The Girl In Cell A
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Synopsis
They say she's a murderer.
She thinks she's been framed.
If only she could remember what happened in Eden Falls.
Convicted of cold-blooded murder at seventeen, Orianna has always maintained her innocence. But there are holes in her memory, a blind spot over that fateful day. Did she really kill Gideon Wyclerc? And what happened to Gideon's teenaged daughter, Grace, who vanished that same day? Forensic psychologist, Annie Ledet, is tasked with unlocking Orianna's faulty memory and separating the real woman from the true crime celebrity she has become in the media. But as their sessions progress, Annie reaches into Orianna's past to a shattering truth.
Praise for Vaseem Khan's storytelling:
'A stunning, richly imagined and downright thrilling mystery' CHRIS WHITAKER
'Vaseem Khan keeps getting better and better' WILLIAM SHAW
'Outstanding' IMRAN MAHMOOD
'Vaseem Khan gets better with each book. A triumph!'' STEVE CAVANAGH
Release date: May 1, 2025
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Print pages: 368
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The Girl In Cell A
Vaseem Khan
Acknowledgements
It’s always frightening doing something new. With this book I’ve had to do several new things. This is my first book set outside India. It’s my first psychological thriller. It’s my first book written using first person narrative. It’s the first book that has taken me three years to finish. It’s the first book where I’ve had to take a complete draft, and then tear it apart and restructure it. It’s the first book where I’ve wanted to hurl myself off a cliff, several times.
So, all in all, a long, exhilarating, and sometimes painful journey.
The good news? I am incredibly happy with the end result. However the book ultimately fares, as a writer I’m glad I took on the challenge of doing something different. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it.
Why small-town America? I have always been fascinated by Americana, both onscreen and on the page, all the way from To Kill a Mockingbird to Stephen King. One of my favourite films, which I first saw as a teenager, is In the Heat of the Night, starring Sydney Poitier in a seminal role. This film – and others – shaped my vision of such places, places of quiet heartbreak, simmering hostilities, and shattering secrets. Human drama is at its keenest in such settings – and what more could a writer wish for?
I could not have got this far without a whole team behind (and usually in front) of me.
So, thank you to my agent Euan Thorneycroft at A.M. Heath, my editor Jo Dickinson, assistant editor Kate Norman, and my publicist Alainna Hadjigeorgiou.
I would also like to thank the others involved at Hodder, namely, Inayah Sheikh Thomas in production and Dom Gribben in audiobooks. Similar thanks go to Euan’s assistant Jessica Lee. And thank you once again to Jack Smyth for another terrific cover.
Thank you also to the many readers, critics, reviewers, bloggers, book-groupers, podcasters, and word-of-mouth enthusiasts who have helped me get to a point in my career where I can take such risks. Your kindness is hugely appreciated.
Special credit to early chapter readers, Tracy Fenton and the TBC (THE Book Club) gang, and Sam Brownley, Kath Middleton and Caroline Maston from the UK Crime Book Club. Your feedback helped me immensely.
And another special thank you to writer Nev March and Pravesh Chatturvedi who drove me around small-town America last year, introduced me to my first po’boy (if you know, you know), and went way beyond the call of duty. Thank you too, to the gang at Malice Domestic who all made me feel so welcome and gave me excellent tips on how to ‘write America’.
My gratitude, as ever, to my WhatsApp pals, namely, Abir Mukherjee, Ayisha Malik, Amit Dhand, Imran Mahmood, and Alex Caan. Brilliant writers and even better human beings. For the most part.
And lastly, a thank you to my family. My brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, for keeping me grounded; and to my wife, Nirupama, for keeping me sane and healthy. After a couple of medical issues last year, she has not only transformed my diet, but also insists on replacing my ‘author wardrobe’, for no good reason that I can understand, but which apparently is very necessary for the modern writer.
Chapter 1
ANNIE: THEN
I picture her walking along corridors humming with misery and loneliness, the by-products of human confinement. I know that she will be led in here by a man in uniform and left alone with me. Something I insisted on, despite the warnings.
It is my first scheduled session with Orianna, convicted murderer and true-crime celebrity. The Girl in Cell A.
It is not my first time dealing with a killer. But this case is different.
Orianna’s application for parole cannot proceed without a thorough psychological evaluation. If she is to be released back into the world, she must pass through me, through the tests I have devised for her. And if she is given her freedom, then, in effect, I will be responsible for what happens next.
Where will she go? What will she do? There are no guarantees here. No magic therapy pill that can make a person in Orianna’s situation entirely stable, entirely safe.
I cannot pretend that I am not nervous.
I check my watch, then dig a compact out of my handbag. No one will come out and say it but, in the therapeutic setting, appearances matter. Patients, like everyone else in the Instagram Age, are overtly influenced by the visual.
What will Orianna see when she enters the room?
A white woman, medium height, athletically built – though thrice-weekly sessions at the gym are now a distant memory. Blonde and blue-eyed, hair platted down to the middle of my back: a single braid, like a Viking’s wife. My outfit is formal – navy trouser suit matched with the best shoes I own, a pair of Jimmy Choo flats that Michael bought me with a month’s salary when we were still trying to one-up each other in the romantic gestures’ stakes.
They’ve lasted admirably. Which is more than I can say for our marriage.
I consider taking off my jacket, but then decide to leave it on. It might seem a little stiff, forbidding, but the patient-therapist relationship invariably begins by marking out territory.
My only concession to personality is the breast cancer band around my wrist, a pop of colour in a charcoal painting.
Grey light seeps in through a barred window.
Winter is almost here. The locals are bracing themselves for crippling blizzards and eight-feet-high snowdrifts. In the coffee shops and bars, there will be talk of climate change, advocates and naysayers eyeballing each other over lattes and beer.
In the corner of the room, a sluggish radiator sighs in complaint. It’s warm enough, but by no means ‘toasty’, as Leo, my sixteen-year-old, would say.
The smell of good coffee permeates the space. I brought it with me – enough for us both. It’s not exactly regulation, but I know that in a place like this, decent coffee will be in short supply.
A knock sounds from behind me.
I take a deep breath, stash my compact, then turn and face the door.
Barney enters first.
I have met him several times now, in preparation for this first session. A handsome, middle-aged black man. His blue-shirted uniform is pristine; his shoes spotless. In our interactions, he is unfailingly polite, patience personified as I ask my questions. He has prepared me as best as he is able, though I sense a hesitation, an uncertainty at the wisdom of this course of action.
