“True.” He has a sudden, crooked grin. “Well, fingers crossed, then.”
He makes a little gesture with his head, beckoning me to follow him.
I can see why the Twickenham Post reporter called his office prosaic. It’s exuberantly untidy, with papers scattered everywhere, and box files with unreadable labels scrawled along their spines. He clears some books from a chair for me. I sit and instantly cover the side of my face with my hand.
“You look terrible,” he says. “The dentist?”
I nod.
“It’s my intuitive powers,” he says. “That and the massive swelling. Bloody hell. What on earth did they do to you?”
“I had an extraction,” I say.
“Poor thing,” he says.
He stands behind his desk, sipping his coffee, his eyes on me. I notice his long, slender fingers curved around the cup.
“You need a drink,” he says. “But nothing hot, I imagine.”
He opens a drawer of his desk, pulls out a bottle of Coke. There’s a restlessness in the way he moves and his sudden, rather awkward gestures. I wonder whether he runs, whether he’s one of those men who need to be constantly active, to still some inner demon. There are mugs on his windowsill. He chooses a mug, peers into it with a doubtful frown, then fills it.
“Thank you, Dr. Winters,” I say.
“Call me Adam,” he says.
I drink gratefully. The sugar kick helps, I don’t feel quite so strange. I look around at his office.
There’s so little to make it personal—no potted plants or posters. The only picture is a single photo on his desk. It looks like him, but much younger—a boy in grubby overalls who’s working on a car. Through the window I can see the lawns and cherry trees.
He watches me, pushes his hand through his brown, disorganized hair. It makes his hair stick up, gives him a startled look.
“Why did you want to see me?” he says.
“I have a little girl. Sylvie. She’s difficult. She sometimes says weird things . . . I read that article about you.”
He nods, but doesn’t say anything, waiting for me to go on.
“And my daughter is rather like the child in the article. And I thought—could she be remembering something? I mean, d’you think that’s possible? I’d never really heard of it before. And I wanted to ask you about her . . .”
He pulls the chair from behind his desk and sits. He moves his hands apart in a little gesture of acceptance or encouragement. Where his sleeves are rolled up, I can see the fine dark hairs on his arms.
“Okay. So talk to me.”
I tell him. About Sylvie’s bad nights, and her fear of water, and always drawing the same picture, and saying Lennie isn’t really Lennie, and the place she seems to recognize. It all pours out. I must have been rehearsing it even as I was coming here, talking to him in my head although we hadn’t yet met.
He interrupts just once.
“The place in the picture,” he says. “D’you have any idea where it is?”
“Yes. I found it. It’s in Ireland. It’s called Coldharbour.”
He nods. He looks excited. His eyes are suddenly wide.
“Well done. That’s great. That’s really useful,” he says.
I feel pleased with myself for finding it.
I pause for a moment, sipping my drink. The anesthetic is fading. My mouth hurts with a blunt, dulled pain.
“Grace, are you on your own?” he says then. “You haven’t mentioned a partner.”
“Yes, I’m a single parent.”
“It must be hard for you, having to handle all of this on your own.”
So I tell him about Mrs. Pace-Barden and losing the nursery place and my panic about our future—which wasn’t rehearsed, which I hadn’t intended to say. He leans toward me, his elbows on his knees. He has an intent look. All the time I’m talking, he doesn’t touch his drink.
When I’ve finished, he sits there looking at me and pushing his hand through his hair.
“So what do you think?” I ask him. “Could you help us?”
He takes a sip of his coffee then, his long, thin fingers wrapped around the cup. You can hear the squeak of polystyrene.
“What we try to do here,” he tells me, “is to investigate the things that can’t be explained. To examine the paranormal scientifically.”
“But how could you do that?” I ask him. “With the things that Sylvie says?”
“You’d investigate the story,” he says. “You’d want to be very objective. You’d be checking for evidence of contamination. Could she have got her story from any other source? Is it something she’s seen in a book or watched on television?”
