The Picture On The Fridge: The debut psychological thriller with the twist of the year Read online

  Looking at Bradley now, in those few seconds before he spotted her and Tam, she felt that familiar sense of dislocation, of being the wrong person in the wrong place, waiting for the wrong man. She had spent half an hour on her make-up this morning, wanting to be sure she looked her best after ten days apart. But, looking in the full-length bedroom mirror, she noticed the weight around her hips, the tired-looking eyes, the roots of her blonde hair greying. She was forty years old, and she looked it. But Bradley was thirty-eight and looked like a movie star. Not in a pretty-boy way. His face was too interesting to be pretty. His eyes were Paul Newman blue, but his nose was too big. Somehow, that just made him sexier. He kept his dark hair short, but scruffy. That detail, on a man who otherwise took pride in his appearance, had been the grit in the oyster for Mags when they'd first met.

  "Dad!" Tam ran to her father, who swept her up and hugged her. Mags hung back, letting them have their reunion. Ten days was a long time for an eleven-year-old.

  "Mum, Mum, look, Dad bought me a book." She waved an old hardback, dark brown. The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain.

  Bradley leaned down and kissed the top of Mags' head, then cupped the side of her face in his palm until she looked at him. He smiled.

  "PG Wodehouse is okay, I guess," he said. "But it's about time she read a real classic." His Boston accent was always stronger when he'd been back there.

  "Clarssic," she said, trying to mimic the sound. She had no gift for it, could never get the flat sound of the vowels right. "Claaahsic."

  "Nope," he said, still smiling. "Nowhere near."

  Tam butted in. "Hey, Dad, when you were in Boston, did you pahk your cah in Hahvahd Yahd?"

  He wheeled on her, eyebrows raised in mock-astonishment. "Hey, that's not bad for a half-Brit."

  "Hahf Brit."

  "Right, you asked for it."

  "Ahsked." Tam giggled as Bradley lunged for her and started tickling. She could hardly breathe for laughing, but still worked her Boston impressions into her protestations. "Stowap! Nowat fair! Nowat fair!"

  "Okay, Tam-Tam, spill the beans. What's been going on?"

  Tam folded her arms and looked out of the window of the car. Bradley shuffled round in the front seat and looked at her. "Oops. Sorry, sweetheart. It's hard for me to stop calling you Tam-Tam, so I might screw up now and then. Will you accept my humble apology, Miss Barkworth?"

  Tam snorted. In the rearview mirror, Mags saw her turn back to her father and smile.

  "Actually, Dad, you're right. I'm not a child anymore. I got my first period."

  Tam shared everything with her father as easily as she did with Mags. Ever since she could talk, Bradley had asked questions about how Tam was feeling, what she was thinking, taking a keen interest in everything she said and did. Family and friends often commented on the closeness between father and daughter.

  "Wow. That's great, honey. Is it uncomfortable? Do you feel ill? Any headaches, or nausea? Any other changes you want to talk about?"

  Mags prodded her husband's leg. "What is this? Twenty questions?"

  "Sorry. Just interested, is all. Our daughter is becoming a woman. What kind of father wouldn't want to hear all about it?"

  "Right, but you're her father, not her doctor."

  Bradley nodded and stretched a hand back to Tam. "Thanks for telling me. We'll talk about it later."

  The traffic on the north circular was dense and still building as rush-hour got into full swing. The final mile-and-a-half took twenty-five minutes, but eventually they were at the kitchen table, croissants warming in the oven, a pot of coffee bubbling on the hob. Tam told her dad about the auditions for the school play, her essay on the Battle of Britain, and that most of the class were ignoring Morag Wilkinson because she was a bigot. Mags saw Bradley nod with satisfaction at his daughter's vocabulary.

  Bradley answered questions about his trip, with few details. He always spoke of his work in general terms, joking that it was boring for anyone who didn't have a degree in genetics. He'd worked for his father since graduating. Edgegen Technology was a genetic research specialising in new treatments for debilitating neurological conditions. Mags didn't know much more than that. Most of Bradley's work was covered by nondisclosure agreements.

