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White Bodies: A gripping psychological thriller for fans of Clare Mackintosh and Lisa Jewell
Jane Robins
‘The perfect thriller’ Elle‘Immensely gripping’ Sophie Hannah‘Gripping, creepy and very addictive!’ BA Paris‘He’s so handsome and clever and romantic. I just wished he hadn’t forced Tilda under the water and held her there so long.’Callie loves Tilda. She’s her sister, after all. And she’s beautiful and successful.Tilda loves Felix. He’s her husband. Successful and charismatic, he is also controlling, suspicious and, possibly, dangerous. Still, Tilda loves Felix.And Callie loves Tilda. Very, very much.So she’s determined to save her. But the cost could destroy them all…Sometimes we love too much.


JANE ROBINS began her career as a journalist with The Economist, the BBC and the Independent on Sunday. She has written three previous books of non-fiction, Rebel Queen (Simon & Schuster), The Magnificent Spilsbury and The Curious Habits of Dr. Adams (both John Murray).


COPYRIGHT (#ulink_acecea06-f122-5ddd-8e39-7c1375f1324a)


An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017
Copyright © Jane Robins 2017
Jane Robins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © December 2017 ISBN: 9780008217570
Version: 2018-03-21
For Carol
Contents
Cover (#u84a6bbc4-a82f-5a95-8588-6bfe0c1de7e0)
About the Author (#u4f627de4-b412-5bbd-bd58-f6c2444e51b2)
Title Page (#u00aa4379-462a-5cc9-b56a-d9a847ebc257)
Dedication (#ud61df239-fa7b-58d8-a017-66c46a836c30)
Autumn 2017 (#ulink_2847f54a-d042-52a2-83a4-b198537b69b4)
Spring 2017 (#ulink_9fbdad38-290a-5d2e-8b97-95bfae2de194)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_8b179030-4fa2-59a5-832b-67f4dccdcbf1)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_218e5d56-288d-5735-91ee-0e21fb8814c7)
1997 (#ulink_3b416e5a-8f60-55fe-aab8-6211b35ef246)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_30c0f394-6c33-5c0b-8115-086b14a94255)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_fe1cc3bd-c955-5c0e-94e6-5f9f57670018)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_c532506e-4240-5809-b47f-6ed9442418a6)
2000
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
2000
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
2006
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Acknowledgements
Copyright (#ulink_267f590e-1056-5f70-8f44-92a0f3a4481d)
AUTUMN 2017 (#ulink_777c7f52-458f-5cee-9514-f499af4706d7)
The evidence suggests that Felix showered. Beyond that, I know practically nothing about his final hours on this earth. All I have is the odd scrap of information and the patchy impressions of the bystanders, and it’s like I’m at the theatre, looking at the stage and seeing only the supporting cast, the scenery and the arrangement of shadows. All the important elements are missing. There are no principal actors, no stage directions and no script.
The receptionist said this – that Felix’s last morning was fresh and cold, that there was a frost on the lawn outside the hotel and a mist in the distance, where the woods are. She’d watched Felix sprinting out of the hotel, down the gravel drive, then turning left at the gate. ‘I was arriving for work and I called out “Good morning!”’ she said. ‘But he didn’t reply; he just kept running.’
Forty minutes later, he was back, dropping his head to catch his breath, panting and sweating. He straightened up and, now noticing the receptionist, said that he’d sprinted all the way to the golf course, running the perimeter and the long path through the woods back to the hotel. He thought that the sun glancing through the trees had been magical, as though life was just beginning (how extraordinary that he should say such a thing!). Then he took the stairs up to his room, two at a time.
He didn’t come down to breakfast or order anything to be sent up, not even the continental breakfast that was included in the room rate. His colleague, Julio, said he was surprised when Felix failed to attend the first session of the conference. At the mid-morning break, Julio carried a cup of coffee and a biscuit up to the room, but found the Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the door. He thought Felix was unwell, sleeping maybe, so he drank the coffee himself and ate the biscuit. ‘We missed him at lunch,’ he said, ‘and again in the afternoon session. By three o’clock I was calling his phone many times, but my calls went to voicemail.’ Julio felt uneasy. It was so unlike Felix to be unreliable, so he went upstairs one more time to hammer on the door, then he summoned the hotel manager, who arrived with a key.
The two men were struck by the unnatural stillness of the room, its air of unreality; Julio said it seemed considered, or planned, like a tableau vivant with Felix as the centrepiece, lying on his back on the bed in a strange balletic pose, right arm cast out across the duvet, left leg bent, bath robe open like a cape, grey eyes gazing at the ceiling. His left arm was dangling down the side of the bed, fingers suspended above the floor, and the hotel manager, who had a degree in the History of Art, was reminded of the pre-Raphaelite painting of the suicide of Thomas Chatterton. Except this didn’t look like suicide; there were no pill bottles or razor blades or other signs.
Dr Patel arrived and the receptionist stood by the door while the doctor conducted her examination. Her professional opinion was that Felix had suffered a heart attack or had some sort of seizure after his morning run. She left, and the receptionist took photographs of Felix and of the room – the bedside table, the pristine bathroom, the opened shower door, the view from the window and, finally, the untouched hospitality tray. ‘I know that was weird,’ she said. ‘But it felt like the right thing to do, to make a record.’ Maybe she thought her photos might become important, that they’d suggest that something about the scene was wrong. No one else had that sense, though. When the results of the postmortem came through, they were in agreement with Dr Patel – Felix’s death was due to heart disease.