“It isn’t,” I tell him.
“It isn’t anything she’s seen?”
“No. Well, it isn’t a place that she’s been, for a start. She’s never been away from me. And I’ve never been to Ireland.”
“What about a book, perhaps?”
“I don’t see how,” I tell him. “Certainly not at home. And they’ve only got kids’ books at the nursery. TV I’m not so sure about. To be honest, I don’t always check what she’s watching. I just sit her down in front of it if I’ve got a lot to do.”
“Okay. So television’s possible, but it seems unlikely.”
“So what would you do, then?” I say. “If there’s no contamination?”
He’s quiet for a moment.
I’m full of hope—that there’s some therapy he can offer, helping her let go of all these weird obsessions she has. Or maybe he uses hypnosis, like I read about in that article. I wonder how I’d feel about that—decide I’d be willing to try it, that really I’d let him try anything that might make her a happier child.
He puts his coffee cup down, leans a little toward me.
“If it seemed convincing,” he tells me, “you might want to take the child there.”
I stare at him. Everything shifts around me. I feel a chill on my skin.
“You mean, actually take them back to the place they seem to remember?”
I can’t believe this. I feel a sense of shock, of outrage even.
“Yes,” he says.
I think of the way Sylvie looks at her picture, of all the yearning in her face, of how she’ll sometimes sleep with it hidden under her pillow.
“But wouldn’t that just make the whole thing worse? It would, I’m sure it would.”
“I can see that’s how it might seem. But it often helps these children. As though when they’ve gone back there, they can start to let go and forget. Which it seems is what we’re meant to do—to forget . . .”
“I just don’t get it,” I tell him. I can hear all the protest in my voice. “How could that possibly help if you want them to let go of it? Making it so real to them?”
“The evidence is that it works,” he says. “There are documented cases where it’s really helped the child.”
I find I am shaking my head.
I can’t do this, I think. It would be so wrong for Sylvie. If water play at nursery is more than she can handle, how would she cope with such a thing? I feel myself withdrawing from him. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know how bad it is. How could he? I don’t know why I came here. I don’t belong in this place, with this clever, overeager man with all his unnerving theories. It’s too strange for me.
“I just don’t think that approach would be right for Sylvie,” I say. “I can’t imagine it.”
“No, I can see that,” he says.
There are little sharp lines between his brows, and I feel I’ve disappointed him. Maybe I’ve been too emphatic. There’s a fragile feeling between us, as though something has been broken.
“Well, then.” I button up my coat.
He looks across at me, frowning slightly. He rubs his hand over his face.
“Look—I could offer her some sessions here. If you think that might be helpful.”
Earlier I’d have said yes at once, but now I’m not so sure.
/> “What would you do if we came?”
“I’d want to start by checking out her general cognitive functioning.”
“You mean, see if she’s normal?”
He smiles. “Yes. More or less. Then I’d talk to her about what she remembers—about the things she tells you. These children usually have quite fragmentary memories. They might talk about certain places, maybe certain people. You’re in luck if they remember a name, but mostly you find they don’t. So I’d want to see what she says, perhaps ask her to do a drawing . . .”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You could just come in for a couple of sessions—see how you both felt,” he says.
I don’t say anything.
“And you wouldn’t have to pay, of course,” he tells me. “We never charge for seeing people here.”
He’s trying to sound casual, but I hear the urgency in his voice. I can tell how much he wants to do this.
“She can be very reserved,” I tell him. “She might not say a thing.”
“That’s okay,” he tells me. “Really.”
He’s leaning toward me, his eyes on my face. His intensity makes me unsure. I feel myself pull back from him.
I sit there for a moment, not knowing what I should do. I think of Lennie’s party, of how I stood alone by the window, looking out into the darkness. I remember the things that Karen said, and how distanced I felt from the other mothers, that sense I had of the life I knew slipping away.
