by Tammy Cohen
That was the height of her ambition. To be quiet.
‘Could we go somewhere else? Your room maybe, or out for a walk?’
Now I look more closely, Mum looks weird. Her hair is tied back in a kind of knot at the back of her head with wispy bits escaping – and not in an artful, casual-not-casual way either – and her black jeans have toothpaste drips down one leg. Also, one of her eyes is doing this kind of flickering thing in the corner.
We put on our coats and go outside. Though it’s mid-morning, the light is grey and soupy, with that kind of damp cold that seems to come from the inside out.
Mum digs her hands into her coat pocket and makes a short, sharp exhalation to watch the cloud of her breath. Normally, her skin is clear and relatively unlined, but today it’s as grey as the day itself and there are two deep vertical scores in her cheeks. I’ve done this to her, I realize suddenly. Worrying about me has made her ten years older.
‘I think you should discharge yourself,’ she says at last.
‘What?’
I must have misheard her. Or else my brain must have processed what she said the wrong way. I know Mum wants me home, but she also wants me well. I’ve lost count of the number of times she’s assured me I’m in the best possible hands.
‘Hear me out.’
She tells me a convoluted story involving a psychiatric clinic and a discredited professor and a younger version of Dr Roberts who was mentored badly and made terrible mistakes. She tells me about three women. Girls. Who suffered horribly and then were let down by the people who were supposed to help them. The threat of legal action that never happened. And the clinic manager who stole their files.
‘Hang on, you drove to Oxford? To visit this alcoholic with a grudge? And to look at people’s private records. Is that even legal?’
‘Ex-alcoholic. And she blacked out the phone numbers and addresses.’
‘Oh, so that makes it all right then.’
‘I wanted to reassure myself that you’re still safe here.’
‘And now you don’t think I am.’
She takes a long pause. ‘There’s something bizarre about the records, Hannah. Something that has really frightened me.’
Icy fingers tippy-tap on my spine. I hear her out.
‘There were photographs of the girls attached to the files. I think Geraldine thought that seeing their faces would make their story more human for me, make me more inclined to dig deeper into what happened at Westbridge House.’
‘For your fictitious journal article?’
Mum ignores my sarcasm.
‘There was something about one of the girls, Hannah. The youngest one. I didn’t recognize her but I kept going back to her picture. And then, last night, it hit me. I don’t know why I hadn’t spotted it before.’
‘Spotted what?’
‘The necklace. She was wearing a cat necklace. Hannah, the youngest girl was Stella.’
36
Corinne
As soon as she’d made the connection with the necklace, Corinne could see it was her. The individual features had been changed, skin stretched over newly implanted cheekbones, nose cracked and sawn and put back together, chin reshaped, weight loss, hair extensions, coloured contact lenses. There wasn’t a single bit of Stella that was still Catherine Pryor and yet the essence of Stella was obvious in the angle of the head, the impassive expression in the eyes.
All night, Corinne had lain awake, trying to get to the kernel of truth she knew lay at the core of this mystery, but all night it had eluded her.
That Stella had changed her name was fair enough. Many survivors of unhappy childhoods choose to leave the trappings of their childhood selves behind when they grow up, and victims of abuse often reject their own names if they were given to them by their abusers. Corinne once had a friend who’d married to rid herself of her hated father’s name, and then when the marriage went sour had randomly changed her surname to the name of the road she was living on.
That Stella had been so full of self-loathing that she’d paid someone to take a scalpel to her face and her body again and again also made a kind of horrible sense. Corinne had had students who cut themselves compulsively when the pain of their lives got too much to cope with.
But the central mystery remained.
Why had Stella chosen to put herself back in the care of Oliver Roberts?
‘I don’t understand,’ Hannah said, for the tenth time since Corinne had managed to make her believe she was serious. ‘I mean, do you think Roberts knows who Stella really is?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘So why come here? You’d have thought she’d run a mile from anything to do with him. He thought she was making it up! Oh, poor Stella.’ Hannah’s voice broke on the last word and Corinne felt a sharp tug of worry.
