by Sue Walker
Without a reply, she knelt up to meet him, letting the duvet fall from her body, her hands moving to his crotch, as she began undoing buttons.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“He’s evidently not fit to be back at work if he can’t deal with something like this! Let’s look at that e-mail again. Right. Dr Calder, herewith new patient list for consideration. Four patients. Fifteen-year-old female with eating disorder; 52-year-old male with OCD. That’s obsessive-compulsive disorder to you and me, Dan. What else? A 44-year-old male with psycho-sexual disorder. Interesting. And here we go. We’ve also bad repeated inquiries from a male with post-traumatic syndrome stemming from the gang rape and kidnapping of his young daughter. He has specifically asked for a consultation with you. Further details in inquiries file”
Alex flung the e-mail printout on to the table and turned to face him, eyes narrowed. “Frankly, Danny, I wouldn’t give Simon’s employers any gold stars for sensitivity, though they may have thought he should get back in the saddle pronto, for his own sake. But really, he’s going to confront stuff like this as long as he remains in the career he’s in. He sends this to us, expecting our sympathy! What the fuck can we do about it?”
Danny sat at her expensive mahogany dining-room table, shaking his head, as much to himself as at her. “For fuck’s sake! Have a heart for poor Simon. When he’d calmed down, I got him to call the Clinic Director then and there. He knows her quite well. Someone called Sheena something or other. Anyway, apparently they’ve got a new secretary in the department. Doesn’t know about Simon and she said that the patient asked for Simon by name. Said he’d been treated by him in the past. Simon says he’s never treated anyone with that profile. Weird, eh? Of course it made Simon worse. I had a hell of a job calming him down.”
He watched her. Typical Alex, putting the whisky away. Situation normal. She flung her head back in disagreement. “It’s probably some undercover tabloid journalist trying to get a story. Or, maybe it’s a genuine patient who had read about Simon in the paper and thought, oh, I’ll see if I can fast-track and get that bloke to treat me. He’ll understand, etc. Anyway, I think Si should take the patient on. It might be just what he needs. To think about someone, something else now. Instead of his crumbling marriage. You know, he phoned me up the other day and told me that his mother had openly taken against him, siding with the wife! That doesn’t surprise me. His mother was always a bitch to him. Pure poison. That’s why he was in the fucking Unit in the first place, as you well know. God, remember those endless hours in group therapy talking about her latest shit with Simon! Thing is, I think the wife should either leave him or stay with him. Or Si should get rid of her for good. Divorce the bitch.”
Danny raised a hand at-her and let out a mock-laugh. “No chance. He’s the sort of guy who needs a family around him. Unloved as a child, he needs at least the trappings of stable family life. He had that once but not now. The child’s kidnapping has ruined his marriage. But look, I think you should’ve got Simon to come here. I’m not happy being here without his knowledge, Alex. I mean it. We need to sort this out once and for all. Take a decision. Anyway, I can’t just come down from the fuckin’ Western Isles at a minute’s notice. I’ve got a croft to run. And it costs a fuckin’ fortune to get here.”
He stood up and began pacing Alex’s long dining room. He’d just about had it now. He wanted to get a word in edgeways. He had things he wanted to raise. But he knew that Alex, as ever, was determined to take the lead. He recognized her uncanny ability to take control, even in those very situations where she had the least right to. Her urge for control always suggested it was on the dangerous and, to some, sexually enticing side of violence. That’s how she’d been in the Unit, minus the overt sexualization. That would have been too troubling for her at the time to face publicly. To any normal adolescent. And she’d been far from that. They’d all been far from that…
He drifted back into her surprisingly emollient tones. “Danny. Please sit down and please calm down. I told you what’s going on with Si, his family. He’s severely fucked up, that I do know. I think we can both agree on that. But I also want us to agree to hold him back. We need time to think, given what’s at stake. Anyway, I think I might stay in closer touch with Si from now on.”
He stopped the pacing and answered her with a sarcastic laugh. “Hah! How close?”
