Obsession: A shocking psychological thriller where love affairs turn deadly
Page 30
9th July.
Quiet day at home. Raining. Shoved the children in front of a film. Updated twenty patient records, Carly defrosted the freezer.
Heather was lying to protect her daughter, but she didn’t really need to. Carly wasn’t in Cornwall.
17th September.
Carly shopping in Brighton with Heather and the kids. They had lunch at Pizza Hut. Matt made a pig of himself with the ice cream factory, apparently. Carly bought me a present. A pair of leather gloves.
So. They did go shopping. On the second Saturday – only half a lie then. All documented. In my diary. In my handwriting. Carly was never anywhere near the deaths in Cornwall. My heart stops.
Sorry, Carly. Sorry.
I know saying sorry can never be enough.
How could I have been so very wrong about you? About the mother of my children? About my wife? Had Jenni so distorted my perception? I sit at the kitchen table, knowing that I need the help of the Lord. Lord, help me. Lord, help me forgive myself. Help Carly to forgive me. Help me make it right with her tomorrow. When I’ve had some sleep. Somehow, however difficult it is, with your help, Lord, I will find the right words.
I tiptoe upstairs. I open the bedroom door, slowly, and slip into bed next to my wife, who has turned on her side and stopped snoring. I put my arms around her and kiss the soft warm skin at the back of her neck. Even tonight after so long in prison she still smells of vanilla.
Carly. Carly. Carly. Wife. Wife. Mother. Mother of my children. I float towards the Lord, towards forgiveness, towards sleep.
~ Carly ~
I wake up, unsure for a second where I am. Slowly, I remember. Back home, in bed with Rob, mouth tasting of decomposition because I drank too much alcohol last night. I do not feel as I imagined I’d feel when I returned. Absolved. Innocent. Ready to start my life again. I always thought that if I won the case, I’d be jubilant. Like a teenager leaving school, life running in front of me in an endless river of possibility.
But I am dead inside. My life has stopped.
And then I remember why.
Rob.
The opinion of the jury is meaningless. Rob is the dissenting thirteenth man who doesn’t believe in me any more. He has been telling me for a while. In the turn of his head. The pain in his eyes. The harder I try to get close to him, the more he pushes me away. The more he idolises the memory of Jenni. Once we were a couple, weren’t we, Rob? We would wake up in the night and touch each other’s bodies. We would chat about something and nothing, and everything, for hours and hours and hours. Do you remember, Rob? I don’t know when you first started to pull away from me. Whether it was because of Jenni. Whether it was because of my breakdown. Because I found being a mother hard to adjust to? Because I became too wrapped up in Craig? Whatever it was, I’m sorry, Rob. I’ve really let you down. And now I have let myself down by allowing Jenni to frighten me. From beyond the grave she frightens me, because I can never compete with her in your eyes. I cannot live with your disgust, your hatred. I cannot live without your trust. I’m not religious. I know that when I’m dead I will feel nothing. Oblivion will overcome me.
Oblivion will take away my pain.
I pad slowly out of the bedroom without switching on the light. I can see just enough because of the strips of moonlight pushing around the curtain edges. I grab my dressing gown from the hook on the door. I creep along the landing to the bathroom, step inside and lock the door.
~ Rob ~
I reach out for you, Carly, to tell you what I know you long to hear. To tell you that at last I believe you and that I’m sorry, so very sorry that it has taken me so long to realise. I reach out to hold your hand and pull you towards me. But I cannot find you. You are not here. Your side of the bed is empty. Cold and empty.
Where are you, Carly? Why aren’t you here? I want to take you in my arms and hold you. I pad towards the bathroom. We were both so far gone last night, you must be unwell. The door is locked. I knock. No reply.
‘Carly,’ I shout.
There is no reply. Carly, don’t give me the silent treatment. I push the door handle down as hard as I can and press my full body weight against the door, leaning into it with my shoulder. I hear the crack of splintering wood and the door gives. One step inside.
Your body is hanging from a beam above the bath.
Panic simmers inside me, white hot panic, tinged with numbness. Ice dead eyes hold mine. I cannot move. Eyes. Eyes. Eyes. Staring at me accusingly from beyond the coldness of death. Eyes shouting at me. Eyes hissing. Eyes spitting. Eyes accusing me of not loving you enough to believe you. Eyes accusing me of not loving you enough.
Oh, Carly, if only I could turn the clock back. If only, on that chilly night at the campsite in France, if only I had said, Carly I will never love anyone else as I love you, would that have stopped this chain reaction? One white lie and you would have lived? One more lie, just one more lie, and both my girls would have lived. Sometimes, a white lie is all it takes.
Acknowledgements
First I would like to thank Phoebe Morgan, my editor at Avon HarperCollins, who it has been a pleasure to work with from start to finish. Thanks indeed also to my agent Ger Nichol of the Book Bureau for noticing my work and for believing in me.
Technical help. Thanks to: Charles Owens – police procedure; Lindsay Parr – medical; Carol Robson – pharmaceutical.
Thank you always to my family and friends who are the backbone of my life. My parents Shirley and Peter who I am so lucky still to have. My mother Shirley, my grandmother Marjorie (who died when I was twenty-one), and I have always loved nothing better than to have our noses in a book. This love of reading seeded the desire to write, so my mother and my grandmother deserve particular thanks. My husband Richard supported me wholeheartedly while I wrote this book. But then he is always there for me, and he always does. My sons Peter and Mark. Peter’s partner Meg. My brother Chris who so often rings me for a chat at the end of a long day’s writing and buoys me up. My brother-in-law John, who does the same. My friends, loved like family, take an encouraging interest in my work. In particular, Angie Fitzhenry, Jackie Westaway, Joanna Tempowski, Alison Buscaine, Rachel McCullock, and Gerry Fletcher.
I want to thank my chums in Sion Row Book Group with whom I enjoy spending so much time. Reading together for so many years has helped formed my taste and ideas about literature. Again dear friends who are like family to me.
Attending the 2011 Faber Academy novel writing course was a very special experience. My tutor Richard Skinner deserves much praise and thanks. He has a well-deserved first class reputation as a novelist, poet, and Director of the Fiction Programme at Faber Academy. He works a bit of magic I think. Check out his success statistics. They will make you blink. Friendships on the course also meant a lot to me. Tamsin Barrett, Julie Fischer and Colette Mcbeth in particular have encouraged me to keep going.
Finally further back, I would like to thank my English teachers, at school and at university. If only I could step back in time I would like to thank them and give them a big hug. In particular Paul Pascoe, my English teacher at Formby High school in the 1970s. If Paul or anyone who knows him reads this, please get in touch, I just want, very belatedly, to say thanks.
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About the Author
After graduating, Amanda Robson worked in medical research at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and at the Poisons Unit at Guy’s Hospital where she became a co-author of a book on cyanide poisoning. Amanda attended the Faber Academy novel writing course in 2011 and now writes full-time. Obsession is her debut novel.
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