The Silent Patient (15 page)

I didn’t speak. I could hardly think, with the throbbing in my head. I could feel him watching me.

“So what did you want to see me for?”

“Just some questions … I wanted to ask you about Alicia. About … her childhood.”

Paul nodded and poured some whiskey into his mug. He seemed to be relaxing now; the whiskey was having an effect on me too, taking the edge off my pain, and I was thinking better. Stay on track, I told myself. Get some facts. Then get the hell out of here.

“You grew up together?”

Paul nodded. “Mum and I moved in when my dad died. I was about eight or nine. It was only meant to be temporary, I think—but then Alicia’s mother was killed in the accident. So Mum stayed on—to take care of Alicia and Uncle Vernon.”

“Vernon Rose—Alicia’s father?”

“Right.”

“And Vernon died here a few years ago?”

“Yes. Several years ago.” Paul frowned. “He killed himself. Hanged himself. Upstairs, in the attic. I found the body.”

“That must have been terrible.”

“Yeah, it was tough—on Alicia mostly. Come to think of it, that’s the last time I saw her. Uncle Vernon’s funeral. She was in a bad way.” Paul stood up. “You want another drink?”

I tried to refuse but he kept talking as he poured more whiskey. “I never believed it, you know. That she killed Gabriel—it didn’t make any sense to me.”

“Why not?”

“Well, she wasn’t like that at all. She wasn’t a violent person.”

She is now, I thought. But I didn’t say anything. Paul sipped his whiskey. “She’s still not talking?”

“No. She’s still not talking.”

“It doesn’t make sense. None of it. You know, I think she was—”

We were interrupted by a thumping, a banging on the floor above. There was a muffled voice, a woman’s voice; her words were unintelligible.

Paul leapt to his feet. “Just a sec.” He walked out. He hurried to the foot of the stairs. He raised his voice. “Everything all right, Mum?”

A mumbled response that I couldn’t understand came from upstairs.

“What? Oh, all right. Just—just a minute.” He sounded uneasy.

Paul glanced at me across the hallway, frowning. He nodded at me. “She wants you to go up.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

STEADIER ON MY FEET
, but still feeling faint, I followed Paul as he thudded up the dusty staircase.

Lydia Rose was waiting at the top. I recognized her scowling face from the window. She had long white hair, spreading across her shoulders like a spider’s web. She was enormously overweight—a swollen neck, fleshy forearms, massive legs like tree trunks. She was leaning heavily on her walking stick, which was buckling under her weight and looked like it might give way at any moment.

“Who is he? Who is he?”

Her shrill question was directed to Paul, even though she was staring at me. She didn’t take her eyes off me. Again, the same intense gaze I recognized from Alicia.

Paul spoke in a low voice. “Mum. Don’t get upset. He’s Alicia’s therapist, that’s all. From the hospital. He’s here to talk to me.”

“You? What does he want to talk to you for? What have you done?”

“He just wants to find out a bit about Alicia.”

“He’s a journalist, you fucking idiot.” Her voice approached a shriek. “Get him out!”

“He’s not a journalist. I’ve seen his ID, all right? Now, come on, Mum, please. Let’s get you back to bed.”

Grumbling, she allowed herself to be guided back into her bedroom. Paul nodded at me to follow.

Lydia flopped back with a deep thud. The bed quivered as it absorbed her weight. Paul adjusted her pillows. An ancient cat lay asleep by her feet, the ugliest cat I’d ever seen—battle scarred, bald in places, one ear bitten off. It was growling in its sleep.

I glanced around the room. It was full of junk—stacks of old magazines and yellowing newspapers, piles of old clothes. An oxygen canister stood by the wall, and a cake tin full of medications was on the bedside table.

I could feel Lydia’s hostile eyes on me the whole time. There was madness in her gaze; I felt quite sure of that.

“What does he want?” Her eyes darted up and down feverishly as she sized me up. “Who is he?”

“I just told you, Mum. He wants to know some background on Alicia, to help him treat her. He’s her psychotherapist.”

Lydia left no doubt about her opinion of psychotherapists. She turned her head, cleared her throat—and spat onto the floor in front of me.

Paul groaned. “Mum, please—”

“Shut up.” Lydia glared at me. “Alicia doesn’t deserve to be in hospital.”

