“So how have you been, Cassie?”
“Not too bad.”
Her psychiatrist didn’t immediately reply. It always took her a while to warm up in their sessions, and he knew when to push, and when to draw back. She sighed deeply, swivelling her head in his direction.
He was wearing one of his usual, dark grey suits, his grey beard neatly trimmed and his kind eyes sparking with intelligence behind his little round glasses. He was so familiar, so comforting. His old school approach to psychological counselling suited her – she greatly appreciated his understated handling of her and his lack of judgment. She even appreciated the old-fashioned leather chaise lounge that she lay on, which always made her think of a prop from a movie set.
He always managed to make her feel safe.
“It’s all right, Cassie. In your own time.”
“I haven’t had the best couple of weeks,” she said, twisting her head back round so that she was staring up at the ceiling once more, knotting her gloved hands loosely together just under her chest.
Dr Thornton said nothing when she stopped speaking, his silence urging her on. She sighed deeply once more. Her thoughts were so jumbled today and she wasn’t quite sure how to arrange them.
No shit. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?
“I’ve met two people in as many weeks that have troubled me,” she began slowly.
“Who have you met, Cassie? And in what way did they trouble you?”
She frowned slightly, chewing on her bottom lip as she tried to put her thoughts into some kind of order.
“Two weeks ago, a few days after my last session with you, I bumped into an ex. I was in the public library, looking for something to read because my kindle wouldn’t charge and I bumped into a guy that I used to date from University. You know, as in before it happened. He was asking a lot of awkward questions and I very nearly had a full-on panic attack right there in front of him.”
“Very nearly? As in, you didn’t?”
“No, I managed to control it.”
“That’s fantastic, Cassie, that’s real progress. There was a time not so long ago that you wouldn’t have been able to control such an attack.”
“No, I guess not,” she said, before lapsing into silence.
“How did it make you feel, seeing your ex?” Dr Thornton asked gently, apparently instinctively knowing that she did want to talk about it, she just wasn’t quite sure how.
“It made me feel frightened. Unsafe. He was the love of my life, when I was twenty-one, but when he first came up to me, I didn’t recognise him in the slightest.”
“Was he verbally confrontational with you, Cassie?”
“No, not really. I mean, he made me feel uncomfortable, but he wasn’t threatening, or anything.”
“I see. What did he say specifically that made you feel uncomfortable?”
“He was just asking questions, about why I just disappeared the way I did and cut him so completely out of my life.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Cassie. It is natural to see an ex love and have those old feelings of love stirred up, but they aren’t real emotions, they are ghosts of emotions. The shadow of something that was once real on the metaphorical cave wall. There is no reason for you to feel guilty, or to feel like you have betrayed your husband in any way by your experiencing a surge of these ghost feelings.”
“That’s the thing – even when I realised who he was, I felt nothing.”
“And again, that is an entirely human, reasonable reaction. Instead of remembering the emotion of love that you once felt for him, you are feeling a strong sense of disassociation. Any reminder of your past is too painful to confront outside the comfort of a controlled situation like this one. But I will say this; you need to make peace with your feelings for this person, wherever they may lie, if there is any danger of you running into him again. You need to set your emotional boundaries...”
“He was only at the library for the computer access,” she said quickly. “And he was only in town for the weekend.”
She didn’t normally interrupt Dr Thornton, but she had no desire to talk about her ex. In fact, now she wished that she hadn’t mentioned him at all.
“We’ll leave this subject for now. Tell me about your second encounter."
For a moment, she didn’t twig what he was asking her, then an image of Ethan M Tayler slammed into her mind. Just thinking about him caused her heart rate to skip up a notch and her stomach to perform a little backflip.
“I met a man yesterday, at the supermarket. I ran over his foot.”
Abruptly, she stopped, unsure how best to proceed.
“And you were attracted to this man?”
His blunt observation startled her, and she sharply twisted her head to the side to look at him for a second. He sat there placidly, his thin legs crossed in a decidedly effeminate way, his leather-bound notebook balanced upon his knee as he peered at her over the top of his round glasses. His eyes seemed too large for his face, like a wise old owl. Their brown depths radiated warmth, kindness and intelligence, like he had been there, done that, and won the t-shirt for compassion. He rubbed his neatly trimmed, white beard as he gazed kindly down at her, silently imploring her to continue.
“I… I wouldn’t say attracted, exactly, but when I met him, it felt like the most real moment I’d experienced for a long time.”
“A real moment? How do you mean?”
She sighed as she struggled with her thoughts.
“When I’m with Hugh, I feel like I’m just going through the motions. I feel like we’re stuck in a rut. But this guy, he made me feel like I was alive. He made me feel like life was suddenly filled with possibilities, that life could be fun, and exciting. And that made me feel so guilty.”
“How are things between you and your husband?”
“Are we talking about sex, here?”
“We’re talking about anything that you want to talk about.”
