And there was Bunny, the mad-eyed grey rabbit Isla was always sucking on. He was lying on the floor by the fridge. Carol bent and picked him up and thought of little Isla, just two months old. Despite being Maggie’s, she was a sweet baby, like a little doll with that round face and big blue eyes.
Carol’s back was prickling with shivers, although the room wasn’t cold.
In fact, the kitchen was hot.
Very hot.
And then she saw the glowing red circle on the top of the Belling.
‘The hob’s on,’ she said aloud, although Nick wasn’t in the room. She could hear him moving about in the warren behind the kitchen. ‘Nick! The hob’s on!’
He appeared at a run, skidding to a halt next to her, staring, as she was, at that red circle. She put her hand over it, feeling the heat radiating out. And sitting on the worktop next to it was a pan filled with water and an open bag of oatmeal.
‘Why were they making porridge?’ said Nick. He turned and crossed the room to the table. ‘And look. Three mugs, with half-drunk tea in them. And three bowls.’ He picked one up and turned it over. ‘Three empty bowls, for the porridge, I guess. Three spoons.’
‘It looks like they were making breakfast,’ Carol blurted, but managed to stop herself completing the thought out loud: when something happened.
‘But we’d had breakfast. We’d cleared up the breakfast stuff. And why are there three mugs and three bowls? Isla isn’t even on solids yet. And she doesn’t drink tea!’ He was staring at Carol now, as if she could help, as if she would have answers. ‘Someone else was here. Who else was here?’ And then his face collapsed, and she was reaching for him and he was shaking his head and backing off and oh, it was heart-breaking, watching him try to master himself, try to face this latest crisis in his short life.
‘We need to call the police,’ he choked. ‘I knew something like this was going to happen. I’ve been trying to tell Dad – ever since Maggie moved in, I’ve been trying to tell him . . . get him to see what she’s really like. But he wouldn’t listen. And now she’s killed them!’
‘Oh, Nick, no!’
Finally, he let Carol pull him into a hug as he wailed: ‘She has! She’s killed Dad and Isla!’
1
Lulu - May 2019
Lulu Clyde ignored the buzzing of her phone that heralded yet another text, got up from her chair and perched on the coffee table in front of her client. She needed to be close enough to perform the procedure but not so close as to invade his personal space. Her heart bumped as the familiar dread descended, but she spoke calmly and quietly. ‘I want you to think about that day.’ And as she saw his face change: ‘No, no, don’t worry. The second you feel uncomfortable, the second you want to stop, we’ll stop. Okay?’
After a beat: ‘I suppose.’
He was such an ordinary-looking man. Pushing forty, average height and build, mousy brown hair, pleasant, forgettable face. If you saw him in the street, walking along with his little dog, you would never guess that he carried a whole world of anger around inside him, day after day after day.
‘Do you trust me?’
This time, the answer was immediate: ‘Yes.’
‘I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. You’re safe here.’
He was safe.
She had to keep reminding herself of that.
Here wasn’t anywhere special: a small, rectangular, pale-green space with a really inspiring view of a brick wall. At the other end of the room were a desk and chair, and at this end, two comfy beige armchairs with a glass coffee table between them on which sat, in addition to Lulu herself, a jug of iced water and two glasses, a box of tissues from Tesco and a stunted maidenhair fern. On the wall behind the desk were her framed certificates, her Bachelor of Science from the University of Melbourne and her Master of Psychotherapy and Counselling from Western Sydney University.
Next to this room were a tiny kitchenette and a toilet.
And that was it.
Her office.
The place where miracles happened – although that made it sound like she had a God complex, and she wasn’t deluded enough to think that the miracles were down to her. It was the clients, her brave, brave clients, who made them happen.
She was only the catalyst.
‘I don’t want Milo here,’ he said suddenly, turning to look at the little dog who sat, so patiently, next to his chair.
Milo’s stubby tail swished the carpet as he looked up at his owner with trusting brown eyes. He was a Jack Russell crossed with something hairy, an ugly little thing really, she supposed, but Lulu found him very cute. He had been in the dog shelter for months, apparently, with no takers, until her client had given him a home. Now they were inseparable, and Lulu suspected that Milo was a much more effective therapist than she was.