The Magpies A Psychological Thriller - By Mark Edwards Page 0,65
of a long shift, persuading her way past the nurse who acted as a kind of bouncer for Paul, but he had refused to speak to her, closing his eyes and pretending to be asleep. Jamie was furious when Kirsty told him, but she had simply shrugged and said, ‘If it’s what he wants.’
Then, of course, there was the continuing harassment from the Newtons. Lucy had written them another letter, saying that the sound of Kirsty thrashing the toilet brush round the pan on a Sunday afternoon, when they had been doing their weekly housework, had been intolerable. It was one of those letters that, at first, made Jamie laugh. But after reading it a couple of times it struck him how insane the writer must be, and he felt scared. Kirsty, however, had simply shrugged and said, ‘I’ll just have to thrash a bit more quietly, won’t I?’
On Saturday, they took a trip to Covent Garden and bought their wedding outfits. Jamie bought a fabulous velvet suit and Kirsty spent a fortune they didn’t really have on a beautiful dress from Whistles. Jamie put it on his credit card. He refused to worry about the expense – this was their wedding day, after all. When Kirsty came out of the changing room in the dress, Jamie felt like applauding. She was stunning. Kirsty looked at herself in the mirror and burst into tears.
Surely, Jamie thought, it couldn’t be the wedding alone that was making Kirsty seem so happy, apparently oblivious to all the crap that was going on around them. Even the appearance of a spider in the bathroom the other day had not fazed her: she had calmly called for Jamie to get rid of it, whereas a few weeks ago she would have had a screaming fit. She was so calm that Jamie wondered briefly if she was on drugs. She was a nurse so it wouldn’t be very hard for her to get hold of a bottle of tranquillizers. He quickly dismissed the idea, admonished himself for being stupid. Kirsty would never fill her body with drugs – she wouldn’t risk harming the baby in any way.
‘You seem to be handling all this much better than I am,’ he said to her one night, sitting in front of the TV. ‘A couple of weeks ago you were really stressed, but now you seem as if you’re not worried about Lucy and Chris any more.’
She turned to him. ‘It’s not that I’m not worried, Jamie, but I’m trying to put things into perspective. I hate them. I’d be delighted if they moved out. I’d be pleased if they just stopped writing us such stupid letters. But it’s not as if they’ve actually threatened us physically. In fact, I think they’re staring to get bored. The hoaxes have dried up. We haven’t seen them for weeks.’
‘But their presence is always there.’
‘I don’t know. I’ve almost managed to put them from my mind.’ She put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Jamie, we’ve got so much to look forward to. We’re going to be parents. That’s a lot scarier than our neighbours, surely.’
He laughed.
She took his hand and rested it on her stomach. ‘I simply want to think about the future, Jamie. And I don’t have enough mental energy to waste my thoughts on Lucy and Chris.’
He nodded, but he couldn’t quite tune in to her wavelength. He couldn’t cast Lucy and Chris from his mind, no matter how hard he tried. And also, he wasn’t sure how sincere Kirsty was being. It might just be that she was putting on a brave face, persuading herself that she needed to be happy. He was worried that her mood was a veneer, and that it could be torn away at any time.
He prayed that this wouldn’t happen, because he needed her strength and optimism. He was doing enough worrying for both of them. Every night before he went to sleep he fell into a state of semi-conscious worry, his mind focusing on one problem after another. He would worry about Paul, wondering why he was being such an arsehole, wondering if the doctors were wrong when they said he had suffered no mental damage. Then he would start worrying about something else. Work, money, how they would manage with one-and-a-half salaries when Kirsty had the baby and went part-time. He worried about how the baby would affect their relationship. He worried about how his parents would react when they discovered he