The last time we were together, he told me bluntly, ‘Don’t underestimate her. We call her the queen of mood swings. A year ago, she broke another woman’s fibula. Snapped it clean in two. Do you know where the fibula is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not many people do.’ The thunderbolt scar at his temple glows. I am tempted to ask him if it had been inflicted in the line of duty.
Today, he says nothing, simply steps aside and ushers in the woman behind him.
She is smaller than I expected; smaller than her courtroom photographs make her appear. Five-three, five-four. The mind makes ogres of those we fear.
Her hair is short, black, falling to her shoulders. The face is oval, her skin a dusky colour – the legacy of her mixed-race, Indian-American ancestry – and as flawless as a Photoshopped cover. The years may have taken their toll, but Orianna is still a beautiful woman. That beauty was one reason the case took hold of the national imagination. The other was the name of the man she had killed.
The Girl in Cell A.
Some tabloid hack gave her that handle, a sly nod to Orianna’s celebrity status, a throwaway remark attributed to one of her prison guards. In the dubious pecking order of the penal system, Orianna is an ‘A-lister’, an orange-suited VIP.
The hokey tag has followed her around, eminently hashtaggable.
She looks at me, a cool, unblinking gaze from deep-set brown eyes.
Unto the breach.
‘Hi, Orianna. My name is Annie. Annie Ledet. I’m a forensic psychotherapist. We’ll be working together.’
Does she sense that the environment has been carefully modulated? There’s nothing here that might be considered threatening, nothing to conjure up dramatic emotions. Plain walls, adorned by a single watercolour – of the lake that sits just beyond the razor wire – and an improving verse in a cheap plastic frame: 1 John 1:9, ‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.’
Several plants rest uneasily in plastic holders. Rubber figs. Kentia palms. A Boston fern in a seagrass basket. Terracotta holders are forbidden, lest they be smashed to fashion lethal shards.
‘So,’ she says finally. ‘How does this work?’
Her voice is gravelly, startlingly old. Of course, Orianna is no longer a child. She’s a woman, one shaped by the vicissitudes of her unique fate.
And it will now be my task to return her to that time, when the storm first came down on her. The journey that we take together in this cramped little room will determine the next chapter in her life. Is she still a danger to the public? To herself? The law doesn’t require me to solve all of Orianna’s mysteries – just enough to tick the right boxes.
The fact is that most murderers serve their time and are released. A very small percentage go on to kill again. We simply don’t have the luxury of locking up killers and throwing away the key. Our prisons are overcrowded to the point of bursting. And so, former murderers walk among us, indistinguishable from anyone else. The chain-smoking neighbour wheezing behind a lawnmower. The old guy in the cubicle two rows down. The woman serving breakfast at the diner.
Our pasts are rarely emblazoned on our exteriors.
I gesture Orianna towards a scarred coffee table and a pair of beaten-up leather chairs.
‘No couch?’
I smile. A sense of humour, no matter how caustic, is a good sign, something I can work with.
And there’s no doubt in my mind that I have my work cut out for me.
The world may have long ago relegated Orianna to the basement of horrors where America’s monsters reside, but the fact remains that she continues, to this day, to protest her innocence. She continues to claim that her memory of the killing is little more than a white-noise soup of imagery.
And in none of those images does she see herself blasting Gideon Wyclerc’s head from his shoulders.
Chapter 10
ORIANNA: NOW
The Eden Falls Community Library had once been a haven for me when I needed to hide away from the world.
In previous incarnations, the library had served as the town hall and the courthouse, although it had originally been built to house back-office operations for the Wyclerc mining business. As a consequence, the three-storey building had been pampered and coddled, renovated on multiple occasions, briefly neglected when the business operations were moved to grander, modern premises, then revived as a municipal hub following the war.
That period lasted a good four decades before a story broke in the mid-nineties that permanently tarnished the library’s reputation. A newspaper in the neighbouring town of Barrier claimed that a black man by the name of Edgar Myers – a local activist – had been lynched on the premises back in the thirties, hung by the neck from a decorative yardarm protruding from the building’s façade. The body had been left to swing for two days.
Though the revelation was furiously denied by the town elders – and an ongoing feud established with Barrier – the stink chased the courthouse out to a purpose-built building overlooking the nearby town square, and the town-hall functions to a less imposing but more practical home directly opposite the new courthouse.
Walking up the spiral staircase, I pass an older-looking white man in grubby denim overalls polishing the brass railing. I have the feeling that I know him, that he might be Tommy Quinn, once a local football star, then an equally notorious drunk. Now he looks to be a veteran of the brigade of ill-fated Eden Falls men who perform menial chores for minimum wage for the various municipal institutions that run the town. Quinn, as I remember him, is the sort of good old boy common to these parts, the kind who would have leered at my mother’s beauty while looking down on her because of the colour of her skin.
The first floor is taken up by row upon row of old-fashioned wooden shelving, laden with books both purpose-bought and donated from the barely thumbed collections of genteel – and now expired – southern gentlemen.
There is a hush about the place that is stultifying.
I find Gertrude – Gerty – in the back row, squatting on the floor, placing books on the bottommost shelf from a handcart.
I stand there, waiting silently, until my presence twitches the hairs on the back of her neck. She twists around and looks up at me, then takes the spectacles dangling on a chain around her neck and places them on her nose.
A long moment passes.
‘Well, damn it all to hell, child.’
Chapter 100
ORIANNA: NOW
‘Jesus Christ!’ Peter is back on his feet.
Rebekah spins around. ‘Have you lost your mind?’
Amos waves the revolver around like a wand. ‘I’d strongly advise you to sit down.’
I look at Luke, see that his face is impassive. Had he known that Amos was going to do this?
Rebekah is frozen in place. And then, with a monumental effort, she forces herself to move forward and stumble into a seat. Fury boils from her in waves hot enough to sear the tablecloth.
‘There’s a reason you’re all here today,’ Amos says. ‘I have an announcement. But before we get to that . . . You all know by now why Orianna has come back. She claims she didn’t kill Gideon. Now, you can believe her or not; frankly, I couldn’t give a damn. But in her time here, she’s made some intriguing discoveries, and tonight, we are going to drag the past into the light.’ His eyes darken. ‘Gideon was killed right here, on the grounds of this estate. I have never voiced the thought before, but I am certain I’m not the only one whose mind it has crossed in all these years . . . If Orianna didn’t kill him, then Gideon’s killer might well be sitting here at this table. Or at least may know who killed him.’
‘That’s preposterous,’ Peter begins. ‘Surely, you can’t believe her?’
