House. Tree. Person.

by Catriona McPherson

  He wouldn’t say any more so, as he started up and got going again, I twisted round and grabbed a big hospital laundry bag, sturdy blue plastic and a toggle with a drawstring. I peered inside, no idea what I thought I’d be seeing.

  “It’s a dolly,” he said. “We use them for regression. I took it home to put it on the gentle cycle after it got cried on, on Friday.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?” I said, still peering into the bag. I could see the checked pinafore and round white legs of a Raggedy Ann.

  “Seriously? You’re supposed to cuddle it. What else would you do with a dolly?”

  “This is your idea of therapy?” I said. “Cuddling a doll?”

  “Cuddling a doll,” Lars said. “Going for a walk, baking a tray of fairy cakes.”

  I had no idea what had happened to my dolls after I was grown up and left home. Maybe they were still in the eaves of my parents’ attic. Or maybe my sister-in-law had chucked them. But I had been a good mum to my plastic Tiny Tears, changing her clothes every day, going up to my bedroom after school and getting her out of her pram to sit and watch me doing my sums and my reading.

  I didn’t see what good it could do me, but because I agreed about the therapeutic value of walks and baking, I reached into the bag.

  “There you go,” Lars said.

  I pulled out the rag doll and turned it to face me. Then everything slowed down and turned to sludge as I pushed the woollen hair back off the disc of white and saw the blankness ripple and bulge and heard the moaning start—

  “Mmmmmhhmmmm.”

  And I was out of the car and running, running as fast as I had ever run in my life, gasping the cold air down into my burning lungs, stumbling over the rough grass towards the sea.

  Fourteen

  He caught me easily, pinned my arms to my sides and held me hard in a deft professional grip that kicked me back ten years, like falling down a well into blackness. I could hear my breath, half sobs half shrieks.

  “Please,” I said. “No.”

  “Sorry,” said Lars, “but it’s a live ammo day. Didn’t you see the flags at the gate? Red means— You can’t be out here, Ali.”

  “I need to go home,” I said. But not to the house I’d just left. Not even to our real house. I wanted to go to was the house I was born in. To my room with the high narrow bed and the skirted dressing table. I shook my head to take the picture away.

  I had wanted to go there when I was ill too. I had wanted my old room and my mum bringing me soup on a tray and a comic to read. Marco had made me sushi, hand rolled and perfect, like little mosaic medallions, and he’d bought me a box-set to play on the flatscreen at the bottom of our bed. He’d told me ever so gently that my parents weren’t coming, that my mum was busy in France with her new house and her olive harvest. His voice had been hypnotic as he spoke and so I didn’t throw the square plate against the wall. I didn’t smash the DVDs and pull the covers over my head. And I was better in six months, start to finish. Fine for a decade after.

  Lars let me go in slow careful stages, in case I ran again, and then took my hand and started walking me back to the car. He had left it sitting in the middle of the track, both its doors hanging open like Dumbo ears. I peered at it, but wherever the dolly had fallen I couldn’t see it from here. I stopped walking anyway.

  “I can’t get back in,” I said. “But I really need to go home.”

  “I can’t take you home anyway,” said Lars. “I need to run the meeting.”

  “I can’t go to the meeting!” I heard myself yelp. “Dr. Ferris would—”

  “Ssh,” Lars said. “She’s not in. Dr. F texted me first thing to say she got called away last night and I’m in charge.”

  “I just need to go,” I said. “I thought I could do this and I need the money but I can’t cope and I want to go home. My kid needs me. Oh Jesus!”

  As if humiliating myself in front of Lars wasn’t enough, now another car was bumping over the track. He waved at it to slow down and it crunched to a stop a foot behind his bumper. Belle leaned out of the driver’s side and I could see Surraya bending forward to crane out at us.

  “Didn’t you see the flags?” Belle shouted. “Live day, Lars. What are you doing?”

  “Ali had a funny turn,” Lars said. “All okay now.” He had let go of my hand.