As simple as that, he had collapsed and was gone – and for a while it seemed that he’d simply vanished. The world had swept over him like the tide coming in.
But then the funeral happened. I trekked out of London that day to a pretty Berkshire village with a Norman church sitting among gravestones and windblown copper-coloured leaves. When I saw it, I thought that Felix, who was born and raised in America, was having a very English final moment, though the mourners who were arriving in small solemn groups were from his international life. Solid men in sharply cut suits; flimsy, elegant women in heels. I watched them from a distance – in fact, from a broken bench set against the churchyard wall, where I was trying to calm down. Eventually, I slipped into the church and stood at the back.
My sister, Tilda, was the person on show and she walked slowly up the aisle like a melancholy bride. I tried hard, really hard, to get inside her head at that moment, and I conjured up a spectacular array of emotions – from profound grief and loss, to exhilarating release and relief. But nothing felt right. As always, I found her confusing, and I was reduced to noticing her expensive clothes. The black silk dress, the tailored jacket, doubtless costing a thousand pounds or more. And I watched her take a place in the empty front pew. On her right, in front of the altar, was Felix’s coffin, under a cascade of white lilies; and to her left, on a wooden stand, a giant photo of his smiling face. A few minutes later, Felix’s mother and father slipped in beside Tilda and then his brother, Lucas. There was the slightest of nods towards my sister who sat perfectly still, gazing at the floor.
The first hymn was a thin rendition of ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’ – but I found that I couldn’t sing. Instead I slumped against the back wall, feeling faint and nauseous, overwhelmed by the occasion. Not that I was mourning Felix, although the sight of his hunched-up, grieving family was upsetting. It was more that I was sick with knowing too much. On the day of his death, I’d waited for the police to turn up at my flat or at the bookshop. It was the same on the morning of the postmortem. And now, at the funeral, it seemed certain that police officers were waiting for me outside the church, stamping their feet to keep warm, sneaking an illicit cigarette, and that as soon as I stepped out of the gloom into the autumn sun I would hear my name. Callie Farrow? Do you have a minute?
SPRING 2017 (#ulink_f3f7fa55-f34f-5a19-881c-3536cc2f95f0)
1 (#ulink_336f29dd-51c7-537c-b074-991384727e28)
The branches outside my window are spindly and bare, and Tilda stands across the room looking like a waif-woman, saying, ‘How can you stand it? All those broken fingers tapping at the glass.’ She’s opening the door, is halfway out. ‘Anyhow, I want you to come to Curzon Street this evening. I’m ordering Thai food and a DVD. Strangers on a Train. It’s an Alfred Hitchcock.’
‘I know that.’
‘Come about eight. There’ll be someone else too. Someone I want you to meet.’
The invitation sounds innocuous, but it isn’t. For a start, Tilda always comes to my flat for movie nights. Also, it’s unknown for her to introduce me to her friends. In fact, she rarely even talks about her friends. I can name only two, and those are girls she’s known since childhood. Paige Mooney and Kimberley Dwyer. I’d be surprised if she saw them more than once a year, so I’m curious and am about to say, ‘Who?’ but she’s leaving as she’s speaking, disappearing down the communal stairs.


At Curzon Street, I’m clutching my bottle of cider, knowing full well that Tilda won’t have cider. And I’ve brought brownies.
She’s waiting on the second floor, at the open door of her flat. Then she’s greeting me with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, kissing my cheeks, saying brightly, ‘Callie!’ Behind her a tall, fair-haired man is in the kitchen area, sleeves rolled up, busying himself with things in cupboards. He comes to say hello, holding out a thin hand, and from the way he stands, so firmly inhabiting his space, I realise that he’s accustomed to being there. Tilda gazes at him proprietorially, glancing at his hair, his shoulders, his bare forearms. She says, ‘Callie, meet Felix. Felix Nordberg.’
‘I’m opening a bottle of white,’ he says. ‘Will you have some?’
‘No, I’m fine with cider.’ I hold up the Strongbow bottle for inspection and take it to the kitchen counter, thinking that Felix seems to be in command of things. The kitchen, the wine. Then he starts asking me polite questions in a soft, moneyed voice that makes me think of super-yachts and private islands. Where do I live? Do I enjoy my work at the bookshop? I ask him about his work, which is for a Mayfair hedge fund.
‘I don’t even know what that means. Except that it’s a sort of gambling.’
He laughs. ‘You’re right, Callie. But our clients prefer to call it investing, so we humour them.’
I sense that he’s humouring me too, and I watch him pouring our drinks with precision, examining the label of a French Chablis, checking that the wine reaches the perfect level in the glass. And he’s careful with my cider, treating it like precious nectar, even though it’s in a plastic bottle with a gigantic red sticker saying £3.30. He hands Tilda her wine, and she flashes him a half-smile as their hands touch. Then Felix gets back to the kitchen cupboards, taking out plates and bowls, wiping them with a cloth and sorting them into piles, at the same time telling me how to short a market.