“No?” I said. “Where should she be?”

“Where do you think? Prison.” Lydia eyed me scornfully. “You want to hear about Alicia? I’ll tell you about her. She’s a little bitch. She always was, even as a child.”

I listened, my head throbbing, as Lydia went on, with mounting anger:

“My poor brother, Vernon. He never recovered from Eva’s death. I took care of him. I took care of Alicia. And was she grateful?”

Obviously, no response was no required. Not that Lydia waited for one.

“You know how Alicia repaid me? All my kindness? Do you know what she did to me?”

“Mum, please—”

“Shut up, Paul!’ Lydia turned to me. I was surprised how much anger was in her voice. “The bitch
painted
me. She painted me, without my knowledge or permission. I went to her exhibition—and there it was, hanging there. Vile, disgusting—an obscene mockery.”

Lydia was trembling with anger, and Paul looked concerned. He gave me an unhappy glance. “Maybe it’s better if you go now, mate. It’s not good for Mum to get upset.”

I nodded. Lydia Rose was not well, no doubt about that. I was more than happy to escape.

I left the house and made my way back to the train station, with a swollen head and a splitting headache. What a fucking waste of time. I’d found out nothing—except it was obvious why Alicia had gotten out of that house as soon as she could. It reminded me of my own escape from home at the age of eighteen, fleeing my father. It was all too obvious who Alicia was running away from—Lydia Rose.

I thought about the painting Alicia had done of Lydia. “An obscene mockery,” she called it. Well, time to pay a visit to Alicia’s gallery and find out why the picture had upset her aunt so much.

As I left Cambridge, my last thoughts were of Paul. I felt sorry for him, having to live with that monstrous woman—be her unpaid slave. It was a lonely life—I didn’t imagine he had many friends. Or a girlfriend. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was still a virgin. Something about him remained stunted, despite his size; something thwarted.

I had taken an instant and violent dislike to Lydia—probably because she reminded me of my father. I would have ended up like Paul if I had stayed in that house, if I had stayed with my parents in Surrey, at the beck and call of a madman.

I felt depressed all the way back to London. Sad, tired, close to tears. I couldn’t tell if I was feeling Paul’s sadness—or my own.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

KATHY WAS OUT WHEN I GOT HOME.

I opened her laptop and tried to access her email—but with no luck. She was logged out.

I had to accept that she might never repeat her mistake. Would I keep checking ad nauseam, give in to obsession, driving myself mad? I had enough self-awareness to appreciate the clich
é
I had become—the jealous husband—and the irony that Kathy was currently rehearsing Desdemona in
Othello
hadn’t escaped me.

I should have forwarded the emails to myself that first night, as soon as I’d read them. Then I’d have some actual physical evidence. That was my mistake. As it was, I had begun questioning what I had seen. Was my recollection to be trusted? I’d been stoned out of my mind, after all—had I misunderstood what I had read? I found myself concocting outlandish theories to prove Kathy’s innocence. Maybe it was just an acting exercise—she was writing in character, in preparation for
Othello.
She had spent six weeks speaking in an American accent when preparing for
All My Sons.
It was possible something similar was going on here. Except the emails were signed by Kathy—not Desdemona.

If only I had imagined it all, then I could forget it, the way you forget a dream—I could wake up and it would fade away. Instead I was trapped in this endless nightmare of mistrust, suspicion, paranoia. Although on the surface, little had changed. We still went for a walk together on Sunday. We looked like every other couple strolling in the park. Perhaps our silences were longer than usual, but they seemed comfortable enough. Under the silence, however, a fevered one-sided conversation was taking place in my mind. I rehearsed a million questions. Why did she do it? How could she? Why say she loved me and marry me, fuck me, and share my bed—then lie to my face, and keep lying, year after year? How long had it been going on? Did she love this man? Was she going to leave me for him?

I looked through her phone a couple of times when she was in the shower, searching for text messages, but found nothing. If she’d received any incriminating texts, she had deleted them. She wasn’t stupid, apparently, just occasionally careless.

It was possible I’d never know the truth. I might never find out.

In a way, I hoped I wouldn’t.

Kathy peered at me as we sat on the couch after the walk. “Are you all right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. You seem a bit flat.”

“Today?”

“Not just today. Recently.”

