‘Urgh.’ Cherry looked disgusted. ‘And you ended up having to cover for him? That’s so gross! Does your mum know?’ Her mouth fell open. ‘Do you think she came round tonight to confront your dad or something and now it’s all come out?’
‘I don’t know, but I think maybe you better go.’
She nodded understandingly. ‘Yeah, of course I will. I’m so sorry, babe. This is really shit. Call me if you need me, or if you want to come and stay at mine if it all kicks off?’
‘Thanks.’
She kissed me and hurried away. I didn’t feel bad for lying. Until I’d had a chance to work out exactly what Alex thought she was playing at, I’d say whatever I needed to if it meant protecting everyone from her increasingly malicious games.
* * *
I went off to find Mum and Dad who were in the cinema room, sat in front of the huge blank screen, talking calmly. Mum wasn’t crying, and they both looked up when I walked in.
‘Dad, can I ask you something, but promise not to get angry?’ I said. ‘That woman who was just here came round to the house when I was at home before the holidays. She said you’d told her to meet you here to talk about this Botox job.’
Dad frowned in confusion. ‘No, I didn’t.’
I took a deep breath. ‘You’re not having an affair with her, are you?’
I expected him to go nuts, and it was actually Mum who exclaimed: ‘Jonathan!’
But Dad just looked at me, like he was considering something. ‘No, son, I’m not. I never make mistakes when it comes to your mother.’ He reached out and took Mum’s hand, and I felt almost sick with relief to realise that he was telling the truth. I wondered why I’d let Alex make me doubt it.
I nodded and turned to walk out.
‘Jonny?’
I looked back.
‘Are you all right?’ Dad said. ‘There’s nothing you want to tell us?’
I hesitated. ‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know.’ Dad looked at me coolly. ‘Just something doesn’t feel right to me. I can’t put my finger on it. I might be way off the mark, it’s been a long day.’
‘You could tell us though, if something was bothering you.’ Mum looked at me, concerned.
‘Did she say anything else to you, that doctor, the day you say she came here to ask about a job?’ Dad said.
I tried to push the image of us on the stairs from my mind. It made me feel dirty, and not in a good way. I didn’t want to discuss that with my parents, of all people, even though events had taken a turn that was downright scaring me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m going to go and email my essay now if that’s all right?’
‘Oh that’s good, love!’ Mum brightened. ‘Well done for getting that finished.’ She smiled encouragingly, and I felt like an A-grade shit. She did not deserve this. Any of it.
Upstairs, I lay on my bed and wondered what the hell I should do. Alex had lost the plot and she needed to understand that this had become completely unacceptable. Coming into my house when I wasn’t here, for fuck’s sake?
I also knew, however, that that was exactly what she wanted: me to come running to her. She would be waiting for my reaction, craving it. I felt panicked and trapped, it was beyond claustrophobic, but she had also crossed a line by involving by my family and Cherry. I wasn’t going to let her contaminate them and invade those parts of my life too.
Enough was enough.
13
Dr David Harper
Sometimes a patient will come into your room and say something so unutterably ridiculous that it’s quite hard not to jump to your feet, point at the door and bark crossly: ‘get out of my room now and stop wasting my time, you bloody idiot.’
I’m thinking, for example, of the woman who complained to me that she was pregnant, despite using the vaginal ring I’d prescribed her. ‘OK, some medicines can interact with it and reduce its effectiveness,’ I’d said sympathetically. ‘When did you put the last ring in?’
She looked at me blankly. ‘What do you mean? Put it in where? I’m wearing it now.’
Then she lifted up her sleeve. She was wearing it round her wrist like a bracelet.
I felt much the same sense of incredulity when Day reached the middle part of his allegation. All of a sudden his account turned into sex at Alex’s house, sex at his house on the stairs (no one actually has sex on the stairs in real life. I mean, honestly), sex at a hotel in Ibiza, sex with his girlfriend, sex, sex, sex – all with Day in the starring role. I didn’t react, just listened gravely to this verbal dribble of a wet dream, taking notes and nodding as if I was taking him seriously.
And right up until the shag on the stairs, I had been. I had been seriously worried at first that Alex had made a heinous error of judgement; I even found myself wondering at one point if she had stolen Day’s iPhone from outside the surgery, worried that it might still contain evidence of their first illicit messages, but as the whole tone of his complaint began to change, it simply stopped ringing true. I didn’t recognise the Alex I know. He painted her by turns hard and demanding, then in the next breath, vulnerable and obsessive. As I listened carefully to his earnest account of how he’d had to firmly tell her it was over in Ibiza – which she’d accepted, even gamely offering him one last roll in the sack for old time’s sake, because he was just that damn irresistible – I felt an overwhelming urge to sit back, cross my arms and raise an eyebrow. He was, I realised, projecting his own personality traits on to his imagined Alex, re-writing the story so that he got to reject her, rather than vice-versa – which was all well and good, but the only problem was Alex actually existed in real life, was a thoroughly decent person and didn’t deserve to be sacrificed at the altar of Jonathan Day’s narcissism.
He also carefully mentioned two more specific dates: 15 July and 7 August, both of which he would have known could be verified, and it occurred to me while he waited for me to write them both down, that if a highly intelligent individual were busily constructing a story such as this he would know how important dates tallying were. He would not – as I had casually assumed earlier – wing it. He would know that such specifics would lend weight to his account. He might possibly ring a surgery to check if said doctor was at work that day. Which he might also do if he were stalking said attractive doctor too, of course. I played with my pen thoughtfully. Not such a silly boy after all.
Ultimately, however, what gave me the gravest cause for concern in his whole account, and really caught my attention, was that Day junior – by his own admission – decided for reasons best known to himself to bring his tale of lovesick woe to our morning surgery. I found it quite hard to remind myself at that point to stay objective and not pass comment. I listened, but I also remembered how severely compromised we were that morning while the systems were down, all doing our level best to provide safe and effective care to patients in need – and doing, if I may say, a damn good job. Day gained access to Alex’s room and once he was finally alone with her, he threatened her. She must have been terrified.
GPs act as the gatekeepers to the rest of the services within the NHS and with that comes great privilege, but make no mistake, genuine risk. As a doctor, you simply never know if the next person in through the door will be the person with mental health issues so severe they are about to suddenly attack you for simply saying the wrong thing.
Yes, Alex made a mistake when paralytic in Ibiza, which is regrettable and, in my opinion, totally out of character, but it does not justify Jonathan Day’s response. He harassed and intimidated a dedicated doctor, for whom I have great personal respect, at her place of work. I really do find that completely unforgivable, no matter how Day attempts to excuse it.
14
Jonathan Day