The Bed I Made
Pathological relationships
I was standing on the shingle bank when they towed her boat back in. The last of the sun was slipping below the horizon, pulling the dying day after it, turning the water of the Solent black … The lifeboat was coming up from the Needles, its orange decks a bright mark in the gloaming, but the throttled down rumble of its engine reached over the surface of the sea like a growl … Less than a minute later, the engine was cut and silence fell.
It was as if the town had taken an inward breath. Nothing moved.
…
They had found her boat, I realised, but they hadn’t found her.
Quite an opening, huh? Palpable tension pervading the scene; a moment in time after which life will be forever changed.
You just know this is going to be psychologically challenging.
The book? The Bed I Made, the second novel by Lucie Whitehouse, and a TV Bookclub Summer Read. (She has gone on to publish more since this one came out in 2010.)
Kate Gibson is on the Isle of Wight, running away from a dark time in her life, when she witnesses this chilling scenario. She’s a translator, so can do her work anywhere … but not if her mind is seething with conflicting emotions. Not if she’s feeling intimidated. Not when every noise in the night fills her with terror. Not when sinister things start to disturb her sense of security.
Richard Brookwood had swept her off her feet instantly when they met in a Soho bar; she’d given herself unreservedly. He was exciting, clever, ambitious, ruthless, rich, handsome, charming, intense, chaotic, challenging, competitive. And he knew exactly how to press her buttons. But now, eighteen months later, she’s doing all in her power to find a safe space away from everything connected with him, from every memory made with him …
… because what we had was not ordinary, there was a higher price for it.
And gradually, incident by incident, the truth begins to emerge from beneath layers of lies and half truths. Those chilling words echo in her head: ‘People have to learn that they can’t outsmart me.’
The attraction had been so strong, the protestations of love so fierce and swift. Then, when the fish was irrevocably hooked, it was payback time.
How could she have been so blind to the warning signs? How could she have made herself so vulnerable?
Whitehouse creates an unnerving story of control and psychopathological behaviour that maintains its tension, whilst leaving space for the reader’s suspicions to fluctuate, and the predator to stalk its prey, coming ever closer, merciless and determined. And through fiction we’re brought closer to the lived reality, and hopefully to more empathy for those caught in these toxic relationships – too many of which we hear about on the news too late.