It was a cheap shot but he knew he was right about one thing. Alex wouldn’t hesitate to use her sexual power on anyone if she thought it would help her. She’d already tried it on with him during that wretched car journey after the reunion at Simon’s. But from the look of her, he thought he might have gone too far this time.
“Fuck off! You should be thanking me, not insulting me. If I can control Simon, then we might avoid being in the shit! You’ve been in close touch with him up to now and he’s still going off the rails. Let me try.”
But he was going to stand his ground. “Yeah, well, you have got the equipment, after all. Mind you, I think his head isn’t on sex right now, hard though that might be for you to understand.”
The slap of her hand as it made contact with his cheek was loud as a whip-crack. He sensed that it had been planned as a dramatic, even flirtatious gesture, but Alex didn’t know her own strength, and he was amazed to see in the wall mirror a trickle of blood beading along his cheek from the cut that her hefty ring had opened up. It hurt. Strangely, Alex seemed more shaken than he did, and he simply wiped a knuckle across his face. She, meanwhile, was helping herself to as much Scotch as she could fit in her glass. She was losing her usually water-tight self-possession.
He turned his back to the room, staring unseeingly out of the window into the black depths of the garden. Alex was speaking to him again. This time her tone was apologetic, though barely under control. “Danny? You said something about ‘taking decisions’. What d’you mean?”
He turned back to face her, pulling out a ready-rolled cigarette, and joined her at the table. The bleeding cut apart, he knew his face looked tense and tired. Alex had pushed a clean ash tray towards him. A peace offering of sorts?
“What’s been going on, Danny?”
The cigarette had stopped midway to his lips, his face a darkening scowl. He did and didn’t welcome the prying question. He put a finger to the cut on his face to check the bleeding and kept silent, refusing to answer her. It looked like Alex was going to prompt him again, but she’d obviously decided to hold back and wait.
He kept his head bent and eventually, when he began, he seemed to be talking to his cigarette, as he rolled the orange, glowing ember into a point against the side of the ash tray. “Right, it’s time you knew about this. There’s no other way to put it. I’ve been seeing Isabella. I did as you suggested. Spun her a line about Simon. The last thing we wanted was for him to be getting in touch with her, but, if he did, I wanted her ready to dismiss his claims. I mean, what happened to his daughter, that obviously got her attention. Naturally, she felt really sorry for him. But I just needed to give her a bit, no, much more to make her wary. I made out he had really lost it. Had become irrational and paranoid, believed that somehow we were all to blame for what happened to his daughter. Basically, I said that he was danger-oust) mentally unstable. I know it was all a bit out of order, but I had to sound her out once and for all, and, as I thought, she was solid. Clueless. But…something…I dunno, I can’t explain it…as I say, we just began seeing each other. She’s been up to my place. And we intend to see more of each other. A lot more. You can make what dirty, smutty remarks you like to yourself, but I’ll tell you this. Yes, we are both having ‘a thing’ and it’s a lot more than just shagging. I was certain when I first met her in the Unit that I’d never meet anyone like Abby. I never did. I don’t try to understand it. I just know it. We fit together in a special way. And if only I’d listened to her that day I…fuck it. Forget it.”
He’d finished abrupdy. There was only silence in return, as Alex swallowed her shock, along with the whisk
y. Tough. She’d been the one who’d encouraged him to get in touch with Isabella. Had she really wanted him to or was she just doing a bit of general stirring? From the look oh her face, she never believed he would do it, let alone that things would turn out like this. And he’d just given her a distinctly watered-down version of what was going on with him and Abby. God knows how she’d react if he told her the full intense truth of their relationship. And exactly why did the news so clearly disturb her? Jealousy? Of whom? Himself or Isabella? Or maybe it was that he, Danny Rintoul of all people, a man she thought she could control and second-guess, had acted on his own. Acted on an eternally held desire. Whatever, the news had come as a bombshell, though she was keeping her voice low and calm, the tone falsely flippant.
“Hey, Dan. You kept that quiet for long enough…okay…I see.” She was leaning towards him, waiting until he met her eye. “So, what you saying? That you’re in love with her? Christ, Dan! I said you should sound her out, but isn’t this…this taking things a bit too far!”
