Daniel reached into his pocket and put a five pound note in the man’s hand, making sure he simultaneously met his eyes.
‘Good on you, friend.’
‘Hope so,’ Daniel murmured. ‘Have you got a place to stay?’
He nodded vaguely.
‘Take care, then.’
Daniel hurried towards the restaurant. He was late - a certain sign that he wasn’t looking forward to the encounter. But the place, as he pushed open the glass door, looked pleasant enough with its muted pastels and long chrome bar. Paola was already there, seated at a round corner table overlooking a stretch of back garden in which a life-like sculpture gazed back at the diners.
‘Daniel. How nice.’ She stretched her face towards him for a regulation kiss on either cheek, then scrutinised him. ‘You are looking, how shall I say, a little more mature, but as handsome as ever.’ She wiped a spot of lint from his jacket. ‘There. Better. A woman’s touch. I have already ordered us some wine. Red. I hope it suits you.’
‘Very well.’ She was a disconcerting woman, this Paola, he thought once more. There was a lavishness about her, an amplitude not only of form and feature, but of gesture. Her black eyes were vast, her mouth full and very red to match the redness of the dress which billowed beneath her. Her arms jangled with the weight of bracelets and her gleaming dark head with a dangle of heavy earrings. Her teeth flashed and her eyes flashed and her jewellery flashed and she laughed with gusto. All this he should have liked, since he didn’t disapprove of flamboyance. Maybe his wariness was as much to do with the adolescent boy in him that recoiled in fear from her one-time advances, as it was to do with their professional differences. In any event, tonight he was prepared to be as friendly as he needed to be.
‘We order, Daniel. And then we have no false pretences. I know you didn’t ring me to see the beauty of my face.’
He laughed. ‘The menu looks great.’
‘It is. I have decided on the roast vegetables to start and then scallops.’
‘Salad and wrack of lamb for me.’
‘A man’s dish.’
‘You have your predetermined ideas.’
‘And you, your predetermined male ways.’ She dipped her bread into the oil and chewed at it with an air of triumph.
A young man in a very white shirt took their order. Daniel cleared his throat. She pre-empted him.
‘Your life as a single parent is going OK?’
‘We’re managing.’
‘Raising a child isn’t a business.’
‘Nor is it any of your business, Paola.’ Daniel shifted into a higher gear. It was always like this with Paola. He had to remind himself that if he didn’t attack, he would be perpetually on the defensive. ‘I rang you because…’
‘You don’t have to tell me. I know. If it wasn’t about an opening for me at the Marlborough, it was because of Isabel Morgan.’
‘It was and is.’ He met the gloating eyes.
‘You’re still angry with me because I stole her away from you.’
‘It’s not that.’
‘Don’t lie to me Daniel. You are transparent. Well, maybe you have a small right to be angry. But Isabel and I, we hit if off right away. We met at a dinner party, you know, and we couldn’t stop talking. It just worked between us.’
‘What just worked?’
‘I knew that I could help her. As soon as I told her about the group, the work I did with women, she wanted to come to me. She needed to be with a woman.’ She made a prim little gesture which sat oddly on her face.
‘I don’t mind that she went to you, Paola.’
It was a lie and she picked it up straight away.
‘Don’t give me this disinterested professional garbage. If you cared about her, you minded.’
‘OK, I minded.’ He changed tack. ‘I minded most because I wasn’t informed that for a while we were seeing her simultaneously. But that’s in the past now. Tell me how it went with her.’
‘If you’re asking, did she talk about you, she didn’t. To her credit. Only once at the very beginning when I drew her out, she said she was very angry at you. Very Angry.’
‘Of course. We were just getting somewhere. The transference was beginning to bite.’
‘You know these words don’t mean a lot to me.’ She waved a large hand in contemptuous dismissal.
