Right Behind You: A completely gripping, unforgettable psychological thriller from Diana Wilkinson

PROLOGUE

THE GARDEN SHED

My outward appearance resembles that of a carefully mown and manicured Wimbledon lawn; pristine, clipped and ready for action. Not a weed in sight. Bring on the players. I perfect the look with an air of crisp efficiency. People imagine the foundations, the layers underneath my manufactured guise to be solid and hard-earned. A person of substance. How do I know? Because I’m treated with respect due from such summations. I read people well, but they have no idea who I really am or what lies beneath.

Below this surface mantle there are no soft silts and sands; no gentle porous foundations. My life has no rich varied layers of experience. Below the smell of freshly cut grass, a giant batholith lies embedded in my core. I was only ten when this black mass of spewing magma exploded through my being, killing off everything in its wake, and it slumbers dangerously close to the surface, threatening to expose itself at any time as life erodes its delicate casing.

Meanwhile, I pretend. I pretend all is right with the world. I keep the façade firmly in place to fool those around me. I know I mustn’t tell, but I can’t forget.

I remember. Every detail. It never goes away.

It’s the pendulous jowls and wet salivating lips. That’s what I see. The thin veneer of sweat coating the fat alabaster face is what I smell. The sweet cloying stench still hangs heavy in the air. It clung to my pores long after the scalding showers scorched my body and I’m still not clean, my nostrils thick with memories.

The garden shed was coloured a faded apple green. Flakes of paint rained to the ground when the door was yanked open.

‘Green snowflakes.’ He laughed. ‘Look.’ His eyes, shrivelled black raisins in a wobbly jelly, glanced briefly down at the ragged chips but he was too eager to get inside. There was no time to linger.

The inside was kitted out like a 1960s sitting room. A drop-leaf table was pushed tight against the damp rotting slats. It would be opened out once he’d caught his breath; crisps and custard creams blackmailing my silence. A two-seater sofa was wedged between the walls and bolstered up the flimsy structure. There was nowhere else to sit. I willed the walls to crumble, bury the shame.

Net curtains, stapled in place, sealed us off from the outside world. Thick dirt was so engrained it had solidified and ensured the flimsy material wouldn’t budge. The floral chipped teacups and sugar tongs teased with homeliness and I often wonder where he got his props. The room smelt of urine, sweat and old age; and death.

Cobwebs decorated the corners with neatly spun gossamer threads. That’s how they looked when I walked in the first time, having been enticed with sweets and treats. But the black hairy arachnids lay in wait; teasing with their silken perfection. That’s the way clever predators operate. They lure the unsuspecting with illusory delights. But the spiders didn’t hang about. They scuttled off, disseminating their pristine homes, when his blubbery white hide appeared and wobbled in excitement.

It wasn’t long until I began to change my route home from school. Left down Burton Avenue, right into Salisbury Road and third left into Park Lane. At the main road I would scamper across when the lights turned green. I tried not to look panicked in case anyone intervened. I measured my pace. He might be there, sitting on a bench, watching me. ‘Remember. It’s our little secret. You mustn’t tell.’ A waggling admonishing finger kept me quiet.

Then I would hurry on through the park, not daring to look back. My heart hammered in my chest, beating like a kettle drum. But there was no escape, no matter how fast I ran, or how hard.

Five more minutes and I’d be home. I counted the numbers backwards from three hundred. That was on a Monday. On Tuesday I took the direct route and avoided the park. Wednesday I spun a coin. Thursday was games afternoon so I got dropped off. On Fridays there was nowhere to run. He only worked a four-day week and would be waiting for me. ‘Fun Friday’ he called it and he was never late.

He became my stalker. I learnt the word later when it needed no explanation. My anxious alertness turned quickly to fear and then to terror. I became a prisoner in my own skin, the invisible walls impenetrable. He was everywhere, all day and all night; watching and waiting.

‘Boo. There you are. I wondered where you’d gone.’

The tree trunk wasn’t wide enough; I’d seen him but I wasn’t fast enough. Again it was too late when I walked in and he was chatting to the shopkeeper, soft candy grasped in fat sausage fingers.

‘Here, do you fancy some? My treat.’

But worst of all was the nightmarish anticipation of Fridays. There was one at the end of every week.

