Hours later, I start searching. I have to find her. My Anya bag. I get up, become more and more focused. More frantic. I empty drawers, boxes, wardrobes. I go to my mother’s room. I find it. I hold it close. I open it. Her fragrance, Coco Mademoiselle, enters the room. I’ve unleashed her. She was right. I need her. She’s been waiting for me. It was time.
Part Six
I couldn’t tell my mother. She didn’t know I was seeing a therapist and I didn’t trust how she’d respond, but I told Maddy. She was furious and said I should go to the police, but I didn’t want that. There were no guarantees of a sympathetic hearing and I couldn’t bear the humiliation of a medical. There was no danger of a pregnancy because I remembered later he’d worn a condom, but Maddy still insisted I visit a clinic and get myself checked out. She came with me. Physically, I was alright. It was my mind that wasn’t.
I took two weeks off work. I told them I wanted a holiday and retreated to my bed. For days I was in a state of shock. Over and over, the scene would be replayed in my head. I felt humiliated and dirty. Bits of it came back. I blamed myself. I must have been provocative. I tried to understand what led to it. My behaviour? But I hadn’t been seductive. Nothing I’d said could be interpreted as a ‘sexual come-on’. My dress? I’d dressed the way I usually dressed, vintage style. Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone to his flat, but he was my therapist, I’d trusted him. Perhaps I shouldn’t have got on his couch. My mind was full of self-doubt and self-recrimination.
At first, I’d thought it was a ‘seduction’ because I should have refused him and I hadn’t. I’d never said ‘no’, but when Maddy realised I was thinking like that, she corrected me. She said it wasn’t seduction. It was rape. She said I’d been in a childlike, vulnerable, dependent state and in that state of mind I couldn’t give consent. He’d exploited that. She was angrier than I was, but I was in a state of shock.
Everything and everybody had become strange. I could see people talking but there was a delay before I could hear their voice. Their mouths moved, but there was no sound. I could see the words floating into the air as they spoke, drifting away, slow and distorted, like tortured musical notes. I retreated from the world and for days I lay in bed, refusing to eat. I’d entered a twilight world, halfway between dreaming and sleeping.
Maddy came to see me every day. She looked after me, stayed with me, talked to me. She said what he’d done was unforgivable. She played me the music I liked. She wanted me to go to specialist rape counselling, but I refused. I’d had enough of counsellors and therapists. She brought me books written by rape survivors and slowly, gradually I was able to face the truth. The truth was I’d been raped by my therapist and once I’d accepted that, my thinking changed, from a victim to thoughts of revenge.
Acknowledging what he’d done filled me with hate. I couldn’t bring myself to use his name and when I spoke of him to Maddy and my mates, I called him JF. They wanted me to put in a complaint to his professional organisation. They said I should, not only for myself but for other women. They said he might do it again. They were adamant it would help, so I began the research, but it wasn’t long before I realised that complaining would be a waste of time.
Therapist organisations are powerful. They advocate for therapists and they have a number of wonderful let-out clauses, mostly based on familiar stereotypes about women. I came across blogs written by ex-clients of therapists. Someone who wrote ‘Fifty Shades of Getting his Way’ and called herself ‘Angry Bird’ wrote sex between a therapist and his client was common. Whether that was true or not I didn’t know, but I was out for vengeance. I objected to women being seen as fantasists or crazy. I didn’t buy the ‘therapeutic relationship’ had finished or when he said, ‘I loved her’ or ‘she misunderstood the nature of our relationship’. I bitterly opposed the envy, jealous, malicious motivation matrix where ordinary human emotions were elevated to murderous, violent intent and ipso facto, by sleight of hand the victim has become the offender.
I began to see psychotherapy and its practitioners as the conveyors of myths and ideologies. Patterns of beliefs, theories, and words, fireworks of meaning, images and affects; they’d spun round my head with their promise. Seductive, enthralling, a dozen nuanced languages to enslave and entrap the inarticulate, the confused, the victimised, the vulnerable, the curious, with the promise of a better world. I’d been hooked.
