Almost imperceptibly, she nods, as if this has reconfirmed what she expected to hear. When she starts to talk, I have to strain to hear her at first. Her voice is level and soft, almost hypnotic. She sketches a picture of a fairly unremarkable life. She and her husband were divorced several years ago, but she speaks about it without passion or regret. Since then, it’s just been her and her daughter, Robyn.
It takes a while for me to realize that the way she speaks about her daughter is strange. She refers to her at times in the present tense, at others in the past. She slips between memories, blurring the years. When she tells me that Robyn has been dead for over a year, it’s almost like an afterthought. She doesn’t think she needs to spell this out, because to her it’s part of her DNA. It’s written across every second and every breath.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, to fill the brief jagged silence, but she doesn’t respond and she begins to tell me how her daughter died. I’m listening, but at the same time a trickle of panic is slipping down the back of my neck, stiffening my muscles. I’m not a bereavement counsellor. I specialize in relationships, family tensions. How the hell has this woman been assigned to me? I’m almost certain there was no mention of any of this in the assessment notes I hastily scanned. But it seems hardly conceivable that she wouldn’t have mentioned it in her first appointment. Clearly, this is why she’s here. Why would she hide it?
‘I spent a long time looking for sense in what happened,’ she’s saying. Flatly, without apparent pain. ‘But I was looking for something that wasn’t there. The car had been coming too fast around the bend. It must have been. But there was no reason why Robyn was there at that precise instant. No reason why a few moments of inattention ended up destroying her life, and mine. You can only go so far down that road. It leads nowhere.’
I nod. I think about saying something around the idea of acceptance and how this realization can be part of it, but something tells me to stay quiet. Besides, whatever she’s feeling, acceptance isn’t it. I can see it in the set of her muscles, the strange way she’s half bent forward, as if she’s poised for flight, and in the haunted look in her eyes that seem miles away from me, even as they’re looking straight into mine.
‘I watched the man who was responsible in the dock,’ she says, ‘and I thought, he’s barely started to live his own life, and already he’s ruined mine. Does that sound unfair?’ I say nothing, moving my head to one side in non-committal encouragement. ‘He was young. Repentant – shell-shocked, even. He didn’t seem like a boy racer. I wanted to hate him. I did hate him, in a way.’
She stops for a minute and looks intently out of the window at the drifting clouds. When she speaks again, it’s with her gaze still trained there, spilling her thoughts out into the open air. ‘He got six months, but he was out in three. It’s not surprising, really. It was an accident, a mistake. But still. It was laughable. Nothing could have compensated, of course, but that … it didn’t even scratch the surface of the pain he’d caused. I don’t mind telling you,’ she says, with mild, disarming frankness, ‘I became a little obsessed with him. Let’s just say I’ve followed his progress. And it’s taken a long time, but I’ve seen enough to know that I don’t think he’s happy. Not really. I couldn’t have borne that. I was starting to think it was time to let it go. I don’t mean forget her, or forgive him. But it seemed that there was nothing more to think, nothing more to feel. I’d got to the end of it.’
‘But something changed,’ I prompt, because she’s looking at me again now and I can see the expectancy in her face and the command for me to speak.
For the first time, she half smiles. It’s a strange, shifting experiment of a smile, and it looks wrong on her, but it briefly transforms her and I can see that she would have been attractive once, charming. ‘It did,’ she says. There’s a note of praise in her voice; I’ve picked up on her unspoken implication. It’s not the first time a new patient has tried to test me this way, but it’s the first time I’ve felt such intense eagerness radiating from another person in response to my passing the test – a real hunger to reward me with her secrets. ‘Like I say, the sentence was negligible, but when I heard it, I thought, well, it’s something. At least it’s something. But recently, I discovered that things weren’t as they appeared. I discovered that the whole thing had been built on a lie. The man who had been held responsible – he wasn’t alone. In fact, he wasn’t even the one driving the car. There was a woman. His lover. He lied to protect her, I suppose. I don’t really care why he did it. But I do care about justice. And it seems that’s something neither of them know much about. Especially her.’
Her voice is louder now and she’s speaking with passion, violence – her eyes burning, her hands clenched hard on her knees. ‘Do you think that’s something that should be allowed? To turn your back on the mess you’ve created and slip back into your own life with barely a ripple? Do you understand what I mean? Do you understand why it’s wrong?’
These aren’t hypothetical questions. She’s firing them at me like gunshots, and I’m wondering if she’s actually deranged – a complete fantasist – and how much, if any, of what she’s saying is true. ‘I understand what you mean,’ I say at last. ‘And I can see exactly why you would feel that way.’
As soon as I’ve spoken, I see her visibly relax. The fury that has been pulsating from her shrinks and disappears. She leans back in her chair and takes a long breath. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘I thought you would.’ There’s something uncomfortably personal about the way she’s looking at me. ‘I don’t think she deserves what she has,’ she says. ‘This woman. This Caroline.’
When I hear the name there’s that tiny reflexive jolt of familiarity, the same way there is when anyone says a name that means something to you, that runs through your own life. On this woman’s lips, it’s tinged with reflective bitterness. It hangs in the air between us before she speaks again. ‘I think of her often,’ she says. ‘Her, and her lover. Carl Jackson.’
This time, the name hits like a blow to the head. Over the years, I’ve learned to keep my expression composed in the face of the most outrageous and wild pronouncements patients have thrown at me. I’ve received tales of obsession and betrayal, deceit and insanity, with studied neutrality. But right now, I can’t stop myself from flinching, and the fierce glint in her eye tells me two things. First, she knows exactly who I am. And second, she’s not lying. This is real.
In the few seconds of silence that cycle lazily through the room before I speak, a lot of thoughts flash through my head. I’m thinking of those weeks and months after Caroline came back crying, the way she often got up in the middle of the night and I’d find her standing in the hallway, staring at nothing. I’m thinking about the feel of her limbs, feverish and slicked with sweat, when she used to wake up from dreams she couldn’t or wouldn’t share. I’m thinking of the way she told me she was selling her car because she didn’t want to drive any more, bluntly and without explanation. And yes, it fits. But I have absolutely no idea yet how I feel or what it means. All I know is that this can’t continue.
‘Our time is up,’ I say. The clock still has twenty minutes to run, but we both know what I mean. I stand up, moving towards the door. ‘If you would like to make another appointment, please talk to reception. But I’m afraid I won’t have this slot in future. In fact, I’m completely booked up.’