by A J Waines
It was then that I began to wonder whether it really was Bruce who was pestering me. Maybe it was someone with a connection to Joanne. Except, why wait so long after her death? Maybe the anniversary had triggered it. It could be a family member intent on punishing me for what happened. Except, they didn’t need to as I was making a mighty fine job of punishing myself. Barely a day went past when I didn’t think of her or taunt myself about the way I’d let her down.
I’d thought about sending a card to Joanne’s parents, but what could I write inside? Sorry, again, that I didn’t respond to your daughter’s cry for help. Sorry, I failed you all and ruined your lives forever. In the end, I decided that a message from me was probably the last thing Mr and Mrs Bellings would want.
That evening, alone after cramming the day full of other people’s laughter, the tears finally came. I stood in front of the bathroom mirror with my toothbrush and dredged it all up, every sickening moment of it. I’d followed the correct procedure, done everything by the book, taken all the correct steps. But I’d failed in one simple way. I hadn’t done the one thing Joanne had asked me – no begged me – to do.
I knew the worst as soon as she didn’t turn up for her session the next morning. Her landlady let me into her room and there she was, her limp body hanging from the hook on the back of the door, her face still wet with tears. There was a note on the floor with my name on it.
When I bent down to pick it up, Joanne’s toe twitched, I was convinced of it. I helped the terrified landlady lay her body down on the carpet, desperately hoping she was still alive, but all the signs of death were already there. I took her pulse with trembling fingers, knowing she was too cold and finally, I let her hand go.
Of course, everyone at work told me it wasn’t my fault. Suicides happen in psychotherapy. You did the right thing. She would have found a way, eventually. She was ill. But I didn’t believe them. In my view, Joanne could have recovered and moved on, if I’d just been there for her.
I closed my eyes and saw again the three piercing words she’d left for me in the note. A simple accusation in a sea of white paper. You didn’t listen.
You’re right, Joanne. I didn’t listen. You had no one else and I didn’t respond. And I should have done.
I climbed into bed feeling just as wretched as I had the moment I found her. I didn’t even try to stop the cascade of images flooding into my mind. I let them come one after another, partly to honour her memory, partly to castigate myself. Joanne’s bare toes swinging only inches away from the rug. Her slippers on the floor where they’d flopped off and the shiny green noose of washing line cutting into her throat. As I lay there, her presence felt so close I could almost reach out and touch her.
Chapter 28
Sam
A raucous party on New Year’s Eve gave me a hangover with the magnitude of a head-on collision on a motorway. After that, the New Year limped in with a whimper. I spent most of the time under my duvet reading historical novels, emerging only to eat and take a shower. It was exactly what I needed. By the time I went back to work I was ready to face the world again.
When Miranda invited me out for supper on my first day back at work, I jumped at the chance. Perhaps her New Year’s resolution was be kinder to Sam.
I dashed home from St Luke’s to change first, so she’d know I was making an effort for her. I was behind with my laundry, but convinced I had a fresh bra in my underwear drawer. A special one, red with lace edging. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I searched through the dirty laundry basket and checked I hadn’t left it in the washing machine, but it had gone AWOL. I wore a tight-fitting camisole instead.
My comb also seemed to have disappeared since I’d last washed my hair. I checked the bathroom cabinet, my handbag, my dressing table and down the edge of the sofa and couldn’t find that either. It was starting to feel like I was losing my marbles.
As I pulled on my coat, the phone rang. I let it ring, chilling the space around me, and left.
Miranda had booked a Greek place in Camden she’d raved about recently. The music and boisterous warmth of Dimitris’ immediately felt like another world. Apart from the low swinging lanterns that nearly took my eye out when I walked in, I loved the décor.
Dimitri himself gave us a showy welcome, leading us to a table with a red-checked cloth and a prime view of a lobster tank. On further inspection, I found that more unnerving than appetising.
‘Don’t be so wet,’ said Miranda, finally agreeing to swap places so I had my back to it. I could still hear intermittent scratching and gurgling sounds and wasn’t sure if that was worse than being able to see what was going on.
I ordered vegetarian to be on the safe side – a traditional feta cheese salad, while Miranda had squid with various seafood delicacies I didn’t attempt to identify.
‘Good Christmas?’ she asked.
‘I saw Dad. We managed to burn the stuffing and the pudding boiled dry,’ I told her, ‘but apart from that you could call it a success.’
‘He rang and said he’d had a lovely time with you,’ she said, taking small sips of mineral water. ‘He brought up that time I was eleven and you must have been nine, d’you remember? We did that terrible carol concert for the neighbours.’
‘You played the recorder – very badly,’ I added.
‘And you were on the tambourine, trying to sing,’ she sniggered. ‘Mr Snape’s little kid…Boris, was he called?...threw mince pies at us.’
It was so good to hear her laugh. She hadn’t been so relaxed with me in a long time.
‘Dad said he liked the cufflinks,’ she said. ‘He said something about setting fire to his paper hat after lunch…’
‘Those Cuban cigars were a complete liability,’ I said, throwing my eyes up. ‘I don’t know who thought they’d be a good idea.’
