Before I Let You In

by Jenny Blackhurst

  She walked over to his sofa and sat herself down like a patient, despite the fact that Robert was behind his desk. He took his cue, and got up and went over to sit opposite her. His sharp, manly scent followed him; expensive, the kind that made a woman’s blood pump regardless of the man wearing it. Not hers, though. He’d worn it for years; she’d become immune to it. It reminded her of late-night study sessions, cramming for exams she was sure she would fail despite looking confident to the outside world. She could honestly say that Robert was the only person who’d seen her panic; she’d let down her defences and he’d seen the real her

  Now he sat back, watched her in silence. She wondered what he saw. Did he notice her hair, splayed out around her head in frizzy waves, a contrast to her usual glossy straight style? She’d been up so late the night before that she was certain her eyes held dark purple shadows, stark against her too-pale complexion. She must have looked a complete mess, but Robert didn’t pass comment.

  ‘I think I have a problem with a patient.’

  She watched him stiffen slightly, a movement that most people would have missed.

  ‘What kind of problem?’

  ‘A conflict of interest.’

  He relaxed a little, leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees. ‘You know them personally?’ This was a problem he could deal with. She knew he was just going to suggest they move her patient to another psychiatrist, shuffle things around. As if it was that straightforward.

  ‘Not exactly. She’s conflicted about an affair she’s having with a married man. It’s possible that her feelings are a manifestation of a deeper issue involving her experiences of relationships, but that’s not the problem here. I believe I know the husband. And the wife, actually. It’s Eleanor.’

  ‘Eleanor the super-mum?’

  She smiled. ‘More like Eleanor the harassed these days. Did I tell you she’d had another? Noah. He’s just a few months old.’

  ‘And you say her husband’s been having it off with one of your patients? Ouch.’

  ‘Don’t say “having it off”, Robert, it sounds bloody awful. But yes, I think he’s the one Jessica is referring to.’

  Robert shifted in his seat. ‘You think? She hasn’t told you outright?’

  ‘No, that’s the problem. She came to see me about an obsession she has with the wife of the man she’s sleeping with. She’s been messing with her. Her words.’

  He was starting to look uncomfortable again; clearly his hopes of a quick fix were fading. Any minute now the vein in his neck would start twitching.

  ‘Messing with?’

  ‘Just little things, she says, making life difficult for her. It sounds as though the poor woman is going to go crazy. And that’s the thing: you should see Eleanor. She’s a mess, missing appointments, losing things …’

  Robert frowned. ‘That just sounds like every new mum I’ve ever met.’ Noticing her raised eyebrows, he added, ‘Yes, I have met a few in my day. Therapy was all the rage for the yummy mummy crowd at one point.’

  ‘This is different, Robert.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound it, Karen. Unless you’ve got some hard proof that this woman is causing your friend harm, you absolutely cannot take this any further. I know I don’t need to remind you of patient confidentiality. I don’t think anything you’ve said suggests a serious threat. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me?’

  She wanted to tell him more, but in truth she didn’t have more to tell that didn’t make her sound crazier than most of the people they saw every day. Eleanor losing her car with baby Noah inside and swearing blind that someone had moved it. The letter she herself had received. The idea that someone had been outside her house in the dead of the night and a strange feeling about this girl, the feeling that she was playing with her, that she had no intention of using her therapy sessions to improve her mental well-being; she just wanted to toy with Karen’s. She had nothing concrete on Jessica Hamilton. Should she mention seeing her with Adam? Then he’d ask her if she’d told Eleanor, and she’d have to lie to her boss, or admit breaking the rules. Had she been wrong to tell her friend her suspicions?

  ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong about this, Karen, but you’re reaching here. You’re seeing associations that don’t exist and you’ll end up doing more harm than good, to your patient, your friend and yourself.’

