Behind Her Eyes

“A thing had been done that could not be undone. A terrible necessary act. An ending and a beginning now knotted up forever.” 

This is part of the very short second chapter where, in a flashback, an unidentified man has just done something illegal in a forest. The reader later learns at the end of the book that this is Rob in Adele’s body, moving Rob’s body into the well in the Fairdale estate. This quotation sets up the mystery of who did what to whom, which is not answered until the end of the book.

“I love my husband. I have since the moment I set eyes on him, and I will never fall out of love with him. I won’t give that up. I can’t.” 

Adele expresses her undying love for David, and her determination to keep him. This occurs in the present when David comes home drunk after their earlier row, filled with loathing and disgust for Adele. This is an indication of her obsessive nature and the emphasis on the importance of physical beauty and appearance.

“The gut punch of the woman I’d glimpsed by his side before I dashed into hiding. His beautiful wife. Elegant. Dark-haired and olive-skinned in an Angelina Jolie way. That kind of mystery about her. Exceptionally slim. The opposite of me.” 

After meeting David in a bar, Louise realizes he is her new boss and sees him at the office the next day with his wife. Louise is shocked and ashamed and hides but at the same time, is awed by Adele’s beauty and grace. This impression of Adele is one many people have but one she will betray as she reveals her unstable personality and evil motives. Deceptive appearances are a key them of the novel.

“I can be the good wife. The new partner’s wife.” 

Adele prepares to charm David’s new colleagues and make him proud to try to win back his love after their latest new start. It reveals her manipulative mind and how she plays roles depending on her motives.

“Oh God, I’d forgotten how good-looking he is […] Blue eyes that go right through you. Skin you just want to touch. I swallow hard. He’s one of those men. A breathtaking man.” 

Louise sees David again at work and is reminded of his attractiveness—a key motivator for several of the characters’ actions. The reference to eyes that see through a person echoes the book’s title. David is, however, the one character who is unable to see behind other character’s eyes and thus becomes their victim.

“Sleep is the release that has turned on her, a biting snake in the night.” 

In Westlands, soon after her parents die in the fire, Adele thinks about her memories and how she refuses to sleep despite the therapists’ insistence that she does so. She is afraid to lose herself and her control over her life by sleeping. Late in the book, the reader learns that her parents died in a fire while Adele was lucid dreaming and unaware of what was happening.

“‘You’re a good man, David,’ I say, even though it’s hard and feels like a lie. ‘You really are.’

The atmosphere stills then, a momentary heaviness in the room, and we both feel the past cement itself between us once more.”

After a reconciliation, David announces he wants to do outreach work; this is Adele’s reaction. The mention of being a good person hints of the past and the crime the two are hiding together but which is driving them apart.

“I had forgotten what happiness feels like. For so long everything has been about David’s happiness—how to stop his dark moods, how to stop him drinking, how to make him love me—that somewhere in all that my happiness dulled.” 

Adele is feeling excited and happy at having a new friend, a new secret: Louise. She feels Louise is attractive and fun and that they will have a wonderful time together. She will not tell David. Her reaction to meeting Louise seems to be exaggerated, until it is later revealed what Adele plans for Louise.

“I remember her face, worried and awkward, asking me not to mention anything about our meeting, and I have a moment of doubt. She was so vulnerable. But I have to tell him. I have to.” 

Louise starts to be drawn into Adele’s web of deceit. She feels guilt at not telling David about knowing Adele, but she is also worried what may happen to Adele if she tells. Adele is manipulating Louise.

“She’s listening, rapt, but I know she wants to get to the meat of the story—David. I’m happy with that. I don’t have any details of the fire anyway. It’s all second-hand.” 

Adele tells Louise about her relationship with David and the fire at her parents’ house. She knows Louise is having an affair with David and wants details about him. At this point it sounds strange that she has no details of the fire, but we learn later Adele was lucid dreaming during the fire, so she has no memory of it. This is a small clue dropped into the narrative early in the book. 

“Maybe then she’ll sleep. Like she used to. She’s missing that time behind her own eyes. It’s a part of her, and guilt isn’t enough to shut it off completely.” 

At Westlands, Adele is feeling tired due to lack of sleep, but guilt for not saving her parents from the fire stops her from sleeping. These lines reference the book’s title and add another dimension to their significance.

