Don’t Stand So Close

by Luana Lewis

  Abruptly, Stella bashed at the red button to disconnect the call. She didn’t want to consider what he thought of her now.

  She was trapped inside her home with a stranger. Overnight. She didn’t think she could make it that long. Already, her anxiety threatened to triumph over the drugs. It wasn’t safe to take any more pills. She had to stay alert.

  Session Five

  She said: ‘I had a dream about you last night.’

  His expression didn’t change and he didn’t say anything.

  ‘I thought therapists were supposed to be interested in dreams,’ she said.

  She watched her hand moving slowly up and down along the arm of the chair. She rubbed the raised crimson flowers until they disappeared under her fingertips. She felt far away, removed from her own body, as though she was looking at someone else’s hand moving back and forth. The strange, disconnected feeling was not unfamiliar.

  She was sitting in an oversized wingback armchair. The curtains were drawn and the soft light in the room came from a lamp in the corner. These fifty minutes in his office were her favourite part of the day.

  He sat opposite her and his chair was exactly the same as hers, with the same crimson flowers on a beige background. A matching pair. She felt hot and fidgety. He was too far away. Even if she stretched out her legs she couldn’t touch him. She wondered if he thought she was pretty. She didn’t care about boys her own age, she only wanted him.

  ‘So, do you want me to tell you about my dream?’ she asked.

  ‘If you’d like to,’ he said.

  ‘I wish my dreams were real.’

  ‘There’s a big difference between dreams and reality. You know that.’

  The air between them crackled with anticipation and excitement and a strange sort of hope. Her skin prickled and tingled; he made her nervous and excited all at the same time. The sky had clouded over and the room had darkened.

  ‘I dreamt you touched me,’ she said. She was half embarrassed, half excited.

  He shifted around in his chair and crossed his legs tight. She stifled a giggle.

  He didn’t say anything more. He wasn’t a big talker. She was dying to know what he was thinking when he looked at her. He was much older than she was, but she didn’t mind. Maybe that made her weird, being interested in someone so old. She didn’t care.

  She let herself slide down and inched across, closer, until she was sitting on the floor at the base of the big chair, staring up at him. She put her thumb between her teeth and bit down gently.

  She reached up and found his fingers, and wriggled her own in between until their hands were intertwined. She looked down at the swirling patterns of the carpet, full of longing.

  Grove Road Clinic, April 2009

  Stella was relieved to be away from her reluctant client for a few minutes. She took shelter in the compact, well-equipped kitchen along the hallway. The small space, not more than two metres long and even narrower than that, was another of Anne’s many triumphs. The modern kitchen included all the essentials: hob, fridge and coffee maker; it was always neat and clean and well stocked with snacks for the staff, healthy stuff, nuts and dried fruit, as well as a selection of biscuits. Stella needed a stiff combination of sugar and caffeine to get through the next two hours so she opened the tin and found a biscuit covered in thick chocolate. She poured her coffee into an elegant yet bland cream-coloured mug. She took a sip. Anne always put too little coffee into the filter and she could barely taste it; she would have to start all over again.

  ‘A question, Stella.’ Max was standing in the doorway looking bemused as she poured the entire pot of coffee down the plughole. ‘I’ve been referred a case where they’re looking to confirm a diagnosis of Asperger’s in a fourteen-year-old. How would you feel about taking that one on?’

  Max Fisher, psychiatrist and now Stella’s boss, owned the Grove Road Clinic. He had managed to secure financing for the building four years earlier, just before the recession hit, and he had worked hard to lure Harley Street specialists away from the city centre to work in his state-of-the-art facilities. Initially, his plan had been to attract residents in the surrounding areas stretching from St John’s Wood to Hampstead, where they weren’t short of disposable income and had good health insurance. The practice offered cutting-edge diagnostic equipment and a range of specialties: ultrasound imaging, physiotherapy, psychotherapy, gynaecology, even speech therapy. But the ever-increasing business closures, job losses and redundancies had changed the landscape of their work and there were fewer patients than Max had hoped for. Four years later, the clinic was not quite paying its own way, and Max put all his energies into keeping the place afloat. Contracts for medico-legal work, funded by government agencies, had become more central to the survival of his clinic than he could have foreseen. That was when Stella became important.

