The Second Sister: The exciting new psychological thriller from Sunday Times bestselling author Claire Kendal. Claire Kendal

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СКАЧАТЬ on mental illness. But this man’s admiration makes me warm, which isn’t something that happens to me very often.

      ‘Let me guess,’ I say. ‘You’re a doctor?’

      He smiles again. ‘You have the gift of mind reading.’

      ‘My sister used to say that.’ There really is something familiar about him. All at once, I see what it is. It is that he is a type. He is your type. The tall, dark and handsome type. This man is commanding, but he is restraining his power, a tension you always found irresistible. I am discovering that I like it too.

      ‘I need to be somewhere,’ I say. Somewhere as in, not this new love nest of Sadie and Brian’s. Somewhere as in home, where there are no doctors to interrogate me. And where there is no supposed-friend to shoot barbs at me.

      ‘Somewhere interesting, I hope,’ he says.

      Is he like this with patients, too? Does he make anybody he talks to feel as if they are the most fascinating person he has ever met? A lot of men couldn’t do this without being sleazy, but this man is gentlemanly, urbane-seeming. The type of man Ted would hate and you would adore. But Ted, as I am all too aware, is not here.

      ‘Lovely to meet you,’ I say.

      ‘Can I see you again? I have a fondness for the martial arts.’

      ‘I am not in the habit of seeing strange men. Especially not strange men who tease me.’

      ‘I’m not strange. But yes, I couldn’t stop myself from teasing you. I’m sorry about that.’

      ‘That was not a sincere apology.’

      ‘Perhaps not.’ He takes out a business card and offers it to me. I don’t take the card and he lets his arm fall back to his side. ‘We can meet at my place of work. Between clinics, so you wouldn’t have to put up with me for too long if I bore you.’ He raises his arm to offer the card again. ‘It’s not often that I invite women there.’

      ‘How often is not often?’

      ‘Not often as in never before. You’ll see why if you look.’

      Fuck you, Ted, I think. Fuck your games and fuck your remoteness and fuck your impatience.

      I squint at Adam for a few seconds. To my surprise, my own arm rises and somehow the card is in my hand. I glance at it. Dr Adam Holderness, Consultant Psychiatrist. He is based in the secure mental hospital outside of town, where Jason Thorne is indefinitely confined. He probably thinks I ought to be an inmate. I suppose it’s inevitable that in a house stuffed with doctors, at least one of them would work there.

      ‘It’s a great place to meet for coffee,’ he says.

      I am making silent fun of myself in a bad bleak way. I decided in the woods this morning that I would write a letter to one of the most horrifying serial killers in recent decades, asking if I can visit him. What normal woman thinks it is good news that she may have improved her chances of getting access to such a man?

      I don’t need Adam Holderness for that access, but having him behind me might help. It occurs to me that he probably knows who I am, but is being too polite to say. It is all too likely that Brian or Sadie told him. If so, he must guess that I will be drawn to his hospital by a more powerful force than a love of caffeine or a wish to date him.

      I say, ‘Do you find that your acquaintance with Jason Thorne is much of an inducement?’

      ‘Only to an extremely select crowd. I tend to keep that one quiet.’

      I fantasise a picture of Luke, proud of me, and happy, finding you at last, running into your arms, smiling at me over your shoulder. But I cannot stop a vision of what his response will be if the truth I discover is a dark one. And I cannot help but consider that if by some miracle we do find you alive, you will take Luke away from me.

      The unexpected thing, though, since I made my promise to Luke this morning, is that the terrible visions of what Thorne might have done to you have stopped. Before that promise, nothing I tried would block them – last week’s headlines brought them on with a relentlessness that I couldn’t figure out how to fight.

      ‘You know what I do,’ Adam says. ‘How about you? Or is your job classified?’

      ‘Hardly mysterious. I’m a personal safety advisor and trainer. Mostly I work with victims, but also sometimes with family members of victims.’

      ‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘I remember Brian mentioning that. For a private charity your family founded?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Sounds like important work. And difficult.’

      ‘I get a lot of support from my mother. She does most of the admin, usually the helpline messages.’

      ‘She must be very organised.’

      ‘She has on occasion been described that way.’ You would say, If organised means control freak bossy, then yes. But I have already confided more to this man than I do to most. ‘Please excuse me. I need to go, Dr Holderness.’ I use his title and surname to impose formality and distance, but it comes out like a flirtatious tease.

      ‘What about that coffee?’

      ‘I like coffee,’ I say. This seems flirtatious too. It is a register I didn’t know I had. It is not the register I was trying for. Again I sound like you.

      ‘So do I. Goodbye for now, Ella.’ With these words he steps away and disappears into the kitchen so I don’t have to do any more work at extracting myself. It occurs to me that Adam Holderness has an instinct for doing many of the things that I like men to do. Most of them involve not invading my space bubble.

       The Fight

      Sadie makes her presence felt in the hallway, though I have been aware of her hovering at the edge of the kitchen, arms crossed and glaring at me, during the last minute of my talk with Adam Holderness.

      I say, ‘Why are you so angry? I’m trying to be understanding, but you’re pushing it.’

      ‘It is no longer possible to trust anything you say.’ She swallows hard. ‘You’re so impulsive.’

      ‘Sadie—’

      She cuts me off. ‘I never know what you’re going to do next. When you’re around I’m constantly on edge. Do you think it’s normal to beat up my guests?’

      ‘He deserved it.’

      ‘My boyfriend’s brother deserved for you to knock him over?’

      ‘I didn’t knock him over. I adjusted things to get him to take his hand off my ass. I didn’t know who he was but it wouldn’t have made a difference if I had.’

      ‘It was embarrassing. So was watching you crawl all over Adam Holderness. At least he got you to leave Brian alone.’

      In СКАЧАТЬ