I evaded her eyes. “Just work. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

Kathy nodded. A sympathetic squeeze of my hand. She was a good actress. I could almost believe she cared.

“How are rehearsals going?”

“Better. Tony came up with some good ideas. We’re going to work late next week to go over them.”

“Right.”

I no longer believed a word she said. I analyzed every sentence, the way I would with a patient. I was looking for subtext, reading between the lines for nonverbal clues—subtle inflections, evasions, omissions. Lies.

“How is Tony?”

“Fine.” She shrugged, as if to indicate she couldn’t care less. I didn’t believe that. She idolized Tony, her director, and was forever talking about him—at least she used to; she hadn’t mentioned him quite so much recently. They talked about plays and acting and the theater—a world beyond my knowledge. I’d heard a lot about Tony, but only glimpsed him once, briefly, when I went to meet Kathy after a rehearsal. I thought it odd that Kathy didn’t introduce us. He was married, and his wife was an actress; I got the sense Kathy didn’t like her much. Perhaps his wife was jealous of their relationship, as I was. I suggested the four of us go out for dinner, but Kathy hadn’t been particularly keen on the idea. Sometimes I wondered if she was trying to keep us apart.

I watched Kathy open her laptop. She angled the screen away from me as she typed. I could hear her fingers tapping. Who was she writing to? Tony?

“What are you doing?” I yawned.

“Just emailing my cousin … She’s in Sydney now.”

“Is she? Send her my love.”

“I will.”

Kathy typed for a moment longer, then stopped typing and put down the laptop. “I’m going to have a bath.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

She gave me an amused look. “Cheer up, darling. Are you sure you’re okay?”

I smiled and nodded. She stood up and walked out. I waited until I heard the bathroom door close, and the sound of running water. I slid over to where she had been sitting. I reached for her laptop. My fingers were trembling as I opened it. I re-opened her browser—and went to her email log-in.

But she’d logged out.

I pushed away the laptop with disgust. This must stop, I thought. This way madness lies. Or was I mad already?

I was getting into bed, pulling back the covers, when Kathy walked into the bedroom, brushing her teeth.

“I forgot to tell you. Nicole is back in London next week.”

“Nicole?”

“You remember Nicole. We went to her going-away party.”

“Oh, yeah. I thought she moved to New York.”

“She did. And now she’s back.” A pause. “She wants me to meet her on Thursday … Thursday night after rehearsal.”

I don’t know what aroused my suspicion. Was it the way Kathy was looking in my direction but not making eye contact? I sensed she was lying. I didn’t say anything. Neither did she. She disappeared from the door. I could hear her in the bathroom, spitting out the toothpaste and rinsing her mouth.

Perhaps there was nothing to it. Perhaps it was entirely innocent and Kathy really was going to meet Nicole on Thursday.

Perhaps.

Only one way to find out.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THERE WERE NO QUEUES OUTSIDE
Alicia’s gallery this time, as there had been that day, six years ago, when I had gone to see the
Alcestis
. A different artist was hanging in the window now, and despite his possible talent, he lacked Alicia’s notoriety and subsequent ability to draw in the crowds.

As I entered the gallery, I shivered; it was even colder in here than on the street. There was something chilly about the atmosphere as well as the temperature; it smelled of exposed steel beams and bare concrete floors. It was soulless, I thought. Empty.

The gallerist was sitting behind his desk. He stood up as I approached.

Jean-Felix Martin was in his early forties, a handsome man with black eyes and hair, and a tight T-shirt with a red skull on it. I told him who I was and why I had come. To my surprise, he seemed perfectly happy to talk about Alicia. He spoke with an accent. I asked if he was French.

“Originally—from Paris. But I’ve been here since I was a student—oh, twenty years at least. I think of myself more as British these days.” He smiled and gestured to a back room. “Come in, we can have a coffee.”

“Thanks.”

Jean-Felix led me into an office that was essentially a storeroom, crowded with stacks of paintings.

“How is Alicia?” he asked, using a complicated-looking coffee machine. “Is she still not talking?”

I shook my head. “No.”

He nodded and sighed. “So sad. Won’t you sit down? What do you want to know? I’ll do my best to answer truthfully.” Jean-Felix gave me a wry smile, tinged with curiosity. “Although I’m not entirely sure why you’ve come to me.”