“I guess we could come in for just a couple of sessions,” I say slowly.
“That’s fantastic,” he says.
He asks for my contact details. I give him both numbers, my cell phone and my work.
“Jonah and the Whale,” he says, rolling the name around his mouth as though it tastes good.
“It’s just a flower shop,” I tell him.
He has this way of looking at me for just a little too long.
“I like that—you working in a flower shop.”
I feel my face go hot. I’m trying to decide whether this is a compliment.
Our conversation is over. I pick up my bag. But there’s something I’m longing to ask him.
“Adam.” My voice is tentative, uncertain. “What do you think? Do you think it could be true? That she could be remembering a previous life?”
He puts down his pen. His face is hard to read.
“I once read that in ancient Greece a skeptic was someone who kept all possibilities open. Who absolutely refused to come to a conclusion. That appealed to me. So let’s say I’m a skeptic . . .”
It seems a pat answer. People have asked him this too many times before.
“But you must have an opinion, surely.”
“I can tell you what I think about a particular case,” he tells me. “What the evidence points to. But even if every case you investigate seems to be a fraud, you can’t close off the possibility that some future case could convince you—”
“So—if you’re not sure you believe in these things, why do you do what you do?”
He smiles his crooked smile and thinks about this for a moment. He smiles a lot, but I feel there’s something about him, a kind of sadness, as though he hurts too easily.
“Good question,” he says. “There could be lots of reasons. There’s a woman I’m in touch with in a faculty in Scotland. She had an out-of-body experience after taking magic mushrooms. She wanted to understand it . . .”
We both know he’s evaded my question. I’m curious, but I don’t press it.
He’s riffling through his papers. “So when can you come in?”
“I work all week. I’m off on Saturdays,” I tell him.
“We’ll make it a Saturday, then.”
“Really, is that okay?”
“My girlfriend’s quite long-suffering,” he says.
I know he’s telling me this for a reason, wanting to make it clear. Stupidly, I feel a flicker of disappointment.
“Does she work here too?” I say.
He nods. “She’s a biophysicist,” he tells me.
I imagine her—tight jeans and artfully casual hair, like the woman I saw in the corridor: clever, privileged, doing work that’s rigorous and valued. I think of my own life, of the only things I’m good at—potting up lobelias, making patchwork angels out of scraps of silk.
He’s hunting in his in-box.
“How does this happen? I have all these degrees, and I still keep losing my diary . . .”
But he finds it, and the Saturday after next will suit him. He writes the date on a card for me and adds his cell phone number.
I pick up my bag. I’m about to leave.
His eyes are on me. His face is dark with thought.
“It’s tough, isn’t it, Grace?” he says.
There’s such warmth in his voice, and I find I have started to cry.
He doesn’t seem embarrassed. He gives me some tissues and sits there waiting for me.
I scrub at my eyes. Mascara comes off on the tissue, and a slick of bright blood from my mouth. I can’t imagine how I must look, my smudged, distorted face.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
He’s leaning toward me in that intent way he has.
“Grace, what’s making you cry?”
“It’s like—she’s slipping away from me.” I can’t express it. I’m struggling toward the words. “Sometimes when she looks at me, it’s like she doesn’t see me, doesn’t recognize me. She has this closed look . . . She’s my daughter—I mean, I gave birth to her, for God’s sake—but in some weird way I feel she isn’t really my child.” I blow my nose. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
“And you don’t know what to believe.”
“No.”
“Grace. I can’t guarantee I’ll solve that one for you—well, for either of us. In fact, I can’t guarantee anything. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
“Of course not. I know that.”
I get up. I suddenly feel so embarrassed that I cried like that.
“I’ll see you out,” he says.
He grins at Carla as we pass her desk.
“Still in one piece,” he tells her.
He stops at the swing doors to say goodbye, and reaches out and puts his hand on my sleeve, lightly, just for a second or two.
