What Goes Around: A chilling psychological thriller Read Online Free Page B

with a startling clarity. I told her I was anxious and that I’d been mugged. I asked her to call me back and then I returned to bed feeling powerful, feeling like I was taking the battle right to her door.
    Now I’m not so sure. I shower and get dressed, my anxiety levels climbing with the passing of every minute. It’s barely a year since Leila Henrikson took my husband and my home, and I’m still trying to get my head and my heart around it, and to have some cockamamie idea that I can seize back control?
    ‘Jesus, Ellen,’ I say out loud. ‘Talk about making things more difficult for yourself.’
    I picture Tom and Leila listening to the answermachine message and having a laugh. ‘What’s she playing at?’ they’ll say to one another. ‘Is she for real?’
    I try to put a lid on my anxiety by losing myself in more checking – the front door, every socket in the house, the knobs on the cooker – over and over again. This preoccupies me, soothes me even, as it silences the ever-critical, ever-fearful voice inside my head.
    I now live in a house a third of the size of Maybanks, a property that has been rented out for fifteen years and is desperately in need of a facelift. Most of the paintwork is chipped, the carpets intermittently stained, and the kitchen units are seventies Formica in a lurid shade of orange. I signed the lease for a year with an option for another year, a reasonably priced, interim solution until the divorce is finalised, but I’m not sure I can live here for much longer. There is a fusty, mouldy smell about the place and no matter how much I clean, I can’t get the smell out of the air. I’ve spoken to the landlord but he refuses to acknowledge it, despite the fact that everyone else who comes here smells it too. I’ve even had my dad investigate the drains but the job was beyond him.
    I check and recheck for over an hour and then I decide to bake. Ben is home for the university holidays – still asleep in his room – and school’s broken up, so I now have eight weeks off teaching. Almost two months without having to cope with reluctant teenagers and overworked colleagues. I’m left to my own devices and the thought is terrifying. Keeping busy is the answer. I’d set aside this time for tackling my anxiety and for trying to get to grips with the divorce paperwork – who knew how much time that would take up? Certainly not me. The paperwork I will get round to, but fixing my psyche is tougher and so in the meantime, I’ll bake.
    Twenty-eight years of marriage means that I’ve accumulated more kitchen equipment than I know what to do with. I packed up what I needed – Tom had neither shopped nor cooked, nor, in fact, taken much of an interest in anything I bought for the house – and brought it with me. I also took every photograph, and everything the children had made and given to us, from knitted egg cosies to misshapen pots. (Most of it is still in boxes in the hallway.) Tom made no objection – he was never the photographer and because his profession occupied most of his waking hours, we were used to him missing family occasions. For weeks at a time he flew down to London on the early-Monday morning plane and returned late Friday evening, only to spend the weekend reading through briefs and catching up on sleep. Often my parents were greater players in the children’s lives than he was. That’s not to say we didn’t have more than our share of good times – we did – but remembering those times only makes me sad for what I no longer have.
    I find mixing bowls and weighing scales, a measuring jug and wooden spoons, and then all the ingredients to make a steak pie for tea and some date slices for snacking on. Ben is always hungry and Chloe’s bound to pop in at some point. I’ll give her some baking to take home with her.
    I’ve made the steak pie and am weighing out the oats for the date slices when my mobile rings. It’s her – the uber-bitch, as Ben calls her. I