‘Think of it like this, I’ll sell you this plate for the current price of ten dollars, agreeing to deliver it to you in three months’ time. Then, just before the three months is up, I’ll buy-in a plate for nine dollars. You see? I’m betting that the plate market will go down and I’ll make a profit of a dollar.’
‘That’s an expensive plate.’
‘Felix likes expensive things,’ Tilda offers from her position at the end of the sofa. She’s decoratively arranged, her feet tucked up, hugging a velvet cushion with one hand, holding her glass with the other, and she’s observing us, wondering how we’re getting along.
I look at Felix, to see if he’ll say That’s why I like your sister, but he doesn’t. He just grins as if to say Got me there! and opens the cutlery drawer, taking out the knives and forks and polishing them. I don’t comment. Instead I ask Felix where he comes from, and how long he’s been in London. His family is from Sweden, he says, but he grew up in Boston, USA and considers himself to be a citizen of the world. I snigger at the phrase, and he tells us that he’s trying to get to grips with England and London.
‘What, queuing and minding-the-gap and apologising all the time, that sort of thing?’
‘Yes, all that. And the self-deprecation, and the way you guys make a joke of all situations, and find it difficult to accept compliments… Did you know, Callie, that those dark eyes of yours are enigmatic, soulful even?’
Feigning a serious expression, he looks right into my face and I feel embarrassed because he’s so handsome and so close to me. But I feel he’s including me in the joke, not laughing at me.
‘Whatever.’
I move away, hot-cheeked, and as I pour myself more cider, I think that he’s intelligent and funny and I like him.
Tilda says, ‘Come and watch the DVD,’ so I pick up my glass and head for the other end of the sofa, intending to recreate the movie nights at my flat, when we sit like that, at each end, passing brownies back and forth and making little comments like ‘Keanu Reeves looks sad in this,’ or ‘Look at the rain outside, it’s going sideways.’ Nothing that amounts to conversation, but enough to make things seem companionable, like we’re children again. But I’m too slow. Before I can establish myself, Felix has taken the space next to Tilda, making it obvious that I should be banished to the old armchair. So I flop down and put my feet up on the coffee table, while Tilda presses the start button on the remote.
Felix and I haven’t seen Strangers on a Train before, but we both like it, the chilling effect of the black-and-white, the clipped 1950s voices and mannerisms, and we all have comments to make as the drama unfolds. Tilda, being an actress, and some sort of expert on Hitchcock, chips in more than Felix and me. Hitchcock put his evil characters on the left-hand side of the screen, she tells us, and good characters on the right. I laugh. ‘So I’m evil, because I’m sitting over here, and you’re good.’
‘Except, silly, onscreen that would be reversed. So I’m bad and you’re good.’
‘I’m the most interesting,’ Felix says. ‘I’m in the middle, and can go either way. Who knows what I’ll do?’
‘Oh, look at Ruth Roman!’ Tilda’s suddenly distracted. ‘The way her lips are slightly parted, it’s so suggestive.’
I say, ‘Hmm,’ in a sceptical way, pouting, and Felix raises an eyebrow. But Tilda isn’t put off.
‘And Robert Walker is incredible as a psychopath. He does that clever thing with his eyes – looking so calculating. Did you know he died just after this movie, because he was drunk and his doctor injected him with barbiturates?’
‘The other guy is using his wrists,’ I offer. ‘He’s doing wrist acting’. Tilda laughs.
‘I like the plot,’ I say.
‘Patricia Highsmith… She wrote the novel that the film is based on.’
The idea is that two strangers on a train could swap murders. The psychopath with the calculating eyes offers to murder the estranged wife of the wrist-guy, if, in return, the wrist-guy will murder the psychopath’s hated father. The police will never solve the crime because neither murderer would have any connection to his victim. There would be no discernible motive.
‘It’s a brilliant idea for a film,’ I say, ‘but it wouldn’t work in practice. I mean if you were plotting a murder and wanted to do it that way.’
‘What do you mean?’ Tilda is nestling into Felix.
‘Well you’d have to travel on trains the whole time, planning to fall into conversation with another person who also wants someone murdered. It’s not going to happen.’
‘Oh, everyone wants someone murdered,’ she says.
Felix rearranges Tilda so that her legs lie over his lap, his hands resting on her skinny knees, and I notice that they are beautiful people, with their fine bones, white skin and blonde hair, looking like they are the twins. They pause the movie to open another bottle of the same French wine and Felix says, ‘Of course you’re right, Callie, about the murder plot, but these days you wouldn’t have to travel on trains to meet another murderer, you could just find someone on the internet, in a forum or a chat room.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
‘I suppose it’s true,’ says Tilda. ‘The internet is where psychos find each other.’


