Mine

by J. L. Butler

  ‘Hey, hey,’ she said, pulling me in. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Everything,’ I sobbed, my whole body trembling.

  She quickly led me through to her living room and turned on the gas fire, filling the cosy space with an orange glow. I perched on the edge of the sofa. I’d sat here dozens of times before, curled into the corner with a glass of wine, my feet under a soft throw. I could barely remember those times now. It was as if the memories belonged to someone else.

  ‘Pete Carroll came to chambers to see me,’ I sobbed.

  ‘The bloke who lives downstairs?’

  I nodded. ‘He’s blackmailing me.’

  ‘What? What about?’

  I looked down at my hands in shame and knew it was time to tell her everything. I took a deep breath and began to speak.

  ‘So he’s threatening to go to the police?’ Clare cut in.

  I nodded and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. ‘He’s insinuating that I might have had something to do with Donna’s disappearance.’ I heard the fear in my voice as I spoke. ‘And let’s be honest, the police might agree with him.’

  ‘That little shit,’ said Clare with venom. ‘What does he want? Money?’

  I fixed her with a bleak stare.

  ‘Sex.’

  Her eyes slowly widened.

  ‘And . . . did you?’ she asked.

  I nodded. Seeing the revulsion on her face, I tried to justify myself.

  ‘Yes, I had to. He’s dangerous, seriously Clare,’ I said. ‘I’m sure he’s had a crush on me for a while, in fact he tried to kiss me on my birthday and I said no. And now it’s as if he’s intent on revenge. He said that he was treated at the Maudsley. I don’t know what for. Maybe he was disturbed. Now I think he might be stalking me . . .’

  I took a deep breath to control my hysteria and then put my head in my hands. I wanted to weep, to bawl and sob, but it was as if every muscle in my body was paralysed. Clare came to sit next to me, an arm around my shoulders, but I couldn’t look at her.

  ‘Fran, you have to go to the police,’ she said gently.

  ‘I think he might beat me to that,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘No, he won’t,’ said Clare. ‘And even if he does – so what? He has some half-baked theory about you? Big deal. He’s the one who’s committed a crime. He raped you, Fran.’

  Somewhere in my head, I knew she was right, but I still shrank away from the word. Rape was something that happened in dark alleys by crazed maniacs, not in your own bedroom by a good-looking neighbour. I knew logically of course that sex by coercion was sex against your will. It wasn’t my area of law, but I saw the fall-out in nearby rooms in the advice centres, sandwiched between the bankruptcy proceedings and small-claims court actions, the pale teenage girls, frightened and afraid. Girls who had been threatened that naked photos or porn tapes would be sent viral if they did not acquiesce to more of the same, married women tricked or forced by a brother-in-law or a co-worker. I didn’t handle these cases; volunteers with criminal expertise looked after them, and each time, their advice was the same as Clare’s. Go to the police. But in truth, the law liked clarity and this situation blurred the edges. It was blurred in my mind.

  ‘The thing that I’m most afraid of is that he might be right,’ I said, my voice little more than a whisper.

  ‘That’s crazy!’ said Clare. ‘You had nothing to do with Donna’s disappearance.’

  ‘But what if I did?’ I said looking at her intently, trying to let her see the guilt I’d been carrying inside me. I had hated Donna Joy – that night more than any other – and in my working life I had seen how destructive the force of hate could be.

  ‘I remember waking up at Pete’s, I remember watching Donna’s house. But in those four hours in between – nothing. I can’t remember what I did, Clare,’ I said, desperation creeping into my voice.

  ‘Fran, you cannot seriously think for one moment that you did something to harm Donna Joy.’

  ‘Pete thinks I did.’

  ‘Pete is twisting things in your head to get what he wants.’

  ‘But do you think I’m capable of violence?’

  ‘Fran – this is ridiculous.’

  ‘No, seriously, Clare, I know there’s a link between bipolar and violence. There is, isn’t there?’

  Clare pulled away, shaking her head. ‘I have spent half my life trying to remove the stigma between patients with a mental illness and the shit that people connect it with,’ she said angrily. ‘You’ve heard what people used to whisper at you: schizo, psycho, loony. None of it is flattering, all of it is wrong and offensive.’

