Before I Let You In

by Jenny Blackhurst

  Part Two

  31

  Karen

  ‘So how have you been feeling since our last session?’

  Jessica Hamilton raised her eyebrows at Karen. Was it just her imagination, or were they slightly less bushy than the last time she’d seen her? And was she wearing lipstick? Karen instinctively pressed her own lips together. She’d had Eleanor on her mind when she was getting ready that morning and she’d completely forgotten to put any lipstick on. She felt annoyed at herself for going to work without checking her make-up first, and for letting a patient make her feel inadequate.

  ‘Bored of answering these questions. Disappointed that you don’t have any insight other than ‘how are you feeling’. Stupid that I ever thought this would help.’ She leaned her elbow on the arm of the sofa and her forehead on her hand and looked thoroughly fed up.

  ‘And what were you expecting to have achieved by this stage?’ Patient is feeling uncomfortable at the new direction her sessions are taking, manifested as frustration at the lack of progress.

  ‘I thought you might have a little more insight for me, you know, on how to stop these headaches. And the obsessive thoughts. I didn’t expect to have to tell you how I’m going to fix myself.’

  Karen tried not to sound as though she was pressing too urgently for details. ‘Is the relationship continuing?’

  Jessica regarded her with keen curiosity, and not for the first time Karen felt as though the girl was trying to look inside her for answers to questions she wasn’t ready to reveal yet. As though she was the one under the microscope and Jessica was here to dissect her.

  ‘If you had the chance to go back in time and kill Adolf Hitler, would you do it?’

  Not the answer she had been expecting. Karen hesitated.

  ‘I think most people would say they would, that one act of murder would be justified to save thousands of lives.’

  Jessica smiled, as though she’d already known what Karen was going to say. ‘It’s interesting you avoid giving an answer by talking about what you think most people would do.’

  Interesting. Like she was an experiment, a butterfly in a jar flapping its wings despite knowing there was nowhere to fly to.

  Jessica paused for a few seconds, giving the impression of someone contemplating their next sentence, but even then Karen got the impression that every word she said was already planned. She didn’t speak unless she was reading from her inner script.

  ‘What about if you had the chance to go back and kill Hitler’s mother? Would you do it then? Sacrifice an innocent life so that thousands would live?’

  ‘Are you interested in questions of morality in general, or just my position on it?’ Karen was trying not to let her see she was rattled, but she could feel her face burning and felt sure Jessica must be able to see it too, hear the sharpness her voice had taken on.

  ‘I’m interested in people.’ If Jessica could tell she was feeling uncomfortable, she didn’t care. ‘And how they claim to have one set of beliefs but then act very differently. It fascinates me how we can quote our own moral code and yet completely disregard it when it doesn’t fit with how we want to live our lives. Talk about cognitive dissonance.’

  If blood could freeze in veins, Karen was certain that hers would have turned to ice. Those words … cognitive dissonance … had she mentioned them to Jessica? It was her initial diagnosis of the girl’s tension headaches – headaches that she’d yet to see or hear any evidence of – and yet she didn’t believe in sharing early diagnoses with patients: if she was wrong, it could send the wrong impression, and often people took her first answer and refused to listen to any other possibilities.

  Could it have been a coincidence?

  Of course it was possible – but that wasn’t what it was. Jessica Hamilton knew the diagnosis she’d already assigned to her and was using it to taunt her. I know you, she was saying. I’m one step ahead of you.

  ‘Tell me what you know about cognitive dissonance.’

  Jessica smiled as though Karen had read from her script.

  ‘It’s the disparity between our thoughts and beliefs, and our actions. Like, I might think that sleeping with married men is wrong in general, but in reality I’m still carrying on my affair.’

  ‘In that case—’

  ‘It’s like those people who were on an underground cave tour when the heavily pregnant woman in front got stuck in the mouth of the cave. The tide was rising, and soon the only person who would be safe was the woman stuck in the rocks because her head was out of the water. The cavers had a stick of dynamite and a choice. They could choose to blow up the innocent woman and save the rest of the cavers, or let her live and condemn everyone else to drowning.’