  ‘You’re right.’ She made to stand up to leave, deflated, let down. She’d expected Robert to tell her that her fears weren’t unfounded and to help her find some way through what was going on. She was so sure she’d been doing the right thing. It was like in those movies when you screamed at the helpless woman to get help, Just tell someone! And the strong male character was supposed to fix things, yes? Liam Neeson didn’t tell his daughter it was unlikely she’d been kidnapped and it was just a coincidence those men had put a hood over her head and shoved her into a car. He didn’t make her feel like a hysterical female. He bloody helped her.

  ‘Don’t go.’ She froze an inch off the chair and lowered herself back down. ‘I need to ask you, Karen, is everything all right with you?’

  Had he not been listening? Of course she wasn’t all right; couldn’t he see the state of her? He was the only person in her life – including her lover – to whom she’d admit not being okay, and he’d basically told her she was imagining things. How long had he known her? She’d never been inclined to dramatic overreactions. She’d never tried to find drama where it wasn’t. God knows, she’d had enough of the real thing.

  ‘Not really, no,’ she said. ‘I’ve been conflicted about this since I began to suspect that Jessica Hamilton was using me to inflict further damage on my best friend. I’m worried about Eleanor; she’s an absolute mess.’

  ‘And you feel like this is your fault?’

  ‘I suppose I feel guilty that I’m not there enough for her.’

  ‘But if her problems are being caused by Jessica Hamilton and her cheating husband, then there’s no way you could be responsible for that.’

  ‘No, I’m not responsible for her husband’s actions, or Jessica’s if that’s truly what’s going on, but I could …’

  Oh, he was good. She’d entered her own little therapy session without even realising. She supposed that was why his name was above the front door.

  ‘I see what you’re doing. You’re intimating that I’m transferring my feelings about not being there for Eleanor on to my patient in order to assuage my own guilt.’

  Robert opened his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I should know better than to try and out-psych a psychiatrist. But do you think that might make sense? Don’t you think that by assigning blame for Eleanor’s inability to cope to an external source, you’re absolving yourself of the need to act?’

  ‘You sound like a bloody textbook, Robert, not a friend. And your theory has one flaw.’

  He raised one eyebrow – something she’d never been able to do, and had always been a bit in awe of. Michael said it made him look like the Rock.

  ‘A flaw? Never.’ He smiled.

  ‘If I’m trying to absolve myself of action, then why is action all I can think about? Why am I constantly wondering what to do for the best?’

  ‘Because you can’t bear to leave a friend in need. You are determined to be the one who helps everyone, the one everyone turns to, even when you can see what it’s doing to you. Look at yourself. You have a good relationship, your own home, a career that you’re set in for life, promotion imminent, and you’re falling to pieces worrying about the fact that your friend can’t make her doctor’s appointments.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘You nothing. As your boss and your friend I’m telling you to go home, take a bath or go for a run or do whatever it is that you do to de-stress these days and come back tomorrow with your mind on your patients and nothing else. Do you think you can do that?’

  His voice had a warning tone to it, one she hadn’t heard before. One that said sh
e’d better be able to do that, or the next step wouldn’t be an afternoon off work.

  ‘Of course I can,’ she lied. But even as he smiled and told her he was there if she needed him, she realised he knew she was lying as much as she did.

  44

  Karen

  Karen put down her book, too agitated even to lose herself in someone else’s story. There was the usual noise from outside: the shouting of teenagers excited about something and nothing, enjoying themselves and not even contemplating that at 8 p.m. there might be children trying to sleep or shift workers grabbing their precious catnaps. It made her think of her own selfish teenage years, nights on the playing fields with Bea and Eleanor, actually managing for full hours on end to be a normal teenager, happy, unencumbered by her past. She got so good at it that sometimes there would be moments when she’d even forget what had happened altogether, until the tinkling sound of a girl’s laugh would shove her back there.

