Page 79 of You Can't Hurt Me

1:00 p.m.

Nate has just left to go to his conference and I’m writing this alone in my studio. It’s funny how the worst things can turn out to be the best. For a while I suspected I may be pregnant. It was unlike me to be a week late and I began to feel vaguely nauseous. I didn’t want to tell Nate, I thought I’d wait until he left the house.

But then he came back unexpectedly, went to the bathroom to get his glasses...and that’s when he spotted it. My pregnancy test out on the side. I knew he’d be so disappointed I didn’t intend to keep it.

Poor Nate. All he really wanted was to be a father. He came down and confronted me. For a moment he looked devastated, broken. I told him the whole truth, about the affair, how deeply I regretted it all, how much pain I had caused to everyone around me, how irresponsible I had been as a therapist. I began to cry and was so relieved to see that Nate seemed more conciliatory.

“Let’s put it behind us,” he said. “I love you, Eva.”

“I love you too,” I whispered, touching his shoulder before he left.

2:00 p.m.

I’ve just texted Tony. He’s on his way round for the very last time. I owe him an explanation and I hope he understands. I know how unpredictable he can be, how carefully I have to handle him. I didn’t see it at first. The disturbance, the sickness. It’s obvious, really. But I was too taken up with the thrill of it. Forbidden, dangerous.

Psychotherapy was never going to be enough. Almost certainly he has borderline personality disorder. Ideally, I’d have referred him for specialist psychiatric help but I didn’t want to involve my supervisor. By then it was all too late. When he told me he felt responsible for his stepfather’s death, I assumed it was survivor’s guilt, a natural regret that he couldn’t have done more that night to save him.

Later, after we started seeing each other, he told me more. Words poured out of him, a confession really, even though by then I didn’t want to know. He told me anyway. How he hid the Ventolin inhalers. How he could have saved his father’s life but decided to end it instead.

Sometimes I catch Tony looking at me. He unnerves me, those lifeless eyes, what lies behind them. As the minutes tick by I can’t help thinking... I’m the only person alive who knows Tony’s secret. What if he decides that’s one person too many?

The New York Times

4 February 2023

Dr. Nate Reid’s memoirHurtinghas been a record-breaking success rising up theNew York Timesbestseller list with first-day sales exceeding expectations.

Hurtingattracted enormous press coverage in the early weeks of its publication following the second high-profile death at his home in West London, two and a half years after his wife, Eva Reid, also died there.

On the evening of his book launch in Marylebone, Dr. Reid had returned to Algos House, his riverside property earlier than expected, surprising an intruder who then viciously attacked him with a knife.

Dr. Reid was forced to protect himself in self-defense only but in the fight that ensued, his assailant was left fatally wounded.

The deceased was later identified as Mr. Anthony Thorpe, an ex-patient of Eva Reid’s. According to psychotherapy notes discovered at her home, he was suffering from mental health issues and admitted full responsibility for his father’s death over twelve years ago.

Eva’s notes also reveal that Mr. Thorpe was due to visit on the evening that she died, offering further evidence that he could have been involved in her death. A second inquest is expected later this year following an initial open verdict, meaning there was insufficient evidence to decide how the death came about.

One theory is that Mr. Thorpe broke into the property, assuming it would be empty in order to find the therapy notes—now in the hands of the police.

This steady drip of scandal and intrigue has, it seems, only helped to drive more book sales. High-profile interviews with Dr. Reid in America and London have also helped to intensify interest.Hurtingsold more than half a million copies in all formats in the United States, Canada and Britain.

Priya James, Dr. Reid’s publisher at Grayson Inc., confirmed this week that another book deal would soon be announced and, despite the news of Mr. Thorpe’s death, there will be no change in publishing plans. The next publication has been slated for a January 2025 release.

EPILOGUE

7 December 2023, 7:30 p.m.

It is such a long way down. I step toward the balcony’s edge. There are hundreds of them packed into the bookshop; the hum and the heat of their bodies pressed close, the clatter of their voices rising up to meet me. My fingers trace where Nate’s once were, gripping the mahogany handrail, seeking comfort in its cool worn surface.

Those words float back to me from that evening, words that we wrote together.

No one can really bear the truth that every minute of our life hangs by a thread. However much we think we can script our own existence and try to ensure nothing bad can ever happen to us, it does and it will.

How I labored over those lines, how prophetic they turned out to be. But even the worst outcomes can turn out well in the end, given the right spin and a little imagination.

Now it is my own editor, Tash, who stands up, taps a pen against her wineglass until the clamor subsides. Tash is older than Priya, less driven, more of a listener. I warmed to her as soon as we met, with her elegant mane of silver hair and wise olive green eyes. She has my best interests at heart. I look out at the sea of animated faces, mainly female, below. I speak softly, like Nate, so people crane to listen.

“Thank you so much. First, I want to say I couldn’t have done all this without my fantastic editor, Tash, who encouraged me to write something for myself. Kath too, who has been an invaluable consultant on the book. As you may know I started out in publishing as a ghostwriter two years ago and although that memoir was successful, it only really told part of her story. But it did teach me one thing. I needed to write a different sort of ending—for both of us.

---