Page 43 of The Psychopath Next Door

‘That’s good.’

‘But the man in the park didn’t.’

I looked at her. ‘What man?’

She was still turning Ken over in her hands. ‘On Friday, me and Fiona went to Brockwell Park and we saw a man eat a cookie then fall over, and then he died.’

I was too shocked to speak for a moment. ‘You ... saw this happen?’

She nodded, her expression deadly serious.

‘Oh, Rose. How much ... I mean, you actually saw him ... die?’

‘Yeah. His face went totally red and he held his neck like this and then he couldn’t breathe anymore.’ As she spoke she put her hands around her own windpipe.

Horrified, I thought back to Friday evening. When I’d got home from work Rose had already been back for a couple of hours and she had seemed completely fine. Maybe a little quiet, but I had assumed that was because it was the end of the week and she was tired.

‘Did you tell Mum about this?’

‘No. I was going to tell her, but when I got home she was on the phone for ages, and then I forgot.’

‘Youforgot?’

She shrugged.

‘Really? It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would slip your mind. Rose, you promised us, if anything happened while you were out with Fiona ...’

‘I forgot, okay?!’

She had form for this. When she was eight, her pet goldfish had died, and when Emma noticed, finding Nemo floating in his tank, Rose had said, ‘Oh yes, he died a few days ago and I forgot to tell you.’

There had been other incidents too, like when she was in the last year of primary school and her best friend, Jasmine, had decided she didn’t want to be Rose’s friend anymore. For months, Rose had acted as if everything was normal until a teacher told us he was concerned, as he’d seen Rose standing on her own in the playground every day, while her old friendship group ignored her. Rose said she had forgotten to tell us she and Jasmine had fallen out. When Emma phoned Jasmine’s mum to see if we could engineer a reconciliation, Jasmine’s mum said that Jasmine had startedcrying when she asked her about it but wouldn’t give any details. It was so close to the end of primary school that we’d let it go, aware that kids fell out all the time and thinking Rose would make a new set of friends at secondary school. But it was another example of Rose forgetting to tell us important stuff.

What was more shocking to me now was thatFionahadn’t told us. Or had she told Emma, who was at work now? Things had been tense between Emma and me since the Pulp gig and especially the barbecue. There was a thick atmosphere that hung inside the house like fog, and I had been avoiding her, spending the evenings in my ‘man cave’, listening to music, continuing to catalogue my collection. Emma, meanwhile, would sit downstairs with a bottle of wine watching true crime documentaries. Lola would wander back and forth between us, as if trying to broker peace. But after the last year of trying to save my marriage, I was tired of hearing myself say, ‘Can we talk?’ I wanted Emma to come to me. So poor Lola’s efforts went unrewarded.

There was another thing, something I was ashamed to admit even to myself. I kept thinking about Fiona. Picturing her leaning towards me over the table. Imagining her kissing me.

Wondering what it would be like to be with her instead of Emma.

I said to Rose, ‘Come down for breakfast and we can talk about this afterwards. I’ll make you scrambled eggs.’

She promised to come down when it was ready. Downstairs, I found Dylan in the kitchen, his head inside the fridge, complaining there was nothing to eat, and pulled him aside while the pan was warming up. ‘Did you know anything about Rose seeing a guy die the other day?’

‘She saw someonedie? Whoa. You mean, when she was with Fiona?’

‘Yes.’ I explained what Rose had told me.

‘Is she upset?’

‘I can’t really tell.’

‘I bet she isn’t.’ He exhaled sharply through his nose. ‘Rose is such a weirdo.’

I was shocked to hear this from him. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Dunno. Just ... Yesterday she was telling me about this museum Fiona took her to, and all these decapitated dog heads she saw.’

‘The Horniman? I took you there when you were little. You had nightmares afterwards.’

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