A Daughter's Secret (3 page)

‘It was – not easy. But a first session often isn’t,’ I say.

‘She’s waiting outside. I told her I had to talk to you.’ She grabs, suddenly, for my arm, her fingers digging into my flesh. I don’t like the way her grip handcuffs me, but I try not to react. ‘What did she say to you?’

‘I’m sorry Annie, what’s said in there has to stay confidential. She’s obviously in a lot of pain, and there’s a lot of anger coming up. But you’re her mum, I’m sure you know that.’

It’s delicate dealing with parents; you don’t want them to think you’re stepping on their turf. Truth be told, I’m not sure it’s Annie’s turf either. She stares at me, as helpless as a fish on a slab, and I feel a rush of sympathy for Gemma. There’s no certainty here, no one who knows the answers.

‘Is that it?’

‘I definitely think we need a follow-up phone call, tomorrow preferably, but I think that’s the last time I’ll be seeing Gemma. A client has to
want
to come and see me.’

Annie’s painted red mouth twists into a smile that never translates. She yanks on a smart beige trench coat and jams on a pair of bug-eyed sunglasses, her knuckles white.

‘Thanks,’ she says, turning on her heel, refusing to look at me.

‘Annie . . .’ I start, but by now I’m talking to thin air.

He’s going to hate you when I tell him. I could be wrong, but it didn’t feel hypothetical. It felt like present tense.

24 December 1984 (six years old)

I’m not sure I like the idea of Father Christmas. A man with a big, puffy cloud of a beard pouring himself down the chimney and sneaking into my bedroom while Mum and Lorcan snore away next door. Mum promised me – crossed her heart and hoped to die – that there was nothing to be scared of. I wanted to hang up one of Lorcan’s stripy cotton socks, but she pointed out the holes in the toes, told me it had to be a stocking so it could fit all the presents. She’d bought one specially, and now it’s pinned to the end of my bed, all woolly and hopeful. I hope he really is coming. But also I hope he’s not.

Lorcan doesn’t really like Christmas. He keeps going on about the ‘comm-er-shall-ization’, which means that Moneybags Men have stolen the idea and turned it into something else, and saying he doesn’t want any presents. I made him a card at school, with stick-on stars and a flock of cotton-ball sheep: Miss Harper couldn’t understand me putting ‘Lorcan’ in glitter pen, not ‘Dad’, but she doesn’t understand about stuff like ‘comm-er-shall-ization’ and why you have to keep watching out for it. I did try to explain it to her. I was a bit scared of giving my card to him, but his face lit up like the pilot light in our noisy boiler. ‘Thank you, petal,’ he said, scooping me onto his knee and squeezing me against him so hard I could feel his skeleton. It made me feel full of happy, like a balloon blown so big it pops.

To fox the Moneybags Men we’re having a Continental Christmas, which means that instead of boring old lunch tomorrow we’re having dinner tonight, and I’m allowed to stay up until at least nine, which is ages past my bedtime. Mum’s downstairs roasting a chicken, the radio blaring out the kind of carols that are sung by posh boys with high-pitched voices, her lovely, tuneless voice trying and failing to hit the high notes along with theirs. Lorcan can’t be home yet. He can sing for real, it’s his job, and if he was here, he’d tease her enough to make her gradually turn herself down to silent, like turning off the radio when
The Archers
has finished. I stop staring at my stocking, imagining how fat it might become, and run down the narrow corridor to find her.

She’s pulling the glossy brown chicken out of the oven, her pretty face all flushed and shiny. I think she’s prettier than other people’s mums, even though she doesn’t bother with lipstick. When I’m a grown-up I’m going to wear make-up every single day, even if I’m ill in bed. She’s wearing a flowery red dress instead of her normal jeans, and her hair is pinned up on the back of her head, with little bits trailing downwards like vines that princes climb up to rescue fair maidens.

‘There you are!’ she says. ‘Why don’t you get out three knives and forks, and start laying the table?’

‘Is it suppertime?’

‘Yes,’ she says, even though she’s making a big tin-foil tent for the chicken and turning the oven down low enough to push him back in.

‘When Lorcan gets home?’

‘Yes,’ she says again, not looking round. Her ‘Yes’ makes a flat sound, like something heavy being dropped. The posh boys are starting on their next carol: I want her to sound happy and sing-y again.

‘What’s this one, Mum? I heard you singing “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” with them.’

‘Could you hear me upstairs?’ she says, a smile back in her voice. ‘Did I sound like a cat being strangled?’

That’s what Lorcan always says.

‘No!’

‘Is that a big fat lie, Mia?’

