Before I Let You In (22 page)

Her absence was what made her so conspicuous. There were plenty of Jessica Hamiltons on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but none of them resembled her Jessica. When she drew a dead end at every avenue she tried – Google Images, even Myspace in case sixteen-year-old Jessica had been more internet savvy – she searched their patient records for more information.

She’d already read the referral notes before their first session and not come up with a whole lot of information, but now, given Jessica’s behaviour and her unusual fixation on Karen’s personal life, the lack of detail in her records was alarming. What they did have, however, was an address. She was so shocked to see it there, a nice, normal-looking address, just as you would expect to see in patient records, that the first time she skimmed through she missed it completely. Once she’d seen it, though, it was impossible to un-see. A quick Google search told her nothing except that the house was ex-directory and belonged to a Mrs Beadle – probably a landlady, as she didn’t expect Jessica would own her own home at her age. It had been purchased in 1996, when Jessica would have barely been out of nappies.

You are not going round to a patient’s house
, she told herself even as she was picking up her pen to write the address down on a pad next to her computer. It would be madness. Career suicide if Jessica complained. Which was probably exactly what she wanted. Karen had no idea why, but by this point she was utterly convinced that Jessica Hamilton was trying to ruin her life.

By a quarter past twelve, she couldn’t stand being in her own company any more. There was no one at work she could talk to without risking them thinking she wasn’t fit to do her job; Michael didn’t want to know about some whingeing rich girl who thought she had a right to complain about a situation she had brought on herself – besides, he thought Karen’s problem with her was more than just an issue with a creepy patient, and the last thing she needed was someone psychoanalysing
her.
She needed to talk to someone uncomplicated, someone who would just listen, maybe crack the odd inappropriate joke, but who knew her well enough to know that if she was concerned, there was a good reason for it.

When Karen walked into the office, Bea was surprised to see her. Maybe she thought something had happened to Eleanor, because the first words out of her mouth were ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Everything is fine,’ Karen replied, trying to stop her hands working over each other, straining not to pick at the skin around her thumb the way she knew she did when she was agitated. ‘I just wondered if you wanted to go to lunch? My treat?’

Bea’s brows rose in suspicion. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’

Karen tried a smile, forcing a casual air she didn’t feel. ‘Even psychiatrists have to eat.’

Bea nodded and checked the time on her computer. Then she turned to the girl at the desk next to hers. ‘Do you mind if I head out for lunch? I’ll only be an hour or so. I’ll divert my phone to reception.’

The girl nodded without even looking at them, and Karen knew this show was for her benefit: Bea wanted to make it look as though it mattered if she was in the office. The sad truth was, she could have left and not returned for the rest of the day and it only would have been noticed when it was her turn to make the tea. That was the problem with big organisations: no one was as indispensable as they liked to believe.

‘So, where are you taking me?’ Bea grinned as she slid into the passenger seat of Karen’s car, but she looked nervous, on edge.

‘Let’s get a sandwich and park up,’ Karen suggested, ignoring the disappointed look Bea threw her.

Karen stopped outside a park across the road from Subway and they collected their lunch in tense silence, like lovers after a jealous row. When they were back in the car, Bea unwrapped her sub, then turned to look Karen in the face.

‘What’s this about? Is it Eleanor? Because I can see how stressed she is at the moment. I just don’t know what to do to help her.’

‘It’s not about Eleanor.’ Karen picked at the corner of her wrap, not feeling like eating in the slightest. ‘Well, I suppose it is, in a way. It’s about Adam. I think he’s having an affair.’

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bea’s hand freeze halfway to bringing the sub to her lips. ‘Excuse me?’

‘I think he’s been sleeping with one of my patients.’

Bea had always known never to ask about Karen’s patients. She knew she was working with Susan Webster, one of the most high-profile cases their county had ever known, but she’d respected the boundaries of her work and her professional and personal ethics and never asked for a single detail of any case. She would know that for Karen to be even saying as much as she already had, she wasn’t messing around.

‘Have they said that? Have they said “I’m sleeping with your best friend’s husband?” That’s weird, right?’