‘Here’s what I think,’ continues Amos, ignoring him. ‘I think you’re waiting for me to drop dead. All of you. You think my death will free you in some way, of guilt, of responsibility. But Gideon, for all his faults, was my son, and I refuse to go to my grave not knowing what really happened to him.’
David tries again. ‘Amos—’
‘Shut up, David.’
I see Luke flinch. Susannah places a hand on her husband’s shoulder. David gazes off into space.
Amos turns to Rebekah. ‘Orianna tells me you were fucking Tommy Quinn when Gideon was killed. Is that true?’
Rebekah’s face turns scarlet. ‘I don’t have to listen to this—’
‘Oh, you’ll listen all right. High up there on your cross. Well, pity party’s over, daughter-in-law of mine. Now . . . answer the goddamned question.’
‘You have no right—’
‘He was my son! I loved him. And I will have a fucking answer!’
Her eyes blaze. ‘You think I didn’t love him? Is that it? You think I married him for his money? Whatever happened between Gideon and me, it was as much his doing as mine. If he hadn’t been out there screwing everything in a dress, maybe I wouldn’t have gone looking for a Tommy Quinn.’
The words strike Amos with the force of a blow. ‘Well, the truth has put its boots on today.’ A silence passes. ‘Very well, truth is what I asked for and truth is what we shall have. You’re right. Gideon was a bad husband. And I was a bad father. But the one thing I know, the one thing I’m certain of, is that I had nothing to do with his death. I can no longer say the same about everyone sat at this table . . . Who is Tommy Quinn to you?’
Rebekah looks like an animal caught in a trap. Finally, she says, ‘Tommy and I had a . . . We had something.’
‘And Gideon found out?’
‘Tommy told him. On the day of the festival. Just came right up and told him.’
‘Told him what?’
‘That he was in love with me. That Gideon didn’t deserve me.’
‘And you? Were you in love with him?’
Colour climbs into her face. ‘Tommy was everything Gideon was not. He made me feel as if I was the only thing that mattered.’
Amos picks up the revolver and taps the butt of it gently on the table. ‘You fell in love with a low-life junkie degenerate. Tommy Quinn may well have killed my son.’
Her head snaps up. ‘Tommy didn’t do it! He’s not . . . He’s not like that. He’s not the brute people make him out to be.’
‘He spent three years in prison. He’s a drug dealer.’ It is Peter who has spoken.
Rebekah flashes him a look of pure hatred. ‘And what about you, Peter? You hated Gideon. You knew Amos was going to put him in charge of the business. Gideon’s death gave you everything you wanted.’
Peter’s eyes burn into her. ‘As God is my witness, I had nothing to do with Gideon’s killing.’
Rebekah snorts. ‘I wouldn’t invoke God if I were you. Not at this table.’
I see Ruth flinch. I remember Amos telling me that Ruth is a religious freak.
Amos’s smile is a facsimile of mirth. ‘That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said in eighteen years. The truth is, God abandoned this house a long time ago.’ His roving gaze settles on Samuel. ‘Yesterday, I found out that a girl over in Turow, about Grace’s age, was doused in gasoline by her father and set alight. For no more reason than she wouldn’t fetch him his supper. Tell me, Padre, how do you reconcile your faith with that?’
Samuel clears his throat softly. ‘Man sins because God ordained it so. But God gave us the capacity to perform penance for our sins. To be forgiven. No man’s soul is unredeemable.’
‘Evil has an odour,’ Amos responds. ‘And by God, I smell that odour on us. I hear the serpent slithering in the Garden of Eden that Nathaniel built. The Wyclercs! . . . Let me tell you about my father. Nathaniel’s hands were steeped in blood. For a start, he murdered his brother and sister.’
Chapter 101
ORIANNA: NOW
The revelation silences the table, hangs over us like a guillotine.
I see the others stare at Amos, the day’s dying light frozen in their eyes like shards of mirrored glass.
‘My father left his younger siblings – the twins, Esther and Jude – behind when he first came to Eden Falls. They had no one else except each other. They became close, closer than nature or God ever intended for a brother and sister. When they finally got to Eden Falls, and my father found out, he locked them in the chapel and set it alight. They burned to death.’
Something dark and wet stirs inside my guts.
‘Nathaniel spent his life trying to understand the nature of evil,’ Amos continues. ‘The monster inside himself that had made him commit such a terrible act. He never could. In the end, he believed he had no choice but to carry out the ultimate act of penance. He threw himself into that boar pit. He told me he was going to do it, the night before he died. I didn’t believe him.’ A shudder trembles his shoulders. ‘That’s who we are. The blood pumping through your veins.’
‘That isn’t true. It simply isn’t,’ Peter says eventually. ‘You’re drunk.’
Amos swings his gaze around the table. ‘This family is a lie. This whole goddamned town is a lie.’ He picks up the revolver. ‘So tell me, my pantheon of the Philistines, why shouldn’t I believe that one of you killed Gideon?’
‘Amos. What are you doing?’ David’s voice cuts across the table. ‘This isn’t going to bring Gideon back.’
His words, spoken so quietly, hum with a power that gives Amos pause. His hand trembles. His eyes lose focus. For an instant, I see him as he is: an old man nearing death, bleary-headed with fatigue, grief, and its close cousin, remorse. The angel of darkness hovers at his shoulder; a dead light glimmers in his gaze.
Susannah stands, put her hands on David’s wheelchair. ‘I’m taking him home.’
We watch as she begins pushing him away.
‘Wait.’ Amos’s voice is a croak. ‘I called you here because I want you to know – I want all of you to know – that I’ll be changing my will. My controlling stake in Wyclerc Industries will pass to Orianna.’
A gasp is pulled from Peter’s throat. His chair clatters back as he storms to his feet. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Did I stutter, Peter?’
‘You can’t— you can’t do that.’
‘I assure you, I can.’
‘This is insane.’ His hands ball helplessly at his sides. But Amos is looking at David.
For a long moment, David says nothing, and then he nods.
After they leave, I turn to Luke. His face is unreadable.
I hear Rebekah rise to her feet. Without a word, she turns and walks away.
Peter remains rooted to the spot, white-faced, staring at his father as if at an escaped lunatic. Beside him, Ruth wipes her lips with a napkin and stands. Samuel joins them. ‘I’m heading back to the church. Mrs Abernathy is hosting an evening recital. Peter, perhaps we should take our leave?’
His brother ignores him. Instead, he points a shaking finger at me. ‘You won’t see a dime of that money. I’ll go to my grave before I let you get your murdering hands on it.’
‘I don’t want the money. I never asked for it.’
