by A J Waines
She rubbed her stomach, and admitted defeat with the squid.
‘I’m sorry…about last time,’ I said. I knew I had to bring it up at some point.
‘Forget it,’ she said without looking up. ‘It’s over. I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Okay.’
We were safely through round one, at least.
In fact, we managed to get through the rest of our main courses, desserts and coffees without a single crossed word. At one point she even reached over and grabbed my hand. At last! This was the carefree, kind-hearted Miranda I wanted in my life.
‘I’ve missed you,’ I said.
She gave me a sorrowful smile. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I’ve not been very nice lately, have I?’
‘Sssh.’ I patted her hand. ‘I want you to know I love you, that’s all.’
‘Me too,’ she said, her voice quivering.
‘Here’s to a great relationship between us from now on,’ I said, tipping my glass towards hers again.
The waiter came with the bill.
‘By the way,’ she said, as she lifted her bag on to the table. ‘You must have left this behind at my flat.’
She held up a copy of Enduring Love by Ian McEwan.
In an instant, it felt as though the door had been flung open and an Arctic wind was blowing in.
‘I didn’t leave it there,’ I said, my voice barely audible.
‘It’s got your name in the front.’ She folded back the cover to show me.
‘It’s got my name in it, but I gave it to Con,’ I said. ‘I left it at his place.’
‘Oh…’ she said, shifting in her seat. Her cheeks flushed a deep crimson and she looked down.
Con.
Suddenly it all became clear. How had I been so stupid? All that crap about wanting to keep ‘the boyfriend’ secret. That’s why she’d been playing down the whole situation.
‘Oh, my God,’ I said, my chair screeching as I stood up. ‘Was it Con’s baby? Was he the father?’
Miranda’s face had turned from red to white in seconds.
‘It isn’t serious…’ she said, playing the same card she’d tried on me before.
As if…
Even in my stunned stupor I noticed she hadn’t actually answered my question.
Suddenly the noise of the restaurant, music twanging through large speakers and clashing dishes in the kitchen, turned from exuberance to an intolerable racket inside my head. I had to get out. I dodged my way around chair legs, handbags and those annoying lanterns and burst out into the night air.
Once on the street, I ran. Blindly, with no sense of where I was going. A post box, a litter bin, cracks in the pavement, a manhole cover, Con’s face; everything overlapped into one surreal mosaic. I leapt on the first bus that came along. I didn’t care where it was heading as long as it took me away from Miranda.
It was just after midnight when I got back home. I don’t know how I managed to keep the feta and vine leaves down for so long, but as soon as I got in, my time ran out. I made it to the bathroom and threw up all the goodwill and false hope Miranda had offered me. I held on to my indignation, refusing to give in to the finger of guilt that reminded me I’d left Miranda to pay the bill.
I half hoped I’d find a message from her on my answering machine, something to show that she recognised the impact of the bombshell she’d dropped. Anything. It didn’t even have to be coherent – just an acknowledgement. I pressed the button on the machine twice, but there was nothing there.
Chapter 29
Sam
Rosie was holding an envelope when she arrived for her session that week. She sat down with it on her lap waiting for me to ask what was inside.
‘They’re photos,’ she said. ‘From when I was little. I know it’s not about the crash, but you said you wanted to know more about Mum and Dad. I thought just this once.’
Even though I was sure Rosie’s tragic history would reveal a great deal, I was aware that we had only one more session left after this one. It was all coming a bit late; we couldn’t afford to delve too deeply.
‘Of course. Let’s take a look at them,’ I said. ‘Then we’d better get back to the crash.’
She took a measly three snapshots out of the envelope and spread them on her lap. Rosie’s entire childhood.
‘It’s taken me a lot of courage to bring them…’ she said, with more than a trace of indignation. ‘I thought you’d be interested.’
‘I am.’
A flash of mistrust darted across my mind. Was this a ploy to open up a can of worms that were too fat and entangled to be stuffed back in again, during the limited consultations we had left?
I lifted a side table and placed it between us, keeping my suspicions to myself. I’d see where she went with it.
‘Mum was scared of Dad,’ she said.
I leaned forward to look closely at the first picture, not wanting to touch it without permission. ‘She’s pretty,’ I said.
‘A neighbour, Mrs Dunbar, told me years later that Dad was jealous of any contact Mum had with other blokes. He used to follow her, apparently.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Mum told the neighbour that she always knew he was there, lurking in the bushes or hiding in the next aisle in the supermarket. she could feel his eyes on her, but not in a nice way.’
‘How did that affect you, do you think?’
‘He must have had his reasons, I suppose. He used to hit her when things got really bad. I never knew what she was supposed to have done – I think it was all inside his head.’
‘Did he ever hit you?’
She laughed. ‘He never noticed me enough to bother. I didn’t register on his radar at all – and he wasn’t around much during the years he was on the oil rigs. After the explosion, he came back, but while his body was with us, his mind was somewhere else. He gambled and drank, came home late.’
She made a sucking sound like someone stepping inside from the cold.
No wonder her mother had packed her bags that fateful day. I couldn’t imagine why she’d left it so long.
