Silent Treatment

by David James

  As she looked at the expression on its face she almost felt sorry for the emotional turmoil she had put it through. She also wondered who was the more emotionally stable now; Sarah or the doll.

  Looking back now it was clear that she had just been copying her father’s work; or at least her own childish understanding of what he did. She remembered introducing the doll to her father as her patient and describing the symptoms and her proposed treatment. He had even asked to sit in on one of her sessions with the doll but she had told him in no uncertain terms that it would violate patient therapist confidentiality. Or more childish words to that effect.

  She had been an unusual child.

  But it had the desired effect and it had brought her closer to her father and his work.

  The feeling of relief that spread across her was slightly tempered by the issue of why the doll had appeared out of nowhere.

  She walked into the room and looked at the stacks of her belongings and reasoned that it must have fallen off one of the boxes and landed sitting upright on the chair. Yes, that's what must have happened.

  The doll looked comfortable sitting on its chair and she decided to leave it there. She reached out and stroked the unruly hair of the doll. The last time she had dressed the doll – she wondered when exactly that was? – she had dressed her in slightly shabby plain t-shirt and jeans. She looked more like she was going on a protest march than about to be presented to royalty. Which was how Sarah liked it.

  She remembered that her father had offered her the choice of any doll in the shop and when Sarah had chosen her, she had liked the somewhat unkempt look of the doll, as opposed to the other perfect dolls in the shop. It had somehow seemed to match how she viewed herself more than the others, even though she was only nine years old when she had chosen it. She suspected she might not have been an easy child to live with.

  She closed the door behind her and made her way into the kitchen. The cupboards yielded nothing interesting to eat and she grabbed a chocolate bar and started to walk back upstairs, as she passed the study door she had the urge to have a look inside, but she looked down at her attire and realised that the key was upstairs in her other clothes. It would wait until morning.

  She headed back upstairs to her bedroom, looking only briefly at her former bedroom she noted that the door was firmly shut. She climbed into bed with her duvet enveloping her in its warm and safe embrace and she felt comfortably sleepy at last.

  Chapter Thirty

  The room was dark, but she knew where she was going. The door was locked, but it yielded to her touch and swung slowly open. The two chairs were there and the game was underway. Her opponent was deep in thought as she approached and their head was down.

  The face remained hidden from her, studying the board. She sat down opposite and studied the board intently. And then he made his move. The figure seemed content and slowly sat back in their chair until their face was revealed.

  She awoke suddenly, the bed clothes were strewn across the floor. and as her eyes began to slowly focus she could see light forcing its way into the room.

  She didn’t feel particularly refreshed by her sleep and she was aware that she had woken several times. It was all very well for the director to say ‘get some rest’, but after the past few months her mind was finding it difficult to be switched off. It needed to think of something. She began to fear that it was involved in making up its own reality to keep itself amused. She was no longer sure whose version of reality was the more real.

  Yet another day at home with her thoughts beckoned, but another day of what? Without the enforced routine of work, the structure the working week provided, it was becoming difficult to differentiate the days. Time seemed to pass in something of an indistinct blur.

  She found herself missing the children’s journals. She wondered if they were still filling them in? Or if Susan had started her own treatment regime and whether the children were still capable of filling them in even if they wanted to.

  She felt so helpless here all alone and unable to help them.

  And still she waited for Ben to contact her.

  Forcing herself out of bed she showered and put on her most comfortable clothes to hand. She was getting used to not worrying what she looked like, who would notice anyway? As she opened the door and walked into the corridor, she noticed that the door to her old room opposite was slightly open. She wasn’t surprised, she was getting used to it. But she stopped herself from walking away. She shouldn't be ‘getting used to it’ really should she? I mean, she remembered shutting it last night. But had she? She had a vision of her opening it, no that was in the dream, wasn’t it?

  She closed the door and walked down to the kitchen.

  She made breakfast and ate it with little enthusiasm.

  What to do now? She so wanted to hear from Ben, he must have got in touch by now. She had taken to leaving her laptop in the study, it was where she spent a lot of her time anyway. She stood up and unlocked the study door. It was cool and quite dark in there, she hadn't opened the curtains and it felt almost like a cave to her and maybe a refuge. She felt she could hide away here.

  She walked across the room towards the desk and glanced across to the chess table and froze.

  The board had changed.

  She stood there looking across at all the pieces and one of them had moved.

  Her father had made his move.

  And it appeared that the game with her father that had been frozen in time, had resumed.

  She must be mistaken. Perhaps she had misremembered how the pieces had been arranged. Yes, that must be it. She laughed out loud at her own silliness.

  But she continued to look at the board.

  She recognised what her father was trying to do, he had tried this strategy on her before. Would it really do any harm if she moved a piece for herself, for old times' sake?

