I do the same in the heart of the house, on the luxurious red and black rug in the hallway. The house isn’t saying a word here too. Perhaps I’m too upset to hear these four walls. But it doesn’t matter anyway; there’ll be plenty of other times. Time is something I’ve got plenty of. As I climb the stairs, I grin to myself. This house has already said a few things to me without realising it.
As soon as I get into the room, I pull across the bolt on the door and place the chair under the handle. Kick my slippers off, pivot half round and freeze. Tense. Was that a noise? A spine-chilling sensation washes over me. Something, someone, is watching me. Goose pimples push my hair to attention on my covered arms.
I lower my breathing. Don’t move a muscle.
There it is again. A slight rustle and a faint clatter of wood like a small stick being run over the floorboards. I turn fully in alarm. My darting gaze finds nothing. There’s so little furniture that it’s difficult to see how anything can be hiding. I tread softly around the room and that’s when I see it. A grey object, like a feather, out of the corner of my eye. Then the faint clatter again.
A shudder of epic revulsion ripples through me. My worst nightmare. A mouse. I cover my mouth, am powerless to move. Its tail is firmly clasped in the metal wire of a trap. It heads towards the blocked-up fireplace but thinks better of it. It tows the trap behind it like a sledge and puffs its desperate way under the bed.
The room is silent. I’m too petrified to cry out. I don’t know where it comes from but I’ve always had a memory of a dead mouse with large dead eyes staring at me. It’s almost touching me. For some reason I can’t get away. It’s going to pounce on me, run its diseased feet and filthy nails over my cringing skin, the tail brushing over my screeching lips. I’m as immobile now as I was in the memory.
I had asked Jack if there were any mice in the house when I came to visit, hadn’t I? Scratching under the bed replaces all thoughts of my landlord. It propels me into action. I leap across the room. Boot the chair away from the door and fumble with the handle. I slam the door shut panting, panting and panting. One small creature against big, old me? I know it’s stupid, but I can’t handle it.
‘Ja…’ I begin to bellow. I suck it back despite the crippling fear.
I know he’ll be able to sort this out, but the last thing I need is a touchy-feely man in my room again.
Then again, I can’t spend all morning hyperventilating with terror outside my room either; I need to get to work. It crosses my mind that If I get a broom I can shoo it out onto the landing where it can take its chances until Jack arrives – Martha’s probably too frail to deal with it. Or even better, my little visitor might have made its escape and be gone by the time I get back in. They’re little Houdinis these things, so I’m hoping.
When I return, armed with a broom from the cupboard under the stairs, I carefully open the door and slip inside with my back to the wall. I go down on my hands and knees and peer under the bed. My little friend is still in hiding. It makes no movement as I stare at it. Perhaps the mouse is too scared to move, just as afraid of me as I am of it. I’m seized with horror as I lock with its eyes. Wide open, as terrified as mine.
My old memory comes storming back. Large dead mouse eyes staring back at me. I scream and scream and scream.
There’s a commotion on the landing below and the thump of heavy boots on the stairs before the door flies open and Jack storms in.
He looks down at me and is curt. ‘What’s the matter with you? Oh, right – it’s a mouse is it?’
I struggle to my feet, angrily pulling my arm away when he tries to help. ‘You told me you didn’t have a mouse problem.’
He looks both innocent and contemptuous at the same time. ‘Did I? I don’t remember that. Of course there’s mice in this house. Loads of them. This is a Victorian house, babe, you try finding one in this city that doesn’t have them.’ He takes the broom out of my hand. ‘Now, where is the little blighter? Ah yes, there he is. Hey, what do you know? He’s got his tail stuck in a trap. That should slow him down a bit.’
With a sweep of the broom the mousetrap, with the mouse still attached, comes spinning out from under the bed. I jump back in petrified panic, holding my palm flat against my furiously beating heart. Jack picks up the trap and holds it at shoulder height. My mouth twists in disgust. He presses it towards me with the mouse suspended underneath by its tail, desperately trying to turn itself the right way up. I can’t tell if Jack is trying to torment the animal or me. Probably both. He can tell how upset I am.