But I was no longer. I’d come to my senses and it was payback time. I wanted him to suffer the way I had; to feel the betrayal, the humiliation, the shame and powerlessness, the fear, the shock, the apprehension, the incomprehension, the rage. These feelings stalked me. They’d taken up residence in my mind and I had to erase them and since they originated with him, he had to be erased. It was necessary. It was essential. It required the sense of timing and purpose he’d shown me. It required an intervention that was as powerful and as destructive as he had been.
I came to a decision. I was going to attack him the way he had me, but my attack wouldn’t be physical but psychological. He’d invaded my body and I wanted to invade his mind. It was the slow-burn approach to revenge.
For a while I had no idea how to go about this but the idea came unexpectedly. It was a month later and I was back at work. I’d woken early and I’d placed my Anya bag on a chair where I could see it as I woke. Its presence was reassuring. Maybe I was half-asleep and still dreaming, but that morning I felt as if a magnet was drawing me towards it. I stumbled across the room and picked the bag up, and as I opened it, Anya entered the room. I knew she was there because of her fragrance, Coco Mademoiselle. I could hear her saying what I should do and that she’d protect me.
I was to stalk him and take her with me and she’d look after me.
From then on, just before I slept, I placed the bag on the chair so I could hear her when I woke. She always spoke to me first thing. She told me I needed to get my confidence back and the way to do that, was to start in little ways and work up to the more spectacular. The little ways she called ‘interventions’, the more spectacular, ‘invasions’. That’s how my stalking began.
It started with checking out JF’s movements; when and where he was, and for how long. I had two addresses, the one in Wigmore Street and the one near Hackney Downs. That was enough. It gave me a choice. I’d go before work, lunchtime, after work; whenever the spirit of Anya moved me. I’d stand outside, wait, watch his comings and goings. I got to know his routine. Each time I made sure to carry my Anya bag. I made no attempt to hide myself.
The first time he noticed me he approached me, holding his hand out. ‘Anya, how lovely to see you. How are you?’ How shameless he was. I didn’t answer. I looked coldly at him, turned and walked away.
It took a while and several sightings before he realised what was going on. At first he seemed oblivious or indifferent as to why I might be there and how that might connect to the consequences of his actions. Either that or he was deeply stupid.
But I was determined he would get it and if he needed time, I had the time, the motivation and the patience. I became a forensic observer. I began keeping a record of his psychological deterioration, monitoring the corrosive effects of my attack. I had no overall plan of action but scientifically recorded my observations, incident by incident and with each sighting I carefully watched his face, his gestures, his movements.
Once when I saw him get out of his cab, he must have thought I wasn’t there, because he looked nonchalant. I ran towards him. I ran fast and the fearful look on his face when he saw me amused me no end. I got there first. He pushed past me and ran down the steps. He fumbled for his keys but he was so nervous, he dropped them. He wasn’t quick enough. I stood at the top of the steps looking down on him. The safety light had snapped on so he could see my face. I was unsmiling. That time I did speak. I took two steps towards him and spoke softly and reassuringly, using the same words he’d used before he raped me.
‘You look frightened. You ne
edn’t be. I know what you want. You must trust me. I won’t hurt you.’ The look of utter terror on his face made me laugh. ‘See you soon,’ I said and as I walked away I turned to look over my shoulder, ‘And take care. You never know who’s watching you.’
I was pleased with that incident because each time I saw his fear I felt empowered and I regained some self-respect, but I was becoming bored. I wanted a new intervention, something less obvious than hanging round where he worked. It was too predictable. I wanted to increase the intensity of my attacks. At any time he could put in a complaint to the police, tell them that a mad client was stalking him and I didn’t want a police visit. It was time for something new. I went back and waited for inspiration and sure enough it came. Was it Anya? I don’t know, but I like to think it was.
I’d come home late. I’d switched on my computer, and as I did the disembodied voice of Etta James floated out of the computer and into the room. She was singing ‘At Last’. I was transfixed. It was the song played by Ifan after I’d met him in the pub and we’d gone back to his place. The song we’d danced to before everything had fallen apart and Etta James’ harsh, expressive voice brought it all back.