  Then they’d discovered White Lightning and she could practically obliterate her memories completely, searching for absolution at the bottom of the plastic two-litre bottle. The only time she wouldn’t dream was when she’d been drinking – the only nights she could guarantee not to see her face imprinted behind her eyelids. Then there was just the comedown the next day to deal with. Not the normal alcohol shakes – mouth like a mouldy sock and mild paranoia – but the screaming reel of memories like a ghoulish episode of This Is Your Life. A punishment for the blissful hours during which her emotions had been numb. She spent so many days locked in her bedroom, tears flooding down her cheeks and the TV so loud that her head pounded to the beat of whatever daytime junk she was using to stop her parents hearing her cry. And every time she would tell herself that the short reprieve wasn’t worth the pain she would go through the next day. That it was getting harder and harder to pull back the Karen she was trying to be.

  But she never stopped. Not until the evening it had all gone wrong. The evening that had brought her past rushing up to meet her present. The others, Eleanor and Bea, laughed about it now, albeit nervously, with the giddy hindsight of people who had never had the worst happen to them, but she couldn’t bring herself to join in, because to her it was more than just a silly near miss. To her it was fate trying to send her a message: Look what happens when you try to be normal. Look what happens when you try to forget. You can never forget, because when you do, people die. She stopped drinking.

  She lifted the remote and flicked on the TV, her fond memories tainted now, like a child who had picked up a pretty stone to find a woodlouse stuck to the bottom. It seemed to her sometimes that on darker days, usually when Michael was away, she couldn’t allow herself to think about the past at all. And she definitely couldn’t allow herself to contemplate the future. So it was easier to distract her mind with trashy TV and Sudoku. Those things were much less painful.

  45

  Karen

  Karen prepared for her next session with Jessica Hamilton as though she was going into battle. Her conversation with Robert yesterday had rattled her – if she was honest with herself, his comments about how she was dealing with things scared her. Every time she closed her eyes she could picture Jessica sitting with her dirty pumps on the sofa, and the look on her face when she’d been talking about the pregnant woman stuck in the rocks. ‘They blew her up.’

  Well if Jessica thought she was going to get the better of her, she could think again.

  She checked the clock: fifteen minutes to go before their session, plenty of time to pop to the toilet. Nerves. Get a grip, she told herself.

  Molly was at her desk when she passed, and Karen smiled a greeting without trusting herself to speak. The toilet was empty, but as she sat in the stall she heard the door swing open and someone throw themselves into the cubicle next to hers. Seconds later there was the sound of sobbing.

  Unable to ignore what was obviously a woman in distress, she spoke.

  ‘Molly?’

  Their PA was the only other woman on this floor, and Karen’s assumption proved correct when she heard her squeak a reply. She flushed the toilet, washed her hands and waited for Molly to appear. When she did, her eyes were red and her face was glistening with tears.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Karen asked, putting out a hand to touch her shoulder. ‘Has something happened at home?’

  Molly shook her head and looked embarrassed.

  ‘It’s Joe,’ she said, not meeting her eyes but instead pretending to fix her hair. ‘I think he’s going to finish with me. He says he needs space.’

  Karen couldn’t help thinking that it wouldn’t be a terrible thing if Joe did finish with her, but that wasn’t going to help the situation. The only time she’d met Molly’s boyfriend he’d been sprawled in the waiting room and had barely looked up when she’d opened the door and introduced herself. He spoke in a language made up of single syllables and grunts, and Karen wondered how this weedy, barely literate man could be the cause of so much grief for pretty, clever Molly.

  ‘Men always say that,’ she said instead. ‘Then they almost never want it when they’ve got it. If he loses you, he loses the best thing in his life and you get to demand an extra-large bouquet of flowers when he realises his mistake. And jewellery.’

  It sounded like something Bea would say, which was a lot more helpful than what she herself usually came out with at times like this. She would always snap into psychiatrist mode, start talking about defence mechanisms and the primal need for men to spread their seed to as many women as possible in order to increase their chance of procreation. Molly seemed satisfied with the Bea answer and Karen excused herself before she was expected to hug her.

