Universally Challenged

by Anna Bell

  ‘No, I work for Clarity.’

  Jessica nodded and rolled her eyes slightly. Clarity weren’t a new company. They had been set up a few years ago and were hired by banks to look into investments in developing countries to see if they were kosher. It made sense that they’d be at a China conference, good way to tout for business. They had had one big coup years ago, and had been chasing the next big windfall ever since. They usually uncovered a little bit of corruption, nothing to lose any sleep over.

  ‘We’re hired by investors to look into companies in far-flung lands.’

  ‘Have you taken down anyone big lately?’ asked Jessica. She knew that he was going to say no, but she didn’t feel mean about it. After all this was a company that was basically accusing analysts and fund managers like Jessica of being irresponsible and not being thorough enough in their research.

  ‘Well,’ the man looked around him and lowered himself towards Jessica. ‘Between you and me, we’re about to. We’re on to this company in China that says it owns these energy companies, but in truth they’ve never been built.’

  Jessica’s smile almost evaporated. They couldn’t be working on anything big in the energy sector; that was her sector. If there was anybody doing anything dodgy in that sector she’d know. She’d at least have heard some gossip somewhere.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, but I can’t say too much. But come next week, we’ll be the talk of Wall Street.’

  ‘So would it be a company I’ve heard of?’

  ‘I doubt it, I don’t think they are big in the teaching world. I’ve probably said too much already, all this free champagne.’ He waved his drink to illustrate his point.

  ‘But surely people wouldn’t invest in a dodgy company?’ asked Jessica, acting as if she wee the teacher.

  ‘Well, let’s just say the lack of up-to-date images of Google Maps has been doing someone some favours. Anyway, I’m going before I say anything else. I think I just got excited meeting another non-banker. Nice to have met you.’

  Jessica had just opened her mouth to say something but he’d already gone. She looked around the room in panic, and took a glass of champagne off a passing waiter.

  ‘You ok? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ said Jake walking up to her.

  ‘I feel like I have.’

  ‘Want to grab some air?’

  Jessica nodded.

  ‘And that’s all he said?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jessica. They were walking around the Rockefeller Center, where usually Jessica would marvel at the Art Deco architecture, but her mind was so focused on the Clarity man that she didn’t even realise where they were walking.

  ‘Well, I don’t think there is anything to worry about.’

  ‘Easy for you to say. I suggested the multi-million dollar investment in SinoDam, what if it’s them?’

  ‘Jessica, it wasn’t you who did that. It was Patricia.’

  Jessica let out a scream and stamped her foot. Jake almost backed away from her.

  ‘Look, Jessica, I know you keep getting upset by this. I know someone who you could talk to.’

  Jessica just stared at him. He guided her gently over to sit on a nearby bench.

  ‘She’s a psychiatrist.’

  ‘I’m not mad,’ said Jessica in frustration.

  ‘I’m not saying you are. It’s just you need to talk to someone. The stuff that you’re coming out with, it’s all descriptions of what Patricia’s done. I mean, no one else knows you.’

  The reality had hit home again. It might have been fun winding up Jilly but she wanted to know what was going on. She wanted to know why no one else knew her.

  ‘Just think of it as someone to talk to, who will listen, and maybe tell you what is going on.’

  Jessica didn’t say anything, she just continued to look at her shoes. ‘You don’t believe me, do you, that this isn’t my life?’

  ‘Jessica. I’m trying to help you.’

  ‘I know, you’re the only one I’ve told. Ironic that you have no idea who I am and yet you’re still helping me.’

  Jessica looked up and Jake was looking down at her with the most curious look. He had the most amazing eyes and for a minute Jessica thought he was going to kiss her. She turned her head quickly, wanting to remove herself from temptation. She couldn’t kiss a colleague. Then it hit her. That wasn’t her life anymore, if it had been at all. Her reason for not kissing him should have been her husband, Benjy. She fiddled with the ring on her left finger.

