Read Online Follow You Home by Mark Edwards - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mark Edwards
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want to kill her.
She’d boarded the next train and found a seat, a memory coming back to her. As she’d clung to the man who saved her, she’d seen a figure pushing hurriedly through the crowd away from her. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. She couldn’t . . .
She killed the thought, reminded herself that it was stupid to think like this.
By the time she’d reached her stop, she had convinced herself that she had imagined it.
Chapter Twelve
D r Claudia Sauvage’s office was on the top floor of her huge red-brick Victorian terrace in Crouch End. Sometimes, on my way up the stairs to the room at the back of the house where we had our weekly sessions, I would catch glimpses of her life outside the therapy room. The smell of soup wafting from the kitchen, photos of Dr Sauvage and her husband framed and hung in the hallway, a couple of pugs poking their squashed faces out of the living room. But I wasn’t allowed to ask Claudia about herself: our sessions were dedicated wholly to talking about me.
The first session had been dedicated to filling Claudia in on my background. I wasn’t sure how pertinent it was but Claudia said it was important to get as much detail as possible so she could understand and help me. So I told her that I grew up in Beckenham, on the outskirts of south London, and was an only child. My parents were divorced and we weren’t particularly close. Claudia wanted to know a lot more about this but I was reluctant to talk about it. I didn’t think it was important. But she scribbled notes as I told her that I only saw them now at Christmas and on the odd special occasion. They had both remarried and thrown themselves into new lives with new partners. They usually wanted to talk about what the other one was up to, as if they were competing to be happier. I didn’t want to get drawn into it.
I spent much of my adolescence in my bedroom playing video games and learning how to code. I was a geek, until I discovered music and met Jake, who showed me that life outside my bedroom was a lot more interesting. From that point I spent a lot of time trying to work out who I was. I was naturally mathematical, scientific, but I yearned to be artistic, bohemian. I studied computer science at university but went out drinking a lot and had a series of short-term girlfriends, all of whom were studying one of the arts. I stopped reading science fiction and read the books these girls pressed on me: Donna Tartt, Douglas Coupland, lots of Penguin Classics. I experimented with soft drugs. I watched a lot of films with subtitles.
After college I moved to North London and worked for an internet start-up for a few years before getting into app development in my spare time. I met Laura, via Jake, and fell in love for the first and only time. Laura was everything I’d ever wanted: well-read, arty, passionate and principled. She encouraged me to embrace my true nature, to do the things I enjoyed without worrying about the image I projected. She helped me figure out who I am. I filled our flat with gadgets and she made it come to life with clutter and candles and bright colours.
‘It’s interesting,’ Dr Sauvage said, ‘how when I ask you to talk about yourself, you quickly start telling me about your girlfriend.’
I shrugged. ‘My life is unremarkable.’
She smiled. ‘No life is unremarkable.’
Dr Sauvage was in her mid-forties, thin and elegant, with slender wrists and legs that I found it hard not to stare at. She wore fashionable glasses and a dark grey jersey dress. During our sessions, she puffed on an electronic cigarette, sending clouds of water vapour into the air. She’d asked me if I minded, which I didn’t at all. ‘I’m more addicted to this than I ever was to real cigarettes,’ she confided.
‘So,’ she said now. ‘How are you feeling, Daniel?’
When I didn’t answer, she said, ‘How about your sleep? Any better?’
I adjusted my
She’d boarded the next train and found a seat, a memory coming back to her. As she’d clung to the man who saved her, she’d seen a figure pushing hurriedly through the crowd away from her. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. She couldn’t . . .
She killed the thought, reminded herself that it was stupid to think like this.
By the time she’d reached her stop, she had convinced herself that she had imagined it.
Chapter Twelve
D r Claudia Sauvage’s office was on the top floor of her huge red-brick Victorian terrace in Crouch End. Sometimes, on my way up the stairs to the room at the back of the house where we had our weekly sessions, I would catch glimpses of her life outside the therapy room. The smell of soup wafting from the kitchen, photos of Dr Sauvage and her husband framed and hung in the hallway, a couple of pugs poking their squashed faces out of the living room. But I wasn’t allowed to ask Claudia about herself: our sessions were dedicated wholly to talking about me.
The first session had been dedicated to filling Claudia in on my background. I wasn’t sure how pertinent it was but Claudia said it was important to get as much detail as possible so she could understand and help me. So I told her that I grew up in Beckenham, on the outskirts of south London, and was an only child. My parents were divorced and we weren’t particularly close. Claudia wanted to know a lot more about this but I was reluctant to talk about it. I didn’t think it was important. But she scribbled notes as I told her that I only saw them now at Christmas and on the odd special occasion. They had both remarried and thrown themselves into new lives with new partners. They usually wanted to talk about what the other one was up to, as if they were competing to be happier. I didn’t want to get drawn into it.
I spent much of my adolescence in my bedroom playing video games and learning how to code. I was a geek, until I discovered music and met Jake, who showed me that life outside my bedroom was a lot more interesting. From that point I spent a lot of time trying to work out who I was. I was naturally mathematical, scientific, but I yearned to be artistic, bohemian. I studied computer science at university but went out drinking a lot and had a series of short-term girlfriends, all of whom were studying one of the arts. I stopped reading science fiction and read the books these girls pressed on me: Donna Tartt, Douglas Coupland, lots of Penguin Classics. I experimented with soft drugs. I watched a lot of films with subtitles.
After college I moved to North London and worked for an internet start-up for a few years before getting into app development in my spare time. I met Laura, via Jake, and fell in love for the first and only time. Laura was everything I’d ever wanted: well-read, arty, passionate and principled. She encouraged me to embrace my true nature, to do the things I enjoyed without worrying about the image I projected. She helped me figure out who I am. I filled our flat with gadgets and she made it come to life with clutter and candles and bright colours.
‘It’s interesting,’ Dr Sauvage said, ‘how when I ask you to talk about yourself, you quickly start telling me about your girlfriend.’
I shrugged. ‘My life is unremarkable.’
She smiled. ‘No life is unremarkable.’
Dr Sauvage was in her mid-forties, thin and elegant, with slender wrists and legs that I found it hard not to stare at. She wore fashionable glasses and a dark grey jersey dress. During our sessions, she puffed on an electronic cigarette, sending clouds of water vapour into the air. She’d asked me if I minded, which I didn’t at all. ‘I’m more addicted to this than I ever was to real cigarettes,’ she confided.
‘So,’ she said now. ‘How are you feeling, Daniel?’
When I didn’t answer, she said, ‘How about your sleep? Any better?’
I adjusted my
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