A Daughter's Secret (10 page)

All love is created equal? I don’t think so. I can feel that tension building up inside me again, memories clamouring. Maybe all love
is
created equal, it’s just that sometimes what looks like love turns out to be nothing of the sort.

‘So do you think he loves you more than your mum?’ She looks at me, defiant, nodding that sharp little chin, carved directly from his face. ‘And your brothers?’

‘I’m his rock, Mia. That’s what he calls me. I’m his little rock of Gibraltar.’

What is it about that statement that chills me so much? His rock, the thing he clings to – the only thing that stops him from drowning.

‘What does it mean, being his little rock?’

‘It means he can tell me anything and I’ll keep it safe.’

There’s something triumphant in the way she says it, the fire back in her eyes. She’s baiting me, asking me to wonder what it is he whispers in her ear.

‘Do you like keeping secrets?’

‘I’m good at it, Mia. It’s my superpower. What’s your superpower?’

‘People tell me secrets too. I don’t know if I’d call it a superpower. You might have to tell me what the rules are.’

‘Something you’re better at than anyone else,’ she says definitively. ‘Something that makes you special.’

‘OK. So what’s it like if there isn’t one thing you’re better at than anyone else? If your superpower is just being you?’

It’s funny, those moments when you dole out a piece of advice that you yourself need more than anyone else – I think of the Booker prize winners I’ve forced myself to the end of, even when I’ve been cross-eyed with boredom, the juice fasts, the endless exams I’ve crammed for.

‘That’s stupid. Spider-Man wouldn’t have a superpower if he couldn’t climb up buildings. He’d just be a burglar. He’d probably be in prison.’

A superhero, stripped of his powers and locked away.

‘So if your superpower is keeping secrets, what’s your dad’s?’

‘My dad IS a superpower. He’s the best at loads of things. He went to Oxford, even though he wasn’t posh like everyone else. He built up his business from nothing. He keeps Mum in the style to which she’s accustomed.’

Not her phrase. Not her list. He’s drilled her – no, he’s brainwashed her – and then he’s abandoned her. She’s the one in prison, not him. If she is keeping his secrets, she’ll never find the way out.

‘Keeping secrets can be really hard. I’ve got Judith, my boss, for when secrets feel too big for me to handle on my own.’

She looks up at me, her eyes big and round, the fight gone. She looks so small, her thin body framed by the plump sofa.

‘It’s easy to keep secrets. You just don’t tell anyone. You zip up.’

‘Like this?’ I say, zipping my mouth. ‘Does it make it hard to breathe?’

‘I’ve got my nose,’ she says, a half-smile playing across her face. ‘You have to keep promises. A promise is a promise, Mia.’

Rage spurts upwards inside me, like a fountain. If he really has left her with a head full of secrets she’s too scared to share, holding on to them the only way she knows how to prove her love to him . . . it’s not even safe. The words are out of my mouth before I’ve given myself time to carefully pull the right ones down from the shelf.

‘I understand it way more than you realize, Gemma, not just because I’m meant to be this big, wise therapist person. My dad would say things to me that would hurt me, and I’d swallow them. Or he’d disappear, and I wouldn’t know where he was. But none of it was my fault, and none of this is your fault. You don’t have to hurt yourself to prove to him you’re a good daughter.’

She gazes at me, her eyes filling with tears. Then she flings her body across the arm of the sofa, sobs shaking the thin rack of her shoulders. I scoot out of my seat and sit next to her, waiting for her pain to subside.

‘I know he loves me,’ she says, her sobs making her breathing ragged. ‘It’s why he had to leave. I get it.’

Present tense
.

‘Because he tells you?’

She raises her tear-stained face, but doesn’t answer the question.

‘Are you someone’s mum?’ she asks, her eyes tracking me.

‘I’m not going to tell you that, Gemma. Why do you think it is that you want to know?’

Children often want to find out if they’re the special one in my life. It’s never a question I answer, but hearing her ask it now makes my heart ball up tight. Have I blurred the lines too much? I don’t want to be yet another adult who doesn’t know what the job description is.

‘Just tell me, Mia! I need to know.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say soothingly, my hand over hers. ‘All that matters is that I’m here for you right now.’

And we sit there quietly for the last few minutes, her sobs gradually subsiding. That was either a brilliant session, me at my dazzling best, or the absolute opposite.

