Tuesday, 6 August 2013
Morning
I’ve barely slept. All night, I lay awake thinking about it, turning it over and over in my mind. Is this stupid, reckless, pointless? Is it dangerous? I don’t know what I’m doing. I made an appointment yesterday morning, to see Doctor Kamal Abdic. I rang his surgery and spoke to a receptionist, and asked for him by name. I might have been imagining it, but I thought she sounded surprised. She said he could see me today at four thirty. So soon? My heart battering my ribs, my mouth dry, I said that would be fine. The session costs ￡75. That ￡300 from my mother is not going to last very long.
Ever since I made the appointment, I haven’t been able to think of anything else. I’m afraid, but I’m excited, too. I can’t deny that there’s a part of me that finds the idea of meeting Kamal thrilling. Because all this started with him: a glimpse of him and my life changed course, veered off the tracks. The moment I saw him kiss Megan, everything changed.
And I need to see him. I need to do something, because the police are only interested in Scott. They had him in for questioning again yesterday. They won’t confirm it, of course, but there’s footage on the internet: Scott, walking into the police station, his mother at his side. His tie was too tight, he looked strangled.
Everyone speculates. The newspapers say that the police are being more circumspect, that they cannot afford to make another hasty arrest. There is talk of a botched investigation, suggestions that a change in personnel may be required. On the internet, the talk about Scott is horrible, the theories wild, disgusting. There are screen grabs of him giving his first tearful appeal for Megan’s return, and next to them are pictures of killers who had also appeared on television, sobbing, seemingly distraught at the fate of their loved ones. It’s horrific, inhuman. I can only pray that he never looks at this stuff. It would break his heart.
So, stupid and reckless I may be, but I am going to see Kamal Abdic, because unlike all the speculators, I have seen Scott. I’ve been close enough to touch him, I know what he is, and he isn’t a murderer.
Evening
My legs are still trembling as I climb the steps to Corly station. I’ve been shaking like this for hours, it must be the adrenaline, my heart just won’t slow down. The train is packed – no chance of a seat here, it’s not like getting on at Euston, so I have to stand, midway through a carriage. It’s like a sweatbox. I’m trying to breathe slowly, my eyes cast down to my feet. I’m just trying to get a handle on what I’m feeling.
Exultation, fear, confusion and guilt. Mostly guilt.
It wasn’t what I expected.
By the time I got to the practice, I’d worked myself up into a state of complete and utter terror: I was convinced that he was going to look at me and somehow know that I knew, that he was going to view me as a threat. I was afraid that I would say the wrong thing, that somehow I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from saying Megan’s name. Then I walked into a doctor’s waiting room, boring and bland, and spoke to a middle-aged receptionist, who took my details without really looking at me. I sat down and picked up a copy of Vogue and flicked through it with trembling fingers, trying to focus my mind on the task ahead while at the same time attempting to look unremarkably bored, just like any other patient.
There were two others in there: a twenty-something man reading something on his phone and an older woman who stared glumly at her feet, not once looking up, even when her name was called by the receptionist. She just got up and shuffled off, she knew where she was going. I waited there for five minutes, ten. I could feel my breathing getting shallow. The waiting room was warm and airless, and I felt as though I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs. I worried that I might faint.
Then a door flew open and a man came out and before I’d even had time to see him properly, I knew that it was him. I knew the way I knew that he wasn’t Scott the first time I saw him, when he was nothing but a shadow moving towards her – just an impression of tallness, of loose, languid movement. He held out his hand to me.
‘Ms Watson?’
I raised my eyes to meet his and felt a jolt of electricity all the way down my spine. I put my hand into his. It was warm and dry and huge, enveloping the whole of mine.
‘Please,’ he said, indicating for me to follow him into his office, and I did, feeling sick, dizzy all the way. I was walking in her footsteps. She did all this. She sat opposite him in the chair he told me to sit in, he probably folded his hands just below his chin the way he did this afternoon, he probably nodded at her in the same way, saying, ‘OK, what would you like to talk to me about today?’
Everything about him was warm: his hand, when I shook it; his eyes; the tone of his voice. I searched his face for clues, for signs of the vicious brute who smashed Megan’s head open, for a glimpse of the traumatized refugee who had lost his family. I couldn’t see any. And for a while, I forgot myself. I forgot to be afraid of him. I was sitting there and I wasn’t panicking any longer. I swallowed hard and tried to remember what I had to say, and I said it. I told him that for four years I’d had problems with alcohol, that my drinking had cost me my marriage and my job, it was costing me my health, obviously, and I feared it might cost me my sanity, too.
