Kind of Cruel (46 page)

I tell Ginny about Sharon’s death, Dinah and Nonie, Marianne, the adoption that might or might not happen. There’s no need, but I find myself wanting to say more, so I explain about Terry Bond and the residents’ association, about my DriveTech course and the scam Jo and I pulled. I allow myself to rant about the hypocrisy of Jo’s disapproval that extended only to me and not to herself, her claim that I’d betrayed Sharon by going to the launch of Terry’s restaurant. By now it seems necessary to put Jo in context, so I tell Ginny everything I think she needs to know: Neil, Quentin, William and Barney, Sabina, Ritchie, Kirsty, Hilary, the too-small house stuffed full of people.

Over and over, I hear myself say her name: Jo, Jo, Jo.

I must change the subject. I go back to Tuesday, explain to Ginny how I ended up in Charlie Zailer’s car; the notebook, DC Gibbs turning up at my house a short while later, being taken to the police station and questioned. My attempts to convey the awfulness of DI Proust make her laugh. Her expression turns serious again when I move on to the case notes Charlie Zailer posted through my letterbox, but she doesn’t interrupt. She’s a good listener. Her still attentiveness does more than anything she’s said so far to convince me that I’m not wasting my time. Nobody in my real life would listen to me for this long, without trying to intervene.

Is that a good enough reason for me to start talking about Jo again, listing things she’s done and said over the years, tiny inconsequential things? Why can’t I stop?

I force myself to talk about other people: Simon Waterhouse, the shaving-rash bobby that he referred to as a ‘police presence’. I tell Ginny about the favour I asked Charlie to do for me, her refusal, my embarrassment. How could I have thought, even in my wildest dreams, that she’d agree? I wouldn’t have made that mistake if I’d had a good night’s sleep, but that was before we moved into Hilary’s house. It was after a night of no sleep at all, the night of the fire, the night I emailed Little Orchard’s owner, having got it into my head that I had to go back, that I must have seen that lined sheet of A4 there, even though I knew I hadn’t, which makes no sense to me – as little sense as Neil being woken in the early hours of Christmas morning and ordered to pack up the boys and go into hiding against his will, hiding from the people he and Jo had invited to spend Christmas with them.

Eventually, I run out of steam and fall silent. The information I’m holding back rings in my mind, so loud that I imagine Ginny must be able to hear it. I haven’t said anything about Dinah’s confession, about my knowing what Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel means. I try to convince myself this won’t matter. Ginny can’t imagine I’ve told her my full and complete life story, missing nothing out. There are other things I haven’t mentioned, plenty of things, all unimportant.

‘You were right,’ she says. ‘You needed to get all of that off your chest. I shouldn’t have tried to stop you. I just want to pick up on something you mentioned in passing, before we start. You implied that, since moving into Jo’s mother’s house, you’ve slept better?’

This isn’t ‘before we start’
, I want to say.
We started as soon as I arrived
.

‘Yes. It’s only been one night, but . . . I slept really well.’

Ginny nods. ‘Because of the police presence outside the house.’ She smiles. ‘You’re off duty. Someone else is making sure Dinah and Nonie are safe, so you can sleep.’

No.
I nearly don’t bother to say anything. Then I decide it’s important. I can’t let her tell me things about myself that aren’t true. ‘I don’t think it’s that,’ I say. ‘In fact, I know it isn’t.’

Ginny’s shaking her head. ‘You told me you, Luke, Dinah and Nonie climbed out of the window onto a flat roof.’

‘So?’

‘You might not realise it, but that’s why you chose that house and not a different house. You saw that window and that roof and thought “fire escape”.’

‘True, but that’s not what you said before. I’m not sleeping well at Hilary’s because of any police presence.’

‘For eighteen months, you and you alone have been responsible for making sure that what happened to Sharon can’t happen again. That’s how you’ve felt, anyway. That’s why you’ve had to spend all those nights patrolling the house.’

I stare out of the window at the falling snow. It’s starting to settle, thickening. ‘What do you want, a gold star?’ I say.