‘Hi, Snippet. Let me walk you home. I could do with the company.’ He called me Snippet. It was his pet name. It rhymed with whippet, his scrawny breed of dog. We were both thin and wiry and got patted on the head.

He’d come to school and chat merrily to a teacher, blocking the exit gates. His sweaty palm would grip mine tightly all the way back and he would only let go when he loosened his belt and unzipped his trousers. By then we’d be inside; the door locked behind us.

It was the stalking that left the scars, the deepest gullies. His death brought a joyous finality to the physical torture, a fleeting release. Outside, through the newly barred windows of the shed, his rheumy watery eyes glistened through a small rip in the curtains. They made a silent unblinking plea; easy to ignore. Instead I smiled back, waved my skinny fingers and skipped away. I was barely thirteen after all, not quite done with skipping.

But I still look over my shoulder. Sleep eludes me. When I try to eat, my food tastes of vomit mingled with a sticky sweetness. My senses are full; full of sounds, sights and tastes but without the pleasure. The joy of touch eludes me. The flaccid monster that grew and grew in my hand, ‘the big friendly giant’ saw to that.

I should have told. It was my own fault. Not his death, but the ‘not telling’. But I was only ten when it all began. Who would have listened? My age and innocence flew quickly by, but after his death I learnt to keep the illusion in place, skilfully, and for long enough so that no one would think me capable of murder. It never crossed their minds.

My stalker was Uncle Chuck Curry; ‘Chuckles’ to his friends; the big, fat, happy clown. He only lived two roads away and was my mother’s stepbrother; the perfect babysitter.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing. That was Uncle Chuck; the harmless cheerful buffoon. His appearance was his disguise. He nurtured the look with jam and cream doughnuts. What wasn’t to like? And then, of course, he warned me not to tell. If I did, he’d lock me in the shed and throw away the key.

1

6 MONTHS PREVIOUSLY

I feel as if I’m in an isolation bunker, the chill in the air quite deathly. The flesh along both arms is stippled with pimples. It’s as if the world has come to an end but with foresight, I’ve been clever enough to brick myself in.

The concrete stairwell is positively empty. I’m not surprised as I pinch my nose against the rank stench of urine. Yellow stains clog up the corners and remnants of rancid hamburger baps exude stale fumes. I shiver, fearful of breathing in the toxic mix. No one else is risking the fallout.

Tucked neatly behind the swing doors at the top, three flights up, my ears are primed against the slightest noise. Through the thick swing doors I pick up the faintest of buzzing. It’s the office workers moseying around the lifts, talking in hushed voices, waiting for the tin cubicles to ferry them back down to the car park and ground zero. Their laziness plays into my hands because no one bothers to descend on foot. They never do. If I’m right, she’ll be the only one to turn up.

It’s been roughly three months since I heard about her impending baby. Thinking about it still makes me mad, leaving me unable to unlock my jawline which is clenched, day and night. My fury is sealed within for the whole twenty-four hours of each day.

Suddenly the swing doors open slightly and my hand shoots out flat against the wall to steady myself, but they close again and no one appears. Retreating voices fade as the clatter of metal heralds the arrival of the lift. Fate has played into my hands as they must have decided against the exercise. My heart threatens to crack its confines and a few seconds pass before I manage a deep breath to slow its rhythm.

My watch shows it’s still only ten past five. I have six minutes left to wait. She’s that regular. At the end of the working day there are lots of random people who head purposefully towards the underground car park where their vehicles are squeezed into obscenely tight spaces. Random is a good word, it smacks of chance. The coincidental angle needs to be watertight. Today I am just another random person, out and about. Coincidence alone can’t put me in prison.

Poor Danielle has had her wing mirrors clipped more than once. I’m surprised she doesn’t rein them in. She still refuses to leave her car near the CCTV cameras to find out who is causing the damage and insists on being as close as possible to the stairwell entrance. This suits me fine. Using the lift for her is never an option. She suffers from claustrophobia, avoiding confined spaces, always on the lookout for an escape route.

Suddenly, at 5.16pm, the steel doors push open again but this time more widely. Quiet as a mouse, prepared to scuttle away once the coast is clear, my ears prick up. Wide eyes devour the spectacle.

