the police. Waiting for my father to arrive to look after the children. I wait and wait and wait. Around me everything has stopped, as if I am sitting in the middle of a photograph or a painting, in the middle of a motionless stage set. The children do not wake or cry. I can’t concentrate on television, or listening to the radio. I cannot think. I cannot read. My eyes focus on anything or nothing. A cushion on the sofa. A scuff mark on the wall. Even sound has stopped. I cannot hear the passing traffic. Or the voices from the shop beneath. All I can hear and see is you falling, Carly. All I can think about is whether you’re still breathing.