by A J Waines
I squashed the lemon against the side of my glass with the plastic stirrer. ‘Yeah, I’m not looking forward to dealing with torture or abuse, but you know me…’ I cocked an eyebrow. ‘I like helping people find the missing pieces, love discovering a way to unlock their subconscious, so they can…’ I trailed off. We were meant to be switching off from work and letting our hair down, but this happened every time. We were both passionate about psychology and found never-ending fascination with the subject. Although, to be fair, I was probably more obsessed than she was.
‘I don’t know how you do it, Sammie.’ She rested her hand on my arm. Her coral lipstick was halfway between the colour of her freckles and her loose coppery hair. Sitting next to her either made me feel like I belonged to an exclusive club or that I needed to get my act together, depending on how buoyant I felt. Today it was the latter.
‘I’m sticking with the “worried well” for now,’ she added. ‘Mostly existential issues at Harley Street this week; the meaning of life, identity, status, striving for success…’ She drew the back of her hand across her brow in a demonstration of mock exhaustion. ‘Oh, so demanding…’
I laughed. Hannah had never denied that she embraced the ‘softer’ end of therapy, whereas I’d always been a sucker for a challenge. And not just at work. At school once, my class had to set a goal in PE designed to sorely test us. Most of the girls chose to cycle 5K or jog around the school grounds. I decided to join a kayaking group and paddle twenty miles from Windsor to Teddington through all the locks on the way. It took me the whole day, but I did it. Never again, mind you.
‘So, any juicy gossip?’ she said, teasing me.
Confidentiality is an issue for any therapist, but as we shared the same line of work and I trusted Hannah implicitly, I knew whatever I told her about my patients would never go any further.
I took a long sip of my drink, waiting for the hit of alcohol to set my veins tingling.
‘I’ve got an odd situation, as it happens.’
She was interested now, sitting forward so I could keep my voice down. ‘In what way?’
‘A new patient came to see me today – she’s hard to describe – full of contradictions.’ Ice rattled against my teeth as I tipped up the glass. ‘She was all light and bubbly, then she said she nearly died a couple of weeks ago in a horrific car accident in a lake, up north somewhere.’
‘What happened to her?’ she said.
‘She was trapped in the back of a van that shot off the road and sank into the water.’
‘Whoa…’ She snatched a breath.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I mean, normally, trauma patients find it painful to recount their experiences, don’t they? You have to wait for them and gently coax them to reveal what happened, bit by bit.’ Hannah nodded. ‘But, this woman was different. It was like she relished telling me every little detail. She made it sound dramatic, like she was reading a story – it was bizarre.’
‘Does she need to be the centre of attention, do you think?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Is she making it up?’
I shook my head. ‘Don’t think so. There’s a copy of the press report of the crash on her file from the GP.’
‘You sure it’s kosher? It’s not like that dreadful time last year, is it?’
‘Hell, no.’ My mind flashed back to the distressing episode at St Luke’s she was referring to, when survivors of a Tube fire were all giving me accounts that didn’t add up. I did the extra memory training straight after that experience, desperate to get a better grip on how the brain worked in that respect. Although if I’m honest, it was partly to take my mind off what happened. ‘This is different. I’m convinced she’s not faking it. It was more that she seemed kind of thrilled to have an audience to entertain.’
‘Lonely, maybe?’
I nodded. ‘Possibly.’
‘Is she coming back?’
‘Looks like it. Her parting words were that she didn’t need therapy, she just wanted all her memories back.’
‘Well, at least she knows what she wants.’
‘I’m intrigued, actually. She’s obviously in denial about how she feels, but there was something else…’
‘Spill…’ Hannah said, twisting her mouth to one side.
‘I don’t know…there’s something tragic about her. I’m waiting for her full medical records to come through, but I get a sense there’s some damaging history there. She’s a bit older than us, but she’s almost like a naïve little girl wrapped up in a huge tangle of sadness…’
Hannah sat back blowing out a big sigh. ‘Sounds like you’ve got yourself a handful there.’ She straightened up and wagged her finger at me. ‘Be careful.’