We watch the final scenes, and afterwards I say I need to get home, but I’ll go to the bathroom first. It’s an excuse; I don’t really need a pee. Instead, once I’ve locked the door, I ferret around, and find that there are two toothbrushes in a plastic tumbler, and a man’s shaving gear in the cupboard over the sink. Also, the bin is full of detritus; empty shampoo bottles, little nodules of old soap, wodges of cotton wool, used razors, half-used pots of lotion. I realise that Felix has been tidying up Tilda’s bathroom mess, just as he was organising the kitchen; I’m happy that someone’s looking after her, sorting her out. I reach further into the bin, and pull out a plastic bag wound around something hard. Sitting on the toilet, I unwrap it, expecting something ordinary, an old nail polish or lipstick maybe. Instead I extract a small used syringe, with a fine needle and I’m so shocked, so perplexed, that I head straight back into the sitting room, brandishing it, saying, ‘What the hell is this?’ Felix and Tilda look at each other, faces suggesting mild embarrassment, a shared joke, and Tilda says, ‘You’ve discovered our secret. We’ve been having vitamin B12 injections – they help us stay on top of things. Intensive lives and all that.’
‘What? That’s crazy. You should be ashamed!’ I’m incredulous, and am still holding the syringe in the air, defiantly.
‘Welcome to the world of high finance,’ says Felix.
‘Really!’ Tilda’s laughing at my stunned face. ‘Really… There’s nothing to be alarmed about. Lots of successful people do it. Actors do it… Bankers do it… Google it if you don’t believe me.’
Then she adds, ‘Hang on… Why the fuck are you going through my bin?’
I can’t think of an answer, so I shrug helplessly and say that I’d better be getting home. Tilda gives me a wonky face that says You’re incorrigible! And she fetches my coat.
Felix says he hopes to see me again soon and as I leave he gives me a quick affable hug, the sort that big rugby-playing men give to nephews and nieces.


At home, I open up my laptop and start Googling vitamin injections. Tilda’s right, it turns out, and I’m amazed at the weird things professional people do in the name of ‘achieving your life goals’. I decide to let it go and to accept that Tilda and Felix live in a different world from me. Then I start to make notes on both of them, working in the file I call my ‘dossier’. It’s a habit that I’ve had since childhood – monitoring Tilda, observing her, checking that she’s okay. I write: Felix seems like a special person. He has a way of making you feel like you’re in a conspiracy with him, sharing a joke about the rest of humanity. I’m astonished that she let me meet him and, now that I have, I’m pleased that she’s met her match and that he is looking after her so well.
2 (#ulink_67708531-b480-53bf-b430-df3b5d025f2e)
On Wednesday, my sister phones and invites me to supper. I’m surprised because I thought she might be angry about the bathroom bin incident, but she doesn’t mention it, and on my return to Curzon Street, I discover that Felix has made venison stew with juniper berries and red wine, and also a lemon tart.
‘You’re a genius!’ I say, and he rewards me with a sexy Get-me! grin.
‘Felix did the pastry himself,’ Tilda says. ‘He has pastry-making fingers, long and cold.’
He flutters his fingers while we assure him that we’ve never attempted pastry in our lives; we always buy ready-made. I notice that Felix has a knack for cleaning up the kitchen as he works, so that when I go to help out after the meal, there’s nothing to do. The surfaces are clearer and cleaner than I’ve ever seen them, all the pots and pans dealt with and back in the cupboards. ‘How do you do that?’ I ask. ‘It’s like magic.’
‘It comes naturally… Now, Callie, forget about cleaning, and tell Tilda that it would be a romantic idea to take a boat down the Thames on Sunday. Up towards Windsor and Bray, where the swans are.’
‘What sort of boat?’
‘Something simple and wooden. Kinda English.’
‘It’s okay,’ says Tilda. ‘I’m sold.’
She’s looking at him upwards through her hair, a soft dewy gaze, and I feel a stab of pain, realising that she’s totally in love with him. She notices me watching her and says, ‘You should come too, Callie. Won’t it be lovely?’ This sort of sentimentality is entirely unlike her, and I can’t help making fun of her as I reply, ‘Oh yes, it will be very lovely… very lovely lovely.’


Felix hires a sporty red Peugeot, and on Sunday we pack a picnic to take to Berkshire. It’s not far, an hour’s drive, and when we arrive we’re in another world – the river so wide and brooding, the tangled woodland coming alive with buds and the first tiny leaves of spring. The boat is just as Felix wanted, a little wooden tub, chipped red paint on the outside, all open, with a motor on the back. ‘It’s perfect,’ I say, admiring the way it’s bobbing on its rope, checking out the three benches, the emergency oars. We clamber in and chug along the river, turning our faces to the sun, and it’s glorious to feel the fragile warmth. One minute a golden caress, then gone again. I lean over the side, trailing my fingers in the black water, and shiver. ‘God that’s cold!’
We pass by open fields and then Windsor castle, by whitewashed suburban mansions with lawns that run down to the water, and I spot a heron on the far bank.
Felix is steering from the back, and he says, ‘Let’s swim.’ We’re on a wide part of the river now, dense woodland on one side, a flat, empty field on the other. I look around, for people, but there’s no one.
‘It’s too cold!’ I protest. ‘And not safe. Don’t people drown in the Thames?’
But Felix and Tilda aren’t listening. Instead, Felix ties the boat to an overhanging branch, and the two of them are ripping their clothes off, frantically, like they’re in a race. Then they’re standing up, totally naked, the boat rocking madly as they position themselves to jump out. Two spindly white bodies, Tilda gripping Felix’s arm and screeching, ‘I’m bloody freezing already! I can’t do it’.