Chapter Six

I’m trying to decide between mozzarella and hummus – fat versus taste basically – when Marcus calls. I look at his name flashing on the screen, deliberate for a second about whether to pick up. My skin still feels taut, stretched thin like a drum, every moment of contact landing like a blow. My session with Gemma is looping round and round in my head, my carefully manicured hand shaking as I reach into the chiller cabinet.

‘Hi, gorgeous,’ he says, the words sticky with intent, and I junk the mozzarella.

‘Hi.’

‘Listen, bad news. I know you were longing to see me later . . .’

‘I was,’ I say, instantly comforted by the normality. ‘I was howling at the sky, beating my breast.’

‘Please don’t talk about breasts,’ he laughs. ‘Not when the whole office can see me. But, darling, listen, I’ve got to go to Dubai.’

‘Dubai?’

‘Yeah, me and Juliet are flying out today. This deal’s looking wobbly. Needs a charm offensive.’

‘Oh, OK.’ Friday night on my own. I’m almost disappointed, but it swiftly starts to mutate into something involving tracksuit bottoms, three episodes of
Girls
back to back, and a second glass of sauvignon blanc. ‘Will you be back tomorrow?’

‘Hope so. Listen, we need to move on this flat. The agent’s chasing. Let’s just get on and sign, shall we?’

‘It’s not as simple as—’

‘OK, fine. Let’s talk about it when we see each other,’ he says, cutting straight across me. Did he hear the stop sign in my voice and ride roughshod over it, or did it not even register? ‘Take care of yourself while I’m gone, sweetheart,’ he adds, his voice softer now. The sound of the words stays with me even after he’s hung up.

The whole afternoon it feels as though I’m hovering over my treatment room in a helicopter, painstakingly critiquing my own performance. I skilfully draw my clients towards subtle insights and major breakthroughs, my professionalism never faltering – I’m the Scarlet Pimpernel, deftly leaping between the Parisian rooftops. Even so, none of it quashes the nagging feeling that I pushed Gemma too far today. I do sometimes share carefully curated fragments of my life with my clients to help them feel less alone, but this was something different. It’s not so much what I said, it was the emotion of it. It was a piece of raw meat slapped down on a butcher’s block, bloody and livid. Gemma needs safety more than anything, to know that the adults in her life are
her
rocks, not the other way round. Have I – in my nuclear zeal to prove that fact to her – succeeded in doing the absolute opposite?

I need to call Annie, I need to speak to Judith – and yet I do neither. Instead, once I know Marcus has gone AWOL, I give Maria, one of my favourite clients, the precious afterwork appointment that she’s been begging me to find for her. She’s going through a bereavement, hot on the heels of a torturous divorce, and I know how much she’ll value it. The net result is that I’m the last one in the office, all set to lock up, when I hear footsteps ascending the stairs.

She’s pink in the face, hair scraped back, make-up free. She looks like the child she sort of is.

‘Hello, Doc,’ she says, breathless.

I feel like a cheap magician, like I’ve conjured her up with the force of my fizzing thoughts.

‘Gemma! You can’t just turn up here, you know that. You need an appointment. You’re lucky I hadn’t already left.’

A sliver of ice traces its way down my spine. Was it luck or something more calculated?

‘Yeah, I’m sorry,’ she says, looking hurt. ‘I just wanted to give you this.’

She reaches into her rucksack and pulls out a cellophane package, an extravagant pink bow tied around it. Two expensive bottles nestle together on a wooden stand, bubble bath and body cream, inviting and luxurious.

‘Gemma,’ I say, trying to order my thoughts. ‘It’s a very sweet thing to do, but you shouldn’t be wasting your pocket money buying me presents.’ It’s more than a pocket-money present, even more so for a family who’ve had their assets frozen. She’s still holding it out to me: I take it, then swiftly drop it onto the reception desk. I don’t want to hold on to its shiny, slippery surface a minute longer than I have to. ‘I’m just doing my job. You don’t owe me anything.’

‘No you’re not,’ she says, quick as a flash. ‘My teachers are, the
police
are. You’re different from them.’

She watches me, like she’s flicked a stone into a pond and is waiting for the ripples.

‘What we do here is different, you’re right. But your teachers care about you too. We’re all trying to take care of you. You don’t have to give something back. You’re entitled. It’s yours to keep.’

‘You’re such a liar,’ she says, hurt swiftly mutating into scorn. I know her now. ‘You’re seeing me cos you’re paid to see me. If you weren’t getting paid, I’d be out on the street.’