  “You shouldn’t be in if you’re coming down with a bug, sweetness,” Belle said.

  I hung my head and said nothing.

  “Not that kind of turn,” Lars said. “I was being my usual brilliant self and I upset her.”

  “I’m fine,” I said at last, looking up. “I’m really fine.”

  But all three of them looked back at me so shrewdly I felt myself shrivel.

  “I can’t get back in that car,” I said, nodding at the open doors. “Will you two take me up the road so I can … ” Hand in my notice and call a taxi, was what I was thinking.

  Belle gave Lars a hard look then turned to me with a smile, her eyes crinkled up. “Happy to.”

  Once I was in, Surraya twisted round and put a hand on my knee. “So,” she said. “You’re fine, eh?” I nodded, pretending to fiddle with my seat belt so I didn’t have to look at her. “Ali,” she went on, “nobody ‘fine’ comes to work here.”

  Belle nodded and muttered agreement under her breath as she started up again and followed Lars’s car.

  “From Dr. Ferris on down,” Surraya went on, “no one’s fine. We’re all walking wounded.”

  She appeared so very untroubled. Maybe it was the hijab, reminding me of nuns, women who lived in serenity. “What do you mean?” I said.

  “It’s what makes the Ferrises such a good team. She only cares about the bottom line and he’s a big softie, but by amazing coincidence that means they want the same things. Dr. Ferris gives people second chances because it keeps them grateful and makes sure they can’t walk away. And Dr. F really and truly believes that staff with problems help clients with problems.”

  “Problems,” I said. I didn’t ask, but they told me anyway.

  “I got sacked from the NHS,” Belle said, “for stepping over professional boundaries.”

  “And I’m a veiled Muslim,” said Surraya. Belle snorted. “Yeah okay,” Surraya added. “A veiled Muslim who’s done a bit of time.”

  “And Lars? And Marion?”

  “You’d need to ask them,” Belle said.

  “Do you think he’s right?” I asked her. “Dr. F?”

  “Course he is,” said Surraya. “Some wee Pollyanna with a Dolly Dimple life would be no bloody good whatsoever when our nutters go the full woo-woo,” she said. Belle laughed softly as Surraya cleared her throat. “I mean, when the clients enter episodes of low function.”

  “So I really can just go and tell my brand-new employer that I’m one scream off a break-down?” I said. “While I’m on probation?” It was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard.

  “I bet he already knows,” Surraya said. “Did nothing come up at your interview?”

  “He wasn’t there,” I said. “It was Dr. Ferris on her own.”

  Neither of them said anything. Belle didn’t even make her hmp-mp-mm noise and Surraya’s eyebrows stayed level all the time she was still looking at me and only rose into a peak as she shared a glance with Belle turning round to face the front again.

  “What?” I said.

  “Probably nothing,” Belle told me. We had got to the staff carpark and she stopped.

  “Go and talk to him,” Surraya said again.

  We climbed out and Lars walked over to join us. We stood staring at one another over the roof of the car as if it was a Ping-Pong table and we were psyching each other out before a match.

  “Belle and Surraya think I can just go to Dr. F and say I’m having panic attacks,” I told Lars.

  “You could
, if you were having panic attacks,” Surraya said. “Are you?”

  “Well, I got out of a moving car and ran onto a firing range,” I said. “I’m having something.”

  After a moment Lars shivered and said, “Come on, Ali. I’m freezing my buns off standing out here in my tunic.”

  “Because you don’t have any meat on your bones,” said Belle. “You need a woman to feed you up and put some flesh on you.”

  Just like that the atmosphere was broken, the strange moment of tension gone. And somehow it seemed to have been decided that I wasn’t calling a taxi and going home. I was going to lay myself bare to Dr. F and listen to whatever he had to tell me.

  I even got through the staff meeting. I sat in the back row of folding chairs, sunk down inside Angel’s coat. It was a different world without Dr. Ferris there watching everyone and trying to trip them up. The night shift reported a quiet twelve hours.

  “Except for Julia,” Marion said. “She was on the phone again, saying she was being held against her will.”