‘Oh yes you can!’
In a sweeping move, he scoops up my sister, holding her across his chest in his arms, which I now notice are muscular and strong. She yells, ‘No! No!’ and kicks her legs in scissor shapes as he flings her overboard into the water, then leaps in himself. For the briefest, heart-stopping moment, they both vanish into the black; then they are swimming and splashing about, Tilda screaming, and I can’t tell whether she’s exhilarated or furious. But she calls out, ‘Come on in, Callie! It’s amazing.’
‘You know you want to!’ Felix reaches up, pulls the side of the boat down into the water, as though he’s a monster coming to get me, grabbing at my ankle.
‘I won’t!’
My mind is racing, though, trying to figure out what to do. I don’t want to strip off my clothes in front of them – I’m embarrassed about my roundish pinkish body, and afraid that they’ll laugh at me. At the same time, I’m thinking how wonderful it would be to sink to the bottom of the river, swallowed up by the icy water. Also, I’m intoxicated by the compliment of being included and, for some reason that I don’t quite understand, I want to impress Felix. So I sit on one of the benches and take off my parka coat and my sweatshirt and jeans and socks. Then I jump in wearing a t-shirt, bra and knickers, sinking down, just as I had wanted, shocked, numb and frozen, unable to think because my head is pounding. My feet touch the bottom, a thick slime with hard edges jutting out. I flinch, and float to the top, where I find that Felix is standing next to me, water up to his chest, and he leans into me, his hands gripping my waist. ‘I have you in my power,’ he says, raising me out of the water, while I pretend to struggle, my hands on his shoulders. Then he throws me backwards; in again, and under, right down to the bottom. When I emerge, I find myself screaming and laughing just as Tilda had done. I want to say, ‘Do it again! Do it again!’ like a child would.
But Felix has turned to Tilda, and I see that he can lift her thin body much higher than mine, and can throw her into the water much harder. Then, when her head appears, it takes only a swift push with one hand to force her back down, so cleanly that she has no chance to protest, and there is no sign of her, no arms flailing, no disturbance in the water, and I worry that he’s holding her down at the bottom far too long, forcing her into the hazardous mud. ‘Stop it! It’s too much,’ I yell.
He releases his grip, so that she comes up limp and choking, her shoulders heaving. This time he takes her gently in his arms and carries her back to the boat. ‘You shouldn’t have done that…’ she says, coughing out the words so weakly that I can barely hear, her head resting on his chest, her arm dangling lifelessly at her side.
Felix flops her over the side, into the bottom of the boat. ‘You’re fine. Now let’s get dressed and have some food.’
I swim to the boat and heave myself up to look inside, to check that she’s okay. Her eyes meet mine and she’s blinking slowly, looking startled and empty. There’s something insect-like in the way she is folded into herself in the corner, something maimed. I’m about to screech with concern but she changes her expression, so swiftly that it’s like a magic trick, and she’s laughing and telling us to get into the boat before we freeze to death.
We take it in turns to use a linen picnic cloth as a towel, and as I watch Tilda drying herself I think I detect that she’s still shaken, but it’s hard to be sure.
Soon we’re huddled in our dry clothes, eating sandwiches, and drinking black coffee from a flask that we pass around. Tilda’s smiling as she says to me, ‘This is what it’s like being with Felix – amazing! And I’m so pleased you joined us.’ Felix says that he too is pleased I came, and he leans across the boat to touch my bare ankle, just for a second. At that moment, everything is sharper, keener, more intense than I’ve ever known. The sky, the trees, the water – even the ham in the sandwiches.
Later, when I’m back home, I open up the dossier and write: Tilda is in love with Felix and maybe I love him too. As her boyfriend, obviously. He’s so handsome and clever and romantic. My pulse raced when he stripped off all his clothes and I saw his white, muscular body, and he jumped into the river. I was amazed that he would do something so spectacular in front of me. I can’t remember such an exciting day in my life as this. I just wish he hadn’t forced Tilda under the water and held her there so long.
1997 (#ulink_49d6fb8c-d66d-5b00-9780-5a791c03744e)
3 (#ulink_8e752ddc-bb2d-5e24-b835-44622abbb147)
It’s the hottest, brightest day I have ever known and we are running, so fast, hurtling down a steep hill, somewhere in Kent. Beneath us, the grass grows in tufts and mounds, and I’m trying to keep my balance, at the same time looking towards the bottom of the hill, at the grown-ups in the half-distance. They are sprawling on a blanket and passing a bottle from hand to hand. Mum is slightly apart from the group, drinking her wine, smoking and adjusting the skirt of the long yellow dress she made the night before.
She looks up to watch our race, shading her eyes with her cigarette hand, and we run faster until we’re tumbling through blue sky into the field, my legs going so fast they’re out of control, making me bump-bump at a million miles an hour, right past the picnickers, whose voices I can suddenly hear. Mum yells, ‘Come on, Tilda!’ because my sister is challenging a girl called Precious for first position, and they are neck and neck, belting for the finish line. Tilda’s blonde hair is flipping around and her elbows are jabbing outwards, until she is just about in front, and she shrieks, ‘I’m the winner! I’m the winner!’ For a fraction of a moment my heart is broken, then Mum calls out, ‘Great job, Callie!’ and I’m happy again even though I hear the note of consolation in her voice, because I am going to be last. At the bottom of the hill, the other children collapse into each other and I bump straight past them, accelerating instead of stopping, until I fall headlong into the black prickly bush that separates the picnicking field from the one beyond, the one with cows in it.