  "I spent far too much time indoors, running tests and going over the results again and again,". He topped up his coffee, offering the jug to Mags. She declined. A cup and a half per day was the limit. More than that and her pulse would quicken, and her skin tingle, reminding her of the onset of the panic attacks that had plagued her after Tam was born. Her daughter's birth had been both the happiest and saddest moment of her life. Just the thought of it produced that familiar vertigo, the sense of walking on the edge of an abyss.

  Mags glanced up at the calendar on the kitchen wall and looked for the next red sticker. Monday afternoon. She wondered if she would ever stop needing therapy. She tuned back into the moment. Bradley was still talking.

  "I meant to get out on the lake, but I was too busy. Anyhow, I'm back for a while this time. I have three sets of trial results to go through. It will take six to eight weeks at least."

  "Promise?" said Tam.

  "Promise." They fist-bumped. "Now, is that all the news?"

  "That's it," said Tam with a smile. "Can we see a movie this afternoon?"

  "Sure. How about a documentary on the economy?"

  "Da-ad."

  Mags cleared away the plates and loaded the dishwasher. Tam hadn't said a word about the picture.

  Later, while Bradley brushed his teeth, Mags considered not telling him about the picture. She thought of the look on her daughter's face as she described drawing the house. Tam hadn't mentioned it since, and was keen to forget about it.

  But not telling Bradley felt wrong. Ria, her therapist, insisted she needed to keep their lines of communication open.

  "Relationships only break down when you stop talking," the therapist had argued. "Communication is everything. Even if you still can't tell Bradley how your anxiety affects your view of him, tell him everything else. Stay in the habit of talking to each other. In time, you'll be ready to open up about your trust issues."

  Mags closed her book as Bradley came out of the bathroom. She had stared at the same page without reading a word for five minutes. She put it on the bedside table and watched him cross the room. He wore drawstring pyjama bottoms. His upper body was lightly muscled and lean. He ran most days and went to the gym three times a week. Her occasional attempts to do the same inevitably ended after a week or two, but he insisted the additional few pounds she'd gained made no difference to him.

  "Tam did an amazing drawing," she began. Bradley had been about to slide into bed next to her. He stopped, one hand on the corner of the duvet.

  "Really? She's never been interested in art before."

  Mags nodded. "I know. I could hardly believe it was Tam's."

  "What was so amazing about it?"

  Mags shrugged. "It was so realistic. Like a photograph."

  "Can I see it?"

  "It's at school. Mrs Matlock said they would display it in the hall. But—"

  She stopped. Bradley's eyes narrowed, his attention on his wife's face. "But what?"

  And there it was: he looked at her as if she meant nothing to him. The moment passed, and his expression softened. Projection, Ria would have called it. Not real. Mags shrugged a second time. "It's not important."

  Bradley sat down on the bed, smiled, and took his wife's hand. "Tell me what were you going to say. I'll be the judge of whether it's important or not."

  Now he was patronising her, the scientist in him coming out. She felt like a test subject, answering questions that would be examined later, before her score was graded.

  Bradley sensed her withdrawing. "I'm sorry. I'm just interested. She's our daughter, and if she's showing talent in any area, I want to hear about it." He rubbed his thumb along her wrist, and kissed her hand. "Please. Tell me."

  Mags s
queezed his fingers, reminded herself to stay present, not to judge Bradley by the paranoia produced by her anxiety. As always, she thought back to the first few months of their relationship, before they got married, before she fell pregnant. The excitement, the desire, an easy sense of love given and received. "Tam says she doesn't remember doing it. She didn't want to talk about it afterwards." Mags told Bradley about the house in the picture, about Tam's strange sense of being disengaged, of waking up as if from a bad dream. "She hasn't mentioned it since. You might need to give her some space."

  Bradley let go of her hand. "When did she draw it?"

  "Wednesday, or Thursday."

  "Which is it?"

  What does it matter? Right, fine, it was Thursday."

  "You sure?"