  Jessica told the story as if it were a real case, when in fact it was an entirely fictional anecdote Karen had heard a million times – variations had been discussed in ethics papers since her days at university, a tool to debate utilitarian versus deontological ethics.

  ‘And what did they do?’ she asked. She was rooted to the spot waiting for Jessica’s answer.

  ‘They blew her up.’

  Karen heard a hiss and realised that she was sucking air between her teeth. Jessica smiled at her discomfort, then lifted her feet on to the sofa and tucked them underneath herself. It was usually a classic sign of self-comfort, but not with her. With her it was dominance, and Karen had never known someone feel comfortable enough to do it in her office before. She felt a flash of irritation at the thought of her patient’s filthy pumps grinding into the fabric as she shifted around. Would she put her feet on the sofa in someone’s home?

  Jessica spoke again.

  ‘Let’s talk about Adam.’

  Adam? This was it. This was where Jessica admitted the real reason she was here. Karen attempted to plaster on a poker face.

  ‘Adam?’ She was getting so good at keeping her tone neutral in these sessions, she was starting to sound like the speaking clock.

  ‘Huh?’ Jessica looked confused. ‘Who’s Adam?’

  ‘You said, “Let’s talk about Adam,”’ Karen reminded her, but Jessica looked so genuinely puzzled, she wasn’t so sure any more. She could just as easily have been hearing things. Or losing my mind.

  Jessica shook her head. ‘I said let’s talk about him. You asked about my relationship. If anything, it’s become more intense. It’s like my life with him is real life now, and when he’s with his wife they are the ones having an affair.’

  Karen couldn’t speak; Jessica’s words had hit so close to home. And she got the distinct feeling that was exactly how the girl wanted it. She wanted Karen’s mind spinning like the last sock in the tumble dryer, barely able to recover from one heart-stopping revelation before she slammed it up a gear.

  Karen struggled to regain her composure. It felt as though she was in an interview in which the other person in the room knew exactly what question was coming next but she didn’t even have a clue what subject it would be on. She wasn’t going to let Jessica make her feel that way – she was the one in charge here; Jessica was just a girl. Just a girl.

  ‘Have you thought much about his wife since you began talking to me?’

  Jessica fixed her with steely eyes. ‘All the time.’

  ‘And what do these thoughts involve?’

  She shifted around on the sofa, making Karen feel uncomfortable just watching her.

  ‘Different things. Sometimes I imagine that she grows a backbone and leaves him. Sometimes I imagine she comes to where I work and confronts me, hits me or screams at me or something. Other times I imagine confronting her. Telling her what her husband has been doing just to see the look on her stupid face. Last week I fell asleep at my desk and imagined taking that screaming bundle of shit and puke away from her and hiding him, just to watch her panic.’

  Karen was less alarmed at these statements than she was at the rest of Jessica’s behaviour. It wasn’t uncommon for her to hear similar things on a daily basis. Most people had so
me kind of disordered thoughts: that fleeting image of punching your boss in the face because he’d just called you an idiot; or screaming at the woman who’d just pushed in front of you in the supermarket queue. What separated them from the Ted Bundys of the world was the knowledge that they wouldn’t act on such thoughts. Jessica Hamilton was trying to scare her. It was the why she couldn’t figure out.

  ‘And how do you feel after these thoughts?’

  Jessica looked down at her thumbnail, picked at the loose skin around the cuticle. ‘Guilty. I mean, who has those kinds of thoughts? I felt terrible after that last one, really I did.’

  And that’s what separates us from the psychopaths, thought Karen. Guilt. Fear that our thoughts define who we are, when in reality it’s only our actions that matter.

  Jessica glanced up suddenly, looking Karen dead in the eyes. ‘And something else.’

  ‘What else, Jessica?’