Now, the sunny day is gone and I’m on my knees in the bush with my hands pressed into the earth, trying to find a way to stand up, but I can’t because I’m stuck in a mesh of branches which are spiking into my back. I think maybe I can scrunch myself up and inch out backwards, and I shift my hands into a good position so that my right palm presses into something hard and knobbly in the ground. As I grasp it, I hear someone laughing, saying, ‘Look at Callie!’ and the others running to the bush to watch me. I’m curious now about the object in my right hand, and am careful to keep hold of it as I scratch myself slowly into the light, rolling backwards until I’m sitting on the grass. I find that I’m holding something pale under dark crumbly soil, which I brush off with the tips of my fingers, tracing along crevices and points. Cradled in my hand, I have the skull of a small animal, and my eyes start to sting.
Precious says, ‘That’s gross. What is it?’ and everyone crowds in to see. Tilda thinks it might be a calf skull, because of the cows in the next field, and Precious points out that I’m crying. ‘It’s because you came last,’ she says. I smear the tears away, but don’t really understand. Maybe I’m upset about being last, maybe I’m jealous of my triumphant sister, or maybe I’m thinking of the dead animal. What I haven’t mentioned yet, is that I am remembering our birthday, Tilda’s and mine. We are seven.
Tilda says, ‘Don’t worry about that thing, come back to the picnic and we can have our cake.’ I take her hand, but have the skull in my other hand, clamped to my chest. When I give it to Mum she inspects it and wraps it up in a paper napkin saying it might belong to a lamb, and it’s a beautiful discovery which she will put into a painting one day, but first it needs a good wash and if I want I can take it to school for the nature table. I hold my hands out while Mum pours water over them from a plastic bottle, then dries them with her skirt. The other children are standing around, watching, and then everyone is singing happy birthday. I lie on my back with my head in Mum’s lap, looking upwards at Tilda who’s standing with her legs apart and her face turned to the sky. She’s singing, even though she’s one of the birthday girls, and the sun shines through her hair, making it glimmer like a halo. At that moment I’m hurting with adoration of her. Then Tilda flops to her knees and I sit up, and side-by-side we blow out the candles.
The next day is Monday, which means school. I bring in the skull, wrapped in a plastic bag, and we’re drawing pictures of our weekend when our form teacher, Miss Parfitt, looks over my shoulder, saying, ‘Interesting, Callie, expressive.’ I explain that my gashed-up picture is the bush and the skull. Then she examines Tilda’s drawing of a birthday cake and a yellow spider in the sky, which is the sun, and says in an absent-minded way, ‘How lovely.’ My picture is dark like my hair and Tilda’s is gold, like hers.
Miss Parfitt is my favourite teacher, and she places the skull in the centre of the nature table like it’s the most impressive exhibit, which it is, better than the crackly old bird’s nest and heaps of dead leaves, and superior to the egg shells with faces and cress hair. I feel proud.
But two weeks later, the skull disappears from the display, and I cry in class as Miss Parfitt stands at the front with her arms folded, saying, ‘Whoever took the sheep skull should put it back on the table, and no more will be said.’ Days pass and nothing happens.
It’s all I can think about. Mum and Tilda both know how upset I am and that I was looking after the skull on behalf of the dead lamb and its mother. To cheer me up, Mum makes a painting of the skull one evening after work, but I have to pretend to like it because the colours are too bright and it lacks tenderness. And, at night, when we’re in our beds, I tell Tilda that I think Precious is the prime suspect because she doesn’t like the skull and she doesn’t like me. Tilda says she would like to punch Precious in the mouth, that Precious is a gobby attention-seeker who needs to be shown a lesson.
‘And you’d be standing up for me,’ I say.
‘That too. I’m your guardian angel.’
I can’t tell from her face whether she means it, or whether she just likes to think of herself as special.
For a couple of days we follow Precious around the playground chanting, ‘We know, we know what you did,’ and I think to myself, And you have warty fingers and smell of biscuits. Precious finally retaliates with, ‘Don’t think you can escape your weirdo sister, Tilda Farrow.’ At this point Tilda does punch her in the mouth and I cry with love and gratitude while Precious runs and tells Miss Parfitt. (Years later Tilda said, ‘Do you remember how horrible we were to Precious Makepeace?’ I’ve looked her up on Facebook, but she isn’t there.)
That night, alone in our bedroom, I take the pink Princess notebook that I received for my birthday and I write on page one: My dossier. I have learned the word from Mum who keeps a dossier on her favourite artists, making notes about their techniques and styles, trying to understand them and (Mum’s words) ‘absorb their essence’ so that she can make her own work better. Then I start to write about Tilda, describing everything she did that day, how she looked and what she said. All the small things. The way she laughed when she punched Precious and then looked around to see if she had an audience. The pity in her eyes when she looked at me – her cry-baby twin. She’s braver than me, I write. And she’s stronger than me. Then I cross out my words, realising that while I idolise my sister, I don’t know her at all, not deep down. If I want to absorb her essence, I’m going to have to write a whole lot more.
