The Stepson: A psychological thriller with a twist you won't see coming(4)

This was why she did it. This was why she put herself through it.

But neither of them should be getting carried away here. So she said, ‘Okay, yes, you’re making great, great progress, but baby steps? I’d hold off on contacting Samantha until we’re a little further –’

‘Aha!’ The exclamation rang through the lobby, and there he was, striding towards them across the maroon carpet tiles, Saville Row come to Hammersmith. He lent the shabby space the glamour-by-proxy he seemed to take with him everywhere, like he was some kind of celebrity.

Her husband.

He’d come for her! He would know, of course, how drained the marathon session would leave her, how unequal to the task of finding her way across London she would be feeling.

She ran to him.

And now he was catching her in his arms and laughing, and she was back in her own wonderful world, the world he made afresh for her each day. It was as if he waved a magic wand and whoosh, all the rest was gone, all the dark places she travelled to with her clients. They’d just been a bad dream, and now she was awake again.

And she would have this, if she was lucky, for the rest of her life. The thought that he was hers and she was his, forever and ever, amen, still made her want to shout with joy.

He gave her an exaggerated smack of a kiss, and she clung to him, hardly able to believe that he was real, that she had found him, her soulmate, this man who looked like a film star and was rather vain about the fact and knew it, sending himself up at every opportunity.

‘Enter stage left: the doting husband,’ he intoned, ‘who’s just endured half an hour of casual racism, courtesy of an infeasibly stereotypical London cabbie, to rush to his wife’s side with life-saving falafels.’ Lulu’s favourite food in the world and also, spookily, one of his. ‘Your chauffeur awaits, ready, willing and able to blow your mind with his views on immigration.’ He lowered his voice to a stage whisper: ‘Best not to admit to being Australian.’ And then, back in character, he swept an arm around the lobby. ‘I’ve come to take you away from all this! I’ve come to whisk you off to la-la land where, for two shining hours, a load of luvvies will get deep and meaningful about the psychiatric issues of pigeons! Oh, the agony! Oh, the ecstasy!’

Milo was yipping excitedly.

‘Idiot.’ She laughed, pushing her husband away and rolling her eyes at her client, who was staring at this apparition in rather wary bemusement. ‘Paul, this is my husband, Nick. Nick, one of my clients, Paul.’

The two men nodded at each other.

Then Nick said, deadpan, ‘So you’re the man responsible for starving my wife.’

‘Oh,’ said poor Paul. ‘I’m sorry, Lulu. I didn’t realise you had plans.’ He stooped to pick up Milo and looked at his watch. ‘Oh, God – I’ve gone way over my time, haven’t I? I’m sorry!’

Lulu smiled. ‘It was completely down to me that we continued so long. There’s nothing to apologise for.’

She’d forgotten to lock the office door. She left the three of them on the doorstep to do so, but when she came back out, she couldn’t find the main door key.

‘Why don’t you keep them on the same ring, darling?’ Nick murmured.

‘That would be far too sensible. Ah, here it is!’ She locked the door behind them. ‘Well, same time next week, Paul? And Milo, of course?’

Paul set Milo down on the pavement and looked at Lulu for a long moment. Then he nodded. And then he was pulling her into a hug.

‘Thank you,’ he said into her hair. ‘I don’t know how to thank you. You’ve literally saved my life.’

Lulu didn’t look at Nick, but she knew he’d be wearing a look of terrible patience. Nick’s theory was that all the nuances of mental health issues were ‘just a big con’ invented by the woke brigade, while anyone with actual, genuine problems was ‘a nutter’. It was one of the few subjects of contention between them, but she hadn’t pushed it because she knew what was at the root of it. She knew he had a real horror of mental illness because of what had happened to his family, and he felt safer pretending there was a simple dichotomy of nutter versus normal.

She hugged Paul back. Physical contact with clients was generally frowned upon, but sometimes they hugged her, and Lulu was fine with that. When emotions were running high, sometimes a bit of human contact was what you needed.

She patted his back and said a few reassuring words, and gently detached herself.

‘You’re doing really well. You should be very proud of yourself.’

Paul gave her a rueful smile and dabbed at his face with a tissue. Then he turned, unexpectedly, to Nick. ‘You should have seen me a month ago. My wife had just left me. I was a mess.’

You are a mess, said Nick’s raised eyebrows. But he just murmured, ‘Sorry to hear that.’

‘I put my wife through hell – I don’t blame her, she was better off out of it. She’d been trying to persuade me to get help with my anger for years, but it took her leaving me before I actually got up off my arse and did something about it. The day I came to Lulu was the best day of my life.’ He looked at Lulu, his eyes moist with tears. ‘I can’t thank you enough, for what you’ve done for me.’ He turned back to Nick. ‘You’re a lucky man. A lucky, lucky man.’