I’ve enclosed reprints of the Anorexia paper for your files. I meant to get them to you sooner, but things have been rather chaotic around here. On the home front, Amanda has finally moved out, after months of wavering, so there’s that as well.
Congrats once again on an excellent publication (and don’t think I’ve forgotten you contributed the lion’s share on this). Keep me posted on your new life.
Warmest wishes, J.
P.S. You’re sorely missed around here – the clinic isn’t the same without you…
She dropped the note on the table. The lion’s share? When he’d done nothing beyond his minimal role as supervisor. The man was infuriating. And what was that annoying ‘J’ scrawled at the bottom of the page. A misguided attempt at intimacy? How like Julian to wait until she was safely on the other side of the Atlantic to make his move. Not that there was the slightest chance she’d ever reciprocate.
Out front, the street was empty, the cracked pavement rimed with frost. Shadows flickered on the ground by the rubbish bins. Rats? Or some other unsavoury vermin. Snowflakes drifted through the air. Across the street, the windows were dark. Before closing the curtains, she checked the pavement again. The shadows by the rubbish bins were gone.
The Greenlake file was next. Though she had no intention of taking the case, it was essential she come up with a plausible excuse for Niels. She carried the file and a glass of wine to the sofa.
Timothy Warren Stern, Jnr. Born, July 18, 1960 in Brookline, Massachusetts. The murders of his mother and sisters were committed on August 26, 1977 in the family home at 44 Easton Road, Belle River, Maine.
Belle River? She squinted at the photo. Timothy Warren Stern. Tim Stern. A chill snaked down her spine. She knew him, or of him. Scenes from childhood summers in Belle River vaulted through her head. She dropped the file and closed her eyes. But this was good news, wasn’t it? She was off the hook. That she knew the patient, however marginally, was an obvious conflict of interest. Now she could decline the request with a clear conscience.
Except she couldn’t. How could she admit a connection to a patient from Maine when Niels thought she’d grown up in England? And that bogus story she’d told him about her family. An only child, her parents happily retired and living in a seaside village in Sussex. All lies. If she came clean, she’d be reported as a fraud, struck off the register, and hustled onto the next plane to Heathrow. An ignominious end to a stellar career, of everything she’d ever worked for.
Deep in the cellar, the ancient boiler grumbled to life. Tim Stern. She closed her eyes, trying to conjure a face. A shaggy-haired boy… in some kind of hat? Lurking behind a counter. Amongst a tangle of synapses, the apparition briefly sparked and faded away.
She’d have to invent another reason to refuse the case. Her history with Leonard Whidby might be something she could work with, though she’d hoped to keep that notorious blot on her record under wraps. In the morning, when her head was clearer, she’d formulate a plan. In the meantime, an invisible force drove her back to the file on the table.
The Stern murders. Impossible to summon a clear-cut memory of the crime, having only learned about it years after the fact. Belle River was a small town, so she must have seen Tim Stern before, even if she couldn’t remember his face. She flipped to the photo – slack jaw, hooded eyes – before taking the plunge and reading straight through.
August 1977. The mother and sisters brutally slain. Tim’s flight across the state. His arrest and trial. The verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. Incarceration at Greenlake, formerly Atherton State Asylum, a maximum-security psychiatric facility in upstate New York. The father, out of town on business when the crime occurred, had not testified at the trial. When it was over, he’d sold the family home and moved out West. Where exactly, the file didn’t say.
And while all that was going on, where was she? Trapped in that house on Gardiner Road, struggling to survive. She rested her head on her arms and listened to the tick of snow on the window. Was it a mistake to come back? Twenty years ago, she’d bolted from the country, like a frightened deer fleeing a fire. Would the new life she’d created from the ashes of those early years, one painstaking day at a time, come crashing down, just when she thought she was free?
From under her jumper, she pulled out the silver quetzal, totem bird of the Mayans, and held it in her hand.
Please, let me be okay. Please.
An appeal to… what, or whom? A confirmed rationalist, she didn’t really believe anything – or anyone – was listening. But praying to something, however vague, was a childish habit she’d yet to relinquish. Even though, in her heart, she knew that a lump of metal, however cherished, could not keep the past where it belonged.
She switched off the light and peeked through the blinds at her neighbour’s flat across the alley. All was dark.
In the morning, she would tell Niels she wasn’t taking the case.
5
The observation room was empty. The bed freshly made with a clean white sheet and the clinic’s monogrammed green blanket. That could only mean one thing: that Cassie had agreed to treatment and was transferred to one of the rooms upstairs. Erin was giddy with relief. Whatever she’d said to her yesterday must have got through.
At reception, Janine was on the phone and signalled for her to wait. By the time she hung up, Erin was fizzing with adrenaline, already designing Cassie’s treatment programme in her head. When was the last time she’d felt this