White Bodies: A gripping psychological thriller for fans of Clare Mackintosh and Lisa Jewell
feet. Under her eyes her skin is stained watery black, her mascara I suppose, but it looks like black tears, like sadness and crying.
‘What are you up to?’ she says to me shakily. ‘You never do this.’
Felix stands up and stares at her. I gawp over the back of the sofa. She seems weak like she might collapse, leaning against the door frame like it’s the only thing holding her up. Her face is dead, as though she doesn’t have the energy to form an expression and the word that comes into my head is damaged. A burning ball of anger forms in my stomach and rises to my throat, and in my head my sleepless night and nine solid hours of reading about sickening abuse makes my thoughts scrunch together into a surge of fury. I stand up too and face Felix.
‘Look at her! This is your work… You’re going to destroy her!’
He says nothing; he’s stunned, and Tilda pulls herself upright, the life snapping back into her body and she shrieks at me, ‘Un-fucking-believable! What’s wrong with you, Callie? What the fuck are you on about? Lay off Felix and get out of here, right now!’
She comes at me, taking my elbow, marching me out of the flat, closing the door on me. As I descend the stairs I’m beating myself up, thinking what an imbecile I’ve been, blaming my sleep deprivation for my outburst; thinking now that maybe she was just weary, like normal people get weary from time to time.
I make my way home on the bus, calling Tilda’s phone five or six times as I travel, and texting her, saying sorry. But she doesn’t reply.
A week later Tilda finally answers my call and accepts my apology. But she’s short and business-like with me, not understanding at all and after she hangs up I feel even worse.
Everything changes between Tilda and Felix and me; it doesn’t happen at once, but step by step. There’s a retraction of Felix’s energy. Or, more accurately, he excludes me from his force field and instead intensifies his focus on Tilda. I gather this because I’m no longer invited to spend evenings at Curzon Street, or to accompany the two of them on outings. And our phone calls change. Tilda and I used to chat on the phone fairly regularly and at the end of our conversations she would say ‘Felix wants to talk to you,’ and he’d ask how my week was going, or for my opinion on something they were discussing, like whether green olives were nicer than black olives, or whether some TV comedian was funny or just annoying. Small things. But Felix doesn’t ask to talk to me any more, and Tilda seems happy for weeks to go by with no contact between us.
On the few occasions when she does actually answer the phone, Felix is her only topic of conversation – how he’s taking her to a private view at an art gallery or a new restaurant or the opera (I’ve never known her go to the opera before). In May, she stays in his flat in Clerkenwell for a couple of weeks so that the builders can start their work in Curzon Street. Then in June the two of them drive to Provence in the Porsche for their holiday, and Tilda is out of touch altogether – not even a postcard – and she doesn’t reply to my texts. When she returns, I phone and suggest that she comes round for a movie night, but she makes excuses, saying only ‘sometime soon’, and that she’s busy at the minute because Felix is moving into her flat and ‘we’re rationalising our belongings’. I feel that I’ve been eliminated from her world, and that makes me scared. The controllingmen.com website has warned me about how predators try to isolate their prey, cutting them off from their friends and family.
In late June, Tilda and I meet briefly in a café in Regents Park and it’s obvious that something’s deeply wrong. My sister has always looked delicate, but now she seems undernourished, and is nervy. Just after we sit down, I knock my hot chocolate over and a river of froth snakes across the table, reaching her phone. It’s an accident, a tiny mishap, but she makes it seem like the last straw, saying, ‘I can’t stand this,’ and she walks right out of the café, leaving me scrabbling to clean up the mess – I’m on my hands and knees and a young waitress comes rushing over with kitchen paper. ‘Here, have this,’ she says. ‘Was that Tilda Farrow with you…? The actress?’
A few minutes later Tilda returns and apologises. ‘Sorry, I’m feeling so edgy right now.’ She slumps into her chair, wilted and limp. I want to say, ‘What’s wrong with you? You look so ill.’ But I can’t, because I’m frightened that she’ll storm out again. So we discuss neutral subjects, like her latest outings with Felix and how wonderful the house in Provence had been. An ozone pool, she says, at the perfect temperature, and a cook who made extraordinary French meals. Not too much cream and fat, but using amazing fruit and vegetables fresh from the local market. French beans in France are nothing like the ones in Sainsbury’s. There’s no comparison; they have real beany flavour. She’s talking like a travel brochure, and as she speaks there’s an almost imperceptible shakiness in her voice. I take a risk. ‘So the house and the cooking were perfect, but what about the company?’
‘You mean Felix? He was perfect too. He’d planned everything, all our outings, food, everything.’
‘You like that? It doesn’t sound like you, not very free spirit.’
‘It’s fine, Callie.’ Again that shakiness in her voice, a flicker in her eyes and I pause before speaking, aware that I’m about to steer the conversation into darker territory – but I have to do it.
‘You should take a look at this website,’ I say. ‘It’s called controllingmen.com and it tells you about the warning signs you should look out for with men like Felix. So you can be prepared… and safe.’ I fumble with my phone, finding the site, while she drinks her coffee, looking around distantly, like she doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be home with Felix. I find the site, and show her.
‘For fuck’s sake…’ She’s scrolling down, far too fast to read it properly. ‘That’s bloody crazy nut-job stuff, you’re losing the plot, Callie!’ Then she softens, which surprises me. ‘I know you think you’re helping… Now, eat that carrot cake, I need to get home.’
But I’m not ready to leave, and I say, ‘How did you meet him?’
‘God, you’re even suspicious about that! Unbelievable… I met him through Jacob Thynne, the guy who played Max in Rebecca… It was perfectly normal… An evening out at the Groucho.’ As she’s speaking, though, her tone belies her words – her voice is weak and nervous, and I make one last effort.
‘Please, Tilda, let me help… I want to help. Honestly, look at the controllingmen site!’
‘You’re ridiculous, Callie,’ she says. ‘You have to stop behaving like this!’ She stands up, stares at me coldly, then hurries out of the café.
I take my laptop out of my bag and write: Tilda seems fearful, unconfident, nervous. I told her about controllingmen but she won’t listen. When I talk to her, I make everything worse. I drive her closer to HIM.
The only time I feel that my sister and I are similar, from the inside out, is when we go swimming, which we do most Saturday mornings. Mum sits on the side of the pool, her legs dangling in the water, reading her book and looking up from time to time to check we haven’t drowned, while Tilda and I dive under each other’s legs, performing roly-polys, picking up coins from the bottom. Our weaving about and beneath each other feels harmonious and dreamlike, despite all the yelling and splashing going on around us, and it’s a revelation to feel calm and confident inside. Usually my sister outshines me and I’m diminished by the force of her luminous energy. But, as a swimmer I can keep up – even though I’m useless at other physical activities – and I suspect I have a champion pair of lungs. Underwater I can hold out for more than a minute, and I beat Tilda when