  Dr. F clucked and tutted, but the rest of the staff were ready to laugh.

  “Samaritans?” said Lars. “With that bloody centralised number? When it was a local office we could get them told.”

  “It wasn’t the Samaritans,” Marion told him. “It was a phone-in show on WestSound. They pulled her off at the first F-bomb, but the producer kept her talking and called the polis on another line. She was not a very happy bunny when the good old D&G constabulary said Julia had been yanking them. I think the poor lassie thought she’d just broken the story of her life.”

  “Ali,” said Dr. F suddenly. “You seem to have established a rapport with her. Can you dream up something to keep her busy today? We’ve got too many groups and off-site visits going on to be at action stations all shift. Thank you, by the way, Marion.”

  He didn’t seem to want an answer from me; seemed to think I’d do his bidding.

  “Speaking of groups,” Lars said. “I was looking at the rota and wondering if we could collapse the two substance lots or if there’s a good reason I’m not seeing to keep them both going? I know Ryan can be a bit lively, so I wondered if he’d be better in solo and the others can all meet at the one time?”

  The nursing staff all had something to say about what seemed like ten different permutations of two groups and Ryan, and eventually I drifted off, looking at my own diary and wondering what else I could offer Julia that would keep her quiet.

  I stayed behind at the end as the rest of the staff filed out, the night shift hurrying to their cars and the day shift, much slower, off to do the med round and start the morning’s clinics.

  “Dr … Eff?” I said. It still seemed cheeky to call him that. “Can I ask you something? Is now a good time?”

  He looked up from his phone and beamed at me. “One moment. I’m attempting to hold a conversation with my daughter. But I’m falling behind.”

  I smiled. I could see her in my mind’s eye: a younger version of her mother with the same swan neck and sharp cheekbones, the same drawling voice. “Thank God she only ever texts me when my wife is unavailable,” Dr. F said, still frantically jabbing at his phone. “Oh, I give up!” He lifted it to his ear and motioned me to take the chair opposite the desk.

  “It’s quicker,” he said into the phone. “Well, walk away so they can’t hear then. Look, I’m sure that’s not tr— Don’t be so hard on yourse— I’m sure you’re overreac—” He listened for a moment. “Oh. Well, another time you’ll know better. Who suggested— Oh? Well, look I’m sure it’ll all blow over soon enough. Least said, soonest mended. I would leave it be, Dido, truly.”

  He didn’t sound like a psychiatrist. Least said, soonest mended?

  He hung up and put the phone down with a groan. “I can’t keep up,” he said. “Another day, another drama! But what can I do for you?”

  “I’m having second thoughts,” I told the top of his head. He was scrolling back over his texts. “Not sure this job is right for me after all. And I reckoned it was best to come to you because you’re not—” He cocked his head. “Well, because it wasn’t your idea to have me here, so you’ll tell me straight.”

  He finally stopped rereading what his daughter had told him and looked up. “I hope I haven’t given the impression that you’re not welcome, Ali.”

  “I just don’t think I’m doing what’s expected,” I blurted out. “I can’t see why I’m being paid so much to do so little, do you understand? And so I think I’m not actually getting what it is I’m really meant to do.” I sat back, feeling as if I’d put down a huge bulky burden now that the fears were words and the words were out of me. “And,” I went on, “it’s really stressing me out.” If I could blame the new job for my—what did Lars call them?—funny turns, they’d be a lot less worrying.

  He nodded slowly a few times before speaking. “My wife is the businesswoman, Ali,” he said. “It would be more worrying if I had employed a paratherapist without her say-so. Rest assured that if Tammy feels you’re needed, you’re needed. And she would never make a poor financial decision. She’s a strategician as well as a fine doctor.”

  Tammy was all I could think. It didn’t suit her. That and strategician was a funny way to talk about the love of your life.

  “So,” he went on, “there’s no need to be stressed. None at all.”

  “Right,” I said. “Good. Well, I’ll take your word for it. I had no idea rehab was so—I mean, I thought it would all be on a bit more of a shoestring.”

