‘Oh, I know it’s fashionable to have one. But this Paul guy – he really seems obsessed with you. The day he met you was the best day of his life? Combine that with the fact he’s a psycho –’
‘He’s not a “psycho”！’
Nick moved his hands on her shoulders, rubbing warmth into them, making her realise for the first time that the night air was a little chilly. ‘You’re so bloody trusting, Lulu, and I love that about you, but it means you’re . . . you’re vulnerable to being played by these people. You’re just the type of woman men obsess over. I know you don’t see it, for some crazy reason you don’t think you’re attractive, but you are beautiful. You’re beautiful and you’re kind, and you always think the best of everyone. Let’s face it – you’re a nutter magnet.’
‘Uh, thanks – I think! But you know I hate that word.’
‘Okay, psychopath magnet. That better? But seriously, I really didn’t like the way Paul acted with you. I think you should stop seeing him.’
‘Oh, Nick! I can’t do that! Paul’s not dangerous.’
‘So you keep saying, but how can I know that, if you won’t tell me anything about him?’
‘I can’t break client confidentiality.’
He dropped his hands from her arms, hitched the bee bag more securely onto his shoulder, and turned away to the steps up to Westminster Bridge. She hurried after him. She wanted so much to try to get him to talk to her about his stepmother and father and sister and what had happened, but, for all her training as a therapist, she was at a loss to know how to do that. How to help her own, beloved husband who was so perfect on the outside and so damaged on the inside, she didn’t even know where to start.
They had only been married two months. She had only known him for six. That was what she kept telling herself. When she got to know him better, she’d be better placed to give him the help he obviously desperately needed, to break down the wall he’d built around himself and defended with facetiousness and humour and charm.
And with silence.
Nick was a master of the silent treatment, particularly when he was thwarted.
‘I’m not in any danger from Paul, or from any of my clients,’ she tried, trotting to match his long stride as they approached the centre of the bridge, with its jaunty triple lantern lights. She was very conscious of the river flowing unseen beneath them, the wide, brown river that flowed past their penthouse apartment at Chelsea Harbour and that she loved so much but that also, at times, gave her a vague feeling of unease.
There were more than fifty ‘jumpers’ a year, Nick had told her the first time they viewed the apartment. People who jumped into this river. People who had watched it, perhaps, day after day, and felt its pull. And one day that pull had been too strong.
She stopped walking.
After a few steps, he turned and came back to her, as she had known he would. He would never leave her here. He never tired of reminding her of the number of women who were raped in London every year （over five thousand） and the number of murders （one hundred and twelve）。 He made her carry an illegal can of pepper spray in her bag, which he’d got from God knew where.
He’d made her promise to keep to the main thoroughfares when she was alone, and never take shortcuts up quiet, dubious alleyways. And she had to keep her phone switched on at all times in case she needed to call 999.
As he walked back to her, his expression contained, wary, her heart suddenly went out to him and she grabbed him into her arms and hugged him tight, so tight, the bee bag bumping awkwardly against them. She felt his chest heave with suppressed emotion.
Talk to me, she wanted to say. Talk to me about them.
Nick’s mum, Kathleen, had died in an accident when he was fourteen – she’d fallen from the galleried landing of their big Victorian house in the Scottish Borders while Nick, oblivious, was upstairs in his room. He had found her body. She thought of Paul, so traumatised by finding his father’s body that he’d been unable to let go of the experience, to let go of the rage, all these years. But Paul had had the loving support of his mother and extended family.
Nick had lost what remained of his family less than two years later, and in the worst possible way. She couldn’t stop thinking about him as he’d been then, sixteen-year-old Nick, coming home from a fun day out with his best friend and his best friend’s mum to find his family gone. Without a trace. And the police had been convinced that they’d just upped and left, leaving Nick behind.