Guilt: The Sunday Times best selling psychological thriller that you need to read in 2018

I’m not sure what to do about it.

Well I am sure.

I need to complain, immediately.

But Sebastian is my sister’s boyfriend. And she is so vulnerable. I can’t believe this has happened. I need time to think. Why did he do that? What’s the matter with him? I can’t tell Zara. If I do she won’t believe me. If she does believe me, the knowledge of what he’s done will destroy her.

I sit on the toilet seat for half an hour before finally leaving the sanctuary of the ladies’ lavatories. I know, however difficult it is, I must try to get Anastasia Sudbury to move Sebastian to another task. Breathing deeply to keep calm, I manage to wheedle my way past her PA, into her office.

‘Please can I work with the other new associate rather than Sebastian? He’s my sister’s boyfriend. Our relationship is too close,’ I beg.

Slowly, slowly I watch her eyes harden to granite.

‘You’re wasting my time.’ There is a pause. ‘I don’t appreciate pointless interruptions like this.’ She pushes her hair back from her eyes. ‘Sebastian has far more experience in the relevant areas than the other associates. That’s why I chose him.’ A shrug of her slender shoulders. ‘It’s a simple choice. You work with Sebastian or you leave. Decide what you want and please leave my office.’

20 (#ulink_cfcada53-9ac3-5ad1-abe3-3fec53f78953)

Zara (#ulink_cfcada53-9ac3-5ad1-abe3-3fec53f78953)

I am laced in his arms as he drifts towards sleep. The sweet fingers of sleep are touching me, pulling me towards oblivion. I feel as if I am floating. Floating. Flying. Weightless. All-powerful. Eternal.

But something has happened. Shouting. Someone is shouting. Someone is kicking. Someone is screaming. I wake up. It is Sebastian, still fast asleep. Eyes tightly closed, fighting the bed covers, kicking and twisting them around his legs. Thumping and kicking. He thumps me in the chest and shrieks. I shriek back at him, grab his shoulders, and shake him to wake him up. He opens his eyes and groans. He clings to me tightly like a frightened toddler.

‘I had a nightmare,’ he whispers.

He is shivering. I stroke his back. I stroke his hair. His breathing slows.

‘Calm down, calm down,’ I mutter. ‘What happened?’

‘I dreamt I was in a car.’ His voice tremors. ‘I was driving.’ He pauses. ‘Everything was woolly. Unfocused. The other driver didn’t see us.’

‘Us?’ I pause. ‘Who else was in the car?’

He pulls away from me, sitting upright in bed now. ‘Nobody … I can’t remember.’ His body is no longer shaking. He is breathing steadily now. ‘I must have had too much to drink last night. I have graphic dreams when I drink too much.’

21 (#ulink_bcc4e1a1-10b7-524b-8521-c1782f8d2083)

Miranda (#ulink_bcc4e1a1-10b7-524b-8521-c1782f8d2083)

Sebastian seems to spend nearly all his time with us. In my flat. It’s all happened so quickly. From the minute you saw one another, you just had to be together. He doesn’t seem to want to spend much time in his family home. He doesn’t get on too well with his parents these days apparently. He is even giving me some money for rent now. Zara, you insisted. I didn’t feel happy as it makes the arrangement too formal. Too difficult to break away from.

I still have to work with him too. Fortunately he hasn’t sexually harassed me again, thank goodness. So perhaps it was an aberration. A one-off. I would so love to believe that. But can a leopard change its spots? I think I’m right not telling you, Zara, when you love him so much. But sometimes, just sometimes, I think not knowing his true nature in the end may cause you harm.

As soon as I think that, my mind twists, remembering the fear I felt both times when you almost took your own life. It comes back to me with such clarity. Walking through the hospital not knowing whether you were alive. Then I remind myself you must never be told about Sebastian’s behaviour. Deep inside I know that is right.

So for the first time in our lives, since you met Sebastian, we are experiencing a slight distance between us. We, who were always so tight. Despite all our differences. Despite the way you fluffed your A levels and didn’t go to uni. Despite my success, my degree, my job. Despite your popularity when I am so quiet. What has caused this? Is it my fault? Is it because you’ve never loved anyone else as much as me, until now? Until now, whenever I’ve needed you, I’ve always had you to myself.

THE PRESENT (#ulink_88968fb9-28a9-5242-a328-96f34542715b)

22 (#ulink_88968fb9-28a9-5242-a328-96f34542715b)

Her mother is here. In a private visiting room. They are using the legal visit area, because the prison governor is so concerned about her vulnerability and is affording her special treatment, special privileges. Today the prison officers have trusted her to dress in her own clothes. Today she is wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She is hardly eating and so her jeans are hanging off her. Thinner than thin. Paler than pale.

Her mother looks like a ghost of her previous self as well. As soon as her mother sees her she takes her into her arms. She holds her tightly against her body as she did when she was a baby. She strokes her hair. She strokes her back. She kisses her. Her daughter’s body relaxes a little, melts into hers.

‘I love you,’ Mother says. ‘You told me what happened. You know I understand you had no choice. You need to come to terms with what happened. You need to forgive yourself.’

‘I will never be able to forgive myself.’

Her daughter pulls away from her to sit at the plastic table in the visiting room, continuing her whimpering and crying, head in hands. Her crying is uncontrollable. Panic simmers inside her mother’s heart.

‘Stop it. Please stop it,’ her mother says. ‘I’ve lost one of you. I can’t, I won’t, lose you both.’

She moves across to the table and bends down next to her daughter, clinging to her body as much as she is able.

‘Please hold it together,’ she begs. ‘I love you so much.’

23 (#ulink_23714073-d315-541e-9195-48315ecb2dbd)

Every day feels the same. Solid. Blurred and grey. They are giving her so many tablets, antidepressants, anxiolytics, sleeping tablets. First thing in the morning. Last thing at night. In happier times, she would have made a joke about it, said she rattled with all the pills she takes. But she is so diminished, jokes are a distant memory.

It is a relief at night to fall into the numbness of a drug-induced sleep. Sleep that isn’t sleep. Sleep that doesn’t refresh her. When she wakes in the morning she feels as if she is pulling herself out of a coma. Her head pounds and feels heavy, so heavy. As if made of solid metal, not bone and tissue and flesh. Her neck aches. It hurts to hold her head up and light pierces, like a painful laser, into her eyes. When she moves, her limbs feel as if they are pushing through solid brick.

The prison officers don’t trust her. She doesn’t always trust herself when she is left alone. The clothes she is given are still made of paper in case she uses them to hang herself. But they don’t really need to worry – she doesn’t have the energy to commit suicide; it would take too much momentum.

Sometimes her mind clears for a while and she steps back in time.

Walking hand in hand with her sister down Fisherman’s Path in Tidebury. The silence of the sandy walkway pressing towards her. No footfall here. Her sister’s palm hot against hers. The sweet smell of the pine trees. The wind from the sea whispering across her cheek. For a few seconds, she forgets. For a few seconds, she feels her sister with her as if she’s still alive. But then she remembers and heaviness engulfs her.