The Dark Room

by Minette Walters

  She flinched at the word ‘suicide’ but let it go. ‘He wasn’t a scoundrel, Simon. You’re not old enough to use words like “scoundrel”. He was a fucking scumbag.’

  ‘I’m a vicar, Jinx.’

  ‘So? I’m a millionaire’s daughter who went to public school.’ She rubbed her hands over her shaven scalp. ‘Look, I don’t care. They can shag each other to death as far as I’m concerned.’ Tears flooded her throat. ‘It’s no big deal. I’d hate to lose Meg because of it. She’s my friend, Simon.’

  He felt ashamed in the face of such generosity, and as usual rushed to condemn his sister. Would Meg, he wondered, in the same circumstances, be as unjudgemental of the woman who had stolen her fiancé? ‘Does it help if I say I don’t believe you tried to kill yourself? Is that what’s worrying you? What people are thinking?’

  Jinx fished the newspaper clipping that Betty had given her from her pocket and stared at it. ‘Except that it doesn’t look like an accident, does it?’ she said slowly, offering him the picture. ‘They say it’s a miracle I escaped.’

  ‘Miracles do happen, you know.’

  Not in her philosophy they didn’t. ‘Apparently I was drunk when it happened.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said flatly, ‘it does. To me, anyway.’

  ‘Because of Betty’s problems?’

  ‘Partly.’ She paused. ‘No, it’s more to do with my own self-esteem. I refuse to believe that I’d need to get drunk in order to kill myself.’ She smiled faintly. ‘You see, I’m a very proud woman, which makes me doubt I’d have given anyone, least of all Leo, the satisfaction of knowing I cared that much.’

  ‘I believe you,’ he said.

  Tears flooded her eyes again, and she jabbed at them with the palm of her hand. ‘Look, don’t take any notice, OK? I’m tired, I’m pissed off and I wish to hell I was back in London.’ She took deep breaths to bring her sorrow under control. ‘Will you do me a favour? Tell Meg I’m happy for her, and that I don’t bear any grudges. And tell your parents that I’m not about to end a damn good friendship because a bastard like Leo swaps horses mid-stream. Truly, Simon, I don’t care.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll tell them,’ he promised. ‘You’re very generous, Jinx.’

  She listened to the screams of frustration that echoed off the walls of her mind. ‘I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true,’ she said carefully, glancing sideways at him. ‘There’s no generosity involved.’

  He leaned forward, staring at the floor. ‘You think you know a person and then something like this happens. She wasn’t even remotely apologetic, just said these are the facts, stick them in your pipe and smoke them. It’s caused the most unbelievable bitterness between the folks. Mum’s blaming Dad for trying to force religion down Meg’s throat for years, and he’s blaming her for her frigidity.’ He sighed. ‘He’s more upset than Mum is but I think that’s because he’s always been so fond of you. He can’t understand why Meg would want to hurt you. I can’t either for that matter.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said inadequately, ‘but I don’t expect she meant to hurt anybody. You know Meg. Carpe diem and leave tomorrow to look after itself. She’s always been the same.’ She rubbed the side of her head where it was hurting. Why did memories of Russell keep flooding her mind? ‘Your father must be very angry if he’s saying things like that to your mother.’ . . . Russell and Meg . . . Meg and Leo . . .

  ‘They’re just words,’ he said, ‘he doesn’t mean anything by them, any more than poor old Mum means anything by striking out at religion.’

  ‘But in a way they’re both right, you know.’ She felt very tired suddenly. ‘Meg’s never been comfortable in the role of vicar’s daughter, and she’s far too raunchy for your mother.’ Her eyelid drooped in exhaustion as memories whirled effortlessly across her mind. ‘It’s your fault as much as anyone’s.’

  Russell dying . . . she had an affair with Russell, too, you know . . . you got drunk and tried to kill yourself . . .

  His voice came across vast stretches of space. ‘Why?’

  ‘She couldn’t compete with a saint, Simon, so she became a sinner . . .’