  ‘Ok, I’ll go see her,’ said Jessica.

  ‘Great, I’ll give her a call for you. See if I can get you squeezed in.’

  ‘Thank you, Jake.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Right, I should be heading home,’ she said, getting up from the bench. She suddenly felt uneasy being in such close proximity to Jake; she almost didn’t trust herself. It had to be the mix of the champagne and him being so damn nice.

  ‘I’ll give you a call when I’ve spoken to my friend,’ he said, flagging down a cab.

  ‘Thanks, Jake, for everything.’

  Jessica couldn’t stop herself from leaning up and kissing him on the cheek. She cursed herself immediately, as he looked shocked. She felt shocked. She slunk quickly into the cab and he held his hand up to signal goodbye in the appropriate way.

  She sank back into the cab and wondered how everything could be so horribly wrong with her life.

  Chapter 16 – Jess Burns

  Jess paid the taxi driver and got out of the car. She didn’t know who this shrink was, but Jake must know her pretty well as he’d phoned her before 7.30am and managed to get Jess an appointment.

  Looking up at the brownstone building she was suddenly scared to go in. She’d laughed at Jake when he’d suggested meeting her there. She’d reassured him that she was a big girl and that she’d be just fine on her own, but now she wasn’t so sure.

  She hesitated on the pavement for a while, pretending she was taking in the street. It wasn’t that far away from her own apartment. She didn’t recognise the street, she’d obviously not had reason to come down it before. The brownstones on the street seemed to be mostly businesses.

  The longer she stood outside, pretending to take in the scenery, the less she wanted to go inside. She took a deep breath and walked up the steps to the main house. She ran her finger over the intercom buttons for the different people’s offices and hovered over Dr Rosenthal’s. She pushed it quickly so that she couldn’t chicken out.

  ‘Yes?’ said a crackly female voice.

  ‘I’m here to see Dr Rosenthal.’

  The door clicked as if the magnet had been released and Jess pushed it open.

  ‘You must be Jessica,’ said a middle-aged woman with big curly hair as she walked down the stairs.

  Jess just nodded.

  ‘I’m Dr Rosenthal. Come on up,’ she said indicating up the stairs. ‘My secretary doesn’t get in until eight. I usually deal with my emergency appointments before then.’

  Jess followed Dr Rosenthal up the stairs right to the top of the converted house. Her room was small and cosy with a sloping attic roof. It wasn’t how she imagined a psychiatrist’s office to be. There were no leather couches or large intimidating collections of books lining the book shelves. Instead, there were comfortable-looking fabric sofas, with cushions, lots of cushions. And everything was bright.

  ‘Take a seat. So Jake tells me that you’re struggling with your identity?’ said Dr Rosenthal picking up a notebook. Jess perched on the sofa edge, trying to wedge her bum between the sofa cushions.

  ‘Not so much my identity. I know who I am, it’s just that I have different views of what I do and where I live.’

  ‘Ok, so tell me about yourself.’

  Jess took another deep breath. ‘I know that my name is Jess Burns, I’m twenty-eight years old. I live in Bond Street, here in the village, and I’m married to Benjy Burns. We’ve been married for seven years. We’re happy.’
r />   ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘Everyone else is saying that I’m not married. That I’m still Jessica Anderson. Apparently for the last seven years I’ve been working for a company called LMG Global, and I’m a successful business woman. And I’m apparently single.’

  ‘Right. And what about your husband, have you spoken to him?’

  Jess nodded.

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He’s married to someone else and is living in Washington D.C. Someone else lives in our apartment.’

  ‘When did this change happen?’

  ‘Monday. I woke up on Monday morning and I was in a hotel room. Everyone told me I’d flown over for business the night before.’

  ‘And what was the last thing you could remember from Sunday?’

  ‘I was really drunk. Benjy and I had got into a phenomenally big fight and I’d got drunk with his friends. I don’t remember anything after we started drinking Tequila around 10pm.’ The memory of the tequila hangover burned in her memory.