And then we hear his key in the lock. I can’t help looking at where the little hand is on our kitchen clock: it’s well past eight, and I wonder if Mum will be cross, but she rushes across the room and throws her arms around his neck.

‘Hello, sex bomb,’ he says, kissing her on the lips for ages. She pulls away in the end, and he comes over to me, my hands still full of knives and forks. He picks me up by my waist, swings me around, and the knives and forks go flying like confetti but it doesn’t make him stop.

‘Hello, petal,’ he says, loudly kissing each of my cheeks. I’m squealing, feeling sick and happy all at once, and Mum’s telling him to put me down right now, but she’s laughing too much to make the words come out properly. He sets me down, looks at the scattered cutlery, and drops to his knees.

‘Quick, it’s a treasure hunt,’ he says, crawling under the table and pulling the cloth across his face, peeking out at me. I crawl straight after him, but he’s already hidden the knives and forks. Every time I find one, he sings, ‘We are the champions,’ and when I find the final knife he tickles me so hard I think I’ll explode.

‘Come on now, supper,’ says Mum, voice firm, and Lorcan makes his naughty face, but he does crawl out from our hidey-hole, his hand extending back to me. I perch on a chair, my legs swinging beneath my dress, just watching him.

‘Are you getting excited about Father Christmas?’ he asks me.

Mum gives him a look I can’t quite decode, even though I’m so good at codes I could be in the Famous Five – I’d solve far more clues than useless Anne. Perhaps Mum’s thinking I’ll get scared again.

‘Yes!’ I say, in an extra-excited voice, so they won’t worry. ‘I’ve asked him for the Famous Five omnibus and a glitter pen.’

‘That guy is quite a dude!’ says Lorcan, and Mum gives him another funny look. I don’t know what a ‘dude’ is, but I nod slowly like I do when I’m pretending I understand. Meanwhile Mum pulls the chicken out, telling Lorcan to make the gravy, and Lorcan produces a bottle of champagne from his rucksack even though I’m sure we can’t afford it. It’s what posh people – like Lord Snooty in the
Beano
– drink. Lorcan is very good at singing but people don’t appreciate him enough and it means that we don’t have many new things. Most of my clothes have been worn by other children, apart from when my grandparents decide they need to dress me (‘Like rags!’ said Granny, yanking at my blue corduroy pinafore, and my cheeks felt like sunburn), and my toys come from jumble sales. I don’t really like toys anyway; they’re for babies. I like books. My reading age is eight even though I’m six. I heard Miss Harper saying to Mum that I’m very ‘mature’, which means I’m like a grown-up trapped up in a child’s body.

Mum produces a box of crackers, bright green foil ones, and puts one next to each plate with a flourish. Lorcan looks at his for a few silent seconds, then asks me to pull it with him. He pretends it’s very, very hard – like we’re having a tug of war – then falls off his chair as the cracker springs in my direction. Inside there’s a red plastic ring, a shiny pretend diamond stuck to the front. I screw up my face to show that I know it’s a bit yucky, but Lorcan picks it up.

‘Princess Mia,’ he says in a Lord Snooty voice, dropping suddenly to his knees. ‘May I kiss your ring?’

I nod, giggling, a bit scared, and he gives it an extravagant smack of the lips, pushing it onto my middle finger. I look at it, glittering there: now it seems like the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t take it off once, all Christmas holidays, even when I’m in the bath or in bed. Every time I see it, it reminds me how big and puffy I got with happiness.

Chapter Two

‘You’re being very hard on yourself.’ Judith smiles at me, teasing. ‘Just for a change.’ I don’t smile back.

It’s 7.30 a.m., the sun almost tentative as it filters through Judith’s impressive windows. The tube was half empty, the other passengers sleep-dazed casualties of a too early start. Lucky them: I barely slept a wink.

‘This isn’t me being self-obsessed or . . . or neurotic,’ I say, trying to keep my voice from reaching a neurotic fever pitch. ‘I know I did my best. But it wasn’t good enough.’

‘Did I call you neurotic?’

‘She needs help. I wish I could’ve got her to see that I could be someone for her to talk to.’

‘You had half an hour. She’s furious, traumatized. And you’ve got no idea how much help you’ve already been. You telling her mum she’s been self-harming might be a huge gift to them all.’

‘Yeah . . .’ I say, trying not to sound dismissive. ‘It’s not just about the self-harm. That’s just a symptom.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It wasn’t just what she said, it was the way she said it.’ I’ve gone over and over this already with her. ‘It really felt like she was going to go straight home and tell him every single detail.’

Judith pauses, carefully picking out her words.

