Just before she comes in I get up and look in the mirror that hangs over the mantelpiece. I don’t know who I’m expecting to see in it. Not this man with the greying, puffy skin and the grooves of worry sunk deep into the corners of his eyes, his face familiar yet strange, like a surreal caricature of myself. For a brief moment, I imagine tapping on the glass. Reaching in to pull him out and hold him up to the light, work out who he is. I see him the same way others seem to see him. Friends with baffled faces, trying to put their fingers on exactly when I stopped giving a shit. You all right, mate? Seems like it’s been a while … My fellow therapists at the clinic lightly sidestepping into corridors to avoid the kind of idle chit-chat they apparently used to live for. My brother Greg, the last time he visited. Francis, I barely even recognize you. What have you done with my brother? Glancing out of the window every so often at his banker-wanker Porsche gleaming smugly on the pavement, as if he was worried someone was going to key it. Riffling through his overstuffed wallet, fanning out his platinum credit cards like a conjurer. How’s business?
The anger flares and fades, a tired old torch I can barely be bothered with any more. I’m sitting back down, and the door is being flung open. Caroline heads across the room and stands in the spot I have just left, checking her make-up and straightening her tailored dress. Her skirt is tight and comes halfway up her thighs. I watch the fabric move and stretch across her skin, and there’s a brief, pointless stirring of desire.
‘I’m off in a minute,’ she says, her reflection looking at mine in the mirror. It seems that a lot of our conversations are conducted this way, these days. We’re staring at each other, but she isn’t even facing my way. ‘I’m dropping Eddie off. I’ll pick him up and bring him back for dinner, and then I’m going out again, yeah?’
‘Where are you going again?’ I ask, but I don’t really care what the answer is, and five minutes later I can’t remember it.
At twenty past ten I step out of the house into the frost-bitten air and think about going inside to find a warmer jumper or coat, but it feels like too much effort and before I’ve decided either way I find that I’m walking down the street towards the station. Everything is too bright. The sharpness of the trees against the skyline sets my teeth on edge and there’s a sickly clarity to the piled-up buildings around me. I can almost taste it, bitter and metallic. On days like this the die already seems cast. Just have to get through.
The train journey usually only takes ten minutes but there’s some problem on the line and it crawls along, lurching to an abrupt standstill every so often. Opposite me, a young woman wearing furry headphones mouths along to whatever song is blasting into her ears. Her mouth is red and sticky with lip gloss. There’s something disgusting about it. Once or twice, she glances up, appraises me warily through shuttered eyes. I know I’m not smiling. I could diffuse the tension, look away, or at least soften the frown I can feel is creasing my forehead, but I can’t be bothered. No room for social niceties today.
At the stop before mine she collects her bag and sweeps out of the carriage, muttering something under her breath. The old biddy on the next bank of seats gives her a quick look of sympathy, then stares at me pointedly for a few seconds before settling back into her seat. More and more these days I notice that the tide of public opinion is turned against me without me even speaking a word. In a way, it’s funny. It’s certainly not something I’m about to fight. In fact, sometimes I find myself playing up to it.
I remember hearing once about a celebrity – Madonna, I think it was – who could apparently switch her ability to be recognized by passers-by on and off at will when walking down the street, one minute blending into the crowd, the next radiating some indefinable superstardom that makes people sit up and take notice. It’s like that with me, only what I’m radiating isn’t stardom but a kind of oppressive, prickly dissatisfaction with the world that pulls uncomfortably on people’s coat-tails and makes them draw back for a second look. Right now, that aura is switched on at full blast.
‘Morning, Francis,’ Sara sing-songs, as I come in, barely looking up from her notes. She’s one of the other therapists who regularly use this centre, and sometimes I look at her sharp, ferrety eyes and the keenness of her gaze and wonder how much she sees through the mask I prop up every time I come in here. I prefer not to think about it.
‘Morning,’ I throw back over my shoulder, as I head to my consultation room. I find my notes, try to think about what I’m about to do. It’s a new patient, a man in his early forties. The notes from his assessment are dancing in front of my eyes and I can’t hold on to the words. Giving up, I push them aside. I’ll start fresh. Better that way.
My hands are trembling again, and I pour myself a glass of water, cursing as it splashes over the table beside my armchair. Time to get it together. I can do this as easily as breathing. Used to love it. It makes less sense now than it used to. Now that I’ve cut down my commitments so much, Caroline’s salary outstrips mine by three or four times. By comparison, my payslips are hardly worth the paper they’re written on.
These thoughts are like little needles, jabbing uncomfortably at my skin. Only one way to blunt them, and I can’t do that yet. Focus.
He’s lingering awkwardly at the door, a small, unassuming man with a thinning hairline and round, amber-rimmed spectacles. Nice enough face, but I can see from ten paces that it’s been metaphorically stamped all over by some woman’s stilettos. I’m rising from my chair, approaching with an outstretched hand. ‘Mark? Come in.’ My voice is measured, authoritative. I’ve had enough practice to know how to sound right when I need to.
A first session is often about little more than listening and prompting, and this is no exception. It’s a relief to absorb myself in it, to switch everything else off. He’s a reluctant talker, often stopping mid-sentence or scratching the side of his face in embarrassment, but once he’s under way the words come pouring out fast, a half-whispered torrent of dissatisfaction. It’s standard stuff, mostly – an underwhelming job, a lack of social activity, unfulfilling relationships with family members. He doesn’t mention his wife until thirty minutes in, despite twirling the wedding ring on his finger every few seconds while he speaks. When he does, it’s hesitantly at first, talking round the houses, qualifying everything he says with caveats and assumptions.
‘She doesn’t seem to want to spend time with me.’ His eyes behind the glasses blink fast and erratically, as if the thought is giving him a minor electric shock. ‘I mean, I don’t know. She has a stressful job, works late a lot. It’s understandable, I suppose, if she just wants to relax. But sometimes I wonder if there’s something more to it. Another factor. I’m probably wrong.’
It takes another ten minutes for the truth to emerge: the late-night text messages that he hears arriving on her phone, the new clothes he’s seen in the wardrobe which never seem to be worn at home, the growing lack of interest in sex or intimacy. Each new detail seems to drag him deeper down into a pit he doesn’t want to enter, but they keep coming. It’s as if he’s assembling the evidence, waiting for a verdict. When he’s finished, he spreads his hands helplessly wide out, palms up. The tips of his fingers are very soft and pink, like a child’s. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Do you think she’s having an affair?’
The answer is as easy as falling off a cliff. But it’s not my place to say it, and instead I say, ‘Do you?’ and watch as he measures his own inward certainty against the reality it will become if he says it out loud.
‘Yes,’ he says, at last. He doesn’t seem to want to say anything more.
I could interject at this point, try to force the issue. But sometimes silence is what works and, besides, my head is buzzing, my own personal thoughts trying to surface. I’m thinking of Caroline at the mirror this morning, twisting this way and that, evaluating her reflection in her short, tight dress. I’m thinking how strange it is that I can analyse the relationships of other people with such acumen, even now, and yet, when it comes to my own, I keep so much boxed up and out of sight I can’t even acknowledge the things I know to be true.
Physician, heal thyself. I wouldn’t even know where to start.
‘I suppose I’ve known it for a long time,’ he says, after a couple more minutes, ‘but I didn’t really want to admit it. Now, I have to do something, and I don’t know what the right thing to do is.’