Blind Spot

by Terence Bailey

  Suddenly, a sickening thought occurred to Sara. ‘Ellie,’ she said in a hushed voice, ‘where’s your daughter?’

  ‘Your fault,’ Ellie repeated, and tried to slam the door. The hinges were rusty; they slowed the swing and gave Sara time to raise a knee and shove it back.

  ‘Who are you, anyway?’ Ellie cried out. ‘Why did you fuck up my life?’

  A choking panic constricted Sara’s throat and pulsed downwards into her chest. She knocked Ellie aside and dashed up the stairs.

  ‘Hey!’ Ellie yelped.

  On the first-floor landing, Sara leapt into the flat’s small living room. Knocking open the bedroom door, she scanned the room. It was a mess of laundry, empty bottles and dirty dishes on moth-eaten carpets. There was no cot, no child’s bed. There were no toys and no toddler. Sara’s stomach lurched and she turned to see Ellie, weaving and sweating heavily, emerge from the stairs.

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘Where is your daughter?’ Sara demanded.

  ‘She’s gone,’ Ellie replied bitterly.

  ‘Ellie – tell me what happened.’

  ‘Leave my home!’

  Sara reached forwards and grabbed her former client by the lapel of her terrycloth gown. She yanked her into the room and thrust her against a wall. Ellie released a guttural huff. Pressing herself close enough to feel the sag of Ellie’s stomach, Sara spoke in a voice calmer than she felt. ‘Tell me she’s not dead.’

  Ellie blinked. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Tell me your daughter is OK.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  Suddenly, the room seemed to have lost all its air. Sara took rapid, shallow breaths and shook her head helplessly. ‘Ellie,’ she said, ‘I tried to help you. I need to know what went wrong.’

  ‘I got sober, that’s what went wrong,’ Ellie muttered. ‘Sober enough to make a stupid choice. I was all responsible, you see. You told me to be responsible, remember? So I gave her up.’

  Relief flooded through Sara. She filled her lungs deeply. ‘To Social Services?’

  Ellie shrugged.

  ‘An interim care order?’

  Ellie acknowledged this with a grudging nod. ‘Just so I could get on my feet. We made a plan. When I’d be allowed to visit, when I might get her back …’ Her voice trailed away and she shuddered.

  ‘But you fell off the wagon,’ Sara speculated.

  ‘It was awful,’ Ellie whimpered. ‘Without my daughter. Long days. Everything was so empty. I went off those meds you gave me. Stopped seeing my sponsor. More than once, I ended up in hospital.’ Ellie’s face contorted and she doubled over, knocking Sara backwards. ‘They took her away from me!’ she howled. ‘For ever!’

  Sara helped Ellie ease to the floor.

  ‘They got a placement order,’ Ellie sobbed. ‘Now she’s going to be adopted.’

  Sara kneeled down and shushed softly. She stroked Ellie’s arm as the young woman’s chest heaved. Sara felt genuine pity for this poor woman who had been so close to besting her disease. ‘I can help you again,’ she said. ‘You can beat this problem. I’ll keep visiting.’

  Ellie rolled onto her back and drew a steadying breath. ‘Fuck that,’ she said. ‘You were the problem. The only reason I let you come here and spout your shit was, you threatened me.’

  Sara felt as though she’d been slapped. ‘Ellie,’ she said softly, ‘I never threatened you.’

  ‘You did,’ Ellie countered. ‘When we first met. You said if I didn’t stop drinking, you’d see to it they took away my daughter for ever.’

  Sara started. She had no clear memory of saying this – but she might have. Faced with the knowledge that Ellie’s child would otherwise drown, she might have said anything. If Ellie was telling the truth, and Sara had threatened to use her pull as a medical doctor with Social Services, it answered one question she had come here with. At least she knew why Ellie had continued to see her.

  It had been fear.

  ‘I used to drink, but I had a daughter,’ Ellie said. ‘Now I drink and I’ve got nobody.’ She added bitterly, ‘If I never met you, I’d still have my child.’

  No, you wouldn’t, Sara thought, quite certain of herself. By now, she’d be dead.

  ‘I asked you to get out,’ Ellie whispered. ‘Now please leave.’

