by Anne Buist
I saw an analyst for three months during my psychiatry training. I might have continued had I not chosen badly. It made sense to me to find a female therapist; have I mentioned that I get on best with women? There is none of the competitive drive that men arouse in me. And doubtless I subconsciously wanted the unconditional love of mother in the safe environment I had never had. But we are all driven by such subconscious longings; there was hardly harm in it.
Victoria had seemed a good choice from a limited field. Ten years older than me, she had only been practising in private for a few years. What I was still too junior to understand was that she was still undergoing her own analysis and supervision. I would not have willingly allowed any of my story to go beyond her and me: I did not come from a family that trusted easily.
For the first month I thought we progressed nicely. In the second month she seemed more withdrawn and less forthcoming with comment or interpretation. In the third it became clear that she was struggling with her own issues: the countertransference. Was it because she was single and found me attractive, or because she was gay and I challenged her ideas of sexuality? From wearing skirts that showed her knees and shirts that outlined her breasts rather well—perhaps too well—she started wearing trousers and loose jackets. She thought I wouldn’t notice that she had moved her chair ever so slightly further away but the carpet marks betrayed her. She no longer leaned into me or gave the small secret smile as I left. At one stage I wondered if she was videoing us, so hard was she trying to present as the perfect therapist. When I asked, she looked so terrified for a moment that I thought I was right.
‘No. Whatever makes you say that?’ she asked, too quickly.
I knew I had hit on something. ‘Have you spoken to anyone about these sessions?’ I smiled at her, watching the twitch under her eye flicker three times.
‘No. Well, yes. I…I get supervision. No names or anything.’
But it meant that someone else knew my story. Someone I hadn’t given permission for her to share it with, knew about it. I had revealed more than enough information to identify me. And I had named my grandfather, often.
‘I expect that to cease.’ I was pleasant; I haven’t lost my temper since I was ten. ‘And I would like the notes. All of them.’
Victoria was flushed; it made her skin an unpleasant mottled colour. She tried to argue that the notes belonged to her, but she knew she wasn’t going to win that argument.
I didn’t return. But I did pay my bill. I like loose ends tied up.
51
Georgia was Natalie’s last patient of the day. The jury had been out for two days and the waiting wouldn’t be
easy for her: Georgia’s capacity for denial would be stretched to the limit. Natalie wasn’t expecting an easy session and she wasn’t surprised that Georgia was late. But when she was fifteen minutes overdue and didn’t answer her home phone or mobile, Natalie felt a twinge of anxiety.
‘Yes,’ said Jacqueline Barrett. ‘I spoke to her around one o’clock when we were told the jury wouldn’t be back today.’
Natalie stared at Georgia’s file and replayed the conversation she had with Declan. What if Georgia had finally seen the reality of her life? If she was found guilty, which seemed likely, it meant a long time behind bars. Arguably, she deserved it. But the picture of Georgia, regressed to a child, wetting her pants, was firmly etched in Natalie’s mind. Tempering justice with mercy wasn’t easy. Maybe for a psychiatrist it wasn’t meant to be.
It took thirty minutes in the peak hour traffic to get to Georgia’s flat. The apartment block, a relic of the seventies in a leafy suburban street, was tired and out of place.
Predictably, no one answered. Curtains shrouded the windows. Natalie banged louder.
‘What the hell you doing lady?’ The head of a young black man emerged from the next door along the corridor. His accent was heavy Horn of Africa. It looked like he’d been sleeping. Or trying to.
‘I’m worried about my friend,’ said Natalie. ‘I think something might have happened to her.’
The man groaned, stepped out. Six feet six of bone and muscle. Tracksuit pants longer than her height hanging around his butt. He flicked a knife out of his pocket. Natalie stared at it, too stunned to react. ‘Locks here are shit,’ he said. A quick jerk and Georgia’s door was open.
‘Can you stay here a moment?’ Natalie asked, looking into the dark corridor, suddenly panicked. The knife-owner gave her a goofy smile, one hand hitching his trousers.