‘Luke wouldn’t understand. You haven’t talked to him about it because there’s no point. He’d only say it’s crazy to think that whoever killed Sharon would want to harm Dinah and Nonie. If they had, they’d have left them inside the house with their mother before setting fire to it.’

‘Can you please not—’

‘What can you say to that? Nothing. He’s right, but it makes no difference. Nothing he could have said would have persuaded you that the same wouldn’t happen again: a fire, started deliberately. Next time the girls might not be so lucky, so how can you sleep and take the risk? How can you ever sleep again?’

I clear my throat. I feel as if I’ve been run over by a truck. No one can see the bruises and breakages; only I can feel them. ‘Thanks for clarifying that for me,’ I say. ‘I thought I needed therapy for insomnia. Turns out all I needed was a trustworthy babysitter, all night every night.’

‘Which, at Hilary’s, you have,’ says Ginny. ‘Which is why you slept last night.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘Amber . . .’

‘Fuck you and your patronising . . .’ I’m on my feet. It’s a good job I didn’t get as far as reclining my chair. Hard to storm out in disgust from a lying-down position.
Can you lift me up so that I can leave, please?
‘Sorry, but you don’t get to be right about everything. Do you really think I’d trust some teenage copper I know nothing about to make sure Dinah and Nonie are safe? That I’d trust
anyone
apart from myself to be a match for the kind of evil . . . Look, forget it. There’s no point.’ I stagger, reach for the door handle. Ginny is saying something about evil, but I don’t hear it. All I hear is a clear insistent voice in my mind that seems to belong to nobody, that thinks it can explain the change in my sleeping habits, if only I would listen.

Shut up. Shut up. You’re nobody’s voice, you’re not mine, you know nothing.

The police presence. That’s what made the difference. Ginny’s right. She must be.

Then why are you so angry with her? Why are you leaving?

It fills the room: the full weight of what I know for sure and can no longer deny. It fills my nose and mouth, until I feel as if I’m suffocating. I have to get out.

I pull open the door and run out into the snow, and into the arms of Simon Waterhouse.

Since you don’t want to be patronised, I’m going to be absolutely frank with you: I find your request outrageous. Being treated as an equal is one thing; demanding that I tell you what shameful guilty secrets I was forced to confront as part of my own therapy is not acceptable. And I’m not going to do it. If that’s your idea of a fair deal, you must have a bloody screw loose!

Listen to me: the therapist who verbally abuses her patients. What’s the problem, Amber? I’m treating you as an equal: you have a go at me, I have a go at you. Perfect equality.

I’m not asking for your secrets because I want to get some dirt on you that I can use against you later. I’m asking you to face and state the truth for your own good. That’s my recommendation as a therapist, but, frankly, I don’t care whether you do it or not. If you want to be screwed up forever, stay in denial. Be my guest.

The reason I can’t tell you my guilty secrets in exchange for yours is that we’re not two people chatting here. I’m a therapist, and I take pride in my work. I’ve invested some time and considerable effort in trying to help you, and I’m damned if I’m going to wreck it by confiding in you as if we’re best friends. If I start telling you about my life, my personal history, my mistakes, I become Ginny-the-woman, and believe you me, she’s not going to be nearly as helpful to you as Ginny-the-therapist. I told you before: I’m a means to an end here, nothing more. My personality and experiences have got nothing to do with anything.

I’m sorry, Simon. You must be hoping I’ll invent some lie to keep her happy, to get it out of her, whatever it is, but I’m not going to do that. Or maybe you’re hoping I’ll tell the truth? Share my intimate secrets with the two of you, all in the good cause of helping to catch a murderer? Well, sorry, but it’s not going to happen. I’ve made quite a few exceptions today to my general rules, but this is a boundary too far.