Swollen feet make her waddle like a duck. Her ankles are retaining water; it’s most unattractive, and the baby bump bulges through the tight outline of her sheer blue dress which hangs below her calves. The fact that she’s displaying the bump so blatantly, a boastful statement, hardens my resolve. Her swollen breasts strain provocatively. My anger and loathing make me want to break cover and spit in her face. But I don’t. I watch and wait.

Like a teetering toddler, she takes a tentative step towards the banister, and extends her right hand to grip the metal. Her left hand is holding firmly on to a soft leather laptop case, but she doesn’t reach the banister. I watch agog as her foot gives way and her tumbling body begins a heavy descent over the cold slabs. Piercing screams follow and my hands automatically reach up to cover my ears.

Wow. I wasn’t expecting such a display. She looks like a tumbling cheese in one of those country fair competitions, turning over and over until coming to a rest at the bottom of a steep hill. It’s very startling.

For a moment I’m tempted to run down the stairs and offer help as the squeals are deafening and she seems in so much pain, but I can’t alert anyone that I’m close by. That might make the stalking issue a criminal offence and I have no intention of being punished for being an innocent bystander, so I slink away.

I slide gently through the thick doors and walk quietly towards the lifts, head down. My soft leather pumps don’t make a noise and I melt easily into the waiting queue. All eyes are steeled forward and no one looks in my direction. Strange though that no one seems to hear the screams, but perhaps I’m imagining that they’re still audible as there’s a definite ringing in my ears.

The lift doors creak open and, swallowed up by office workers, I’m shoved to the back of the tin cubical. We are like sardines in a can. Two young girls step back when someone indicates that the occupancy limit is eight people. Perhaps in their statements, when they come forward as being present on the day of the incident, they will recall how they were asked to wait for the next lift. An obese man, his body sweat engulfing us all with its putrid excretions, insists they wait. I can’t help thinking that if he got out an extra four people could get in. On another day I might have dared to point this out.

As the doors finally close I find myself crushed between two suited men rapt in serious low-toned conversation, humming with importance, and I close my eyes tight as the lift chugs slowly downwards. I try to think of what I might cook for supper, what I might watch on television. You see, like the tumbling cheese I’m not a fan of enclosed spaces.

At ground level we all spill out of the lift and head off in different directions, casually walking past paramedics who are already on the scene. They must have been close by. A blue light flashes silently, steadily on top of an ambulance whose back doors are flung wide. A flustered medic is talking into a handset, relaying details of the incident and is ordering a stretcher to be lifted out.

No one stops and asks what’s happened, which is strange. If I didn’t already know, I’m sure I would have stopped. However, this works in my favour as no one takes any notice of me either, everyone keeping their eyes down, glad not to be part of an unfolding drama. It’s too late in the working day.

I weave in and out of the line of all the CCTV cameras like a speeding motorist jumping lanes with aplomb until I’m back out on the street. It is part of a ritual to note where the snooping monitors are placed and I’m adept at avoiding their big brother recordings and today, I’m confident that my image won’t be flagged up.

Yet, if my face does get captured and I’ve missed one, or someone vaguely remembers me, my testimony will claim coincidence. I happened to be shopping in the vicinity at the time; that’s all. I have several receipts from the adjoining mall stowed away safely in my handbag.

As I reach the Tube and begin my descent into the bowels of the earth, at last breathing more easily, I remind myself that I didn’t go near or speak to the woman who fell. She wouldn’t have recognised me even if I had. Long gone is my dejected air and sunken cheekbones. The leggings and baggy shirts have been replaced by designer chic and my straggling locks have been shorn.

If she did glimpse me, she would have seen a stranger. It has all been a matter of coincidence.

2

PRESENT DAY

I’m lying prostrate on the therapist’s couch like a patient waiting for a massage to begin. I’m fully dressed but the aim will be to strip my soul bare. This woman though isn’t into gentle manipulation but rather into kneading deep-tissue knots embedded savagely along the spine accompanied by hands-on aggressive probing.

‘Names,’ she begins. Pause. ‘Do these men have names?’ She peers at me over the top of her half-moon glasses tempting me to respond using the severity of her stare as a challenge. With eyes closed, I hope she’ll be fooled into believing that I’m considering a carefully constructed and thoughtful answer.