  She replaced the empty coffee pot on to the counter and pushed her hair back from her face. ‘Sure. I used to work in the complex-needs clinic in Camden. I’ve had experience in assessment of social-communication disorders.’ Her words sounded rather stilted and selfconscious. He had that effect on her.

  ‘How soon could you offer the appointments?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll need the next two weeks to write up the Simpson report. So any time after that.’

  ‘That’s great,’ he said. He always sounded as though he was genuinely grateful she had agreed to do her job. ‘I’ll tell Anne to draft the letters – if you’ll just give her your available appointment times.’

  She nodded. ‘Sure.’

  Creases appeared around his eyes, when he smiled at her.

  She did not see her feelings for her boss as being a problem. They were simply another reason she was always happy to come to work, a consolation for all the overtime she worked. She wanted to impress him, to please him.

  Lawrence Simpson was where she had left him: diligently filling in the questionnaire, his head down. He did not look up as she walked in.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, as he reached for the mug, his expression earnest as his fringe flopped on to his forehead.

  While she was out of the room, he had put on a pair of reading glasses and, wearing these, he looked far more vulnerable. From her chair at the opposite side of the desk, she peered over at the questionnaire. He was halfway through the answer sheet. He must have worked more quickly while she was out of the room. Perhaps he did not like being scrutinized. Or perhaps he could see better with his glasses on.

  He looked up and caught her eye. She smiled at him, hopeful that the mood of their meeting had begun to shift away from the tense, oppositional manner in which it had begun. She opened her laptop to start formatting the report. Simpson sharpened his pencil and then pressed on with the questionnaire without further complaint. It took him seventy minutes to finish the personality test. Stella put it aside to score later.

  He declined to take a break, and so they went straight on to the clinical interview. Stella decided to change the way they were seated. She came out from behind the imposing desk and invited Simpson to sit opposite her, on one of the more comfortable chairs placed in the centre of the room.

  ‘What’s your understanding of why the judge has asked for a psychological assessment?’ she asked him.

  ‘My ex-wife has proved, over and over again, that she is not a competent parent. I’m assuming you know the background – she had problems looking after our daughter right from the start. She’s an alcoholic. She also suffers from borderline personality disorder. I want a chance to take over, to do it properly, to give my child a stable home.’

  ‘But, in your opinion – what are the problems that you might have had in parenting?’

  ‘I suppose I knew the relationship wasn’t right from the beginning but I didn’t want to admit it, especially when she fell pregnant. It wasn’t planned – stupid, I know, given my profession – but I was excited to be a father and I loved that baby from the first second. I practically delivered her. My ex-wife couldn
’t cope with a child. She was too emotionally fragile herself, too needy. She wanted all of my attention. I was working ungodly hours as a registrar and trying to pay the mortgage. I was exhausted and irritable, I fully admit that. But when I came home I wanted to focus on the baby, because I was worried about what she was getting – or not getting – from her mother. I’m assuming you’ve read all the documents? It started in the first few days – the baby was starving and she was completely unreasonable, refusing to supplement with a bottle. The health visitor had to intervene or God knows what would have happened. There are so many examples I could give you.’

  He sighed.

  His ex-wife had a rather different version of events. According to her, Simpson was jealous when she focused her attention on the baby. He was angry at the length of time it took her to breastfeed the colicky newborn and would snatch the child from her and insist on giving it a bottle. He wouldn’t allow the baby to sleep in their room because he hated that his ex-wife wanted the child close to her at all times. And he wouldn’t allow her to go to the baby if the child cried during the night. He insisted on sleep training, allowing their daughter to cry herself to sleep for an hour or more, from the time she was three weeks old.