Peter swings his finger towards Amos. ‘You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to let you do this. I’ll fight you with everything I’ve got.’
‘What have you got, Peter? I own the controlling stake in Wyclerc Industries. I made you CEO. I can just as easily take it away from you.’
‘You wouldn’t.’ The full horror of the situation is dawning on him. He puts a hand on his wife’s shoulder to steady himself. ‘You can’t.’
‘Come on, Peter.’ Samuel slips a hand through his brother’s arm, then gently leads him away.
‘Well,’ says Martha as the sound of their engines fades, ‘that was enormous fun. I should get out of bed more often.’
I pick up my glass and drain it. The whisky is smoky and warm and leaves a dark taste in my throat. I look at Amos. ‘Why?’
‘If you live long enough, you can learn to stomach anything. Except mendacity.’
‘This was pointless. I didn’t come back to Eden Falls for your money.’
‘My fortune, what’s left of it, is better off in your hands than theirs.’
‘You really have lost your mind.’
‘Perhaps . . . there was another reason I asked you over.’ He nods at Cletus.
I watch as Cletus walks to a side table, removes the cover from a steel cloche, and returns with a cake, filled with white cream and ribbons of strawberry jam. He bends over it and lights three candles bunched in the centre.
‘Happy birthday,’ Amos says.
Something indescribable wells inside me. My mother almost always forgot my birthday, running around at the last instant – a haphazard affair, at best. There were no friends to invite over, no gifts worth the name.
I glance at Luke. He offers up a strained smile. Is this his doing?
‘I don’t need this.’
‘Humour a dying man.’
‘That’s not fair. You think you can make me . . . what? Forgive? Forget? Because you’re dying?’
‘I don’t need your forgiveness. You’re my granddaughter. Nothing you or I say can change that. Now, blow out the fucking candles.’
His brow shimmers with perspiration. He looks ready to pass out.
My mouth is suddenly dry. I glance again at Luke. He nods at me. I see Grace hovering at his shoulder. Grace gives a slow smile. Her face blurs, changes, until it is my own face at Luke’s shoulder.
I blink. The apparition vanishes.
I stand on unsteady legs, blow out the candles.
Chapter 102
ORIANNA: NOW
Afterwards, as we dig into crystal bowls of brandy-and-butterscotch ice cream, I tell Amos about the lynch mob at the town hall. He frowns. ‘Once upon a time, they wouldn’t have dared cross me.’ He massages his chest, as if the thought of the coming conflict has given him heartburn.
‘How do you feel today?’
‘Like a bear ate me up and shat me into a tin can.’
‘Why won’t you accept treatment?’
‘Never fight a battle you know you can’t win.’ He clasps his hands around his belly. ‘What was it like? In prison?’
I want to tell him that he has no right to ask me that. No birthday cake can make up for what he has done to me, to my mother, the years stolen from us both.
He senses my thoughts. ‘Forget it. Forget I asked.’
‘I met a woman in there. A cellmate. She’d murdered two people. She would tell me about lost light. The light that illuminates the human soul. Each time we commit acts against our better nature, we lose some of that light. But she believed we could get it back. That lost light. All we have to do is turn the dial.’
‘Amen to that,’ says Martha.
‘Why were you so hard on Rebekah?’ I ask Amos. ‘Do you really think she could have had something to do with Gideon’s death?’
‘I don’t know. A part of me wants her to be guilty. At least I’d have an answer. But then, I think of Grace. Rebekah loved her, doted on her. She’s kept her room like a mausoleum, exactly the way it was on the day she vanished. I can’t believe that Rebekah had anything to do with whatever happened to Grace.’
I consider his words. ‘What if Tommy Quinn killed Gideon, and Grace somehow found out? Perhaps Quinn did something to Grace, to stop her from telling anyone. Perhaps Rebekah doesn’t know.’
Luke speaks up. He has been so quiet, I have almost forgotten he is still here. ‘That’s quite a leap.’
A silence passes.
‘Cletus,’ Martha says, ‘I think you should get Amos back inside. He looks beat.’
I expect Amos to throw a hissy fit at being treated like a child. But he says nothing as Cletus helps him to his feet.
‘That stuff about Nathaniel,’ I say. ‘Why’d you tell us?’
He looks down at me with a greater measure of sadness than I have seen in human eyes in a very long time. ‘Because there are some secrets a man cannot take to the grave. There’s only one thing I’m certain of any more, Orianna. If there is a heaven up there, I will never see it.’
Chapter 103
ANNIE: THEN
I stop at a gas station about an hour from the town.
My car, a ten-year-old Subaru, is a luxury I can ill afford but cannot do without.
The gas station is resolutely uncharming, a throwback to the era of wild-grass-edged tarmac, dungareed attendants, and a hostility to outsiders that might as well have been painted onto the flaking signboard hanging from the low-slung canopy.
I wander into the office-cum-shop, grab a bottle of water and a bar of chocolate, hand my credit card to the old soak behind the counter. Who looks at it as if I have just handed him a live grenade.
‘Can’t take plastic. Machine’s busted.’
I curse, dig back in my wallet, find just enough bills to cover the charge.
The decision to go to Eden Falls isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. I have been planning it ever since I took the case, but knew that I would have to get to know Orianna first, otherwise it would simply be an exercise in curiosity. Like a book tourist visiting a place they’d read about in a favourite novel.
There are some who consider this sort of thing a blurring of professional boundaries.
But there is also a breed of modern psychotherapists who believe in a holistic form of treatment. Like archaeologists, the things we dig up in therapy can only attain meaning when given context. Sometimes, you have to go out and find that context.
Our last session convinced me that the time was now right for a field trip.
Orianna’s admission that she once harboured thoughts about killing her father hadn’t quite turned out to be the revelation I had hoped for. It was an admission without admitting anything. At that point, she hadn’t known who her father was, so her threat meant little. Then again, had such an admission come out in court, it could easily have been used to demonstrate a long-simmering anger, which had finally exploded the day Orianna discovered that Gideon was her father.
Or perhaps Orianna is playing games with me.
Rehashing the trial, the forensic analysis, has shaken her, of that I am sure.
But she remains closed off to me, some inner part of her held back.
How can I get to that hidden part of her?
I need to immerse myself in the environment in which she grew up – the environment that made her, had led her, inexorably, to that moment in the woods, in the cabin, with Gideon.
I need to go to Eden Falls.
Chapter 105
ANNIE: THEN
I drive into town past a wooden signboard.
EDEN FALLS
Population: 2000
Graffiti is scribbled across the bottom of the board, but I can’t make out exactly what it says.
