In Too Deep (8 page)

I look at Hannah. Do we want it? I wish I knew. Since Rick went, even the most trivial of decisions pass me by, rendering me stuck in a place of a thousand impossible choices.

‘We’d love to eat here tonight,’ Hannah says right on cue. I’m so glad she’s here.

‘Perfect,’ Susan replies, jotting down a note on her pad.

I look at her hands – strong and lean, capable hands, but something doesn’t feel right. Something that begins the swell of nausea inside me as I watch her write. I have no idea what it is.

‘May I have a glass of water, please?’ I say to the barman. I take a few sips, thinking how stupid I am to have had wine in the afternoon. I can already feel a headache blooming behind my forehead. But it’s more than that. Hannah is talking to Susan about dogs now, something about Labradors and gundogs . . . and my eyes are drawn back to Susan’s hands as she clicks her pen on and off, occasionally allowing the nib to wander across the paper in an idle doodle. The room blurs around the edges.

Susan laughs loudly and Hannah follows suit, covering her face briefly at the funny story they’ve just shared.

‘That must have been sooo embarrassing,’ Hannah says in that incredulous way of hers, the same way I’ve heard her talking to her friends. But rarely to me.

‘It
was
,’ Susan replies, her smile broad and white. ‘But thankfully they didn’t hold it against me.’ The laughter subsides and the pair turn to me. I have no idea what they
were talking about, just that I don’t feel right, that something has made me uneasy and I don’t know what.

‘Are you OK, Mum?’

‘I’m fine,’ I say, sweeping my hair from my face. Cooper’s soft body leans against my ankles, grounding me. ‘Your blouse, Susan. It’s so pretty.’ I only compliment her so as not to sound awkward, even though it has the opposite effect.

And it’s not the blouse I actually meant to comment on, it was something else. I just don’t know what.

‘Thank you,’ she says, beaming. ‘My husband bought it for me. Not bad, eh, for a man who loathes shopping.’ Her chin lifts a little, exposing her long neck, her angular jaw.

‘Between you and me,’ she says, leaning closer, ‘I think it was a gift of guilt. His work trip had run over . . .
again
. . . and he picked this up for me so I couldn’t possibly get mad at him.’ She looks down at the fabric, running her fingers across the sleeve. ‘It’s from Dubai,’ she adds, almost proudly, as if she’s tempting me to ask what he does for a living.

I don’t, because talking about other people’s husbands isn’t high up on my list of achievable tasks right now. Paula, my counsellor, said that will come in time. That I mustn’t rush it. That I must be kind to myself and take everything slowly. As it is, I feel as though I’m wading through treacle from the moment I wake to the moment I go to sleep. I don’t think I could function any slower, more cautiously, more detached, if I tried.

‘Well, it really suits you,’ I say. Tiny birds are printed
at all angles and in all colours, spattered on her body as if she’s been caught up in a flock.

But suddenly it seems wrong, almost distasteful, as does everything about her, even though logically I know it’s not. She’s stylish and kind and friendly. What is it, then, that pulls at me so? Why can’t I relax and enjoy chatting with her?

And then I realise what it is that’s been nagging at me. But by the time I’ve thought of the right words, Susan has told us that she’ll see us later and has walked off.

‘Hannah . . .’ I whisper, grabbing her arm. ‘Did you see it?’ My eyes feel as if they’re going to burst out of my head. Across the room, I watch Susan speaking to one of the staff before she leaves.

‘See what?’

‘The pen Susan was holding.’

Hannah shrugs and shakes her head casually. There’s a flash of colour on her cheeks, but it’s quickly gone.

‘No. What about it?’ she says, fussing Cooper.

I take another sip of wine, knowing what she’ll say if I mention it – that I’m mad, that I’m doing ‘that thing’ again where I’m reading something into nothing. That everywhere I look, if I really want to, I’ll see bits of Rick, as if he’s been blown into a million pieces and I’ve been left behind to gather them all up.

And I’ve told myself that I will. Even if it takes the rest of my life, I will piece him back together.

‘It was nice, that’s all,’ I say, trying to backtrack. I
daren’t look at Hannah, don’t want to read her expression.