  ‘Dr Simpson, so far you’ve talked about your ex-wife’s problems. But we’re really here to focus on you,’ Stella said.

  There was a slight tightening of his lips, a pulling down.

  ‘Your ex-wife has made several serious allegations and that’s the reason why the judge has asked for this assessment as part of custody proceedings. Do you have any insight into the difficulties you have that may have contributed to problems in your marriage or problems in parenting?’

  In response to her question, Simpson continued his monologue. ‘She couldn’t stand my devotion to my daughter. And so she punished me, first by drinking and then by trying to take my child away from me. She knows damn well she’s not capable of being a decent parent. I can offer my daughter a good life. A home we own, a garden, private schools. My ex-wife has been evicted from properties twice in the last two years for non-payment of rent, for God’s sake.’

  Stella interrupted. ‘You think that your ex-wife started drinking to punish you?’ His view of the world seemed rather egocentric.

  ‘Her father was an alcoholic too. I’m sure there’s some kind of genetic component.’

  ‘I see,’ Stella said.

  Simpson was in his comfort zone while talking about his ex-wife’s problems and he was performing what appeared to be a well-practised character assassination. Unfortunately for Stella, his sole purpose was to malign his ex-wife, not to reveal anything of interest about himself.

  ‘My ex-wife was very beautiful when she was younger,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t believe it to see her now. She’s let herself go in every way.’

  He never referred to his ex-wife by her name. Stella had seen her as she was now: bloated and defeated. She had to wonder if this might have something to do with her life with Simpson.

  Stella decided to change tack. She interviewed Simpson about his personal history, his childhood and his schooling. But this exchange turned out to be bland and boring as all hell – for both clinician and client. Simpson refused to talk to her about anything meaningful or close to his heart. His childhood was apparently ‘good’ and ‘completely normal’. He had a ‘great’ relationship with both parents. School was ‘fine’, he enjoyed it. Etcetera. He gave her nothing, no access to his inner life.

  Stella found that she had begun to take a deep breath before asking each question. Each enquiry, any attempt to get to know him, seemed to be perceived as some sort of attack. He was intensely, impossibly, guarded. She felt drained. It was stressful for her too, being with someone who hated every minute of their interaction and who resisted all the way. She reminded herself that the interview, frustrating as it was, was all good data – of one sort or another.

  She put her hand over her eyes, closing them for a brief second. At that moment, a terrible piercing sound shattered the genteel atmosphere of the Grove Road Clinic. A sound so loud it was painful.

  Stella was disoriented. It took her a few seconds to realize it was the smoke alarm.

  ‘We need to go to the nearest fire exit,’ she said.

  She knew she shouldn’t do it, but she couldn’t resist the urge to pack her laptop into her bag. The thought of losing all of her work was unbearable.

  Simpson followed her out of the office, but at the top of the staircase he stopped. Instead of following her to the end of the passageway, he took the stairs instead. Stella carried on, towards the fire exit. By the time she heaved open the exit door and looked behind her, he had disappeared.

  She climbed down the metal staircase along the side of the building. She was cold; she had left her coat in the consulting room. Anne was already at the meeting point at the bottom of the stairs. She looked even chillier than Stella, in her low-cut top. She seemed to be on the telephone to the fire department. Paul, the psychotherapist, was outside too, in his white socks and sensible sandals.

  ‘Where’s Max?’ Stella asked.

  Paul shook his head. ‘No idea.’

  ‘He left for a meeting,’ Anne said, covering the mouthpiece.

  The three of them waited, impatient to be let back into the building. Stella had never heard the siren go off before and she feared there might really be a fire. Max would be devastated. And she wondered what on earth her client was up to, more uneasy about her case file than his safety. She should have grabbed it as she left the office. He could be reading through her notes as the staff waited, helpless, outside the building.

