Dr Samantha Willerby Box Set

by A J Waines

  I came home after that.

  As I lie on my own lumpy mattress there’s a question niggling in my mind. Does Sam know what it’s like to suffer? Does she know what it’s like to feel the ground crumble under her feet?

  Chapter 26

  Sam

  I started our final session before Christmas by telling Rosie we’d be taking a break from therapy over the holiday. Her face fell.

  ‘Then we’ll have two final appointments in the new year to try to cover all the loose ends,’ I added. I needed to get it flagged up, loud and clear, so there were no misunderstandings. I wanted her to be ready for our work together to end. Not to feel abandoned.

  ‘Final?’ She stared blankly. ‘Only two. Is that all?’

  ‘That’s what we agreed. It will be twelve sessions in all, six more than you’d normally get on the NHS.’

  Rosie was on her feet, trembling. ‘But, we haven’t finished. I haven’t found my viola…’

  ‘We can do a lot in that time.’

  ‘I thought we could keep going…’

  ‘This was always meant to be short term. I thought I’d made that clear.’ Had I? Had I made it clear enough?

  ‘I don’t know what I’ll do without these appointments.’ She was still on her feet, pacing about. ‘I’ve been feeling so much better, but, if we stop…’

  ‘When we end our sessions, you can always see someone who works longer term, if you—’

  She stood by the sofa, holding on to it. ‘I thought you liked me.’ Her face crumpled like a three year old’s.

  ‘I do…’

  What else could I say? I do…but you’re complicated, clingy, trying to push me all the time and I want the privacy of my flat back?

  ‘The kind of therapy I do is designed to work in small blocks. Just dealing with one specific memory issue.’

  She stood sucking her fingers. ‘But, now we’re not at the hospital, I thought it would be different.’

  ‘I never said it would be. It’s the same method, just as before. We’re only here because you couldn’t get to the hospital in the daytime, any more.’

  The next moment she was back in her seat again. Suddenly her distress seemed to dissipate. ‘Shit – I’d better get on with it, then, I’m wasting valuable time.’

  It reminded me of Miranda – the way she could blow hot and cold in the same breath. It made me wonder if Rosie was masking some deeper mental illness.

  She went on to tell me about the auction house and how she hadn’t got a clear enough view of the man who’d tried to sell Max’s watch.

  ‘I caught a few minutes of footage of him on my phone, when he was in the foyer,’ she said. She pressed a button and handed it to me. ‘Do you recognise him? From the video of the party?’

  I watched the few seconds of shaky footage. There wasn’t much to see. The skinny man in black looked nervous, lifting one foot up and rubbing it against his other leg, fiddling with his pockets. I couldn’t see his face clearly.

  ‘I can’t really tell…’ I said. ‘The party footage you showed me was fifteen years ago, remember…?’

  Rosie looked disappointed. ‘I know. He probably looked totally different back then.’

  ‘And he may not even have been there. Why do you think he was?’

  ‘Dunno,’ she huffed. ‘There’s just something telling me that what happened then is connected with us all going back the second time, that’s all. But you’re right. It’s stupid to try to link everything up. He was probably just passing the scene of the crash, like he said.’

  I leant back. ‘How did you feel when I said I couldn’t come with you to Rothmans?’

  She tossed her hand in the air. ‘Oh, no problem. Dawn was brilliant.’

  ‘You weren’t angry with me?’

  ‘Angry? No, it would have been nice, but I understand.’ She gave me a plastic smile. ‘Oh, and, by the way,’ she said, examining her nails, ‘I met a really nice guy the other day. In a café.’ Her smile softened into more of a real one. ‘You know when you really click with someone?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  I was pleased for her, but also relieved. If she was forming new attachments, she wouldn’t need to rely on me so much. ‘Do you want to talk any more about that?’

  ‘No. Not now. I want to go back to the crash. Can we use your trance thingy to see if anything new is ready to come up?’