The sarcasm was thick on her voice. He ignored it. “I’ve always loved her. And that’s why I need to tell her the truth. I may lose her. Lose everything. But I’ve got to do it. I think we should stop pissing about.”
She exploded exactly as he expected her to. “What! Oh, come on! In God’s name, Danny! Tell her the truth? She’s a fucking Girl Guide! She’ll blab her mouth off. That’ll be fucking it! The end for us all! Now stop this adolescent puppy-love crap. Shag the arse off her, get her out of your system, and grow up!”
Part of him wanted to strike her. Instead, he gathered up his jacket, snatched his cigarette tin off her table, scratching it on the way, and headed for the door. “I’m going now. You’d better have a long, hard think, Alex. This business needs sorting out. I’m willing to give you some time. God knows I need it too. I’m not due to see Abby again for a bit. But, equally, I can’t force Simon to go against his deepest wishes. This needs facing up to. And we should’ve done it twenty-six years ago.”
He heard the echo of his door-slamming fade into the building, followed moments later by his footsteps crunching their way down the gravel path. Then he paused and took a few steps back, looking through the living-room windows.
Alex was on her feet now, Scotch in hand, shouting at the top of her voice to herself. “If he tells her, I’ll fucking kill him. Kill them both. Him and his Girl Guide!”
He winced as he watched her hurl the crystal glass into the fireplace, where it shattered into a dozen pieces. With a pitying shake of his head, he went on his way.
THIRTY-EIGHT
He was missing her. There was no doubt. He’d never experienced that with anyone. Not even Sian. Sian…she was staying away from him now. She’d sensed something and the fact that he’d avoided seeing her, apart from a couple of monosyllabic phone calls in the past few months, had led her to give up. Or radier, she’d decided to leave him be for an unspecified period of time. Well, diat period of time would have to be for ever, now he had Abby. But Sian was a toughie. She’d survive. Theirs hadn’t been a love job. Just good sex, companionship, no commitment. But her brother lan was a different prospect. He could feel lan’s puzzlement and hurt. They’d been mates. An odd couple, though. Funny that a gay man and a straight man could be close. But lan was an interesting, generous and entertaining guy. And as for himself? He didn’t care a toss who anyone slept with. Each to their own. And lan had trusted him—quite justifiably—with his ‘secret’. To be outed, even in this day and age, on this island would be the end for lan and his partner. No, he and lan had enjoyed a great friendship. Until now.
He wandered out the back door and stood enjoying the end of the day. His croft offered a breathtaking view up the length of Loch Roag. This freezing January evening it was a deep mauve. And still. So still. He leant against his back wall and lit another roll-up, the plumes of his exhalation hanging near-stationary in the cold air. The entrance of Abby into his life had added so many complications: the Sian thing, his friendship with lan, the physical distance between them when Abby was in London. She so belonged here now and he felt her absences. He didn’t quite know how she could take so much time away from her London life and work, but she seemed remarkably flippant about it. Said that after twenty-six years, it was time for her to get her priorities right. Too true.
Finally in all this, there was the issue of his keeping her a secret, hidden away. This wasn’t too difficult in these coldest, darkest and most inward-looking of months, when people kept themselves to themselves, hardly seeing another soul for weeks on end. But why was this so important to him? Abby had raised, more than once, the issue of why he didn’t introduce her to anyone. She’d thought it was because he’d have to lie about how they first met. The Unit days were not for others’ consumption. And so she’d encouraged him to bend the truth and spin a line saying that they knew each other from Edinburgh, years ago, and had met again through a mutual friend. Truthful, as far as it went. But he didn’t want to examine too deeply his own motives for keeping her a secret. He just wanted some absolutely exclusive and ‘perfect’ time with her. And the future? Well, he shied away from that one…
He took a last loving look at the view, ground his cigarette end out in the yard and went back into the warm. The fire was still roaring and he sat down in his comfy chair by the hearth, whisky bottle and glass to hand. Twilight was fading fast, and he saw the first chunky flakes of snow fall outside the window. Without any wind the fall might be heavy but there wouldn’t be drifting or blizzards. His flock should be okay. Strange, over the years he’d loved, cherished, solitary evenings like this, just thinking about his animals and enjoying the fire and the single malt. Now, somehow, it was different. It no longer offered the security of solitary self-sufficiency. It just felt lonely.