Let’s be very clear about this, Amber. If we make no further progress today, my unwillingness to share guilty secrets with you in exchange for yours is not responsible. You can blame your own unhelpful attitude. I was willing to set aside my whole morning for you. I even cancelled two appointments, and you swear at me and walk out, exactly like you did on Tuesday. Then Simon persuades me to give up my afternoon as well, and he persuades you to . . . I don’t know what he got you to agree to, to be honest. Certainly not to cooperate. You strut back in here with a list of ridiculous over-the-top rules: I’m not allowed to ask any direct questions, I mustn’t expect any answers, you’ll talk when you feel like talking and apart from that you’ll just lie there and let me do all the work, making it clear you think I’m a complete waste of space. And what do I do? I agree. I agree to your ridiculous counterproductive rules, I cancel yet more appointments, because I, too, want to help Simon. I have to go through my hypnosis script three times before I’m sure it’s worked, because you’re intent on interrupting me to argue about how many steps there ought to be in an imaginary staircase! You’re positively garrulous when you see an opportunity to bait me, and silently, sneerily detached the rest of the time. Still, I give you the benefit of the doubt: I talk myself hoarse. I rack my brains for helpful things I can say, I describe the difference between memories and stories, I talk you through every detail of your life and your preoccupations, like some bloody
This
is Your Life host, in the hope of drawing you into a dialogue, but it doesn’t work. You’re determined to say only the bare minimum.

Yes, I want to help Simon, but I’m not sure I want to help you any more, if I’m honest. I’m not sure you deserve it. There, is that equal enough for you? Are you feeling sufficiently unpatronised?

Yes, I’ve got secrets. Haven’t we all? Yes, there are things I feel guilty about and ashamed of, but I can promise you one thing: speaking my mind now will never be one of them. Now get out of my clinic, both of you.

12

3/12/2010

‘Don’t blame yourself,’ said Simon. He and Amber were sitting in his car across the road from Ginny Saxon’s house, with the heater on full blast, not going anywhere. Simon wasn’t ready to move. Ginny might have kicked him out of her clinic, but he was entitled to keep his car parked outside it on a public road for as long as he wanted. ‘She overreacted. You asked her to do something she didn’t want to do. She could have said no without throwing a tantrum.’

‘It won’t work.’ Amber leaned her head against the window.

‘What won’t?’

‘Flattery. Massaging my ego. I had no right to ask.’

‘You wanted to start a fight,’ said Simon. ‘Get us kicked out.’

‘Think that if you want to.’

‘It’s not true?’

She shook her head. ‘Ginny said she was willing to be unprofessional to impress me. I wanted to see if she meant it. I didn’t do it to wind her up, or make her feel uncomfortable. I don’t even want to know her secrets. She’s nothing to do with me. I’d rather not know them.’

‘Then why ask for them?’ Simon felt uncomfortable. He’d spent too long listening to Ginny, had temporarily lost his ability to differentiate between interview questions and therapy questions. Did he ask that last one because it would help solve a crime or crimes, or because he was interested in the workings of Amber’s mind? Too easy to tell himself they amounted to the same thing.

‘I just . . . wanted her to understand what she was asking me to do,’ Amber said. ‘It’s a bit too easy to tell someone they need to cut their heart open in public and let all the crap spill out in front of strangers. I wanted her to feel the . . . horror’s too strong a word. I’ll be moderate for a change and call it extreme reluctance.’ She shifted in the passenger seat so that she was facing Simon. ‘So extreme you feel it physically, not just as an idea, not a purely intellectual preference for secrecy over sharing. I may have cocked up our working relationship . . .’ – she mimed inverted commas – ‘. . . but at least now Ginny knows how I felt every time she ordered me to reveal all for the good of my psyche.’

Simon nodded. How many therapy patients swallowed the for-your-own-good line? Nobody who genuinely valued their privacy, surely. He didn’t want to risk alienating Amber – she seemed to be in favour of him where she was against everybody else, for some reason he couldn’t fathom – but privately he decided her conditional stance was dubious. Either she could bear to talk about whatever the hell it was or she couldn’t. If she could, if telling didn’t feel absolutely impossible, why the hell wasn’t she giving him the information he needed?

‘I could have done with the moral support, to be honest,’ she went on. ‘Why should I be the only one parading my guilt? If a therapist can share his or her own personal story and make a client feel they’re both in it together, equally frail and fucked-up, why is that such a bad idea?’