The Trespasser

by Tana French

I’m amazed this guy manages to get out of bed in the morning without working himself into a panic attack over the chance that he might trip on the bath mat and stab himself through the eye socket with his toothbrush and be left with a permanent twitch that’ll ruin his chances of landing an airplane safely if the pilot has a heart attack and doom hundreds to a fiery death.

If I ditch this gig, I’m gonna set up as a therapist. A new kind, specially for people like Aislinn. For a hundred quid an hour, I’ll clatter you across the back of the head and tell you to cop yourself on.”

I’m second-guessing myself, too, wondering if I actually needed to talk to Fleas for investigative purposes or if deep down I was just looking for an excuse to have a sandwich and a chat with someone who doesn’t know I’m untouchable.

We sit there, drinking, while the stuff we should probably be saying out loud gets itself done in the silence.

“I couldn’t believe it was happening. To me. I thought I knew the rest of my life like it had already happened. All the decisions that make a difference, I’d made them before I was twenty-five—the job, the wife, the neighborhood, having kids. All that was left was for me to sit there and watch them play out. No twists left; no surprises.”

Time after time it’s left me gobsmacked, how people will tell you things they should keep locked inside for life; how ferociously they need the story to be out in the air, in the world, to exist somewhere outside their own heads.