I shrugged.
A waiter brought over a bowl of warm olives and the oily aroma made me realise how hungry I was. I stabbed a fat green one with a cocktail stick and chewed it with relish.
‘Anyway, enough of that. What about you?’
She talked about her clinic, but her tone was flat and she wrinkled her nose a lot. It was obvious that she was growing tired of seeing celebrities who showed up week after week to dump their petty grievances, but had no real problems at all. ‘I need a change,’ she said.
She left a little pause which made me think that what she had to say next was going to be significant.
‘Actually, Alan and I are thinking of moving.’ She whipped her eyes away from mine. ‘We’re thinking of leaving London.’
Her words hung in the air and I swallowed a pang of dread – that awful feeling you get when everyone has rushed to catch a train and you’re left behind on the platform.
‘What? No, no way – you can’t,’ I said, leaving my mouth gaping open. What would I do without her?
‘We want a bigger place, Sammie, with a garden and roses around the front door and a little white picket fence…’ She stared out over the balcony at a soaring seagull. I wanted to tell her that her pipe dream was little more than a cliché, but the wistful look on her face warned me not to.
I was close to tears. ‘Won’t you miss…London?’ I said. ‘Our London, the centre of everything – concerts, galleries, films…’ I thought about the momentous times we’d shared here, the deep discussions, the support we’d been to each other and the fun, the escapism, the riotous laughter. ‘And there’s always that creative sparkle in the air in London…the glamour…’ I stopped. She knew all this.
She pulled a face. ‘Our flat is so pokey with no privacy. Alan is sick of not being able to get a seat on the Tube in the mornings, sick of the commute altogether. We want to settle somewhere now, before we think about having a family.’
A family.
My stomach sank. Hannah deserved to be happy, of course she did, but right now all I could focus on was the stinging certainty that she was about to move on to another stage of her life without me.
She glanced up at me as if she could read my mind. ‘Obviously, you and I will still be joined at the hip,’ she said, squeezing my hand.
Yeah…by email, I wanted to say, but managed to hold my tongue. I forced myself to nod with a lukewarm attempt at a smile.
We ordered more drinks and a cup stacked with tall, bendy French fries.
‘How’s the flat-hunting? Your sister? Any gorgeous man I need to know about?’ she asked, shaking salt off a long thin chip.
I cleared my throat. Was it really over three weeks since she’d come back from Iceland with the schnapps that had practically taken the skin off the back of my throat? I was embarrassed there wasn’t more to tell.
‘I still haven’t got round to looking for somewhere better to live,’ I said. I’d grown to love my do-for-now Victorian flat in Clapham Junction. It was like a snug, threadbare dressing-gown made of bricks and mortar. ‘It’s still tricky with Miranda – I’m treading a fine line between watching her blossom and keeping an eye on her. She’s flighty and unpredictable half the time, but I love her to bits.’
‘So leaving Linde
n Manor was a good move on her part?’ Hannah knew my sister had been diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of twenty and had been in and out of institutions. She knew my upbringing had been blighted by Miranda’s wild and erratic behaviour: breaking my toys for no reason, causing uproar in public places, ruining family gatherings.
‘Definitely. She paints all the time, spending most of her week at the Community Arts Project in Camden plus a few hours’ waitressing in a local café. It’s just right for her.’
Hannah was already in the picture about how much I wanted to support my sister – and how Miranda hated anyone trying to wrap her up in cotton wool. It was common knowledge we’d had a prickly relationship until recently – me the ‘interfering busybody’ and my sister the small child kicking back whenever she sensed any form of restraint. She hadn’t grasped the notion of ‘moderation’ in any area of her life. Nevertheless, things had improved over the past year or so. During the difficult time at work Hannah referred to, I’d seen how capable and warm-hearted Miranda could be and I’d finally discovered a new bond with her. I was doing my utmost to foster it.
