The Silent Patient (28 page)

“I see. It sounds like you’re saying you were this man’s prey? That he was playing some kind of sadistic game with you. Is that right?”

Alicia dropped the end of her cigarette on the ground and stepped on it. “Give me another one.”

I handed her the pack. She took one and lit the cigarette herself. She smoked for a moment. “Gabriel was coming home at eight. Two more hours. I kept staring at the clock. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘Don’t you like spending time with me?’ And he stroked my skin with the gun, running it up and down my arm.” She shivered at the memory. “I said Gabriel was going to be home any minute. ‘And what then?’ he asked. ‘He’ll rescue you?’”

“And what did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything. I just kept staring at the clock … and then my phone rang. It was Gabriel. He told me to answer it. He held the gun against my head.”

“And? What did Gabriel say?”

“He said … he said the shoot was turning into a nightmare, so I should go ahead and eat without him. He wouldn’t get back until ten at the earliest. I hung up. ‘My husband is on his way home,’ I said. ‘He’ll be here in a few minutes. You should go, now, before he gets back.’ The man just laughed. ‘But I heard him say he won’t be back until ten,’ he said. ‘We’ve got hours to kill. Get me some rope,’ he said, ‘or tape or something. I want to tie you up.’

“I did as he asked. I knew it was hopeless now. I knew how it was going to end.”

Alicia stopped talking and looked at me. I could see the raw emotion in her eyes. I wondered if I was pushing her too hard.

“Maybe we should take a break.”

“No, I need to finish. I need to do this.”

She went on, speaking faster now. “I didn’t have any rope, so he took the wire I had for hanging canvases. He made me go in the living room. He pulled out one of the upright chairs from the dining table. He told me to sit down. He started wrapping the wire around my ankles, tying me to the chair. I could feel it cutting into me. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘please—’ But he didn’t listen. He tied my wrists behind my back. I was sure then that he was going to kill me. I wish …
I wish he had
.”

She spat this out. I was startled by her vehemence.

“Why do you wish that?”

“Because what he did was worse.”

For a second I thought Alicia was going to cry. I fought a sudden desire to hold her, take her in my arms, kiss her, reassure her, promise her she was safe. I restrained myself. I stubbed out my cigarette on the redbrick wall.

“I feel that you need to be taken care of. I find myself wanting to take care of you, Alicia.”

“No.” She shook her head firmly. “That’s not what I want from you.”

“What do you want?”

Alicia didn’t answer. She turned and walked back inside.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I TURNED ON THE LIGHT
in the therapy room and shut the door. When I turned around, Alicia had already sat down—but not in her chair. She was sitting in my chair.

Normally I would have explored the meaning of this telling gesture with her. Now, however, I said nothing. If sitting in my chair signified she had the upper hand—well, she did. I was impatient to get to the end of her story, now that we were so close to it. So I just sat down and waited for her to speak. She half shut her eyes and was perfectly still.

Eventually she said, “I was tied to the chair, and every time I squirmed, the wire cut deeper into my legs, and they were bleeding. It was a relief to focus on the cutting instead of my thoughts. My thoughts were too scary.… I thought I would never see Gabriel again. I thought I was going to die.”

“What happened next?”

“We sat there for what seemed like forever. It’s funny. I’ve always thought of fear as a cold sensation, but it’s not—it burns like fire. It was so hot in that room, with the windows closed and the blinds drawn. Still, stifling, heavy air. Beads of sweat were dripping down my forehead and into my eyes, stinging them. I could smell the alcohol on him and the stink of his sweat while he drank and talked—he kept talking. I didn’t listen to a lot of it. I could hear a big fat fly, buzzing between the blind and the window—it was trapped and thudding against the glass, thud, thud, thud. He asked questions about me and Gabriel—how we met, how long we’d been together, if we were happy. I thought if I could keep him talking, I had a better chance of staying alive. So I answered his questions—about me, Gabriel, my work. I talked about whatever he wanted. Just to buy time. I kept focusing on the clock. Listening to it tick. And then suddenly it was ten o’clock.… And then … ten-thirty. And still Gabriel hadn’t come home.