  She hesitated.

  She smiled and said ‘You don’t expect me to fall for that do you?’

  After hovering her hand over the piece for a few moments, she eventually moved her piece on the board. She smiled, she was pleased with the move.

  And then she remembered why she had come into the study.

  The laptop was in one of the drawers of the desk and she left the chess table and sat down in the sumptuous chair and reached inside to pull the laptop out.

  She started the machine up and waited patiently until her emails downloaded.

  There was the usual rubbish, nothing from the institute begging her to go back she noticed and most importantly, still nothing from Ben.

  She wondered what normal people did on a day off? Shopping; visit a castle; go for a walk. She didn’t particularly fancy any of those, so she decided to look through her father’s old papers instead. She had started to organise them chronologically and by subject. It took her most of the morning, but eventually there laid out on his old desk was the sum total of his work. Her father’s life laid bare. As she looked at the files on the desk, she wondered when someone laid out her life like that what would it say?

  She picked up the first folder and began to skip through it. It detailed his early professional life. Some of the descriptions of the treatments appeared almost comical by today’s standards. But early on it was clear that her father was willing to experiment and try new approaches. As she read through the second file, she recognised descriptions of the old institute she had been in with the children. It seemed strange that he was describing a building bristling with life and she remembered the tattered and empty remains she had seen there.

  As she read more she felt herself getting closer and closer to her father, reading the little scribbled notes and asides he had written on the papers. She half expected him to walk into his study at any moment and chastise her for making a mess and reading his private files.

  She looked up at the door. It remained closed.

  It was also a little odd to see mentions of ‘Robert’, who Sarah knew as her boss, the director of
the institute. Reading some of her father’s comments it was clear that they were close, it was also clear that if anyone was going to be the director of an institute, it was Robert, not her father. He didn’t seem to posses the political skills necessary to scale the greasy pole at all.

  She shut the file and put it back on the desk. As it settled in amongst the many other files, she realised that she had barely started the journey through her father’s life. She was acutely aware that she hadn't left the house since she started her enforced break. Maybe now would be the time to go outside.

  She stood up, glanced at the chess table, locked the study door and grabbed her coat from the hallway and left via the front door.

  As she emerged into the world her eyes squinted uncomfortably and began to tear up. She felt like a recluse emerging into the world for the first time for many years. She had no clear idea where she was going, just that she felt she should get out of the house. But as she closed the door behind her she immediately began feeling anxious.

  In the house everything was where she wanted it and she felt in control. But out here she didn’t feel in control, not at all. As she walked along the road, she remembered that there was a park nearby that had somehow managed to escape the developers tender clutches, and hadn’t been converted into an urban village of a thousand tightly packed homes.

  Her head was beginning to clear a little as she walked and as she turned into the park she was beginning to feel a little better.

  The park had been allowed to remain quite natural. The trees had been allowed to grow, the grass had grown as it was intended to do and the paths were minimal. She found as she walked that the pathway became less distinct and the light was beginning to be filtered by the tree canopy. She walked deeper into the woods, expecting to re-emerge into the brightness at any moment. Her mind was on the children again. They rarely left her thoughts, but away from the safety of her house, her mind seemed to fill with images of them. She began to wonder what they were doing now? What was Susan doing to them?

  And then she heard something.

  Or thought she did. But she shook her head to clear it.

  She stopped walking. All seemed quiet around her, except the sound of the occasional bird call. She must have imagined it, maybe it was the sound of her feet moving the leaves around as she walked. But she couldn't deny she thought she had heard a voice.

  She started walking again, now she would really welcome the glare of the outside world.

  She heard the sound again and stopped, this time the sound continued fractionally after she stopped and she caught the last remnant of the sound. It seemed to have formed into a word.

  Shara.

  She froze. She hadn’t heard that name for a long time; it was her father's nickname for her. Apparently it was her attempt at pronouncing her own name when she was too young to know better. The rest of her family, especially her mother, hadn’t approved of the nickname and it had the effect of bonding her and her father closer together as a result.

  She was sure she had heard it this time. But was she just making a normal sound into something she wanted to hear?

  Part of her mind screamed out to her to run, part to turn around and see where the sound was coming from and to find its source. She stood there as if paralysed.

  Shara.

  She swung round to confront the sound.

  It stopped as suddenly as she thought it had started. She felt dizzy now and out of control. She realised that she had left her tablets at home in her haste to leave.

  She looked back where she had come from, the path didn’t look so clear now. She could push deeper into the woods and hope to emerge soon or she could go back.

  She chose to go back. But her head was throbbing now and her vision was clouded. She stumbled on half blinded, crashing into tree branches. She decided to walk with her hands flailing about in front of her to stop the branches flicking into her face. It was only partly successful and she felt the branches cut across her face.

