Page 112 of The Psychopath Next Door

All the doors were open, revealing empty rooms, except one.

I pushed it, hard, and it struck and bounced back off something. I pushed again, shouldering my way into the room.

It took a moment for me to take it all in as I passed the torch over it.

The light settled on Emma, sitting with her back to the wall to my right, her legs stretched out before her, arms slumped, head fallen forward. A knife lay next to her, just beyond her lifeless fingers. Rose was crouched beside her saying, ‘Mummy. Mummy.’

And lying on her front close by me in the doorway, with blood soaking the back of her T-shirt, was Fiona.

I ignored her and rushed over to Emma, throwing myself on to my knees beside her. The front of her T-shirt was drenched in blood, slick with it, and it pooled around her on the floor, soaking my jeans where I knelt. I could smell it, the sharp, meaty tang of it.

Nothing seemed real, especially when I touched Emma and she was cold, unmoving. That slumped head, her chin on her collarbone.

On the other side of her, Rose was frozen, silent now, staring at me. In the gloom, she looked like she’d sprouted hundreds of new freckles that had clustered together and also spread to her hair. It took me a moment to realise it was blood.

I put my hand on Emma’s chin and, in a grotesque imitation of a romantic gesture, lifted her face towards mine. It lifted too freely. I saw the slashed throat, the gaping wound oozing blood that glistened black in the bleached light of my phone.

She was dead. Indisputably dead.

‘No, Emma!’

I pulled her against me, began instantly to sob, crying out her name. ‘Emma.Emma!’ Her blood stained the front of my shirt; Icould feel the cold, inert weight of her, but I couldn’t believe she was dead, couldn’t comprehend what was happening.

Struggling to breathe, I gently lowered her to the ground and found Rose still staring.

‘What happened?’ I said it quietly first, through my tears, then shouted it. ‘What happened?’

Rose sucked in a breath before she spoke. ‘Fiona ... Fiona went crazy. She and Mum started fighting because Fiona told her the two of you were in love, and then Fiona had a knife and she attacked Mum with it but Mum fought her and managed to get the knife and stabbed Fiona in the back but thenshecollapsed.’

It all came out in a rush. I couldn’t take it in, not properly. The pieces refused to fit. Emma had stabbed Fiona even after her throat had been cut? I looked at Rose’s hands. Like her face, they were covered with blood, except this wasn’t spatter. It looked like she’d dipped her fingers in it and rubbed her palms together.

She saw me looking. Hid her hands behind her back.

Still not speaking, I went over to Fiona and nudged her with my foot. She was a heavy, motionless lump. I crouched and felt for a pulse. There was no doubt. She was dead too.

I went back towards Emma, and Rose flung herself at me, wrapping her arms around me, sobbing against my shoulder.

‘Mummy’s dead,’ she said. ‘Mummy’s dead.’

I heard footsteps, then a voice calling, ‘Dad?’

Dylan’s voice brought me back to life. He was close by, in the corridor. I started to tell him to stay where he was, but Rose spoke first.

‘We’re in here.’

Before I could do anything, Dylan’s head appeared around the door. He took in the scene. His mum, dead. Fiona, dead. Rose,stained with blood which was all over my clothes now too. He started to tremble, his breath quickening.

He changed in that instant. I knew, with a stab of despair, that he would never be the same happy boy he had always been.

But he didn’t cry, not yet. Instead, he pointed at Rose.

‘What did youdo?’ he screamed.

‘It wasn’t me,’ Rose said, and I was thrown back to when she was a pre-schooler, caught red-handed in our living room with a box of felt-tip pens, green and red scribbles all over the freshly painted walls. She’d said ‘Not me’ then too, eyes wide and innocent, my little girl, so sweet, so guilty, and Emma and I had laughed, even though we knew she had done it.

‘Dad, she’s lying,’ Dylan said, desperation making his voice crack. ‘She did this. I told you, she’s ... she’s dark triad. She’s a psychopath.’

‘How can you say that?’ Rose began to cry and her tears seemed so real, her upset so genuine.

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