  Sara passed the African food shops of Rye Lane. She did not pay attention to the burble of languages and accents, nor notice the smells of fresh fish, uncooked chicken, and spices that wafted along the pavement. She was wrapped in the heavy insulation that comes with grief and pushes the focus inward. Sara knew that part of the numbness was simply after-shock: any emotional confrontation was bound to leave a person hyper-aroused. But she could not blame the whole of her reaction on adrenaline. Sara had been horrified to see the state of her former client. The sight of what Ellie had become pushed her into a familiar state of self-recrimination – she should not have ended this client’s care simply because she’d known the toddler was now safe. Sara had been too willing to accept Ellie’s reassurances that she was on the path to recovery.

  Sara was also taken aback by Ellie’s reminder of how she’d ensured the woman’s cooperation. She had threatened Ellie. In her practice, Sara had employed all kinds of emotional tactics for her clients’ greater good – but she was disturbed by the fact that she had so readily erased the memory from all but her deepest mind. Sara wanted to think of herself as the good guy. She didn’t like having to admit the lengths she would go to in order to achieve a goal.

  But, damn it, Ellie’s behaviour today was proof that such a tactic could be justified. You saved the child, she told herself. Maybe that’s enough – maybe Ellie was always beyond redemption.

  Sara had one further realisation, too, quicker than it could be silenced.

  This is the way Eldon Carson thought.

  And Eldon Carson had always been certain about what to do with people who were beyond redemption.

  Sara took a train from Peckham Rye to Victoria, then rode the underground to Acton in West London. She made her way to a terraced house on a pleasant, tree-lined street.

  This is where the most recent of her special clients lived – or, at least, the most recent until Tim Wilson had thundered onto the scene. Like Wilson, Conor Lowe was a young man in his mid-twenties. Conor shared the Acton house with two mates. By the time Sara first met him, she was already working at the clinic in East London, in the position created for her by Andy Turner’s largesse. Conor had already been languishing on the waiting list for psychiatric treatment in the borough of Ealing when a kindly GP pointed him towards the London Fields clinic. Conor had started to see Sara regularly to combat his depression. Sara treated him the way she would have treated any depressed client, but there was an added urgency to Conor’s case. Shortly after meeting the young man, Sara had suffered a terrible premonition of his suicide. In that vision, Sara witnessed Conor driving along the North Circular road at night, up towards Wembley and his job at a 24-hour superstore. In her trance, Sara could feel Conor’s emotional numbness give way to a sudden, overwhelming despair. Before he had time to process this new grief, Conor had jerked the wheel and swerved his car into the headlights of an oncoming lorry. The subsequent pile-up took not only Conor’s life but those of eight others.

  Conor had seen Sara twice a week. The young man was aware that he suffered from a certain amount of suicidal ideation, but he’d never actually tried to end his life. Without her psychic preview, Sara wouldn’t have worried overmuch for his safety. However, week after week, that dreadful vision had recurred – a pile-up, just south of the Hangar Lane Gyratory, caused by Conor Lowe.

  The solution had come from a source beyond Sara’s control. Conor’s uncle was a carpenter, hand-crafting bespoke furniture from rough-hewn wood for the middle-class rustic. Sara learned that this uncle had asked Conor to join him as an apprentice. Each time the uncle made this offer, Conor had refused it. This had not surprised Sara: it was hard for a depressed person to commit to active chang
e.

  Slowly, as Conor’s mood responded to both drugs and therapy, Sara had been able to introduce this change as a real possibility. Her reason was simple: if Conor was no longer driving to Wembley, he would not be on the North Circular on the night he otherwise would have ploughed into a lorry and caused his own and eight other deaths. With Sara’s encouragement, Conor quit his job at the superstore – and Sara’s visions stopped. The timeline that lead to mass fatalities had been erased.

  Conor’s house turned out to be a well-maintained two-storey place on a suburban street. When Sara knocked, the door was answered by a tall lad with skin so white it was almost translucent. He wore sweat shorts and nothing else; his chest was pebble-dashed with freckles. He stared at Sara expectantly.

  ‘I’m looking for Conor,’ Sara explained.

  The lad stared at her silently for a little too long.

  ‘I suppose he might be with his uncle,’ Sara went on. ‘If he’s still working as a carpenter.’