It’s the way the questions are phrased that rankles. Sarcasm oozes from the single opening word, ‘names’. My knee-jerk reaction is to say, ‘No. They don’t have names. One went by the letter x, one by y and then there was z.’ But I don’t. I hide my irritation and decide to play fair. The sooner we get it over with, the sooner I can escape.

‘Jeremy is a name I think you mentioned before.’ This is followed by a meaningful silence. My left eyelid peels gently back and through the narrow slit I see my interrogator twirl the end of a pen round in her mouth. She has checked her notes to find the name and is sitting patiently. I’ve heard somewhere that’s what therapists do. Ask a question, wait quietly, and bore their clients into responding. It’s an easy way to earn money.

‘Yes,’ I say. Jeremy. How could I forget? He was my first love; the deepest cut is what they call it. At the time he could do no wrong. Or let me rephrase that. I believed he could do no wrong. I conjure up his face, the beautiful perfect features. Only a woman in love would call them perfect. His nose was slightly hooked, his lips well formed but rather thin and the third tooth on the right overlapped its neighbour, giving rise to an endearing lisp. Endearing at first, irritating in retrospect.

‘What happened?’ She’s going to pick at the sores, try to find out what makes me tick and why a restraining order has been slapped on such an innocent-looking young woman. Silence. I have all the time in the world.

Outside the birds are tweeting, cheerful background music. The large sash window is ajar, letting in the first warm wafting breeze of summer; early June, my favourite month. A thick red book, a tome by Freud or Pavlov no doubt, holds it open, jammed in at one end. Perhaps the cord has snapped.

‘Nothing much really. He went off with someone else.’ It sounds so simple, so normal but I’m not going to own up to the shock I felt on discovering that he’d been sleeping with three women at the same time.

‘We were young,’ I continue, reluctantly, as I scan the room through lazy eyes. Bookshelves line the walls and stretch heavenward towards corniced ceilings. Psychotherapists must be well paid.

‘Did you feel betrayed?’ she asks, her voice soft and marshmallowy. A strange question really. At the time I kept going back for more, disbelieving and listening to the excuses, desperate for a few crumbs of encouragement. I used to ask him questions, willing the truth to set me free but he wasn’t that noble. He was the first guy, since my father, that I couldn’t let go. The worse Jeremy treated me, the more determined I got to hold on. The more elusive, the more driven I was to see him. Stalking isn’t a word I would use. I was keen to catch him out, so I followed him around, day and night, until he disappeared.

‘A complete bastard.’ Thinking out loud, I’m shocked by the venom in the three words and wonder if the excavation of my soul might be starting to bear fruit, finally revealing its hidden depths. I know that’s what Ms Evans is digging for.

‘In what way?’ A neatly shaped eyebrow raises. Miss, or perhaps to be more accurate, Ms Justine Evans as depicted on the gold embossed nameplate, asks questions for a living. I have a few questions I’m tempted to throw her way. For example, portraying single status for professional purposes gives me a clue as to her character. She doesn’t want to be defined by marriage. She likes to play-act that she’s single and it’s tempting to ask why.

‘He wouldn’t phone for several days and this would force me to turn up at his flat, very late at night banging loudly to be let in.’

It was his fault entirely that I was forced to hang around outside and lose what dignity I had left. Following him every day to work might have been a bit over the top but I was in love and when he told me to back off, it only made things worse.

‘He forced you? To turn up like that, I mean.’ Ms Evans, ‘call me Justine’, is trying to pass the blame my way, make me own up to being desperate and neurotic, perhaps slightly unhinged. Ms Evans has a plan but then so have I.

‘Perhaps that’s a bit harsh but we were virtually living together so I would expect to see him at the end of the day.’ My smile is like a politician’s, a fixed grin set firm to sell my pitch. As his girlfriend, Jeremy had sworn undying love within the first three weeks of hooking up and I took it for granted that we would end up together. Together forever. We kept moving through difficult phases in our relationship, that was all, or so I told myself.

Ms Evans will guess I’m lying. We lived in two separate flats a couple of miles apart and even after a year, Jeremy showed determined reluctance to move in together; in fact to do anything together any more.

‘What about the sex?’ Ms Evans’ lips have a gentle upturn at the corners.

