by Anne Buist
Malik? Natalie shook her head. Didn’t want to know. ‘Just get rid of them.’
Natalie’s nightmares came back in full force, and even more vividly. She woke alone in the middle of the night to Bob announcing, ‘Shots fired out!’ She stared at the ceiling and tried to pinpoint what was worrying her. Not the replica guns, surely. Was it Ted Beahre? Or the thought that she’d got it wrong with Malik, or that La Brooy, Okeke and Twitter would annihilate her? Followed by the College and Medical Board?
On balance, the evidence still pointed to Chelsea being upset about the breakup and nothing more. And Jenna (if you were charitable) was exaggerating and jumping to conclusions. If you weren’t, she was calculatedly lying.
The dream left Natalie with unease, guilt and fear. The hollowness in her stomach was like the time their dog had escaped and she had heard the squeal of tires, the thud. That moment when you still had a little hope, before the worst was revealed. The thoughts and feelings whirled in a nonsensical spiral…and the base of the tornado was an eye that was both accusing, and, it seemed to her, immensely saddened.
She took an extra quetiapine but still couldn’t sleep. The phone by her bed drew her in. She searched #PsychBitch to see if there were any references to her, wondering briefly if she was paranoid. The hashtag had been getting an airing.
Man Under Fire @ManUnderFire: Feminist + psychiatrist + child abuse paranoia = lethal cocktail for men #PsychBitch
#PsychBitch could refer to anyone.
Liza R @lizar82, the insider: @ManUnderFire PC psychiatrist + fear of being called Islamophobic + traitor to feminism = lethal cocktail for kids #PsychBitch
That one was probably her.
Julie G @JoolieGG: @ManUnderFire @lizar82 Its never that simple. People doing their best in difficult situations just like you guys.
Maybe she needed to follow some of these people too? She added them—and @MyBitchinRules—to her list: following seven, followers one—who seemed to be some sort of automated scammer—number of tweets, zero.
It was a long time before she slept again and if she dreamed any more, she retained no memory of it.
31
In a move that was out of character, Declan had rescheduled their weekly appointment for an earlier time—the morning of Chelsea’s second session. Natalie assumed he had more instructions for her. They met over breakfast, which Natalie knew he usually reserved for a browse of the papers. He had a pot of hot coffee waiting and she could smell bacon and eggs cooking; she was glad she was over the morning sickness phase.
‘You’d better have a look at this.’
Not about Chelsea’s session after all. Shit. Had La Brooy or Okeke finally named her? It couldn’t be Twitter—Declan didn’t know the first thing about social media. Natalie took the paper from Declan’s hand—not a newspaper at all. A letter from the College of Psychiatrists. Contacting Declan as her supervisor, so he could discuss it with her.
There has been a complaint…Natalie skimmed it, looking for the name. The Chair of the Ethics committee, Ken Rankin, a man with a perpetual frown, had signed it. Though it didn’t say who had complained, it didn’t have to. Wadhwa.
Natalie’s hand and jaw clenched. ‘This isn’t fair. I told you about this. He’s the one who didn’t get a corroborative history, had the short interview, and didn’t see Malik with Chris or Chelsea. Malik is good with the kids. After the last session—’
Declan put his hand up, shaking his head. ‘Take a breath.’
Natalie forced herself to put the letter down rather than throwing it across the room. How dare Wadhwa report her. She should have reported him.
Lack of expertise…contradicting each other gives a poor impression of the profession.
‘Like it or not, Professor Wadhwa has his supporters. And a point: psychiatrists get bad enough press as it is.’
Declan let his words settle in. It took all Natalie’s willpower not to let out exactly what she thought of the professor, his expertise and his qualifications. Maybe she’d drop a line to Okeke, pointing out Wadhwa’s associate professorship was in administration—at a university without a medical school. ‘It doesn’t mean your clinical acumen is being questioned,’ Declan continued. ‘The College have me supervising you for a reason, Natalie. To ensure competency—stability—to practise.’
Natalie winced. Psychiatrists knew the cost of stigma—yet here she was feeling its full force inflicted on her. The label, her past indiscretions, would always dog her.