When I finish working on my dossier, I look at the pages and feel deeply satisfied, as though by writing about Tilda I’m less dominated by her.
4 (#ulink_4007333e-185a-5075-b6e8-338944db83ae)
Tilda’s embedding me in the heart of her relationship – join us here, join us there, come bowling, come to the theatre. It’s weird because I used to see my sister only once every three or four weeks and then only for movie nights. The latest development is an invitation to meet her and Felix at Borough Market to help look for a French cheese called Cancoyotte, which has to be served with champagne and walnuts, apparently. Also, she wants Lithuanian rye bread and sea salt caramel, and a micro-greenhouse that sits on your window-ledge and sprouts rocket and chard. Tilda explains her shopping list on the phone in a voice that suggests that her niche ingredients are incredible earth-shattering news, but I infer that the real agenda is for me to spend yet more time with Felix. I say yes straight away.
The anticipation of seeing him brings back that sense of an enhanced world, and as I make my way to the market, negotiating the London streets, everything seems to have a splendid clarity – magnolia trees, red buses, people walking labradoodle dogs (they’re everywhere, those labradoodles!). When I arrive at the market, I’m still in that elevated state, my skin tingling, buffed by the sharp air – and I don’t have to wait long, because Tilda and Felix appear on the pavement, walking towards me. Felix’s eyes are smiling, as usual, and he does his hug-thing, squeezing me tight, and then the three of us set off into the crowds, shuffling up to market stalls, attempting to see around the heads to the actual produce for sale.
Tilda and Felix have their arms round each other’s waists; they’re behaving like lovebirds and, after an hour or so in the market, I find that I’m trailing behind them, struggling to be part of their conversation; and something happens – instead of being energised, my excitement is draining away so that I start to feel leaden and dull, and it dawns on me that I have somehow fallen into the role of stupid sheep, following them dumbly from stall to stall while they taste little morsels of chorizo and salami and bread dipped into rare olive oils. Felix asks questions about the production processes and the flavours in a distant voice, and I notice for the first time that his habit of talking softly means that people have to lean in to hear him.
At one point he makes a special effort with me, saying, ‘Try this one, Callie; doesn’t it have intriguing overtones, salty and sour at the same time?’ and he pops a crumb of goats cheese into my obliging mouth. Tilda now has her arm hanging prettily through his, and she’s looking at me, waiting for a reaction. ‘It’s bitter,’ I say, ‘not like cheddar.’ Then we move on to a stall selling freshly-pressed apple juice, where a bald guy is pouring juice into miniature paper cups.
‘Hey beautiful,’ he says to Tilda, ‘give this a try.’ And then the inevitable, ‘I know you, don’t I?’
Everywhere she goes, Tilda is recognised as the actress from Rebecca. Even when she’s wearing big sunglasses. She tastes the drink, but doesn’t say anything and, as she returns the paper cup, Felix ushers her away. The bald guy leans towards me. ‘What’s he? Her minder?’
We take a cab to Curzon Street, and Tilda and Felix go to the kitchen space to make a lunch out of their purchases at the market, while I sit on the sofa and flip the pages of the Vogue magazine on the coffee table, sniffing the free perfume and rubbing it on to my wrists and neck. I look up and notice that Felix is gazing at Tilda lovingly as she sets things out on plates; he’s watching her when she goes to the bedroom. When she comes out again he says, ‘Shirt looks good.’ She’s put on a floppy salmon-coloured blouse, bordering on see-through, and I’m sure that it’s been bought by him, as a present. Even to my untrained eye, it looks expensive.
‘Nice,’ I add.
She sashays across the room likes she’s Cara Delevingne on the runway, saying, ‘Givenchy!’
‘If you say so.’
I watch her put her arms around Felix, and give him a thankyou kiss, delicately, before she stands next to him, so close that their arms are touching, while they attend to the food.
I gaze at Vogue, but don’t read. Instead I listen to their conversation, which is mainly Tilda asking Felix questions – ‘What about Julio?’ ‘How far did you run this morning?’ ‘Do you like my nails?’ ‘Do you like these shoes?’ His opinion of mundane things is evidently a powerful bonding force between them, and the atmosphere in the kitchen is intimate and exclusive. Then, out of the blue, Felix says, ‘Oh, fuck it. I didn’t buy sparkling water…’
His aggressive tone and furious face seem to turn the entire room from warm to cold with the sort of shock you get when a shower turns suddenly freezing. And they are totally out of proportion with the problem. I say, ‘I’m fine with tap water,’ and Tilda says, ‘Me too.’ But he’s already halfway to the door, which he slams behind him, and we hear another ‘Fuck!’ before he descends the stairs.
‘What was that about?’ I’m up off the sofa, joining her in the kitchen area, where she’s leaning back against the fridge, like his words have forced her there.
‘God knows… Felix feels strongly about fizzy water I guess.’
I can tell Tilda’s trying not to cry, which also seems an overreaction.
‘Come on, tell me… It’s not about the water, is it?’
She’s shaking her head and tugging at her sleeves, pulling them down over her wrists.
