‘I’ve got one,’ a small voice chimes, saving her from Dr Sharp’s encouraging stare. Katherine looks up. It’s the girl sitting right next to her, her fingers tightly interlaced in her lap. She gives the girl a grateful smile for taking the clinician’s focus and enjoys the tentative one she gets in return. ‘Keeping busy, having tasks to focus on,’ the girl continues.

‘That can be really helpful, Ellie,’ Dr Sharp says, although her voice is uncharacteristically reticent. ‘Katherine, what do you think?’ she tries again.

She bites her cheek. ‘Absolving for my sins,’ she murmurs.

‘Sorry, I didn’t hear …’

‘Doing something good,’ she says louder, looking at the new girl who came to her rescue. ‘Helping someone in need.’

December 2021

December 2021

Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Beth

Beth skids to a halt on the corner of Brookhill Road. Her knees start to buckle. She reaches out, finds the rough surface of yellow London brick, someone’s garden wall. But it feels grimy. She imagines the dirt seeping into her fingertips. Her heart starts galloping and she pulls her hand back, rubs it against her jeans. What’s she going to do?

She raced back from Reading – a screeching taxi to the station, then a fast train to Clapham and a sprint from there – and she’s only a stone’s throw from home now. But she can’t make the final steps, not with Mark curled up on the pavement opposite her house, his lanky legs folded under his chin. He looks like a victim, she realises. A sad, homeless man who’s missed out on life’s chances. Not at all like the truth of it: a nasty piece of shit who’s happy to traumatise a little girl.

And what else is Mark capable of? If he’s reckless enough to approach Ava at school, what would he be willing to do to Beth?

She’s heard the stories. Stalkers who follow their victims night and day, whom no one takes seriously because they seem so passive. Then one day it changes. Except it’s all too late by then. Because they’re sitting in a police cell claiming mental illness and a woman somewhere has had her life ruined forever. Acid in her face, a knife in her chest, or even just a memory that she can never erase. Is that what’s going to happen to her?