  "Yes, I'm bloody sure. The same day she started her period." Mags picked up the book again. "Which is what you should be interested in. She is coping brilliantly, thanks for asking."

  Bradley sighed and sat down. "I'm sorry, honey. Jet-lagged, I guess. But that doesn't excuse me snapping at you. Seriously, I'm sorry. Forgive me?"

  Those guileless blue eyes could still melt her. Mags reminded herself of Ria's advice. Her anxiety, despite being far more under her control now, coloured her view of her husband. He was a good man, an attentive father, a willing and sensitive lover. She needed to acknowledge that. She pulled him towards her and they kissed. As his hands moved over her body, Mags brought her attention into the moment, using Ria's mindfulness technique. She counted to six while breathing in, and, when she exhaled, she brought her attention to the parts of her body he was touching. The third time she did it, she lost count, giving herself up to pleasure.

  She opened her eyes at 3am and reached for a glass of water. Bradley's side of the bed was empty, the adjoining bathroom dark and silent. He often woke in the night and spent an hour or two in his basement office. She knew Bradley's work provided a beautiful house, holidays in the tropics, and a decent amount in the bank. She shouldn't resent that.

  Mags smoothed one hand across the dent in his pillow.

  He did everything right. He always had. So why didn't she trust him?

  Chapter Four

  I forget who I am for a few seconds. My skull hums, vibrating. It makes my teeth hurt. I half-open my eyes. Glass, rain, blackness. Then a sweep of light across my face from above. I sit up, take my head off the glass, look back at the light. It falls from a sign over the freeway. I turn around in my seat again. I'm on a bus. Just can't remember where I'm going. Or where I started out.

  The bus is half-empty. Most folk are sleeping. I like that. It feels good to be here. We are between cities, somewhere in the mid-west. Before the treatment, I never left Florida. When I found out about the program, I went north for the first time. I travelled on buses like this one. I didn't enjoy it. I didn't enjoy being away from home. There was no purpose to my life back then.

  They thought they could cure me. They said one operation might do it. No one likes to think of their head being cut open, but if it meant I could sleep after, I said they could take my whole head off. They laughed when I said that. It wasn't a joke.

  They didn't cure me. The last time I slept properly was when I was under the knife. It's as bad now as it's ever been. I nap for one minute, maybe two, then I'm awake again.

  The drug-trial doctors thought they had failed. Maybe, for them, it was a failure, because I still have insomnia. But everything is different now.

  I bring my hand up to the scar. My hair has grown back, but I can trace it still, the rough raised skin behind my ear running up and across to the top of my forehead. It's like a staircase, the way it jigs and jags. That's one of the two things the docs gave me. The scar. They also gave me a reason to live. They don't know that, of course. I didn't know it myself for a while. It was days, maybe weeks, later. I realised the operation had given me something extra. Something much better than sleep.

  I look around the bus again. I count eleven heads. All sleeping, apart from some Hispanic old lady, who looks at me then turns away.

  I look forward again. My eyes flick to the mirror at the front of the bus. The driver is staring right at me. I look down; realise I've been speaking out loud. I need to watch that. If I draw attention to myself, I won't be able to do my work. I have to be able to work. There are so few of us blessed with a purpose.

  It's another couple hours before we reach the next stop. I miss the sign saying where I am, but I get off anyway. The bus pulls away. There's a gas station and an overnight truck stop. Good. I've been on the move for a day or two, I think.

  I go to the gas station, ask about showers. I pay the guy five bucks for a token and walk round the back. The water is warm so I turn it down until bumps appear on my skin and my hands shake. I wash and change into the new clothes I have in the bag. I leave the old clothes hanging on the pegs outside the shower. Someone will take them. They always do.

  It's only been a week since the last time. But I was given a sign. A sign that someone is watching over me.

  From the edge of the gas station I see the lights of a town less than a mile away. If I cut across the fields, no one will see me. It won't be light for an hour or two.

  I take one last look around me. No one is looking, no one sees, everyone is half-asleep. The guy in the gas station is hunched over his phone, playing some game.

