and she could have sworn she could actually felt the blood stop pumping through her veins.
There’s no way she could know, she told herself, desperately trying to keep her composure. There’s no way she could know what happened to Amy. It’s a coincidence. Lots of people have sisters who die. When she looked back on the session, she would be furious at herself for letting her guard drop, for believing Jessica was just another patient, even for a minute.
‘What happened to her?’ Her voice didn’t quiver; didn’t give away any of the thousand emotions she was feeling. And yet Jessica Hamilton studied her as though it had.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said, her own voice devoid of any emotion. ‘Do I have to talk about it?’
‘No, not if it’s too difficult for you,’ Karen replied, the voice inside her head screaming, Yes! Yes, you do have to talk about it! She wanted to know what had happened – needed to know what had happened to Jessica’s sister. If there was a sister. Everything that came out of Jessica’s mouth seemed to be aimed straight at Karen’s heart.
‘Good. Let’s talk about him, then,’ Jessica said. ‘Or more importantly, her.’
‘Your lover’s wife?’ Karen was spinning again, her mind struggling to deal with the constant change in direction.
‘Yes, her. I think she’s going mad.’
Karen managed to successfully pick up her coffee cup and brought it to her lips. The coffee was cooler than she’d have liked, but she needed the pause to slow the pace of the session, bring it back under her control. By making Jessica wait for her reply, she was giving herself time to appraise the rapid turn in the conversation while hopefully making her patient feel a little less like she was running the show. The fact was that she couldn’t manage to separate in her mind the woman Jessica was talking about from Eleanor. Now that the idea had entered her head, it was as clear as if she’d come straight out and said it.
‘What do you mean by mad?’
Jessica frowned. ‘You know, crazy. Batshit. Lost it. Mad.’
‘And what makes you think that?’
She threw her a ‘I thought you’d never ask’ smile. ‘She lost the baby.’
Karen couldn’t help the sharp intake of breath as Jessica finished the sentence, and the iron ball of dread that had been forming since this morning seemed to grow in size and roll over in her stomach.
‘What do you mean, lost?’ she asked. ‘As in “I can’t remember where I put my keys” lost?’ She winced inwardly at her flippancy – an annoying habit she’d picked up from years of friendship with Bea. In reality she was in no way feeling flippant.
‘Exactly like that. She was at Asda and she forgot where she’d parked the car. She phoned the police and everything. He told me about it, said she was losing her mind.’
Forgot where she parked the car. Called the police and everything.
‘At Asda?’ This was it. This was where she came right out and asked her if she was talking about Eleanor, demanded to know why she was targeting her like this. What was the worst that could happen? Jessica would deny it was her husband’s best friend she was sleeping with and they would carry on with this game of cat and mouse. Only then she would know Karen was on to her. That she was winning.
‘And you didn’t have any part in what happened to her son?’
Jessica scowled. ‘How could I? She forgot where she parked the car – I can’t make the stupid bitch forget things. Can I?’
It was a challenge, daring Karen to suggest she might have moved the car – daring her to ask more questions. Except Karen didn’t need to ask; she knew that Eleanor hadn’t forgotten where she’d parked the car. She knew it had been taken. What she didn’t know was why Jessica was here, taunting her with talk about mad women and dead sisters. What did she know?
Karen leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees, and looked Jessica square in the face.
‘Let me ask you, Jessica, if you could speak to this woman, if you could just walk up to her on the street, what would you say?’
Jessica considered this for a second – this question she hadn’t planned for or rehearsed, this break from ‘How does that make you feel?’
‘I’d tell her that she doesn’t deserve any of it, any of what she has. And that I’m going