He reached up to the mantelpiece for the photo. How his adolescent life had caught up with him in such an unexpected way. Although by the time that wretched photo had been taken, he knew that he’d be tied to at least some of them for life. But Abby? No, he thought that one was gone…
“What the hell happened last night, Danny? Where did you all go after I left you?”
“I told you, Abby. We got lost. Just like you did. You said you’d see us up at the fork in the high road. But you fucked up too. It was blind luck that we all eventually bumped into you. And yes, I know we had the orienteering compasses and maps, but we’re all crap at that. And anyway, you know we’d all been smoking dope and drinking. We…we just fucked up with the directions, y’know? At least we found you eventually, so we could wait out the night together. And yes, I know we were grumpy and weird, but we were fucking freezing and knackered and we’d done too much bevvy and dope! End of story.”
Her face said it all. She didn’t believe him. He wasn’t sure the staff did either, although their relief at finding them all safe and well seemed to have foreclosed any possibility of interrogations or post-mortems on the night’s events. Sarah Melville in particular seemed purely relieved, not a trace of anger. Simon had told him about eavesdropping on a completely livid Anna, who really tore a strip off both Sarah and Ranj, outlining in no uncertain terms what would have happened if any harm had come to the patients. Professional disgrace, careers finished and quite possibly a court case. That was a laugh, said Si! But that was also good. It concentrated the staff’s minds and kept them preoccupied with their own stuff. He hoped to God Si was right about that.
Her voice broke back in on his thoughts. “…did you?”
“What…sorry, Abby. Did I what?”
“What is wrong with you, Danny? Did you hang around by the loch after I left? I hope you didn’t. You promised.”
She was waiting for an answer. Even within his confused, panicky and exhausted state, he knew this was it. A chance to change everything. His whole life at stake with just a few words. But he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Not even for Abby…
The howl of the wind snapped him out of it. He smoothed a hand over the photo and l
ooked out of the window. He’d read the weather wrong. Not like him. Maybe his desperate attempts to be optimistic were stretching to everything. It was going to be a bad night, in more ways than one. She was due up for a visit tomorrow. It should be a time of happiness for him. But it was time for something else. Time to tell her the truth. A truth he should have told her twenty-six years ago.
KNOWLEDGE
Four months later
File note from Dr Adrian Laurie, Consultant and Medical Director, APU, to Sister Anna Cockburn
7 January 1978
RE: Patient, Innes Haldane (d.o.b. 3.4.62)
As you know I have spent the initial post-holiday group-therapy sessions monitoring how the group are, after spending time at home with their parents. Some have had their fair share of excitement, such as Danny’s physical fight with his father, Alex’s absconding from home, and Lydia’s burning down of her father’s garden shed.
They are all setbacks, and we will discuss them individually at the next case conference. However, it is Innes that is causing me some concern this week. She has returned from home clearly depressed and, unusually for her, monosyllabic. She refuses to engage in group therapy. As we know, with some others this is attention-seeking behaviour and normally the precursor for some dramatic acting out. But Innes does not display in that way. I advise careful monitoring.
Copy to: General Nursing File
Copy to: patient file, I. Haldane
File note from Sister Anna Cockburn to Dr Adrian Laurie, Consultant and Medical Director, APU
8 January 1978
RE: Patient, Innes Haldane (d.o.b. 3.4.62)
Last night I managed to engage Innes in conversation. She admitted that her festive break had been ‘a disaster’. Her mother, clearly ashamed and embarrassed by, as she put it, Innes’s ‘incarceration’, insisted that she, Innes and Innes’s father would, throughout the holidays, tell all family and friends who visited that Innes had been away at boarding school. Denial was the order for the two-week break. I have to say that I am worried about this. I feel that the shame, embarrassment and denial fed to Innes by her mother may stay with her for a very long time, whatever the outcome here is.