Love Me, Love Me Not: An addictive psychological suspense with a twist you won’t see coming

‘But we won’t tell Elle.’ I could imagine her face if she knew what I was up to. She would accuse me of putting my own selfish needs before those of the baby. Which, of course, I was.

‘Probably best not to,’ he said, as if it was for his wife’s own good.

So many untruths, so many lies we pretend aren’t there because the words have never been said. We tell ourselves it doesn’t matter, that sometimes it’s necessary to filter out the truth, that what we do is for the benefit of others. To protect them from harm, when in fact the one we want to protect is ourselves.

Poor Elle. Poor, ignorant Elle. She has been protected her entire life, only ever shown the version of a world that is as close to perfect as it’s possible to be. But she has chosen to believe. To ignore anything that threatens to pollute her glossy existence and everything in it. The house, the car, the five-star holidays. The cleaner, the gardener, designer clothes and the three-carat diamond that catches the light as she moves. I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.

She styled their existence to its very limit, but none of it is real. Take away the money and all that’s left is two people hiding from one another because they’re so afraid to reveal the true versions of themselves.

‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ Patrick’s chair complained as he stood. A cigarette sat behind his ear, a lighter concealed in his fist. One more thing Elle chose not to see. A habit he’s supposed to have broken long ago, just like her, for the sake of their unborn child, but part of him still clings to it. A small rebellion against everything she has changed.

‘Those things will kill you.’

‘I’m tougher than I look.’

Except he’s not. We’re all just flesh that can so easily be cut, blood spewing from the wound as our hearts, the very organ that feels, that gives us meaning, pumps life from our withering bodies. For death is as certain as the setting of the sun. But we do our best to ignore it. One more lie.

Patrick rubbed at his eye, pink around the edges of contacts he has worn ever since his wife told him not to hide behind those awful plastic frames.

‘Back in a sec.’

I watched him navigate his way through the crowds of people drinking their way through whatever it was they were trying to forget. Shoulders heavy as he passed underneath an exposed beam still clinging to a few strands of Christmas mistletoe.

He was doing it for her. He never wanted kids. Not really. Then again, he never wanted the lifestyle to which Elle had become so accustomed.

Taking hold of his glass I pressed my lips to the rim, an absent kiss that activated a memory I hold most dear. At the same time my hand retrieved a tiny glass vial, hidden in the bottom of my bag, and as the glass found its spot on the table once more I emptied the contents of the vial into Patrick’s drink. My whole body was slightly off kilter, stood ready, waiting, fear and excitement tangled up together.

There was still time to undo what I had been turning around in my mind for several weeks. Still time to reconsider what I was about to do. Still time to make another choice, to accept what I had agreed over lunch in Hong Kong.

She knew how much you loved him, yet she took him anyway.

‘How did we get here?’ He returned with the smoky cloak of a familiar friend, the taste of which would linger in his mouth, on his lips.

‘What do you mean?’ I stuffed my hands under my legs to stop them from snatching back the poisoned chalice. Fate had nothing on me because I always, always planned ahead. I had double-checked the required amount, made sure there was no possibility of harming his splendid self, but there was a part of me, a voice that couldn’t be stilled, which cried out for me to stop. To find another way. Not to risk doing harm. Not to risk the pain I knew was still to come.

‘Here. Now. This life.’ He scratched the back of his neck as he looked at me, willing me to understand so he didn’t have to spit out the words.

‘I always imagined you holed up in a college somewhere, with books as pets and students instead of children.’ I drained my glass then refilled it. ‘I never had you down as a suit, a maker of money.’ That was always my ambition.

‘Nor I, but we do what we must.’ He didn’t need to sigh for me to hear his remorse. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I love Elle.’

Don’t we all, in our own, twisted way, changing ourselves in order to fit her exacting requirements. My transformation came first, way back in school, when I realised, if I was going to survive, I needed to fit in, to slip inside a different persona. I did what was required. I cut my hair, I changed my glasses, I discovered how to create the perfect smoky eye. I squeezed my limbs into too-tight jeans and learnt everything else I needed to know from MTV. I practised and I practised and I practised, all so I would be good enough, one day, for someone like him.

For it is entirely possible to be anybody, anybody at all, as long as you’re willing to work at it.

But Patrick didn’t need to change. He was already perfect. For me. But not for her. It was subtle, to the untrained eye, but his osmosis had a helping hand that brushed hair from his forehead, bought gifts of Burberry overcoats and custom-made shirts to replace the battered leather jacket and M&S jumpers. Took him on weekend retreats in Tuscany where he learnt to appreciate the difference between Barolo and Sassicaia. Hosted dinners and attended corporate events, mingling with wives and partners, swapping stories about ski weekends in St Moritz and New Year in the Maldives. Keeping up with the Jones’s at its best.

Because we all have something that we want. And Elle wanted to escape the stain of her father’s working-class roots. She wanted a different kind of life, a different kind of money that was both accepted and envied. A world that Patrick’s pedigree and intelligence could provide.

Of course he never saw it, never suspected, due to his utter disbelief that she had chosen him. Was that my fault too? Did I fail to protect him? To protect his true self from her intoxicating spell? The fact he’d chosen her wasn’t what surprised me, more that I’d never believed her capable of such blatant manipulation, of taking away my happiness for the sake of her own.

‘I’m not sure I can do this.’ He clutched his glass and looked at me.

‘What is it?’ Go on, go on, go on.

‘Nothing. I have nothing to complain about.’ He rested his hands on the table, fingers splayed, my traitorous eye as ever finding the platinum band on his third finger.

‘Everyone has something to complain about.’

‘Even you?’ A mocking eyebrow stretched high.

‘Even me. For example…’ I tilted my glass in his direction. ‘…This will shortly be forbidden.’

‘I’m surprised Elle hasn’t put you on some kind of pre-pregnancy detox.’

‘She has tried, believe me, but I refuse to spend my last days of freedom either juicing or partaking in sunrise yoga.’

He raised his pint. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

She never had asked what he intended to do that weekend. How he would pass the time while she stretched and starved her body on a yoga retreat in Ibiza. Happy instead to bathe in the ensuing compliments about the healthy glow that would result from the consumption of nothing but plant water for three days.