Daniel swallowed rising bile with a peppery leaf. He wouldn’t let her deflect him with an argument about their respective techniques. As far as he was concerned, whatever Paola did had nothing in common with analytic therapies, even if it paraded under the same rubric. From his point of view, she simply charged into her patients lives and tried to rearrange them, like some overbearing agony aunt. He chose his words and tone with care.
‘We’re not in a seminar, Paola, so we don’t need to have disagreements. Just tell me what happened with Isabel,’ he said calmly, then added, ‘The police have been on to me about her.’
‘The police!’ Her pitch was so voluble, the people at the next table turned to stare. She gave them a warm smile and lowered her voice. There was something a little furtive in her face. ‘You didn’t give them my name?’
‘Of course not.’
‘I can always depend on you to be a gentleman. So Isabel is in trouble. In Australia, I imagine? That’s why she hasn’t returned my call.’
Daniel let the question pass. ‘Tell me what went on between you.’
‘Well, it was clear to me after fifteen minutes, once she’d told me about herself, how she lived alone, all those lovers, her inability to settle down, those seductive ways of hers, and the fact that she was dissatisfied enough to come to therapy, that she had suffered some kind of deep abuse as a child.’
‘Fifteen minutes and you were certain,’ Daniel bridled.
‘I know these things Daniel. I’m an experienced woman.’
‘Go on.’
‘I asked her straight away, was she not troubled by the fact that she had reached the age of thirty-five and didn’t have a child? Wasn’t the biological clock ticking away? And if not, why not? She told me she’d never wanted children. Well, we had better find out why, I said to her, before it was too late. If she didn’t want children, a hundred to one it was because she didn’t trust men. And if she didn’t trust men, there was a reason.’
‘One reason? Only one.’
‘Don’t be cute, Daniel.’
‘So you gave her your own agenda.’
‘A woman’s agenda. There’s no point beating round the tree, or the bush, you say.’
Her emphasis on the word beating carried a visceral charge. Daniel put his fork down. She didn’t notice his reaction. She was off and running, baiting him again.
‘We’re not all millionaires who can lie on your couch into infinity, Daniel. Nor have we got forever to tease out those little diamonds of truths. Life is short. Anyhow, Isabel didn’t run away, so we found out why she didn’t want children. I started by pointing out to her that being beautiful and seductive and independent were not necessarily virtues.’
‘Wasn’t that just a trifle sadistic?’
Understated irony had no impact on Paola.
‘That jargon again. Unnecessary. I needed to stir her up - so we could move to the core problem.’
‘So you undermined her first, turned her virtues into vices. Malevolent then, if not sadistic.’
‘It’s an effective technique for going places - quickly.’
‘Dangerous, perhaps, too. Your certainty astonishes me.’
‘That is your problem, Daniel. You have no certainties.’ She paused as a waitress cleared their plates away.
‘I’m certain that we’re all different,’ he muttered beneath his breath.
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing. Go on,’ he gave her his sweetest smile, but he was thinking of Isabel. How would she have reacted to Paola’s attack. With anger, of course, but part of her would have agreed with Paola’s assessment, colluded with her. The
self-destructive impulse would have been unleashed.
‘So she told me a little about her childhood, that terrible mother of hers, the aunt who cared - her saving grace, I imagine - the terrible schools. She told it to me flatly, not in self-justification. Which was impressive, but…’
‘You didn’t approve.’
‘Not exactly. You should eat, Daniel. You will be too thin to deal with your patients.’ She dug into her scallops, chewed for a moment, then made a face and called a waitress over. ‘The last time I had this dish, you could taste the ginger, the shallots. The scallops were better cooked. Take it back, please. Tell your chef to pay more attention.’
The young woman looked at her in confusion and seemed about to protest, when Paola uttered a stentorian ‘Go. Quickly!’ She scuttled off like a whipped dog.
‘They have to be kept on their toes. Or the standards go down. Where was I?’
‘Isabel’s childhood.’
