Page 63 of The Psychopath Next Door

She smiled. ‘Chill out.That’smy advice. A lot of parents get very het up about their child’s behaviour in their tween years and when they hit puberty. They’re like, “my child is suddenly so angry”, or “my child hates me”. But it’s just normal childhood development. Moodiness, anger, being difficult. I’m sure you were both the same. I bet you went through it with Dylan a few years ago too.’

‘Hmm. Not really.’

‘He was abitmoody,’ Emma said. ‘And he still spends a lot of time locked away playing video games and listening to music.’

‘And probably watching all sorts of muck,’ Theo said with a laugh.

‘I dread to think,’ said Emma.

‘The point is,’ Angela said once we’d all stopped pulling faces, ‘I wouldn’t worry. As long as a child – a young adult – isn’t completely unattached from his or her parents and isn’t suffering from one or more of the mental health issues that are so common these days ...’

‘As long as she’s not going round burning down houses or torturing cats, you’re grand.’ Theo winked at me.

Rose appeared, changed into her swimming costume and wrapped in a towel.

‘What were you all talking about?’ she asked, and for a horrible moment I thought she might have overheard us.

‘Oh, nothing,’ Emma said. ‘I think Henry is waiting for you by the hot tub.’

We all looked over. There he was, a skinny eleven-year-old kid wearing a pair of goggles, waiting patiently with a big smile on his face. Rose looked at him and I couldn’t help but laugh at her expression. She looked like the headmistress of a posh boarding school regarding a poor oik who had somehow won a scholarship. But she strode over to him and I heard her say, ‘I hope it’s not cold like ours.’

‘Well,’ said Angela. ‘We’d better go and keep an eye on them.’

‘You two should make the most of being child-free,’ said Theo, winking again.

‘Hmm,’ said Emma. ‘I think I’ll go and read in the bath.’

She went inside and I thought,This is the perfect opportunity to talk to her, while there are no kids around. But by the time I went in she had locked herself in the bathroom and the taps were running.

Was she in there textinghim?

My guts roiled from the stress of it all, and the only thing I could think to do was get a bottle of wine out of the fridge and take it outside. I stood on the decking and saw Dylan and Keira emerge from the woods in the distance, the dog trotting along beside them. As they came closer I heard laughter and wondered if this was going to result in a brief holiday romance. I guessed it was easier for teenagers these days. They could keep in touch and chat online, follow each other on TikTok or whatever. It would be nice for Dylan to make a new friend. And if he did like Keira, it was certainly a lot healthier than watching him eye up our adult neighbour – which, thankfully, I hadn’t seen him do in a while.

You’re the only one eyeing her up, said my conscience.

It struck me that Dylan was the easiest member of our family. The only one I wasn’t worried about.

But what about my moody daughter? Wasshemaking a new friend? I peered over the fence that separated the two cabins. Rose was in next door’s hot tub, the bubbling water covering her shoulders, seemingly relaxed and happy. Strangely, Henry was standing beside the tub, holding his towel, goggles still on.

It was as if she had told him he wasn’t allowed to get in with her. Was hescaredof her – this little twelve-year-old girl?

Surely not.

But the more I looked, the more it seemed evident. He was afraid of her.

22

Fiona wished she didn’t have to look after Lola, something she had only agreed to because Rose had asked her to and she knew how important it was right now to do everything she could to keep Rose calm. After what had happened in Wadhurst, the girl would be in a state of intense emotional turmoil. Hyperarousal, to use the technical term – with all her feelings heightened. Excitement, anger, fear, elation. All this would be tumbling through her blood, way beyond the cool, calm state she needed to be in right now. It was vital for Fiona to keep an eye on her, talk to her, help her understand who she was and what she was going to feel. It was important that Rose didn’t do anything to draw attention to herself and her outings with Fiona, especially anything to do with the deaths of Max and Patrick. She was confident Rose wouldn’t blurt out what they’d done, but it was possible she might behave in a way that would make her parents question what was going on while Fiona was looking after her.

This was the worst possible time for her parents to have taken her on a stupid mini-break.

‘Come on, dog,’ she said, attaching the lead to Lola’s collar.

She stepped out into the afternoon light, squinting at the sunshine, wishing she hadn’t drunk so much the last two nights. The problem was,shewas in a state of hyperarousal too, and she hadneeded the alcohol to knock herself out. The first thing she’d done this morning, and the previous day, was check the news for reports of a death in Wadhurst.

She was confident no one had seen her and Rose leave the pub with Patrick – and, on top of that, no one who might have seen them playing chess in the beer garden would know who she was. Even if they’d been captured on CCTV somewhere along the route, she was confident they wouldn’t be identified, partly because she didn’t think anyone would look that hard. The plan had always been to make Patrick’s death look like an accident, or possibly a suicide, and real life was not how it was in the movies. The police force wasn’t full of tenacious detectives who smelled something fishy and dedicated their lives to uncovering the truth. No, the pressure on the police to hit targets and deal with their huge workload meant that, if something looked like an accident, it would stay an accident. No case to be cleared up. On top of that, Patrick didn’t have any close relatives who might lean on the police to ask them to look closer.

However, she still wanted to double-check there were no reports of a suspicious death; of a man found dead after he’d been seen with a mysterious woman and girl. But there was nothing, and she could only assume he hadn’t been found yet.

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