by M K Farrar
She opened her office door and stopped short.
“Oh, Timothy, what are you doing in here?”
Her boss straightened from where he was leaning over her desk. She got the distinct impression he was looking for something, though she had no idea what.
“Amy. Good morning. You’re in early.”
“No,” she replied slowly. “I’m actually right on time.”
“Of course you are.” He threw her a winning smile.
“Is there something I can help you with?”
He cast his glance across her desk again. “Yes, actually. I was just on the hunt for a calculator. I don’t suppose you have one? Mine seems to have gone walkabouts.”
“I expect I have one in my drawer.” She crossed the room and rounded her desk. “I’m sure Linda would have had one. It would have saved you coming all the way in here.”
“Yes, well, she was on the telephone, and I didn’t want to interrupt her.”
Linda had been on a call when she’d come in just now. Maybe she had to believe him. She couldn’t think of any other reason he’d be in here, poking around her stuff.
Amy’s fingers touched the plastic of the calculator, and she picked it up and handed it to him. He leaned in and took the calculator out of her hand, their fingers brushing, sending jolts of unpleasant electricity down her arm.
She hesitated, wondering if she should mention her thoughts about the Swain family, but then she clamped her mouth shut again. The truth was that she didn’t fully trust Timothy. Even though she was the doctor here who specialised in child psychology, it wouldn’t surprise her if he decided to take the case off her hands if she gave him the slightest reason for thinking she’d do something outside of their normal guidelines. He might even just think it was an interesting case—more so than all the eating disorders and grief-stricken teens—and take it off her anyway.
“Well, thanks for this,” he said, waving the calculator at her. “Have a good morning.”
Amy forced a smile. “You, too.”
She stood in place as he left the room, pulling the door shut behind him.
Amy let out a shaky sigh and sank into her seat. She hated how he always had that effect on her. He’d never said or even really done anything inappropriate, but just being in his presence put her on edge. Maybe it was her, and not him. Perhaps the tension at home, and the stress of starting a new job, and taking on all the emotional burden of her patients had wired her nerves tighter than she’d realised. That could explain why things felt off with Robert Swain as well. She was simply projecting rather than seeing things as they were. She’d have to watch herself with that. It didn’t make her good at her job.
Amy focused her attention on her other patients and who she would be seeing today. She liked to go through each file to bring herself up to speed before each session. Most of her cases were anxiety related. One fifteen-year-old who had been picking out all her eyebrows and eyelashes whenever she got stressed. Another who was suffering from agoraphobia and struggled to even leave her bedroom to come and have their sessions. Others were coming to see her for grief counselling after losing a parent or a sibling. It was hard, emotional work, but it was hugely rewarding as well. Even though her career was still in its infancy, the small amount of help she’d given the handful of children she’d already treated was worth all the sleepless nights.
She checked her schedule to see who had appointments after lunch and frowned. Edward Swain’s name was on it.
Amy picked up the phone and called the reception desk. “Hi, Linda, I see Edward Swain is due to come in again today. Did something happen overnight?” Her stomach tumbled with nerves, though she wasn’t sure why.
“Oh, no. That’s my mistake. I scheduled him in yesterday when I thought you might not have been able to see him and his father after your last appointment. Then you said you’d see him, and I forgot to cross him off again. Do you want me to call and rearrange?”
Amy hesitated for a moment and then said, “No, no need. Yesterday was more rushed than I would have liked anyway. It’ll be good to speak to him properly.”
“Okay, as long as you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
She hung up.
Her first client arrived—a fifteen-year-old boy who’d been battling social phobias. He was with his mother. Amy preferred to work with the parents as well. It wasn’t unusual for a child to subconsciously be mirroring a parent’s behaviour and often magnifying it. A mother’s obsession with an extra tyre or two around her stomach may turn into anorexia in a daughter who’d been watching that behaviour every day. A father’s reluctance to show emotion to a son may result in a boy who bottled everything up to a point where he now suffered from panic attacks. It was important to get a parent to understand that they should be validating a child’s feelings and not telling them to stop crying when they were sad or to bottle things up when they were angry. There were healthier ways of coping with emotions, and often the parent needed to be taught those ways as much as their offspring.
Of course, not all children had the advantage of having a loving, supportive parent around. Amy knew that more than most. And those were often the hardest cases, the ones where those children’s struggles were the greatest.
She worked through that morning’s patients and then nipped out for half an hour to grab a sandwich. The appointment with Edward Swain was directly after lunch, and she noticed his father’s name was also on the list. Of course, the appointment had been made before she’d seen them the night before. Did that mean Robert Swain was also going to come for this one, despite having said the previous day that he wouldn’t be? She found herself growing nervous about it, though she had nothing substantial to pin her worries on.
Amy went to her favourite sandwich shop around the corner. The place was popular, and it was always busy at lunchtime, so she wasn’t surprised that a line of customers was already trailing out of the door. Not that it mattered. She was happy to wait. She took her place in the queue and studied the menu, even though she almost always went for her favourite chicken salad sandwich, or on the odd occasion switched the chicken for tuna.