  ‘Excited. When I thought about hurting her, I felt excited.’

  32

  Eleanor

  Eleanor froze, her mind taking a few seconds to process what her eyes weren’t seeing. The space where she’d left the car just a few short minutes ago was empty, as though she’d never been there. Panic rising in her chest, she scanned the other vehicles; they were all still there, exactly as they had been when she’d pulled in. No traffic wardens stood waiting to tick her off for parking in the wrong spot (a spot she’d parked in a million times previously), no police officers crowded around her silver people carrier ready to quiz her about why her child had been left alone in a car park. Not one other person was anywhere in sight.

  Her legs refused to move, torn between running towards where her car quite clearly wasn’t and running back inside and screaming the school down. Her heart threatening to pound through her chest, she stood helplessly on the spot, praying this was some kind of joke, or a stupid mix-up. At last she turned towards the school.

  ‘My car!’ She threw herself through the door of the office. Mrs Fenton looked up from her book. ‘My car’s been stolen. Call the police!’

  ‘Calm down, Mrs Whitney. I’ll call them in a moment. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘My son is in there! Noah … he’s in the fucking car!’

  Mrs Fenton’s smile froze on her face and she grabbed for the phone, punching at the nines so fast she nearly knocked it flying. As she spoke to the operator, Eleanor paced the office, panic obscuring her thoughts. What should she be doing? Should she be outside, running around the streets screaming?

  ‘Mrs Whitney, they need to speak to you. Stay calm, the police are already on their way; they just need more details. I’m calling the head teacher now and activating our missing child procedure.’

  Eleanor nodded numbly and took the phone. The operator asked her various questions and she answered without thinking, things she’d have struggled to remember that morning suddenly surfacing as though she had them written in front of her. Vauxhall Zafira, silver, seven-seater, only five in use, DU54 FUP, all doors locked, only one spare key at home. They kept her on the phone until she saw two police cars pulling through the front gates of the school, the way she’d done herself only twenty minutes earlier, two officers in each. As she placed the receiver back in the cradle, her shaking hand misjudged it and it fell to the floor.

  The head teacher, Mr Newman, a small, bald man with his spectacles on his head, was at her side in seconds. ‘This is PC Edwards. I was just telling him we have people scouring the perimeter of the school looking for anything or anyone suspicious. There are two people in the car park taking down number plates that don’t match the ones we have on record for staff in case the perpetrator dumped their own car to return to later. It’s more likely—’

  ‘Thank you for your help, Mr Newman.’ PC Edwards looked at Eleanor kindly. ‘If you could just take me through exactly what happened, Mrs Whitney.’

  He listened patiently as Eleanor spoke, the words practically falling from her mouth in a verbal machine-gun spray.

  ‘I was only in here five minutes, maybe slightly more, but definitely no more than ten.’

  ‘So which was it, do you think? Five, or ten?’

  ‘Well, probably closer to ten, by the time I’d seen Toby off and waited for Mrs Fenton to return to the reception.’

  Georgia Fenton had the good grace to blush, but Eleanor didn’t much care about her embarrassment at that moment. If she’d been in the fucking office, instead of having a fag …

  ‘Wait, weren’t you outside?’ She turned, taking a step towards the now frightened woman. ‘Did you see anyone there? Was there anyone around my car?’

  ‘I … I wasn’t out the front,’ Mrs Fenton stammered. ‘I was round by the kitchens; I came back through the school …’

  ‘Sir?’ The female police officer who had arrived with PC Edwards gestured with her head for him to follow her.

  ‘What, what is it? Have you found him?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, we’ve found your car, with your son inside. He looks fine; he was still fast asleep and very much unaware of the fuss he’s caused. We had to smash your front window to get to him; he woke up then.’

  Relief coursed through her so fast that her knees gave way and she leaned back against the wall for support. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Well …’ The woman looked between Eleanor and the other officer. ‘It was still in the car park, ma’am, parked around the side, just out of sight of the doors. One of the teachers writing down number plates saw it. We would have found it sooner but we assumed you’d checked the car park yourself …’ She looked embarrassed at their oversight, but all Eleanor felt was confusion.