  She knew the drill by now and settled into a receptive state with little prompting. She was convinced there was an important piece missing in connection with the phone call she’d overheard between rehearsals before the crash. I took her through the steps leading up to that point; how she was worried about the concert, because they were all out of practice – all except Max, who was showing them all up. Rosie had gone out onto the landing to be on her own for a while.

  ‘You can hear a voice,’ I said. ‘A lone voice, a man’s voice, coming up from the hallway.’

  ‘He’s on the phone,’ she said in a flat tone. ‘Yes, I know all this. He’s saying, “It’s under the bridge…it’s worth a—”’ She shot into a sitting position like a corpse coming to life. ‘Shit…’

  I held my breath.

  ‘It was about me!’ She jammed the heel of her hand into her hairline. ‘He used my name, I’m sure of it, in connection with the bit about it being worth a fortune. He said, Rosie.’

  I waited for her to say more, but that was it.

  ‘You still don’t know who said it?’

  She shook her head vigorously.

  ‘What does it mean?’ I ventured.

  ‘Don’t you see? Whatever it is – it’s connected to me.’

  ‘Okay…’ I must have looked like someone who hadn’t got the punchline. I asked the obvious question. ‘Which bridge?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, which bridge is this “fortune” under? The Lake District is crammed full of bridges.’

  She had the forlorn look of a child who’s just found out that Father Christmas doesn’t exist.

  ‘Which bridge? I don’t know.’ She gripped the blanket and squeezed it hard as if it was sodden with water. ‘There must be another memory. There has to be more.’

  I led her through recollections of being outside in the open; a walk she and Richard had taken down to Ullswater shortly after they arrived, a scurry to the local Post Office with Stephanie during a break in rehearsals – but no particular bridges seemed to jump out at her. We trawled back over the same scenes again and again, but Rosie kept shaking her head.

  She left once her time was up, dragging her limbs, wishing me a half-hearted Merry Christmas.

  I held open the door and watched her go down the stairs, waiting as I always did for the front latch to click so that I’d know she’d gone.

  An hour or so later, I was halfway through a plateful of ratatouille when the phone rang. I picked it up before remembering that my whistle had disappeared. Sure enough, I heard the unnerving silence again, so I put down the receiver straight away.

  I couldn’t face the rest of my meal after that. Instead I spoke to my phone provider and reported the mystery calls. Although on several occasions the numbers had been withheld, when they’d shown up I’d made a note of them, so I had a list to reel off. All had the London area code. The man I spoke to said they could have come from public phone boxes. Great – it could be anyone.

  I didn’t want to change my number, nor did I want to block all withheld callers. Calls from Miranda’s Project were often withheld and I didn’t want to prevent those getting through. If I felt it was harassment or malicious, I should contact the police, the guy said, but as someone who dealt with the fallout from real traumas every day, I felt like I’d be wasting their time. I decided to wait and see.

  I picked up the payment of forty-five pounds Rosie had left me on the ledge inside my front door. It was stuffed inside a plastic bag; a bundle of five-pound notes and pound coins, with two pounds’ worth in loose change. It looked pitiful, like she’d
raided her money box to pay for her time with me.

  Something made me think of the talk at King’s I’d been to several weeks ago. I remembered ‘Kitty’s’ voice and almost without thinking, I found myself calling Minette’s number.

  ‘I hope it’s okay to call after hours,’ I said.

  Minette chuckled and said she could hardly tell what out of hours meant any more. ‘I hope you’re calling to fix up a lunch date,’ she said.

  ‘I’d love to…although actually, I’m calling about something else.’ My fingers tightened around the phone. ‘After your talk, I didn’t mention that I recognised a patient in one of the recordings: someone you called “Kitty”.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘In fact, I’m working with her at the moment.’

  ‘Quite a handful, I’d imagine,’ she said, ‘if I’m thinking of the right patient.’

  I cleared my throat. ‘You could say that.’ I chewed my lip. ‘You said she’d been seeing a therapist called Erica Mandale, who’d died suddenly?’

  ‘Yeah…that’s right.’