  The alarm stopped. Minutes later, Simpson appeared at the front door of the clinic.

  ‘There’s no fire,’ he said. ‘But there were two incense sticks burning in one of the rooms on the ground floor and the smoke set off your fire alarm.’

  He held up the two offending incense sticks as proof. Anne looked accusingly at Paul.

  ‘I’ve never had a problem with incense sticks before,’ Paul said.

  ‘It’s quite safe,’ Simpson said. ‘I’ve checked all the consulting rooms. You’re perfectly safe to come back inside.’

  When Stella and her client resumed their positions in the first-floor office, his posture was more open, his arms relaxed and placed casually along the armrests, both feet solidly on the floor.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked Stella. He was staring at her, looking right into her eyes. Intelligence and curiosity flickered in his gaze.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. It was a strange sensation, and mildly embarrassing, to have been vulnerable in front of a client, for him to have seen her confused and rushing for the fire exit. But the pay-off appeared to be that he had dropped his aloof and irritable stance and she was allowed to glimpse a gentler side. He seemed happier, now that he had performed an act of heroism. Or, maybe, if she took a more cynical view, if he saw himself as her protector, then she must be the powerless female and that was what made him happy. Regardless, his need to be the good guy was a lot more charming than the guarded stance he had taken up until that point.

  Just as Stella had retrieved her interview schedule, there was a light knock on the door and Anne stepped inside, without waiting for an invitation. ‘I just wanted to thank you, Dr Simpson,’ she said.

  ‘Glad I could help.’

  ‘We have warned him about those incense sticks,’ Anne said.

  Stella was annoyed to have her intrude on the assessment session. The support staff at the clinic knew better than to disturb any of the clinicians when they were with clients, but Anne tended to act with impunity. Stella wondered sometimes about the nature of Anne’s relationship with Max Fisher. Anne’s French-manicured fingernails played with the diamond-encrusted bee that dangled from the thin gold chain around her neck and hung just above the V of her blouse.

  ‘Thanks, Anne,’ Stella said in a tone that indicated she should leave the room as soon as possible.

 
; Anne gave her client the once-over. ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea or coffee?’ she said. As she spoke, she ran her fingers through her hair, the sharply cut bob that swung just above her shoulders. Stella felt for the chunky plastic clamp from Boots that she had used to pin her own hair up that morning. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been near a hairdresser. Her suit, too, could do with a trip to the dry-cleaners. Between her student loan, rent and utilities, she barely came out even.

  She noted that Anne had not bothered to offer her a cup of anything.

  Stella admired Simpson’s self-control as he kept his eyes firmly locked on Anne’s face. ‘Dr Davies has already been kind enough to make me one,’ he said.

  Stella imagined that Anne looked disappointed as she made her gracious exit, leaving behind her a lingering, musky scent.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Simpson said, ‘my having a look around the building. I just know how these things go. We could have been waiting outside for an hour while the fire department turned up and searched the place. We would all have lost an afternoon’s work, and I can’t afford to take off much more time. You have no idea how many appointments I’ve got to attend for the court case.’

  Stella nodded. ‘It’s fine. We all appreciate your help.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Of course. Thank you,’ she said. She decided that the time was right, with his eagerness to impress her and his guard down, to move on to the more challenging part of the interview.

  ‘Dr Simpson,’ she said. ‘I need to ask you about some of the more difficult material in the background documents. Some of the accusations your ex-wife has made against you.’

  He nodded. ‘As long as you actually listen to my answers,’ he said.

  He didn’t change his open posture, but his fingers tightened around the arm of the chair. The tension was back.

  ‘Of course.’ She flipped open her case file to a page she had marked with a Post-it note.

  ‘Your ex-wife has said in her statement that you physically abused her, over a number of years. She claims that it started when she was pregnant, and that you would hit her on her torso and upper arms, so that the bruises could be hidden under her clothes.’