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

would ruffle your hair and say “what are friends for?” but that, at the moment, would just be gross.’

      ‘Thank you for restraining yourself.’

      We sit across from each other in a quiet corner of the Dog and Duck. It’s cramped inside, combining eatery and bar with all the polished wood and colourful tiles such a small space can embrace. I find it strangely reassuring. Drew sips on his half while I indulge in a Bloody Mary, needing the kick of fiery Worcester sauce to drive off the taste of rubbish. It feels the right kind of retro drink to have in such an antiquated place.

      ‘So what are you going to do now?’ asks Drew. He flicks through one of my notebooks. ‘You’ve done so much work on these girls. You’re not going to give up, are you?’

      ‘I don’t know. I don’t understand right now. What was Jacob doing investigating them in the first place?’

      Drew scans the other people in the bar, fairly quiet on this Monday night, a couple of office workers, some tourists in optimistic shorts, a gaggle of student types looking effortlessly young. That’s what I notice but I wonder what he sees when he looks at people? Coffin sizes? God, that’s macabre. He’s not like that. His job makes him celebrate life; I’m the one with the Gothic imagination.

      ‘Jess, if he was asked to do that by family or friends, then they might have another way of contacting him. He’ll want to be paid.’

      ‘Don’t we all?’ I wonder how it would go, trying to contact some of the nearest and dearest to the missing. I cringe at the thought.

      ‘I suppose there’s another possibility.’

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘He’s insane, obsessed by these cases for no particular reason, living out some kind of fantasy where he’s the intrepid detective and you’re his Dr Watson.’

      I don’t like to leap so quickly to the accusation that Jacob was living in a world of his own invention; that has come my way too before and I know how difficult it is to wriggle out from under such an allegation. ‘Surely I should’ve sensed if he were delusional? He appeared perfectly rational to me.’

      Drew just smiles. ‘You, my friend, are easy to fool because you are so nice. Me, I’m a little nastier, and I suspect everyone.’

      ‘You’re not nasty.’

      ‘Oh, I am. But you don’t see it. I have motives within motives.’ He reaches out and takes my hand where it is loosely looped around the base of my glass. ‘It’s not anyone I’ll go through bins for.’

      I let my hand stay in his. Right now, I just need the comfort that someone finds me the least bit necessary to them.

      ‘It’s too soon, isn’t it?’ Drew brushes my fingers with his.

      ‘Too soon for what?’

      ‘You and me.’

      Major gaydar malfunction. ‘Drew, are you saying … oh my God, you are, aren’t you?’

      He gives me a funny look. ‘Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for. Polite refusal, yes; incredulity, no.’

      ‘I thought you were like my gay best friend.’

      He moves back. ‘You thought I was homosexual?’

      ‘Or maybe bipossible. Oh shit, I’ve made a hash of this, haven’t I?’ I’m blushing worse than when I was thirteen and asked the out-of-my-league boy to a party.

      Drew gives a grimace. ‘Or maybe the hash is mine?’

      ‘No, no, it’s my fault. I just assumed… kind of built a picture of you based on…’ I tail off. What had I based it on? The fact that he made me feel at ease. That is all, really. I’ve made a fantasy role for him and moulded him into it in my ridiculous mind.

      ‘I thought you knew me better than that.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘God, this is embarrassing. Bit of a dent to the old ego.’ He sips his drink.

      ‘No, no, it’s not you, it’s me.’

      He laughs at my joke, which is also the truth. ‘Jess, you are something else.’

      I shrug. ‘I’m so sorry for being dense. And I want you to take a long hard look at me. I’m this.’ I gesture to my own hopelessness.

      ‘That’s fine by me. You need to get away from that dickhead Michael. He’s destroying you, you know that, don’t you?’

      I didn’t really. There were times when I thought he’d been saving me. ‘I can’t blame him, Drew. He’s tried his best. People do, and I still mess things up.’ I gaze out at the street. A girl in a brief black skirt and off-the-shoulder blouse is coaxing a guy into an alley with the practised moves of a pro. He looks furtive but follows. I shudder. There is so much that Drew does not know.

      He squeezes my hand and lets go. ‘I get it. This is a process. You need to make the break, then we’ll talk.’

      ‘Now that I know you’re not gay.’

      He manages to laugh. ‘Yeah, that’ll help my case. Speak to him when he gets back. Not because of me but because you really need to do this for you.’

      Drew’s right. This train has been coming down the tracks for a very long time now. If I had any objectivity about my own relationships, I would’ve told myself, lying on my own therapy couch, that something that started with such an unequal balance of power, made more exciting by being a rule-breaking secret, would fail when it became respectable and had to face real problems. Michael accuses me of spinning fantasies but he has as well over our relationship, using me to flatter some version he has of himself. I need to free him so he can either grow up or, more likely, enter another round with a younger model. He is going to be nothing but disappointed with me from here on. None of us, the women in his life, live up to his dead wife, so he is destined to repeat unless he works out how to move on.

      But that’s now his problem, not mine.

      ‘OK, I’ll talk to him when he gets back.’

       Chapter 11

       Emma, 13th January 2011

      It’s been a rough week. This treatment cycle is no picnic and there are times when I just want to opt out, pretend none of it is necessary. I can see myself doing it, ripping out the IV, flushing the pills, striding out into the sunset. I would if I had the energy but I’ve had a continually streaming nose and felt like death since the weekend. Funny, as the treatment is the thing that’s supposed to stave that off, not bring it prematurely into my body. I sit on the sofa in the kitchen, too tired to do much else but watch Michael at work. I’m so grateful to our friends helping out to give us this time. Biff has gone with Katy to the shops getting food and some supplies for the house. They’ll enjoy that time together and it gives me a break.

      I wish they’d stop asking me what I want to eat, though. I don’t bloody well want to eat anything.

      I asked Michael how his book is going. He went off on a little lecture about the limitations of Eysenck’s personality types as applied to the personalities of serious offenders in the judicial system. I won’t tell him that it’s not what he says but how he says it that I’m listening to as I murmur ‘really?’ and ‘that’s interesting’ at appropriate moments. He has hopes the book is going to take his work to a larger audience than he’s managed so far on the conference circuit. The police might appreciate him but I know he craves a bigger stage. I’m pushing him to come up with a catchy title. Anything with Eysenck in it will remain on the academic shelves. Type M for Murder is my best so far, with a wordplay on Michael’s use of the concept of personality type. I’m sure I can