“‘He’s late,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’s not coming.’

“‘He’s coming,’ I said.

“‘Well, it’s a good thing I’m here to keep you company.’

“And then the clock struck eleven, and I heard a car outside. The man went to the window and looked out. ‘Perfect timing,’ he said.”

*   *   *

What happened next—Alicia said—happened fast.

The man grabbed Alicia and swung her chair around, so she faced away from the door. He said he would shoot Gabriel in the head if she spoke one word or made a single sound. Then he disappeared. A moment later the lights fused and everything went dark. In the hallway, the front door opened and closed.

“Alicia?” Gabriel called out.

There was no reply, and he called her name again. He walked into the living room—and saw her by the fireplace, sitting with her back to him.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” Gabriel asked. No reply. “Alicia?”

Alicia fought to remain silent—she wanted to cry out, but her eyes had become accustomed to the dark and she could see in front of her, in the corner of the room, the man’s gun glinting in the shadows. He was pointing it at Gabriel. Alicia kept silent for his sake.

“Alicia?” Gabriel walked toward her. “What’s wrong?”

Just as Gabriel reached out his hand to touch her, the man leaped from the darkness. Alicia screamed, but it was too late—and Gabriel was knocked to the floor; the man on top of him. The gun was raised like a hammer and brought down onto Gabriel’s head with a sickening thud—once, twice, three times—and he lay there, unconscious, bleeding. The man pulled him up and sat Gabriel on a chair. He tied him to it, using the wire. Gabriel stirred as he regained consciousness.

“What the fuck? What—”

The man raised the gun and aimed it at Gabriel. There was a gunshot. And another. And another. Alicia started screaming. The man kept firing. He shot Gabriel in the head six times. Then he tossed the gun to the floor.

He left without saying a word.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT
. Alicia Berenson didn’t kill her husband. A faceless intruder broke into their home and, in an apparently motiveless act of malice, shot Gabriel dead before vanishing into the night. Alicia was entirely innocent.

That’s if you believe her explanation.

I didn’t. Not a word of it.

Apart from her obvious inconsistencies and inaccuracies—such as that Gabriel was not shot six times, but only five, one of the bullets being fired at the ceiling; nor was Alicia discovered tied to a chair, but standing in the middle of the room, having slashed her wrists. Alicia made no mention to me of the man’s untying her, nor did she explain why she hadn’t told the police this version of events from the start. No, I knew she was lying. I was annoyed that she had lied, badly and pointlessly, to my face. For a second I wondered if she was testing me, seeing whether I accepted the story? If so, I was determined to give nothing away.

I sat there in silence.

Unusually, Alicia spoke first. “I’m tired. I want to stop.”

I nodded. I couldn’t object.

“Let’s carry on tomorrow,” she said.

“Is there more to say?”

“Yes. One last thing.”

“Very well. Tomorrow.”

Yuri was waiting in the corridor. He escorted Alicia to her room, and I went up to my office.

As I have said, it’s been my practice for years to transcribe a session as soon as it’s ended. The ability to accurately record what has been said during the past fifty minutes is of paramount importance to a therapist—otherwise much detail is forgotten and the immediacy of the emotions lost.

I sat at my desk and wrote down, as fast as I could, everything that had transpired between us. The moment I finished, I marched through the corridors, clutching my pages of notes.

I knocked on Diomedes’s door. There was no response, so I knocked again. Still no answer. I opened the door a crack—and there was Diomedes, fast asleep on his narrow couch.

“Professor?” And again, louder: “Professor Diomedes?”

He woke with a start and sat up quickly. He blinked at me.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I need to talk to you. Should I come back later?”

Diomedes frowned and shook his head. “I was having a brief siesta. I always do, after lunch. It helps me get through the afternoon. It becomes a necessity as you get older.” He yawned and stood up. “Come in, Theo. Sit down. By the looks of you, it’s important.”

“I think it is, yes.”

“Alicia?”

I nodded. I sat in front of the desk. He sat down behind it. His hair was sticking up to one side, and he still looked half-asleep.

“Are you sure I shouldn’t come back later?”

Diomedes shook his head. He poured himself a glass of water from a jug. “I’m awake now. Go on. What it is?”