From out of nowhere, she felt a prickling down her spine, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. The unnerving sense that someone was watching her filled her. It was like a pressure against her back, the certainty someone was there.
Amy spun around. Of course, people were behind her. Several others had joined the queue—a man and a woman, and a couple of businessmen in suits. One of the men caught her staring back so intently and gave her a slightly awkward smile, probably wondering what she was looking at. But there was no one who appeared out of place or who she recognised.
Shaking the feeling away, she stepped forward to the counter.
“Hi,” the girl serving greeted, recognising her as a regular. “Your usual?”
“Yes, chicken salad, please.”
“Extra mayonnaise on white bread?” she asked.
Amy smiled. “Perfect.”
There was something about coming somewhere and having people know what you liked. Even in a big, faceless city like London, it was possible to carve out a small niche that felt like home. But even though this was somewhere she normally felt comfortable, Amy couldn’t shake the sensation of eyes on her back.
She accepted the paper bag containing her lunch and paid, then turned to leave. As she stepped out of the door and onto the street, someone bumped her shoulder.
“Oh, sorry,” she exclaimed, holding her handbag tighter. It was such a British thing to do—apologise for something when it wasn’t even your fault.
She didn’t see who’d bumped into her, the person quickly vanishing into the crowds.
EDWARD SWAIN WAS ALREADY in the waiting room when she got back. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped, his head bent as he stared down at his joined fingers.
“Hello, Edward.” She offered him a smile. “Where’s your father?”
>
The boy shrugged. She was starting to feel like that was his go-to answer for things. “He’s at work. Couldn’t take any more time off.”
She pinned the smile to her face. “Okay, well, I’m just getting back from lunch, so I won’t be much longer.”
Edward didn’t reply.
Sitting behind the reception desk, Linda jerked her chin, signalling Amy to come over.
“He wanted to wait in your office,” she whispered, leaning towards Amy to bridge the distance. “Obviously, I told him no, but he was pretty insistent for a kid. It was only when I told him you’d locked the door on your way out that he gave up.”
She frowned. “I didn’t lock the door.”
Linda raised both eyebrows. “He didn’t know that.”
Amy gave a small laugh. “Clever. And you did the right thing. I can’t have people in there unsupervised.”
She had all her case files locked inside the filing cabinet, but she still didn’t want anyone in there. Her thoughts instantly went to Timothy alone in her office that morning, but she shook them out of her head. Though she worked from the office, Timothy owned the building, so it was technically more his office than hers. Even so, it felt like an invasion of her private space, so perhaps that was why she’d been uncomfortable this morning.
“Give me five minutes and then send him in.”
“Will do, Doctor Penrose.”
She’d given up asking Linda to call her Amy. It had been six months now, and the older woman still insisted on using Doctor Penrose instead. She didn’t know why it felt weird.
Amy walked into her office and put her handbag down, then went to the corner where the filing cabinet stood. She unlocked it and pulled out the drawer containing her most recent cases. Edward Swain’s was at the front. Once their treatment was finished, she’d move the case to the drawers below, where they were stored in alphabetical order.
Normally, she’d refresh her mind by going over the file before seeing the patient, but since it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since she’d last seen him, and because his case had been on her mind almost constantly, she didn’t need to go over it again.
A light knock came at the door.
“Come in,” she called.
The door opened, and Edward Swain stepped into the room.
“Edward,” she greeted, getting to her feet. “Please, come and sit down.”
The boy was even taller than she’d realised. She was only five feet four, but he already had several inches on her. It was the way he moved, with his shoulders slumped and head hung, that made him seem shorter.
“How did you get here today?” she asked, gesturing for him to take a seat.
“Caught the Tube,” he muttered, sliding onto the couch.
Amy took up her usual position in her chair opposite. “Is your father looking at other arrangements for your schooling?”
Edward couldn’t go without an education all together, no matter how difficult he was finding things.
“S’pose.” He didn’t meet her eye. “Though there’s no point.”
She leaned forwards slightly. “Why is there no point, Edward?”
He shrugged. “I’ll only get kicked out again.”
“Well, I’m hoping that during our time together, we can come up with some ways of managing your emotions a little better so that doesn’t have to happen next time. Does that sound like something you’d like?”
He didn’t answer, so she had no choice but to take his silence as a yes.
“Do you have any children?” he asked suddenly.
His question surprised her. “Me? No, I don’t.”
He lifted his gaze to her, making real eye contact for the first time. “But you’re old enough, and you work with kids, so you must like them.” His line of sight flicked down to her hand. “But you’re not married.”
“I’ve been focused on my work,” she replied, wanting to steer him off the topic of her. “And right now, my work is about helping you.”
That shrug again. “I’m not sure I can be helped.”