‘Yes. She took to the memory work very well. You know the technique I use. She closed her eyes and I asked her to go back to the first house of her childhood and find a safe space in there, one where she was happy, at peace. She described the place to me in great detail. She was good at the work. She told me about a high-up room in a big rickety house where the floorboards creaked. It was very hot, but at least there was shade. From the room there was a view across the farm. Yellow earth and sheep. She liked to watch them. There was also one doll, very battered. She loved that doll. One day it disappeared. She cried and cried. The room didn’t have a key and someone had taken the doll and flung her away. I told her from now on, that wouldn’t happen. I would make sure the door was locked and guarded. Only when she wanted to allow it, would others come in. It was hers alone. Voices could penetrate, of course. Once she felt completely safe, I encouraged her to tell me about these and to wander further afield.
‘The voices were very loud. Always screaming. Her mother’s voice the loudest, blaming her, scolding, unhappy. Blaming her father, too, for their rotten life. There was screaming at night as well. You can imagine the kind. Isabel reproduced it for me graphically, but here is not the place.’ Paola looked into Daniel’s face with a faint leer. ‘Oh good. Here is my food.’ She attacked it greedily, while Daniel wondered what proportion of the memories she attributed to Isabel were due to suggestion and leading questions. He had never heard about the doll, for one. He waited for her to go on.
‘So, all this I imagine you know. But wait, much you don’t know. She told me she had never remembered it before. In the house apart from her parents and her, lived another man and woman, hired hands, I guess. Her mother spent a lot of time lying down and Isabel would go into the darkened room and chat to her, try to get her to smile. Sometimes when she wanted to go into her mother’s room during the day, the door was locked. But she could hear voices squealing, like cats. I told her to go back and eventually she unlocked the door. She found her mother with the hired man. I won’t describe the scene to you. Only that each time Isabel went back to it, it grew a little more brutal, whipping and so on, and the man threatened the little girl who was Isabel and said he would do the same to her if she ever came in there again and he pulled her towards the bed and her mother laughed.
‘Anyhow, this is all preliminary. One day - this took us several weeks to get to - she saw her father beating her mother. Very badly. This happened on several occasions. And then her father took sick. He lay in his bed all the time in a special room and didn’t work outside anymore. Depression, I imagine, though Isabel called it sickness. Isabel would lie with him to cheer him up. He told her how he would take her away from her vile mother, how they would be rich and so on. And Isabel paid her dues. I don’t have to go into the gory details.’
She met Daniel’s eyes meaningfully, but he didn’t take the bait and she carried on. ‘At night, Isabel would hear the screams again from the parental bed. She didn’t want to hear them, not the loudest ones. I had to urge her to visit the scene, slowly of course. We covered a lot of daily life in the process. But eventually she saw it. After she saw it, she didn’t go back to the house any more in memory or in fact. She was sent away.’
‘What did she see?’ Daniel asked. He had hardly touched his food. There was a bad taste in his mouth.
‘Don’t tell me you don’t know?’
‘How can I know whether I know, if you don’t tell me?’ he said stiffly.
‘So you don’t. You surprise me Daniel. So many months, years of working with her.’ Paola paused dramatically. A bracelet jangled. ‘What little Isabel saw was her mother on top of her father. Her hands were around his throat. He was clutching at her wrists, groaning. And then his fingers went limp. He was dead. Isabel’s mother murdered her father. In its best light, it was manslaughter. A sexual accident.’
Paola snapped her fingers as if she had just materialised a rabbit from a hat. ‘That’s why Isabel was sent away so suddenly. And then to all those boarding schools. It’s why her mother would never talk about her father. Poor girl.’
Daniel contained himself. ‘So having unearthed all this how did you recommend Isabel put herself together again.’
Paola wiped her plate clean. ‘The first thing I encouraged her to do was to write to her mother or to go and see her to talk about it. We played out various scenarios and forms of letters, as well as ways for her to handle either her mother’s acknowledgement or denial of the facts. I also worked with her on her self-esteem. I stressed that her mother might have been led to the act in part out of love for Isabel. To defend her against further abuse.’