She called out and stood in the echoing corridor listening to her own heartbeat. The apartment was devoid of character in the dim light. She would have sworn no one had lived there for months. No pictures on the wall, no ornaments or little tables to put them on. In the kitchenette, as she walked past, there was a solitary cup on the sink; benches wiped clean of ownership.
Natalie had prepared herself for something gruesome. Blood, or the sight of the bulging tongue and eyes that result from hanging. She had treated slashed wrists, stabbings and gunshot wounds as an intern in the emergency department. But what dominated her memory was the team’s urgency and efficiency; the equipment ready at hand to help save life.
What Natalie wasn’t prepared for was the still, quiet reality of a lonely death.
Georgia was in her bedroom. Natalie had known somehow that was where she would be. No blood. No bulging eyes to accuse. As yet, no smell. Just empty pill bottles and skin cold to touch. She looked, thought Natalie, strangely at peace. There was no note but Georgia hadn’t needed one: the explanation was all around her.
The Sudanese lock-breaker called the police while Natalie waited with Georgia, both of them surrounded by the artefacts of the existence Georgia had wanted to believe in.
Every surface, including the ceiling, was covered in photos. All were of Paul and her. There was not one picture of their children; neither the three dead infants nor the one who’d survived.
Later Natalie recalled thinking over and over that things went in threes and that this meant it was all over. She was trying to explain that to Declan hours later, when he came out of his rooms and found her sitting on the porch in the rain. But nothing she said made any sense to either of them.
Georgia’s suicide had opened the memory of her own depression; the terror she’d felt at the bottom of the pit when she had considered killing herself. She had despised herself for her weakness; yet doing so meant she had to despise Georgia and all her troubled patients who went to that place. She didn’t want to be like them, and was ashamed at her own narcissism, the belief that she was superior. As she poured out her thoughts to Declan she didn’t even know she’d been thinking that.
‘You’re angry,’ Declan observed, and it horrified her that he was right. How could she be angry at Georgia, whose future, when she’d looked ahead, had been so bleak and so meaningless that death was preferable? She didn’t want to be someone without compassion. But the anger was at herself, and not just for her weakness, for having thought of doing the same as Georgia. The anger was that Georgia had shown her up to be less than perfect. Less than even a good-enough therapist.
‘You aren’t her, Natalie,’ Declan said. But for months now Natalie hadn’t known who she was. The old Natalie kicked butt. She would never give up, or in. The passivity of the new one terrified her.
‘I shouldn’t have testified.’
‘You were legally obliged and she knew that, Natalie. The perfect relationship she desired wasn’t with you, it was with Paul. She killed herself because the fantasy couldn’t be maintained: beneath the surface she was very fragile and without defences. And it wasn’t despair that killed her, it was anger. Uncontrolled anger, the same that may well have killed her children, and then turned inward. This is the work we do. The risk we hold and have to bear. We won’t ever be able to save everyone.’
‘I failed her.’
‘No Natalie. Her family failed her, the system failed her when she was a child. It was her illness that then killed her
. You did more than anyone else.’
‘It wasn’t good enough,’ Natalie said, mostly to herself. She needed to harness her anger, not turn it inward; if she did that, the black hole would reclaim her. Seconds turned into minutes. Natalie finally took a breath and sat up, looking directly at her supervisor. ‘Georgia made her choice, now I want to make mine. I want myself back.’ Natalie watched Declan’s expression become wary. ‘I’ve tried, but trouble attracts me, and vice versa. Honest truth? I like it that way.’
Declan rubbed his forehead. ‘This isn’t exactly news to me, Natalie.’
‘I know, Declan. But I just can’t settle for a life where I am constantly having to pull myself back. I am passionate about my patients and passionate about my work: the tough stuff, not research. Without that? I’m barely alive.’ She’d just re-read bits of a memoir: a psychologist and professor of psychiatry (possibly the only academic she had any time for) who had bipolar disorder. Leaning in to Declan, she quoted: ‘If I can’t feel, if I can’t move, if I can’t think, and I don’t care, then what conceivable point is there in living?’