“I’ve been with Alicia, talking.… I need some supervision.”

Diomedes nodded. He was looking more awake by the second, and more interested. “Go on.”

I started reading from my notes. I took him through the entire session. I repeated her words as accurately as I could and relayed the story she had told me: how the man who’d been spying on her broke into the house, took her prisoner, and shot and killed Gabriel.

When I finished, there was a long pause. Diomedes’s expression gave little away. He pulled a box of cigars out of his desk drawer. He took out a little silver guillotine. He popped the end of a cigar into it and sliced it off.

“Let’s start with the countertransference. Tell me about your emotional experience. Start at the beginning. As she was telling you her story, what kind of feelings were coming up?”

I thought about it for a moment. “I felt excited, I suppose.… And anxious. Afraid.”

“Afraid? Was it your fear, or hers?”

“Both, I imagine.”

“And what were you afraid of?”

“I’m not sure. Fear of failure, perhaps. I have a lot riding on this, as you know.”

Diomedes nodded. “What else?”

“Frustration too. I feel frustrated quite frequently during our sessions.”

“And angry?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“You feel like a frustrated father, dealing with a difficult child?”

“Yes. I want to help her—but I don’t know if she wants to be helped.”

He nodded. “Stay with the feeling of anger. Talk more about it. How does it manifest itself?”

I hesitated. “Well, I often leave the sessions with a splitting headache.”

Diomedes nodded. “Yes, exactly. It has to come out one way or another. ‘A trainee who is not anxious will be sick.’ Who was it who said that?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I’m sick
and
anxious.”

Diomedes smiled. “You’re also no longer a trainee—although those feelings never go away entirely.” He picked up his cigar. “Let’s go outside for a smoke.”

*   *   *

We went onto the fire escape. Diomedes puffed on his cigar for a moment, mulling things over. Eventually he reached a conclusion.

“She’s lying, you know.”

“You mean about the man killing Gabriel? I thought so too.”

“Not just that.”

“Then what?”

“All of it. The whole cock-and-bull story. I don’t believe a single word of it.”

I must have looked rather taken aback. I had suspected he’d disbelieve some elements of Alicia’s tale. I hadn’t expected him to reject the whole thing.

“You don’t believe in the man?”

“No, I don’t. I don’t believe he ever existed. It’s a fantasy. From start to finish.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Diomedes gave me a strange smile. “Call it my intuition. Years of professional experience with fantasists.” I tried to interrupt but he forestalled me with a wave of his hand. “Of course, I don’t expect you to agree, Theo. You’re in deep with Alicia, and your feelings are bound up with hers like a tangled ball of wool. That is the purpose of a supervision like this—to help you unpick the strands of wool—to see what is yours and what is hers. And once you gain some distance, and clarity, I suspect you will feel rather differently about your experience with Alicia Berenson.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Well, to be blunt, I fear she has been performing for you. Manipulating you. And it’s a performance that I believe has been tailored specifically to appeal to your chivalric … and, let’s say, romantic instincts. It was obvious to me from the start that you intended to rescue her. I’m quite sure it was obvious to Alicia too. Hence her seduction of you.”

“You sound like Christian. She hasn’t seduced me. I am perfectly capable of withstanding a patient’s sexual projections. Don’t underestimate me, Professor.”

“Don’t underestimate
her
. She’s giving an excellent performance.” Diomedes shook his head and peered up at the gray clouds. “The vulnerable woman under attack, alone, in need of protection. Alicia has cast herself as the victim and this mystery man as the villain. Whereas in fact Alicia and the man are one and the same. She killed Gabriel. She was guilty—and she is still refusing to accept that guilt. So she splits, dissociates, fantasizes—Alicia becomes the innocent victim and you are her protector. And by colluding with this fantasy you are allowing her to disown all responsibility.”

“I don’t agree with that. I don’t believe she is lying, consciously, anyway. At the very least, Alicia believes her story to be true.”

“Yes, she believes it. Alicia is under attack—but from her own psyche, not the outside world.”

I knew that wasn’t true, but there was no point in arguing further. I stubbed out my cigarette.