Her daughter was so fragile at the moment. Could she really cope with this? Whatever this turned out to be.
‘She could be seeking some sort of closure. She might see the whole episode at Westbridge House as unfinished business in her life that she needs to process before she can move on.’
Hannah groaned. ‘God, you sound just like him.’
‘Who?’
‘Roberts.’
‘Or there’s another, less welcome, explanation. What if Stella is here seeking revenge?’
‘Revenge? How?’
‘This clinic is Roberts’ baby, the showcase of his professional achievements to date. You said yourself that the deaths of Sofia and Charlie have hurt admissions, and investors are pulling out. What if that’s the plan? To ruin him?’
Hannah was staring at her as if she’d grown another head.
‘Mum, you can’t be serious. This is Stella we’re talking about. Dreamy, otherworldly Stella. Are you honestly suggesting she would murder two people – two people she liked very much – just to get her own back for something that happened fifteen years ago?’
‘No. Of course not. Only … Oh, I don’t know, Hannah! I don’t know anything except that I no longer trust Dr Roberts and, until we understand Stella’s motivation, we can’t trust her either.’
‘I’ll talk to her. Ask her straight.’
‘Don’t!’
Corinne spat out the word so loudly it stopped both her and Hannah in their tracks.
‘If you talk to Stella, it could put you in danger. Who knows what she might do if she thinks she’s about to be exposed?’
Hannah looked sceptical.
‘Also, I don’t know what laws I might have broken taking those confidential records. And think of the trouble Geraldine would get into. I lied to her, Hannah. I told her I was writing a profile on Roberts. She thinks he’s about to be discredited, finally.’
‘Lying? Breaking laws? God, Mum. What’s happened to you?’
Corinne couldn’t answer that, because what could she have said except that it’s surprising what you’d do to protect your children.
‘That’s why I want you to leave here now, Hannah. You can go to a different clinic to finish your treatment. As an outpatient.’
A strange expression crossed Hannah’s face and Corinne had a sudden realization. She was scared. Her brave, headstrong elder daughter had become so institutionalized she was scared of leaving The Meadows.
‘Hannah, I’ll help you.’ She took hold of Hannah’s hand and pressed it, feeling how cold the fingers were, and how the skin was tight to the bone, like a latex glove. ‘I’ll take time off work. I’ll look after you.’
‘Mum. You can’t shield me from everything. I’ve made a mess of things. No, don’t argue, I have. I chose Danny, even though I knew, deep down, I loved him more than he loved me. There always has to be one person who loves more, right? That’s what I told myself. And in our case it was me. And I chose to press on with plans for more IVF, even though it was destroying us.
‘And on some level, I must have chosen to believe I was pregnant. One more test, one scan, could have proved I was deluded, and I chose not to have any. I’m n
ot a victim, Mum. I need to take responsibility for the choices I’ve made. Even the shitty ones. Especially the shitty ones.’
‘Darling, if it’s about Danny, you don’t owe that man anything—’
‘It’s not about Danny. I promised myself that I wouldn’t leave here until I was better, and I have to follow through. And I need to find out what happened to Charlie.’
Corinne found herself flooded with so many conflicting emotions that, for a moment, she felt almost numb. She was still frightened for her daughter but, for the first time in months, Hannah was sounding like Hannah.
‘You’re sounding so much better,’ she said, unable to help herself. ‘So much more like your old self.’
‘I’ve been having hypnosis from Laura. It’s helping.’
Still, she didn’t want Hannah to stay here.
‘How can we entrust your recovery to Roberts, now that we know he’s capable of such a serious breach of judgement?’
‘That was a long time ago, Mum. How many patients do you think have passed through this clinic since it opened? Women who’ve suffered all kinds of abuse. What happened at that other place was awful, but he was just starting out then. He’s clearly learned from it.’