‘I don’t remember things,’ I said. ‘I black out and I can’t remember where I’ve been or what I’ve done. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve done or said terrible things, and I can’t remember. And if … if someone tells me something I’ve done, it doesn’t even feel like me. It doesn’t feel like it was me who was doing that thing. And it’s so hard to feel responsible for something you don’t remember. So I never feel bad enough. I feel bad, but the thing that I’ve done – it’s removed from me. It’s like it doesn’t belong to me.’
All this came out, all this truth, I just spilled it in front of him in the first few minutes of being in his presence. I was so ready to say it, I’d been waiting to say it to someone. But it shouldn’t have been him. He listened, his clear amber eyes on mine, his hands folded, motionless. He didn’t look around the room or make notes. He listened. And eventually he nodded slightly and said, ‘You want to take responsibility for what you have done, and you find it difficult to do that, to feel fully accountable if you cannot remember it?’
‘Yes, that’s it, that’s exactly it.’
‘So, how do we take responsibility? You can apologize – and even if you cannot remember committing your transgression, that doesn’t mean that your apology, and the sentiment behind your apology, is not sincere.’
‘But I want to feel it. I want to feel … worse.’
It’s an odd thing to say, but I think this all the time. I don’t feel bad enough. I know what I’m responsible for, I know all the terrible things I’ve done, even if I don’t remember the details – but I feel distanced from those actions. I feel them at one remove.
‘You think that you should feel worse than you do? That you don’t feel bad enough for your mistakes?’
‘Yes.’
Kamal shook his head. ‘Rachel, you have told me that you lost your marriage, you lost your job – do you not think this is punishment enough?’
I shook my head.
He leaned back a little in his chair. ‘I think perhaps you are being rather hard on yourself.’
‘I’m not.’
‘All right. OK. Can we go back a bit? To when the problem started. You said it was … four years ago? Can you tell me about that time?’
I resisted. I wasn’t completely lulled by the warmth of his voice, by the softness of his eyes. I wasn’t completely hopeless. I wasn’t going to start telling him the whole truth. I wasn’t going to tell him how I longed for a baby. I told him that my marriage broke down, that I was depressed, and that I’d always been a drinker, but that things just got out of hand.
‘Your marriage broke down, so … you left your husband, or he left you, or … you left each other?’
‘He had an affair,’ I said. ‘He met another woman and fell in love with her.’ He nodded, waiting for me to go on. ‘It wasn’t his fault, though. It was my fault.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well, the drinking started before …’
‘So your husband’s affair was not the trigger?’
‘No, I’d already started, my drinking drove him away, it was why he stopped …’
Kamal waited, he didn’t prompt me to go on, he just let me sit there, waiting for me to say the words out loud.
‘Why he stopped loving me,’ I said.
I hate myself for crying in front of him. I don’t understand why I couldn’t keep my guard up. I shouldn’t have talked about real things, I should have gone in there with some totally made-up problems, some imaginary persona. I should have been better prepared.
I hate myself for looking at him and believing, for a moment, that he felt for me. Because he looked at me as though he did, not as though he pitied me, but as though he understood me, as though I was someone he wanted to help.
‘So then, Rachel, the drinking started before the breakdown of your marriage. Do you think you can point to an underlying cause? I mean, not everyone can. For some people, there is just a general slide into a depressive or an addicted state. Was there something specific for you? A bereavement, some other loss?’
I shook my head, shrugged. I wasn’t going to tell him that. I will not tell him that.
He waited for a few moments and then glanced quickly at the clock on his desk.
‘We will pick up next time, perhaps?’ he said, and then he smiled and I went cold.
Everything about him is warm – his hands, his eyes, his voice – everything but the smile. You can see the killer in him when he shows his teeth. My stomach a hard ball, my pulse sky-rocketing again, I left his office without shaking his outstretched hand. I couldn’t stand to touch him.
I understand, I do. I can see what Megan saw in him, and it’s not just that he’s arrestingly handsome. He’s also calm and reassuring, he exudes a patient kindness. Someone innocent or trusting or simply troubled might not see through all that, might not see that under all that calm he’s a wolf. I understand that. For almost an hour, I was drawn in. I let myself open up to him. I forgot who he was. I betrayed Scott, and I betrayed Megan, and I feel guilty about that.
But most of all, I feel guilty because I want to go back.