Page 81 of The Psychopath Next Door

Rose frowned. ‘Jasmine was so annoying. She was weak. She let the other girls upset her. They called her Jas-minger.’

Fiona hadn’t encountered the word ‘minger’, meaning an unattractive person, until she’d come to the UK.

Rose went on: ‘And she let them. There was this group of popular girls who really bullied her and made her do jobs for them, or do their homework, clean their shoes at breaktime. It was so embarrassing. She’d do everything they asked and then they’d shout, “Thank you, Jas-minger!” and run off laughing, ignoring her. It made me hate her. The way she refused to stand up for herself. She was so weak.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I guess I started being horrible to her. I called her Jas-minger too. I made her shoplift chocolate bars from the corner shop, even though she was terrified of being caught. I wrote a fake love letter to this boy and signed it from her, so then all the boys started teasing her. I stole her schoolwork from her bag so she’d get into trouble with teachers. And all the time I knew I was meant to feel bad, but I didn’t. It made me happy. I had power over her. And she was so pathetic, she deserved it.’

‘Like Henry.’

‘Yeah. Just like Henry.’

There was a long pause.

‘I know why you took me to that museum to see the wolves and the walrus and all the predators. Because that’s what I am, isn’t it?’

‘It’s whatweare, Rose. Apex predators. And people like Jasmine and Henry are prey. It’s the way the world is supposed to work. Some people – like a friend of mine called Lucy – get nourishment from tormenting and hurting others in the same way wolves obtain nourishment from meat. It’s a kind of pure pleasure for her. A need. Some of us aren’t that ... sadistic. But we don’t let others stand in the way of what we want.’

‘Is that what Max and Patrick were? Prey? Or were you trying to get something from them?’

Rose’s pupils were dilated. She was excited by all this. Happy to hear she was different. To understand why she felt the way she did.

To know she was special – and not alone.

‘With Max and Patrick it was different. That was vengeance – another understandable motivation for us. It was because of what they did to me. It was because of them that I spent some time in prison.’

Rose’s eyes went wide. ‘You were in prison?’

‘Yeah. Max was our lawyer and Patrick was the one who figured out what we were doing. Who exposed—’

‘Wait. Who’swe?’

‘Ah. Maisie and me. Maisie was my partner.’

‘Yourgirlfriend?’

‘I suppose you could use that word, but it doesn’t really describe it.’ She really didn’t want to go into all the details of her relationship with Maisie with a twelve-year-old. ‘We were a team. A little pack. We lived together, did everything as a couple. And we were going to get rich together.’

29

It was Fiona’s turn to get up and cross to the window. The street lights had come on, casting a soft glow across the estate. As she watched, Tommy came out of his house and lurched off down the road, walking unsteadily. Drunk, Fiona assumed.

‘We had a scheme to make a lot of money,’ she said to Rose. ‘Enough to allow us to move out of London into the countryside. There’s this house ... Well, we’ll come to that. It’s the kind of property neither of us could ever afford through so-called honest means. But the world is full of people who have inherited their wealth, been handed everything by Mummy and Daddy. My parents had nothing to give me and neither did Maisie’s. So we found someone who would be generous.’

‘A rich person?’

‘Oh yes.’ The thought of all the money in Dinah Uxbridge’s bank account still made her blood grow hot. ‘Filthy rich. And all alone. She lived in this ridiculous, huge house in Dulwich, not far from where Maisie and I had our little flat. Maisie met her first. Got chatting to her in this cemetery in West Norwood, where Dinah was visiting her husband’s grave. He was a former Member of Parliament. Old Etonian. Born with a silver spoon rammed right up his ...’ She trailed off, remembering who her audience was.

‘And he left his money to his wife?’

‘Yes, exactly, although she already had family money of her own. Honestly, Rose, these people ... They were old money through and through. SoBritish. Dinah said that she’d been a “party girl” in New York. Run away from home, hung out with a wild crowd. Andy Warhol and his superstars.’ Rose’s reaction told Fiona that she didn’t know who that was. Of course she wouldn’t. Ancient history. ‘Once she’d got that out of her system, she came home and married a rising star of the Tory Party. They had a daughter but she died when she was young. Drug overdose. All very tragic, blah blah.’

Rose nodded.

‘Anyway, to cut a long story short, she was in her early eighties when Maisie met her. Still quite healthy, but living all alone in this house that was too big for her to take care of. She’d had a housekeeper and a gardener but they’d both retired recently, and she didn’t have a clue about how to hire new ones. You should have seen the place. The garden looked post-apocalyptic and the house was crumbling from the inside, mice everywhere, damp coming through the walls. Worth a mint, though. An absolute mint.’

‘A million?’

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