There were times, like now, that she felt as if her psychiatrist talked in circles. It could be frustrating, but ultimately, she trusted his judgement, even if he was prone to speaking in riddles. She supposed that it was mainly an effective tactic, that his roundabout questions could catch her off-guard, forcing her to examine her problems from a new angle, a new perspective.
“We still have sex,” she said. “It’s not as often as it used to be, but when we do, it’s satisfactory.”
“And you experienced a strong sexual pull towards this man in the supermarket?”
“That’s a very personal question,” she said, squirming slightly on the couch.
Dr Thornton laughed softly, but there was no malice or even a hint of patronisation in his voice.
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I’m not here to judge, but I am here to guide, in the loosest possible way. But ultimately, you must forge your own path. Will you see this man again?”
“No,” she said.
“Hmm. Before you do embark on an affair with this man, you might first want to consider your options.”
“I never said that I was going to have an affair.”
“Cassie,” he said softly. “It’s me you’re talking to. I am inside your head, am I not? People are so easy to find nowadays, aren’t they? Even if you didn’t accept his number, you still know his name.”
“What? I didn’t tell you that. How did you know that?”
“It was easy to deduce, from that which you did not say. You simply saying it was the most real moment you’d had for a long time made it clear to me – one cannot experience such a real moment without real names to give the encounter weight and to tether it to your existence. And I doubt very much that you accepted his number because the connection you felt with him made you feel guilty. Had you not experienced guilt, you would have accepted his number without conscience. The fact you are telling me about this encounter proves that you are torn between seeing this man again, or not. Whether you should seek him out on social medi
a, or not.”
“That’s a big assumptive leap on your part,” she said, amazed by the inciteful observation.
“Not really. But I do strongly urge you to personally examine your motivations for possibly contacting this man. It might help you to think of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol.”
“Huh?”
She had been seeing Dr Thornton for the best part of three months now, but his fanciful analogies still took a bit of getting used to.
“It might help you to think about these three men as the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. The latter and the former of which have shaken your carefully built-up existence to the core. Your ex-boyfriend is, of course, the ghost of Christmas past, the man in the supermarket the ghost of Christmas future. Your ex forced you to confront your past, and Supermarket Man represents a future that could possibly be carefree and filled with fun.”
Cassie thought about that for a moment. It wasn’t quite A Christmas Carol as she knew it, but then, she was more than familiar with Dr Thornton’s flights of fancy and artistic licence on such matters.
“I’m really not so sure about that,” she said softly, more to herself than to him.
“Think about it, Cassie. Your emotions are both repressed and exaggerated with regards to these two new men. You have repressed your emotions from the past and therefore the love you once felt for this figure from the past, and at the same time you have put too much weight on the figure that has become symbolic in your mind of your future. The encounter with the man from the supermarket has taken on greater meaning in your mind than what it is worth. The man that exists in your present, as in your husband, represents your angst and guilt. And you know what the most important thing in life is, don’t you? The present is the most important thing in all our lives. Because when it all boils down to it, that’s all any person has. If you still love your husband, Cassie, I strongly advise you to work on your marriage.”
It wasn’t like Dr Thornton to tell her what to do, and the strangest feeling tightened in her guts. She wasn’t sure what the feeling was, exactly, but it left her disorientated, like things was subtly off-kilter. It was much like the feeling she sometimes got when she walked into a room, only to forget why she had walked into the room. Or when she experienced the occasional, creeping sense of déjà vu at the most innocuous of times. Or when she woke in the middle of a nightmare, unable to remember what the dream was about but still shivering in fear, just the same…
“My marriage is fine,” she said, that sense of unease still clinging to her.
“If your marriage was fine, then you wouldn’t be considering pursuing an affair with a relative stranger and throwing away your life.”
Cassie squirmed on the sofa, surprised and confused by his sudden judgement of her. It really wasn’t like him at all.
“Look, Cassie,” he said in placatory tones, “I know what you’re thinking – you think that I’m speaking out of turn. But sometimes a person simply needs a dose of tough love. What I’m saying is for your own good and is coming from an objective, professional viewpoint that is in your best interest. Do you still wish to have children with Hugh?”
“It’s not happening naturally, and he’s pushing for me to get checked out at the doctors. But he knows how I feel about that. I don’t want to be poked and prodded around by those so-called professionals and spend all that money for something that might not even work, anyway.”
“Is that the whole truth, Cassie? Or do you just not want to have children with Hugh?”
“Yes, it’s the truth,” she said too quickly.
“If it’s true, then why are considering embarking on an affair?”
“But I’m not, you just made that assumption,” she retorted.
“It’s not my place to tell you what to do, but I think it’s time for you to get yourself together. You need to get out there and meet people. You need to start socialising and by that I do not mean instigate an affair. You need to make use of that degree and pursue a career in journalism, or commit to the idea of starting a family. You need to make some serious changes, Cassie.”
Cassie sat up. She had heard enough. Dr Thornton never talked to her like this, like an angry father who believed that his offspring was making a horrible mess of their life.
