In The Garden Of Stones

by Lucy Pepperdine

  “Erm … coffee, please. If it’s no trouble.”

  “None at all. How do you take it? Black? Milk? Cream? Sugar?”

  “Cream no sugar, please.”

  “Want something to eat? Sandwich? Biscuit?”

  After a meagre breakfast of soggy cereal, sweaty toast and cold tea, and lunch consisting of a bowl of tepid soup and roll so stale it could have been used as a cobble stone, she’s starving, and the mere thought of coffee and biscuits makes her stomach rumble.

  Mal smiles and points at her, index finger and thumb cocked like a gun. “I know what you’d like.”

  He scrambles to his feet and pokes his head through the door to have a word with his secretary in the outer office. When he returns he flops down into his chair with a sigh, for all the world as if he’s settling down to watch football on the television. He looks so relaxed that his ease bleeds into her. Grace feels a smile touching her lips. She didn’t put it there, he did, and with it comes the first tickle of trust. She might be ready to talk after all.

  “Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself, Grace?” he says. “Nothing much. Only what you’re comfortable with. Name, rank and serial number. We’ll call it an icebreaker.”

  She tips her head toward the folder lying on the coffee table. “It’s all in my file.”

  “I haven’t read it.”

  “That’s a bit remiss of you. Forewarned is forearmed, don’t they say.”

  “I didn’t read your file because they are not my notes in there, and I don’t want my findings tainted by someone else’s preconceptions. I like to do my learning first hand. I would prefer you to offer me information willingly and let me make up my own mind, not have it made up for me.”

  “What you see is what you get,” she says. “Move along. Nothing to see here.”

  His smile broadens. “I doubt that very much.”

  “Okay, bare facts. Grace Elizabeth Dove, age 34 and three quarters, single, mentally unbalanced, former interior decorator with my own –”

  A knock on the door interrupts, and Mal calls over his shoulder. “Come in!”

  The door opens and his secretary enters, carrying a tray laden with a cafetiere, two mugs, a jug of cream, a small dish of pale brown crystals, and a plate with two plain digestive biscuits sitting alongside a pair of red and gold oblongs. Tunnock’s tasty caramel wafers. Grace’s favourite. How did he know?

  The woman sets the tray down on the occasional table and depresses the plunger on the cafetiere.

  “Thank you, Denise.”

  When Denise has gone, Mal plays ‘mother’, pouring coffee into the mugs and topping it up with cream from the jug. He digs the spoon into the dish, drawing out a little pile of sugar, halting before he tips it into Grace’s mug.

  “Oh, you said no sugar, didn’t you,” he says, diverting it to his own mug. “Sweet enough, eh?

  A second spoonful follows the first and he gives both mugs a thorough stir with the teaspoon, before tinging it on the side, a high pitched annoying noise that sets Grace’s teeth on edge.

  He offers the unsweetened drink to Grace. “There you go. See how that suits you.”

  She takes it and risks an experimental sip. It’s hot, aromatic and quite delicious. No supermarket bargain brand this.

  “It’s really nice. Thank you.”

  “If something’s worth having, have the best you can afford,” he says. “And good coffee is always worth having, don’t you think?”

  “Yes. Yes I do.”

  He settles back in his chair. “You were telling me about yourself,” he says.

  She screws her face up on one side. “Do I have to? Can’t we just let it drop and you sign my release and I go home and clean Alec’s flat until I feel better?”

  “Is that what you did before? The first time you…”

  “Tried to kill myself? Yes.”

  “Did it work?”

  She fingers the fine silver lines crossing her wrist. “In a way.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She cradles the mug in her hand, letting its warmth flow into her fingers. “I got myself all stitched up and locked up for a couple of days,” she says. “The doctor I saw shoved some pills on me and threatened to have me sectioned if I didn’t pull myself together. Alec would have none of it. He signed a release responsibility, took me home and locked me in his flat with him, and gave me reign to do whatever I needed to burn myself out, fully prepared to have the place trashed or burned, his windows broken and himself to be battered to a pulp in the process. ‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘The place needs redecorating and those curtains are just dreadful. Do your worst.’ Nothing so dramatic happened, although, to be on the safe side he did take the precaution of hiding his kitchen knives, forks and other sharp implements.”