She dropped her eyes. ‘I only got a few to tide him over…’
I groaned inwardly, but the moment passed without her getting cranky with me.
She raised her glass for a toast. ‘To selling lots more paintings this year and the perfect man for you,’ she said. I tapped my glass against hers, willing the perfect man to put in an appearance before cobwebs finally smothered my heart.
She rubbed her stomach, and admitted defeat with the squid.
‘I’m sorry…about last time,’ I said. I knew I had to bring it up at some point.
‘Forget it,’ she said without looking up. ‘It’s over. I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Okay.’
We were safely through round one, at least.
In fact, we managed to get through the rest of our main courses, desserts and coffees without a single crossed word. At one point she even reached over and grabbed my hand. At last! This was the carefree, kind-hearted Miranda I wanted in my life.
‘I’ve missed you,’ I said.
She gave me a sorrowful smile. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I’ve not been very nice lately, have I?’
‘Sssh.’ I patted her hand. ‘I want you to know I love you, that’s all.’
‘Me too,’ she said, her voice quivering.
‘Here’s to a great relationship between us from now on,’ I said, tipping my glass towards hers again.
The waiter came with the bill.
‘By the way,’ she said, as she lifted her bag on to the table. ‘You must have left this behind at my flat.’
She held up a copy of Enduring Love by Ian McEwan.
In an instant, it felt as though the door had been flung open and an Arctic wind was blowing in.
‘I didn’t leave it there,’ I said, my voice barely audible.
‘It’s got your name in the front.’ She folded back the cover to show me.
‘It’s got my name in it, but I gave it to Con,’ I said. ‘I left it at his place.’
‘Oh…’ she said, shifting in her seat. Her cheeks flushed a deep crimson and she looked down.
Con.
Suddenly it all became clear. How had I been so stupid
? All that crap about wanting to keep ‘the boyfriend’ secret. That’s why she’d been playing down the whole situation.
‘Oh, my God,’ I said, my chair screeching as I stood up. ‘Was it Con’s baby? Was he the father?’
Miranda’s face had turned from red to white in seconds.
‘It isn’t serious…’ she said, playing the same card she’d tried on me before.
As if…
Even in my stunned stupor I noticed she hadn’t actually answered my question.
Suddenly the noise of the restaurant, music twanging through large speakers and clashing dishes in the kitchen, turned from exuberance to an intolerable racket inside my head. I had to get out. I dodged my way around chair legs, handbags and those annoying lanterns and burst out into the night air.
Once on the street, I ran. Blindly, with no sense of where I was going. A post box, a litter bin, cracks in the pavement, a manhole cover, Con’s face; everything overlapped into one surreal mosaic. I leapt on the first bus that came along. I didn’t care where it was heading as long as it took me away from Miranda.
It was just after midnight when I got back home. I don’t know how I managed to keep the feta and vine leaves down for so long, but as soon as I got in, my time ran out. I made it to the bathroom and threw up all the goodwill and false hope Miranda had offered me. I held on to my indignation, refusing to give in to the finger of guilt that reminded me I’d left Miranda to pay the bill.
I half hoped I’d find a message from her on my answering machine, something to show that she recognised the impact of the bombshell she’d dropped. Anything. It didn’t even have to be coherent – just an acknowledgement. I pressed the button on the machine twice, but there was nothing there.
Chapter 29
Sam
Rosie was holding an envelope when she arrived for her session that week. She sat down with it on her lap waiting for me to ask what was inside.
‘They’re photos,’ she said. ‘From when I was little. I know it’s not about the crash, but you said you wanted to know more about Mum and Dad. I thought just this once.’
Even though I was sure Rosie’s tragic history would reveal a great deal, I was aware that we had only one more session left after this one. It was all coming a bit late; we couldn’t afford to delve too deeply.
‘Of course. Let’s take a look at them,’ I said. ‘Then we’d better get back to the crash.’
She took a measly three snapshots out of the envelope and spread them on her lap. Rosie’s entire childhood.
‘It’s taken me a lot of courage to bring them…’ she said, with more than a trace of indignation. ‘I thought you’d be interested.’
‘I am.’
A flash of mistrust darted across my mind. Was this a ploy to open up a can of worms that were too fat and entangled to be stuffed back in again, during the limited consultations we had left?
I lifted a side table and placed it between us, keeping my suspicions to myself. I’d see where she went with it.
‘Mum was scared of Dad,’ she said.
I leaned forward to look closely at the first picture, not wanting to touch it without permission. ‘She’s pretty,’ I said.
‘A neighbour, Mrs Dunbar, told me years later that Dad was jealous of any contact Mum had with other blokes. He used to follow her, apparently.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Mum told the neighbour that she always knew he was there, lurking in the bushes or hiding in the next aisle in the supermarket. She could feel his eyes on her, but not in a nice way.’
‘How did that affect you, do you think?’
‘He must have had his reasons, I suppose. He used to hit her when things got really bad. I never knew what she was supposed to have done – I think it was all inside his head.’
‘Did he ever hit you?’