  “Howell Hall isn’t our only enterprise,” he said. “Although it’s where we started. Managing to get this property for a song was what convinced us we could open our own place, when we were both in the Infirmary, juggling child care and shift work. So I suppose you could say it’s our flagship, but we’ve got Rowan House in Dumfries that’s mostly contract work from the local authority, more focussed on through-put, and the same at Fairview in Stranraer. And my wife’s family business is still very much a going concern.”

  “Child care?” I said. “So Howell Hall hasn’t really been open that long then? I mean if your daughter’s still a teenager.” He shrugged. “Sorry, didn’t mean to be nosy.”

  “We do try to keep Dido away from our professional lives, I admit,” he said. “We send her up to Wellington’s so she’s not in a geography class with the child of a patient, and so forth. Do you have children yourself, Ali? I’m sure you’ll understand.”

  I understood perfectly. They might be making their money off of Fairview and Rowan House, off of junkies and alkies from the housing schemes in the region’s greyest towns, but they spent their days here on polished floors behind graceful windows. And their daughter was the Queen of Sheba. For devilment, I asked, “What’s Dr. Ferris’s family business then? Does it take up much of your time?”

  “I never go near the place from one year’s end to the next,” said Dr. F. “Our manager runs everything and since he’s getting close to retirement, she’s grooming another one.”

  But he hadn’t said what it was. I kind of hoped it was an undertaker’s or a waste recycler, something grubby that it bugged her to think about whenever she remembered.

  “Can I ask you one more thing?” I said. He glanced at his watch and grimaced, but he nodded at me. “What will I say to Julia if she starts on again about killing her dad?”

  “Human kindness goes a long way,” he said. Then he echoed what Marion had told me that first day. “The pain is real even if the words are false. Something is troubling Julia so very deeply that she makes shocking claims to try to express it.”

  “So … it’s really not that she might actually have killed him then?” I said.

  “Not a chance,” Dr. F said. “Garran Swain is alive and well and currently golfing in Portugal. He sent us a postcard.” He must have seen my start of surprise. “Galloway is a small place,” he told me, �
�and the Swains are friends of ours from years back. In fact, we bought Howell Hall from them. Well, from Mona, when she got tired of the family ghosts and moved on to pastures new and improved. It’s a real architectural gem. Been in all the glossy magazines.”

  “So why does Julia keep saying she killed him?” I said. I couldn’t care less about how posh the family were or what their house looked like, although I suppose the connection made sense of why Julia got to stay here when she was such a pain in the arse every day.

  “Julia has a personality disorder,” he said. “Her wild tales are a symptom.”

  “Yeah but—” I began. He glanced at his watch again and I knew I was losing him. “Why does she say her dad? Why not her mum? If she’s trying to think of the worst thing she could say, wouldn’t she say she killed her mum?”

  Dr. F opened his eyes so wide that his straggly brows curved forward over them.

  “Well, Mona Swain is so very much alive, you see.” I thought of her wrenching the cellophane off lipsticks in Tesco and smearing them on her big lips. “And Garran has gone away. But you make an interesting point and I don’t take offence. Much as I love my daughter and know she loves me, I agree that the central relationship, the strongest bond, is that between mother and child. Only … Are you all right?” he said suddenly in a different voice. “Have I said something to upset you?”

  “My son is closer to my husband,” I said. “It’s hard not to be jealous sometimes.” I knew that my face had drained and now I felt it flood. I must look like a maniac sitting here. “Thanks for helping me. About Julia, I mean. It makes sense.”

  “She’s doing her very best to give voice to fear and pain the only way she knows how,” Dr. F said. “It doesn’t matter how deeply you bury something, Ali, it comes to the surface eventually. Good grief, like that body at the Abbey, eh!”

  “A hand,” I said. “That’s what the police are saying now. A hand broke through the ground after all the flooding.”

  Dr. F sat forward in his seat and stared at me. “I hadn’t heard that.”