I walk off through the labyrinth of corridors, thinking about him, this urgent, messy, eager man with the strange preoccupations and the sadness under his smile. Oh my God, what have I done?
23
ON SATURDAY EVENING Karen comes around to my flat with a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.
I’m so happy to see her. But it feels a little awkward between us. There’s something new about her, something remote, reserved, as though she’s still angry with me.
I tell her everything that’s happened—about seeing Dominic, which appalls her, as I knew it would; about losing the place at the nursery.
“Jesus, Grace,” she says. “How on earth will you manage?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her.
She smooths her hair back. She looks somehow out of place on my sofa, in her sleek black cashmere clothes, with her handbag of rich dark leather with all its elaborate pockets and zips. When Karen comes here, I always notice how tatty everything is—my flimsy furniture, my chipped paintwork. I have my gas fire turned up full, but these walls hold a chill that never seems to thaw, and I worry that it’s too cold for her.
“You’ve got to get this sorted, Grace,” she tells me. “You’ve got to.”
But her voice sounds rather weary. She doesn’t think I will.
“I’m trying,” I tell her. “We’re going to see a new person, Sylvie and me.”
I keep my voice quite low. I worry Sylvie could hear our conversation—the walls of our flat are so thin. But maybe Sylvie is fast asleep. There’s no sound at all from her room.
“You’ve found a better psychiatrist?” says Karen hopefully. “I was going to say you should do that—you have a right to a second
opinion, of course. You obviously didn’t like that doctor you saw . . .”
“It’s not another doctor.” I take a gulp of wine. I know I’m drinking too fast. “It’s someone at the university, in the psychology faculty.” I breathe in deeply, not knowing quite how to go on. “I mean, I’m not sure about it, but I thought it was worth a shot.”
“Okay,” she says warily. There’s a question in her gaze.
“It’s that guy I read about—the one who investigates the paranormal—”
“No, Grace.” Her voice has a sharp edge.
“It’s not like you think—really. It’s all aboveboard. You know, kind of academic. I’m not sure he really believes it all—he just does the research.”
Karen stares at me. “Grace. How can some weird ghost-busting creep possibly be aboveboard? How can this possibly help Sylvie?”
“He wants to try and understand her—to understand what’s going on.”
“And how does he propose to do that, exactly?”
“Well, you know. Talk to her, do some tests. Sometimes with these cases—I mean, I don’t know what I think about this—but they’d want to take the child back there, to the place they seem to remember.”
Her mouth thins. “I think that’s a simply appalling idea,” she tells me briskly. “He’s using you, Grace. He just wants you for his research. Academics are like that.”
“Well, some of them, maybe,” I say.
“No, trust me, Grace. It’s not what Sylvie needs. What Sylvie needs is a therapist. Someone to help her let go of that stuff, not just get deeper in.”
“But nothing can make her let go of it. I’ve tried to ignore it, not pay attention. Nothing makes any difference. I thought I could give this a go—perhaps just for a couple of sessions. Maybe there’s something in it. I mean, how much do we really know—about life and death and everything?” I can feel myself becoming expansive because of the cabernet sauvignon. “We don’t really understand how the world works, do we? Not really. How could we? Our minds are just so limited . . .”
Karen leans toward me, fixing me with her anxious, troubled gaze.
“Grace.” Her voice is gentle. “She said she had a dragon.”
Afterward, I walk her out to her car. I’m so used to living here now, but I know that these streets must seem threatening to her. There’s a nail-paring moon, and a thin glaze of ice on the puddles. The prostitutes are standing on the corner, smoking and talking softly. One of them cups her hands together to light her cigarette, and the burning tip flares briefly like a red and winking eye. An elderly woman who’s sleeping rough has settled down for the night in the alley next to Kwik Save, with all her bulging shopping bags beside her. She’s wrapped in a filthy pink eiderdown, and I feel so sorry for her, to think how cold she will be. I wonder what Karen makes of all this.
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