Don’t Trust Me: The best psychological thriller debut you will read in 2018. Joss Stirling

over a carrot like a Tudor executioner. I imagine it as Michael’s… well, not his head.

      ‘I’ll ask Lizzy to go in and switch it off.’

      Concern for our blameless neighbour sweeps me. ‘Michael, tell Lizzy not to go alone. It might be an actual break-in – not the cat. Things are happening that you don’t know.’

      ‘I never know with you. Always it has to be a drama, never a simple mistake of forgetting to shut the bloody door.’

      God, he’s turning into an irate Michael Caine. If I’m beginning to find his rants amusing, does that mean I’m getting over his rejection? Consciously decoupling, isn’t that the phrase? ‘It’s probably my fault, usually is, but I can’t get there for at least an hour. Tell her to be careful, OK? I’ll go over as soon as we’ve finished dinner.’

      ‘I don’t know if I can trust you.’

      ‘No, you don’t, do you?’ I end the call.

      Drew raises his brows.

      ‘Michael. The alarm’s going off at our house – his house.’

      ‘How bad has it got – you and him?’ He sweeps the carrot matchsticks into the pan.

      ‘Are you going to add any meat to that?’

      ‘I’ll add grilled halloumi at the end. I’ve gone vegetarian. Trust me: it’ll be great.’

      My spirits sink – no chocolate and now no meat. ‘Our basic problem is that he doesn’t like me anymore. The things I do – well, you know me…?’

      Drew nods.

      ‘I can’t help them sometimes. It’s part of my condition. He used to find them amusing but now he’s embarrassed. He’d prefer me just to go but I haven’t got the money to rent somewhere, so…’ I catch a glimpse of Drew’s expression. ‘I’m not asking to stay here more than a night, don’t worry.’

      ‘I wasn’t worried about that.’

      ‘You should be. I’d drive you crazy if you had to live with me. I drive everyone crazy after a time. Michael’s up for a sainthood, having survived five years.’

      ‘Jess, really, it’s not a problem how long you stay. I’m worried that you are in an unhealthy relationship which is destroying your belief in your own self-worth.’ Drew is into self-help books. There’s a whole shelf of them in his living room.

      I laugh. As far as self-worth goes, I’ve always been an atheist.

      ‘Why are you with him again?’

      ‘I don’t know really. It made sense at the beginning. We met at his college. He was supportive when I did teacher training.’ I curled a carrot peeling around my ring finger. ‘He found it unthreatening. He was just beginning to really take off in his career as the media’s go-to psychologist on socially deviant behaviour, and my job was always going to be second fiddle. He liked that. What he didn’t like was the development where I needed more from him than he was prepared to give. He only wanted a witty and amusing girlfriend, not a partner, and certainly not a partner with problems.’

      Drew is silent while he tosses the vegetables. I can imagine what he’s thinking. She sees it so clearly, so why is she so feeble as to stay? I don’t want to admit it to him but, apart from new friend Drew, I don’t really have anyone of my own. My relationship with Michael cut me off from my old friendship groups as I moved in his circle rather than keeping mine. The colleagues I made at Eastfields – well, they went with the job. I am disgusted by myself. I’ve lost all confidence in my ability to make decisions, and that’s with good reason, as the ones I’ve made tend to be impulsive and end up as disasters. Michael had got accomplished at sweeping in to rectify them for me. He was the one who persuaded me to resign from Eastfields before I was dismissed – that was sound advice in retrospect, though it felt like I was surrendering. He sorted out the counselling when I had my breakdown. I’m not convinced I’d survive on my own.

      ‘I’ve always thought he was a bit of a prick,’ announces Drew, plating up the stir-fry and adding the grilled cheese on top.

      ‘Funny, he thinks the same about you.’ I laugh. ‘Though he would give it a posh term.’

      ‘I’m pleased he classes me as one of his social deviants. Might get that put on a T-shirt.’

      ‘A black T-shirt?’

      ‘Obviously.’

       Chapter 9

      To: [email protected]

      August 8

      From: [email protected]

      Subject: Jessica again

      Dear Charles,

      I apologise for interrupting your long weekend in Edinburgh but Jessica’s behaviour is causing me deep concern. After a relatively quiet few months during which she occupied herself with a range of new hobbies, she appears to have gone wildly off track. The new crisis centres on her claim to have a job as a ‘psychological profiler’. I did wonder, as I told you at the time when she announced she had got this position, whether this was a shot at me and my career? I thought then that she was disguising some office temp job, but I increasingly have begun to suspect that she is inventing the whole thing. This has been worrying me, so I followed her to her place of work the week before we went away and discovered she spent most of her time in a local cafe, drinking coffee and scribbling in one of her many notebooks. The writing in these is still as you will remember: obsessional, full of lists, underlinings and highlightings, writing from various points of view as if she is that person. It’s very hard to decipher but I can see that I don’t come out very well in any of her entries.

      I tested her on a number of occasions as to the nature of her work but her attempts to introduce me to her employer all conveniently failed. You warned me that her fantasies are real to her and there will always be a good excuse for her inability to make them concrete. Just in case, I searched for evidence of her boss’s existence and found no trace of the man and just the barest front door of a website that Jessica admitted while we were on holiday that she had constructed herself. That caused a particularly spectacular row between us. Now she claims to have lost said job, and mislaid her employer, marking the start of a second paranoid phase to the job fantasy.

      We’ve seen this pattern before over the Eastfields debacle. She barely escaped prosecution then and I’m not clear where this current fantasy is leading her. To give me peace of mind, I would be eternally grateful if you would persuade Jessica to come in for another inpatient stay at your clinic. I know we’ve discussed this before but it’s far more than adult ADHD with her; there is something profoundly out of kilter in her psyche and I think she needs rest and a controlled environment if there’s any hope of her recovering. At least this time there doesn’t appear to be a sexual element to her fantasy, not like when she turned on me and that poor student at Eastfields – you can see that I’m reduced to being grateful for small mercies.

      I would also be most appreciative if you would reconsider her medication. As before, I’m happy to pay for this and any other costs of treatment. I will suggest she contacts you when I return from my Berlin conference. I’m due in Washington in two weeks and I really don’t feel safe leaving her on her own again. Her only friend appears to be drawn from the shadier fringes of society, picked up at a bar, no less. Her talent for charming people on first acquaintance hasn’t faded and she’s extremely engaging to begin with, knowing how to deploy her good looks and vulnerable air. She claims her new friend is an undertaker, which again shows how rampant her imagination has become. I’ve met him and he is far more likely to be living on benefits with a pitbull named Spike, but you can’t stop Jessica once she gets inventing.

      On a happier note, I send greetings from Miles and Tariq. We are all sorry you were unable to