‘I haven’t done anything wrong.’ Natalie knew she sounded like a sulky kid; but then Declan was acting like he was her father.
‘I have already spoken to the College,’ Declan continued. ‘As you have indeed been doing the right thing, both by talking to me, and in your clinical approach, there will be no further action.’
‘But it’s a black mark, right?’
Declan shook his head, topping up her coffee. ‘Think more of it as a reminder to proceed with caution. The cases you deal with are difficult—already this one has made the news and, as you noted, you could easily get caught up in the media blow-up.’
‘You were the one who said I should see Chelsea.’
‘Which I pointed out to Professor Rankin. What happened in your session?’
Natalie reluctantly pushed Wadhwa to the back of her mind and brought Declan up to date with her work with Chelsea.
‘Bringing the doll’s house up first in conversation was her subconscious speaking,’ Declan said.
‘What makes you think that?’ Natalie had relayed the conversation with Chelsea verbatim. It hadn’t struck her as odd—merely that it reminded her of her grandparents’ house.
‘Because of the picture. This picture.’ Declan was holding the first attempt at a house that Chelsea had discarded.
It was a house like the doll’s house, but with attics.
‘So you think she is saying something about a real house?’
‘More about her room,’ Declan said. ‘I’m mostly concerned about the windows.’
Natalie looked at the windows in the picture: two downstairs, two upstairs, two attic ones.
‘What about them?’
‘It has attic windows, which the subsequent drawing doesn’t.’
‘Maybe she just had a favourite story with a house like this. Anne of Green Gables or something.’
‘Possibly. But there is this.’ Declan pointed to curtains on the attic windows—but missing on the main ones.
‘Secrets? Things to be hidden?’ Upstairs where bedrooms usually were.
‘Get her to play with the doll’s house,’ Declan finally said.
The session was at 2 p.m. Declan arrived at half past one and spent fifteen minutes charming Beverley, who promised to invite him to the wedding.
‘He sees things,’ said Beverley to Natalie, oblivious to the fact that it really wasn’t the sort of comment psychiatrists welcomed.
Natalie dragged Declan up to the little room on the other side of the screen.
‘Instructions?’ she asked.
‘Don’t push too hard,’ said Declan. ‘Let her get comfortable.’ He paused. ‘And Natalie.’
‘Yes?’
Declan looked into the sand therapy room for a moment, lost in thought. ‘Before you let her go,’ he finally said, ‘come and confer with me.’
Chelsea was with her mother in the waiting room. She gave Natalie a small smile and headed towards the stairs.
‘How is she?’ Natalie quickly asked Jenna, watching Chelsea’s back as she headed to where the sand therapy room was.
Jenna pulled a bright-coloured beret over her ears. ‘How do you expect?’ The surly expression of a teenager who hadn’t got her way. But there was anger as well, and a hint of something. A haunted expression that Natalie recognised but couldn’t place. She hadn’t seen it before in Jenna.
‘Has something happened?’
‘Yeah. Malik abused her, remember? And now she sees him every week. Thanks for that. Do you know
how that makes me feel?’ Jenna turned abruptly and left, nearly bowling over a patient coming to visit one of Natalie’s colleagues. She didn’t offer an apology.
Chelsea was already in the therapy room, browsing the shelves. Natalie flashed a look towards the screen as she closed the door. Declan would be focused on the patient rather than her. But it was hard not to feel self-conscious.
‘I thought you might like to play with the doll’s house,’ Natalie said.
The sand therapist was still away, which was just as well. One blast about the misfiling of figures was better than a weekly telling-off.
Chelsea shrugged. Natalie sat down on the floor and eased off the side of the house to reveal the rooms. Chelsea knelt beside her. ‘Can I put furniture in it?’
‘Whatever you’d like. Have you seen the shelf with the tables and beds and chairs?’
Chelsea crawled across to the shelves and picked out the laundry set—a washing machine and dryer. ‘This house doesn’t have a place for these.’
‘Maybe the garage?’
