A Good Enough Mother
Page 21
‘So – are you saying you never see people here for more than six sessions?’
I hesitate for a moment, and can feel the tension in the room.
‘No,’ I say carefully, ‘that’s not what I’m saying. Sometimes that’s enough, sometimes people need more. And I think you would benefit hugely from some more sessions, some bereavement work.’
‘These sessions – they’ll be with someone else? In a completely different place?’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘that’s right.’
She looks back at me incredulously.
‘And how many sessions will that be for? Until I say I want to stop?’ I can see there are tears forming at the corner of her eyes. She blinks them away. ‘Or will that be someone else’s decision?’ she asks, twisting the silver charm bracelet on her wrist.
‘That will be something to work out with the new therapist,’ I say. I pause and fold my hands together in my lap. ‘I think we have done some very important work here together, Hayley. You have been courageous in coming here and talking about what has been a most incredibly traumatic and stressful—’
‘You’re lying,’ she cuts in. ‘This “we just offer six sessions” crap. It’s simply not true. A while ago, you told another patient he could have “as many sessions as he needs” – why can’t I?’ Her eyes are ablaze.
I feel a flush spread quickly up my neck.
‘I’m not sure I understand—’
‘That bloke who comes after me. Dan. How come you told Dan he could have as many as he needed? Did he score more points than me? Is that how it gets worked out? Three of his family died and only one of mine … is that how it goes? Points for people? Or does arson trump a car crash?’
I keep my voice even and calm. ‘I’m not at liberty to discuss other patients’ treatment plans,’ I say, ‘we make decisions on a case by case basis. Our initial offering is six sessions. Some people need more. Some less. That’s it.’
As I’m speaking, repeating the same instructions, my thoughts are scattered, trying to get a handle on what she’s talking about. Dan? Losing three members of his family? Arson? Most of all, I’m trying to regain some control. Her rage is quietly simmering, heating up to a boiling point. I know I need to move beyond this focus on sessions, to an understanding of what all this really means for Hayley. The pain and distress of endings – in the midst of so much loss. The loss of her mother. The loss of me. But as I go to speak, she bats away my words.
‘So that’s what you do here is it? Make us talk about the worst thing that’s ever happened to us, then say – fuck off. Go and talk to someone else.’
I try to speak, but she’s gathering momentum. Her body upright in her chair. Her hands clasped, white-knuckled in her lap. Her voice has hardened, her face has twisted into that old defiant stare.
‘“Bring your photos, Hayley. It’s not your fault, Hayley,”’ she says, mocking my voice, ‘“I really want to be there for you, Hayley—”’
Small bubbles of spittle are gathering in the corner of her mouth.
‘How do you live with yourself?’ she demands. ‘People like you make me sick. All smug and above us all with your perfect life. Your poncey consulting room—’ and as she speaks, saliva sprays over the case file in front of us.
‘Hayley—’
‘Your perfect leafy life,’ she says again, spitting out the words. ‘Bet you live in one of these big fuck-off houses round here. People like you make me sick. Literally. In fact, I want to puke. Right now,’ and she mimes poking her fingers in her throat and retching. ‘I want to puke my guts up over your carpet.’ She takes a breath. ‘Look at all this,’ and she jabs a finger round the room. ‘These silly chairs. The box of tissues at the ready. That stupid picture,’ and she turns towards my desk. ‘I mean – what is that? Looks like it’s been drawn by a five-year-old.’ I follow her gaze. It’s one of the sketches at the cabin in Devon that Carolyn had drawn.
‘Cherry picking,’ she continues. ‘That’s what you’re doing. Choosing who you want to be with – and you’ve decided not to choose me. Are you worried that something bad might happen to you? Are you scared of me?’ she says, and she wiggles her fingers in the air, woo hoo, like a ghost. ‘Is that why you’re palming me off to someone else?’ she continues, without taking a breath.
‘Hayley,’ I say, quietly, ‘I can see you are angry and—’
She cuts in again. With her clasped fists and a mean face, she sits rigid in front of me.