  ‘Mark!’ the lad called over his shoulder, cutting Sara short. ‘Someone’s looking for Conor.’

  A muffled shout came down the stairs, and the tall boy repeated, ‘Conor! Someone’s asking for him.’

  ‘Does he still live here?’ Sara asked.

  ‘Mark’ll be right down,’ the lad said, and retreated into the house. A moment later, she could hear the babble of a YouTube video. For Sara, being left standing at doors was the theme of the day.

  Mark turned out to be a pudgy, dark-haired young man with olive skin and a wary expression. Unlike his half-naked housemate, Mark was well-dressed, in a button-down Oxford shirt and pressed chinos. Only his lack of socks spoiled the effect. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said in an upbeat voice that was contradicted by his eyes. ‘I’d apologise for Kevin’s behaviour, but actually, you caught him on a good day. Normally, he doesn’t even answer the door.’

  From the living room, the tall lad named Kevin made a rude noise.

  ‘He didn’t tell me your name,’ Mark said.

  ‘I’m Sara Jones,’ she said, and wondered whether Conor’s housemates knew he had once seen a psychiatrist. She thought it best not to betray confidences. ‘I’m a family friend. I haven’t visited Conor in a while.’

  In the living room, the YouTube video paused, and Kevin called, ‘If she’s a friend, why doesn’t she know?’

  Mark winced; Sara gave him a quizzical look.

  The young man stepped out of the house and led Sara across the front garden. He stopped near the pavement. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you,’ he said quietly, ‘but Conor killed himself.’

  Sara released a breath. ‘When?’

  ‘Couple months ago.’

  She drew in a deeper lungful of air and failed to release it. It occurred to Sara that she wasn’t even surprised by the news. She hadn’t known that Conor was dead – not in the way she had foreseen his other suicide, the one she had prevented – but some part of her had understood it was a possibility. For the second time today, Sara condemned herself for giving up on a client too soon. Why couldn’t she have called him at least? Made sure he was feeling OK?

  Because, a voice in her head told her, you never cared about Conor. You only cared about stopping him from killing those other people. Just like you didn’t care about Ellie – only about her daughter. That’s why you abandoned them both, as soon as their victims were safe.

  It was an unsettling thought – but, Sara had to admit, it was at least partly true. As soon as she had foreseen Conor’s potential act of murderous suicide, she’d stopped seeing him as a patient. Instead, he became a problem to be solved, a criminal plot to be thwarted. And once Sara had accomplished that task, she had mentally placed him in a file labelled ‘job done.’

  ‘How well did you know him?’ Mark was asking.

  ‘Oh,’ Sara replied, ‘not well. Sometimes we had coffee.’ She remembered to breathe, and to offer Mark her condolences. ‘How did he do it?’ she asked.

  ‘It was stupid, really,’ Mark said. ‘He jumped off Beachy Head.’ The young man snorted bleakly. ‘Can you believe it? The most unimaginative way to top yourself. After the funeral, Kevin started calling him The Cliché.’

  Sara must have looked shocked, because Mark added, ‘Yeah, Kev can be a real prick.’

  She thought. ‘Do you know whether Conor drove or took the train?’ she asked.

  Mark frowned, surprised. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘To Eastbourne. To the cliffs.’

  ‘Oh,’ Mark said. ‘They found his car on Beachy Head Road.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ she mused, more to herself than to him. ‘That requires less planning than catching a train. It’s easier to do. Still, even driving takes effort – it’s not something you’d do if you were deeply depressed, is it?’

  ‘Was he depressed?’ Mark asked.

  Sara started; she had just revealed something she shouldn’t have. She supposed the truth could no longer have an effect on Conor, but it was still relevant to Sara. For some reason, she remained reluctant to disclose her true connection to the dead boy.

  ‘He must have been depressed, don’t you think?’ she asked with a shrug. ‘Considering what he did.’

  EIGHTEEN

  By the time Sara turned the corner onto her Brixton street, her emotions were flatlining. Today’s visits had taught her nothing that would help with her current predicament, and instead served only to cast an unpleasant shadow over her previous successes. It was still true that, in both cases over the last couple of years, she had achieved what she’d set out to do. Ellie Giddings had not drowned her daughter. Conor Lowe had not killed others in a deliberate act of vehicular homicide. Sara’s interventions had been successes. But, beyond this truth, both her clients’ stories had unhappy endings. Sara felt numb guilt for not having known, or not caring to have known.