  She lurched out of sleep with a sickening jolt and opened her eyes on Alan Protheroe. He was bending over her, and Jinx’s immediate thought was that he must be Simon until relieved recognition told her he wasn’t. She looked around rather vaguely. ‘I was smoking a cigarette.’

  He pointed to the butt in the ashtray. ‘I put it out.’

  ‘I had a visitor.’

  ‘I know. Father Simon Harris. I gave him his marching orders. I was afraid he’d upset you.’

  ‘He wouldn’t dare,’ she said with a twisted smile. ‘He’s an Anglo-Catholic priest.’

  ‘And Meg’s brother,’ he said, taking the other chair. ‘Do you like him, Jinx?’

  She could feel the inevitable sweat drenching her back again. ‘He’s a sanctimonious prig like his father and mother, and he made his sister into a whore.’ Her face turned towards this huge amiable man who was doing his best to care for her, and she felt an incredible urge to reach out and touch him. She wanted to curl in his lap, feel his arms about her, shelter, childlike, inside the protection of his strong embrace. Instead she withdrew to the other corner of her chair and wrapped her thin arms about her chest. ‘I’m not sure why I said that.’

  ‘Because you’re angrier with her than you think you are.’

  ‘Simon came to apologize.’

  ‘For his sister’s behaviour?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She fell silent.

  ‘Is he older or younger than she is?’

  ‘He’s a year younger.’

  ‘Does Meg look like him?’

  ‘Not really. She’s very beautiful.’

  ‘Do you like her, Jinx?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He nodded. ‘You were dreaming just now, and they didn’t look very happy dreams. Do you want to tell me about them?’

  She didn’t – couldn’t? – answer. Even after ten years, the wound was still raw and she shrank instinctively from anything that might re-open it. Yet, there was an extraordinary need within her to convince someone – anyone – of how little Leo had really mattered to her. Do you like her? Yes. Yes. YES. But why did it hurt so much to say it?

  ‘I was dreaming about a man I knew,’ she said abruptly. ‘He was beaten to death ten years ago, and I was the one who found him. He had an art gallery in Chelsea. The police think he disturbed some burglars because the place had been ransacked and several of the paintings stolen. We were supposed to be having dinner but he never turned up, so I went to the gallery to find him. There was blood everywhere. I found him in the store room at the back, but I didn’t recognize him . . .’ Her voice faltered and she held her fingers to her lips. ‘He was still alive, but he couldn’t say anything because his jaw had been smashed. So he tried to use his eyes to talk to me, but – I – couldn’t understand what he wanted.’ She lived the terrible scene again in her mind, her shock, her revulsion, her inadequacy in the face of the bludgeoned bleeding mask that had once been Russell. ‘And there was nothing I could do except call an ambulance, and watch him . . . I watched him die.’ She fell silent. Had Russell been in a trap, too?

  Protheroe didn’t press her to go on. He was content to let her tell the story at her own speed, realizing perhaps that because it was so rarely told it was bound to lack fluency.

  ‘I had nightmares about it for ages, so Adam packed me off to a hypnotherapist. But that just made everything worse. The man was a quack. He encouraged me to confront what disturbed me most about the incident and then put it into perspective, but all he actually succeeded in doing was exacerbating every feeling of guilt I had.’ She fell silent again, and this time her face took on an introspective look as if she were revisiting rooms long closed.

  Protheroe was more interested in what she hadn’t said than what she had. He knew the details of the story already, both from what her father had t
old him over the phone and from reading the notes made by her psychiatrist. Why hadn’t she mentioned, for example, that she and Russell Landy had been married? Or that the murder of her husband had caused her to miscarry at thirteen weeks? Why did she talk about being referred to a hypnotherapist when she had, in fact, been admitted to hospital in a state of near starvation, weighing under six stone, and with very severe depression? He ran his thumb down his jawline and pondered this last thought. She had referred to the therapist as ‘he’, yet the notes he had in his office were written by a woman.

  He waited for another minute or two, then prompted her gently when it became clear she was lost in self-absorption. ‘Did the psychiatrist at Queen Mary’s Hospital help you at all, Jinx?’