And not only that, in that moment, she was struck by how much he sounded like Hugh.
“I think I should go,” she said, getting to her feet.
Dr Thornton remained sitting in his leather swivel chair next to his large, oak desk, gazing impassively up at her. Again, that strange feeling curdled in her guts – the one which she couldn’t quite place except to say that things felt off.
“You’re paying good money for these sessions, Cassie, and you still have twenty minutes left.”
“It’s okay. I think I’ve had enough psychoanalysis for one day.”
“You need to trust me, Cassie, I’m only trying to help you and there is no one better qualified than me to do it. Don’t forget to schedule your next appointment with my receptionist on your way out.”
Cassie made sure that she didn’t.
CHAPTER SEVEN
That night, after the entirely dissatisfactory session with Dr Thornton, she sat there curled up on the end of the leather sofa with her laptop balanced on her knee and a glass of red wine in hand, her head positively buzzing with all the thoughts whizzing around in her mind.
For a start, she was still reeling from her session with Thornton. Not once, in all the months that she had been going to him had he passed judgement on her. He had always listened to her with a cool, professional detachment.
Yeah. Not today though…
She was incredibly hurt by this – she felt as if he had let her down. She also wondered if she was maybe just being oversensitive, and that she should just trust him to do his job. But today, it simply hadn’t felt right in his office. It wasn’t as if she had anyone to talk to about this latest development either, seeing as Hugh was in Scotland. Not that she could talk to him about this anyway, as the air still hadn’t exactly been completely clear when he had left this morning. The unspoken tension had remained between them, as heavy and as oppressive as the air of an impending thunderstorm.
Why hasn’t he called me yet, anyway?
She didn’t want to call him out of sheer principle. Like her, he didn’t have a facebook, but unlike her, that was because he deemed it too childish for a man of his profession, rather than because he had a near-pathological fear of other interacting with other people.
Sighing deeply, she took a big gulp of wine.
I’m lonely.
The thought was like a sledgehammer in her brain – the absolute truth of it left a deep sadness in its wake. She was lonely. Being with Hugh made her lonely.
Maybe me not getting pregnant is a sign that we shouldn’t be together…
But the mere thought of her functioning as a single woman was enough to bring on a panic attack. She couldn’t be alone, she just couldn’t. She had never been alone. Growing up as one half of a set of twins meant that the mere concept of alone was completely alien to her. In many ways, Hugh had replaced Chloe.
Tears pricked her eyes as she thought of her dead twin.
No. Don’t go there. Don’t think about her.
She took a big gulp of wine before placing it on the coffee table, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. Before she knew quite what she was doing, her fingers were typing facebook into the search engine.
Or perhaps she knew exactly what she was doing all along.
It was all too easy to reactivate her account – by some miracle she even remembered her old password. Her facebook had lain dormant for five long, lonely years, and prior to deactivating her account she had deleted all her friends, messages and set the privacy settings to private. She was invisible, and the cloak of invisibility emboldened her. Before her brain had a chance to catch up with her fingers, she was typing the name into the search function – a name that was branded in he
r memory…
Ethan M Tayler.
Because try as she might, she couldn’t get the stranger’s face whom she had met yesterday out of her head.
He’s not a stranger, she reminded herself. He’s not a stranger because I know his name…
And then, sure enough, there he was – a picture of him, next to his name on the very first page of the search. Her heart jumped into her throat at the sight of him. It was as if that photo had been taken just hours before she had met him at the supermarket – he even wore the same, khaki jacket. The smallest smile tugged at a corner of his mouth and those sparkling blue eyes jumped out at her off the screen.
She found herself staring unblinkingly at his face, entranced by his features and the way his brown hair hung in dishevelled curls over his broad forehead. Her heart was hammering hard and she extended her arm for the wine.
She hovered the mouse over his image but there were no further photos or information to show. She would have to send him a friend request.
I can’t do that…
Why can’t I?
It wasn’t like she was doing anything wrong. It was only facebook, wasn’t it? She was only being friendly, she wasn’t coming on to him.
But what the hell was she supposed to say? She thought for a moment then began to type:
Hi, it’s the girl who ran over your foot in the supermarket yesterday. I hope your toes are recovered… Do you fancy getting a coffee sometime?
Promptly, she deleted it again – that was so bloody naff, not to mention forward. The tone was too flirtatious, and she absolutely was not flirting, in any way, shape or form…
Hey. So I found you. I’m sorry I ran over your foot yesterday.
She stared at the words and the blinking cursor. Was that flirtatious? She didn’t think so.
I shouldn’t be doing this, she thought.
And then she hit return.
“No. Definitely shouldn’t have done that,” she said to the empty living room.
She breathed in deeply, surprised to find that she was trembling, and she took a big gulp of wine to steady her nerves. Her glass was near empty. She drank too much, she knew she did, but she was beginning to hate being alone and alcohol went some way to numbing the loneliness and easing the nightmares.
After She Died Page 3