‘You’re right, your mum’s paying me because she wants to support you too, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you. I could say no. I could put my feet up and read
Grazia,
or see someone else. You’re not my only client.’ She smiles at me fleetingly. ‘Does your mum even know you’re here?’

‘She won’t mind. She
loves
you now,’ she says with a roll of her eyes. She pauses, cocks her head. ‘Was your mum nicer to you than your dad was, Mia?’

‘OK, Gemma, time out,’ I say, my unease mushrooming. She thinks she’s found a secret passageway, a hidden route into the heart of my life. I shouldn’t have lent her a flashlight, let alone snatched it back. I’ll need to make this right, but not here in the deserted waiting room, the alarm beeping at me because the code’s only half tapped in. ‘That’s why you can’t just turn up. We talk in our sessions, not outside them. You need to get home.’ I pick up the heavy package. ‘Give this to your mum. I’m sure she’ll love it.’

And then I hear the stairs creaking again, my heartbeat pounding in time with the heavy footfall.

‘Hello?’ I call, just as he comes through the door. He pauses a second, bright eyes roving around the room.

‘Hello there,’ he says, grinning. He looks at Gemma. ‘And hello to you.’

I try and make my voice light and calm, whipped butter. ‘Hello, Mr O’Leary. Gemma, I’ll see you on Tuesday, same time.’

Gemma’s rooted to the spot, her eyes sweeping over Patrick. She’s such a chameleon, so young one minute and the next suffused with a knowingness that chills me. She lays the present down on the couch. Patrick stares back at her, sticks out a large hand.

‘Gemma Vine, I presume?’

He’s dressed more casually today: belted chinos with a pale blue polo shirt, clumpy shoes that are a weird kind of trainer hybrid. What’s the message supposed to be? Unthreatening, chummy.

‘Yeah, that’s right,’ she says, still showing no sign of moving. ‘I came to see Mia. I brought her a present.’

She looks at me, gives me a smile that’s a test.

‘Patrick works with the police,’ I say. I wanted to spare her that knowledge, but she needs to know. I pause, thinking it through – it’s the second unlikely coincidence of the last hour. ‘Why don’t you come to my office and tell me what it is you want?’

‘I’d be delighted,’ he says, all bonhomie.

Gemma grabs her rucksack, alert and watchful.

‘Tuesday,’ I say, squeezing her thin arm, hoping the touch will somehow anchor her. But how can anything anchor her?

‘Don’t forget your present,’ she says, eyes sliding towards Patrick. She pulls her rucksack over her shoulder, finally heads for the door.

‘Nice to meet you, Gemma,’ Patrick says to her retreating form. She turns.

‘Bye, Patrick,’ she says, looking straight at him, no fear there. I almost admire the chutzpah of it, but it makes me wonder: has Christopher taught her that the Vines fly first-class, soaring above the law?

‘Bye, Mia. We did good work today, didn’t we?’

‘We did.’

Patrick watches us, a look of faint amusement on his face, not conceding any power. He turns back to me. ‘Now, Mia. Where were we?’

Patrick O’Leary talks a good game. He perches on the arm of my sofa, long legs spilling out over the carpet, pouring out silver-tongued justifications.

‘I went in too hard, I accept that,’ he says. ‘I just want the chance to explain why.’

‘I don’t
need
you to explain why,’ I say, pointedly piling my files into my handbag. ‘And you’re apologizing for the exact crime you’ve just committed.’

‘How so?’

‘Ambushing me! Ambushing Gemma. There’s something pretty sick about stalking a traumatized child, don’t you think?’

‘Stalking?! Oh what, you think I followed her here? I’m a lawyer, Mia, not Columbo.’

‘I don’t believe a word you say.’

‘It’s all a bit more complicated than you think. Let me buy you a coffee, give you a bit more background.’

‘I don’t need background either!’ He looks at me, those dark brown eyes wide and hurt. I can’t help but feel like I’ve kicked a puppy. ‘It’s Friday night, Mr O’Leary . . .’

‘Come on, it’s Patrick.’

‘Patrick. Surely you’ve got better things to do than hang around strange women’s offices pushing caffeine?’

‘I know, it’s sad, isn’t it? Let’s have a proper drink.’

‘No!’

‘Mia, joking aside, I think it’s worth both our whiles us having a wee chat.’

There’s something, something in the way he says it – before I know it I’m letting him clatter his way down the stairs behind me.