‘I feel as though I’m treading on eggshells all the time,’ he says, studying Lydia’s response. ‘I feel I have to constantly justify myself. I’m entitled to get on with my life now. Why should I carry on suffering for other people’s mistakes?’
‘We keep going around in circles where this is concerned,’ Lydia says, addressing her words to Karen. She notices the changed expression on the counsellor’s face; the faraway look in her eyes that suggests her mind has drifted elsewhere.
‘How much of a recurring issue is this allegation?’ Karen asks. ‘How often would you say it causes arguments?’
‘Daily,’ Lydia says.
‘What will it take for you to get past it, do you think?’
She shifts in her seat, her eyes cast down to the floor. ‘I don’t know,’ she says, her voice small and almost inaudible. ‘If I’m honest, I don’t see how we can.’
‘Josh can’t undo the allegation,’ Karen says eventually. ‘He’s only able to give you his version of events.’
‘My version of events?’ he repeats, throwing emphasis on the offending word. He folds his arms across his chest, his eyes darting between the two women. ‘You may as well call me a liar.’
‘That’s not what I’m suggesting at all.’ For the first time in their meetings, it is Karen who looks embarrassed. A flush of pink mottles the top of her chest, quickly chasing up her throat. ‘What I mean is that whatever the truth might be, all anyone can do is give their side of it. Whether another person believes them or not is their decision. You can’t be punished for someone else’s choice.’
‘You think I’m punishing him?’ Lydia asks, disheartened and frustrated by the suggestion.
‘You have to decide what you believe,’ Karen says, fighting to regain some control and composure. The flush of colour has risen to her cheeks now, where a red spot sits on either side of her face. ‘If you believe in Josh’s innocence, you have to find a way to move on from this. That means that once you’ve discussed it to the point where it’s been exhausted, there needs to be no more bringing it back up in arguments or using it to score points.’
Lydia feels herself growing hot with indignation. She had hoped that Karen was on her side. She needs her to be on her side. ‘You think he’s the victim here?’
‘I’m not saying anyone is a victim. What I’m saying is that being here in this room suggests you both want to make this relationship work, and yet when you say you don’t think you can get past a particular issue – regardless of what that issue is – it implies that you already consider the marriage to be over.’
Lydia and Josh exchange glances. The silence that follows is broken by Karen, who seems to reconsider her words and the finality with which they have been spoken. ‘Allegations such as this are very difficult to move on from,’ she says, as though correcting her earlier statement. ‘I’m not saying it can’t be done – of course it can – but it will most certainly take time.’
‘Have you seen this before?’ Lydia asks. ‘Have you ever known another couple to survive an allegation like this?’
Karen hesitates on an answer, her mouth set in a rigid line as though her face has momentarily frozen. ‘I’m not saying it won’t be difficult,’ she says finally, ‘but there’s no reason why a relationship can’t survive this.’
‘But do you know of anyone personally?’ Lydia presses.
This time the pause is longer. ‘No,’ she says. ‘No, I don’t personally know of any cases. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If two people want to make something work, there’s always a way.’
‘I still love him, despite everything.’
‘Then there are ways,’ Karen says, with a smile Lydia doesn’t believe for a moment is sincere. Behind it she suspects she may be thinking something far different. Get out while you still can. ‘Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting.’
‘Forgiving?’ Josh repeats. ‘Forgiveness for what, though? I haven’t done anything wrong. Shouldn’t she be making it up to me?’
‘This isn’t about who’s right and who’s wrong,’ Karen says. ‘It’s about accepting what’s happened and how it’s affected you both, and finding a way to move on from it.’
Josh tuts and his face lapses into a sneer. ‘And how do we do that exactly? Because you keep talking about moving on from this and getting over that, but you never actually tell us how we’re supposed to do that. What do you suggest?’
Lydia feels the temperature in the room drop as the two of them lock eyes with one another, Josh’s eyebrows raised in expectation while Karen stares him out defiantly.
‘Firstly,’ she says, her tone cold and stony, ‘I suggest you adjust the way you speak to me.’
‘This feels like a bit of a witch hunt. I was accused of something I didn’t do and now I’m being attacked for it because I expect her to show me a bit of support.’
‘No one’s attacking you, Josh.’
‘It certainly feels like it.’
‘I apologise for that. Do you think you might be able to do the same?’
‘What?’
‘Do you think you might be able to apologise to me for the way you spoke to me?’
Lydia watches back and forth, turning her attention to each of them in turn, hooked by the scene that is unfolding in front of her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he finally offers. He sounds like a child coaxed into saying the words after being threatened with having his toys taken away from him.
‘Thank you,’ Karen says, her voice still cold; no gratitude in her tone. ‘In answer to your question, what I suggest you do is tell each other exactly how the allegation has made you feel. We’ve only scratched the surface here today. You don’t have to do that in front of me, you don’t even have to do it face to face – if you prefer, you could write your feelings down and give them to the other person to read when you’re not around. Until each of you really knows how the other is feeling, you’ll continue to find yourselves going around in circles. Which way would you rather do it, do you think?’