‘What are you doing that for?’ I croak. Seething heat enters my voice. ‘Do you get a kick out of being cruel to animals? Take him out front and let him go.’
Jack tuts. ‘Can’t do that, what if he comes back?’
I’ve had it up to here with this moron. ‘You put it in my room, didn’t you?’
‘You what?’ he replies scornfully. ‘Stop talking bollocks. The missus has told me point blank to stay out of your way and that’s what I was doing until you decided to bring the roof down as if Freddy Krueger’s in town.’
I don’t believe a word of it. How else would a mouse stuck to a trap have got to the top of the house? He probably caught the live mouse somewhere else before pegging it on to the trap and leaving it in my room for me to find. It’s a piece of grotesque theatre by him against me.
That must’ve been the sound I heard upstairs when I reached the ground floor: him creeping out of his bedroom with the mouse and then creeping up to my room. What a bastard!
With a sound of disgust ringing from his lips Jack disappears from the room, but a few minutes later he returns with the mouse still on the trap in one hand and what looks like a length of lead piping in the other. Very carefully, he puts the helpless mouse back down on the floorboards. He gives me a look with a glint in his eye before raising the pipe and bringing it down with unspeakable violence. The animal is not so much killed as obliterated. It’s a tangled mush of fur and flesh with drops of blood scattered around on the white painted boards.
I gasp in both horror and anger.
‘What did you that for? Why didn’t you let it go?’
‘Kindest thing to do, Lisa…’
He takes a plastic bag and brushes the remains into it along with the trap. He gets to his feet and gives me a beady look which I know is not so much cruelty or baiting as an implied threat.
I say nothing but give him an angry look of defiance as he leaves.
When he’s gone, I go to the bathroom – their bathroom – and fetch a sponge. I scrub and scrub and scrub until every trace of the tiny drops of animal blood and fur have been erased from the white floorboards.
Chapter 8
Ihover, pace, hover some more, then make myself still in front of the door to Doctor Wilson’s studio. All that dithering has made me ten minutes late for our first appointment. I really can’t face it. Shrinks, therapists, head doctors. They don’t work for me. Worst still, a session with one can tumble me backwards into the dark side where only frightening things await, control slipping out of my clawing fingers.
I take a breath that fills up the empty cavern of my chest. Remind myself I’m doing this for Mum and Dad, sort of like an early Christmas present for them. Grin and bear it is the name of the game. No doubt the good doctor is a great guy, a leading light of his profession by the sound of it, but I know he can’t help me. He can’t. No one can now.
Except for me.
I don’t know why Wilson calls his consulting rooms his ‘studio’ – he’s supposed to be a psychiatrist not a rock star. Perhaps it’s the trendy new word that shrinks use for the places they do business in. His studio is in upmarket Hampstead, housed in a pretty detached cottage. The Mercedes parked out front roars big money. I guess his client list must include messed-up millionaires, poor little rich kids and the like.
Even after I’ve rung the buzzer, that need to bolt tugs, won’t let go. But Wilson is too quick for me; the door is confidently pu
lled back before I know it.
Despite my unease, I nearly burst out laughing. He’s the image of Sigmund Freud: close-cut hair, neatly trimmed grey beard. Even his glasses look like pince-nez. The image bursts when he opens his mouth. He speaks the Queen’s English, doesn’t have a German accent.
‘Lisa? It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ He has one of those deep, careful voices, the type where every word is considered before it leaves his mouth.
It’s a Saturday morning, so the reception and waiting room are deserted and we’re here on our own. He asks me a few questions about my parents’ health as we go; it seems he hasn’t seen them for a while. In his consulting room, I have to hold back the laughter again. He has a psychiatrist’s couch, the real deal. Very expensive – gleaming in fact – upholstered jet-black leather.
