Page 36

THIRTY-FIVE

The screen shows three faces. At the top is Jane, wearing red lipstick and oversized reading glasses.

She’s being distracted by a large dog who keeps nuzzling at her neck from behind.

“You have very smelly breath, Reggie,” she says before pushing him gently away.

Next to Jane is Ash, and at the bottom of the screen is the woman called Sarah May.

She’s in her early thirties, Ash would guess; her hair is dark blond and tied back from her face, with a blunt fringe framing serious, dark eyes.

Behind her is a heavily curated bookshelf, spines in color order, plants, framed graphic art.

She smiles just once and says, “Hi. Nice to meet you both.”

Ash introduces herself and then Jane. “Jane,” she tells Sarah, “used to go out with my dad in the nineties. My dad died last year, and I got in touch with Jane because I wanted to hear her memories of him, but also because my mum started seeing this guy a few weeks ago. He’s called Nick Radcliffe and he kind of came from nowhere with some dodgy backstory about knowing my dad when they were young and—”

Jane interjects. “I could smell the whiff coming off it from the very first moment. It was so clearly not quite right. The restaurant Nick said he worked at with Ash’s dad in the nineties shut down twenty years ago, so we can’t corroborate that he was ever there.

But we’ve been doing some digging, and we found a photo of the man who currently calls himself Nick Radcliffe on this page for a life-coaching consultancy.

With a different name. Justin Warshaw. And a wedding ring.

While our Nick Radcliffe claims never to have been married. ”

Sarah May’s face remains inscrutable. “Gosh,” she says after a short lull. “That’s insane.”

Ash and Jane nod in unison.

“So,” says Sarah, “let me tell you what I know about Justin. Or whatever his actual name is. I met him in a pub about twelve years ago. I was twenty-two, I suppose. I’d just graduated, I was working in a bookshop, didn’t want to go home, but didn’t want to start my real life yet.

I was going out with a very avoidant man, and I was drinking too much.

I was crying in a pub, something the guy had done, or not done—I don’t know, I can barely remember—and this tall older man approached me, and I didn’t feel threatened by him.

He was very good-looking, very gentle, he got me a glass of water from the bar, and he checked in with me.

And then he gave me his card. The whole thing felt like a dream, like he was an angel or something.

I emailed him that same night and we had our first appointment two days later. ”

“Wow,” says Jane. “And how did it go?”

“Brilliantly,” Sarah replies. “He was brilliant. Well, I mean… that’s how I felt at the time.

He was so energetic, full of ideas. He gave me all these incredible techniques to use to get on top of my life, to deal with the man, the job, my stasis, all of that.

And at the time I felt like it was all working, like he was changing my life for the better.

He gave me my first session for free and then it was fifty pounds an hour, and then, after a couple of weeks, he put it up to a hundred an hour, and then, I don’t know, it all got a bit weird, and I didn’t quite realize it was weird at the time, but he started asking me to do two sessions a week and I tried to tell him I couldn’t afford it, that I worked in a bookshop, so he got me to…

” She sighs and her eyes drop down for a moment before she looks up again.

“He said I should get a loan from my mum and dad.”

Jane and Ash both inhale through their teeth. “And did you?” asks Jane.

Sarah nods, and Jane says, “Ouch.”

“How long did this go on for?” Ash asks.

“Oh God, about a year, I guess, two sessions a week. And then he got me to pay out for plans and books and… accessories. I just paid for all of it and then after it was all over, after we stopped, I looked it up and saw it was all stuff he’d bought off Amazon for like a few pounds, and I’d given him fifty quid for it.

You know? And all the while, I really thought it was working, what we were doing together.

I thought I was getting my life on track, but when I look back on it, I just wasn’t.

I was still working in the bookshop, still avoiding going home to see my family, still letting the avoidant man into my inboxes, into my head.

At the end of the year nothing had actually changed, but Justin had somehow managed to make me believe that it had.

That it was all just one session away, one new exercise away.

And it was only a few months later that I could see the only thing which had changed was that I was five thousand pounds in debt. ”

“He conned you?”

“Well, yes and no. No, in that he gave me the services I was paying for and a lot of the stuff he did with me was great. But yes, in that I don’t think I needed two sessions a week, I didn’t need all the overpriced books and accessories.

He definitely led me to believe I needed to spend as much money as possible to achieve certain goals.

Money, in retrospect, I’m not convinced I needed to spend.

But I just put it down to being young and desperate, you know?

I never felt for a moment like there was anything bad about him.

I liked him. I thought he was amazing. Like really amazing. ”

“So why did you stop seeing him?” asks Jane.

“He moved away. Very suddenly. Said his parents were ill? Or something like that? I can’t really remember. But yes, he left. And that was that.”

“And you never heard from him again?”

“No. Never did.”

“And where did you used to see him? Did he have a clinic, or something?”

“No, he worked from home. He had a little room at the top of his house.”

Ash glances at Jane on the screen. “You went to his house?”

“Yes. Twice a week for a year.”

“And did he—did he live with anyone else?”

“Yes. His wife.”

Jane glances back at Ash—both of their eyes are wide.

“His wife?”

“Yes. She was really lovely. Her name was Laura. And they had a couple of little girls, as I recall.”

“Wait. Are you serious?”

“Yes. Of course I am.”

“Were they his children?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I assumed they were. But they might not have been, I suppose.”

“And this house, where was it?”

“It was in Cherry Hinton. Just outside the city.”

“Can you remember the address?”

Sarah blinks and shakes her head. “Er, God. No. It’s been ten years, after all.

But I can still picture the house. It was on a crescent.

It had three floors. One of those houses where you walk straight into the living room, no hallway, and then kind of—what are they called?

—open-tread stairs up to the next floor and then his office on the top floor.

It was tiny, the whole house. Tiny for a family of four and a professional practice.

But very pretty. A cottage, I suppose. And in the spring, it had wisteria outside.

And there were bollards on the pavement.

And… a little park over the way, with a tall wall.

You could see into it from Justin’s study.

But God, the name of the road…” She shakes her head again.

Then she pauses and looks at Ash and Jane.

“Are you saying that he’s some kind of scammer? Is he… is he bad?”

Ash shakes her head. “He hasn’t actually done anything bad, yet. He just seems to be a bit… slippery? And my mum is vulnerable. And I really need to know that he’s not going to take advantage of her, that he’s not going to hurt her. We’re just—”

“Doing our due diligence,” Jane finishes.

“Yes,” says Ash. “Exactly.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I think he was a good man.

A bit overenthusiastic, maybe? A bit over-the-top.

Maybe in over his head a bit with the life coaching.

But he always struck me as a great husband, a great father, just a, you know, a really decent human being.

I’m sure he doesn’t mean your mother any ill will.

And I do know that there was some strange family stuff in his background.

He used to allude to a dark past that he was trying to escape, which could explain the name change? ”

The moment the Zoom is over, Ash switches her browser to maps and types in “Cherry Hinton.” Then she spends the best part of half an hour zooming around the map with her little virtual person, looking at all the streets that abut the park, looking for bollards and wisteria branches, and then there it is, finally, she’s sure it is.

She takes a screenshot and WhatsApps it to Sarah May, who replies immediately and says yes, that’s the one, definitely.

The number on the door is twelve and the name of the street is Kingston Gardens.

She googles this and finds that the last time the house had been sold was in 2016, but there are no names connected to the house.

Nothing on Companies House. She types the address with the name “Justin Warshaw” included and the internet returns nothing at all.

She sighs and closes her laptop.