  ‘I know all that,’ I said. ‘But it’s just you and me here, Clare. Please, tell me – is it possible?’

  She gave a loud sigh of disapproval.

  ‘If someone is in a severe manic episode, then it’s possible, yes. It’s possible that someone could be violent.’

  ‘What could they do? If they were out of control, I mean?’

  ‘I’ve heard of acts of superhuman strength,’ she said reluctantly. ‘More often, but still uncommon, it’s just aggressive behaviour. Sometimes people have to be sectioned when they’re having a manic episode and substance abuse can increase the risk of violence and physical assault – but it’s still very unlikely.’

  She put her hand over mine.

  ‘And I’m talking “could have”s here because you’re pushing me – these are extreme instances, Fran. Besides, what you’re talking about is something else. This isn’t you going batshit and having to be restrained, this is you blacking out for a couple of hours – not the same thing at all.’

  She looked at me, the concern turning to irritation, the friend overtaking the psychiatrist.

  ‘Come on Fran, what do you think happened here? You broke down Donna’s locked door, delivered a fatal karate chop, then got rid of her body, all before two o’clock in the morning when you arrived back in Islington? Oh, and after hoovering and wiping down every surface with Mr Muscle before you left: I assume forensics have crawled all over Donna’s house and found nothing except traces of Donna – and Martin.’

  I didn’t like her mention of Martin’s DNA being collected by the scene-of-crime team, but I had to admit that she was talking sense.

  ‘That still leaves three missing hours from pub closing time. What could I have been doing? If only I could get that time back. If only I could remember.’

  Clare stood up and walked over to the window, staring through the glass on to the dark shadows on the street.

  ‘I have a friend who might be able to help,’ she said after a moment. ‘His name is Gil. He works at the centre, he’s a clinical psychiatrist who specializes in trauma.’

  I looked at her, a tiny dot of hope growing.

  ‘But I thought you said you couldn’t retrieve memories from a blackout?’

  ‘It’s not an exact science, and I’m not sure if it can be done in your case. But if there’s a way, Gil will know. I think we should see whether it is possible, don’t you?’

  I jumped up and threw my arms around her. ‘Thank you, Clare. You are so wonderful.’

  ‘Hey, it’s OK,’ she murmured, pulling me close, stroking my hair. For a moment, a memory dislodged. A night at university. The night of the summer ball. It had been such a warm day, the balminess was still in the air and the Sloaney girls on the events committee had done a glorious job transforming the grounds of our halls of residence into a wonderland sprinkled with hurricane lanterns; it was as if the whole place had been dusted with stardust and fireflies, just like the night Alex had described, the night he first kissed Donna. Clare and I had been reckless too. We were drunk and happy, the fairground rides at the far end of the lawns making us even more dizzy and heady. I had felt beautiful that evening in a long vintage dress I’d found in a charity shop. A year earlier, I had been the girl behind the bike shed, the school slut who smoked and slept her way around town, trying to get noticed. But that night I’d felt like a
princess in a fairy tale and Clare had been cast in the same spell. I wondered if she ever remembered that night. Those carefree, reckless days of youth – oh, how I missed them.

  Chapter 36

  The West London counselling centre looked unremarkable on a wet Saturday morning. The small car park at the front was empty, except for a drizzle-spattered people carrier in a bay marked ‘Reserved for doctors’.

  ‘Looks deserted,’ I said, suddenly irritated. ‘You’d have thought if anywhere needed to be open at the weekend, it’d be a clinic like this. All those people working in stressful jobs all week, why can’t they—’

  Clare cut me off.

  ‘You’re anxious,’ she said, tapping the access code into a pad by the door. ‘I get it. But bear in mind that Gil might not be able to help. Don’t build your hopes up: it’s unlikely that anything will happen today. Therapy is a process, not a quick fix. It could take six months of sessions. You do know that, right?’

  ‘Martin will be in prison in six months if I can’t help him,’ I said, stepping inside and shaking the collar of my raincoat. ‘You know that, right?’