‘It’s not that simple.’ Through the windscreen Karen could see the whole of the park. She watched as a small boy, wrapped up against the elements, hauled himself up the steps of the slide and sat stubbornly at the top, refusing to move until his mother laughed and clapped at his achievement. Then he threw himself down, his mother still acting as though it was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen. Had her mother been like that, once upon a time? Had she thought that every step Karen took, every slide she climbed, every new word she uttered was some amazing feat? She was sure life must have been like that once, but she had no memory of it. No recollection of a time when she wasn’t someone to be either snapped at or ignored.

‘You know you can talk to me about anything, Karen.’

‘It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, Bea, it’s that I don’t know where to start. I’ve already spoken to Robert about this and he basically said I was losing my mind. Michael thinks I’m overreacting. I don’t want to tell you just for you to think the same.’

Bea looked as though she was going to put her hand on her knee but thought better of it. Karen had never been one for physical contact between friends; she always used to make jokes about her personal space that weren’t jokes at all, but now she wished she was the type of person people felt comfortable hugging. Or someone who felt comfortable asking to be hugged.

‘I’m not going to think you’re crazy. You’re one of the most level-headed people I know. You’ve met my family, right? Now
that’s
crazy.’

Karen smiled for what felt like the first time in weeks.

‘And I don’t have to remind you how confidential this is? You can’t tell Eleanor anything, not until we’ve figured it all out.’

‘Absolutely.’

Karen knew that Bea broke confidences, because she’d broken other people’s to tell her juicy bits of gossip countless times – she just had to trust that she wouldn’t break this one.

‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath in through her nose. ‘This client – the one I told you both about the other day who I think has a fixation with me – well it transpires that she’s been sleeping with a married man.’

Bea nodded but didn’t interrupt – probably in case she changed her mind and stopped speaking.

‘Well, like I said before, she said a few things that concerned me.’ It occurred to Karen suddenly that she couldn’t actually tell Bea the things Jessica had said, because Bea didn’t know what she herself had done. ‘Some personal things that led me to think they were a dig at me specifically, rather than at psychiatry and psychiatrists in general.’

‘Like what?’

Karen went for a ‘don’t push your luck’ look and must have hit it, because Bea shrank back slightly and didn’t ask again.

‘Anyway, she mentioned that she was fixated on the wife of this guy, and that she’d been doing things to make her life difficult. Things like changing diary appointments and hiding letters to make her think she was losing her mind.’

‘She sounds charming,’ Bea snorted. ‘But I’m still not sure why you think it’s Eleanor. Just because she missed a couple of appointments …’

‘There’s more. She started talking about the kids. After that thing with Noah, she practically admitted she’d taken this woman’s child.’

‘Whoa.’ Bea held up a hand. ‘She said that? Then shouldn’t you be speaking to the police instead of me? Even if she’s not talking about Eleanor, she sounds dangerous.’

Karen sighed. ‘She’s clever. She hasn’t said anything that I can use as strong evidence that she’s a danger to anyone. It’s all so abstract that it’s like she’s goading me, like she’s picked me personally to tell her story to. Then she slipped up and I’m almost certain she said his name, even though she denied it afterwards.’ She paused, still not a hundred per cent sure that she was doing the right thing giving Bea this much detail. ‘It was Adam.’

Bea let out a breath. ‘We have to tell Eleanor.’

Karen had been afraid she would say that. As much as Bea pretended to understand patient–psychiatrist confidentiality, she wasn’t invested in this situation the way Karen was. If she was wrong … well, even if she was right, there wasn’t a good enough reason to break privilege.

‘I tried to tell her Adam might be seeing someone, but she didn’t believe me. I couldn’t tell her all the details,’ she added at Bea’s frown. ‘Unless there’s a real and proven danger to Eleanor or her children, I can’t give her the evidence she needs. That’s probably why she was paranoid the other day, and I don’t want to make that worse without proof …’

‘That’s ridiculous! This is your best friend’s life we’re talking about. Her child and her marriage. You might not understand that—’

The insinuation that none of them understood lives they weren’t living angered her instantly.

