‘Please don’t mention it again. But, and I’m sorry if this sounds impertinent, are you getting help?’
This time his smile looks less forced. ‘I have a friend who acts as my supervisor for my own caseload and a therapist for more personal stuff. And then there’s my mother, who you met last time you came. She can’t resist being helpful.’
‘The lady with pink hair?’
‘That’s the one.’ Joe reaches back for his notebook. He still looks pale. ‘How was your weekend?’ he asks.
She has her answer all ready. She has learned that detail reassures Joe so she tells him about the film she saw on Friday evening, her early morning swim in the Jesus Green lido and the pub by the river where she had lunch on Saturday. She talks about the bike ride she took with the local cycling club on Sunday afternoon and the enormous late Sunday lunch she cooked for herself when she got home. Some of what she tells him is true. She really did swim in the lido and cycle to Bury St Edmunds on Sunday. Not with any club, of course, she has never been a joiner. As for the rest, she’s picked up enough information on the internet to sound convincing.
‘The rest of the time, I was reading about South Georgia,’ she says. ‘Did you know Ernest Shackleton is buried there?’
She can see from his wary look that he doesn’t know who Shackleton is.
‘Explorer in the early twentieth century,’ she says. ‘His ship was stranded in the Antarctic ice so he set off in a tiny boat, with a handful of crew, to cross the Weddle Sea in the middle of winter. He landed on South Georgia’s west coast, the really wild bit, and then had to hike across the island to reach help at the whaling stations.’
Joe is smiling now.
‘There are no roads on South Georgia.’ She is pretty sure she’s told him this before. ‘No footpaths, not even animal trails, the mammals aren’t big enough. They really were crossing virgin land.’
‘You seem to be looking forward to it,’ he says.
‘Very much,’ she agrees, and wonders how long she can keep the conversation on South Georgia up. ‘It’s a unique opportunity.’
He nods, and she can’t help feeling he knows exactly what she is doing. ‘I haven’t heard from your new GP yet,’ he says.
‘Really? I was told my records would have been sent over by now. I’ll chase them up tomorrow.’
Again, a look that lasts a second too long.
‘What would you like to talk about today?’
He has never given her the choice before. ‘Under hypnosis or normally?’ she asks.
‘Up to you.’
She wonders if this is a trap.
‘I’m curious as to why, in all the time we’ve been meeting, you’ve never wanted to talk about your personal life.’
Felicity can feel her body stiffening in the chair and tells herself not to let it show, not to move an inch on the outside. She makes herself keep smiling.
‘I’ve been focusing on my problems,’ she says. ‘My private life isn’t a problem.’
‘Have you ever been married?’
Where is this coming from? Can he possibly suspect something?
‘Why do you ask?’ she says.
‘Standard procedure,’ Joe tells her. ‘We’d have got into it before now but your issues seemed all encompassing.’
‘I’m not sure my personal life is relevant.’ She knows how defensive she sounds.
‘How can your personal life not be relevant to your mental wellbeing?’
She has no answer to give him.
Joe asks, ‘When was your last long-term relationship?’
She doesn’t know. ‘A while,’ she says. ‘I’ve been concentrating on work. I’m posted abroad a lot. My lifestyle isn’t conducive to relationships.’
‘We all need someone,’ he says. ‘When did you last have sex?’
‘Excuse me?’
He holds up a hand. ‘Felicity, I’m your therapist. All these questions are relevant and important.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t feel comfortable talking about things that are so personal.’
‘Tell me about your last relationship.’
‘Stop it!’
She drops her head into her hands. Seconds go by, and then more seconds. She hears the sound of Joe getting to his feet.
‘I’ll give you a moment,’ he says.
She hears the door close and then his footsteps on the hardwood floor of another room. She gets up too and walks to the nearest window, wishing that it was on the ground floor and that she could simply climb out. Some way below, at street level, she can see the elaborate Gothic screen and gatehouse to King’s front court. Beyond the screen, mostly hidden by the pale stonework, a pale face stares back at her. At first, she thinks it is a child, then perhaps a young-looking student. The intensity of the other woman’s gaze is unnerving, and she makes no move to turn away or look elsewhere.
The sound of the door opening alerts Felicity to Joe’s return and she is glad to escape the stare of the student across the street. She turns to face him as he stands in the doorway, almost as though he needs permission to return.
‘Would you like to continue?’ he asks.
She shakes her head. ‘I’m not feeling great,’ she says. ‘I’ve had a headache for most of the day. Can we leave it at that?’
He agrees, of course, and she says goodbye. When she steps outside into King’s Parade, the intense young woman is still there, still staring at her.
48
Shane
Shane wakes to find himself in a bed. This is unusual. Normally, he wakes in a shop doorway, or a bus shelter. More frequently, though, on a park bench. The other rough sleepers are nervous of him and he has learned to avoid them when they are awake. Asleep, though, that’s a different matter. He likes to watch them sleeping.