Hearing the lines of the song was gut wrenching. All the old pain returned and tears welled into my eyes. I walked round my bedroom. I couldn’t sit still. I walked out of my bedroom, I sat at my table. I got up from my table, I paced back and forth. I was buzzing. I wanted to get in touch with him. I didn’t want to get in touch with him.
I was so taken with this song and the memories it brought back, it took a while to register that someone had hacked into my computer. Then I freaked. I had no idea who it could be, but whoever it was, knew my taste in music. I wondered if it was JF but discarded that thought. The song was too beautiful for him and I couldn’t imagine it was his type of thing. Besides, he didn’t go for retro, he was too conventional and he was on the run from me. I couldn’t see him counter-attacking.
It could only be one person and that was Ifan. I’d left my card with my email address on his bike the day I’d seen him in Wigmore Street. He was an electrical engineer, he’d have the right techie background, and he knew the significance of Etta’s songs for both of us. It was still creepy. He would know how to do it, but why didn’t he just ring me? Ask me out? What was his game?
Two weeks later, I switched on my computer and another of her songs drifted out. This time it was ‘I’ve Been Loving You Too Long to Stop Now’. I sat and listened. The lyrics were beautiful. I wanted it to be from Ifan so much but the irony hadn’t escaped me; Ifan was stalking me. But in an alternative way. After all if you’re a ‘hacker’ with an offbeat sense of humour, it could be seen as a special way of sending an anonymous love letter. But, it occurred to me, this was a game two can play and the idea came to me that I could play Ifan at his own game by hacking into his computer.
It was a small jump from that, to a decision to hack into JF’s computer. That way I could still stalk him but online. It was a way of getting into his head. I’d invade his mind so that every time he opened his computer a song would play. But it had be disturbing.
I began my search. I soon found one on YouTube. The song? ‘Every Breath You Take.’ I planned to get it installed on his computer. He wouldn’t be able to switch it off. It would spread through the computer’s hardware and like an actual biological virus it would infiltrate, penetrate, insinuate, destroy all expectations of rationality and predictability. The infection would cross the boundary from the machine to his mind, and from there it would invade, colonise and control his thoughts – just like he had mine.
I imagined him switching on his computer at home, in Hackney, at Wigmore Street, on the train, at home. Wherever he was, he couldn’t escape. The lyrics of ‘Every Breath You Take’ would follow him. Only a specialist would be able to clear the virus. It would be expensive, time consuming, disturbing and the disruption it would cause gave me pleasure every time I thought of it. I turned to my Anya bag and gave her a wink. ‘Keep the ideas coming,’ I said.
But I didn’t know how to go about this so I had to ask around. I found out that hacking, like stalking, is a crime, and infecting someone’s computer with a Trojan virus doesn’t stop there; it can spread. That slowed me down for a while. I thought about it long and hard before I made the decision to go ahead and when I did, I justified it on the grounds he’d raped me.
I continued my research and through friends of friends of friends, I discovered within the cyber world some hackers will hack ‘for free’ if they think someone or some organisation has done wrong. They’re a kind of cyber social service, an updated Robin Hood or SAS patrolling cyberspace and although I never found out who it was who helped me, I’m eternally grateful to him or her. Let’s hope it was a ‘her’, anyway.
As for Ifan, I still planned to contact him but I wasn’t sure how he felt about me even if he had sent the two Etta James tracks. There was only one way to find out; I had to take a risk. I turned again to my Anya bag for inspiration, but this time there was nothing and I had to make up my own mind.
In the end, I sent him via email an attachment of a track from the Etta James CD. It was simple, straightforward and legal but I chose the track carefully. My song had to have the right lyrics and since he’d communicated his thoughts and desires with her lyrics, I did the same. I chose ‘Teach Me Tonight’. Having made that decision, I danced round my flat. I loved that song and I loved him. But now I knew that I was filled with an insecurity so strong, I wanted to run away. What if, I thought, he was still with his girlfriend and they’d had a tiff and he’d contacted me to just make her jealous?