‘What, because I’m not married I don’t know how important a husband is? Unless it’s escaped your notice, Bea, you don’t exactly have men lining up to sweep you down the aisle either.’

Bea looked crestfallen. The remains of her sub fell from her hand and landed on the paper in her lap, a piece of lettuce dropping into the footwell. It was testament to how wound up she felt that she didn’t pick it up straight away.

‘I’m sorry,’ Karen sighed. ‘That was a horrible thing to say. I’ve just been driving myself crazy over this. Of course I know how important it is to Eleanor, but the fact is, she said she didn’t believe me. And then if J— if my patient found out I’d told her, I’d lose my job. It’s probably exactly what she wants; that’s why she’s telling me all this. I can’t believe it would be a coincidence that she sought me out.’

‘So what can we do? If Eleanor won’t believe you and you can’t give her the proof you think you have now?’ Bea’s voice was harder now, with a weary tinge that told Karen she didn’t really want to be involved in any of this – or she still didn’t completely believe her either. She knew Bea had issues of her own and she didn’t court drama the way some people did. This wasn’t a sport for her.

‘You could try and find out for yourself. Don’t look like that, Bea. If you found evidence that Adam was having an affair, then you could tell Eleanor without breaking any client confidentiality. You wouldn’t even have to tell Eleanor; you could just tell Adam you knew and he’d probably break it off with this woman himself.’

‘Wouldn’t that just put Eleanor and the boys at more risk? If this woman gets dumped? I mean, if she’s obsessed with Eleanor, then getting cast aside in favour of her might push her over the edge of crazy.’

‘That’s where I come in. I’ll carry on working with her, and if her mental health deteriorates I can take the case for breaking confidentiality and going to the police back to Robert. He just needs something concrete to ensure the practice doesn’t suffer. This will all be fine. I promise.’

The look on Bea’s face told Karen that her friend didn’t believe her. And perhaps she was right not to.

48

Bea

Today had started out as a good day. Then Karen had turned up and blown her good mood to pieces with her weird ramblings about Adam having some affair with one of her patients and now she was confused and worried about the mental health of both of her friends. And the two people she would usually talk things through with were the two people acting strangely.

Throwing her handbag on to the sofa, she made herself some dinner – sausage and beans on toast with a sprinkling of grated cheese and Worcester sauce (food of the gods, her grandad used to say) – and was just about to settle down to Season 2 of
Orange Is
the New Black
on Netflix and forget everything for the evening when from somewhere inside her bag her mobile rang.

‘Fuck sake,’ she muttered, her mouth full of hot melted cheese. She’d pretty much made up her mind not to answer when she checked the name on the display. Eleanor. She had only exchanged the odd obligatory
Ru ok?
text message since following her out of the café last week, and given her conversation with Karen today, she really couldn’t ignore her now.

‘’Lo.’ She swallowed her food. ‘What’s up?’

‘Bea, it’s me, Eleanor.’ Bea smirked. Eleanor did that every time she called, despite the fact that she knew very well that her name would flash up on Bea’s screen.

‘Is everything okay?’

Eleanor hesitated. ‘I’m not sure. Look, you didn’t send me an email earlier today, did you? From a new address?’

‘Nope. I haven’t got a new email address.’ Bea clicked the TV on with the remote. ‘Why? Is it an RSVP? I thought we were having all those sent to that party email?’

‘No, it was from you and it wasn’t anything to do with the party.’

‘But I didn’t send you any emails today. What did it say? And if it’s not my email address, what makes you think it was from me?’

‘It had your name on the account,’ Eleanor replied. ‘So it looked like it was from you at first glance. I checked the address and it was slightly different; the E in Barker was a three.’

Bea stopped scrolling through the programme list. ‘So what did it say? Penis enlargement? Viagra advert?’

‘Have you got your laptop there? I’ll send it to you.’

Bea resisted the urge to sigh. Eleanor could be so melodramatic sometimes – why couldn’t she just tell her what the bloody thing said? All this cloak-and-dagger, and her melted cheese was going claggy.