‘You’ve got a couch.’ I can’t stop myself from sharing my disbelief.
He doesn’t take offence, instead smiles warmly, lines creasing at the corners of his eyes. ‘Some of my clients seem to expect one and I don’t like to disappoint. Try if it you like. Or, if you prefer, there’s a perfectly good chair over here.’
I can’t stop myself. I climb on board the couch like it’s a fairground ride. Settle in, lean back and sink into the comfort of its welcoming texture. I might appear as snug as a bug, but I want to get this done ASAP so I refuse his offer of tea, coffee or bottled water.
Before I know it he’s in his own chair, fingers woven together in his lap. ‘Do you mind if I record some of what we share today?’
I shake my head. What does it matter what he writes down? I know what questions he’s going to ask and I’m ready to rattle the answers off and then go. I do worry, though, that I might lose the run of myself while I’m going through my story by numbers.
He starts: Can I tell him something about myself?
No problem. I reel off my prepared CV.
I’m a nice middle-class girl from Surrey, an only child who grew up in idyllic surroundings with loving and stable parents who provided me with everything. Totally everything. I excelled at whatever I did at a private school that described itself as ‘outstanding’ in its prospectus. I became one of those rare girls who go on to study maths at university before moving into high-end software work in the financial sector. I rose up the ranks fast. I’m disciplined, focused and hard-working. I don’t have any real friends, but hey, who needs them? I’ve had one proper boyfriend. Yes, one, that’s right. I’ve never been abused – so don’t go down that road – and I’ve never taken drugs or had any substance or addiction issues. That’s it. That’s me.
I notice he’s making a lot of notes, far more than are justified by what I’ve revealed. It occurs to me that perhaps he’s just making a shopping list. Perhaps he’s no more eager to waste his Saturday morning talking to me than I am talking to him. Perhaps he’s just doing it to humour my parents. Then I remember he’s a friend of my dad’s so he may well know more about me than he’s letting on. My fingertips dig into the leather.
‘I see.’
A two-word comment is not what I expect from him. Follow-up questions surely. He asks none. He finishes making notes.
Without thinking about the implications, voice bitter and hoarse, I almost yell, ‘I need to make one thing clear straight from the gate. I’m not mad, OK? I’m not mad.’
Where had that come from? The ‘M’ word was the last thing I wanted planting roots during our session.
The doctor’s gentle smile is there again. ‘I think you’ll find, Lisa, that there are very few members of my profession who use the word “mad” these days. And if there are, they should be struck off.’ He sighs slightly and studies what he’s written. ‘Your father mentioned something happened four months ago, an incident, that he thought you might want to discuss. Is that right?’
It would be typical of my dad to refer to what had happened as an ‘incident’. A blip. Almost as if it’s something everyone does at one time or the other.
I lift one shoulder. ‘If you like.’
‘It’s not what I like, Lisa, it’s what you like.’
I suppose we’re going to have to discuss this. ‘Sure, let’s talk about the “incident”.’
‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’
I don’t want to but I do anyway. I take a deep breath that’s audible in the room; I don’t want my voice to tremble. I can’t stop the coldness that covers my skin. I detach myself. Start talking as if I’m delivering a report.
‘Well, I suppose I’d been feeling a bit low and I’d got some pills for it. I’d had a really bad night. I’ve had cycles of bad dreams every so often since I was a kid, and I was at the end of one of those cycles of nightmares. I hadn’t slept at all, so I took the day off work. At lunchtime, I helped myself to a vodka to cheer myself up along with some of the various pills in my medicine cabinet. And then I took some more and washed them down with more vodka. Then some more and then some more. I don’t really know what I was doing, really. I was exhausted and very rattled by my dreams. I suppose I must have passed out. I was found on the bathroom floor. The next thing I know I’m down the hospital getting my stomach pumped.’ Now comes the hard bit. ‘They – the hospital, Mum and Dad, especially Dad – decided it was a suicide attempt.’