  ‘What? Why would someone steal my car and park it in the car park?’

  ‘Well that’s the thing, Mrs Whitney, there’s no sign the car was broken into. The doors are still locked and no windows were broken.’

  Eleanor didn’t have time to work out what the fuck had just happened. She needed to get to her son, to pick him up and never put him down again. Without another word, she ran towards the corner of the car park where a crowd had gathered.

  ‘Noah! Give him to me.’ She held her arms out for her baby boy, practically snatching him away from the police officer who was cradling him to his chest.

  ‘Mrs Whitney, is there someone we can call for you, someone who can come and sit with you while we try and clear up what’s gone on here? We need to decide if Noah needs any medical attention, and if, um, if you’re okay to …’

  They needed to know if she was crazy. Hell, she needed to know if she was crazy. Right at that moment, all eyes on her, she thought she might very well be. For the first time, with Noah safe in her arms, she noticed the individual faces of the teachers who looked after her son on a daily basis, people she saw every day, laughed with on sports day and parents’ evening. They were regarding her with fear and suspicion.

  Her first thought was Adam. He was her husband and Noah’s father, but she just couldn’t face the phone call to tell him she’d fucked up again. She wanted things to be back the way they’d been when he chose her to be a mother to his precious son. When she was solid and dependable. When she wasn’t crazy.

  ‘Karen,’ she said, pulling her phone from her pocket. ‘Karen Browning, please.’

  33

  Karen

  Karen pulled into the car park of Toby’s school, the same school that she, Eleanor and Bea had attended what seemed like a lifetime ago. A police car was parked haphazardly near the front doors, but apart from that there was no sign that anything untoward had happened. Karen looked around for Eleanor’s car, but it wasn’t in sight.

  ‘Karen!’

  As she walked into the reception, Eleanor threw herself towards her friend, baby Noah in her arms. She looked smaller than Karen had ever seen her look, her face red and puffy, streaked with tears. She folded them both into her arms, ignoring the police officers who were sitting on the visitors’ chairs.

  ‘
What’s happened, hun?’ she asked into Eleanor’s hair. She held her at arm’s length to look at her properly. She looked terrible, her clothes crumpled and not entirely clean, dark purple circles under her eyes.

  ‘Someone stole my car with Noah inside! I mean, they moved it.’ She dropped her head and fell silent. ‘I don’t really know what I mean, but I think I’m in trouble.’

  Karen looked over at the police officer who had stood to greet her, a middle-aged woman whose dull brown hair was pulled into a stern ponytail, though her face looked kind enough.

  ‘What’s happened here? Have you found out who took my friend’s car?’

  The woman shot a look at her companion, a young male totally unequipped for dealing with hysterical females.

  ‘Mrs Browning?’

  ‘Dr Browning.’

  ‘Of course, I’m sorry. Could we maybe talk outside?’

  Karen glanced back at Eleanor. ‘Will you be okay? I’ll find out what’s going on and take care of this.’

  Eleanor looked reluctant to let her go now that she had a friendly face in the room, and Karen wasn’t surprised. Someone had stolen her car with her son inside! Why were they treating her like the criminal? She touched her friend’s arm reassuringly before following the female officer outside.

  ‘Dr Browning, I gather you are Mrs Whitney’s psychiatrist?’

  ‘I’m a psychiatrist, I’m not Eleanor’s psychiatrist. Eleanor doesn’t need therapy; she needs a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘Okay, well we’re trying to determine if Eleanor is all right to take her son home.’

  ‘She’s just shocked. Wouldn’t you be if you’d had your car stolen with your son inside?’

  ‘That’s just it, Dr Browning, Eleanor’s car wasn’t stolen. It was found in the car park, where she left it. Just around the corner from where she was looking.’