‘I’m glad I won’t be seeing you,’ she snaps, ‘you’re evil. It’s you that has the problem. My mother’s dead. But at least she was kind. At least she wasn’t selfish, like you. Thank God I had a mother that was kind. Thank God I didn’t have you.’
Thank God I didn’t have you.
The priority is to bear her fury. I know how to do this. The four walls of my consulting room have been splattered with rage over the years. Most of the time it’s been raw, but not such a personal attack. The important thing is to contain it. Then try to understand it together. As she continues to berate me – a relentless assault on my room, my clothes, my very existence – I realise there’s no space to intervene. For a few moments, I simply watch her mouth move. Her arms and hands flicking back and forth. Her jaw set. When she takes a breath, I say her name.
‘Hayley,’ I say calmly, ‘when you are shouting, it’s impossible for us to talk. And it’s hard for me to listen—’
‘You’re useless,’ she snaps, ‘useless, stupid and unhelpful. In fact you make me feel worse. I feel worse coming here. Is that what you want?’ she says.
I let her words go over my head. I know she feels abandoned, alone and rejected. And I know that all her rage is being funnelled into this small moment with me. All I can see is her taut angry face leering in at me. All I can hear is her hatred.
‘Hayley,’ I try again.
Perhaps it’s the calmness in my voice that ignites her further, because she lurches forwards. Her eyes are a bright flared blue, and I’m close enough to smell the cigarette smoke on her breath.
‘I hope to God you don’t have kids,’ she says, pushing her face close to mine. ‘What kind of a useless cunt of a mother would you be?’
These are the words that don’t drift over my head. Instead they land hard, like sharp slaps across my cheeks.
It’s at this point she stands up. I’m aware of a strong desire to get her to stay, and I stand up too. It’s all I can think about. Finding some way to get her to sit down, and a way to contain her anger before she leaves.
She hisses with venom, ‘If I was a child of yours, I’d get as far away from you as possible.’
It’s like a body blow.
As she turns away, I move towards her. I reach my hands out. Palms down, a sort of fanning motion. A soothing gesture. A way of trying to calm things down. And as she moves away, the hands that are fanning and placatory reach out. I want to try to get her to sit back down with me.
‘As far away as possible,’ she repeats very slowly.
I hear her words thundering in my ears. I see my hand reach for her. My fingers touching her skinny white arm.
She startles.
‘What the fuck are you doing? Don’t touch me,’ she shrieks, spit landing on my cheek. The exact sequence of events is a little hazy. I remember how the emotion on her face seems to course right through me. It’s like a sudden and unexpected flaring of my own anger. Then, seconds later, we’re both staring down at the tangle of our arms. She says something. I let go, quickly. She jerks her arm away, shock on her face.
‘Bitch,’ she says, leaning into my face, ‘you’re a fucking disgrace.’ Then she grabs her bag, slams the door behind her and is gone.
I slump down into the chair. My hands are trembling. Her rage. My rage. I wash my face at the sink and open the window. I gulp in fresh air. I feel jittery and panicky, but I make myself sit at my desk and take some slow deep breaths and then I realise I have twenty minutes until Dan is due to come.
At 4.45, it’s clear he’s not coming and I start to gather up my things to go home. The phone rings.
‘It’s Dr Jane Davies – Dan Griffin’s GP?’
She tells me she had a call from an A & E department to say Dan was waiting for treatment, ‘but then he upped and left. He’d given the doctor your name.’
‘What happened?’
‘Not sure,’ she says. ‘Wasn’t local,’ and I can hear the sound of the shuffling of papers.
‘Bristol,’ she says.
‘When was this?’
‘Couple of hours ago. That’s all I’ve got. Seems it was a physical injury.’