  “I take it there was to be no trashing, beating or stabbing,” says Mal.

  “No, just a solid twenty-four hours of frenetic cleaning, scrubbing, polishing, dusting, rearranging of furniture, all accompanied by non-stop gibberish babbling. When my rubber band finally snapped, I was spark out on Alec’s couch for a full eighteen hours. I didn’t need the pills. Wearing myself out and getting a good solid sleep pressed my reset button. A good long chat and a cry with Alec and his boyfriend, lots of hugs and fine red wine and I felt pretty okay again. I went home and carried on where I left off.”

  “For how long?”

  “Nearly two and a half years … until I crossed paths with that delightful charmer, Connor Mackintosh.”

  She spat out the name as if it were a bitter tasting poison.

  Mal rests his head against the back of his chair. “And would he have anything to do with what led up to this current event?”

  “Everything. Connor inveigled his way into my life, making himself my partner, both business and personal. He was that sort of person … irresistible. He was talented and attentive and life seemed to be rather peachy … until I got pregnant. That’s when it all changed. Connor made it perfectly clear that having a kid would not be the best idea. Business was thriving, we were travelling a lot, neither of us could give a child the quality time and attention it needed, or deserved, he said. He told me the best thing I could do for all concerned was to get rid of it. So I did. A couple of months later he left me. Just packed his bags and walked. Said I was spending too much time focusing on the business and not enough on him. When he’d gone I found out he’d been seeing at least two other women behind my back, and one of them was within weeks of giving birth. Talk about rubbing salt into the wound.”

  She takes a sip from her coffee, letting its bitter sweet heat caress her tongue before she swallows it and continues.

  “I was distraught, confused, angry, you name it. The man I thought was going to be my forever partner, both in life and business, turned out to be nothing more than a cheating, lying, pump action sperm dispenser. My trust had been betrayed, my baby gone, and he made it sound like it was all my fault because I wasn’t paying him enough attention. Before I knew it I’d obsessed myself into a state, feeling guilty, trying to work out what I’d done to make it all go wrong. I stopped eating and couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t face being in the flat with his expresence all over it. I moved out, put it on the market and had to fall on the mercy of my darling long-suffering Alec once again for somewhere to put my head down. I got so stressed and depressed my OCD and ADHD exceeded the limits of my medications, exacerbating to the point where I could barely function.”

  “So you thought you had to take back control,” Mal says, “and the only way you could find to do that was to…?”

  “Put a stop to it once and for all. To go into that deep dark hole where everything is still and quiet and peaceful, where no one would make demands of me or criticise everything I said and did, where no one could tell me what to do or what to say, what to feel and what to think, where to go and when - or who with. Remember the strong pills my doctor prescribed, but I never took? I didn’t throw them away. I stuffed them a
t the back of my sock drawer as a ‘just in case’ measure.”

  “And you felt this was a ‘case’?”

  “Yes.” A brittle, sardonic laugh. “You’d think swallowing every last one of them and washing them down with half a bottle of vodka would do the trick, wouldn’t you? Noooooo. Not me. I made an arse of it, just like everything else in my life. I couldn’t even kill myself properly. Can’t do anything right. Never checked the label. Turns out the bloody things were past their sell by date. They’d gone off, lost their effectiveness and didn’t do their job. Never checked the label on the vodka bottle either, so that was probably fake; methanol mixed with horse piss or something. City’s swimming in the stuff. All I managed to do was pass out on the bedroom floor and have a seizure, puking everything up onto the rug and then, as a final indignity, wetting myself. Can I have a biscuit?”

  Mal offers her the plate and its tempting contents, and she takes one of the gaily wrapped oblongs, teasing off the wrapper and forming it into a neat holder. She takes a savage bite, talking through her mouthful.