The ride in is short, and before long I am drifting through the centre of town.
I park on a side street off the town square, then wander back in, checking out the cluster of civic buildings – a courthouse, a library, the town hall – and a large bronze statue of a man grappling with a wolf. The plaque on the base reads: Nathaniel and the Wolf.
I remember Orianna telling me about Nathaniel, Eden Falls’ founder. Amos’s father; Gideon’s grandfather.
The town appears to be very much as Orianna has described in our sessions, and depicted in maps and drawings that she has made over the years. Clearly, very little
It’s always frightening doing something new. With this book I’ve had to do several new things. This is my first book set outside India. It’s my first psychological thriller. It’s my first book written using first person narrative. It’s the first book that has taken me three years to finish. It’s the first book where I’ve had to take a complete draft, and then tear it apart and restructure it. It’s the first book where I’ve wanted to hurl myself off a cliff, several times.
So, all in all, a long, exhilarating, and sometimes painful journey.
The good news? I am incredibly happy with the end result. However the book ultimately fares, as a writer I’m glad I took on the challenge of doing something different. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it.
Why small-town America? I have always been fascinated by Americana, both onscreen and on the page, all the way from To Kill a Mockingbird to Stephen King. One of my favourite films, which I first saw as a teenager, is In the Heat of the Night, starring Sydney Poitier in a seminal role. This film – and others – shaped my vision of such places, places of quiet heartbreak, simmering hostilities, and shattering secrets. Human drama is at its keenest in such settings – and what more could a writer wish for?
I could not have got this far without a whole team behind (and usually in front) of me.
So, thank you to my agent Euan Thorneycroft at A.M. Heath, my editor Jo Dickinson, assistant editor Kate Norman, and my publicist Alainna Hadjigeorgiou.
I would also like to thank the others involved at Hodder, namely, Inayah Sheikh Thomas in production and Dom Gribben in audiobooks. Similar thanks go to Euan’s assistant Jessica Lee. And thank you once again to Jack Smyth for another terrific cover.
Thank you also to the many readers, critics, reviewers, bloggers, book-groupers, podcasters, and word-of-mouth enthusiasts who have helped me get to a point in my career where I can take such risks. Your kindness is hugely appreciated.
Special credit to early chapter readers, Tracy Fenton and the TBC (THE Book Club) gang, and Sam Brownley, Kath Middleton and Caroline Maston from the UK Crime Book Club. Your feedback helped me immensely.
And another special thank you to writer Nev March and Pravesh Chatturvedi who drove me around small-town America last year, introduced me to my first po’boy (if you know, you know), and went way beyond the call of duty. Thank you too, to the gang at Malice Domestic who all made me feel so welcome and gave me excellent tips on how to ‘write America’.
My gratitude, as ever, to my WhatsApp pals, namely, Abir Mukherjee, Ayisha Malik, Amit Dhand, Imran Mahmood, and Alex Caan. Brilliant writers and even better human beings. For the most part.
And lastly, a thank you to my family. My brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, for keeping me grounded; and to my wife, Nirupama, for keeping me sane and healthy. After a couple of medical issues last year, she has not only transformed my diet, but also insists on replacing my ‘author wardrobe’, for no good reason that I can understand, but which apparently is very necessary for the modern writer.
Chapter 1
ANNIE: THEN
I picture her walking along corridors humming with misery and loneliness, the by-products of human confinement. I know that she will be led in here by a man in uniform and left alone with me. Something I insisted on, despite the warnings.
It is my first scheduled session with Orianna, convicted murderer and true-crime celebrity. The Girl in Cell A.
It is not my first time dealing with a killer. But this case is different.
Orianna’s application for parole cannot proceed without a thorough psychological evaluation. If she is to be released back into the world, she must pass through me, through the tests I have devised for her. And if she is given her freedom, then, in effect, I will be responsible for what happens next.
Where will she go? What will she do? There are no guarantees here. No magic therapy pill that can make a person in Orianna’s situation entirely stable, entirely safe.
I cannot pretend that I am not nervous.
I check my watch, then dig a compact out of my handbag. No one will come out and say it but, in the therapeutic setting, appearances matter. Patients, like everyone else in the Instagram Age, are overtly influenced by the visual.
What will Orianna see when she enters the room?
A white woman, medium height, athletically built – though thrice-weekly sessions at the gym are now a distant memory. Blonde and blue-eyed, hair platted down to the middle of my back: a single braid, like a Viking’s wife. My outfit is formal – navy trouser suit matched with the best shoes I own, a pair of Jimmy Choo flats that Michael bought me with a month’s salary when we were still trying to one-up each other in the romantic gestures’ stakes.
They’ve lasted admirably. Which is more than I can say for our marriage.
I consider taking off my jacket, but then decide to leave it on. It might seem a little stiff, forbidding, but the patient-therapist relationship invariably begins by marking out territory.
My only concession to personality is the breast cancer band around my wrist, a pop of colour in a charcoal painting.
Grey light seeps in through a barred window.
Winter is almost here. The locals are bracing themselves for crippling blizzards and eight-feet-high snowdrifts. In the coffee shops and bars, there will be talk of climate change, advocates and naysayers eyeballing each other over lattes and beer.
In the corner of the room, a sluggish radiator sighs in complaint. It’s warm enough, but by no means ‘toasty’, as Leo, my sixteen-year-old, would say.
The smell of good coffee permeates the space. I brought it with me – enough for us both. It’s not exactly regulation, but I know that in a place like this, decent coffee will be in short supply.
A knock sounds from behind me.
I take a deep breath, stash my compact, then turn and face the door.
Barney enters first.
I have met him several times now, in preparation for this first session. A handsome, middle-aged black man. His blue-shirted uniform is pristine; his shoes spotless. In our interactions, he is unfailingly polite, patience personified as I ask my questions. He has prepared me as best as he is able, though I sense a hesitation, an uncertainty at the wisdom of this course of action.
The last time we were together, he told me bluntly, ‘Don’t underestimate her. We call her the queen of mood swings. A year ago, she broke another woman’s fibula. Snapped it clean in two. Do you know where the fibula is?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not many people do.’ The thunderbolt scar at his temple glows. I am tempted to ask him if it had been inflicted in the line of duty.
Today, he says nothing, simply steps aside and ushers in the woman behind him.
She is smaller than I expected; smaller than her courtroom photographs make her appear. Five-three, five-four. The mind makes ogres of those we fear.