But I can’t help wondering if she noticed it too. Susan was holding a silver filigree pen, similar, if not identical, to the one I gave to Rick a couple of anniversaries ago.

And it’s our anniversary on Monday.

It’s a sign, I feel sure.

Lower Buckley is a classic Cotswold village – all toffee-and-biscuit-coloured stone cottages, a willow-fringed green with a heart-shaped pond, and a dozen ducks that come waddling up to us the moment they see us approaching.

‘Hold him,’ I say to Hannah, but Cooper is too old and lazy to pay much attention to the noisy birds. His tail swings in a wide arc, nearly knocking into one of them as they surround us. We go over to the bench and sit down, some of the ducks following on, convinced we have food for them. The sun sweeps low through the willow fronds that are already coming into leaf, but there’s a nip in the air now evening approaches. The last couple of days have been unseasonably mild, but it’s set to change. I pull my jacket around me.

‘Imagine living here,’ Hannah says wistfully. ‘You’d feel like a strawberry cream, wouldn’t you?’

I’m not sure what she means, but smile anyway. Her imagination has always taken her places, though less so in recent years. Perhaps that’s to do with the losses she’s suffered, and suddenly I feel so selfish, so wretched and
wrapped up in my own grief that I’ve failed to pay attention to what my daughter must be going through.

‘Chocolate box cottages,’ she says as if I’m stupid, turning round, trailing her gaze up and down the street. There’s no one about, not even a car passing through, and we only saw one other person on our walk down here before dinner. She gives a little laugh.

‘Apparently the pub further down has a restaurant attached that’s owned by a celebrity chef,’ I say. ‘Though I can’t remember who.’

I did a quick search of the area before we came, keen to find activities to fill the gaps between the treatments Rick had booked – mainly so I didn’t have too much thinking time.
Dangerous
time, I once said to Paula as she listened to me talk for an hour solid. She understood what I meant.

‘I wouldn’t want to live here, though,’ Hannah continues. ‘It’s far too quiet.’

‘I would,’ I reply, surprising myself.

At that moment, I realise there’s nothing I want to do more than pack a small suitcase and leave our house behind, contents and all. If I can’t have it with Rick in it, I don’t want it at all. So much has happened since we moved there, good and heart-wrenchingly terrible, but with Rick beside me we somehow made it through from one day to the next. We were a team, working through things together, as if one of us somehow managed to balance out the other’s grief, knowing instinctively when to be strong.

‘That’s natural,’ I say. ‘You’re young and still need the buzz of a city and friends close by. When you get to my age, you’ll be after different things. Just you wait until babies come along.’ I wink, thinking she’ll shove me in the ribs, or make a growling noise that says she’s not even thinking about such things yet, but she doesn’t. She just keeps on staring up the street.

‘Let’s save some bread from breakfast and bring it for the ducks,’ I say, but still Hannah doesn’t look round.

I pat Cooper and press my face against his neck, breathing in his pleasant scent, knowing that all I’m trying to do is catch a whiff of Rick.

The first time I saw Paula Nicholls, I instantly liked her. She made me feel as if I wasn’t coming apart at the seams quite as much as I believed. She was worth the money for that alone – an hour of feeling as near to normal as I was probably ever going to get.

But my concern was, as I walked into her office for the first time a couple of months ago, that she wouldn’t like me. I’d lost my husband, after all. Been very careless. The family liaison officer allocated by PC Lane was the one to recommend counselling support and while she couldn’t refer me to a specific therapist, she said there were one or two close to where I lived who had done work with victims of crime before.

Was I a victim of crime? I wondered as I waited, slightly early, for my appointment. If so, I had no idea what the crime was. Or perhaps it was a crime-in-waiting, an impending, looming event – a crime that may never actually happen, but would instead shroud my life with foreboding and dread, driving me mad from fear and
anticipation, forcing me to live the rest of my days constantly cowering.

Rick had been missing only two weeks when I picked up the phone to make an appointment with Paula, but I didn’t get to see her until early January. Her office was in a shared building alongside other therapists ranging from a reiki practitioner to a chiropractor and a child psychologist. There was a small waiting room with a laminated sign –
Please enter
– stuck to it leading off the main entrance hall of the Georgian building. The beige carpet was a little stained, and the magnolia walls rather grubby and chipped, but the place exuded an air of safety and comfort, which was what I needed more than anything.

