The Disappeared (39 page)

'Try,'
he said, coaxing gently.

'It's
not what it was about, it's the fact I got it so wrong. I was so sure of myself
. . . It's why I stopped the pills, to get the certainty back, the fire ... I
felt so deceived.'

He
noted down her answer. 'Are you going to tell me or not?'

Jenny
let out an angry sigh. 'Her daughter's a lesbian. She's been praying with a man
at a church for her to be healed. He's a detective I don't happen to trust. I
said this man was using and misleading her. But it turns out the reason her
daughter is living with a woman is because when she was a teenager she was
raped. And the detective's had more than his share of suffering too.' She dug
her nails into the arms of her chair. 'God, I feel so much better.'

Ignoring
her sarcasm, Dr Allen looked up from his notes and regarded her thoughtfully.
'You hurt her and, what's worse, you felt deceived into hurting her?'

'It
was just an incident. It was probably coming off the pills. It's not as if you
hadn't warned me.'

'Now
you're avoiding the issue.'

'I'm
not avoiding anything. I came straight here.'

'Then
if you want my help, you'll let me offer it.' It was first time she'd heard him
issue anything like a rebuke. He continued in this sterner vein. 'You practised
family law for fifteen years, is that correct?'

'Yes.'

'You
represented the local authority, taking vulnerable children into care.'

'Mostly.'

He
flipped back through the pages of his notebook. 'Yes, here we are. And the
first time you had a full-blown anxiety attack was in a courtroom. You were
reading out a medical report. . . Can you remember anything about the case?'

'I
could hardly forget it.' She felt her heart beat faster. She closed her eyes
and took a breath, fixed her mind on a vision of a Mediterranean sunset. It
helped a little, but not much. 'There was an eight-year-old boy, Owen Patrick
Lindsey. I'd dealt with his case off and on for two years. His mother wasn't
coping so we took him into care. Most kids are glad to be out of a chaotic
home, but he kept trying to escape and get back. I went against the social
worker's advice and chose not to contest his mother's application to have him
returned to her. The first weekend he was at home she got drunk and threw a pan
of scalding water over him ... It was a report from the burns unit I was
reading out.'

Dr
Allen scribbled rapidly. Still writing, he said, 'And you went from the
vulnerable to the dead - dead people beyond help, or your ability to harm them,
at least.'

'Hmm.
Maybe.'

He
lifted his pen from the page and fixed her with a look of intense interest.
'You don't like hurting people, do you, Jenny? In fact, I'd say you'd do almost
anything to avoid causing pain.'

'I
don't make a very good job of it.'

'When
you've spoken of your ex-husband it's always of his arrogance, the offhand way
he treats you and his patients. Yes, I remember: you once said it infuriates
you how little he's affected by what you see as the damage he causes.'

'A
heartless heart surgeon. Work that one out.'

'Perhaps
he's just reconciled to a basic fact of life. You can't live without causing
some pain. And we do tend to marry people with qualities we lack.'

'I
despise his attitude.'

'But
you try to mimic it. It's not a submissive, motherly woman I see sitting in
that chair twice a month.'

'A
moment ago you were saying I couldn't bear to hurt people.'

'Your
defensiveness tells me I'm onto something. People's emotional responses break
down when they can no longer bear the burden they are consciously or
subconsciously placing on themselves. Believe me, it's becoming obvious you
have an overwhelming sense of responsibility for things beyond your ability to
control.'

'Is
this a eureka moment? It doesn't feel like it.'

'The
dream you mentioned last time - the children vanishing into thin air. Nothing,
not a thing you could do to help them. It terrified you.'

'I
can't fault your logic,' Jenny said drily.

'And
the other image that haunts you: the crack opening up in the corner of your
childhood bedroom; the monstrous, unseen presence in a secret room behind it.
It's the realm beyond your control where the horrors happen.'

Jenny
let out a heavy sigh. She had lost the ability to be excited by potential
revelations.

Dr
Allen continued undaunted. 'What have you been writing about in your journal?'

'Hardly
anything.'

'Really?'

Just
the mention of it consumed her with yet another more powerful wave of shame.
There was no question of confessing to him that Ross had found it. She couldn't
even deal with the thought herself. She parried him with a partial truth.
'Mostly stuff about wanting to feel real again, connect with myself.'

'To
find what you haven't got.' He presented it as a statement, an answer that
neatly completed his theory.

Jenny
felt a sense of disappointment, of having been here so many times before. Dr
Travis had had at least half a dozen big ideas that had come to nothing.

'We're
going to try regression.'

'Again?'
Jenny said, failing to conceal her cynicism.

'Please,
go with me,' he insisted urgently. 'It's for your own good.'

She
was taken aback. In eight months of consultations he'd maintained an unbroken
mask of passivity. This was something new.