‘And Stella?’
‘Mum, Stella is damaged. But she’s not a murderer. She loved Charlie even more than I did.’
‘So why come back here?’
‘I don’t know. The same as I don’t know why my body decided to pump itself full of pregnancy hormones. You know, the more I learn about the human mind, the more I realize how clueless we really are about what goes on in our own heads.’
Corinne knew Hannah was right, and yet she couldn’t shake off that unnerving sense of things not being as they should be. For a moment she thought about telling Hannah about the trip to Tunbridge Wells and about Patricia Garitson and her warnings about Steffie.
But even as she tried to formulate the words in her head, she knew she couldn’t say them. She’d left it too late to explain to Hannah about finding the photograph of Steffie among her private things. Hannah would think it such a breach of trust. She remembered Jacob Garitson’s pale, twitchy eyes, and how he’d said, ‘She hurts people.’
Wasn’t there a possibility, she thought, looking at her daughter, who seemed to be buzzing with renewed resolution, that Hannah was safer in here than outside?
37
Hannah
It’s the day after Mum’s visit and, in Morning Group, we are focusing on Stella.
Well, everyone else is focusing on Stella. I am focusing on Dr Roberts focusing on Stella.
He is leaning back in his chair with his legs straight out in front of him, imposing deep into the circle formed by our chairs. His hands are clasped behind his head, and he is half smiling, as if we are all in on the same joke.
What does it mean that they have this history together? And how can Roberts not know it? Is she really so unrecognizable from the Catherine Pryor of all those years ago?
Stella is wearing a soft black leather dress that appears seamless and stretches over her body like a second skin reaching to the knee. We’re not allowed tights so her legs are bare, despite the cold outside, and on her feet is a pair of sparkling sequin platform shoes. Her blonde hair falls loosely around her shoulders. On her perfectly made-up face there is not a hint of fat. Just jutting bones over which the skin is stretched tight, like one of Laura’s canvases.
How much pain has gone into making Stella look this way? How many hours, days, spent in consulting rooms and operating suites? How much blood has it taken to wash away every trace of her former self? How many stitches hold this new Stella together?
Stella is talking about her childhood, a time when her parents were still together and she and her mother and father went to the theatre and afterwards called in to a restaurant where the maître d’ addressed her father by his first name and found them a table in the centre of the room, and the waitress fussed around them and her mother seemed actually to like the man she was married to. And both of them seemed actually to like Stella.
‘I think it’s really sad that being liked by your parents should be so unusual that it stands out in your mind like that,’ says Odelle.
‘My parents didn’t like me much either,’ says Katy. ‘Don’t think it did me much harm.’
‘How do you work that one out? You’re in the fucking loony bin,’ says Judith.
Nina, who has been rocking backwards and forwards on her chair, shrieks with laughter, until Dr Roberts flaps his hand in a quiet-down gesture. Then he sits up straight and leans forward.
‘Stella, we’ve talked a lot in these sessions about your early childhood. Do you feel able now to take us on a bit? To when you lived with your stepfather?’
In Group, Stella tends to circle around her stepfather like a suspect package. We know he was something high up in the military, which is why Stella’s family moved around so much. Then, when he retired from the military, he became a high-level security adviser, first working for an oil company in Iraq and later for the US government.
We know he has red hair.
We know that, whenever Stella refers to him, no matter how obliquely, her voice becomes higher pitched, like a child’s.
‘He didn’t like me much. My stepfather. Gordon. My mother is very beautiful and my stepfather used to say, “Shame how looks always skip a generation, hey, Cat?”’
‘Why did he call you Cat?’ Frannie wants to know.
Stella’s flush reaches her forehead so that even the areas of skin visible between the roots of her hair are shocking pink against the blonde.
‘It was nothing. A stupid nickname my father gave me. Gordon used it sarcastically. He liked to rubbish anything to do with my real dad.’