‘Why on earth…?’
‘Daniel, Daniel, as you know very well, it’s not easy to love the woman in yourself, if you’ve been abused by both parents and god knows who else. And on top of it all, your mother is a murderer. So one has to find love where one can.’
‘Hardly easy. I agree.’
‘Isabel also started to go to the victim support group.’
‘The one you’re linked with in Devon?’
‘I didn’t know I’d told you about that.’
‘News travels.’
She played with her beads for a moment, taking that in, not altogether comfortably, he noted.
‘No, here. She was planning to spend some time in Devon. But first she wanted to go to Australia. Then in the midst of all this, her mother died.’ Paola scowled. ‘Bad timing. I imagine Isabel is still there trying to find things out. Maybe it was more than she could handle on her own.’
‘It certainly sounds likely.’ Daniel was so angry, he could barely bring out a sentence. Paola was looking at him expectantly. ‘So she left you too.’ The flat saying of it gave him pleasure.
She didn’t respond. ‘What did the police want?’
‘They’re looking for her.’
‘What has she done?’ Fear flickered across Paola’s face, discomposing it for a fraction of a second.
‘Are you worrying that you launched her on a cycle of repetition?’ Daniel’s tone was acid. ‘A second murder to exorcise the first.’
‘Do not get cute with me, Daniel. Tell me.’
‘Isabel is missing.’
‘Is that everything?’
He nodded.
She patted her mouth primly with the serviette and called the waitress over. ‘I will have your special shortbread with the berries. Together with a filter coffee.’
‘A double espresso for me.’
Daniel waited for the coffee before speaking again. He was considering, only listening with half an ear to Paola’s relieved monologue about her plans for setting up her own unit. Perhaps one which could be attached to the Marlborough. She had too much work at the moment. So many victimised women knocking at her door. Wanting her to be their good mother. And a television company had approached her to do a series.
In a pause, Daniel interrupted, ‘Isabel’s father wasn’t murdered, Paola.’ His voice was hard. ‘To kill off the memory of someone is not to murder them.’
; ‘Wasn’t murdered? But…’
‘You heard me. You really must beware of taking everything your patients say - or you want to hear - quite so literally. The primary rule is that we deal in psychic events which may or may not be events in the world outside the consulting room. Memory plays tricks. A child’s emotional response to a scene is not the totality of that scene’s factual content. Nor does suggestion help. Some patients like to please. For a while, in any case.’
‘Are you accusing me of hypnotising Isabel?’
‘I’m not accusing you of anything. Just giving you a fact.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re wrong, Daniel. I know. She told me.’
He pushed back his chair with a scrape and gestured for the bill.
She put a hand on his arm. ‘We have to trust our patients. It is what we can give them. So few of them have experienced an atmosphere of trust before. Only in that trust will they heal.’
‘You can enter into a contract of trust with them without taking everything they say or you encourage them to say as the literal truth. If a patient says to me, I want to kill my father, I don’t instantly call in the police.’
‘In America, if you didn’t and something happened, you would be liable.’
‘In that situation, I’d stop practising.’
Her ample bosom heaved with laughter. ‘You’re addicted to chasing clues, Daniel. I know the kind of analyst you are. You could never give it up. The Sherlock Holmes of the consulting room.’
‘But I don’t have a fixed model of what I want my patients to turn into. Nor do I find either victims or perpetrators in every cranny. Let’s hope that between us we haven’t helped to make one of Isabel.’ He rose.
She registered no discomfort, but grew reflective. Devoid of expression, her face suddenly looked weary. ‘She’ll be fine. She’s a strong one. I insist on it. I know. Once she frightened even me. I had a feeling that she would know how to drive someone mad. Because she had been driven mad, herself. Adios amigo. You will come next week, no?’
Daniel gave her his neutral smile. He had no idea what she was referring to and no intention of asking.
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