  Clare looked as if she was about to reply, but paused and nodded instead, giving me the slightest of weary smiles as she led me down the white corridors. I knew she was willing to tolerate my loyalty to Martin, but she didn’t like it. She was helping me, not Martin.

  ‘This way,’ she said, using a swipe card to open a door. ‘Gil’s on the top floor.’

  The stairwell was a glass box, silver ribbons of rainwater running top to bottom, making the outside world look distorted, displaced. I could hear each footstep on every stair, echoing upwards.

  Clare seemed nervous too; but I found that reassuring. At the end of a long passage, a single door was open, fanning a wedge of grey light into the corridor.

  ‘Gil?’ said Clare, politely tapping on the doorframe.

  ‘Oh, hello, hello.’ A tall man jumped up from behind his desk. ‘Come in, come in, both of you.’

  He was in his late forties, a thin face with a receding hairline, but he was surprisingly fashionably dressed, like a trendy sixth-form teacher. The most striking feature, though, were his eyes: coal-dark and mischievous. I liked Gil Moore on sight.

  ‘You must be Fran,’ he said, shaking my hand. I wondered how much Clare had told him, then immediately wondered how much I should tell him.

  ‘Excuse the room,’ said Gil, scooping up a half-eaten sandwich and dropping it into a wastepaper basket. ‘Crappiest space in the building, but I’m only here two days a week.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘My office is no better. Where are you usually based?’

  ‘At Baverstock Hospital,’ he said, distractedly rearranging his desk like a housewife surprised by visitors. ‘I mainly do trauma work: patients with post-traumatic stress disorder – a lot of ex-military, as you might imagine.’

  There were some framed certificates on the wall next to a pile of CD cases on a shelf. Tilting my head, I could see The Smiths, Jesus Jones, Royal Blood. I don’t know what I had been expecting – someone old and fusty in a black turtleneck, gentle classical music playing in the background, perhaps.

  ‘I should leave you to it,’ said Clare, who hadn’t moved from the doorway. ‘My desk could do with a tidy too.’

  ‘Says the most anally retentive person in the building,’ smiled Gil.

  Clare looked down, colouring a little. ‘You know me too well,’ she mumbled, then with raised eyebrows towards me, disappeared. Interesting, I thought, feeling a pang of regret. Partly due to the realization that here was a corner of my best friend’s life I knew nothing about, and partly disappointment that Clare hadn’t ended up with someone like this smart, compassionate man. Instead she had chosen Dom; or let herself be chosen.

  Gil took my dripping coat and hung it on a rack by the door. He waved me to a grey fabric sofa – Habitat, once upon a time, I thought – and slid his office chair into position opposite me.

  ‘So you’re Clare’s best friend?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said, perching awkwardly on the sofa. ‘I’m surprised we haven’t met before.’

  ‘I’ve only been here six months, hence the smallest room in the building,’ Gil explained. ‘I was in America for a long time before that.’

  He shifted, leaning on the armrest.

  ‘Clare tells me you had a blackout?’

  So we were straight into the session. Efficient, direct: my kind of guy. Clare had chosen well.

  ‘I need to remember what happened,’ I said, watching him for a reaction – disapproval, perhaps, or hesitation – but he simply nodded. Clare’s friend or not, I suppose I was just a patient, another problem to be solved.

  ‘Good, well why don’t you tell me what you do remember?’

  Haltingly, I gave Gil a brief outline of how I had arrived at my neighbour’s flat at two in the morning, stressed and agitated, with very few memories of what had gone before. I thought my bipolar might be relevant, so I filled him in on that too.

  ‘Do you have a history of blackouts?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really. Not since university. I was a binge drinker in my first year – nothing too unusual there, I suppose, but I’d go to a Wine Society meeting and wake up the next day fully clothed, not remembering a thing. For a while I assumed it was the booze, but I was lucky enough to run into a GP at the college practice who paid attention, especially aften an episode of self-harming. Eventually, I was diagnosed with bipolar.’

  Gil nodded, making a note on a pad on his lap.

  ‘I take it you gave up Wine Soc?’ he smiled.