The clock is ticking onwards and my one-hour slot is nearly up. Although I’m being treated like a sick criminal, I think it’s quite amazing that the cost of my treatment is being funded by some governmental body; probably a specially set-up unit for the criminally insane.

‘That was the hardest thing to give up.’ This is what she’s expecting to hear. I don’t disappoint.

Ms Evans’ legs are neatly crossed, silken nude-coloured stockings giving a hint of an inner sexuality. I wonder when she might uncross them and for what sort of clients. I suspect sex is a major topic on most of her questionnaires and maybe the answers get her excited.

‘Was it special?’

What does she mean ‘special’? We had been lock and key, first-time lovers who couldn’t get enough of each other. Several times a day, inside and out, upstairs and down, covertly and brazenly. Isn’t that how it is with all first-time lovers? La-di-da-di-da.

‘I thought so.’

‘Before we round off our session, perhaps you can tell me how you finally accepted the end of the relationship.’ This will be central to her enquiries. Once a stalker, always a stalker.

‘I didn’t. He disappeared off to America and I’ve never been able to track him down. I did try but eventually out of sight, out of mind.’ This is something else she needs to believe, my ability to move on.

I don’t tell her about the fury, hurt and devastation that clung to me after he left. Clothed in a cloak of self-loathing and failure, I spent day and night trying to track him down. Not to mention the three futile trips to the States. A blackness suffocated my soul. Until I met Scott.

‘Next time we can perhaps talk a little bit about Scott. He was your saviour I think you called him.’ She smiles, but again I sense sarcasm lurking below the measured statement. Scott is the reason I’m here so I knew she wouldn’t want to waste too much time on his predecessor.

‘I met him on the rebound. He treated me even worse than Jeremy.’ A tinny laugh pops out, accompanied by a distinct puff of disbelief. Puff the Magic Dragon.

‘Okay. Next week you can tell me all about Scott.’ As her notebook closes, an acknowledgement that the session is over, a crinkly smile replaces the professional mask.

Standing up straight, I flick back my hair in an act of defiance, and pass the buck firmly towards my interrogator. ‘I’ve no idea why Scott has had a restraining order slapped on me as I wouldn’t go within a hundred miles of him.’ No need to tell her about my plans.

Without reply, the prim consultant opens her desk diary and pencils me in for the same time next week. I thank her, but unsure for what. When I leave, Ms Evans dictates her conclusions into the little Dictaphone on her desk and her secretary types up a report which gets sent off to all interested parties. That is, all parties interested in my psychotic and unbalanced state of mind. Not to mention those footing the bill.

I close the door quietly behind me and wander out through the ornate portico entrance, pleasantly calm and weirdly refreshed from the lie down, and head back out into the sunshine. I glance heavenward, pause, and let the heat seep through my pores.

I trace the winding path back towards the road, through the carefully manicured grounds with the mature stately trees lining the route. The Abbott Hospital grounds have the distinct feel of an upmarket stately home. Luxury and insanity nestle side by side; an unlikely union.

Up ahead a thin wiry man pushing a bicycle approaches. He’s not dressed in striped pyjamas, and isn’t wandering haphazardly in a delusional psychotic state. That’s the thing with mental issues, they’re hard to spot. But this guy, Bob Pratchett, is a regular.

‘Hi. All okay?’ He pulls up alongside, his smile beaming like a toothpaste advert. It’s a bright, overly forced, ‘see how at ease I am with the world’ kind of smile, yet his rounded shoulders and fidgeting fingers suggest that he’s anything but.

‘Hi. I survived,’ I say. Bob is wearing a weird baseball hat, askew at an angle, with Boston Red Sox emblazoned in red across the brim. His mouth displays small perfectly formed pebbles for teeth but his lips are wet, small spots of saliva congealed in the corners. He’s like a salivating mongrel, rabid and malnourished.

‘Perhaps you fancy a coffee sometime? We could swap stories and perhaps tell each other the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’ His hearty laugh convulses his body as he makes the courtroom pronouncement.

‘Sounds good,’ I lie.

‘Don’t talk to anyone from the Abbot Hospital. They’re all mad. Walk straight on past.’ My mother’s warning is still with me even after all these years. She wasn’t quite so vehement though after the beatings sent her scrambling through the wrought-iron gates in search of drugs and a sympathetic ear to ease her