Declan looked thoughtful. He stood and went to his bookshelf. ‘If memory serves,’ he said, ‘she abandons the idea of a life without mayhem, but—’
‘Not mayhem. Without storms,’ said Natalie. ‘Because she preferred turmoil over a stunningly boring life.’ Like a life in the country doing research.
Declan shook his head, leaned in as he sat. ‘I doubt Professor Jamison would be happy to know that’s all you took from the book.’
Natalie smiled ruefully. ‘Yes I know, Declan. She thinks lithium saved her life.’
And Natalie was taking her lithium. Just a lower dose, to minimise side effects. It was hard to know which was worse: the black hole or the prospect she might never feel the wild energetic magic of a high ever again. ‘Not just the lithium,’ Natalie added. ‘Also her psychotherapist.’
She wasn’t normally one for sentimentality but now she smiled. ‘What would I do without you?’
Natalie started reclaiming her life by throwing out the pastel-coloured clothing she’d tried for the demure-researcher look. Floral? She shuddered. One night down, and the nightmares were better. Telling her fears to fuck off was working better than meditation. As for the herbal tea, she’d thrown her Morning Dew to the cockatoos, who were as uninterested in it as she was.
The next day Jacqueline Barrett informed her that the jury had turned in a verdict. Natalie wondered if Georgia would have taken the same decisive action regardless of the jury’s conclusion. She congratulated the lawyer, but neither of them felt like celebrating. Still not sure what she felt about Liam, she texted him: Nobody won this one.
Georgia might have been found not guilty, but Natalie felt guilty enough for them both.
‘I have missed seeing you.’ Wei came over as soon as she arrived, meeting her at the computer carrel. He looked her up and down. ‘Had a makeover, have we?’
Natalie turned to face him, back in skin-tight black and her own bodyweight of silver jewellery, a heavy line of kohl around her eyes. It was a new look only to those who had met her for the first time since she arrived down the coast—now she was looking like the real Natalie. She hoped her inner sense of self would catch up soon.
Wei’s expression suggested that he knew why Natalie was pulling all her papers out of the trays. ‘I’ve done a lot of thinking. I want to finish off some things here and then I’m resigning.’ She wasn’t sure she actually had any arrangement formal enough to warrant a resignation, but it amounted to the same. A failed trial of sanity-on-the-sea.
For a moment Wei looked surprised, though she couldn’t imagine why. It wasn’t as if he would be there much longer either. ‘Does Frank know?’
Natalie shook her head. ‘Not yet.’ She put the papers in her bag and slung it over her shoulder. ‘I need to use the computer in the office.’ She didn’t wait for his response, just strode into the office that had once been Reeva’s and Alison’s, and fired up the machine.
She was determined to resolve this case, in her own mind at least. With any luck, she’d be able to give Damian some sort of proof as a consolation prize for helping her hold herself together in the past few months.
She felt decidedly unhappy, but the flip side was that she was feeling. Facing life, not running away from it. Perhaps Georgia’s greatest gift, one Natalie didn’t feel she deserved, was to show her how much she did want to live, and how grateful she was to Declan and the hospital team that had treated her and steered her away from ending up like Georgia.
She was feeling the normal—unpleasant—feelings of life not dealing you the cards you want. Much better than the grip of despair that could lead her places she didn’t want to go.
And she felt adequately energised to try and re-deal the pack. In her own house, in her own job, after talking to the real estate agent about repairs to the stilt house. And after finishing what she had started with Frank and his wives.
She opened up the internet browser on Reeva and Alison’s computer. This time she went through its full history. After staring at the browser and the genetic searches she couldn’t believe she had missed it. Why would anyone risk their baby with an amniocentesis if there was no need? The baby needed checking only if one parent was positive. From her family history—lack of it—Alison had known she wasn’t a carrier. It was Frank she would have checked.
