This is what I mean by roundness. I am the centre of all emotions now. Imagine a square, and then draw lines inside of it to round off the edges so that when you erase the corners you have a perfect complete circle. This is what they have done to me. There is no edge, no beginning, and no end. When you start at the centre, you cannot possibly know the furthest point away, because every distance is equal. I have lost my corners. My extremes. I am now equal in all directions. One corner was happy, another angry, confused, and excited. There is nothing deep about my emotions anymore. I don’t know yet if I prefer it this way, even though I recognise the obvious benefits.
Seeing Marianne will be difficult. She happened to knock the door whilst I was at Dana’s. She chose not to come in. Dana told me that she couldn’t spare the time, but there didn’t seem to be any great reason for her visit other than company. I guess it will take longer with Marianne. I know she is wondering why it was her I imagined that I had killed. I think she wonders if I stop taking my tablets again whether I will really do it. I am sure she makes some extra effort to lock the door and check the windows now, which at least gives her some insight into how I was feeling. It is strange that I never knew about Mary’s twin sister, or that I do not remember her death. Dr. Abrams told me that in time it would be appropriate to send my condolences to John Wexley for the death of Mary’s mother, but that it probably wasn't the right time just yet. Margaret, Mary’s sister hasn’t been back to the house since. Dr. Abrams also told me that Wexley having the same name as my father could have been a relevant factor in the development of my delusions, but that we shouldn’t talk about it too much. Not yet, anyway. He seems warier of me now.
Ishiko’s departure was decided upon whilst I was in my own world. It was a mutual decision, I was told, but part of me thinks she may have chosen to leave. She has decided to return to Japan for a while, or so she says. Maybe she is just telling me so I don’t try to find her. I can’t really blame her. Please don’t believe that I don’t feel some regret for the accusations that I made. I do feel bad, at least some sense of guilt. Gregory appears to have forgiven me, and has offered me an explanation for most of the events. The magazine in the hotel room for example. She hung out there on her rare days off. He gave her use of the swimming pool, a free lunch, and a chance to kick back for a few hours in her own suite. The dancing he tells me was an effort to cheer him up, help him forget about his marital problems. I have to admit that since I have been taking the Prozac regularly she seems much nicer, much kinder. I suppose it was all in my mind, like the night I caught them in her room. She tells me that it never happened. Gregory confirmed it. I see now that the floorboards don’t even creak. She doesn’t even like lavender, apparently.
Today is the final day of Ishiko’s presence in our house. I am five months pregnant now and my stomach has rounded nicely. I meet with Dr. Abrams once a week, and take my tablets under unnecessary supervision. I have accepted what Dr. Abrams says, and realise that my lack of compliance was what caused my problems to manifest. Discontinuation Syndrome he called it. Because I stopped taking them too quickly. So I take them regularly now, without fail. Sometimes I even have to remind Gregory that it is time, and he comes and watches me. In time I think he will start to trust me to take them on my own again.
Ishiko agreed to stay until we were stable, and so I suppose today is a celebration. I decided to look around my bedroom, have a hunt through the cupboards, drawers, see if there was anything left that I might gift to her. I thought it would be a nice gesture, considering I took her photograph, ruined it, and lusted after her death. In the process I found a key. It has a small brown tag on it and I remember it from work. It is the key to my obstetrician’s house. The final viewing that I did. He will be living there now and so I slip it in my pocket and decide to continue the search for a gift later on.
Downstairs Gregory is reading last Sunday’s newspaper. Ishiko is packing the last of her bags in the room that will become a nursery.
“Gregory, I am going to go out for a walk.” He folds the paper in half and peers at me over the top of it. He has taken to wearing a tweed jacket in the house, and always appears to be assessing me. I think his latest role is that of a not so modern day version of Lucian Freud. He wears his glasses all the time, but they stay on the tip of his nose because he doesn’t need to use them, and he seems to be in a constant state of psychological assessment. I think he would like to get me on a couch and talk about my childhood. We don’t make love anymore. Therapists are not supposed to sleep with their clients.
“Where are you planning to go?”
“I just want to walk into town. I haven’t been out of this road on my own in weeks. We are on our own as of tonight. I have to face it.” I chose not to tell him about the key. He still doesn’t think visiting the past is a good plan. I only do that with Dr. Abrams, and even he seems reluctant. Instead he says something about focussing on what’s happening in my life now. Perhaps even he is scared to talk about the lake this time around.
“Ok.” He re-opens the paper, and I know that his air of confidence is all about experimentation. If we were in hospital, this would be the first time I would be allowed day privileges.
The first view that I get of the lake doesn’t make me feel anxious. I see that there is a child pulling along a toy boat, and another family feeding the ducks. Perhaps I will be able to do this, in a year or so. The very idea I could be stood at the water’s edge enjoying time with Gregory and a child of my own is quite a magical thought. I think it would be something special. Something unexpected, if I could do that. I walk along the edge of the water wobbling as the gravel displaces under my feet with a small smile on my face, thinking about how Dr. Abrams would be proud of me. He says behavioural changes are a good idea, if we do them slowly. He says they will help my self esteem, and that I will feel better about who I am. Next Wednesday I will tell him about this morning. Another success.