I feel the ghost of the faceless man who wrote the farewell letter lie down on the coach next to me. It’s not uncomfortable, almost as if he’s giving me strength.
The doctor is still making copious notes. ‘And was it?’
‘Was it what?’
‘A suicide attempt?’
I sigh and think about the question. ‘I don’t know really. Maybe it was. My parents certainly seem to think so. Now I have to check in and visit every so often to prove that I’m not dead.’
‘Have you contemplated suicide in the past?’
I close my eyes. It’s a difficult question to answer but I do my best. ‘Not… exactly. But sometimes I just wish I wasn’t here, you know? Perhaps I should have mentioned I suffered from an eating disorder in my teens. I think sometimes that was just an attempt to disappear, to go away somewhere. From time to time, I just wish death would come along and sweep me away to a Shangri-La of peace and quiet. A place where bad dreams are banned. You know, what it says on Victorian gravestones: “Where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest”.’
The doctor shares a new smile. ‘That’s the Bible, the Book of Job.’
‘Poor old Job. I sympathise with him.’
‘Have you had any professional help with your problems over the years?’
‘Yeah, loads.’ Truth be told I could write a book on it. ‘Even when I was messed up in junior school my doctor dad was trying to work out what was wrong with me and consulting his friends in your profession. My parents were at their wits’ end so they sent me to see a child psychologist. Nice lady. Always wore Vivienne Westwood skirts. She asked me if I was being bullied by the other children and I said I wasn’t. So she decided it was bullying that was causing it even though I’d just told her I wasn’t being bullied.’ I glance sideways at him. ‘No one can help me, I’m afraid.’
‘What about your father? What does he think?’
‘My… father?’ I utter slowly. My mind flashes back to my parents’ garden. Dad pushing me tenderly on the swing.
‘Yes,’ Doctor Wilson continues softly. ‘You said he tried to help when you were very young. You mention him more than your mother. He’s also a highly distinguished doctor with many friends in the field. So I’m wondering what his opinion is? Has he given you one?’
I’m silent. I wasn’t expecting this. I’m also acutely conscious of the fact that my parents have never in my life been disloyal to me and I don’t want to be disloyal to them. Especially my beloved dad. Like all children, I find my parents irritating from time to time but they’ve never stabbed me in the back. I’ve already edited my story to avoid appearing disloyal and I don’t want to start now. I try to think of something to say but dis
loyalty seems to lie in every direction.
Abruptly, I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the couch. ‘I’m sorry doctor, I’ve got to go.’
His face is a picture of empathy. ‘Of course, if you wish.’
‘I’ve wasted your time.’
‘Not at all.’
I stand up. I’m a little unsteady on my feet and I’m avoiding Doctor Wilson’s X-ray gaze. I have wasted his time. If I were one of his mixed-up millionaires he would’ve earned a couple of thousand out of our little chat. Instead, he’s seen me on his free Saturday as a favour to my mum and dad and made nothing out of it. And now I’m walking just when things were getting interesting. As I creep towards the door, I ask him if he can do something for me.
‘Of course.’
‘I’m really grateful for you giving up your time, really I am, but I’m not coming here anymore.’
‘I understand.’
I’m still avoiding his eyes. ‘I was wondering if, when you bump into my dad again or speak to him on the phone, whether perhaps you could tell him I’m still coming for these sessions? It would make him and Mum relax, you know, feel more at ease. Stop worrying.’
Doctor Wilson smiles sympathetically. ‘That wouldn’t be very ethical of me, Lisa. I mean ethical in the personal sense rather than professional. Look, why don’t you sit down again for a moment?’
I sit on the edge of the couch.
‘These sessions aren’t about your parents or me and my time or anyone doing anyone favours. They’re meant to be about helping you. If you think by coming to see me it will help then come again next Saturday. I’ll be here at the same time next week regardless. I always have plenty of work to get on with anyway.’
‘I don’t think you can help me.’ My voice trembles for the first time in our session.
Spare Room: a twisty dark psychological thriller Page 6