‘I learnt how to climb out of windows and down the drainpipe when I was small, after Dad started locking us in the house. Mum was terrified for me at first, but then she realised it was our only saving grace. At least she knew I’d be able to get out if there was a fire.’
‘Your mum cared a lot about you,’ I said, stressing every word.
‘Yeah, I suppose she did.’ She said it in a lacklustre tone, as though her mother’s feelings for her didn’t count for a great deal.
‘I think the van going in the water brought all that back to me – the clambering in and out of small windows. I know I could do with losing a few pounds, but I’m more agile than most people think.’
‘Except you’ve lost weight recently.’
She grinned. ‘I have, haven’t I? I’m a lot prettier now without my glasses, don’t you think?’ I’d noticed in our last two sessions that the clunky specs weren’t dominating her face anymore. ‘I decided they make me look geeky. I’m using contact lenses now.’
‘You’re a smart, attractive lady,’ I said. It was hard to think of her as a woman. Even though she was in her thirties, I could only ever think of her as a child. ‘Do you want to say more about your mum?’
‘My memories of her are hazy. Mrs Dunbar told me that when he was on the rigs, Dad made her do late shifts at the cosmetics’ factory, so she wouldn’t have her evenings free, but she’d often swap with her workmates to spend time with me. Thing is, I can’t remember much of it.
‘Do you remember any special times with your mum?’
Rosie picked up the photograph and stroked it. ‘I don’t remember her ever saying she loved me, but I think she did. She got angry with me for climbing out of the window, I can remember that, but it was only because she was frightened I’d hurt myself. That’s a kind of love, isn’t it?’
She looked up. ‘Sometimes you have to work things out like that, don’t you?’ she said.
‘You have to work out from what people do or say, what they really mean.’
As she spoke my heart was turning to putty. Part of me wanted to scoop her up in my arms and hold her, rock her, reassure her. No child should have to go through what she’d suffered. It wasn’t only that both her parents had died so horribly when she was young – and that she’d had to witness it – but she’d also had a complete lack of affection from her father and a distracted, tentative love from her downtrodden mother.
As I feared, Rosie’s past took over the whole session. There was enough material spilling out for months and months of therapy. By the end my heartstrings were tugged into shreds. Rosie even asked if I was okay at one point. My face must have given me away.
‘I really like you,’ she said, as she put the pictures back in the envelope.
There was a lump in my throat the size of a tennis ball.
She looked up. ‘Please can we have more sessions? Can’t you see how this is starting to work now?’
Ah. My heart sank.
‘We said we’d have only one more – you agreed to that.’
‘No, you decided it,’ she said, a prickly edge to her tone.
I didn’t rise to it.
She sank back, her voice softening. ‘The more I see you, the more I realise how much it’s helping.’
This was the moment of truth. I had to lay it on the line once and for all.
‘Your history has been really tough, anyone can see that,’ I said, ‘and therapy could really help you. But our arrangement was for you to recover your memories of the crash, as far as possible. To explore your past you’d need to work long term with someone else; using different techniques. It can’t be with me.’
‘Can’t be with you?’ Her bottom lip quivered. ‘Are you saying you can’t do the kind of therapy I need? Are you saying you’ve never worked with someone who had a messed up childhood?’
I drew a deep fluttery breath. Of course, I had. I couldn’t lie.
I was about to speak when she shot to her feet. She glared at me. ‘You don’t care, do you? Not really.’
She grabbed her bag and ran for the door without another word.
I stood in the hall, listening to her footsteps stomping down the stairs, trying to work out what I should do.
I had a decision to make.
In theory, there was nothing preventing us from carrying on. We could change tack and cover Rosie’s hurt and pain from the past, but it would be a long haul. We didn’t have any hospital bureaucracy instructing us about when we had to finish. It was her will against mine. And Rosie knew it.
The problem was I wanted my flat back; I no longer wanted to be seeing patients after hours. I’d realised after our first consultation here that I’d made a mistake; I should never have suggested it.
But that wasn’t the real issue.
If I offered Rosie another block of sessions, would it be enough? Would it ever be enough? She’d been working for eighteen months with her previous therapist and they would probably still be going strong if it hadn’t been for Erica’s untimely death.
I shuddered at the thought of spending so much time with Rosie. Week after week. Month after month. I’d started to hate Thursdays, especially that crushing blow to the stomach I felt when I thought my day was nearly over, then I remembered she’d be coming over.
I really felt for her, but she pushed and pushed all the time, needing more than I could give. Every time we met, I had to be on my guard, making sure I didn’t say or do anything to allow her to think our connection was anything beyond a professional arrangement. It was wearing to say the least.
I had to face the fact that Rosie seemed attached to me, infatuated even. But it was like a seven-year-old’s crush; regressive and tiresome, yet throwing up material we could work on productively in therapy. If we had more time.
Should I keep working with her, or let her go?
My gut was saying No way, but the professional side of me was prodding me, exhorting me to follow through.