I walk home quickly. Already the episode with Hayley has taken on a surreal quality. It plays and replays in a loop in my head, spooling back and forth. I feel ashamed by my feelings of anger. Ashamed that I let her words get to me, and I realise my mistake. My focus was on getting her to stay, but it was wrong. She was too angry. I should have simply let her go. Sometimes the most containing thing to do is to let someone leave. Let them calm down. My thoughts flit back and forth between Hayley and Dan. I feel jumpy. When I shift away from the image of Hayley and the enraged look on her face, my thoughts turn to Dan. To his trip to Bristol. And then my feelings of panic are free-floating, exploding like fireworks, way above my head.
Nineteen
When I get back home, I call Robert straight away. I send a follow-up email. It’s the email that sends back an ‘out of office’ until Friday lunchtime. I email back, asking for an urgent appointment on his return. That night, the house feels empty. I sit on the sofa. When I close my eyes, I see Hayley’s face. That twist of fury. Her hot angry breath on my face. Bitch. I pour out red wine and watch it splash around the huge bowl of a glass. Wine in a glass. The sound of a bottle opening. It used to be celebratory. The sound of joyfulness. Of merriment. Now it’s often the opposite.
My body is tense. I realise I’m perched on the edge of my seat, as if ready for the dramatic moment of a production. I have my monthly visit to see my mother on Saturday. I already know I won’t be able to go. I sit very still. I am staring at nothing, just listening to the sound of the rain on the windows in the kitchen. I think about how the skylights were part of the kitchen extension, the ‘side-return’ to give us a wide-open family space. When the twins went to secondary school, I’d imagined they’d sit at the long table and do their homework side by side. I often had images of how I imagined our life would be. I still do.
The rain is lashing harder now, like handfuls of grit being hurled against the glass. I always think of Tom when it rains. I close my eyes and try to picture where he is. I wonder if he’s out there, walking the streets, head down and bent forwards without a coat on his back. Sometimes I can catch myself, and picture him inside, somewhere warm and sheltered. That evening, my mind drifts to darker places. A shop doorway? The bottom of a lake? I remembered the conversations in those early days, when it was quickly established he took no bank cards or cash. ‘He can’t have gone far,’ they said, ‘without funds or resources.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Don’t forget it’s easier to disappear when you’re alive than when you’re dead. Bodies always turn up sooner or later.’ At the time, I felt the words like a punch. The cold blunt words of a middle-aged policeman. Now that all this time has passed, when I repeat them in my head, they have become the reverse. A strange sort of comfort. Perhaps a misguided source of hope – but hope nonetheless.
I’m at the computer after the second glass of wine. I can’t help myself, it’s a weird sort of solace these days, watching the mouse track the faces that are now so familiar. After checking in on my son, I move to Denis Watson and click on the website. It all looks different. The black ribbons. The statement posted over the top of the montage of pictures. As my eyes scan the words, I feel drained.
As you may have seen in the press reports, human remains were discovered in a cave close to the beach where Denis was last seen in Corfu. Officers from the UK have been working in conjunction with the Greek authorities and it is with great sadness that we report that forensics have confirmed that it is the body of our Denis. Denis Watson – much loved by many. RIP. We will be bringing his body home to rest.
After such a long period of uncertainty, grief and hope – we now have to deal with a huge loss as our tireless search has ended. We hope for rest and peace for both Denis and ourselves, as we focus on the precious memories we have of Denis and of his wonderful life.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank both the public and the media for their support over the years, but we now ask for privacy as we come to terms with our loss.
The words swim in front of me as the tears well up. I Google his name and Corfu, and sure enough there are many reports of a body unearthed at a rocky outcrop of caves. I click on the press reports, reading each one greedily for new information. By the time I click back to the website, moving the mouse over the pictures I know so well, I am sobbing. There’s the birth of his best friend’s baby. His brother’s wedding. The death of his grandad. Twelve years of all these lives moving forwards. His own stopped all of a sudden, like the hands of a clock. There’s no detail on when he died, but the implication is that it was on that night, on holiday, all those years ago. All that time, all those posted blogs and pictures. All those visits by his brothers. All in vain. He was long dead. I lean in close. That cheeky smile. That casual pose against the backdrop of the bright blue sea. I refill my glass. I gulp at the wine. My hands are feverish on the pictures. Entering into the life that ended so abruptly. The family that lives on. I’m crying hard as I gaze into the void of their lives. The space they have filled with him, with their hope, their search, their expectations have come to nothing. It’s not much later that I notice my glass is empty and I’m weeping in a strange and uncontrollable way. My body lurches back and forth in great dry heaves, and the tears continue to flow, like I am punctured and leaky.
