Page 70 of The Psychopath Next Door

He threatened her. He begged. But in the end he knew he was beaten. He paid up and she lived off that money for a year.

At the end of that glorious year, during which she travelled, stayed in luxury resorts, broken more hearts and helped herself to expensive jewellery and watches her victims left lying around, she reconnected with Maisie. Fiona hadn’t seen her since Maisie left Perth and returned to the UK, back before Fiona’s dangerous spell. They hadn’t fallen out; the parting had been purely geographical. That, and Maisie telling Fiona she needed to spend some time on her own, finding her feet.

‘Look me up when you’re ready,’ Maisie had said when she’d left Australia.

In the aftermath of the Gareth situation, Fiona reached out.

Maisie immediately told her how risky Fiona’s actions had been. Gareth might have murdered her. Fiona was a young Aussie girl with no friends or family to look after her. If she’d gone missing, no one would even have noticed.

‘Alone, we’re vulnerable,’ Maisie said. ‘But together, as a little pack, we’re strong, and not least because together we can hide in plain sight.’

Rose needed to learn that too. But Fiona knew that if Tommy found out who she was, she wouldn’t be around to pass on any more lessons.

Standing in that field yesterday afternoon, she had remembered Gareth. And she had suddenly known what to do.

She thought back to the events of yesterday afternoon, after she had invited Tommy back to her house. It had been dangerous, just as it had been with Gareth. But she hadn’t had any choice.

Besides, she liked danger.

It was one of the few things that made her feel anything.

Tommy had dropped his dogs at home, letting them in through the back door. It was the middle of the afternoon, and Tommy said something about how his wife had taken Albie to the hospital for a check-up. Eric, the younger boy, was with his grandparents.

Fiona heard Tommy order the German shepherds to lie down, then he followed her over to her house. It was peaceful. Birds were singing. There was a delivery driver dropping off a parcel further down the street, and music drifted out of an open window several houses down. Apart from that, none of the other neighbours were around.

‘This had better be good,’ Tommy said as they entered her house.

‘It will be. Can I get you a drink? A beer?’

‘Let’s just get on with it.’ They stood in the hallway and he looked around very briefly. Lola stood by his feet and he glanced down at her.

‘Does Emma next door know about you and her husband?’

‘I know what it looked like, but I was seriously only comforting him, that’s all. Giving him a hug because he’d had some bad news.’

‘Oh yeah? What bad news?’

She shook her head to indicate it was none of his business. ‘I’mgoing to have a beer. Sure you don’t want one?’

He raised his eyebrows. A woman having a beer in the afternoon?Well, she could hear him thinking,sheisAustralian.

‘Go on then.’

‘Why don’t you go into the living room?’ she said with the warmest smile she could fake. ‘Make yourself comfortable.’

When she came back, holding two bottles of lager, he was on the sofa, knees spread, scrolling through his phone.

‘News from the hospital?’ Fiona asked, handing him a bottle. ‘About your son?’

‘Yeah. We got the results from the latest scan. Looks like it might not be as bad as they first feared.’

Shame.

‘Wow, that’s great.’

‘Yeah.’ His eyes filled with tears and he swiped at his face with one of his massive paws, then appeared to remember who he was talking to. ‘It’s still gonna be a long process, though, they say. And someone did it.Someoneput nails or glass on the path.’

He really was tedious. She watched him, keeping her face neutral to disguise her loathing, while he took a long swig from the beer bottle.

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