Walking up the hill to my old office is even harder now as my stomach grows. The measurement lines have all but disappeared, healing remarkably well because the cuts were never very deep. But it doesn’t matter. That’s what I tell myself. Dr. Jenkinson has arranged for me to go to the maternity department once a week, the day before my therapy sessions to have my measurements taken. It was Dr. Abrams' idea. It is working. I don’t really think about the size of my stomach anymore, and have just enjoyed watching it grow, like a normal person. I have even enjoyed the drive with Gregory who talks about when the baby is here, and the baby’s first this and that. I am still wearing his love heart necklace. He hasn’t taken any photographs of me growing yet. Maybe he will nearer the birth.
Arriving outside the shop which I expected to be an Estate Agent’s, I find a man outside pasting a flyer to the window. It says ‘For Sale’. The man is crouching over his bucket of paste. He is elderly and hard of hearing as I have to say excuse me twice. On the second time, and after getting close enough, he hears me.
“Oh, you scared me,” he says as he recovers from the unexpected intrusion to his work. He puts a hand on his back and unfolds himself upwards.
“Sorry,” I say, and he reaches out for my arm and I oblige by helping him stand up. I'm not wearing any gloves.
“That’s OK, no problem. What can I do for you, Miss?”
“This building. How long has it been empty?” I want to be very careful about telling him what I think it was. I don’t want to drag him into my ideas if what I think is the truth turns about to be part of my own creation.
“Oh, only a week. Family who own it put it on the market. Wife doesn’t want anything to do with it after what happened.”
“Why? What happened?”
“You haven’t heard?” he says, sounding surprised. “It’s been all over the news.”
“I haven’t been listening to the news?” I say.
“Well, the chap who owned it went missing, didn’t he. They found his body in a ditch couple of weeks ago. Somebody had made a righ
t mess of him. Cut him from ear to ear.” The old man makes a motion of drawing one finger from one ear to the next, dragging it underneath his chin whilst his tongue hangs out like a dog's as it leans out from a car window. I can feel the colour draining from my cheeks, whitening from top to bottom, an incoming layer of mist. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says, only now aware of my swollen stomach. “Are you OK?” He steadies me by grabbing my arm, but I am nodding and taking a step back, leaving the old man. He looks at me with suspicion, the way he might eye somebody who just told him he had inherited a few million pounds. “Are you sure you are alright?”
“Yes, I’m OK.” I fiddle with the key in my pocket, and eventually decide to keep it. “I used to work here, that’s all.”
“Shame. Real shame. He looked a nice chap.”
“Yes, he was.” The old man picks up his bucket and sets off back to his van, parked only a couple of spaces away. I look back through the window and I can see the old posters of houses for sale strewn in rows across the floor all on top of each other, already collecting a layer of dust.
When I get back home Gregory is sitting as he was where I left him, but the newspaper has been discarded and he is drinking a coffee. It’s a new habit. He says he must always be alert.
“Are you OK, Charlotte? You look white as a ghost.” He jumps up from his chair, wraps me in his arms, sits me down protectively. “Whatever happened? I knew it was too soon for you. I knew it.”
“Stop it, Gregory. I’m OK. I just had a shock that’s all.” He stares at me, his eyebrows raised as if waiting for me to answer. “Stephen Jones was murdered. I think.” He stood up, one hand on his hip, one on his chin, wondering if I was hallucinating again. Like I said, nobody believes a crazy girl. “I went back to the shop to hand in this key.” I take it out from my pocket, hold it up as proof of the reality to which I refer. He takes it from me. “There was a man pasting a For Sale sign on the shop and he told me. He was found. In a ditch.”
“Yes, he was found.” He began stroking my hair away. “You poor thing, finding out like that.”
“You knew?”
“I had seen it on the television, yes. And in the newspaper.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to upset you. You know how things have been.”
“Well I am upset anyway. At least I would have known. I think he was my friend. I think he cared about me.”
“Well, it’s done now, Charlotte,” he says, straightening his tweed jacket. He pulls out the pocket watch that was his grandfathers and checks the time. “Ishiko is leaving in a few minutes. Let’s not make a scene, eh? Let’s give her a proper goodbye.”
Gregory helps Ishiko with her suitcase and loads it into the boot of the taxi. He bids her a polite farewell, pats her on the back and goes inside. She watches him as he leaves. I am left on the step, wondering what, if anything is appropriate for me to do. At the last moment, just as she closes the door of the taxi I rush out and tap my knuckles on the window.
“Ishiko,” I say as I bang on the car. She winds down the glass pane. I take off my love heart necklace and push it towards her. She holds out her hand and I place the chain in it. I take my fingers and wrap them around hers, closing her hand in on the necklace like a shell over a pearl. “I want you to have this. It is my way of an apology.” I had never put a photograph in it.
“Mrs. Astor, you have nothing to apologise for,” she says as she opens her hand to see what it is I have given her.
“My behaviour was terrible, Ishiko. I accused you of all sorts of things.” I take her hand again as if to emphasise my point before letting go, aware that I don’t want to scare her. She pushes her arm back out from the taxi and pushes the necklace towards me.