  ‘And “Kitty” was seeing Erica through the NHS, not privately, is that right?’

  ‘Hold on, let me find my lecture notes.’ There was the clomp of footsteps followed by tapping at a keyboard. ‘Here it is,’ she said, ‘I’ve only got sketchy notes about her. Let me see…the sessions were at Guy’s, for around eighteen months…no wait a minute.’ She took a breath. ‘The last five appointments were at Erica’s home in Chelsea.’

  I swallowed hard. ‘Do you know why they were moved from the hospital to her house?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I can’t check, I’m afraid. Erica’s full records are logged in the hospital system.’

  ‘“Kitty” is a very intense patient showing symptoms of a histrionic personality disorder,’ I said.

  ‘Ooh – tricky,’ she said. ‘Anxious about being ignored and needing to be the centre of attention, no doubt.’

  ‘Exactly. She comes across as demanding, pushing the boundaries. I’ve been seeing her for ten weeks now and I wondered what sort of progress Erica had made with her in a year and a half. Do you know how much of her childhood was covered?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. I only had a few recordings from their work together. You’d have to get access to her original records.’

  ‘I was hoping her experience with Erica could enlighten me. I’m stumbling around in the dark with her to be honest. Something doesn’t feel quite right. She’s had a tragic life and I want to do the best I can for her, but I’ve felt uneasy right from the start.’

  ‘Sounds like an issue for supervision, Sam.’

  ‘Mmm…’ I muttered.

  I hated supervision. Dr Rosen had been allocated to me over a year ago and we didn’t suit each other one bit. He was all sharp angles and corners, keen to play everything by the book, whereas I wanted to bend the rules when it was in the best interests of the patient. I’d put in a request for a replacement, but no one else was available for the time being. As things stood, I turned up to as few meetings with him as I could get away with.

  I thanked her and we had a brief chat about plans for Christmas, before fixing a date for lunch in the New Year.

  ‘By the way,’ I said, just before I rang off. ‘How would I go about getting hold of Erica’s notes?’

  ‘You’d need the go-ahead from the senior psychiatrist at Guy’s, Professor Radley Dean. I can give you his details, but he’s in America at the moment.’

  ‘And Erica died, you said?’

  ‘Yes, a heart attack, just like that – out of the blue. Her husband found her at the bottom of the stairs. Such a terrible tragedy.’

  Chapter 27

  Sam

  The two weeks of demob-happy days over Christmas came and went. I took a stroll through a frosty Hyde Park with my uni friend, Ronnie, discussing the latest TV adaptation of a bestselling psychological thriller. I told him the scenes with the therapist were all wrong.

  ‘She’d get struck off for going out for dinner with her patient,’ I’d told him. ‘She’s asking for trouble.’

  ‘Only if she gets found out,’ he’d said.

  I shared chip butties in Covent Garden with Gemma, an old school pal from Kent, saw a film at Leicester Square, visited Tate Modern…

  I even managed to drag Hannah away from online properties searches for cocktails at a posh hotel bar in Covent Garden.

  We took seats on the velvet sofa in front of the open fire, crackling with glittery pine cones that had been thrown into the flames. Sparkling fairy lights coiled around the edges of a broad antique mirror on the mantelpiece and sunken candles dribbled wax on to the hearth. It was a perfect festive setting: I always love the coziness of winter.

  ‘This will be my last Christmas in London,’ Hannah said, flattening my mood in an instant, as she draped her coat over the arm of a passing waiter. ‘I can hardly believe it.’

  In spite of the flames spitting in the hearth, a deep chill swept through me. ‘Well, you should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself,’ I said, only half-joking. ‘Leaving your best mate all alone.’

  A day later, I met up with Debbie and Bernie from St Luke’s and we went ice-skating in Bayswater.

  I knew something was different about Debbie as soon as she joined us at the boot-hire desk.

  ‘Can’t skate,’ she said.

  ‘Tell me something new,’ I smirked.

  ‘No, I mean I can’t skate. I’ll sit and watch.’