Stella’s hand worries at the necklace around her throat.
‘And how did you feel about him?’ Roberts asks her, tapping his fingers against his thigh.
‘In the beginning, I hated him for stealing my mother from my father and making my father go away. It was my father who introduced Gordon to Mama and, after they got together, my father always referred to him as the Snake.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘After my father had disappeared from the scene and it was obvious Gordon was sticking around, I tried to win his approval by working really hard, getting top marks, but he wasn’t interested in how I did at school. It was all about appearances for him. The smart car, the stylish home, the gorgeous woman on his arm. I was chubby and plain. I didn’t fit at all. And he made that quite obvious.’
Odelle sits upright, bouncing in her seat with her arm up like we’re at fucking kindergarten or something.
‘Stella, do you think that could be why you put yourself through all that plastic surgery? Because you’re still looking for his approval?’
Judith starts a sarcastic slow handclap but Roberts merely says, ‘That’s very perceptive, Odelle. Perhaps you’d like to respond, Stella?’
But Stella has had enough of talking now and is playing noughts and crosses on her leather dress with her finger. And I think:
I wish Gordon hadn’t done whatever terrible thing he must have done to break you so completely. And:
I wonder if his name is even Gordon. And:
He can’t really be an ex-military-turned-security-adviser, or Roberts would have recognized you for sure. And I think:
What else are you lying about, Stella?
Danny looks everywhere except at me. ‘It’s weird seeing you out of that place,’ he says finally. ‘I hardly recognize you.’
We are in a bistro on the high street later that afternoon, a few doors from the café Stella and I visited a few days ago. I am facing a huge canvas print of Audrey Hepburn with a long cigarette and I look at her face whenever I’ve had enough of the frown on Danny’s. What’s a girl to do? Audrey seems to say.
‘Dr Roberts says I should take trips out now. To get used to being away from the clinic. Ready for when I come home.’<
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When I say the word ‘home’, Danny does something weird with his mouth so that, just for a minute, he doesn’t look handsome any more. A pebble drops down to the pit of my stomach and lodges there, hard and heavy.
I change the subject.
‘Tell me again why you don’t like Stella.’
He is so surprised by the question that he actually looks me in the eye before glancing swiftly away.
‘Everything about Stella is too much. The looks, the clothes. The way she is with you, like she wants you to be her mummy or something. She’s damaged, Hannah.’
‘We’re all damaged.’
It comes out sharper than I intended.
‘Not like that, Hannah. Not like her. You know she came on to me?’
‘I don’t believe you.’
The pebble in my gut has grown spikes and is moving around inside me.
‘It’s true. I bumped into her in the corridor when I was coming in to visit you. I mean, literally, bumped into her. And she kind of rubbed herself against me.’
‘You misread it, that’s all.’
‘For God’s sake, Hannah. I know when a woman is coming on to me.’
‘Oh yeah. Sorry. I forgot you’ve had recent experience of it. You’ve got a bloody A level in women coming on to you. You’re a leading world expert in it.’
Danny throws down the fork he’s been playing with so it clatters on to his plate. A woman at the next table looks up sharply. She has a tiny, flesh-coloured sticking plaster below one eye that looks like a wart.
‘There’s no point in talking to you when you’re like this. I’ve said sorry a million times, but you have to understand that what happened, what I did, doesn’t give you a lifetime’s membership to the moral high ground. It doesn’t make you right all the time. Or me wrong.
‘Stella is damaged, and damaged people can be dangerous. Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying.’
I go to bed early, the row with Danny still fresh in my mind. I brush my teeth in the en suite and try not to look at my pale, pasty face in the mirror. I am convinced I won’t sleep, have a magazine ready beside my bed, but I drop off almost immediately. I dream Stella is chasing me, although she has Steffie’s face. I know that she’s carrying something that will hurt me, although I don’t know what it is. All I know is that I must keep running. I must go faster, but my legs are made of lead.