  ‘You mean the second one, Stephanie Fellowes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She seemed to find her position uncomfortable and unlocked her arms to reach for the inevitable cigarette. ‘When am I going to be allowed outside?’ she demanded suddenly, flicking the lighter to the tip and eyeing him through the smoke.

  ‘The sooner the better. We could go now if you like. I’ve a pretty good arm for leaning on and we can find ourselves a bench away from the madding crowd.’

  She smiled faintly. ‘No thank you. I’ll wait till I can manage it alone.’ She nodded towards her bathroom door. ‘I’ve been to the loo a couple of times and had to crawl most of the way, so I’ll practise in private for a bit. I’m not particularly keen to have you laugh at me.’

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  She shrugged. ‘Not in front of me, perhaps, but I’m sure you could work it up into a good story for the golf club.’ She mimicked his lower register. ‘I say, chaps, have I told you the one about my pet hysteric who drove her car at a concrete pillar, survived by a miracle, then fell flat on her face when she tried to stand up?’

  ‘Do you always ascribe such base motives to the people who care for you?’

  ‘Stephanie Fellowes certainly thought so.’ But then I didn’t trust her. She blew smoke rings into the air. ‘You see, I’m not a willing guinea pig. I’d rather live with all my fears, depressions and obsessions than have clumsy people in hobnailed boots trampling about in my head.’ She smiled without hostility. ‘I presume she or my father has told you that I became so depressed I was starving myself?’ She looked at him enquiringly and he nodded. ‘Which one, as a matter of interest? Stephanie or Adam?’

  He showed no hesitation about answering. ‘Both. Stephanie sent me a copy of the notes she took at the time. Your father told me when you first came here.’

  ‘Have you met him?’

  ‘No. We spoke on the telephone.’

  She nodded. ‘That’s how he does business. Technology, particularly the impersonal fax, was invented for Adam. He knows how intimidating it is to deal with somebody you never meet. I’d keep it that way if I were you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘No particular reason.’

  ‘He seemed pleasant enough, and he’s very concerned for you.’

  She smiled to herself, and he wondered if she realized how provocative that smile was. As a character she was fascinating. She was determined to wean him away from her father, but in the most subtle of fashions – through innuendo rather than fact, through sympathy rather than honesty. And he knew he wasn’t immune. There was something infinitely appealing about the combination of incisive intellect and physical weakness. Particularly for him, although she couldn’t know that.

  ‘So concerned that he hasn’t been near me,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Then phone him and find out why not,’ he suggested.

  She shook her head. ‘Adam and I never ask each other personal questions, Dr Protheroe.’

  ‘Yet you always call him Adam. I assumed that meant you saw each other as equals.’

  But that was clearly something she didn’t want to discuss. ‘We were talking about my alleged depression,’ she said abruptly. ‘Alleged being the operative word.’

  He abandoned the subject. ‘You wanted to know whether it was Stephanie or Adam who told me you became so depressed that you were starving yourself,’ he reminded her, ‘and I said they both had. Shall we go on from there?’

  ‘It happened the other way round. The depression developed because I wasn’t eating, so when they took me into hospital and started feeding me I began to feel better.’

  He thought it more likely that her improvement was due to anti-depressants, but he had no intention of arguing about it. ‘Do you know why you weren’t eating?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He waited for a moment. ‘Are you going to tell me?’

  ‘Maybe. If you tell me what Stephanie put in her notes.’

  She would be satisfied with nothing less than the truth, he thought, although whether she would believe that what he told her was the truth was another matter altogether. ‘The notes are in my office,’ he said, ‘so I can’t quote her verbatim but I can give you the gist of what she wrote. You were admitted with severe reactive depression, following the murder of your husband and the loss of your baby. Your symptoms were extreme – in particular, loss of appetite and persistent insomnia. It was clear to Dr Fellowes that you were very disturbed and that your malnutrition was due not so much to a loss of appetite as a refusal to eat, and she diagnosed you a potential suicide. Your treatment consisted of a combination of drug and psychotherapy and, while she admits that you were extremely hostile to the psychotherapy, your condition began to improve quite markedly after three to four weeks. As far as I recall you were discharged fit after six weeks and, although you have consistently refused to have your progress monitored at out-patient attendances, Dr Fellowes regards you as one of her successes.’ He paused briefly. ‘Or she did until I requested your notes.’