  She continued to wave her arms out in front of her and she noticed that nothing touched them for a while, but she continued to wave her arms around just in case there were still branches there.

  Through her bleary eyes she hadn't noticed that it had started to get brighter.

  And then the voice returned.

  Except it was different, more distinct this time, she strained to understand it.

  ‘Are you alright? Can I help you?’ said the voice.

  She stopped waving her hands in front of her. But she didn’t know how to react.

  ‘Are you alright?’ said the voice again.

  She looked up, but the light seemed blinding now and the tears refused to clear.

  She recovered enough of her wits to say ‘Are they still there?’

  ‘Is who there? There’s no one else here.’

  She nodded her head vigorously, ‘You probably scared them off. Well done.’

  Her eyes cleared enough to see a concerned face say ‘Do you live around here?’

  She nodded. ‘Must get back to see my father,’ she said.

  ‘And will he look after you okay?’ said the voice.

  ‘Yes, yes, we’ll be fine,’ said Sarah.

  Sarah’s eyes had recovered enough for her to start walking back along the path and towards the house. She turned and said ‘Thank you,’ and for the first time could clearly see the face of the middle aged man as he spoke to her. His voice didn’t sound like the one she had heard in the woodland. But he could always have disguised it. Yes, that was possible, she thought.

  ‘If you are sure then,’ he said.

  She managed a half smile and said ‘I’ll be fine,’ and turned and walked back home, but even she was beginning to doubt that she was fine. She hurried along, looking over her shoulder at regular intervals. If she was still being followed, then if she took an unusual route home she could shake them off.

  He watched her walk down the path and was wondering if he should follow her and check if she was okay. When she had emerged from the woodland she had looked distressed and had been waving her arms around wildly in front of her. She had seemed to be talking to someone, or at least mumbling to herself, but there was no one else around. He continued to watch as she shuffled down the path and away into the distance.

  As he turned away he was already feeling guilty that he had let her leave without helping her, she had seemed so distressed.

  She walked slowly along the road and then would suddenly dart down another road without warning. She smiled at her own ingenuity, that would fool them. Eventually she was walking down her own road. She walked past her own house and as she did she felt a desperate urge to dive in to the safety of its walls. But she might still have to shake them off. She walked a hundred yards past her own door and them quickly looked around.

  There was no one following her.

  Or perhaps they were just good at hiding from her?

  She slowly turned around and headed back towards her house, as soon as she reached her gate, she dived quickly through it, rushed up to the door, unlocked it and almost fell through the door. She just hoped they hadn’t seen her.

  The director was sitting at his desk and he was feeling uncomfortable.

  He had no choice about replacing Sarah. But it wasn’t a choice he felt good about. And now it was four days since she had taken leave. They had only agreed to two days, but considering what he had done he hadn’t worried about her taking a few more. But they hadn’t heard from her in all that time.

  And now he was worried.

  And he was wondering if he should go and see if she was okay. After all he was still her boss so it wouldn’t be entirely unusual. But he was still reticent, and feeling guilty. Maybe removing her from the children’s treatment had not been good for her. Maybe they needed each other, the children and Sarah, in some strange symbiotic way. If he didn’t owe it to Sarah then he certainly owed it to her father.

  He sighed deeply and resolved that he would go to
her father’s old house and see if she was okay. He must.

  Chapter Thirty One

  Sarah slammed the front door behind her, locked it, double locked it and peered cautiously through the letter box. From her limited view it all looked safe. She must have shaken them off.

  She stood up and returned to the sanctuary of her father’s study. She unlocked the study door and virtually ran inside.

  ‘I’m back,’ she announced and slumped down in the chair.

  Her heart was still pounding and she was still trying to make sense of what had happened. Or what she thought had happened, she wasn’t sure anymore.

  She tried to control her breathing, slower and deeper until she could feel her head partially clearing and as she looked around the room she felt safe and secure once more.

  She reached down and picked up the laptop. Maybe Ben had replied already? That would be such a relief, she thought, and she opened the screen eagerly.

  Nothing from Ben.

  She was beginning to feel uneasy now. She wondered if something had happened to him? Had they known about what she and Ben were doing?

  There was a sound from outside that made her jump. She resolved that she needed to make sure the house was safe. She stood up and pulled the curtains shut in the study. But she knew that wouldn’t be enough, so she spent the next few hours walking round the house, looking for ways to make it safer. She closed all the curtains she could, locked all the doors, checked the doors again, locked the windows where she could. She began to curse the size of the house, there were so many rooms and windows and doors and she couldn’t see how she could secure them all.

  She went round again, to check she hadn’t missed anything. But then she realised with a jolt that she hadn’t checked if the house was empty when she had got back in. If somebody had already got in then all she was doing was locking herself in the house, alone, with them.