Yet, I’d trusted him when we’d been together in Wales all those years ago. Since then life had changed me, but had it him? I wondered how Philomena and Gareth were in Ffridd, and whether they were still together. My mother used to talk about them but no longer. Since she’d met her new fella, all her time was spent with him.
I was filled with a wild yearning to return to Wales. I wanted to visit the estuary. I hadn’t visited since my failed seduction of Gareth all those years ago and I wasn’t sure how he’d react when he saw me. Despite that, I still wanted to go back, to the time when life had seemed straightforward and predictable. The next morning I was ready to visit Ffridd.
A week later, I was standing in the queue at Newport Railway Station waiting for a cab. I’d taken advantage of the absence of appointments in my diary and organised a long weekend away. I hadn’t contacted Philomena and Gareth to say I was coming because I wanted my visit to be spontaneous. Besides, they weren’t the type to need notice and if, when I arrived, they weren’t there, I’d stay somewhere else.
A cab drew up. I asked for the farmhouse at Ffridd. The cabbie seemed to know of it and gave me a look, but didn’t say anything. We headed towards Ffridd. Eventually he turned off the main road and we bounced along the tracks through the fields towards the farmhouse. It was winter. The landscape was bleak, the sky grey, the trees bare but there was no wind. It had been raining and muddy water splashed up from the potholes, spotting the sides of his immaculately maintained BMW. He loved his car. He said, ‘If I’d known I’d be bringing someone here, I wouldn’t have bothered to wash it.’ I didn’t respond but stared out of the window. He spoke again. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve come here. Used to visit a lot, bringing all kinds from the station. Weird. Artists. What they get up to. All their comings and goings. They all slept with each other, but then it takes all sorts. Been before?’
‘Yes, I used to come every summer with my mother.’
‘So you know about it then.’
‘Not really. Not when I was young. Do you know if the same people live there?’
‘No idea, can’t help you there. Sorry.’
I could see the farmhouse now. It lay in a hollow but it looked different from how I remembered it in the bright summer days of my childhood.
‘You can
stop now. I’d like to walk the rest.’ He turned round briefly. ‘Sure?’
‘Yes, your car will get splashed more. Drop me off here.’ He pulled the car to a halt, silently took the fare, turned his car round and with a wave drove off. I watched the car bump away, picked up my bag and began the short walk to the farmhouse. I heard the geese before I saw them. They were the same as when I used to come, they rushed at me, but I knew how to ignore them. In terms of the noise they made, they were better guards than dogs. I stood waiting, half-expecting to see Philomena standing in the doorway, but she didn’t appear. I closed the farmhouse gate behind me, put my bag down by the porch and began wandering round the grounds.
I was filled with nostalgia. Memories of past summers flooded back. I walked to the orchard at the back of the farmhouse and in my mind’s eye I could see Gareth sitting under the apple trees writing his poetry. He was sitting in his favourite chair, the high-backed, rush-seated chair, and drinking cider. It was warm then. The wind had got up. I turned to make my way back. There was a new sculpture under the trees and I stood looking at it. A figure with a long neck, small breasts, folded wings, it was a cross between a woman and a swan. It had a plaque entitled Leda, and I remembered from Greek mythology, Leda was raped by a god in the form of a swan. I turned away. I didn’t like it. It disturbed me.
I’d reached the porch, put my hand up to ring the bell, when the door opened. Philomena stood smiling broadly. She held her arms open, stepped towards me, and clasped me to her. ‘Anya. Amazing. Do you know I was dreaming of you a few days ago and I thought that was an omen and you might visit. I was upstairs and saw you in the orchard. It’s been a long time, far too long since you last came. Come in.’ She picked up my bag and said, ‘I’ll leave this in the hall. Let’s go to the kitchen and I’ll make some coffee.’
She looked the same as she had eight years ago but I felt shy, as if I was still the child I had been when we used to visit. All I could do was smile. I looked around. ‘You’ve changed the colours of the kitchen. It’s less vibrant. More contemplative.’ The colours were sludgy and reminded me of the mud of the estuary when the tide had gone out.
My Name Is Echo Page 21