“I cannot take this,” she says.
“Please, Ishiko, I feel terrible for what I did. I want to put things right, for all of the things I did and said. I....” I push the necklace back into the taxi but because she was trying to loosen her grip it drops to the floor of the car. She leans forward to pick it up and it is at this moment that I watch as her own necklace falls forwards. It was an exact replica copy of the one she was now holding in her hand. As she sits up the love heart locket rests into the soft section at the base of her neck, the same section I had stared at so many times and considered what would happen if I was to hold it and compress it. “You already wear the same necklace,” I say, stunned.
Her big hazel eyes with their lightning streaks of yellow running through them didn’t ask forgiveness, they didn’t say they were sorry. Instead they taunted me, as if to ask me, you see, now?
“You have the same necklace,” I say again. She pushes my hand out from the window and once again I am clutching my own version of the thing around her neck. “Ishiko, why do you have the same necklace?”
“Don’t you see yet? I thought now you would see.” In spite of the tablets that I have taken without coercion, my thoughts were running so fast through my mind that I couldn’t remember what I was trying to think of half way through the thought. Ideas and thought processes stopped making sense, and instead my brain was suddenly full of random motion, chaotic and anarchic. I snatched at any details as they flew past, moments with Ishiko, when she kissed me, when she held me, when I smelt her. When I saw them.
“He gave you that,” I say. Ishiko moves her head just enough to confirm that I am right. “You were sleeping together. I did see you.” She wasn’t listening to me, and I watched her reach forwards and tell the driver to leave. I grip the side of the car, and as she reaches for the window button, I reach out and take her hand. It feels in this moment that perhaps we are sat together watching a film, me for the first time, Ishiko for the one hundredth. She already knows the plot and didn’t need to pay attention. “Am I right?” She sits back, snatches her hand away from mine. She stares at me as if she has all the time in the world to consider an answer. She reaches across into her handbag and pulls something out.
“Mrs. Astor I told you long ago that you had to remember. I know you tried. I was trying to help you. But after what happened I thought it best forgotten. But now you see again,” she said, pushing a series of papers through the window which I instinctively took, “and so there is no reason to hide the truth anymore.”
“What are these?” I ask.
“I never filed these papers like he told me to. I told you once to beware the truth, Mrs. Astor. Maybe this time,” she said as she clasped her own locket in her hands before once again looking at me, “you will actually learn it.” She tapped the taxi driver on the shoulder and he drove away, taking Ishiko far from our lives, and yet I could feel her here all over me, swallowing me up just as she had done from a distance on the day I first saw her dancing in front of Gregory. She was like a bug, crawling all over my skin, so invisible that she was beyond swatting away, and yet I could feel her everywhere as if I was charged with electric.
I looked down at the paperwork. At first it seemed like nothing of importance. There was a telephone bill, a charity invitation, one of my hospital letters. But then my eyes began to read rather than just glance, and I started to process the letters on the page. This letter from the hospital wasn’t mine. This had nothing to do with Dr. Jenkinson, or obstetrics. It was addressed to Gregory, and it was from a urologist. An appointment for a vasectomy reversal. His appointment was May 6th. In two weeks time.
Images from the back of my mind raced towards me, my mind playing out in fast forward and rewind all at once. Two simultaneous stories, sanity and insanity, crossing paths and fighting for room. Moments from the past. The cold of the water, the bump on my head, the headaches and throbbing that have plagued me since my fall from the boat. I see the redhead running after my father as he scooped me up and took me to the water. I can feel my chin bobbing up and down on his shoulder as he runs. I hear him tell me not to panic. But then there are waves that do not belong in this memory. The waves hit the sides of the boat, rocking me left and rig
ht and I am saying out loud that I am scared but I am no longer a child. I am a woman. The fog is falling, wetting my face, blurring my sight. The rowing boat tips but it is not my father who tells me not to panic as he inches forward. I say over and over that I am scared but my father isn’t there to comfort me. Instead it is Stephen. I grip the edge of the boat whilst he talks to me and strokes my face. The fog is clearing and I see he smiles at me, his eyes guiding the way like the beam of a lighthouse for ships to stay free from harm. He says to me, leave the past behind you. Do not fear it. He reaches over. He kisses me. He tells me, come with me and we will make it better. Leave this place. He is pleading, I am telling him no. I am telling him I cannot because I belong here. He tells me to feel the water and I do. He tells me not everything has to die here in this lake. He tells me, I am here. I will always be here. He reaches out and places a Triquetra pendant around my neck and he tells me that the ring is for protection. Remember that. I hold the pendant tight and the water doesn't feel so dangerous. His eyes start to flash and I realise that the fog has cleared. What I thought were lights in his eyes are now the lights of the taxi driving away and I realise that I am back in reality and that Stephen is no longer here. He is dead. Just like my father. Taken from me. I am holding my neck and watching the taxi leave my driveway, but there is no necklace where there should be, instead only a heart in my hand amidst a pile of letters.
PSYCHOPHILIA: A Disturbing Psychological Thriller Page 30