  I looked her up and down with concern. ‘Are you injured?’

  ‘No.’ She bit her lip looking sheepish. ‘I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure, but…’

  ‘You’re not…?’ I whispered, open-mouthed.

  She pressed her hand on her belly. ‘I didn’t know if I was feeling nauseous because of the drugs, but we did a test and—’ She burst into tears. ‘Oh…sorry, I’m all mushy and hormonal.’

  I wrapped her in my arms almost smothering her with my thick scarf. ‘That’s amazing. Brilliant. I’m so pleased.’

  ‘I’m probably being overcautious by staying off the ice,’ she sniffed, ‘but I know I’ll fall over and I’m not taking any risks.’

  ‘Of course,’ I assured her. I knew how much this meant to her.

  She unzipped her anorak, looking hot and overwhelmed. ‘Don’t tell anyone yet,’ she whispered as Bernie came back from the men’s desk swinging his skates.

  I was delighted for her, but I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for myself. People closest to me were taking life-changing steps and I was being left behind. For a brief moment I thought about Rosie. Her entire life consisted of people walking away from her, one after the other.

  I called Miranda to try to make peace and find out what she was doing on Christmas Day. True to form, she was vague, but it looked like she wouldn’t be joining Dad and me in Kent this year.

  ‘I’m going to Eastbourne,’ she said. ‘Some friends are having a big bash.’ I waited, but there was no invitation for me to tag along. Maybe she’d be with her nameless boyfriend. I wished her well and said I’d put her present in the post.

  I went to see Mrs Willow in the adjacent flat on Christmas Eve. She’d invited me, and I knew she wouldn’t have many visitors over the holidays. I remembered from an earlier Christmas that her husband had died on Boxing Day, in the 1990s. We shared vinegary wine, pulled a limp cracker and I gave her what was possibly her only Christmas present – an enamel pill box I’d bought from Miranda’s Arts Project. She insisted on opening it there and then, held it to her bosom, and almost wept with gratitude.

  On the twenty-fifth itself, I went over to Dad’s, played Scrabble and watched him fall asleep in front of the Queen’s speech. Before he’d retired, Dad had been a first-rate barrister. I’d seen him in action in court and he was formidable. He was so sure of himself when it came to the law, but with Mum he’d always been hopeless: tentative and passive. It was hard to believe those two sides could belong to one person.


  At least spending Christmas with Mum wasn’t an option any more. My parents had been drifting apart for years: Mum always so demanding and Dad going out of his way to try to please her. When she retired as a professor of architecture, they were forced to spend too much time together and their relationship went through what Dad called a ‘bad patch’ and Mum called ‘the end of the line’. Then, last year, Miranda’s terrible revelation blew the family apart and Moira Willerby was out of our lives forever.

  But I didn’t want to think about that now; it was part of another chapter in my life altogether. Suffice to say that Dad swiftly moved out of their beautiful detached house into a pokey flat on the outskirts of Canterbury. As far as I know, Mum is still in the house on her own. We left her to it. None of us wanted to go back to that place now its history had been sullied. I hadn’t seen my mother since – she knew the kind of reception she’d get if she ever rang my doorbell. Not that I would ever have invited her to my place for Christmas previously – we’d never had that kind of relationship.

  Towards the end of the festive season came the day I’d been dreading. I’d been doing well until then, but I knew the anniversary of Joanne’s suicide was going to be tough. When it came, I blundered my way through it by arranging lunch and dinner with different sets of close friends. I’d coped with suicides before, of course – in my line of work it comes with the territory – but it had never felt like this before. There’d been a dreadful spate of suicides at St Luke’s eighteen months ago, when I was dragged into a harrowing situation involving the London Underground. But Joanne’s suicide came months after that and it was different – it had been my fault.

  On the morning of December 28th, I had another silent call and after repeatedly demanding that the caller reveal themselves, I blew the whistle I kept in my bag as hard as I could and put down the phone. I half expected Mrs Willow to come hammering on my door to see what was going on, but nothing happened.