When the doorbell rings, it’s close to midnight. Maybe even later. There’s barely an inch of wine left in the bottle. And the sound of the shrill bell in the silence is jolting. I stand up too quickly. Lightheaded from the alcohol. I feel dizzy, and in my flurry to move, my foot kicks into the coffee table. The bottle rocks and teeters, then falls to the side. The wine tips, a red gash across the carpet. The bell rings again.
Perhaps it’s because I’m thinking of Tom. Perhaps it’s because my thoughts are curled around him at that very moment. Perhaps because I can think of no one else who could possibly call so late, I move with a surge of hope and expectation. And in my mind’s eye, I see him. Standing on the porch. No coat. The water running down his face.
‘Hey, Mum,’ he’ll say, stepping past me into the warmth of the house. The bell rings again, more urgently. I turn into the hallway and I see his figure in the porch. I open the door. A stooped head in the darkness.
‘Help me—’ the voice says, ‘please?’
Dan is standing in my porch. His lip is swollen. The rain is tipping down.
His face is pinched and white. His hands are trembling.
Without hesitation, I open the door wide, and he steps inside.
There are many moments I will come to look back on, turn over and scrutinise. The decision not to refer Dan on to another therapist, the first blurring of my boundaries that led to the bigger lie. And one of those moments will be how quick I was to open the door and let him in. Let him into my hallway. My house. My world.
Water pools onto the wood of the floor, ‘Sorry, I’m very sorry,’ he mutters, looking around helplessly as though parts of himself were dripping to the floor in a puddle.
In the light of the hallway, I can see his bloodied nose and a bruise emerging on his cheek above the bleeding lip. His teeth are chattering and it becomes obvious that he needs dry clothes. Without thi
nking, I go upstairs and gather a jumper, trousers, underwear and socks from Tom’s room. Do I think this through? I simply don’t remember. What I do remember is how I stumbled drunkenly on the stairs as I came back down.
‘Here,’ I say, opening the utility room door off the kitchen, ‘you can change in here.’ He steps in, but doesn’t close the door. Quickly, he peels off his wet hoodie; I see the flash of his torso. Tight, muscular but patterned with old scars. I look away.
I should call the police. I can see he’s very frightened. I can see from the way he’s walking, gingerly and with caution, that he’s been hurt. I should take him to a doctor. I don’t know why I don’t do either of these things. I don’t ask him how he knows where I live. I don’t tell him that he can’t be here. That I’ll have to call him a cab. All of these things are the things I should say, but I don’t. Instead, I make him hot chocolate in my kitchen.
‘I went to Bristol,’ he says, mumbling into his fingers. ‘I didn’t know where else to go—’ and he looks up at me. It’s his face. Open. Pleading. ‘I’m sorry.’
I don’t know whether the apology is for coming to my house or for going to Bristol after we’d discussed it at the last session.
‘I didn’t know who else to turn to—’ He’s gulping in air. His body is twitching. His hands flying up to his face, then wringing his fingers together. ‘I knew you would help,’ he says.
Bitch. You’re a fucking disgrace.
‘How did you know where I live?’ I ask. And I can hear the slight slur in my voice.
His face falls into his hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says simply, ‘I followed you home once. It was ages ago. I’m really sorry. I know it was wrong. It was the day I left early. I waited and followed you home. I’d been rude. I wanted to say sorry. But then I changed my mind. Thought you might think it was creepy.’