Tony and I had taken many long-weekend city breaks. His parents looked after the kids and we’d spend Friday to Sunday in cities like Bruges and Barcelona. I hated that he was replicating our life with Janine.
I skipped back a few pages and noted she’d scribbled something out. She’d pressed pretty heavily on the page because it left an impression on the next. What was she trying to hide? Curious, I held the paper up to the strip light and the name became clear.
4.15 p.m., Ryan Smith, it read.
I glared at the name for a time, allowing my brain to absorb it and what it meant. I blinked hard and looked again and his name was still there. The only two people on my hit list were working together.
A knock on the door made me jump out of my skin, and I covered the diary with a ring binder.
‘Laura, your appointment is here.’ Zoe smiled. ‘I’ll start monitoring the cameras.’
Downstairs, a man with a pinched face and the stench of stale tobacco began grumbling about how dreadful his life had been since his wife walked out on him. Knowing we were being watched, I nodded at the appropriate times and gave enough sympathetic smiles where suitable. Even when he told me he thought he’d be better off dead than alone, I didn’t bite. I didn’t need a candidate right now. All I could think about was Janine and Ryan meeting under this roof and in this room. Not knowing what they had discussed was killing me.
Later, when the client left, seemingly satisfied that someone in the world now understood his woes, I went back upstairs and thanked Zoe for keeping an eye on me from the camera room. I waited for her to return to her desk, then went into the room and closed the door. She hadn’t logged out from the computer, so I accessed a file containing saved footage of past drop-in callers. Each clip was labelled with their name, date, the interviewer and the camera monitor. However, none of the MPEGs had Ryan’s name attached. I folded my arms, frustrated. Then I clicked the mouse on the trash can symbol. Among the deleted Word documents was a file titled ‘R.S.’
‘Ryan Smith,’ I said out loud.
With no other names attached to it, I assumed Janine had recorded it herself then deleted it, but forgotten to empty the virtual rubbish bin.
I slipped on the headphones and pressed play. Eventually, Ryan entered the room followed by Janine. He drummed his fingers against his leg and tapped his foot on the floor nervously while he waited for her to return with a glass. This was a very different Ryan from the smug one taunting me at Effie’s school.
I listened intently as he told Janine about his wife Charlotte’s death and how he’d read online about the Helpline Heroine, and he recalled the effort he’d put into discovering if I were real. Then he recounted in detail our many conversations – how I’d encouraged him to die and how I’d accepted his invitation to watch as it happened. My heart raced. I kept staring at Janine’s face, but it remained emotionless despite the accusations.
Listening to Ryan talk in-depth about the loss he’d felt after his wife’s death humanised him a little. Until that moment, he’d been an unpredictable force bent on tormenting me. But watching this video, he became a real person, a man who’d suffered; who was fractured and lonely. He was nothing like the formidable opponent I’d spent months hiding from in my house.
It made me want to break him even more.
Suddenly he handed her what looked like a Dictaphone. She glanced at the camera, then pulled out headphones from her bag and spent the next five minutes listening without saying a word. I hunched forward, literally on the edge of my seat, wondering what the hell was on that recording. Finally, she spoke.
‘You need to know that Laura is a popular member of the team and a big fundraiser for us,’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t for her, we’d be struggling to stay open.’
Janine’s appreciation of my hard work wasn’t the response I’d expected, as she’d never shown me anything close to gratitude before. And I began to feel a little relieved when a frustrated Ryan stood up to leave. It was his word against mine – a stranger wracked with grief and desperate to find someone other than himself to blame for his wife’s death, versus me, a people person, a woman whose middle name was charity. Janine might not have liked me, but at least I had her support.
I began to slip the headphones from my ears, but continued to watch the screen as Ryan made his way towards the door. Suddenly, Janine stood up and stopped him. She looked straight into the video camera and whispered into his ear. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, so I replayed it. Again, it was too muffled. Only when I turned up the volume to maximum could I understand a few words.
‘I believe . . . saying,’ she told him. ‘. . . suspicions . . . number of suicidal calls . . . higher . . . other branches . . . I promise . . . me a little time . . . kicked out of here . . . police investigation. This place . . . I’ll take it away from her . . .’
I slumped in my seat, watching both figures leave the room until eventually the computer screen turned black.
Oh, Janine, why did you have to say that?
Everyone was too busy on calls to spot me rifling through her drawers, filing cabinet and the cupboard behind her desk, frantically searching for that damning Dictaphone. But it was nowhere to be found.
I gave up for now and deleted the video file – permanently this time – and it felt like a light switch in my head had just been flicked on. Now I could see everything much more clearly: the present and the future. I didn’t need to compartmentalise Ryan and Janine. I could use them to cancel each other out. Two birds, and me holding the stone.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RYAN
My mum and dad sat on the opposite side of the kitchen table to me, their expressions serious, like when I was a kid and they were about to tell me off.
When they began talking, I knew they had rehearsed beforehand by the way they took it in turns – a sentence each, like a couple of breakfast TV presenters reading from a teleprompter. They’d even printed off their bank statements and highlighted their outgoings to prove their point.
‘We just can’t afford it any longer,’ Mum continued, and took a sip from a glass of Prosecco. ‘If we keep going like this, we’ll have to cash in our pensions to keep paying for it.’
I nodded. ‘You’re right and I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it. You should have said something sooner.’
They’d asked me to their home to discuss the two mortgages I had in my name. While I was paying for the flat, they’d been stepping in to pay for the empty cottage. A teacher’s income wasn’t a bottomless pit of money, and neither were their savings.
‘I appreciate why you’re reluctant to let either of them go,’ Dad said, ‘but you’re going to need to make a decision soon. You can’t keep both.’
I briefly weighed up the pros and cons of each home. I no longer had any love for the flat since Charlotte died. So making my home in a place she hadn’t set foot in would be the sensible choice.
‘I’ll sell the flat.’