Knowing Erica died out of the blue didn’t help. I’d contacted Professor Dean to see if I could get hold of Erica’s notes from her sessions with Rosie, but he hadn’t got back to me. Erica’s death must have stirred up considerable loss and abandonment for Rosie and it wasn’t that long ago. I was reluctant to replicate that in any way.
I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. The bottom line was I had a responsibility of care towards Rosie; I’d taken that on when I’d started seeing her, privately, at home.
I stared at my dripping reflection. Come on – it wasn’t such a big deal. I’d offer her six further sessions, making it clear that we were preparing for an ending. I wanted a clean ending that left Rosie fortified and hopeful about her future. I’d give her details of private therapists she could work with longer term and we’d get it all set up with a smooth transition. There were plenty of psychotherapists who were happy working from home.
I let out a deep sigh and buried my face in the towel. I had to get this right. I’d failed to respond to a patient in crisis once before and look how that had ended up.
I slept fitfully that night, close to the surface; I couldn’t get scenes of Miranda and Con out of my head. They’d lived together as flatmates for a while, over a year ago, but Miranda had moved out in a shot when Dad offered to pay for a flat of her own with studio space. It had never occurred to me that something might have been going on between them.
At what point did she and Con turn their casual friendship into a more intimate one? I tried to find memories of the two of them together to recall how they’d acted around each other. Should I have seen it coming? How many times had they slept together? Did he say the same things to her as he’d said to me? Did he hold her, kiss her in the same way he’d kissed me?
Stop…
I woke up in a sweat and squashed an earbud into my ear to make the radio block out my thoughts.
Soon after, patchy dreams took over. Rosie was playing with the quartet and I could hear them, floating on a tiny island in the middle of a lake. I saw edited highlights from the DVD we’d watched together and then suddenly I was awake. It was as though two wires in my brain had connected and made a spark, but like a scout’s campfire, I couldn’t get the spark to catch.
I got out of bed, put the kettle on and tried to step back into the dream. The image of a man standing, kept flashing into my mind. I had to see Rosie’s footage of the party again. There was something there I’d missed. Something that was trying to get through to me.
I paced around the flat in my pyjamas, making a little circuit of the bedroom, sitting room and kitchen. The ironing was folded on a chair. When had I done that? The dishes were cleared from the draining board. I stood in the kitchen biting my thumbnail, trying to recall when I’d stacked everything away. I put it down to overwork.
In the light of my dream, the next morning I made a decision and picked up the phone. Rosie sounded both surprised and overjoyed to hear from me.
‘I know we don’t normally have contact between sessions,’ I said, ‘but I wondered if you could bring the disc of the Hinds’ party again on Thursday.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘I’d like to see it again. I’m not a hundred per cent sure,’ I said, ‘but I think there’s something there that could be useful.’
I heard a tiny hiccup on the other end of the line. ‘Thursday – that’s our last session…’ She dropped the words like rocks.
I put her out of her misery. ‘Okay. I’ve been thinking. We could have another six sessions if—’
‘Really?’
Her eagerness made me want to weep. ‘Just six, mind. This is more than I usually offer, but—’
‘Oh, yes – yes, please!’ she squealed. It was as if I’d given her a million pounds.
‘We’ll talk about it on Thursday. I’m sorry to bother you.’
‘It’s no trouble at all. Thank you for…you know...’
I pr
essed end call and got ready to pop out. I needed, among other things, more Hula Hoops. They may be junk food, but they were an absolute staple in my diet and I only had a few crumbs left in the last packet. I must have worked my way through it in my sleep!
On the way back from the corner shop, I had a creepy feeling that I was being followed. Was it Bruce? I really didn’t have the energy to cope with this now.
I stopped abruptly and shot round, but there was no one there. I picked up my pace and dragged my hood over my head against the sleet that was slicing the chilled air. I was being ridiculous. My imagination was running riot. Nevertheless, at the last corner I broke into a run and scrabbled around with numb fingers at the main door trying to get it unlocked. I raced up the stairs and as soon as I got inside my flat, snapped the bolt across.
I huffed and puffed like a fox getting down its burrow just in time.
Chapter 30
Rosie
I can’t tell you how relieved I am! Sam told me we could have six more appointments. I nearly fell to my knees. I was so scared she was going to end it. I was getting desperate, but now everything is going to be all right.
She even rang between sessions, which I thought we weren’t supposed to do! Of course, I’d speak to her every day if I could. I kind of do in my head anyway, but it’s not the same. She’s so caring – the look in her eyes when I showed her my family photos. I thought she was going to burst into tears…for me!
I’ve forgiven her for letting me down over the auction house, because she’s starting to feel like, well, family. Finally, for the first time in my life, someone warm, funny, caring and incredible really cares about me. I’m so excited. I’ve got such plans for the two of us.
At the music store, Sid seems happy for me to take the odd afternoon off. It works perfectly for me. It’s only a twenty-minute journey from Charing Cross to Clapham. I wonder if Sam has discovered any of my little liberties by now. I haven’t taken much and I do plenty of good things in return, so there’s no harm done. It’s lucky we’re about the same height, and now I’m losing weight I could probably squeeze into most of her clothes if I wanted to.
