The Silent Suspect by Nell Pattison (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud .TXT) 📗

a smile that would make him relax. I think it’s important that we do talk about it. It was a big question, and it’s not something I want to answer without having given it a lot of careful thought.

He gave me a wry smile. Here was me hoping you wouldn’t have to give it any thought at all, or that you’d already been thinking about it and were just waiting for me to ask.

I shook my head. You know my history, Max. You know why the idea of living with you, with any partner, is a difficult one for me to process. I need to separate my feelings for you from my fears, and sometimes that’s really hard, even now.

For a moment, I searched for the right words to explain how I felt. For four years I’d lived with a man who gambled away all of his own money, then started making his way through mine. He gradually took control of my finances, without me even noticing until it was too late, but by then he’d worn down my self-esteem so far that I didn’t have the fight left in me to challenge him. It all came to a head when he went out on a three-day casino bender, locking me in the flat without a phone or any other means to communicate with the outside world. I’d broken a window to get out, in the end, leaving me with a jagged scar on my left forearm.

Now, as I looked at Max, my other hand was drawn to touch my scar, but I forced myself to resist the impulse. I knew he was sensitive about being compared to my ex, and I understood why, but sometimes I couldn’t help it. It was automatic that my past experiences would play a role in my decision-making in this relationship.

I understand that, Paige, I do. But at some point I feel like we need to move past that. You need to move on and remember that I’m completely different from him. To me it seems like the logical next step in our relationship. He sat forward, his knee touching mine. I love you, Paige. I want to wake up next to you every morning, and go to sleep next to you every night. I don’t want to take away any of your independence, I just want to spend my life with you.

I love you too, I replied. I just need a bit of time to decide what I want.

Max took a deep breath, and I could tell that he was trying not to get cross. Maybe it was something he’d been thinking about for months, but I hadn’t. Whenever thoughts about our future drifted into my mind, I’d deliberately pushed them away again. Now that strategy was coming back to bite me, but I didn’t think I was being unfair by asking for a few days to make my decision.

It’s a big commitment, I reminded him, and neither of us should go into it without thinking carefully about it first. That’s all I’m asking for. I looked down at my hands for a moment while I thought. Can I give you an answer by Saturday? I asked.

Max nodded, and I tried not to let the sadness in his eyes get to me. Part of me wanted to say yes and agree to whatever he wanted, just to please him, but that was the part of me that had acquiesced to everything with my ex and got me into such a difficult situation. I wasn’t going back there, and if that meant being selfish and always putting myself before Max, so be it.

We settled down on the sofa, and I put my feet up on the coffee table, dislodging a couple of papers. Picking them up, I noticed my name on one of them, so I had a closer look.

What’s this? I asked him. I had a pretty good idea what it was, but I needed to make sure.

Oh, I got it from the leisure centre, Max replied, taking the papers off me.

You applied for a joint membership?

I haven’t applied yet, I just got the form.

I paused. And you filled the form in. Without asking me.

Max sat up a bit, realising I wasn’t happy. I thought it would be nice, if you moved in. It would be something for us to do together.

My head swam with all of the potential responses. Are you serious?

What? he asked, looking hurt.

Have I ever expressed any interest in going to the gym? I asked him slowly, trying not to get angry.

Well, no, but I thought it would be good for us to try and share each other’s interests, he began, but I held up a hand and shook my head.

Are you trying to tell me something? That you don’t think I’m fit enough, that my body isn’t good enough? I snapped.

He rolled his eyes, which was probably the worst thing he could have done at that point. No, Paige, of course not. I thought it would be a bit of fun. Just forget about it.

I sat back on the sofa, my arms folded and my stomach churning. Had he really thought that I would appreciate a gesture like that? Going to the gym was not my idea of fun, but if I ever did decide I wanted to work out it would be me making that decision, not whoever I was in a relationship with. How could he have thought I would be happy about it? Didn’t he know me at all?

I didn’t bring it up again but there was tension between us for the rest of the evening. I was meeting Sasha at the office the following morning, so I didn’t stay over, and as I got in my car Max watched me from the doorway, his face blank. I knew he was deep in thought, but perhaps I didn’t want to know what he was thinking.

Six hours before the fire

The gym was quiet, but