Confused, he lies in the darkness trying to remember how he got here, what day (or night) it might be, and where here is. He remembers following the tow path from Victoria Bridge towards the colleges and peering under the tarpaulin covering the punts at the Magdalen Street dock. Lately, the city’s street dwellers have taken to bedding down in punts, especially as some of the lazier dock hands leave the cushions out overnight.
He remembers finding the old lady in one of them, curled up with her arms around her shopping trolley and her beret pulled down over her eyes like a sleep mask. He’d watched her for a while, until her snoring quietened, and he’d thought she might be waking up. They often woke up as he watched them, as though they could sense him there.
After the dock, he walked across Jesus Green, and then to the common.
He is hot, which isn’t surprising because he is still dressed. His black sweatshirt is damp with sweat and his jeans are sticking to him. He pushes back the covers and swings his feet to the hardwood floor. His shoes are by the bed. There is pain between his shoulder blades and when he reaches behind his back he can feel the burning pain of a fresh wound. He has been cutting himself again.
His hands are sore too and he can feel the stickiness of blood. This feels wrong, somehow. He doesn’t normally cut himself where the marks will show. He has a flashback to broken glass, squeezing himself through a narrow window and his anxiety builds. He doesn’t break windows, he doesn’t leave a trail, he comes and goes like a ghost. Except now, it seems, he doesn’t. Things are unravelling.
He sniffs the air and can smell a familiar mix of furniture polish, fabric conditioner and coconut shampoo. Of course, he is in Felicity’s house, he has been sleeping in her spare bedroom.
Treading carefully – he knows which floorboards creak and which are silent – he crosses to the window. Her car is parked outside. He lets the curtain fall back and returns to the bed. He straightens the quilt and plumps up the pillow. It looks the same as when he got in, but he knows it will smell of the streets now and that she will know he has been here again. She always knows.
He leaves the room and heads for the stairs. Several of them creak, but he has learned to walk at the very edg
es. As he reaches the ground floor, he hears a church clock striking four in the morning. It will be getting light soon.
The door to Felicity’s room is ajar. He pushes it slowly and it inches open.
49
Joe
Joe almost expects Felicity to cancel their Friday appointment. He sits at his desk, waiting for the phone call that will tell him he won’t be seeing her again, and wonders, a little curiously, about the impending sense of loss that he feels. He tells himself that she is just a patient, and once again, that not all patients can be helped. Or even understood. The sound of the doorbell startles him, that of her voice over the intercom even more.
It will take her two minutes to climb to the second floor. He crosses to his bathroom and checks his face in the mirror. He looks pale, the creases from the corners of his eyes more pronounced than usual. She is at the top of the stairs when he steps back out onto the landing.
‘Hi.’ She is flushed, having taken the stairs at a run.
‘Good evening,’ he replies. ‘Come through.’
She follows him into the consulting room and closes the door. She looks different. He’d spotted it immediately but in the better light can properly appreciate quite how much. She is wearing a dress of white lace, cut high at the neck and with sleeves to her elbows. It has an underskirt of bright fondant pink. It should be demure, and it is far from revealing, but it is tight and ends a couple of inches above her knee. Her hair is curled and she is wearing make-up.
‘Are you on your way out?’ he says, because to ignore such a transformation would feel dishonest.
‘We had a drinks reception at work,’ she says. ‘These heels are killing me.’
He looks down at her high-heeled pink shoes and sees, as he is intended to, that she is barelegged, that her skin is a pale apricot colour and that her ankles are very slim.
‘I’m so sorry about Tuesday,’ she says.
‘Have a seat,’ he tells her. ‘And please don’t be sorry. You became distressed and you let me know about it. That was absolutely the right thing to do.’
She smiles, letting him see her white, even teeth, and sits, crossing her legs. She has great legs. And, just like that, he knows he is being played.
He comes out from behind the desk and walks to his armchair. Pulling it back a few inches he sits.
She does not wait for him to ask her any questions. ‘The truth is,’ she says, ‘I’ve never had a long-term relationship. I was embarrassed to tell you that.’
‘Why would that be embarrassing?’
She half shrugs. ‘Because it’s weird. I’m twenty-eight. Most women my age are married with babies or planning their weddings.’
‘I’m not sure that’s true. Lots of young women put their careers first until they’re well into their thirties.’
She looks down, then peers back up at him. ‘It’s kind of you to say so. But I feel weird.’
Conscious of feeling stiff and uncomfortable, Joe tries to relax a little in the armchair. ‘Why do you think you’ve never had a relationship?’
She answers quickly. ‘I think it’s partly circumstantial. I work overseas a lot, and it’s difficult to put down roots when you’re never in one country for more than a couple of months. But also, on some level, I think I’m afraid of intimacy. I lost my parents very young. I didn’t have the normal opportunities to bond at an early age.’
This is starting to feel like a rehearsed speech.
‘Do you remember your parents?’ he asks.
‘Not really. I remember my grandmother. She didn’t die until I was thirteen.’
‘Were you close to her?’
She makes a thinking face. ‘I’m not sure I’d say close. She took good care of me. But she was quite elderly and also, I think, a bit detached. In any case, it’s not the same, is it? Not the same as having an actual mum and dad.’