‘The mum will get wet when she washes the clothes.’ Chelsea added the laundry set to the garage nevertheless and then chose some figures—Princess Jasmine and Aladdin—and put them beside the house. ‘But now it’s a nice day and they’re enjoying the sun while the cleaner’s working.’
Chelsea took a few more minutes selecting furniture. ‘Will I have to move?’ Chelsea seemed to be talking to herself—or rather, Princess Jasmine was asking Aladdin.
‘Have you seen your new room at Ama’s—your grandmother’s?’
‘Yes,’ said Chelsea. She wasn’t looking at Natalie and suddenly froze. Turning around, she looked like she was going to cry. ‘You won’t tell, will you?’
Natalie felt bile rising. Shit. She couldn’t keep secrets, not if it was the one she was looking for. Natalie looked at the screen but wasn’t sure what she expected to see there; Declan was the one with the view.
‘Won’t tell what, Chelsea?’
‘I wasn’t meant to go to Teta’s last week. Mummy said I was going to come straight home after dinner at the Pancake Shop but we went for a chocolate drink at Teta’s, but it was my fault. I really wanted to see the room because Teta said she had bought me a Disney doona with all my favourite characters and Daddy said he’d got me a lamp that had the Egyptian gods on them, not just the Percy Jackson ones.’
Chelsea’s lip trembled; Natalie smiled and the girl seemed to take this as her secret being safe. ‘Daddy said he’d tell me the real Greek misses.’
Misses. ‘Myths?’
‘Yes.’ Chelsea turned back to the shelves and picked a selection for the lounge room. Soon the doll’s house room was cluttered with furniture.
‘So where does everyone sleep when they get tired?’ Natalie asked.
Chelsea put herself—Princess Jasmine—on the pink bed. She then turned her attention to the living room, next door, on the upper level. She put Tweetie Bird—her mother?—on the couch at one end, and Bart Simpson—Chris, presumably—on it. Then she found a chair and had Aladdin sit on it. She hovered over where to put it, eventually electing to keep it separate from Tweetie Bird on the other side of the same room.
Nothing complicated here. Chelsea felt alone, felt her mother was more tied up with Chris than her—and her father was isolated as well. Probably felt responsible in a way that would make sense only to her. Already she was learning to keep secrets—before long she’d be playing her parents against each other for what she could get out of them. Did she know instinctively that Jenna would be jealous of Malik giving her presents, while she might have to move back to her parents’ to save money?
Chelsea added someone she called Anna from Frozen, and Lisa from The Simpsons, to the bedroom and they had a pyjama party.
‘Was that what Amy had?’
‘This one is at Matilda’s,’ said Chelsea. ‘We had popcorn and pancakes and red lemonade and Matilda was sick.’
‘Was it just girls?’
‘Yes, except for Matilda’s dad.’
Wasn’t there an intervention order out on Matilda’s father?
‘Do you go to Matilda’s a lot?’
‘No. Amy doesn’t like her.’
‘But do you?’
Chelsea thought about it. ‘She’s okay.’
‘And Matilda’s dad?’ Natalie watched Chelsea carefully. She appeared to not have heard.
Natalie repeated the question.
‘He’s okay. He doesn’t live with them either.’
So just some similarities that were both comforting and unsettling?
Natalie checked her watch. Fifteen minutes to go. She excused herself and ducked into the room where Declan was sitting.
‘Instructions?’ Natalie could see Declan had taken a page or more of notes.
‘Get her to draw a tree.’
‘A tree?’
‘A tree that would go next to her house. And then get her to put a nest in it.’
Trees? Nests? Natalie tried to remember what this might show but if she had ever learnt it, she hadn’t retained it. So much of what she did was learnt and cemented through repetition with real people and their responses. There just hadn’t ever been enough children in her six-month child psychiatry term to try anything more than once; most of the rotation had involved sedating aggressive pre-psychotic and drug-addicted teenagers.
‘Okay, Chelsea,’ Natalie said when she returned, ‘I wonder if I can get you to do some drawings for me?’
‘Sure.’ Chelsea seemed relaxed.