  ‘And then you woke up and it was all different?’

  ‘Yes. Do you think I’m mad?’

  ‘Jess, I’m a psychiatrist. We don’t use terminology like that.’

  ‘Ok, well what do you think is wrong with me, then?’

  ‘Tell me about your job. You’re a business woman. Is it stressful?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know as I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I’m a teacher in real life.’

  ‘In real life, interesting.’

  Jess rolled her eyes, then immediately looked away to fiddle with the cushions as Dr Rosenthal had seen.

  ‘Ok, going back to the business, is something big happening?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got a big presentation to do tomorrow and I’ve got a big meeting with a Chinese company on Friday.’

  ‘And are you nervous about them?’

  YES screamed Jess in her head, of course I’m bloody nervous, I have no clue what I’m talking about. ‘Yes, I am, in as much as I’m not confident in my subject.’

  ‘And this man you thought was your husband, Benjy,’ she said, squinting over her glasses to read her notes. ‘Does he know who you are?’

  ‘Yes, he thinks we broke up seven years ago.’

  ‘I see. So do you still harbour feelings for him?’

  ‘Well, seeing as up to two days ago I thought I was married to him, safe to say I still have feelings for him.’ Jess bit her lip; she didn’t mean to get cross with Dr Rosenthal.

  ‘Ok. And what was his reaction to you making contact again?’

  ‘He offered to have an affair with me.’

  ‘And how did that make you feel?’

  ‘Pissed off. I mean he is my husband and he is offering to sleep with me, when he’s married. He would willingly cheat on his wife – that pissed me off.’

  Dr Rosenthal took her glasses off and started chewing the end. ‘So have you spoken to anyone else who has known you differently this week?’

  ‘My parents.’

  Dr Rosenthal started scribbling away and she waved her other arm enthusiastically to get Jess to continue.

  ‘That was weird; my parents were nice to me. They actually sounded proud of me.’

  ‘Is that unusual for you?’

  ‘We don’t get on that well.’

  Again Dr Rosenthal made hand signals to encourage her to keep going.

  ‘They think I ruined my life by marrying Benjy.’

  ‘What about you, did you think you ruined your life marrying this Benjy?’

  ‘Sometimes, not often, but sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t moved out to the US and I hadn’t married him. I think that’s normal though, isn’t it? You know, wondering what if?’

  ‘Is it?’

  Jess didn’t like this one little bit. She picked up the fluffy pink pillow next to her and hugged it towards her chest for comfort. She shrugged, not wanting to do any more of the talking. She wanted some answers.

  ‘Now, Jess, I wouldn’t usually tell you what I thought was going on after only a few minutes. Let’s face it, I’m a business woman, too. But Jake tells me you are back off to the UK on Saturday? So there is no chance to do a follow-up session.’

  Jess nodded, even though she couldn’t believe she was leaving on Saturday. She braced herself for the worst.

  ‘You must understand that I recommend when you get back to the UK you see someone else and you tell them the same things you told me, ok? If you promise you’ll seek help when you get home, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Ok,’ said Jess nodding, ‘I promise’. The only relieving thing in that sentence was the fact that she was letting her go, and letting her go back to the UK. She’d woken up in the night in a panic that Dr Rosenthal was going to have her committed.

  ‘Right. I should have asked earlier, did you bump your head? You said you were out drinking.’

  ‘No, at least I don’t think I bumped my head.’

  ‘You’ve not had any headaches?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I think that you are stressed.’

  ‘Stressed?’ said Jess. She’d been stressed in the past. The last tour Benjy had been on had been pretty stressful when she could never get hold of him and there were constant rumours of him with other women. Her marriage was crumbling around her then, that had been stressful.

  ‘Yes, stress. It can do all sorts of strange things to the brain.’

  ‘What, like completely rewrite my memories from the last seven years?’

  ‘Yes, exactly like that. You don’t look happy with that explanation?’