  “My reward for my sterling endeavour - three days in intensive care on a ventilator in a medically induced coma, to see whether I’d given myself brain damage, followed by enforced rest on the lockup ward –”

  “Followed by a compulsory visit to my delightful domain?” he says.

  She sighs deeply and takes another bite. She really is hungry. She follows the mouthful with a swig of her coffee. The mixture of coffee, chocolate and caramel flavours, is like angels dancing on her tongue, so why doesn’t she feel cheered? Tunnock’s wafers have always been her go to feel-good food. Have they lost their magic too?

  Mal is sooking chocolate from his fingers. “Have you spoken to anyone outside since your admission? Friends? Family?”

  Grace pushes the last of her biscuit into her mouth and picks up the discarded foil wrapper, smoothing it against her thigh. “No. There is no one.”

  “What about your flatmate, the one who brought you in?”

  “Alec? It was his rug I puked and pissed on. It was a really nice rug, too. Hand made. Brought it back from Tunisia, or was it Morocco. Some North African Whereverthehellristan. Probably cost him a fortune, so he’ll be pretty pissed off with me for ruining it and won’t want to speak to me.”

  “Would it help if I told you he’s rung the ward every day to find out how you are?”

  Grace feels her stomach shift. “He has?”

  “Twice some days.”

  And turn over. “Really? Nobody told me. Why didn’t they tell me?”

  “I don’t know, but they should have. Maybe he asked them not to. Do you want to give him a call, just to let him know you’re okay?”

  Shrug.

  Mal lifts his chin and looks down his nose at her. “What’s the real reason you don’t want to talk to him?”

  Silence.

  “Truth be told? I’m too embarrassed,” she admits. “I made a real show of myself, left him to clean up an awful mess, and –”

  “Nobody ever died of embarrassment, Grace. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to be sure, but it’s completely natural, and people who care have short memories.” Mal screws up his foil biscuit wrapper into a tight ball and drops it onto the plate, where it sits like a jewel. “Do you want to call him now?”

  “I, er –”

  “No time like the present. Grab the bull by the horns. You don’t need to say much. Hi. How are you? I’m fine. No need to worry. Sorry about the rug. Short and sweet. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

  “I don’t know –”

  Mal is already on his feet. “I need a pee. Coffee goes right through me.” He heads for a door at the back of the room. “Phone’s on the desk. I’ll leave you to it. Dial 9 for an outside line.”

  “What if I try and run away while you’re having a slash?”

  “I wouldn’t even think about it. Denise is a black belt Feng Shui or some such. She’ll have you on the ground and tied in a knot before you get halfway to the door.”

  In the eight minutes it takes Dr Mal to empty his bladder and wash his hands, Grace makes a short and emotional call to her best, her only friend, to put his mind at ease and to apologise for ruining his rug, all the while fiddling with the gold and red biscuit wrappers, smoothing and creasing and folding them industriously against the desktop blotter.

  When Mal exits the small washroom in a waft of soap scented air, she bounds to her feet and snatches something off the desk and stands fidgeting like a schoolgirl before the head teacher, her face, her entire stance screaming Guilty!

  “Everything okay?” Mal says, suspicion in his eyes.

  “Fine.”

  “You done it?”

  Grace bobs her head.

  “What did he say?”

  She clears her throat and shrugs. “Once he has stopped crying he’ll be fine.”

  “Good.” Mal indicates the closed hand Grace has tucked behind her back. “What have you got there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Let me see.”

  “It’s nothing. I was just –”

  “Show me.”

  She brings out her hand and uncurls her fingers to reveal two small perfectly folded red and gold foil squares sitting in the palm of her hand like a pair of earrings. “I like to keep my hands busy.”

  Mal picks up one of the tight little treasures, examines it, and then places it back in her palm. “Very nice. Shall we crack on?”

  He drops into his chair and waits until Grace has made herself comfortable in hers again.