‘That’s where I think you could be veering off course. Mia, fathers and daughters, it’s going to be very triggering for you. Perhaps she even sensed that . . .’ Judith waves her elegant, ring-laden hands, aware it sounds a little woo woo. ‘On some level. Of course she doesn’t want to think Dad’s gone. Present tense makes the prospect of never seeing him again a bit less real.’

Judith must think I’m an idiot, following a trail of breadcrumbs right into a teenage girl’s fairy story. I should have worked this through myself, not exposed the multicoloured chaos of my thoughts.

‘Thank you. And thanks for coming in so early.’ My first client is at eight, a corporate lawyer who likes an hour before real life begins to work on the dream life he swears he can’t afford to live. Judith smiles.

‘Sometimes there’s a limit to what we can do. Knowing that fact is a big part of the job.’

‘I know.’

‘Let me know how the call goes. Oh and Mia, Maria from the ACA called about your application. She was still a bit sniffy about whether someone in their mid-thirties could be experienced enough, but they were very impressed with the paper you wrote.’ The ACA is a specialist organization who work with child bereavement. There’s a spot that’s come up on their board, and I want it. Even more now she’s said that.

‘Is there anything else I can do to prove what a wise old crone I can be?’

‘We’ll keep gently nudging the door. I’m sure it’ll swing open.’

‘Thanks again,’ I say, smiling my gratitude.

I try Annie twice between patients, but she doesn’t pick up. Come lunchtime, I decide it’s a sushi kind of day, virtuously sipping on a miso soup in the window of the Japanese place on the corner, before ruining it at a stroke with a hastily grabbed bar of Green & Black’s en route to the office. I’m passing the tiny green handkerchief of park round the corner when I see her name flash up. I duck into the park, drop onto a bench and accept the call.

‘Annie. Thanks for calling me back.’

‘Can you talk?’

‘That’s why I picked up. I’m really glad you called.’

‘Not that you
can
talk to me. That’s what you said.’

Are they all this aggressive, the Vines?

‘I can’t talk about things that are covered under patient confidentiality, but there is something I need to raise with you as Gemma’s parent.’

God, I sound pompous. I’m glad she can’t hear how hard my heart is hammering in my chest. I look around, anchor myself. I shouldn’t be this rattled. A little girl is sitting in a swing, the kind for tiny kids with bars to hold them safe, begging to be pushed higher and higher, hair flying back behind her like a magic carpet, her face alight with exhilaration.

‘Yeah, and I was calling to book another appointment.’

‘Another appointment?’ I can’t keep the shock out of my voice. ‘Does Gemma really want to come back? She seemed pretty adamant she didn’t.’

‘You don’t know Gemma,’ says Annie, her voice like lead.

‘That’s true.’ I pause, choosing my words carefully. ‘But she needs to want to come for herself, not to please anyone else.’

‘Yeah, I get it. Don’t worry, she hasn’t got a gun to her head.’ She’s pissing me off now. ‘You obviously got somewhere with her,’ she says, wheedling, like she’s detected my mood in my breathing. ‘She wants to see you as soon as you can fit her in.’

I feel a tiny nudge of self-satisfaction. I squash it down.

‘Annie, what I’m concerned about is self-harm. Have you seen her wrists? There are cuts all over them, which I assume she did herself.’

Annie pauses. I hear the flick of metal, a sharp breath inwards, smoke going down into her lungs. I wait. Should I have been more gentle? Insisted we meet face to face?

‘I’ve seen it,’ she says, voice catching. ‘I’m not being harsh, but it looks worse than it is. She did it with a compass, just scratched away at herself. She’s never done it before.’ She waits. ‘We need you. You can see that, can’t you?’

I think for a split second, then hold the phone away from me, page through my calendar. She’s minimizing what Gemma’s done, protecting herself.

‘Let’s book one more in, and then we can talk again.’

‘Thanks,’ she says, relief warming her up. ‘Thanks so much.’

I thrust the phone back into the darkness of my bag, chart a course towards the office. For once, I’m trying not to think.

He’s standing next to the sofa in the unmanned reception area, wary-looking, like he’s contemplated sitting on it but decided it’s a trap. He’s toweringly tall, but it doesn’t make him seem manly to me, far from it. It’s a gangly kind of height, made more so by the way his suit fits him, like a school uniform that’s been unwisely awarded an extra year. His dark red hair is thick and abundant, falling against pale skin the colour of full-fat milk. He should be freckled, but somehow he isn’t. I try to work out how old he is, but it’s beyond me; he could be my age, but only in human years. Thinking he’s another therapist’s patient I try to slither past as unobtrusively as I can, like the flash of green as a grass snake streaks across a lawn.