  ‘Well, it’s just, how did I know where my apartment was if I didn’t live there? How did I know the address?’

  ‘I don’t know. Our brains can just pick up on the smallest bits of information. Maybe you’d seen it written down somewhere.’

  Jess looked up at the slanting ceiling desperately trying to distract herself. She was counting to ten in her head. She didn’t want to get any angrier. ‘But the last seven years are so vivid in my head.’

  ‘Yes, Jess, they will be. That’s how powerful the mind can be. Look at the cases of people who wake up from comas speaking another language. I think you are stressed about your job and it latched on to your fear of being single. You obviously went back to the one that got away in your mind. There is no other alternative. What did you think, that you’d fallen through a gap in the space-time continuum and you were in a parallel universe? Ha.’

  Dr Rosenthal laughed a really hearty belly laugh and scared Jess into sitting up straight. She didn’t like being laughed at. It was the most sense Dr Rosenthal had made yet. It felt exactly like she was in a parallel universe. Where everyone was the same, only it had split at the point that she had not married Benjy.

  She didn’t buy the stress argument. She remembered her life too vividly for that. She remembered the taste and smell of Benjy. The cosiness of the apartment. The knowledge of her teaching career.

  ‘So will my memory come back then, if it is stress?’

  ‘Possibly, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. I advise you to find someone like me when you get home and they will help you to try and almost regress you back. They’ll help you to try and explore your mind.’

  Jess wondered just how Jake knew Dr Rosenthal. Maybe he, too, had suffered from stress and had sat on this very sofa and watched her wave her arms around as she talked.

  ‘Ok. And I’m not crazy?’

  ‘Jess, I’m telling you off for using that word. In this room no one is crazy. Some people, including yourself, struggle with what is going on around them. Different people have different ways of coping with that, and sometimes that has an effect on our brains.’

  Jess wondered how much she was going to be billed for these pearls of wisdom. She was none the wiser then when she’d come in, but no doubt she was going to be poorer.

  ‘Now, our half an hour is up. These emergency slots are only short, just to make sure that e
verything is ok. Which with you, I believe it is. Perhaps when your presentation is over at the end of the week, you will feel better.’

  Jess smiled. She was never going to see this woman again, she didn’t need to argue with her.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Rosenthal. How much do I owe you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Jake and I go back a long way. I’m doing this as a favour. After all, it isn’t like we’ll see each other again with you living in England.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Jess Though as her apartment was only five blocks from here, theoretically she could bump into her on the way to the subway in the mornings.

  ‘Wonderful. Well, my secretary will be in now, she will show you out. You take care now, Jess. And remember just to relax and think soothing thoughts.’

  ‘Great. Thanks for the advice.’ Jess smiled and walked out of the office. The secretary was poised, waiting, and took her down the stairs.

  Jess stood out on the street and headed towards LMG Global. If she believed Dr Rosenthal and she was apparently stressed, how did she know her way round the village well enough to know which way to walk to get to the office?

  No, Dr Rosenthal was wrong, thought Jess. There was something else going on and it had nothing to do with stress.

  Chapter 17 – Jessica Anderson

  Jessica ran up the brownstone steps, after practically throwing the money at the taxi driver. She hated being late anywhere. She’d been shocked when Jake had phoned her about the emergency appointment so soon. She’d half expected to hear later in the week for an appointment in weeks to come.

  She’d taken the phone call in whispered tones, petrified that Benjy would hear her from the shower. It wasn’t that she felt she was doing anything wrong, being on the phone to Jake. It was more that she didn’t know how she could explain knowing him without having to tell Benjy the whole tale of her and her confused state.

  Unlike the previous morning, where Benjy had got ready quickly and rushed out of the door to work, he had taken ages in the shower. Having seen Jessica was up, Benjy insisted on talking at her at great lengths before he left for work. Meaning, she got into the shower really late, and she was now running late for her appointment with Dr Rosenthal. Jake had already warned her that she only had a half-an-hour appointment and that she’d have to be brief.