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

What? I know I didn’t sign anything resembling a lease while working for Jacob. I may be many things but utterly braindead is not one of them.

‘As Mr Wrath has decided to make himself unreachable, we wish to pursue our claim with her. You might like to tell her that as her name and address are listed, she will not be able to avoid us. I strongly recommend you ask her, Miss Golightly, to get in touch.’ The sarcasm with which he says my fake name makes it clear he believes he’s talking to Jessica Bridges. Which he is.

I turn off my phone again. My three-month employer has shifted quickly in my mind from hapless to fraudulent. Have I really been set up? For real? And why?

I sink on to a kitchen chair and beat the table top with a fist, hissing swear words. The very worst thing is that no one will believe me if I tell them. I’ve tried that before and it has never gone well. Despite what Michael thinks, it’s not the ‘Cry Wolf’ situation; there’s always been a wolf in my mess-ups, but I’ve always managed to escape – just. This time it looks like the wolf knows where I live and is coming to eat me.

The landline starts ringing, making me start. I rub my aching fist. No one ever calls us that way, not unless they are trying to sell us something. I bite a hangnail, looking at the handset as if it will make the decision for me. It’s probably the man again, having traced me via my address on whatever agreement Jacob has forged. Jacob knew where I lived because I’d filled out a form with all my details when applying for the job, as any normal person would do. I’m not speaking to the lawyer; I’m learning Jacob’s lesson and not making myself real. I have to go out before the landlord sends more people round to bang on the front door. Fortunately, the house is in Michael’s name, so the lawyer can’t burst in with bailiffs. As far as the law is concerned I don’t own anything worth seizing. When Mr Khan works that out, he’ll back off, surely?

I grab my bag, stuffing in keys and phone. Entering the utility room, I step over the drift of laundry waiting to go into the washing machine and pluck down a change of clothes from the dryer. They’ve been hanging there for over a week and need an iron but I’m not an ironing kind of person. That’s Michael’s phrasing about me. ‘You’re not a tidy sort of person’; ‘you’re not a focused kind of person’; ‘you’re not a careful kind of person’. No shit, Sherlock.

That reminds me to fetch my tablets. I go up to the bathroom on the half landing and pack my wash bag, including my disposable contact lenses and little box of Ritalin capsules. In my hurry, had I remembered to take one this morning? I think not. I quickly pop one from the blister pack and wash it down with a gulp snatched from under the running tap. It’s supposed to help my concentration but, to be honest, I’ve not noticed much improvement since I started the course, not unless I take a couple and I’m not supposed to exceed Charles’ prescribed dose. Tempting though. I find myself staring blankly at the green glass bottles arranged on the windowsill for a drifty moment. What am I doing? Oh yes, packing. Getting the hell out of Dodge, as they say in American novels.

Pocketing the pills, I enter the bedroom and step over Michael’s holiday clothes. How have we become the couple where he expects me to pick up after him? It’s the not-having-a-proper-job thing that’s done it to us. Or maybe he was always heading that way but I’d just not woken up to my expected role? Next he’ll be leaving me housekeeping money on the table like my dad used to do for Mum and expecting dinner on the table.

Speaking of money.

I go through Michael’s bedside drawer, looking for his wallet. He has a travel one – currently with him in Berlin – and the one he carries at home, stuffed with loyalty cards. I find it and borrow forty pounds. As I put it back, I can’t help but notice the framed photo of his wife, dead now just over five years, smiling up at me in her perfect pose of windswept black hair and sultry smile, forever young. He says he doesn’t keep it on display out of consideration for me, despite the fact that I’ve no problem sharing my life with her picture. I never met Emma, she’s dead; so why should I feel bad? It would be healthier to have her out in the open. Instead, I’ve had to put up with the knowledge that she’s snuggled down next to us at night. He usually lies on his side, turned towards her, presenting his back to me.

The lovely Emma. I’ve begun to call her that in my mind, sometimes chatting to her when I’m on my own. Was Michael such a bully to you too? Were you ‘an ironing sort of person’? You don’t look it. I bet you made him do his own shirts. He might’ve even done yours. Did he nag you about forgetting to put the sharp knives away at night? He has this hang-up about preventing someone breaking in and using them on us. It’s all that reading about psychopaths. Michael has such dark expectations that even a kitchen is first and foremost a potential crime scene.

I rarely delve beyond the photo as Michael has snapped at me several times for prying but I decide to have a proper root through the bedside shrine. You know how it works, while the cat’s away…

A little blue box with a wedding ring. I’ve opened that up before. You clearly had something I don’t, Emma, if you brought him to the point where he got down on one knee. Only way I’d get him there would be if I set a trip wire for him to fall over and that wouldn’t end in a proposal.

There’s a bundle of cards tied with a ribbon. Variations on ‘Happy Anniversary, darling’ followed by a row of big kisses. Her writing is a surprise – large loopy words in turquoise ink. A risk taker on the pen front. I conclude that she felt confident about covering more space than most of us do. Some photos. Emma at work. A couple of nice studio ones in the little album from their wedding in the US. I approve of her dress. She looks so glamorous. Very very sexy. No wonder I don’t measure up.

Right at the bottom there’s a new addition to the shrine: a Moleskine notebook. I wonder where that’s come from? I have a soft spot for that brand myself, a hangover from the teenage diary days, and I usually have several on the go at the same time, one for work, one for my random thoughts. I flick open the cover and find that it is filled with Emma’s, rather than Michael’s, handwriting. Unlike my notebooks, hers is meticulously kept – dates, neat little anecdotes, not my jottings, highlighting and underlinings. I read a couple of sentences. ‘Michael took me to Venice for a surprise weekend to make up for the bad news. I love that man more and more each day.’

Romantic Venice? I should be so lucky.

Before I have time to quash my own impulse, I’ve pulled out my phone and begun capturing any page that takes my fancy, just snapping, not taking time to read. I can’t remove something so personal to Michael, even for a day, but I have to know more about this woman – this wife – who haunts our relationship. If I understand her, then maybe I’d get a better handle on what she was to him and I’d know where I’ve been going wrong?

At least that’s what I tell myself. Maybe I’m just plain nosy and what I’m doing is way out of line? It’s a bit like grave-robbing, isn’t it? My jury is out and decided to go for a long lunch break while I carry on taking photos.

I make myself stop at twenty images. More would be obsessive, wouldn’t it? I bite my lip, seeing another entry that appeals. OK, now that really is the last. No more. Step away from the diary, Jessica.

The last page, handwriting no longer so exuberant, some of the words illegible, I see that she mentions getting a cat to cheer Michael up. It was a nice thought, to give him something to live for afterwards. My mind takes another swallow dive off the top board. The cat. I’ve forgotten the cat. Lizzy had fed her while we were away, but Michael will not be pleased if I abandon his beloved Colette to fish her dinner out of food recycle bins. Pocketing my phone after a last photo, I hurriedly put the Emma shrine back exactly as I think I found it. I then make sure I walk on Michael’s dirty boxers on my way out of the bedroom.