Joe thinks about his own relationship with his mother, how at times it seems too close, almost claustrophobic.
‘Did she talk to you about your parents?’ he asks.
‘Never.’ Felicity frowns. ‘I’m not sure I realised that before. That she never mentioned them. I don’t even have any photographs.’
‘What happened to them?’
For a second, Felicity’s face becomes entirely vacant, then she looks bewildered. ‘I don’t think she told me that either. I’ve always assumed it was a car accident but I can’t actually remember her telling me so.’
He waits, to see if she has more to say. She doesn’t. He writes, Parents. What happened?
‘Do you think your difficulty making connections with people is what draws you to extreme environments?’ he asks. ‘On glaciers there can’t be many people to worry about.’
‘That’s true. Maybe my career choice does spring from being uncomfortable around people.’ She matches his smile. ‘Mind you, it’s never going to get any better if I keep jetting off to the other side of the planet.’
‘Are you having second thoughts about South Georgia?’
‘No, I still want to do that. It will be good for me. I think now that these problems I’ve been having, the memory lapses, the confusion, have been my subconscious trying to tell me something’s wrong. South Georgia will give me some breathing space. Some time to think about what I really want. I feel I’m really on the way to getting better. You’ve helped me so much.’
She smiles again. It becomes a little fixed when she sees that he doesn’t return it.
‘Why do you think refusing to admit the truth about commitment issues has manifested as a belief that someone is stalking you?’
Her smile fades. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Under hypnosis, you talked about someone watching you. Someone you called “he”.’
She takes her time. ‘But I never actually saw anyone, did I? It was just a vague uncomfortable feeling. Maybe it isn’t a stalker so much as an unwanted presence in my life.’
Joe wonders how much time she has spent planning this.
‘Are you afraid of men?’ he asks.
She answers a little too quickly. ‘No, of course not.’
‘What are you hoping to get out of the session today, Felicity?’
‘Well, I thought I’d thank you, for your time. And say that you’ve helped a lot and that I’m grateful. And I suppose, I wanted to say goodbye.’
He glances at the clock. They are barely halfway through their allotted time. ‘You want this to be our last session?’ he asks.
Maybe it is a good thing, that this is the last he sees of her.
‘Well, we agreed to six, not including the first time we met, and then we added Friday appointments as well. We’ve covered a lot of ground in that time.’
‘Do you think we’ve got to the bottom of your problems?’
That bright smile is back. ‘I honestly do. I’ve had no more episodes since we started hypnotherapy. I’m sleeping well, I’m doing well at work, looking forward to the new job.’
He says nothing, waiting for her to fill the gap.
‘I’m cured,’ she says cheerily. ‘Well done.’
50
Felicity
Felicity breathes a sigh of relief when she leaves Joe’s office. It’s done, she’s made it through therapy. A few more days and she will be gone. Safe.
Her car is in the Grand Arcade car park but an order she placed last week at Heffers is waiting for collection and the detour won’t take long.
The bookshop is busy and she has to stand in a queue at the enquiry desk waiting her turn. She is almost at the front, one more person to go, when she gets a sense of someone standing too close behind her. She looks back, but the Japanese tourists to her rear are keeping a polite distance. As she returns their smiles, she hears a buzzing sound, low and insistent, below the hum of conversation in the shop. She is suddenly breathing heavily.
The noise she can hear is internalised, a humming in her ears, her own body telling her that something is wrong. The damn woman at the front o
f the queue cannot remember the title of the book she is looking for, nor its author. Her attempts to describe the plot, and the blue and yellow cover, are met with patience by the server but Felicity has to fight back the urge to yell at them both.
Heffers is a huge bookshop, over several floors, but the walls seem to be closing in. She is getting hotter, in spite of the air conditioning, and the rattle of voices around her is becoming ever more shrill. She is scanning faces, but no one will keep still, and there is a heat boring down onto the top of her head. She can feel herself fading, slipping back into herself, as though she might faint. She looks up and sees him.
Freddie is on the gallery that runs around the first floor. He leans on the rail and watches her. When their eyes meet, he does not move. He does not try to hide, but neither does he acknowledge her presence in any way. He is waiting to see what she will do.
There is only one thing she can do. Run.
51
Joe
When most of the pubs are calling last orders, Joe leaves his flat. He checks his mobile phone has a full battery and in his pockets he carries a high-pitched rape alarm and a can of mace. Ashamed of his cowardice, he knows that without a few safeguards he won’t get through the night. His rucksack is filled with sandwiches, cakes and tubs of fruit, all donated by the city’s sandwich bars, all slightly past their sell-by dates.
He tells himself that the sadness he has been feeling all evening is nothing more than an attack of the glums, a period when he feels down for no apparent reason. He tells himself that it is nothing to do with Felicity’s imminent departure and that it will pass.
He starts in the parks. There is a small collection of tents and awnings by the bowling green on Christ’s Pieces and he calls out a greeting as he approaches. They all know who he is. He stays a while with the dark-eyed mother and baby and the sixteen-year-old Scottish boy whom she seems to have adopted.
The Split Page 16