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.