But even then, as I reported to the receptionist, lowering myself into one of three matching velour chairs, I was tempted to leave. Paula wasn’t going to bring Rick back, and while I’d never seen a counsellor before, I had a friend who’d had therapy a couple of years ago. She’d recounted how stuff had been unearthed that she hadn’t even realised was buried. I didn’t want anything unearthing. Far from it. I’d always tackled things head-on with Rick by my side and wasn’t sure how I’d cope alone if anything terrifying was exhumed.

I waited for Paula to call me through, trying to convince myself that her job wasn’t to judge, that ultimately I was paying her to sit there and be pleasant whatever she thought of me. That she wouldn’t pin the blame on me for my husband vanishing without a trace. That it couldn’t possibly be my fault.

‘Mrs Forrester?’

When I looked up, a woman was standing in a doorway off the waiting room. She beckoned me through with a warm smile, and I offered her a nervous one in return. My legs felt weak and my heart pattered out a thin, uncontrollable beat.

‘Please, make yourself comfortable,’ she said, allowing me to go first into her consulting room.

I think I forced out a
thank you
, a
nice to meet you
, but just stared at her hand as it reached out for me to shake. Paula wasn’t fazed by my near muteness and lack of social skills. She understood from the start.

‘Thanks for seeing me,’ I finally managed. I’d been thanking so many people those past few weeks, yet I was never sure for what.

‘My pleasure,’ she said. ‘And a belated happy New Year to you.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘What brings you to me today, Mrs Forrester?’ She glanced at a thin file beside her on a glass-topped desk. The room was furnished minimally. ‘Is it OK to call you Gina?’

‘Yes, please do.’ I could answer
that
question easily enough.

I’d not alluded to anything about my situation when I made the appointment. ‘It’s quite complicated,’ I began. ‘But in a nutshell, I need to find a way to cope. Figure out how not to fall apart, I suppose.’

‘OK . . .’ she said slowly, before pausing. It was a space
filled with warmth. ‘Is there anything specific you’re having trouble coping with?’

We were sitting in matching chairs – low and pale grey, comfortable yet not overly so. The room was painted pure white, I noticed, much fresher than the waiting area, and as I searched for the right words, I focused on the circular aubergine-coloured rug. My eyes tracked the pattern on it. Maze-like. I saw myself standing in the centre, turning in circles. Tiny and lost in the thick pile.

‘My husband went missing at the end of last November,’ I said robotically. It was the only way I could get it out, by making it sound as if it hadn’t really happened. As if I was an actor delivering a crucial line in a play.

‘That sounds really hard for you,’ Paula said as unemotionally as she could, yet I still registered the shock on her face, the slight widening of her pupils, the tightening of her facial muscles. I knew then that her mind would be racing with questions and scenarios, wanting all the details. I began with the events of that Saturday morning. It took nearly thirty minutes to get it out, and afterwards I felt exhausted.

‘Firstly,’ Paula said, abandoning her pen to the table. She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. ‘I’m hearing a lot of guilt and self-blame in your story. It may not seem possible now, but learning how to ease that guilt is going to help you.’

I didn’t think I could do that.

‘And holding on to those new feelings will open doors for you, show you a new direction. Guilt has a habit of
chasing after us, and I understand totally why you feel this way. When bad things happen, it’s human nature to find a cause, logical or not. And when you can’t find one, your mind can turn inwards, blaming yourself to help make sense of the situation. It’s actually quite clever, though wholly unhelpful in the long term.’

But what if it
was
my fault?
I wanted to blurt out.
What if there’s stuff I can’t tell you, that I can’t tell
anyone
?

‘I’m always thinking there’s something I should have done differently,’ I said automatically. ‘Like, if I’d insisted Rick didn’t go to the shop, but rather made him stay home and help me get ready for our guests that evening. He wasn’t going to have time to read the paper anyway. Or I could have asked him to do the cleaning and dashed to the shop myself. Maybe I should have suggested he take the dog with him, and perhaps that would have changed things. There are so many alternatives.’

Paula was nodding, her eyes big and dark and absorbent. Soaking up all my misery.