‘And as to a man…I’d really love to meet someone…but…’ I stared at the ice cubes melting at the bottom of my glass.
Hannah shuffled forward on her high stool. ‘In that case, I’ll have to set you up with a date,’ she said, sounding smug.
Hannah put her arm around me. She knew all about Conrad, my ex. We’d split up over a year ago and he hadn’t spoken to me since. I’d found him knee-quiveringly attractive at first, with his tousled black hair and exuberant spirit, and was totally blown away by his ability to hold the stage at the Young Vic. He played rogues and charming villains effortlessly in my view and when he actually showed an interest in me, I hadn’t been able to resist. I was infatuated with him, felt compelled to discover the depths of his enigmatic personality, but there were signs I should have spotted sooner. He was possessive by nature, which made him aggressive at times, too. It took me months to come to my senses.
Hannah chased the last olive with her stick, stabbed it and offered it to me. ‘As it happens, there’s a lovely new guy who’s just joined the clinic. He’s a hypnotherapist – and maybe your Mr Right.’
‘Mr Halfway-decent would do,’ I said wistfully.
‘There’s a retirement do coming up soon. I’ll invite you.’ She fluttered her eyelids. ‘How about it?’
‘Sure. Go for it.’ I was on my third G&T by then and would have agreed to anything.
I missed having someone special in my life. It wasn’t just Con’s possessiveness that drove me away; we’d never been on the same wavelength. Con liked late nights and lie-ins and I was up with the lark getting on with my to-do list. Con didn’t have a to-do list, or a diary, or even a watch on his wrist most days.
Countless relationships accommodate such clashes, but our problems ran deeper than that. My strength is my ability to listen and he was distinctly lacking in that department. He assumed, he decided things for me, he speculated and never bothered to find out how I actually felt about things. It was mostly my fault, though. I’d fallen for an idea of him and gradually found out it didn’t match who he really was. I’d had my head in the clouds. It wasn’t the first time.
There’d been a handful of false starts since then. Not many people knew that although I was Ms Level-headed in most situations, I was hopeless in my choice of men. I couldn’t help it. I’m always sucked in by charisma. I spot someone from afar and fall head over heels. (Hannah says I’m terribly superficial.) I’m especially attracted to talented men: a lecturer, TV comedian, film director, even a high-powered politician. I fling myself into a relationship only to do a U-turn once I discover they’re narcissistic, arrogant, cruel or all three.
Lately I’d been trying to convince myself that being single suited me – gave me time to get on a better footing with Miranda and seriously consider where my career was heading. But I was fooling myself. The simple fact was I’d given up on finding a relationship that worked.
I dragged my coat onto my lap. ‘I should go,’ I said. ‘I’ll be dropping off during consultations, tomorrow.’
‘You total wimp,’ Hannah said. Her energy never seemed to dip, in fact her life seemed to be locked permanently on full steam ahead.
‘I know. I’d love to stay and knock back at least another couple of these…’ I wiggled my empty glass. ‘But it would be just my luck to meet a patient on my way home and somehow end up making a fool of myself.’
‘Ooh, you party-pooper, Willerby,’ Hannah snorted, clapping her hands together. ‘Bring on making fools of ourselves – it makes life just that little bit more interesting.’
Chapter 4
Sam
I’m not sure how she got past the receptionist, but at her next appointment Rosie burst into my office without waiting to be called in. She bounded towards me with a big grin on her face as if she was my best friend dropping in to wish me a happy birthday. Fortunately, my previous patient had already left and I was only catching up on notes. I thought of Hannah; she would have insisted on discussing boundaries with Rosie, but I let it go this once. Hannah said I was a soft touch with people; too lenient for my own good.
Nevertheless, I jumped in first this time and explained to Rosie how we’d use various techniques over the coming weeks to try to recover more of her memories about what had happened in the Lake District. She nodded eagerly. She said she had her heart set on remembering everything.