‘Writing,’ Lydia says quickly. She looks at Josh, who simply nods in agreement.
‘Okay then. What I’m going to ask you to do is write it all down when you get a chance over the next few days, and make sure you read each other’s thoughts before the next session. Try to give yourself enough time to absorb them properly before you come back, okay?’
Lydia nods, noticing that Josh doesn’t respond. He has been humiliated and won’t take kindly to having been made a fool of. She’ll pay for it once they get into the car. He stands hurriedly and leaves the room, not waiting for Karen to say anything more.
‘Are you all right?’
She meets the counsellor’s eye and smiles, doing her best to fix the face she so often needs to wear. ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I’m fine.’
But it’s clear that Karen doesn’t believe it. And Lydia needs her not to believe it.
Four
Karen
We need to talk about the children. This is my first thought when I hear the doorbell ring, announcing the arrival of the Greens and the start of what will be their fourth session. Since we met last week, I have found myself thinking about them frequently, their issues concerning me far more than I know I should allow them to. Over the years, I have tried to develop a resilience that might enable me to leave other people’s problems outside once the door has been closed on them, in the same way I suspect others in certain types of jobs – doctors, nurses, social workers – must learn to shut their minds off from the tragedies they witness. It is a form of self-preservation.
Though I make the attempt, I still find it hard to switch off from the things I hear. There have been times when these things have haunted me, lingering in the corners of my home and disrupting my sleep. There are people I have met and been unable to leave behind, people whose relationships – and the mistakes I made in trying to help them – are as much a part of my history as my own, but despite all this, counselling gives me a purpose, s
omething on which to focus my limited energies. If I can help these couples, I can get something right.
The news of Josh’s arrest and the allegation made against him has preyed on my mind, and I wonder what effect it has had on their two children. They are old enough to be aware of the tensions that have arisen between their parents. I hope for both their sakes they aren’t aware of any more than this, but life can be cruel, and children are often forced to grow up too quickly, exposed to a world in which privacy no longer exists and innocence is stolen far too soon. Perhaps their younger child, their son, has been lucky enough to escape the mood that must surely have fallen over the home, though I doubt the same might apply to his older sister.
And what if they are aware of more? What sort of effect must an allegation of this nature against a parent have had on them?
Josh enters the house first, greeting me with a clipped good morning. The tense atmosphere between him and his wife is evident immediately; I breathe it in with the cold air that sweeps into the house with them and swallow it down as though it might offer me some insight into whatever has passed between them in the week since our last meeting. With it, I gulp down a yawn that attempts to escape me. I haven’t been sleeping well, though this is nothing new. My life has been plagued by sleeplessness, and this time of year always has the same effect on me, my grey mood reflected in the dark mornings and the evenings that close in before I am prepared for their arrival.
In two days, it will be Christopher’s thirty-fifth birthday. Would have been his thirty-fifth birthday, had he been born when he was due to arrive, not the day I first saw his face, when he was forced too early from my body, neither of us ready to meet for the first time.
This time of year always does the same thing to me, sapping me of any will to get up and face the day. The doctor prescribed medication to help with my insomnia, but all it seems to be doing so far is making me forgetful.
‘How are you both?’ I ask.
Though Lydia and Josh have troubled me, they have given me something to focus my thoughts on, allowing me if only for the briefest moments to escape my memories.
When Josh steps past me, I do what I can to pretend that the look he gives me has gone unnoticed. He is a man who doesn’t easily forget or forgive, and he still resents me for the words that were spoken here last week; words he chose to take as a personal attack. How often does he do the same to Lydia? How often does he twist what she says so that he can use it to make her suffer in his silences?
‘Okay, thank you,’ Lydia replies. It is said automatically and on cue, in the way that a sick person responds ‘Fine, thanks’ when asked how they are by a doctor, despite fearing something sinister in their symptoms. The irony of Josh’s profession occurs to me, not for the first time. It never ceases to amaze me how many people in roles associated with care and compassion seem incapable of these most basic of human qualities.
I wonder if whatever has happened between the Greens since our last session will be shared with me, or if it will be kept hidden. If nothing else, I am certain it is not their only secret. They will have spoken about Lydia’s mention of the assault allegation during the last session: how could they not? Josh was angry with his wife for raising the subject, but he surely must have realised it would surface at some point. No secret can stay hidden for ever.
I lead them through to the consultancy room and pull one of the heavy curtains across the window, where a rare streak of sunlight is pouring through the glass in a fiery mid-morning burst of heat.
‘Josh?’
He nods but says nothing, as though the gesture is enough of an answer. I already suspect that today’s session may be a strained one, particularly if he persists with this demonstration of disinterest. Why pay money to be here if only to then act in this way?
‘You’ve had three sessions now,’ I say, as they both take a seat. ‘Do you feel the counselling is helping things between you?’
Lydia nods. ‘It’s definitely helping me. Josh?’
He looks at me in a strange way, with an expression for which I’m unable to find an appropriate adjective. ‘We’ll see, won’t we?’