She laughed. ‘He never noticed me enough to bother. I didn’t register on his radar at all – and he wasn’t around much during the years he was on the oil rigs. After the explosion, he came back, but while his body was with us, his mind was somewhere else. He gambled and drank, came home late.’
She made a sucking sound like someone stepping inside from the cold.
No wonder her mother had packed her bags that fateful day. I couldn’t imagine why she’d left it so long.
‘I learnt how to climb out of windows and down the drainpipe when I was small, after Dad started locking us in the house. Mum was terrified for me at first, but then she realised it was our only saving grace. At least she knew I’d be able to get out if there was a fire.’
‘Your mum cared a lot about you,’ I said, stressing every word.
‘Yeah, I suppose she did.’ She said it in a lacklustre tone, as though her mother’s feelings for her didn’t count for a great deal.
‘I think the van going in the water brought all that back to me – the clambering in and out of small windows. I know I could do with losing a few pounds, but I’m more agile than most people think.’
‘Except you’ve lost weight recently.’
She grinned. ‘I have, haven’t I? I’m a lot prettier now without my glasses, don’t you think?’ I’d noticed in our last two sessions that the clunky specs weren’t dominating her face any more. ‘I decided they make me look geeky. I’m using contact lenses now.’
‘You’re a smart, attractive lady,’ I said. It was hard to think of her as a woman. Even though she was in her thirties, I could only ever think of her as a child. ‘Do you want to say more about your mum?’
‘My memories of her are hazy. Mrs Dunbar told me that when he was on the rigs, Dad made her do late shifts at the cosmetics’ factory, so she wouldn’t have her evenings free, but she’d often swap with her workmates to spend time with me. Thing is, I can’t remember much of it.’
‘Do you remember any special times with your mum?’
Rosie picked up the photograph and stroked it. ‘I don’t remember her ever saying she loved me, but I think she did. She got angry with me for climbing out of the window, I can remember that, but it was only because she was frightened I’d hurt myself. That’s a kind of love, isn’t it?’
She looked up. ‘Sometimes you have to work things out like that, don’t you?’ she said. ‘You have to work out from what people do or say, what they really mean.’
As she spoke my heart was turning to putty. Part of me wanted to scoop her up in my arms and hold her, rock her, reassure her. No child should have to go through what she’d suffered. It wasn’t only that both her parents had died so horribly when she was young – and that she’d had to witness it – but she’d also had a complete lack of affection from her father and a distracted, tentative love from her downtrodden mother.
As I feared, Rosie’s past took over the whole session. There was enough material spilling out for months and months of therapy. By the end my heartstrings were tugged into shreds. Rosie even asked if I was okay at one point. My face must have given me away.
‘I really like you,’ she said, as she put the pictures back in the envelope.
There was a lump in my throat the size of a tennis ball.
She looked up. ‘Please can we have more sessions? Can’t you see how this is starting to work now?’
Ah. My heart sank.
‘We said we’d have only one more – you agreed to that.’
‘No, you decided it,’ she said, a prickly edge to her tone.
I didn’t rise to it.
She sank back, her voice softening. ‘The more I see you, the more I realise how much it’s helping.’
This was the moment of truth. I had to lay it on the line once and for all.
‘Your history has been really tough, anyone can see that,’ I said, ‘and therapy could really help you. But our arrangement was for you to recover your memories of the crash, as far as possible. To explore your past you’d need to work long term with someone else; using different techniques. It can’t be with me.’
‘Can’t be with you?’ Her bottom lip quivered. ‘Are you
saying you can’t do the kind of therapy I need? Are you saying you’ve never worked with someone who had a messed up childhood?’
I drew a deep fluttery breath. Of course, I had. I couldn’t lie.
I was about to speak when she shot to her feet. She glared at me. ‘You don’t care, do you? Not really.’
She grabbed her bag and ran for the door without another word.
I stood in the hall, listening to her footsteps stomping down the stairs, trying to work out what I should do.
I had a decision to make.
In theory, there was nothing preventing us from carrying on. We could change tack and cover Rosie’s hurt and pain from the past, but it would be a long haul. We didn’t have any hospital bureaucracy instructing us about when we had to finish. It was her will against mine. And Rosie knew it.
The problem was I wanted my flat back; I no longer wanted to be seeing patients after hours. I’d realised after our first consultation here that I’d made a mistake; I should never have suggested it.
But that wasn’t the real issue.
If I offered Rosie another block of sessions, would it be enough? Would it ever be enough? She’d been working for eighteen months with her previous therapist and they would probably still be going strong if it hadn’t been for Erica’s untimely death.
I shuddered at the thought of spending so much time with Rosie. Week after week. Month after month. I’d started to hate Thursdays, especially that crushing blow to the stomach I felt when I thought my day was nearly over, then I remembered she’d be coming over.
I really felt for her, but she pushed and pushed all the time, needing more than I could give. Every time we met, I had to be on my guard, making sure I didn’t say or do anything to allow her to think our connection was anything beyond a professional arrangement. It was wearing to say the least.
I had to face the fact that Rosie seemed attached to me, infatuated even. But it was like a seven-year-old’s crush; regressive and tiresome, yet throwing up material we could work on productively in therapy. If we had more time.