  Maybe I didn’t want to know, she thought. Maybe these were the outcomes I feared.

  Maybe that’s why I stayed away.

  As she got closer to the house, Sara’s attention was drawn to her Mini, parked in her favourite space right outside her low garden wall. The first thing she noticed was that, in this burnished sunset, the car’s blue paint looked a sickly green. Then she looked over the car’s black roof and saw the back of someone’s head. From this angle, it looked as though a person were sitting on the bonnet. Sara quickened her pace. Yes – someone had definitely perched on her car. Longish brown hair and a red-checked shirt.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she called. ‘Could you get off there, please?’

  The figure lowered its head slightly, but otherwise did not move. Sara reached the passenger’s side and stopped, leaving most of the vehicle between herself and whoever was using her Countryman as a couch.

  ‘Deep breath,’ a man’s voice said. ‘I only want to talk.’

  He slid off the car, and as he moved around, Sara saw past the stringy hair and into the bearded face of Tim Wilson. She caught her breath. Her first thought was to leap inside the car and lock the door, but realised she didn’t have her keys. And once again, her medical bag was in the car.

  Sara swivelled towards her front door. ‘Easy, now – don’t run,’ Tim commanded, and grasped her wrist.

  ‘Let go of me!’

  ‘I only want to talk,’ he repeated. ‘If I let go, will you talk to me?’

  Tim took Sara’s silence as agreement and allowed his hand to slide from her wrist. ‘I thought about coming to your office,’ he stated. ‘I know where it is – you gave me your card. But I thought it would be better to talk here.’

  He meant, where there was no security.

  ‘How did you get this address?’ Sara said.

  ‘You gave Phil your mobile number,’ Wilson said. ‘I noticed it was different from the one on your card, so I knew it was for your personal phone. I tried the reverse directories online. You weren’t there. But there are companies that can trace mobile numbers. You cost me twenty quid.’

  He grinned. It was the same grin he�
��d graced her with in Chalk Farm, not long before turning rabid. Once again, Sara noticed how sweet he looked when he smiled. Wilson was even more boyish with his hair down – without the silly topknot. ‘You owe me a couple of drinks, I reckon,’ he said.

  Sara tried to smile back. She was afraid the expression came out as a nervous simper. ‘I could have bought them for you at the pub,’ she said.

  Wilson nodded. ‘Would have been more honest,’ he noted, his tone sharpening. ‘I guess Phil rang you?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘He said he would. I like him,’ Wilson stated simply. ‘Guys my own age have nothing to offer me, you know? It’s like looking in a mirror. Phil’s different.’ Wilson shrugged wistfully. ‘I give him something, too. He’s only just come out. He’s still coming to terms with everything. I can make him feel …’

  He groped for the appropriate word. ‘I make him feel comfortable,’ he said finally.

  This is good, Sara thought. He’s opening up.

  She tried to tell herself that Wilson’s visit here this evening was a good thing. After all, he wouldn’t have come unless he wanted to make amends. Maybe Tim Wilson could still become Success Number Four.

  Wilson stared at Sara meaningfully. ‘Why would you want to stop me from helping him?’ he asked earnestly. ‘Why would you go out of your way to come to a pub and tell him to be afraid of me?’

  Because you’re going to kill him, Sara thought.

  ‘That wasn’t my purpose,’ she said.

  ‘How did you know we’d meet there?’ Wilson asked. ‘I didn’t tell you about it. I didn’t tell you anything.’

  ‘I found out because I needed to,’ Sara said. ‘We got off on the wrong foot, you and I, but I think maybe we –’

  ‘Don’t you think I deserve happiness?’ Wilson demanded.

  ‘I do. That’s exactly why I’d like to –’

  Sara noticed a change in Tim Wilson’s breathing. It was becoming more regular, heavier. It was then that Sara noticed that he stood between her and her front door. ‘If you want me to be happy, then leave me alone,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty fucking simple, when you think about it.’