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So Peter had saved her life, though in the days following the attack she had not been particularly grateful to him for this service. 
It was all too much; she had suffered too much in her youth to bear these fresh outrages.  The pain of her battered body had been hard to take but the mental torment had been far worse.  The shame and the horror and the
fea
r
.
 
The fear that had settled into her soul and become a huge new factor in her life.  The fear which, once so dearly bought, no woman ever wholly loses.  And in fact she had once or twice caught herself half-wishing that Peter had not returned until Straub had finished his brutal work.  But those unworthy, ungrateful thoughts had faded in time, as the healing of her body presaged the healing of her mind.  Her nose had healed within a couple of weeks, as a matter of fact, and by some miracle none of her teeth had been broken.  The pain from the cracked ribs had seemed to hang on forever but the bruising on her face and body had begun to fade even before her nose had healed.  The healing of her mind had taken considerably longer, and even now she sometimes thought it would never be complete.

Both types of healing had taken place in the quiet little cottage that they had eventuall
y fled to in Dorset, and could not have taken place without Peter, who had been simply wonderful.  About giving up his job, his life and his friends, all without a murmur of protest.  And, of course, for eschewing sex for a year; for a long time, even after she recovered physically, the mere
thought
of any man touching her had been enough to trigger a panic attack in Kate.  And even after they had resumed their physical relationship it had been months before she had really enjoyed sex again, or wanted it more than occasionally.  A lesser man might have lost patience with her but through it all Peter had been so caring and considerate, so thoughtful and understanding, that she had fallen more deeply in love with him than ever, and had valued his love all the more.  Eventually she had become first happy again, and then happier than
ever
until…

She sighed and got up to wash herself and brush her teeth; there always seemed to be an
until. 
It was the story of her life.  She got dressed and made her way into work, refusing to think about the matter any further.  And in spite of the alarums of the night before, and her all too realistic nightmare, that day proved one of minor triumph for Kate.  It was a Wednesday, the only day of the week on which she had a full University schedule, and usually she found it something of a slog.  But not that day.  In spite of her restless sleep she felt sharp and alert and clear-headed.  She banished all thoughts of Peter, the Riordans, father and daughter, and even her mysterious visitor of the evening before, to concentrate totally on her work.

Her lectures and tutorials were always meticulo
usly planned, and if somewhat uninspired they were at least comprehensive.  But on that day Kate for the first time felt energized by the interaction with her students rather than frustrated.  Her usual air of slight impatience was nowhere in evidence, and for once she was able to impart into her lectures her
passion
for the subject rather than just her knowledge.  Moreover, her tutorial pupils, many of whom found her a touch intimidating, all found her far more approachable than usual that day, far more
alive
, and afterwards found themselves infused with some of her own enthusiasm for helping the emotionally damaged.

How much of her new rapport with her pupils was due to the fact that she was once more counseling, and consequently had an outlet for the darker, damaged side of her own natur
e, she neither knew nor cared.  The important thing was that she felt completely
there,
completely herself again, for the first time since the Incident.  It was as if having a patient again had opened up her emotions, had freed a part of her she had frozen shut after the attack.  So good did Kate feel that when she was leaving for the day and bumped into Julian Symons at the Nassau Street exit she actually smiled at him.  And when he responded with an almost frightened glance in her direction she couldn’t help but say, in her most saccharin tone, ‘Why Julian, I haven’t seen you in ages.  Been to any good
soirees
lately?’

He gave
her a tight-lipped little sneer and scuttled off without replying, leaving Kate to assume that she was no longer on his A-list for party invites.  Oh well, at least his somewhat timid gaze had been for once aimed at her face rather than the contents of her blouse.

When she finally got home Kate was tired but content, indeed happier than she had been since returning from England.  In a way she felt as if she was fin
ally awakening from a long sleep and actually starting to
live
again rather than just existing.  Almost as soon as she entered her flat hunger pangs struck but she resisted the impulse to order a Chinese –her favorite food but fattening- and instead made do with a large and very dull green salad.  Then she turned off her mobile, took the phone off the hook, and settled down on the sofa to go through Grainne Riordan’s file with a fine-tooth comb.  The secret, the key to the girl’s breakdown had to be in there somewhere, if she could only find it.
  Try as she might, she could find nothing revealing and eventually went to bed disappointed and vaguely discontented with herself; was she missing something obvious?  On the other hand, she wasn’t burgled or attacked and had no mysterious callers or unpleasant surprises, which these days had to be considered something gained, and she eventually fell asleep feeling better than she had in days.

   
Kate had a tutorial and a lecture on Thursday mornings too, after which she was free for the day.  However, the glory of the previous day was forgotten, and that Thursday’s lectures were back to being dull and uninspired.  Her newfound empathy with her students had vanished too, and more than once in the course of the morning she found herself wondering if some of them were being deliberately obtuse, or if they were simply stupid.  But she struggled through her lectures somehow and at last was finished for the day and could eagerly set off for Deacon House, wondering as she went what mood Grainne would be in that day, wondering indeed
which
Grainne she would find.  She just hoped it wasn’t to soon to see the girl again; her own impulse, her own needs, would push her to see the girl every day but she didn’t want to alienate her by visiting so often she became a pest.