Amy gave a rueful smile. “We can all be helped, Edward, and we should all feel that we can accept help as well. People try too hard these days to be strong, but it’s okay to admit that life is hard and that we’re struggling to deal with our emotions because of it.”
He twisted his lips. “I guess.”
“It must have been really hard for you after your mother left,” she said gently. “Do you want to tell me how it made you feel?”
Why did she feel guilty about asking questions about his mother? In any other case, she was sure she wouldn’t. Parenting was one of the most important parts of a child’s world, and shaped and defined a child’s personality, so why was she filled with the unnerving sensation she was doing something wrong by bringing it up?
Is it because what you really want to ask is ‘Do you think your father could have had something to do with your mother’s disappearance?’
“How do you think it made me feel?” His gaze snapped up to hers—hard ice in his blue eyes—then just as quickly dropped back down again.
She was left wondering if she’d imagined it.
“Honestly, I have no idea. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“Did you have both parents when you were growing up?” he asked.
She hesitated and then said, “My dad died when I was about your age, and I was left with my mum.”
“At least you still had your mum.”
“You still have your dad,” she pointed out.
He snorted, the sound surprising her. “You’ve met my dad.”
“You don’t get on?”
He looked down at his hands again, his fingers twisting together like knotting snakes. “My dad hates me.”
“I’m sure that isn’t true.”
That same look again. “He tries to make out like it’s my fault my mum left, but I know better.”
Icy fingers ran across her skin, goose bumps rising. “What do you mean by that, Edward?”
“I heard them fighting all the time. He’d always be shouting.”
“Only shouting? Or were things worse than that?”
His head dropped again.
She leaned in closer. “You can tell me anything in here, Edward. I won’t let it go any further.”
Still, the boy didn’t respond.
“But your dad went to the police and reported her disappearance, didn’t he?” she pressed him.
He answered her this time. “Yeah, the police talked to us both. But it looked like she’d just left us, so there wasn’t much they could do.”
No, there wouldn’t have been.
“What about your mother’s friends and family. Didn’t they wonder what had happened to her?”
His fingers wrung each other out. “She didn’t have any. I never met any of my family on my mother’s side.”
“What about friends?” she prompted.
“She didn’t have any of those either. She never went out. It was always just the three of us.”
A woman who had no family or friends decided one day to pack her bags and leave? Even to her ears, that sounded extreme. It was a big jump to go from never even going out to starting a whole new life somewhere else. And if she didn’t work, where did she get the money from to start that new life? Of course, there was the possibility that Robert and Edward didn’t really know her at all. Perhaps she’d met a man and she’d left with him.
Edward cleared his throat, and she realised she’d been lost in thought about his mother. Blinking to bring herself back to the present, she smiled and brightened her tone.
“Right then, Edward. How about we run through some tactics that will help you control your anger and make better choices.”
Amy got to work, teaching Edward counting and breathing techniques, and promised herself she’d make the focus Edward and not his mother.
Chapter Four
The rest of the afternoon passed quickly, and before she knew it,
Amy was back on the District Line, heading home.
Edward hadn’t said anything else that had given her cause for concern, and she’d seen him out of the office with a smile and instructions to make his next appointment with Linda. He seemed far too young to be this independent, but since his father was working, she guessed he didn’t have much choice.
The appointments with her other patients had gone smoothly as well, and she was relieved to have been able to leave on time.
She wasn’t happy about going home, however, and it had nothing to do with Gary this time. Her stomach knotted. Today was Wednesday, and her mother always expected a phone call at exactly six-thirty on a Wednesday evening. If she was even a few minutes late, she’d be greeted with that tsk of disapproval.
“Hi!” she called, walking in. “You home?”
“Yeah, through here,” Gary called back.
He was in the kitchen, but she didn’t see any signs of food being cooked. She knew she couldn’t complain. He’d made dinner the previous night when she’d been late.
“How was your day?” she asked as he kissed her cheek.
“Good. We’ve been invited to a party at Ashley and Liz’s place on Friday night.”
Her stomach sank. She really wasn’t in the mood for socialising. “Really? Do I have to come?”
He caught her around the waist and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Yes, you do. You’ve been working too hard lately, and we need to have some fun.”
Immediately, her defences rose. “I need to work hard. This is my first real job. I can’t screw it up.”
He let out a sigh and released her. “I know that, but it doesn’t mean the rest of our lives has to stop, does it? You deserve to have a little fun. We deserve to have fun. It’ll be good for us.”
Ashley was Gary’s friend from work, and Liz was his wife. She’d only met them on a handful of occasions, and she didn’t want to spend an awkward evening standing around their flat making small talk with a whole heap of people she didn’t know. They’d always make some comment along the lines of ‘so when are you two planning on starting a family?’ or something similar, especially once they’d got through all the usual questions of ‘how did you guys meet?’ and ‘how long have you been together?’ She didn’t know why people thought their relationship was everyone else’s business. She was sure she didn’t question people in that way—unless they were sitting on her sofa in her office, of course.