‘Can you imagine a tree that you’d like to have in your garden, maybe next to your house?’
‘A tree? Like a treehouse, or just a tree?’
‘Let’s start with the tree.’
Chelsea looked at the pile of paper and pulled out a green sheet, and a brown pen. Her tree was small, taking up only a quarter of the page.
‘No leaves?’
Chelsea shook her head. ‘It’s winter.’
‘So would you like a treehouse in it? Or maybe a nest?’
‘It’s not big enough for a tree house,’ Chelsea said with authority. She selected a yellow pen and put a small tightly drawn nest among the top branches. ‘You can’t see the bird because it’s only an egg and the mother is hiding it.’
‘What,’ Declan asked her minutes later when Chelsea had been returned to a sulky Jenna, ‘do you make of that?’
‘That she feels she needs protection. And wants her mother to protect her?’ Natalie stared at the drawing. ‘It’s bleak, too. No leaves. Nest exposed.’ Natalie started to feel uneasy. ‘She doesn’t come across as depressed, yet…I guess she doesn’t smile much.’
‘I thought her distinctly serious.’
Chelsea had always been ‘good’, but had she been serious? Was this a change? Not significant enough alone, but… Natalie looked back to the drawing. There was something else odd about the tree, what was it?
‘We’ll come back to that,’ said Declan. ‘Let’s go and look at the doll’s house.’
Natalie followed Declan into the room where she and Chelsea had been minutes before. Princess Jasmine was still busy partying with Anna (Amy?) and Lisa Simpson (Matilda?).
‘Thoughts?’
Natalie looked at it. ‘She’s separate from the family, in the bedroom she dreams of, her brother is occupying her mother. Aladdin is, I presume, Malik. He’s also apart from Jenna and Chris.’
‘Anything strike you about the positioning?’
Natalie looked back. She recalled Chelsea’s moment of indecision about where to put Aladdin.
Then she saw it. Her stomach did a somersault.
The bedroom furniture was all around the bed—and separate from it, was a chair. Right up next to the door. Like a barrier.
On the other side of the door, in the living area, was Aladdin.
Declan put the drawing of the tree on the table. ‘This shows a nest—the quintessential expression of a protective home—and she has made it
a fortress, high in a tree. But the branches are weak and it can be seen by everyone, so she is still in danger. It is also rootless, lost, floating without a base. And this—’
Declan pointed to something Natalie now realised looked at odds with the rest of the barren stick form: a knot high up the trunk before the thin branches stretched out.
‘If we think of the trunk as her eight years, then the knot is in the most recent year. And the knot?’ He looked at Natalie. ‘The knot, in this child, in this tree and with that bedroom…is abuse. Probably sexual.’
32
‘What do I do now?’ Natalie and Declan were both in her office.
What she wanted to do was to ring Jenna and apologise—to say Don’t let Chelsea out of your sight, you were right.
‘I got it wrong. It has to be Malik,’ Natalie said.
‘You don’t know that, Natalie.’
‘I was so sure Jenna was misreading things, blaming Malik because it suited her childcare and financial circumstances.’
‘Maybe she is.’
‘Is this enough to take to court?’ Natalie could just picture Louise Perkins’ look of disbelief that a knot on a tree meant anything other than the child couldn’t draw straight lines.
‘Not yet.’ Declan looked worried though. ‘Chelsea is clearly developing a relationship with you. She tested you—told you about seeing her bedroom at Ama’s, was worried you would give her away, but trusted you.’
‘I should tell Protective Services.’
‘Chelsea’s grandmother was there, supervising her. They didn’t breach the conditions—just didn’t tell Jenna they were going to show her the new room.’
‘So. What do I do?’ Right now, hoping for a genie to appear and grant wishes seemed like a good option.
‘The next session,’ said Declan, ‘she will tell you.’
And if she didn’t? After Declan had left, Natalie found her thoughts racing in circles. Worry, not mania. But stress could lead to mania. Or depression. She gritted her teeth, determined not to let Jenna and Chelsea’s case send her spiralling down. The bean needed her—it might not have anyone else.