I decide not to take offence at his words, though the response is both rude and dismissive. His lip is curled in a sneer, giving him an obnoxious veneer that does nothing to help him ingratiate himself, though it occurs to me that he perhaps has no intention of trying to achieve favour with me or, for that matter, anyone else. Lydia glances at him before looking at me, her mouth tightening with embarrassment at her husband’s ill manners.
‘Have you both managed to do what I asked of you last time?’
Lydia reaches into her handbag and retrieves a sheet of paper, but I raise a hand to stop her before she unfolds it. ‘I don’t need to see it,’ I tell her. ‘In fact, it’s better that I don’t. Whatever you’ve written there should remain private between the two of you, if that’s how you’d prefer things to remain. Have you read it, Josh?’
He nods.
‘Was there anything there you weren’t already aware of?’
He looks at his wife and nods again. ‘There were some things she hasn’t told me before.’
‘Did it help to write it down?’ I ask Lydia.
‘Definitely. I think he understands things a bit better now. He’s been a lot more patient this past week.’
‘Well that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Josh, how did you get on?’
He shrugs. ‘I don’t think I wrote anything that’s not already been said. She knows how I feel about things.’
‘And have those feelings changed at all since reading what Lydia wrote?’
He pauses, studying me while he constructs his answer. ‘Not really,’ he admits. ‘I still feel pretty much the same.’
‘And how is that, Josh?’ I ask. ‘How do you feel?’
‘I just wish things were different.’ He holds my gaze for a moment, his grey eyes lingering for longer than they should. As with Lydia, his words manage to convey the sense that there is far more behind them, things that have gone unspoken but that long to be said.
‘Bear in mind what this exercise has allowed you to do. If you ever find you’re unable to tell each other how you feel about something, write it down. It can often be a more effective way of communicating. It tends to result in fewer arguments.’
Neither of them says anything to this. The atmosphere in the room is claustrophobic, and I wish it wasn’t so cold outside: if it was warmer, I could open a window and we could all get a breath of fresh air. Sometimes there is something stifling about just being around this couple, although I have no credible explanation for the feeling.
‘Would either of you like to share anything that you wrote?’ I ask, having gained the impression that Lydia might be keen to share her feelings with me.
I have had other couples carry out this exercise, and it has often resulted in barriers being broken down. Somehow, writing things out is easier than speaking the words aloud, even when later read face to face. Thirty-five years ago, a nurse advised me to write down how I was feeling. With red eyes and an empty heart, I dismissed the suggestion, feeling at the time that I could have gladly stabbed her with the biro she left on the cabinet at the side of my hospital bed. Yet when the ward had fallen silent and the sky outside turned black, I did what she had recommended, allowing the words to spill from me page by page, writing everything I couldn’t say to the son I had never met, and everything I wanted to say to the man who had taken him from me.
It was during that night that I chose the name Christopher. I didn’t want to think of him as gone, only as somewhere else, imagining he had left me in search of adventure. For over three decades I have continued to think of him in this way, inventing memories of people he never got to meet, places he never got to see, gathering these stories to create some kind of life for the one that was lost.
He would be a similar age to the couple sitting with me now, and as this thought crosses my mind, I find myself having to look away from
them both, resentful for a moment that they are here and he is not.
Lydia looks at Josh as though seeking permission to speak. He shrugs, apparently not caring whether she reveals the details of what has been shared between them.
‘I told him the truth,’ she says, turning back to me. ‘I told him that I can’t trust him.’
There is an uncomfortable silence. Josh shakes his head slightly, turning his face towards the window, and Lydia looks at her hands in her lap, twisting her wedding ring around her finger.
‘Is this in relation to the accusation, or something else?’ I ask, the words leaving me tentatively in anticipation of Josh’s potential reaction. When she doesn’t answer, her husband’s voice fills the gap.
‘She’s just being paranoid.’
And there I am again, thrown back into the past. I am no longer in this room, and it is no longer Josh Green who sits in front of me. I stand before a different man, his voice low and shallow in my ear as he leans towards me, taunting me with his words.
What are you going to do about it?
‘What makes you say that, Josh?’
‘It’s a fact,’ he says nonchalantly. ‘She’s always been the same, always thinking people are talking about her behind her back or trying to make trouble for her. You know, you say you don’t get out much,’ he continues, turning now to his wife, ‘but the truth is, you’ve pushed everyone away, haven’t you? You’re too sensitive, that’s your problem.’
I feel my jaw tightening as his speech escalates. He is so much like someone I used to know, someone I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with.
‘I’ve lost a lot of friends,’ Lydia responds quietly, directing her words at me. ‘But it’s not all been my fault.’ She bites her bottom lip and looks down at her lap like a child who has uttered words she fears will get her into trouble. Just how afraid of her husband is this woman?
My heart tightens in sympathy. I was once like her in so many ways; our stories appear so similar at a glance, and yet they are so different. Her children need her, and she wants to save her marriage, whether rightly or wrongly. I wish I could speak with her alone. Perhaps I might one day, but not yet. If there is something greatly amiss in this relationship – as I fear there might be – it is too early yet to go racing in to try to save her.
The Divorce: A gripping psychological thriller with a fantastic twist Page 6