I laid my notebook on my lap, activated the voice recorder on the laptop and the session began.
Since our first session, I’d done my homework. I’d read about crashes where a vehicle had ended up in deep water. It wasn’t for the faint-hearted. I’d learnt that floating time, depending on the car, ranged from a few seconds to a few minutes. The more airtight a vehicle is, the longer it floats, but you can’t afford to hang around. Experts say the doors won’t open underwater; no matter how hard you push, the pressure of the water outside is too great. People waste vital seconds that way. It’s only when the vehicle hits the bottom and the pressure equalises that the doors become accessible. Advice seems to be to get a window open straight away. Whatever you do, the water’s going to be coming at you – fast – from the opposite direction, filling up the car, squashing out every remaining pocket of air. My stomach flipped just reading about it.
Rosie explained that her memories from immediately before and after the accident were patchy. I reassured her it was normal.
‘I went back, when I got out of hospital, but I couldn’t find it,’ she said. ‘I checked the bank and behind the rocks, but it wasn’t there.’
‘Find it?’
She was chewing her nail. ‘My viola. I found the tyre tracks where the van left the road and the broken fence, but maybe I climbed out of the water somewhere else.’
‘Your viola is very important to you,’ I said.
‘Will you help me find it?’
‘I’ll try. We’ll aim to get back as many memories as we can.’
I assumed Rosie was fixating on the viola, giving it disproportionate significance, to avoid focusing on Richard, Stephanie and Max. It was early days, but Rosie hadn’t talked about the others with any degree of regret so far. They were all still missing. She said she hadn’t known them well, and certainly wasn’t keen on Max, but I would have expected at least some level of macabre speculation about them at some stage. With every day that passed, the chances of any of them turning up alive grew more and more unlikely.
‘Something was wrong,’ she said, pressing the heel of her hand into her hairline. ‘I need to fill in the gaps. It didn’t feel like an accident. Sometimes you just know.’
She shivered, but looked away and coughed to try to cover it. No doubt she’d been putting on a brave face like this ever since the incident happened. Probably didn’t want people to think she wasn’t coping. She’d told me she’d gone back to work – in a music store – straight away. In my opinion it was pro
bably too soon. Part of Rosie was still underwater trying to figure out which way was up.
‘Max’s violin is worth two million pounds,’ she said flatly. ‘You’d think I would have grabbed that, instead, wouldn’t you?’ She plucked at her lip, tears gathering in her eyes, and answered her own query. ‘It wasn’t mine, that’s why. I only had one pair of hands – you always save your own child first.’
Rosie changed the subject after that, but I could tell she was talking about one thing and feeling another, trying not to reveal her emotions. Perhaps she thought if she stuck to the facts the feelings would go away. Perhaps she needed to trust me more first. I wondered about her background, whether anything had happened to make her think twice about reaching out to people. She had guts and determination – that was obvious already – against all the odds, she’d fought her way out of that sinking van. But, in therapy, being tough has its drawbacks. Patients with high defences are always the hardest to work with – they are guarded, evasive, and want to do things their way.
I’d scoured her medical records, but they were full of gaps and revealed very little about her childhood. I needed to find out more.
‘There’s not much information about your past in my notes,’ I said, tapping my file. ‘Obviously, you’re not here to focus on your upbringing, but it would help me to get a sense of how to proceed with the memory work if you could give me a very brief outline.’
Delivered in her high-pitched earnest voice, Rosie’s account described a childhood that started out straightforward enough, if less than ideal. Her father worked on the oil rigs and was hardly at home and when he was, Rosie kept out of his way. Her mother spent her life at a cosmetics’ factory, making up for all the money he lost when he came back.
‘He gambled,’ she said. ‘My mother was playing one long hopeless game of catch up. She was careful with money, saved it and put it in the bank, but Dad insisted on a joint account. She had to start hiding bank notes in the airing cupboard, but then Dad got wise to that and got there first. He spent every penny within days of coming home. Every time. Then he’d take it out on her…’