  Jinx frowned. ‘I hadn’t realized she thought I was doing it deliberately.’ She took a thoughtful puff of her cigarette. ‘It explains why you’re all assuming suicide now. Pardus maculas non deponit. The leopard doesn’t change his spots,’ she translated idly, her eyes drifting towards the window where a man was wandering across the lawn. Fair hair, green sweater, brown cords. For a fraction of a second she thought it was Leo, and her heart lurched violently.

  ‘If you weren’t starving yourself for a reason, then why were you doing it?’

  She waited a moment before she answered. ‘Because the quack I saw first used hypnosis to unlock my nightmares, and turned me into a psychotic wreck in the process.’ She shrugged and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘But a nightmare isn’t so bad. Most of the time you don’t remember details, and the relief of waking always outweighs the fears.’ She used her fingertips to sweep the arm of the chair, something she would do again and again during the next few minutes. ‘I wasn’t getting very much sleep admittedly, but, other than that, I was coping pretty well in view of everything that had happened. At which point, enter my father.’ She shook her head. ‘You have to understand that he’d always loathed Russell, partly because we got married without telling him, but mostly because Russell was twenty years older than I was and had been one of my dons at Oxford. If my father referred to him at all it was always as “the twisted paedophile”.’ She dwelt on that for a moment. ‘Anyway, about a week after the miscarriage, Adam had an attack of conscience – at least I assume that’s what it was – and paid this extremely expensive therapist to counsel me through my double bereavement.’ She took out another cigarette. ‘If I hadn’t been so shocked by it all, I might have realized he was a charlatan, but you don’t think straight in situations like that. Do you know what flooding is?’ She flung the question at him as she bent to the lighter.

  Protheroe was taken by surprise. ‘In psychiatric terms? Well, yes, it’s a drastic method of dealing with fear. You force a patient to confront the thing he’s afraid of, often without warning and usually with no means of escape. It’s risky and not always successful, but when it works it’s spectacular. It has its place in the treatment of phobias.’

 
; ‘Do you use it here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you use hypnosis?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Then what do you use, Dr Protheroe?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He smiled at her expression of disbelief. ‘No tricks, anyway, and no short-cuts. We simply concentrate on restoring self-esteem, and most of the people who come here are halfway to winning the battle before they even walk through the door because they’ve already made up their minds they want to be free of whatever disturbs them.’

  ‘One of your patients came in yesterday. He wanted to know whether I was on heroin or cocaine, so I presume he’s a drug addict himself. He didn’t strike me as being halfway to winning anything.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Tall, skinny, long ginger hair.’

  He looked pleased. ‘Matthew Cornell. Well, that’s an improvement. At least he’s beginning to notice a world beyond smack, poppers and MDMA.’

  ‘Is that why he came to my room uninvited, because you encourage your patients to notice each other?’

  ‘I rely entirely on human nature,’ he told her without a hint of guile. ‘In the end, curiosity usually wins out. You’re our newest resident, therefore you’re of interest. I’m quite pleased Matthew found the courage to defy the restrictions.’

  ‘What restrictions?’

  ‘There’s a huge notice outside your door saying Do Not Disturb.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘You should have looked.’

  ‘If it’s there, why did Simon Harris ignore it?’

  He shrugged. ‘Are you sure he did?’

  ‘He came in.’

  ‘Uninvited?’

  ‘No, he asked me if he should make polite excuses and leave, but I could hardly say I didn’t want to see him when he’d come all this way.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Because no one ever taught me how to say piss off. ‘I won’t be psychoanalysed, Dr Protheroe. I won’t do group therapy. I won’t join in. I won’t play games.’