  ‘Switched to badminton,’ I said. I liked how easy it was to talk to him, but there was also something that had been weighing on my mind.

  ‘Clare said if I was drunk I won’t ever be able to remember. Is that true?’

  Gil let out a breath and sat back, lacing his hands behind his head.

  ‘The real answer to that question is, it depends. The trouble with therapy is that the brain is infinitely complex. If you’re a heart surgeon, you’re basically working with a few pipes. Fit them all together in the right way, and you can reasonably expect everything to work once you’ve sewn the patient back up. Not the same with the mind, I’m afraid.’

  He must have sensed my distress, because he smiled reassuringly.

  ‘That’s not to say we haven’t worked out a few things over the years,’ he went on. ‘Yes, Clare’s right in saying that sometimes memories lost in a blackout can’t be brought back, but that’s assuming the blackout was related to your alcohol consumption.’

  ‘So there are other possibilities?’

  ‘Lots of them. For example, I hear a lot of anecdotal evidence of minor memory lapses in bipolar patients. Psychosis, fugue states, any sort of dissociation – which is my field of expertise, happily.’

  He gave me an ironic smile. ‘Or not so happily, depending on your point of view. Heart surgeons don’t often have crying patients to treat.’

  ‘That’s because they’re usually asleep,’ I said.

  ‘Good point,’ he grinned. ‘Should pay more attention with a barrister, shouldn’t I? All right, tell me about the night you can’t remember.’

  I nodded, looking down at my clasped hands, surprised at how nervous I felt. I had wanted so badly to remember that night, but now the moment was here, I was frightened. Frightened that I wouldn’t remember and frightened that I would. More than anything, I wanted to help prove Martin’s innocence, but did I really want to relive seeing my boyfriend with his wife? Did I want it confirmed that he thought so little of me that they had slept together? And of course, there was the accusation Pete Carroll had added to the mix: that I had been involved in Donna’s disappearance. I certainly wasn’t sure I wanted to relive that, if it was true.

  ‘Relax,’ said Gil, his voice deep, smooth. ‘Just the broad strokes of what happened that night for now. So I can get an idea.’

  I had no option but to tell him. I descri
bed how I’d followed my boyfriend to his ex-wife’s house, watching from the pub opposite. How my next memory was waking up in a neighbour’s flat, apparently having been helped inside, my memory all but wiped, like a book with missing pages.

  ‘How much did you drink that night?’

  ‘That’s the point: I can’t remember. Nothing beyond the first drink anyway.’

  ‘And I assume you were upset that your boyfriend was going to his wife’s house for sex?’

  My eyes met his, but there was no judgement there, just curiosity and shrewdness. That unnerved me, and again I wondered how much I was prepared to reveal to this stranger.

  ‘Have you heard of this term “dissociation”?’ he asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘It’s the separation of reality,’ said Gil, putting his pen down. ‘It can be as mild as daydreaming or as extreme as alternative identities. I see it a lot with combat and abuse victims – they block out those disturbing memories. It’s the brain’s way of protecting itself from uncomfortable feelings – it simply pretends it never happened.’

  ‘And you think that’s what my amnesia is? Dissociation?’

  Gil nodded. ‘It’s what we call a dissociation fugue – a one-off event. Generally it’s caused by trauma, but it can be brought on by drugs or alcohol. The patient has memories but the mind has essentially closed them off. The brain is in denial.’

  ‘So in those cases, it’s possible to retrieve the memories. How?’ I asked, eager to get started.

  ‘By kicking the doors in,’ he said, standing up. He moved across to the corner of his office and with a quiet grunt, picked up a piece of equipment and began setting it up. It looked like a portable projector screen, only more high-tech. ‘The problem with the subconscious is in the name,’ said Gil as he worked, folding out the apparatus. ‘It’s sub-conscious, below our consciousness. All this interesting stuff is going on in there, but we can’t get to it. So we need to find a way to trick the brain into opening up.’

  ‘There, I think that’ll do it.’ He stood back to admire his handiwork: a long thin box sitting on top of a tripod, wires trailing from the back.