to the doorway than usual, or had the shop itself not been almost empty she might have missed them altogether. As it was, in the exact second that she was passing the doorway, he turned, the movement drawing attention to that trademark teenage haircut that was beginning to look out of place on a man in his thirties. He placed a hand on the arm of the younger girl at his side, and as Karen turned back, the shop almost completely behind her now, she saw her smile, the same smile she’d seen just a few days before when that same girl had sat opposite her and talked about her married lover.
Jessica and Adam. Her patient and her best friend’s husband.
The foyer was quiet when she arrived back at work, just the tapping of Molly’s fingers on her keyboard. She looked up and smiled when she saw it was Karen.
‘Fine, thanks, Molly. I had a sandwich.’ Karen realised too late that that wasn’t what the receptionist had asked, and just how distracted she’d managed to make herself sound with the lie. She’d gone straight back to the office after seeing Jessica and Adam together and completely forgotten to eat, questions slamming through her mind like gunfire.
Is Adam her married lover? Did she know we were best friends? Is that why she chose me? What the hell do I do now?
‘Can you hold my calls for an hour, please?’
‘Sure.’
She fumbled to get her key into the office lock, cringing at how all over the place she must look. Once inside, she could feel herself relaxing – no one watching her in here, no one for whom to maintain the professional demeanour.
Sinking down on to the plush beige carpet and leaning her back against the base of the sofa, she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply through her nose to the count of eight. Letting the breath out through her mouth as slowly as she could manage, she felt the panic inside her flow outward, pictured it as a physical entity that she could expel and watch float away. Repeating the exercise twice more, she felt herself relaxing, her thoughts ordering themselves into a list in her mind. She enjoyed lists; they were manageable, organised. They helped her keep control. How anyone got through their lives without a set of bullet-pointed tasks to guide them, she would never understand.
The first item on her list – was it definitely Jessica Hamilton she’d seen in that store? There was no question of whether it was Adam; she’d known him longer than she’d known Michael, had even been with Eleanor when she’d bought him the jacket he’d been wearing that afternoon. The question of Jessica was trickier. She’d only met her once before, and in a different environment. Could she say for certain it was her? She visualised the coat the girl had been wearing, a camel-coloured mac with a tie belt at the waist. She didn’t remember it from their session – in fact the only colours she could associate with her patient were grey and black. Of course that didn’t mean anything; not everyone wore the same coat all the time. Bea had hundreds.
She tried to picture Jessica’s face but could see only features: those murky blue eyes, the helmet of frizzy hair. The girl with Adam definitely hadn’t had that. Her hair had been sleek, styled, her face made up. Granted, Karen had only seen her for a second or two, but she’d got the impression of someone infinitely more confident than the girl who had come to her for therapy. And yet her first instinct had been that it was Jessica – why else would her name spring to mind? There must have been something about Adam’s companion that had made her instantly recognise her as the girl who had been in her office just a few days ago. But try as she might, she couldn’t picture what it was.
Assuming she was wrong and the girl in the shop wasn’t her patient, had she also been mistaken about them being together? Adam had certainly laid a hand on the girl’s arm, but could there have been an innocent reason? Had he been pushing past her?
No, her first instinct had been right. Whether it was Jessica Hamilton or not, that lying bastard was cheating on her best friend, and now she had to decide what to do about it.