Page 87 of The Game

He just shrugs and studies his hands again.

“People got sick! Jesus. What kinds of things?”

“Stomach upsets, joint pains. Something they’d attribute to a virus or an allergy. I’ve no idea where it would have ended up, but then I started to feel sick, too.”

My whole body locks up. I don’t know what the expression on my face is saying, but Adam’s is ashen. “Oh my God, Adam.”

“I still didn’t put two and two together. I mean when friends tell you they’re unwell and then you get sick, you just think there’s a bug going around. And she looked after me when I was sick. She was kind and caring. I didn’t think she wasdoingthese things. She seemed like a lovely person. She was always helping her neighbors and friends.

“I was sick for months, off and on. I’d have bad pains and feel lethargic and then it would clear up. Just for long enough to convince myself it was nothing to worry about. But Celine kept telling me it was odd and that I should see a doctor!” He lets out a harsh laugh. “I was raised in a household where you didn’t complain, you soldiered on through if things weren’t too awful.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“Then I found some pills in her purse—it was on the kitchen counter, andI saw a white packet in there. When I pulled them out, the label said digoxin. I was immediately concerned. Was she sick? Was this why she was anxious all the time? But she was so sensitive, so liable to fly off the handle, that I couldn’t ask her before I knew what I was dealing with. So, I took a photograph and asked a friend who was a med student what they were. She said they were a treatment for heart problems, and they had some difficult side effects depending on how you responded to the medication and the dose, and then she described them, and they were exactly my own symptoms.

“I thought this explained everything. Celine had a heart complaint, and I’d somehow ingested her medicine by mistake, like she’d mixed it with food or a drink and I’d unwittingly picked upherfood or drink. She was sick, and she hadn’t said anything.” Adam laughs. “Istillthought it was a mistake.”

“Adam, this is horrific.”

“Can you understand why I don’t talk about it?”

“Absolutely. God.”

“Anyway, I talked to Fabian. Best thing I ever did. He immediately saw what I couldn’t admit to myself. His brother was a drug addict, and he’s come across a lot of strange behavior and paranoid people. He told me he always thought something wasn’t quite right about Celine. He said she set all his alarm bells clanging, but he could never put his finger on what was off. This behavior made all kinds of sense to him. Control. Power.” Adam laughs. “I was dubious. I’d never met anyone who’d do such a thing, and Celine didn’t seem unbalanced at all, just a little overwrought.

“Fabian being Fabian, he hacked into her computer and found nothing except a few encrypted files he couldn’t access, which was odd. He can get into most things. But there was also no search history and oddly little personal stuff. He wondered whether she might have other records or another PC.

“I decided it was all ridiculous, so I asked her about the pills, and she flew right off the handle. She said they were for problems she’d had for a long time, and it was nothing to worry about. But something seemed off about her explanation. It lacked detail, a medical history. So, I accepted it, but I told her, ifanything was troubling her, she could always talk to me and that I’d understand. Perhaps she knew that I was starting to wonder what was going on.

“And that seemed to be it. Nothing happened for weeks. I stopped feeling sick. Fabian couldn’t let it rest, though; he was worried she’d flip and do something more dangerous, administer a more potent drug. He said people like this always escalate things because they need a bigger and bigger buzz from what they’re doing and it plays on their mind. I told him not to be so stupid, but his suspicions about her made me more wary. He and I argued: I hated that he’d placed these doubts in my head. Then Fabian got into her phone one day when she’d left it on his kitchen counter and downloaded all her contacts. He painstakingly went through all the people on the list and went to talk to the people she knew. He put together everything they said to him. When he decides to do something, Fabian’s thorough.

“When I looked at it, the pattern was so obvious. Dead pets, odd illnesses, anonymous threatening letters, random acts of vandalism. There were even people who had suspected her and taken out a restraining order. I didn’t know what to do with what he’d found. And then she took the decision right out of my hands.”

“Oh God,” I say, but he shakes his head.

“She split up with me. She said it wasn’t working out and that she didn’t think I trusted her, and she wasn’t wrong. Perhaps it got back to her that Fabian was asking around and she was spooked. I didn’t know how I felt, but by now I was convinced that she was doing these things and there was something wrong with her. I thought Fabian had threatened her or told her to leave me alone, but he swore he hadn’t.” Adam gives a half smile. “And I believed him. We have a pact of honesty between us, Fabian, Janus, and me, ever since Fabian got admitted to the ER and lied about what he’d taken. They gave him the wrong drug and he nearly died. Janus lost his shit. But that’s another story.” He lets out a long sigh.

“What happened then? Did you talk to the police?”

“Janus had a lawyer because he was already working on his business, and he took a look at it and said it was complicated given the number of peopleand what legal action I might be able to take against her. He said I’d need solid evidence. Everything we had was circumstantial, and the best he felt we could do was to file for a restraining order, like some of the other people she’d known.”

“So, she’s still out there? Holy shit, Adam, that’s insane. Where did she go?”

“I’ve no idea. She disappeared. She left college without finishing her degree, and I never heard from her again. I sometimes wonder whether she changed her name.”

“Christ, I can’t believe it.”

He laughs roughly. “So perhaps that explains all my strange behavior when we met. I’m pretty broken now, I think. It has played on my mind over the years, conversations we had, how slow I was to realize, why I didn’t do something sooner, all the signs I ignored, and her friend Ali and the dead cat.” He shakes his head. “It left me deeply wary of relationships with women.”

My heart aches for him. How can he still feel he was somehow at fault? One thing is for sure: He isn’t broken. “I take back what I said when we were arguing about how you don’t understand.”

He screws up his face. “It’s very different from your situation, I think.”

“Not so different.”

He laughs at this. “I think the idea of closure is a fallacy. Some things are too bad for that.”

“Have you ever thought of trying to find her?” He makes a face, and then I laugh. “Yeah, I can see why you wouldn’t want to do that.”

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