Her hair is short, black, falling to her shoulders. The face is oval, her skin a dusky colour – the legacy of her mixed-race, Indian-American ancestry – and as flawless as a Photoshopped cover. The years may have taken their toll, but Orianna is still a beautiful woman. That beauty was one reason the case took hold of the national imagination. The other was the name of the man she had killed.
The Girl in Cell A.
Some tabloid hack gave her that handle, a sly nod to Orianna’s celebrity status, a throwaway remark attributed to one of her prison guards. In the dubious pecking order of the penal system, Orianna is an ‘A-lister’, an orange-suited VIP.
The hokey tag has followed her around, eminently hashtaggable.
She looks at me, a cool, unblinking gaze from deep-set brown eyes.
Unto the breach.
‘Hi, Orianna. My name is Annie. Annie Ledet. I’m a forensic psychotherapist. We’ll be working together.’
Does she sense that the environment has been carefully modulated? There’s nothing here that might be considered threatening, nothing to conjure up dramatic emotions. Plain walls, adorned by a single watercolour – of the lake that sits just beyond the razor wire – and an improving verse in a cheap plastic frame: 1 John 1:9, ‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.’
Several plants rest uneasily in plastic holders. Rubber figs. Kentia palms. A Boston fern in a seagrass basket. Terracotta holders are forbidden, lest they be smashed to fashion lethal shards.
‘So,’ she says finally. ‘How does this work?’
Her voice is gravelly, startlingly old. Of course, Orianna is no longer a child. She’s a woman, one shaped by the vicissitudes of her unique fate.
And it will now be my task to return her to that time, when the storm first came down on her. The journey that we take together in this cramped little room will determine the next chapter in her life. Is she still a danger to the public? To herself? The law doesn’t require me to solve all of Orianna’s mysteries – just enough to tick the right boxes.
The fact is that most murderers serve their time and are released. A very small percentage go on to kill again. We simply don’t have the luxury of locking up killers and throwing away the key. Our prisons are overcrowded to the point of bursting. And so, former murderers walk among us, indistinguishable from anyone else. The chain-smoking neighbour wheezing behind a lawnmower. The old guy in the cubicle two rows down. The woman serving breakfast at the diner.
Our pasts are rarely emblazoned on our exteriors.
I gesture Orianna towards a scarred coffee table and a pair of beaten-up leather chairs.
‘No couch?’
I smile. A sense of humour, no matter how caustic, is a good sign, something I can work with.
And there’s no doubt in my mind that I have my work cut out for me.
The world may have long ago relegated Orianna to the basement of horrors where America’s monsters reside, but the fact remains that she continues, to this day, to protest her innocence. She continues to claim that her memory of the killing is little more than a white-noise soup of imagery.
And in none of those images does she see herself blasting Gideon Wyclerc’s head from his shoulders.
Chapter 10
ORIANNA: NOW
The Eden Falls Community Library had once been a haven for me when I needed to hide away from the world.
In previous incarnations, the library had served as the town hall and the courthouse, although it had originally been built to house back-office operations for the Wyclerc mining business. As a consequence, the three-storey building had been pampered and coddled, renovated on multiple occasions, briefly neglected when the business operations were moved to grander, modern premises, then revived as a municipal hub following the war.
That period lasted a good four decades before a story broke in the mid-nineties that permanently tarnished the library’s reputation. A newspaper in the neighbouring town of Barrier claimed that a black man by the name of Edgar Myers – a local activist – had been lynched on the premises back in the thirties, hung by the neck from a decorative yardarm protruding from the building’s façade. The body had been left to swing for two days.
Though the revelation was furiously denied by the town elders – and an ongoing feud established with Barrier – the stink chased the courthouse out to a purpose-built building overlooking the nearby town square, and the town-hall functions to a less imposing but more practical home directly opposite the new courthouse.
Walking up the spiral staircase, I pass an older-looking white man in grubby denim overalls polishing the brass railing. I have the feeling that I know him, that he might be Tommy Quinn, once a local football star, then an equally notorious drunk. Now he looks to be a veteran of the brigade of ill-fated Eden Falls men who perform menial chores for minimum wage for the various municipal institutions that run the town. Quinn, as I remember him, is the sort of good old boy common to these parts, the kind who would have leered at my mother’s beauty while looking down on her because of the colour of her skin.
The first floor is taken up by row upon row of old-fashioned wooden shelving, laden with books both purpose-bought and donated from the barely thumbed collections of genteel – and now expired – southern gentlemen.
There is a hush about the place that is stultifying.
I find Gertrude – Gerty – in the back row, squatting on the floor, placing books on the bottommost shelf from a handcart.
I stand there, waiting silently, until my presence twitches the hairs on the back of her neck. She twists around and looks up at me, then takes the spectacles dangling on a chain around her neck and places them on her nose.
A long moment passes.
‘Well, damn it all to hell, child.’
Chapter 100
ORIANNA: NOW
‘Jesus Christ!’ Peter is back on his feet.
Rebekah spins around. ‘Have you lost your mind?’
Amos waves the revolver around like a wand. ‘I’d strongly advise you to sit down.’
I look at Luke, see that his face is impassive. Had he known that Amos was going to do this?
Rebekah is frozen in place. And then, with a monumental effort, she forces herself to move forward and stumble into a seat. Fury boils from her in waves hot enough to sear the tablecloth.
‘There’s a reason you’re all here today,’ Amos says. ‘I have an announcement. But before we get to that . . . You all know by now why Orianna has come back. She claims she didn’t kill Gideon. Now, you can believe her or not; frankly, I couldn’t give a damn. But in her time here, she’s made some intriguing discoveries, and tonight, we are going to drag the past into the light.’ His eyes darken. ‘Gideon was killed right here, on the grounds of this estate. I have never voiced the thought before, but I am certain I’m not the only one whose mind it has crossed in all these years . . . If Orianna didn’t kill him, then Gideon’s killer might well be sitting here at this table. Or at least may know who killed him.’
‘That’s preposterous,’ Peter begins. ‘Surely, you can’t believe her?’
‘Here’s what I think,’ continues Amos, ignoring him. ‘I think you’re waiting for me to drop dead. All of you. You think my death will free you in some way, of guilt, of responsibility. But Gideon, for all his faults, was my son, and I refuse to go to my grave not knowing what really happened to him.’
David tries again. ‘Amos—’
‘Shut up, David.’
I see Luke flinch. Susannah places a hand on her husband’s shoulder. David gazes off into space.
Amos turns to Rebekah. ‘Orianna tells me you were fucking Tommy Quinn when Gideon was killed. Is that true?’