  If he knew who I was, what I can do, he would ask for my help. He would beg for it. If folk understood what I'm offering, everyone would want it.

  No need to be half-asleep, or half-awake, any more. When I help you, you can sleep. You can sleep.

  Chapter Five

  Ria was Mags' fifth therapist in a decade, and the only one she had stayed with for more than three sessions. If pressed, Mags might have struggled to explain what it was she liked about Ria. On the surface, the evidence suggested she might need counselling herself, rather than giving it to others. Her basement flat—in one of the roads that extended like spider's legs from Hyde Park—was always in chaos. More than once, Mags had passed a dazed male in the doorway. Ria only took female clients, so these men, as she unblushingly pointed out, were conquests.

  There was no man this time. Mags followed Ria through the usual obstacle course of discarded clothes, wine bottles, and books.

  Ria's office was so different to the rest of her living space, it might have belonged to another person. There was a simple desk with a keyboard and monitor, plus a notepad and pen. On a shelf next to the high, wide window was a jug of water, glasses, and a box of tissues. Ria poured them a glass each and sat down in her swivel chair, tapping the spacebar to bring up the record of their sessions, then picking up pen and paper.

  "What's on your mind?"

  Ria opened every session the same way. The first time, Mags had thought it was glib. But by the end of that first hour, she knew she had found a kindred spirit, someone who wasn't feigning interest, someone who never suggested cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solutions.

  "Bradley's back for a month or two."

  Ria nodded. She was, Mags guessed, in her early fifties. She must have been at least a stone heavier than Mags, a few inches shorter than her own five-foot-five, but she carried the weight as if it meant nothing to her. Judging from the semi-regular stream of happy looking men leaving the flat, it wasn't an issue for anyone else either. Ria said Mags' concern with her own fluctuating weight was a deflection, a way of avoiding more important issues. She was probably right, but Ria's air of self-assurance suggested she'd never experienced the burst of happiness at getting into a new outfit after a crash diet, or spent a morning crying after catching sight of her belly spilling over the top of her jeans.

  "Have you spoken to him?"

  Mags didn't need to ask her to clarify. It was the same question every session, and she always answered it the same way.

  "No." Mags spread her hands in a gesture of appeal. "How can I? Where would I start? You always make it sound so easy, but it isn't."

  M
ags never talked about her marriage in their sessions until she had spoken about Tam. Her concerns, her fears, the irrational thoughts she sometimes entertained when Tam was at school. Talking therapy helped. Mags knew her relationship with her daughter was far stronger now, because of the way Ria showed her the pitfalls of her over-protective behaviour. Mags would never find it easy to give Tam her own space, to let her go on school trips, to drop her off at a friend's house and drive away, but now she had strategies to deal with her reluctance to do any of these things. And, as Ria had promised, the mother-daughter relationship had become stronger. One day, Mags thought, she would be able to tell Tam why she found it harder than most mothers to grant her daughter some independence.

  What hadn't improved was Mags' relationship with Bradley. Mags couldn't explain why she could make no headway with her feelings about her husband.

  "Rationally, logically, you accept Bradley is what he seems to be: a good father and husband." Ria doodled as she spoke. "He's intelligent, attractive, and he works hard in a vocational job which gives him great professional satisfaction." It wasn't a question, not really. Both Ria and Mags knew the answer. She made a face anyway.

  "Don't make him sound perfect. My family and friends do quite enough of that."

  "I didn't say he was perfect."

  "Fine. Yes, all right, I accept that. Makes no difference. It's just…" Mags sat forward, put her elbows on her knees, and pushed her fingers through her hair, massaging the sides of her head as she did so. "For whatever reason, I still feel the same way. I know it's crazy."

  That was something else Mags liked about Ria. She never discouraged the use of the word crazy. She even used it herself. "Yeah," Ria agreed, "it is crazy, Mags."

  "I can't understand why I'm getting nowhere."

  "This is a major sticking point for you. You've seen progress in other areas, you will see progress in this too. It'll take as long as it takes, that's all. Some issues take time to be resolved."