‘I know you want me to love him,’ I say, touching her fleetingly on her arm, watching her flinch. ‘And I do. I think he’s wonderful… but that was weird. I mean, it was only water, but he was so angry, out of nowhere.’
‘He’s under a lot of pressure at work and it makes him like that sometimes. He snaps.’
‘It was creepy though.’
Tilda shakes her head, indicating that I shouldn’t criticise, and she says in a shaky voice, ‘Wait and see, he’ll be fine when he gets back.’
Acting instinctively, I lean over and pull her silk Givenchy sleeve right up to her elbow, exposing white skin splattered with yellow and blue bruises, little smudged ink-blots.
I grab her arm to inspect it more closely.
‘Stop that!’ she says. ‘For fuck’s sake!’
‘Tilda! What’s going on? Please tell me.’
She pushes me away, hard, making me crash into the kitchen counter, and pulling her sleeve back down. She runs into the bedroom, then the en-suite bathroom, slamming the door, turning the lock.
I’m amazed by what’s just happened. What made me do that? How had I sensed that she had damaged arms? It seems inexplicable. There had been no bruises on her that day on the Thames. Then her body had been milky white, no blemishes other than the mole on her left shoulder.
I sit on her bed, staring at the shut bathroom door, working out what to say next – we’re close, but I’m hopeless at communicating with her, forever driving her away with my crassness, my blunt way of talking. Gently, I call out, ‘Are you all right in there?’ But she doesn’t answer. So I lie down, burying my face in her pillow, breathing in her smell, and waiting. Occasional sounds emerge; splashing water, pacing about, and after a while she calls out, ‘It’s nothing, Callie, I’m fine.’ And she comes out of the bathroom, looking refreshed and happy, but slightly insane, her eyes still rimmed in pink. I’m about to ask her again to confide in me, but I don’t get the chance because at that moment there’s a sound in the other room. It’s Felix returning (he has his own key!). We both leave the bedroom and find that he’s transformed – he’s grinning, has a big bottle of fizzy water in his hand, and he thumps it down on the kitchen counter together with a set of car keys attached to a disc that says Porsche. Tilda reacts like an excited idiot, jumping on the spot, flipping her hair about, a quick look to see that I’m paying attention. ‘You didn’t!’
‘Come and see.’
He throws the car keys for Tilda to catch, and they leave, his arm around her shoulders, me following, comparing the blondeness of their hair, the thinness of their hips, their totally modern beauty. Tilda says sweetly, ‘So you forgot the water on purpose? So sneaky!’
A few streets later, and we’re admiring Felix’s new silver-coloured Porsche sports car. He opens the door, sits in the driver’s seat and presses a button that makes the roof slide backwards. ‘James Bond,’ I say. I want to be massively impressed, but I’m still thinking about Tilda’s arms. I clamber into the back and Tilda slips into the passenger seat, picking up a white envelope that has her name on the front, written in a spiky, tight script. She opens it and reads the card that’s inside.
‘My god! That’s perfect.’ She starts kissing Felix with an uninhibited enthusiasm that makes me look away.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Take us for a spin.’
‘Look, Callie.’ Tilda turns around to face me, her face radiant, and hands me the card.
I read: Darling T, come with me to France.
On the other side is a picture of a white-washed villa on a hillside, a turquoise swimming pool at a tasteful distance from a vine-covered terrace.
‘To this actual house?’
‘Yes, that actual house.’ Felix steers the car through the streets with one hand, the other arm stretched out, his fingers under Tilda’s hair, brushing the back of her neck.
‘We’ll drive down to Provence,’ he says proudly. ‘And, while we’re gone, my builders will come into your flat and do some work.’
‘What sort of work?’
‘A surprise.’
‘Nothing too drastic?’
‘No – what can I say – fine-tuning… You’ll like it. It will be my gift.’
‘Lucky me!’
That wouldn’t have been my reaction – and I’m surprised that Tilda’s going along with Felix’s scheme. Wanting to change her home without consulting her about how strikes me as rather extreme. ‘You’re being swept off your feet,’ I say.
‘I am.’ She’s ignoring my disapproving tone, acting like the emotional dash into the bathroom hasn’t happened, like her arms aren’t bruised, and she laughs as Felix puts his foot on the accelerator. We zoom three hundred yards up Regent Street, then hit a traffic jam.


In the dossier I write: I was shocked to see bruises on Tilda’s arms. Was Felix responsible? I don’t know. I can’t work out whether he’s a truly amazing person – organising surprise holidays and improving her flat – or a deeply dangerous one. Either way, Tilda’s infatuated with him and I’m in pain. I don’t know whether I still feel the elation that came from adoring him, or whether I’m now terrified that I’ve been manipulated.
I go online and start Googling. I look up the dangerous elements in passionate romances, and what happens psychologically as relationships become increasingly abusive. Before long I come upon a website called controllingmen.com and I find myself reading for hours the hundreds of posts in forums called the first signs and romance as control and – most interesting of all – what you can do to help a friend who has been targeted by a controlling man. In fact, I’m so sucked in that I join the site, giving myself a username, and entering the forums that are visible only to members. It’s addictive, and I’m up all night, reading, reading, reading.

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