Rebekah’s face turns scarlet. ‘I don’t have to listen to this—’
‘Oh, you’ll listen all right. High up there on your cross. Well, pity party’s over, daughter-in-law of mine. Now . . . answer the goddamned question.’
‘You have no right—’
‘He was my son! I loved him. And I will have a fucking answer!’
Her eyes blaze. ‘You think I didn’t love him? Is that it? You think I married him for his money? Whatever happened between Gideon and me, it was as much his doing as mine. If he hadn’t been out there screwing everything in a dress, maybe I wouldn’t have gone looking for a Tommy Quinn.’
The words strike Amos with the force of a blow. ‘Well, the truth has put its boots on today.’ A silence passes. ‘Very well, truth is what I asked for and truth is what we shall have. You’re right. Gideon was a bad husband. And I was a bad father. But the one thing I know, the one thing I’m certain of, is that I had nothing to do with his death. I can no longer say the same about everyone sat at this table . . . Who is Tommy Quinn to you?’
Rebekah looks like an animal caught in a trap. Finally, she says, ‘Tommy and I had a . . . We had something.’
‘And Gideon found out?’
‘Tommy told him. On the day of the festival. Just came right up and told him.’
‘Told him what?’
‘That he was in love with me. That Gideon didn’t deserve me.’
‘And you? Were you in love with him?’
Colour climbs into her face. ‘Tommy was everything Gideon was not. He made me feel as if I was the only thing that mattered.’
Amos picks up the revolver and taps the butt of it gently on the table. ‘You fell in love with a low-life junkie degenerate. Tommy Quinn may well have killed my son.’
Her head snaps up. ‘Tommy didn’t do it! He’s not . . . He’s not like that. He’s not the brute people make him out to be.’
‘He spent three years in prison. He’s a drug dealer.’ It is Peter who has spoken.
Rebekah flashes him a look of pure hatred. ‘And what about you, Peter? You hated Gideon. You knew Amos was going to put him in charge of the business. Gideon’s death gave you everything you wanted.’
Peter’s eyes burn into her. ‘As God is my witness, I had nothing to do with Gideon’s killing.’
Rebekah snorts. ‘I wouldn’t invoke God if I were you. Not at this table.’
I see Ruth flinch. I remember Amos telling me that Ruth is a religious freak.
Amos’s smile is a facsimile of mirth. ‘That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said in eighteen years. The truth is, God abandoned this house a long time ago.’ His roving gaze settles on Samuel. ‘Yesterday, I found out that a girl over in Turow, about Grace’s age, was doused in gasoline by her father and set alight. For no more reason than she wouldn’t fetch him his supper. Tell me, Padre, how do you reconcile your faith with that?’
Samuel clears his throat softly. ‘Man sins because God ordained it so. But God gave us the capacity to perform penance for our sins. To be forgiven. No man’s soul is unredeemable.’
‘Evil has an odour,’ Amos responds. ‘And by God, I smell that odour on us. I hear the serpent slithering in the Garden of Eden that Nathaniel built. The Wyclercs! . . . Let me tell you about my father. Nathaniel’s hands were steeped in blood. For a start, he murdered his brother and sister.’
Chapter 101
ORIANNA: NOW
The revelation silences the table, hangs over us like a guillotine.
I see the others stare at Amos, the day’s dying light frozen in their eyes like shards of mirrored glass.
‘My father left his younger siblings – the twins, Esther and Jude – behind when he first came to Eden Falls. They had no one else except each other. They became close, closer than nature or God ever intended for a brother and sister. When they finally got to Eden Falls, and my father found out, he locked them in the chapel and set it alight. They burned to death.’
Something dark and wet stirs inside my guts.
‘Nathaniel spent his life trying to understand the nature of evil,’ Amos continues. ‘The monster inside himself that had made him commit such a terrible act. He never could. In the end, he believed he had no choice but to carry out the ultimate act of penance. He threw himself into that boar pit. He told me he was going to do it, the night before he died. I didn’t believe him.’ A shudder trembles his shoulders. ‘That’s who we are. The blood pumping through your veins.’
‘That isn’t true. It simply isn’t,’ Peter says eventually. ‘You’re drunk.’
Amos swings his gaze around the table. ‘This family is a lie. This whole goddamned town is a lie.’ He picks up the revolver. ‘So tell me, my pantheon of the Philistines, why shouldn’t I believe that one of you killed Gideon?’
‘Amos. What are you doing?’ David’s voice cuts across the table. ‘This isn’t going to bring Gideon back.’
His words, spoken so quietly, hum with a power that gives Amos pause. His hand trembles. His eyes lose focus. For an instant, I see him as he is: an old man nearing death, bleary-headed with fatigue, grief, and its close cousin, remorse. The angel of darkness hovers at his shoulder; a dead light glimmers in his gaze.
Susannah stands, put her hands on David’s wheelchair. ‘I’m taking him home.’
We watch as she begins pushing him away.
‘Wait.’ Amos’s voice is a croak. ‘I called you here because I want you to know – I want all of you to know – that I’ll be changing my will. My controlling stake in Wyclerc Industries will pass to Orianna.’
A gasp is pulled from Peter’s throat. His chair clatters back as he storms to his feet. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Did I stutter, Peter?’
‘You can’t— you can’t do that.’
‘I assure you, I can.’
‘This is insane.’ His hands ball helplessly at his sides. But Amos is looking at David.
For a long moment, David says nothing, and then he nods.
After they leave, I turn to Luke. His face is unreadable.
I hear Rebekah rise to her feet. Without a word, she turns and walks away.
Peter remains rooted to the spot, white-faced, staring at his father as if at an escaped lunatic. Beside him, Ruth wipes her lips with a napkin and stands. Samuel joins them. ‘I’m heading back to the church. Mrs Abernathy is hosting an evening recital. Peter, perhaps we should take our leave?’
His brother ignores him. Instead, he points a shaking finger at me. ‘You won’t see a dime of that money. I’ll go to my grave before I let you get your murdering hands on it.’
‘I don’t want the money. I never asked for it.’
Peter swings his finger towards Amos. ‘You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to let you do this. I’ll fight you with everything I’ve got.’
‘What have you got, Peter? I own the controlling stake in Wyclerc Industries. I made you CEO. I can just as easily take it away from you.’
‘You wouldn’t.’ The full horror of the situation is dawning on him. He puts a hand on his wife’s shoulder to steady himself. ‘You can’t.’
‘Come on, Peter.’ Samuel slips a hand through his brother’s arm, then gently leads him away.
‘Well,’ says Martha as the sound of their engines fades, ‘that was enormous fun. I should get out of bed more often.’