  The waiting room was empty. Jessica’s session was still five minutes away and she hadn’t arrived yet. Grabbing herself a cup of coffee, Karen pushed open the door to her office, ready to assume her poised, ‘in control’ position before Molly brought her client through.

  Jessica was standing behind Karen’s desk, studying the only personal photograph Karen had in the entire room. The shock that reverberated through her almost forced the coffee cup from her hand. Black liquid sloshed over the side, dripping down on to the carpet.

  ‘Jessica.’

  Jessica hadn’t looked up as Karen had entered, but she did at the sound of her voice. She smiled, not looking the least bit embarrassed at being found in Karen’s office, touching her personal things.

  ‘Dr Browning. There was no one outside so I came straight in. Nice photo.’

  She held it up to indicate what she was talking about, then replaced it on the desk. It was a 6x4 photograph of Karen and her friends, linking arms and beaming widely at the camera. They’d been on a hen weekend in Ireland, and shortly after the picture was taken, they’d argued about no one booking a taxi and had to walk the two miles to their hotel, getting lost twice on the way.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t let yourself into my office, Jessica. And please do call me Karen.’

  She gestured to the sofa, hopefully looking much more composed than she felt. How did this girl always manage to get her on the back foot? Jessica shrugged and sat down without apologising.

  ‘How have you been since our last session? Any more headaches?’

  She braced herself for a reply about her obvious and boring question, or an interrogation into her feelings on prisoner-of-war camps, but Jessica just shook her head.

  ‘No, they seem to be gone at the moment. I’m feeling much better. Maybe these sessions really are helping.’

  Karen couldn’t imagine how. They’d gone around in circles avoiding talking about the real reason Jessica was here and seemed to have made no progress on her feelings towards her affair. In fact the only thing they appeared to have achieved was to turn each session into a sparring match, Jessica trying to goad Karen into losing her composure and Karen trying not to scream.

  ‘Is there anything you’d like to talk about today?’

  Jessica looked down at her feet, and Karen felt sure s
he was about to lift them on to the sofa again.

  ‘Maybe I could talk about my past? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? Explore the reasons for my screwed-up relationships with men?’

  This was territory Karen was familiar with. ‘If that’s what you’d like. Is there anything that comes to mind?’

  She nodded. ‘My father cheated on my mother a lot when I was younger.’

  No real surprise there. Daughter following mother into an unhealthy relationship with the opposite sex, repeating patterns of destructive behaviour, sabotaging attempts at a real relationship by choosing someone inappropriate. Textbook.

  ‘Do you remember how you felt about that? As a child, it must have been hard to see your mother going through that kind of pain.’

  ‘I guess. I think I blamed my mum more than anything. If she’d just been prettier or funnier or made more effort, my dad might have wanted to be at home a bit more. It was almost like she gave up trying to keep him.’

  Karen almost felt like shouting ‘Aha!’ but stopped herself in time. The suspicious part of her told her this was too easy, almost as if Jessica had come in here ready to reveal the reason for her problems. She shook away the feeling, desperate to cling to the thought that they might be having some kind of breakthrough.

  ‘And why do you think your mum reacted the way she did to the affairs?’

  ‘I have a sister. Had … had a sister.’ She gave a nervous little laugh. ‘I never know whether I’m supposed to say have or had – you know, like when a woman’s baby is stillborn and she still says she has a child. As if it belongs to her even though it isn’t alive any more. It’s like that. I used to have a sister. She’s dead.’

  Karen’s hand froze halfway to her coffee mug and she could have sworn she could actually felt the blood stop pumping through her veins.

  There’s no way she could know, she told herself, desperately trying to keep her composure. There’s no way she could know what happened to Amy. It’s a coincidence. Lots of people have sisters who die. When she looked back on the session, she would be furious at herself for letting her guard drop, for believing Jessica was just another patient, even for a minute.