  “Right then, let’s get to work,” he says. “What say we try and start with a clean slate? Easier said than done, I know, and obviously we can’t simply wipe out every bad memory as easily as erasing a video, and we wouldn’t want to, because horrible though they are, they are valuable lessons to be learned from. Once we accept that what’s past is past and there’s nothing we can do to change it, we can move on and make progress toward making the future a little rosier for you. Is that worth a little time and effort?”

  A silent nod.

  “I want this to be a team effort, Grace. I want us to work together, and I promise I won’t ask you to do anything you are not totally comfortable with. Deal?”

  He leans forward in his chair with his hand outstretched, ready to seal their bargain of co-operation. She cannot deny his sincerity and enthusiasm, yet she remains in the chair, legs folded firmly under her, hands clamped together in her lap.

  His hand hovers unshaken for a beat before he takes it back.

  “I want to try something new with you, Grace,” he says, seemingly unperturbed by her rejection. “Something I’ve never used on anyone before.”

  Grace takes up the cushion and places it on her lap. Aware she appears to be using it to hide behind, she puts it back. “I’m not taking any experimental drugs. I’m not being anyone’s guinea pig.”

  “No-one is asking you to. There are no drugs involved apart from the odd cup of camomile tea. I’m a therapist, not a psychiatrist. I can’t prescribe.”

  “And you can forget about zapping my brain with electricity as well, it isn’t going to do any good. It just resets itself and we’re back to square one.”

  “No ECT either. It’s old fashioned and barbaric.”

  “What did you have in mind then?”

  “Something a little more personalised. Bespoke treatment you might say.”

  “Okay, I’m intrigued.”

  Mal sits forward in his chair again, his elbows on his knees, his fingers steepled in front of his mouth.

  “I want you to think back to your childhood and tell me whether you ever had an imaginary friend.”

  “Oh.” Grace scratches at her throat. “Erm… no, I didn’t. In truth of fact I didn’t have any friends at all, imaginary or otherwise. A real Billy No-Mates me.”

  A sad and lonely childhood… just like yours.

  Oh, God! Did she say that out loud? She’s not sure, but judging by the way h
e’s staring at her, the corners of his mouth twitching, she did!

  Bite your tongue, don’t speak, don’t even breathe.

  Mal clears his throat, snatches up one of the digestive biscuits and dunks it in his coffee, biting off the soggy end. “As I was saying, about imaginary friends?”

  “Sorry. Please continue.”

  “I want you to find one,” he says.

  Grace blinks at him. “Excuse me?”

  “This new therapy I want to try on you, it requires you to find yourself a friend. An imaginary friend. Someone to talk to, to argue with, to bounce ideas off, to unload your feelings on.”

  “Ooo-kaay.”

  “I want you to take time every day to talk to him … or her … it doesn’t have to be for long. A few minutes here and there –”

  “Out loud?”

  “Well, in private at least. While you’re wandering through the supermarket you might want to keep it in here…” He taps his temple. “…else someone’s going to think you’re some kind of nutter. It mustn’t be a one way street, though. In turn, I want you to listen to what they have to say back to you. I want you to enter into discussions, arguments if necessary, debates and frank exchanges of views – whatever you would do with an actual, living, person.”

  Grace thinks she can see where he’s going with this.

  “Because the voice talking back to me will be me, but another part of me,” she says. “In essence I’ll be giving myself a good talking to. When I have a problem I can’t sort out, or a decision I can’t make, or feelings that don’t make sense, and I ask my new best friend what I should do about them, it will be the rational, thinking, sensible part of me helping me decide.”

  “Got it in one.”

  “Makes sense, except … if he, or she, tells me to go buy anchovies, they can take a running jump. Can’t stand ‘em, little hairy fish. Bleuch.”

  Mal chuckles quietly. “Me neither.”

  They drink their coffees and Grace munches at the other biscuit. Crumbs tumble down the front of her sweater and onto the rug and she makes a soft keening noise. Mal has either not heard it, or chosen to ignore it.

  “So what do you think of my grand plan for you,” he says. “It’s a bit radical, a bit unorthodox, a bit –” He makes quote bunnies with his fingers, “– out of the box, but I really do think it might do you some good.”