What Goes Around: A chilling psychological thriller by Julie Corbin Page B

my GP’s name and address and then she asks for my address. I haven’t thought about this in advance and I make the snap decision not to give her my address but to give her my dad’s instead – which, seconds after I’ve said it, I realise might be just as much of a giveaway if she knows anything about the divorce agreement.
    ‘And have you been in therapy before?’ she says.
    ‘No.’ I cross and uncross my legs. ‘I tried to go once but my husband didn’t want to.’
    ‘You wanted to attend couples therapy?’
    ‘I did. My husband was having an affair and I thought it might help us.’ I feel brave enough to look up at her. I expect to see recognition on her face. I expect to see her draw back from her note-taking and realise who I am, but she doesn’t. She’s either an incredible actress or she really has no idea who is sitting in front of her.
    ‘Is that when your symptoms started?’
    ‘Yes. And then I was mugged – it wasn’t serious but it was the final straw. I went to a support group but that didn’t really suit me and—’
    I stop talking because I have a sudden skin-crawling sensation. I reposition myself in my chair but it doesn’t help. Forgetting my reserve and being frank with the very woman who is the root cause of all my problems feels perverse. I haven’t thought this far ahead because I hadn’t really expected to get this far.
    She lays her paper and pen to one side and gives me her full attention, her expression sympathetic. ‘You said on the phone that you are suffering from anxiety and obsessive compulsion.’ I nod. ‘Would you like to tell me a little bit about that?’
    I glance around the room, stalling for time, wondering how I can possibly open my mouth and talk to her as if this is a perfectly normal situation.
    ‘For example,’ she says. ‘How does the anxiety manifest itself?’
    Think, Ellen, think.
The penny isn’t dropping for her. She’s not going to show me the door. I can do and say whatever I want. I can lead her on and then reveal my true identity exactly when it suits me. I am in control of this.
    ‘The time we spend together is for you to use as you wish,’ Leila says. ‘I’m here to listen to everything you tell me without judgement.’
    ‘Without judgement?’
    She nods.
    And then I stare through the window, into the back garden. For a second I’m stunned. I blink and blink again.
    The oak tree is gone. The oak tree that stood there for over a hundred years, that added a stately permanence to the garden, shade to lie under, branches to climb, space to nurture children’s imaginations. Chloe was seven and Ben was a newborn when my dad came round to build the tree house. Chloe was wearing yellow shorts, a sparkly top and red wellie boots and was beside herself with excitement. She ran around fetching and carrying tools while I nursed the baby.
    It wasn’t elaborate; it was a rudimentary tree house. The floor was made from the tops of two discarded coffee tables that my dad had found in a skip and the roof was partly open, partly covered with an old tent. The project lasted the whole weekend and after it was finished Chloe played in it for years. Even when she was a teenager she’d go up there to read or sleep or gaze up through the branches and the leaves to the sky. I now understand what she meant when she told me her childhood was being destroyed. She is being thoroughly removed from the house. Yes, she’s an adult, but she’s still Tom’s child and this has always been her family home, from the moment she was born in the downstairs bathroom, an unexpectedly quick and easy birth that caught us all by surprise, to her twenty-fourth birthday party that we held in the garden just days before Tom announced that he was having an affair.
    I experience an acute sense of betrayal on Chloe’s behalf. How could Tom have allowed this woman to do this? What about Molly, his granddaughter? When Molly was born, hadn’t we said to one another that as soon