When she got there Cathy informed her that Trevor was engaged with a pat
ient but had left word that Kate had right of access to Grainne at any time.  So, after making sure that she had fresh tapes for her old Sanyo Talkbook, -which she was incongruously carrying in a plastic Tesco shopping bag- she made her way up the great, curving staircase to Grainne’s room. 
I really must get a new briefcase,
she thought as she climbed.  But this idea was somehow repugnant to her.  Her mother’s black, scarred old case, relic of many a court battle, would always be her
real
briefcase, and although she told herself it was ridiculous she couldn’t help feeling that buying another would in some way be betraying her mother.  A new laptop was another essential, and at least she could buy one of those without a qualm, as soon as she had the time.

She reached the top of the stairs and turned left along the blue-carpeted corridor until she reached Grainne’s room.  She
took her customary deep breaths to pump herself up and get the adrenaline flowing before tapping on the door softly.  She waited long seconds for a reply, her heart beating faster, but there was nothing.  She tapped again and, still receiving no reply, opened the door and popped her head into the room.

Grainne was there, all right, seated beside the window as before and staring through it.  Or not; perhaps her gaze stopped at the glass.  Rather than the
car park and rolling lawns outside, who knew what visions played before the unfortunate girl’s eyes?  Kate looked at her compassionately for several seconds before clearing her throat and saying softly, ‘Grainne?  Hi, it’s Kate again.  Do you remember me?’

There was no response, not even the slightest flicker to differentiate the girl from a
waxwork doll.  After a slight pause Kate stepped inside and closed the door, saying in the same gentle voice, ‘Grainne, could you turn around, please?’

Still nothing, so Kate brought the chair she had used before over to the
window and sat down beside the girl but facing her rather than the window, looking intently at that lovely profile.  The face was as blank as on the first occasion, but was there now a shadow in the eyes that had not been there before?  Kate thought so, though she was well aware of the dangers of transposing emotions or thoughts onto others.  In the same way that pet-owners anthropomorphized their cats and dogs, ascribing human understanding and feelings to them, so mental health workers could all too easily imagine responses on the blank face of a patient detached from reality.  And the more they wanted, or needed, a reaction the greater the danger of them providing one from their own minds.

It had worked before so Kate tried saying
loudly and clearly, ‘Where is Grainne?’

Nothing
.  Not that she had expected much, having already pretty well dismissed the idea of a split personality.  On her previous visit Kate had felt that Grainne was only separated from her by a thin veil of fantasy, like a layer of fog, but this today they seemed to be separated by a blank, impenetrable wall.  Acting solely on instinct Kate reached across and took the girl’s hand, hoping that the warm contact of human flesh would reach across her self-imposed barrier and awaken her.  And, in a way, it did.

Grainne shuddered violently, ripples seeming to run up and down her body, and her face twisted with some strong emotion, her
strong white teeth baring in a grimace that was not far from a snarl.

Although her first,
wholly instinctive reaction was to recoil from such an ugly expression on that beautiful face, Kate remained perfectly still and maintained her hold on the girl’s hand.  And she said gently, ‘Grainne, can you hear me?  Will you talk to me?’

‘Dead,’ said Grainne suddenly, in a hopeless, empty voice, still staring off into nothingness,
‘Dead.’

‘Who’s dead?’

No answer.  Then, once again going beyond the limits she had mentally imposed on herself at this early stage in their relationship, Kate said softly, and not without trepidation, ‘Are you talking about your mother?’

Nothing;
not the slightest flicker of a response.

‘Is
it your mother that’s dead? 
Grainne
?’

Grainne seemed to be
in a trance, to have returned to her earlier catatonic state.  Kate tried for several more minutes but got no reaction whatsoever.  She changed tack and tried to reach the child-Grainne, using everything she had learned from her file to try and provoke some form of response. 
Any
response; even a negative reaction was better than nothing.  But Grainne continued to sit there like a beautiful statue, so far removed from the real world that Kate felt her first flicker of discouragement since meeting her; all the girl’s perceived improvement had simply vanished.  She sat back at last, thinking;
Thank God she wasn’t like this the first day.  I’d have refused the job on the spot.
  Had she been wrong about Grainne’s improvement?  Had her insistence that the girl was healing herself from within been just so much wishful thinking?  She had leapt to conclusions rather, on very little evidence.

She looked
her patient over closely, particularly the soft, golden skin of the girl’s throat; in the watery autumn sunshine, streaming in at a low angle through the window, faint scars could still be seen.  Scars from where Grainne had smashed a window and then drawn her own throat across one of the jagged shards of broken glass.  She had cut a gash so wide and deep that, although the response by the nurses had been almost instantaneous, she had lost several pints of blood and had been not far from death by the time they brought the bleeding under control.

What could have brought the girl to despair so great that such an action was even
conceivable?
  Kate sighed; theorize though she might, she invariably came back to the death of the girl’s mother.  That had been the catalyst for the breakdown, and Grainne’s condition bore all the hallmarks of a vast, crushing guilt too great to be borne.  Extreme Substance-Abuse Disorder was also a possibility, of course, and Kate wondered if she had been on anything other than the speed and cocaine Trev had already told her about.  The drug-pusher ex-boyfriend might tell her, if she could discover his name.  Maybe the police would help her with that; Grainne had a criminal record, and the names of any drug-pushing associates would surely be in their files.

She shook her head;
there was still so much she didn’t know about her patient.  And
she
certainly wasn’t giving any of her secrets away.  Not yet anyway.  Discouraged, she decided to give up for the day and was walking towards the door when she suddenly remembered another scar the girl was carrying.  She turned back and, bending over, whispered in Grainne’s ear, ‘Why did Ruddles bite you?’