Mum ignored him and carried on.
“She looked through the window and saw Mr. Charles asleep in the armchair and Casey on the floor playing with her doll.”
“So Casey was around then?” said Dad.
“Hold on, hold on, Brian!” said Mum, wriggling in her seat. “This is the thing! Penny decided to take him home to look after him, so she picked Teddy up, and before she took him home she waved at her! She waved at Casey!”
Dad put his fork down.
“What? Do you mean to say that that kid knew exactly where Teddy was all along?”
I ate my pasta in silence.
“I don’t know, Brian. Casey denied it. And Penny’s a desperate woman! Surely she’d say anything to try and get herself off the hook?”
Mum picked up her fork and then put it down again, too agitated to eat.
“Penny told the police she only intended to look after him for a while so that Mr. Charles could have a rest. She didn’t mean to keep him so long.”
“No, no, no,” said Dad. “I don’t believe that for a minute. That woman drove her own kids away trying to interfere with their lives, trying to prove she was some kind of superior mother. No, what happened was she saw Teddy and thought: ‘I can do a better job looking after him than that.’ She didn’t care about anyone else, so she just took him. End of story.”
Dad took a big mouthful of mashed potato.
Mum carried on.
“Before they knew it the police helicopter was thudding overhead and rather than own up, Penny persuaded Gordon to keep him just a bit longer. She told the police Mr. Charles was useless.”
Mum turned to me. “You know when Teddy got pushed into the pond? Penny said Mr. Charles was too busy jabbering at her to realize his own grandson was in danger. She said if it wasn’t for you banging on the glass, Teddy would have drowned.”
We were all quiet for a moment as we ate.
“He’s always been a pushover, that Gordon,” said Dad, after thinking about it for a bit. “He’s never stood up to her.”
Mum got up to get a glass of water.
“Well, he stood up to her in the end. It was only when she started making plans to take him abroad that Gordon cracked. He got up while she was still asleep and put Teddy back in the front yard. And that’s where you came in, darling.”
Mum sat back down and gave me a big smile.
“Sue Bishop is having a barbecue next week as a little celebration. The whole block is invited. That’ll be nice, won’t it? You’ll come, won’t you, Matty? Melody and Jake will be there.”
I shrugged and shook my head, and we all carried on eating.
So Casey had denied ever seeing Penny Sullivan on that day. I wondered if Mr. Charles or her mum or the police believed her. I wondered if anyone believed her.
I certainly didn’t.
“Do you think Dr. Rhodes is married?”
I didn’t care if she was or not. At this particular moment in time my skin was crawling with death and I just wanted Mum to turn the car around and go home. My knees jiggled up and down uncontrollably.
“I think she’s got a daughter,” I said.
“Has she? I wonder how old she is.”
I didn’t expect Dr. Rhodes was someone who went to Mum’s salon, and she was therefore off her gossip radar. I stared out the window as we passed a woman holding a blond toddler’s hand.
“Did you hear Melissa and the kids leave for the airport this morning?”
I nodded. At 6:22 a.m. I’d woken up to tapping on my wall. Just three.
Tap, tap, tap.
Two minutes later a car engine started up and I listened as Melissa, Casey, and Teddy Dawson drove away. Melissa was taking them back to New York with her. She didn’t want to let them out of her sight, so she planned to hire a nanny back in America and keep them with her while she worked.
We pulled up into a space on the far end of High Street and I felt like I was going to be sick. I looked at Mum and she pressed her fingers to her lips and then held them out toward me. That was as close as she could get to giving me a kiss.
“Be strong, Matthew,” she said. “You can do this, okay?”
I sat there for a moment, trying to think of a reason why I couldn’t get out of the car, why I needed her to turn around and take me straight home. Beside the car was a bin, and a missing child poster was still stuck on one side. Teddy’s glassy eyes blinked out at me.
Go on, Fishy.
Dr. Rhodes welcomed me with a beaming smile, and I sat on the brown leather sofa and glanced at the clock on her wall.
“Thanks for coming, Matthew, and well done. I know it’s not easy for you.”
Smiling, she nodded her head at me, and I suddenly felt like I was a guest on a talk show.
“So, let’s get started, shall we?” Dr. Rhodes paused to put her glasses on and then we began.
First she said she wanted me to explain how I felt when I came into contact with something that I deemed dirty. I felt silly, but after a while it was obvious that she wasn’t going to laugh, so I told her that I basically felt like my heart was going to explode.
We then discussed my top five fears, and she drew a ladder and I had to score each one according to how it made me feel:
5) Touching public door knobs/hand rails without gloves—anxiety level 7
4) Touching a trash can without gloves—anxiety level 8
3) Touching Nigel without gloves—anxiety level 9
2) Touching another person without gloves—anxiety level 9
1) Kissing another person—anxiety level 10
I didn’t mention my issues with tenplusthree or the fact that I had a piece of wallpaper in the shape of a lion’s eye hidden in my pocket to bring me luck.
We talked for a long time about what triggered my anxieties, and then she put her pad to one side for a moment and removed her glasses.
“From what you’ve told me, I think your fear of germs stems from a worry that you might pass illness on to another person. What distresses you is not the thought of you being ill, but others. Is that right?”
She was talking about that “magical thinking” again. How did she know that stuff? Her head tipped to one side as she went in for the kill.
“Would you like to tell me about that?”
I cleared my throat. My eyes warmed as they moistened; I quickly blinked the tears away.
“If-if I don’t clean … If I don’t keep cleaning then I’ll get sick and then someone around me could die. Because of me.”
Dr. Rhodes nodded.
“Okay. So what is your evidence to back up this theory?”
I rubbed at my scar over my eyebrow and felt the deep indentation, which was all the evidence I needed. The spot I couldn’t stop picking when I was little. I shrugged. Dr. Rhodes blinked at me—once, twice, and then again. I wanted to choke on the silence. Unlike Mum or Dad, she wasn’t going to let me get away with not answering.
“Mum’s baby died,” I said, my voice trembling. “Because of me.”
Any minute now I knew I’d start crying and I tried to swallow it away.
“Okay,” said Dr. Rhodes, resting her chin on her fist as she leaned forward. “Go on.”
I took a deep breath.
“When I was seven I woke up in the middle of the night feeling sick. I lay there for a bit, too scared to move because I really didn’t want to throw up. You know that feeling?”
Dr. Rhodes nodded.
I’d laid in bed absolutely still for a few minutes, listening to my stomach gurgling and hoping the sick feeling would pass, but it didn’t, so I called out for Mum. She was heavily pregnant so it took her a while to get to me, but eventually she appeared, filling the space in my doorway.
“What’s up, Matthew?” she said lazily. Her long, white dressing gown was tied around her tummy as if it was anchoring a balloon, and her hands rested on top.
“I don’t feel very well,” I said, trying not to move.
She clicked my lamp on and sat on my bed, and my stomach churned as the mattress moved. Her wide hand swaddled my forehead, making me shiver.