She made some calls. The second lab found his test results for Huntington’s. Done a week before Alison died, around the time she had rung her ex-boyfriend Oliver, when she didn’t want Frank to know what she was up to. Natalie had to ask the technician to repeat the results twice.
Negative.
On the way back to the stilt house, she stopped in Lorne. Eliza Carson’s gallery was closed but she made her way around the back where she could see Eliza in the breakfast room painting. She looked up when Natalie knocked, making no attempt to hide her irritation at the intrusion as she opened the door.
‘I don’t have anything to say to you.’ Eliza’s lips were pressed firmly together, faint creases lining her mouth. She was about the same size as Natalie, a little heavier, but not prepared for Natalie pushing past her.
‘Out! I want you out of here.’ She stood in the doorway as Natalie sat on a kitchen chair.
‘After we talk.’
Eliza went to get her phone.
‘If you want the police I’d be delighted. I’m sure they’d be very interested in my theory of who petrol-bombed my house. And let’s not get started on the cost of an expensive pair of tyres for my bike.’
Eliza crossed her arms, digging into her fingernails into her own flesh. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Really? Should we call your son, then?’
Eliza’s fingers loosened their grip. For the first time she looked doubtful.
‘Sit.’
Eliza reluctantly did so.
‘So here’s my theory,’ said Natalie lying back in her chair. She put her bike helmet on the ground. ‘Jasper may or may not know who his daddy is, but unless you have DNA evidence of someone other than Frank, he’s going to be pretty sure he does know.’
‘It isn’t any of your business.’
‘It became my business when Alison died because I have this odd characteristic. I like to pay for my mistakes. Balance the ledger. Don’t care if someone owes me, happy to let it go. But if I owe them? I like to pay. I owed Alison because I behaved badly; I hurt her, and she died before I got to say sorry properly. She wouldn’t talk to me back then, and more recently she had other things on her mind.’
‘She’s dead. If the Malosevics are responsible they’ll get away with it. That’s what happens when you are that arrogant and rich.’
‘But it also became my business when someone targeted me. Any idea why that might be, Eliza?’
She shook her head. But she suspected something; she wouldn’t look Natalie directly in the eye.
‘You’ve been
paid off, to keep quiet, right?’ Eliza didn’t respond, which Natalie took as an affirmative. She pushed ahead. ‘So here’s my wild theory. Jasper, a bit lost and fatherless, sees me in the band. Sees Frank checking me out. Maybe hears that Frank and I have a regular get-together in Wye River, it being a small town and all, and nothing like that would be hard to find out around here. Including where I’ve been staying. You still with me?’
Eliza nodded. Her eyes went to the clock.
‘And just maybe you are on Alison’s side, hell you’ve been there before, haven’t you? And you were seeing it happen all over again, or so you thought. Even if Alison didn’t.’
Eliza was shaking her head, now looking angry. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Jasper wouldn’t…’
‘Wouldn’t slash my tyres? Petrol-bomb the house? Really? Someone did.’
‘He wouldn’t. I haven’t said anything to him about Alison or Frank or…Nothing.’
Natalie wondered if she could be telling the truth. If Eliza hadn’t told him, he’d worked it out for himself. ‘There is of course another possible motive along the same lines.’
Eliza frowned.
‘What if Jasper thinks he’s Frank’s son—and wants to be his only son?’
Eliza’s eyes widened.
‘You came back to Lorne when Reeva was pregnant. Did you know about her and the baby?’ Natalie watched her. Her money was on Eliza driving Jasper’s malevolence. Older, with many more years to let bitterness and greed eat away at her. Once Reeva got pregnant the inheritance started to look more complicated. If her bitterness had worked on Jasper, he wouldn’t have been hard to persuade. All Eliza would have had to say to him was, ‘Wish this new doctor would leave town’.
Had Eliza also planned with him to get rid of Alison? Jasper was young and arrogant; he thought he’d get away with it, thought he was invincible. He probably hadn’t covered his tracks well.