I slumped back into my seat. She had taken me by surprise with her startlingly accurate summary of how things had been, and then asked a very interesting, pertinent question. Despite the gold shoes and the novelty key rings, I could see already that Maria Temple was no fool. This was all going to take me a while to process, but in the meantime, I tried to gather my thoughts into some sort of coherent response.
“I suppose on some level I actually felt the whole thing was real, and that, when we finally met, we’d fall in love and get married and so on. I felt, I don’t know, somehow ready for a relationship like that. People—men—like him don’t cross my path very often. It seemed only right not to let the opportunity pass by. And I felt sure that . . . certain people . . . would be pleased that I’d found him. When he and I were finally in the same room together, though, something that I’d worked hard to make happen, the whole thing just sort of . . . dissolved. Does that make any sense?”
She nodded encouragingly.
“I suppose I realized, right there in that room, that I’d been stupid, acting like a teenager rather than a thirty-year-old woman. He wasn’t even special, I’d been focused on him, but really, it could have been anyone. I’d been trying to please M—”
Nodding, she interrupted me, thankfully stopping me from going too far.
“There are actually a number of issues I’d like to suggest we explore over the next few sessions,” she said. “We’ve been talking about recent events here today, but at some point I’d like to hear a bit about your childhood—”
“Absolutely not,” I said, folding my arms and staring at the carpet. The lady does not need to know what goes on in this house.
“I understand that it can be a very difficult thing to talk about,” she said.
“I don’t want to talk about any of that, Maria. Please, do not ask me to talk about Mummy.”
Damn, damn, damn. She leaped on that, of course. Mummy’s always the star turn, the big draw.
“What sort of relationship do you have with your mother, Eleanor? Are you close?”
“Mummy’s in contact quite regularly. Too regularly,” I said. The cat was out of the bag now.
“You two don’t get on, then?” she said.
“It’s . . . complicated.” I noticed myself physically as well as metaphorically squirming in my seat.
“Can you tell me why?” Maria asked, bold as brass, nosy, intrusive. Shameless.
“No,” I said.
There was a very long pause.
“I know that it’s difficult, really difficult, to talk about painful things, but, as I said, that’s the best route to helping us move forward. Let’s start very slowly. Can you tell me why you don’t feel comfortable talking about your mother?”
“I . . . she wouldn’t want me to,” I said. That was true. I remembered the last—and only—time I’d done it, with a teacher. It wasn’t a mistake you made twice.
My left leg had begun to tremble; just a little quiver, but once it started, I couldn’t get it to stop. I threw my head back and made a noise, a sort of sigh mixed with a cough, to try to distract her eye from it.
“OK,” she said patiently. “If it’s all right with you, to finish up, I’d like to suggest that we try something a bit different. It’s called the empty-chair exercise,” she said. I folded my arms and stared at her.
“Basically, I’d like you to imagine that this chair here”—she indicated the lone upright dining chair—“is your mother.”
She anticipated my response.
“Now, I know this might feel silly, or embarrassing, but please, just try and go with it. No one’s judging you here. This is a safe space.” I twisted my hands together anxiously in my lap, mirroring the feeling in my stomach.
“Are you willing to give it a try?”
I stared at the door, willing myself out of it, willing the hands of the clock to tick round to the hour.
“Eleanor,” she said gently, “I’m here to help you, and you’re here to help yourself, aren’t you? I think you want to be happy. In fact, I know you do. Who doesn’t? We can work together in this room toward helping you achieve that. It’s not going to be easy, or quick, but I really think it could be worth it. What have you got to lose, after all? You’re going to be here for an hour either way. Why not give it a try?”
She had made a fair point, I supposed. I looked up and slowly unfolded my arms.
“Great!” she said. “Thank you, Eleanor. So . . . let’s imagine that this chair here is your mother. What do you want to tell her, right now? If you could say anything, right here, without being interrupted? Without fear of judgment? Come on, don’t worry. Anything you like . . .”
I turned to face the empty chair. My leg was still trembling. I cleared my throat. I was safe. She wasn’t really here, she wasn’t really listening. I thought back to that house, the cold, the damp smell, the wallpaper with the cornflowers and the brown carpet. I heard the cars passing by outside, all of them driving to nice places, safe places, while we were here, left all alone or—worse—left with her.
“Mummy . . . please,” I said. I could hear my voice outside of my own head, disembodied in the room, floating. It was high and very, very quiet. I breathed in.
“Please don’t hurt us.”
30
I don’t resort to foul language as a rule, but that first session with the counselor yesterday was bloody ridiculous. I started crying in front of Dr. Temple at the end of her stupid empty-chair exercise, and then she actually said, with faux gentleness, that our session had to draw to a close and that she’d see me next week at the same time. She basically hustled me out onto the street, and I found myself standing on the pavement, shoppers bustling past me, tears streaming down my face. How could she do it? How could one human being see another so obviously in pain, a pain she had deliberately drawn out and worried away at, and then push her out into the street and leave her to cope with it alone?
It was 11 a.m. I wasn’t supposed to be drinking, but I wiped away my tears, went into the nearest pub and ordered a large vodka. I silently raised a toast to absent friends and drank it down fast. I walked out before any of the daytime drinkers could begin an interaction with me. Then I went home and got into bed.
Raymond and I continued to meet for lunch in our usual café while I was off work. He would text me to suggest a time and date (the only texts I had received on my new mobile telephone so far). It turned out that if you saw the same person with some degree of regularity, then the conversation was immediately pleasant and comfortable—you could pick up where you left off, as it were, rather than having to start afresh each time.
During the course of these chats, Raymond asked again about Mummy—why I hadn’t told her I’d been unwell, why she never visited me, or I her, until finally I gave in and provided him with a potted biography. He already knew about the fire, of course, and that I’d been brought up in care afterward. That, I told him, was because it wasn’t possible for me to live with Mummy afterward, not where she was. It was, I’d hoped, enough to keep him quiet, but no.
“Where is she, then? Hospital, nursing home?” he guessed. I shook my head.
“It’s a bad place, for bad people,” I said. He thought for a moment.
“Not prison?” He looked shocked. I held his gaze but said nothing. After another short pause he asked, not unreasonably, what crime she had committed.
“I can’t remember,” I said.
He stared at me, then snorted.
“Bullshit,” he said. “Come on, Eleanor. You can tell me. It won’t change anything between us, I promise. It’s not like you did it, whatever it was.”
I felt a hot flush streak right up the front of my body and then down my back, a sensation I can only liken to being given a sedative prior to a general anesthetic. My pulse was pounding.
“It’s true,” I said. “I honestly don’t know. I think I must have been told at the time, but I can’t remember. I was only ten. Everyone was really careful never to mention it around me . . .”
“Oh, come on,” he said. “She must have done something really terrible to . . . I mean, what about at school? Kids can be little shits about stuff like that. What about when people hear your name? Although, come to think of it, I don’t think I remember reading anything about a crime involving an Oliphant . . . ?”