“Lies and truths and tests.” 

Louise is hearing different or incomplete accounts from David and Adele of their history. She experiencing confusion and mixed emotions. This short quotation expresses the style of relationship of which the book is full.

“They think they’ve helped her too. If only they knew they had nothing to do with it. There are doors in the mind to be opened, but not how they think. Not at all.” 

Adele is reflecting on her success at Westlands in teaching Rob to manage his dreams and on her manipulation of the therapists. She and Rob are smoking weed, and the reference to opening doors in the mind is about both drugs and the other ways Adele knows of getting inside someone’s head.

“What am I supposed to do when there are all these questions trapped inside me? About them, about us, about where all this is going?” 

In the middle of the book, Louise is at her most conflicted and confused point. Her feelings for David and Adele, their past, and who is telling the truth are worrying and dividing her loyalty. The reader, at this point, has many questions, too.

“Does she imagine me in her dreams, or is it always the legendary bore that is David? I worry most about David. I don’t know why she’s so caught up in him. I don’t think she can see what he’s really like.” 

Louise is reading Rob’s notebook, written in Westlands. Here, he expresses his distrust and jealousy of David and his affection toward Adele. Rob’s motives sound a little suspicious at this point as his internal dialogue is often focused on Adele’s money. He has not yet met David though, and the irony is that Rob will fall in love with David, too.

“I’ll act quicker than him though. I’m braver that way. I’ve always been one step ahead. My resolve hardens. David will never be happy until he is free of the past, and I can never be happy until David’s happy.”

Adele reflects that she is losing David, but she has a plan to push him into Louise’s arms. Her manipulation is working, but she needs to make sure she keeps control over the two. This passage reinforces the reader’s impression of Adele as a strong and determined character with ulterior motives.

“I never care about the past unless I can use it for something in the present, and perhaps Blackheath will turn out to be useful, in which case it won’t have been a mistake at all. The past is as ephemeral as the future—it’s all perspective and smoke and mirrors. You can’t pin it down, can you?” 

Adele reflects on her actions in the past, like threatening and scaring Marianne, David’s friend in Blackheath, into silence. The comments on the veracity of memory, on individual interpretation of the past, underline a key them of the book.

“Some secrets need to be excavated, not just told, and our little sin is one of those.” 

Adele is working on Louise finding out about David and Adele’s killing of Rob, their secret. The reference to excavation echoes the images of mud in the fingernails, digging a hole, and the deep well in which Rob’s body is decomposing.

“Things are starting to move apace. Louise is my little terrier and she’s gripped the bone I’ve given her and I know she won’t let go.” 

Adele has manipulated Louise into working out the mystery of Rob’s disappearance. Everything is going according to Adele’s plan.

“‘He’d have got in touch’ […] ‘If he was still alive.’”

Adele coyly references the fact that Rob’s no longer alive. She does not expound upon this mention. With these few words, Adele sets Louise’s investigative urges in motion and Pinborough drops another teaser for the reader.

“I tell her I’m enjoying the oblivion. The feeling of nothingness. Of non-existence. I text her that sometimes I think I’d like to be nothing. I wonder how she felt reading those words. A hint of what’s possibly to come. Words to haunt her later.” 

This is part of Adele’s elaborate lie to cover up her knowledge of the second door and its powers. She tells Louise she has been taking sleeping pills, so she is not experiencing lucid dreaming. She is in fact referring to her own death, to come soon, as part of her plan. This is an example of overt foreshadowing.

“Then she said that truth was all relative. Truth often came down to what is the most believable version of events.” 

David is relating to Louise how Adele blackmailed him into covering up Rob’s death. Louise has just sent the letter to the police detective stating that David killed him. She now believes David and regrets sending the letter. Louise and the reader wonder who will be believed in the end. Much of the book revolves around this question of whose reality is most valid.

“It’s why I was so glad to meet you. You’re so normal […] You’re so grounded. Your nightmares are just nightmares, and you just get on with them. You would never believe anything like that. You’re sane.” 

David compares Louise to Adele after explaining the details of Adele’s disorder. This is, however, Louise’s one and only secret from him—that she does know how to lucid dream and do astral projection. She keeps this secret for when she needs it.