I pick up my glass and drain it. The whisky is smoky and warm and leaves a dark taste in my throat. I look at Amos. ‘Why?’
‘If you live long enough, you can learn to stomach anything. Except mendacity.’
‘This was pointless. I didn’t come back to Eden Falls for your money.’
‘My fortune, what’s left of it, is better off in your hands than theirs.’
‘You really have lost your mind.’
‘Perhaps . . . there was another reason I asked you over.’ He nods at Cletus.
I watch as Cletus walks to a side table, removes the cover from a steel cloche, and returns with a cake, filled with white cream and ribbons of strawberry jam. He bends over it and lights three candles bunched in the centre.
‘Happy birthday,’ Amos says.
Something indescribable wells inside me. My mother almost always forgot my birthday, running around at the last instant – a haphazard affair, at best. There were no friends to invite over, no gifts worth the name.
I glance at Luke. He offers up a strained smile. Is this his doing?
‘I don’t need this.’
‘Humour a dying man.’
‘That’s not fair. You think you can make me . . . what? Forgive? Forget? Because you’re dying?’
‘I don’t need your forgiveness. You’re my granddaughter. Nothing you or I say can change that. Now, blow out the fucking candles.’
His brow shimmers with perspiration. He looks ready to pass out.
My mouth is suddenly dry. I glance again at Luke. He nods at me. I see Grace hovering at his shoulder. Grace gives a slow smile. Her face blurs, changes, until it is my own face at Luke’s shoulder.
I blink. The apparition vanishes.
I stand on unsteady legs, blow out the candles.
Chapter 102
ORIANNA: NOW
Afterwards, as we dig into crystal bowls of brandy-and-butterscotch ice cream, I tell Amos about the lynch mob at the town hall. He frowns. ‘Once upon a time, they wouldn’t have dared cross me.’ He massages his chest, as if the thought of the coming conflict has given him heartburn.
‘How do you feel today?’
‘Like a bear ate me up and shat me into a tin can.’
‘Why won’t you accept treatment?’
‘Never fight a battle you know you can’t win.’ He clasps his hands around his belly. ‘What was it like? In prison?’
I want to tell him that he has no right to ask me that. No birthday cake can make up for what he has done to me, to my mother, the years stolen from us both.
He senses my thoughts. ‘Forget it. Forget I asked.’
‘I met a woman in there. A cellmate. She’d murdered two people. She would tell me about lost light. The light that illuminates the human soul. Each time we commit acts against our better nature, we lose some of that light. But she believed we could get it back. That lost light. All we have to do is turn the dial.’
‘Amen to that,’ says Martha.
‘Why were you so hard on Rebekah?’ I ask Amos. ‘Do you really think she could have had something to do with Gideon’s death?’
‘I don’t know. A part of me wants her to be guilty. At least I’d have an answer. But then, I think of Grace. Rebekah loved her, doted on her. She’s kept her room like a mausoleum, exactly the way it was on the day she vanished. I can’t believe that Rebekah had anything to do with whatever happened to Grace.’
I consider his words. ‘What if Tommy Quinn killed Gideon, and Grace somehow found out? Perhaps Quinn did something to Grace, to stop her from telling anyone. Perhaps Rebekah doesn’t know.’
Luke speaks up. He has been so quiet, I have almost forgotten he is still here. ‘That’s quite a leap.’
A silence passes.
‘Cletus,’ Martha says, ‘I think you should get Amos back inside. He looks beat.’
I expect Amos to throw a hissy fit at being treated like a child. But he says nothing as Cletus helps him to his feet.
‘That stuff about Nathaniel,’ I say. ‘Why’d you tell us?’
He looks down at me with a greater measure of sadness than I have seen in human eyes in a very long time. ‘Because there are some secrets a man cannot take to the grave. There’s only one thing I’m certain of any more, Orianna. If there is a heaven up there, I will never see it.’
Chapter 103
ANNIE: THEN
I stop at a gas station about an hour from the town.
My car, a ten-year-old Subaru, is a luxury I can ill afford but cannot do without.
The gas station is resolutely uncharming, a throwback to the era of wild-grass-edged tarmac, dungareed attendants, and a hostility to outsiders that might as well have been painted onto the flaking signboard hanging from the low-slung canopy.
I wander into the office-cum-shop, grab a bottle of water and a bar of chocolate, hand my credit card to the old soak behind the counter. Who looks at it as if I have just handed him a live grenade.
‘Can’t take plastic. Machine’s busted.’
I curse, dig back in my wallet, find just enough bills to cover the charge.
The decision to go to Eden Falls isn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. I have been planning it ever since I took the case, but knew that I would have to get to know Orianna first, otherwise it would simply be an exercise in curiosity. Like a book tourist visiting a place they’d read about in a favourite novel.
There are some who consider this sort of thing a blurring of professional boundaries.
But there is also a breed of modern psychotherapists who believe in a holistic form of treatment. Like archaeologists, the things we dig up in therapy can only attain meaning when given context. Sometimes, you have to go out and find that context.
Our last session convinced me that the time was now right for a field trip.
Orianna’s admission that she once harboured thoughts about killing her father hadn’t quite turned out to be the revelation I had hoped for. It was an admission without admitting anything. At that point, she hadn’t known who her father was, so her threat meant little. Then again, had such an admission come out in court, it could easily have been used to demonstrate a long-simmering anger, which had finally exploded the day Orianna discovered that Gideon was her father.
Or perhaps Orianna is playing games with me.
Rehashing the trial, the forensic analysis, has shaken her, of that I am sure.
But she remains closed off to me, some inner part of her held back.
How can I get to that hidden part of her?
I need to immerse myself in the environment in which she grew up – the environment that made her, had led her, inexorably, to that moment in the woods, in the cabin, with Gideon.
I need to go to Eden Falls.
Chapter 105
ANNIE: THEN
I drive into town past a wooden signboard.
EDEN FALLS
Population: 2000
Graffiti is scribbled across the bottom of the board, but I can’t make out exactly what it says.
The ride in is short, and before long I am drifting through the centre of town.
I park on a side street off the town square, then wander back in, checking out the cluster of civic buildings – a courthouse, a library, the town hall – and a large bronze statue of a man grappling with a wolf. The plaque on the base reads: Nathaniel and the Wolf.
I remember Orianna telling me about Nathaniel, Eden Falls’ founder. Amos’s father; Gideon’s grandfather.
The town appears to be very much as Orianna has described in our sessions, and depicted in maps and drawings that she has made over the years. Clearly, very little
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The Girl In Cell A
Vaseem Khan
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