'Close
your eyes, feel yourself sinking into the chair . . .'

She
forced her eyes shut and unwillingly submitted to the well-worn routine. He
talked her down through the gradual stages of physical relaxation. Feet, ankles
and legs grew heavy, hands, arms, head, chest, then abdomen, and lastly
internal organs. As she sank deeper, Dr Allen's voice became fainter, more
remote, until it was little more than a distant echo in the comforting darkness
that was her envelope of safety between sleeping and waking.

She
wanted to slip quietly under.

'Stay
with me, Jenny,' Dr Allen said. 'You're perfectly safe. Nothing can happen to
you here. I want you to go back to where we've been before. You're a child
upstairs in your bedroom, playing by yourself. You hear the banging on the
front door, the raised voices - it's your grandfather. He's shouting,
screaming.'

Jenny's
body gave an involuntary twitch.

'Tell
me what he's shouting.'

'I
can't... I can't hear.'

'You
can't hear the words?' 'No.'

'Are
there other voices?'

A
pause. Jenny's eyes moved sideways under their closed lids.

'It's
a woman . . . sobbing, wailing . . . my mother.'

'Is
she saying anything?'

'She's
crying out, "No, no —." She keeps saying it. . . over and over.'

'Then
what?'

Jenny
shook her head. 'It just goes on and on.'

'What
about the men? What are they saying?'

'They've
gone quiet. It's just my mother . . . It's just her crying. Her voice carrying
up the stairs.'

'How
are you feeling about this? What are you doing?'

'I
just want to get away ... I want to go, get out of there.'

'Why?'

'I
don't know ... I just want to go.'

'What
are you frightened of?'

Tears
squeezed out of the corners of her eyes. 'I can't . . . It's nothing to do with
me. It's not my fault.'

'What's
not your fault?'

'The
screaming ... I can't stand it.'

'Why
would it be your fault?'

'I
don't want this ... I hate it here ... I
hate
it. I just want to go.'

'Where
do want to go, Jenny? Tell me where you'd go.'

'There
isn't anywhere . . . They'd see me . . . There's nowhere ... I can't even go to
. . .' Her body convulsed as violently as if she touched an electric wire. She
bolted back to consciousness, staring into space with wide, blank eyes.

Dr
Allen gave her a moment. 'You couldn't even go where?'

Jenny
blinked. 'Katy's,' she said, with a rising inflection, as if the name was
unfamiliar.

Dr
Allen tugged a Kleenex from the box on his desk and handed it to her. Jenny
dried her eyes feeling oddly empty, neither calm nor anxious.

'Who's
Katy?'

'I've
no idea.' She sniffed back the tears and shivered.

'A
sister, relation, friend?'

Jenny
glanced upwards. 'God, I don't know. Not a sister . . .' Dr Allen was staring
intently at her face. 'What?'

'Your
grandfather came with bad news that made your mother wail. You said it wasn't
your fault. Were you referring to whatever it was he told her?'

'I
can't say . . .' She shook her head. 'The moment I'm awake it hardly seems real
... I could even be making it up.'

'You've
got a name: Katy. I want you to find out what that means.'

'I
told you—'

'Please,
do what I say. I'm going to make it a condition of you coming back here. You're
going to do something positive for yourself. Next time I want to hear about
your research.' He turned to his notebook and wrote the instruction down.

'You're
getting impatient with me, aren't you?' Jenny said.

'Not
at all. You're just in need of a push. You're also going to stick to the
medication this time.' He reached for his prescription pad. 'I don't suppose
there's any chance of you easing off at work?'

'Not
unless you section me.'

'When
you're abrasive it suggests to me you're feeling delicate. If you must carry on
as normal, just be on your guard. Try to avoid emotional responses.' He tapped
his temple with his finger. 'You'll always make your best judgements up here.'

She
collected the drugs from the dispensary and swallowed her first dose in the
ladies' room. They were both new brands to her: one blue, one red, like jelly
beans. The world they led her to was less colourful. They took away her
excitement and any sense of danger. Her attention was held by the immediate and
the mundane: the instruments on the dashboard of her car, the squeak when she
touched the brakes. She was aware of her emotions, but they were pale
reflections of what she'd experienced during the last two days. She turned her
thoughts to her inquest and without any conscious effort they lined up in
logical order as a neat list of tasks waiting to be performed: jurors to be
telephoned, witnesses to be summoned, law to be researched. Dr Allen had given
her the mind of a bureaucrat.

The
sensation was short-lived. She wasn't yet halfway home when her phone beeped,
signalling a message. She glanced at the lit-up screen: Call me. Urgent. Alec.

A
jolt went through her. Dr Allen's parting words rang like a warning bell in her
head. She should ignore him, see him only once: in the witness box. Her finger
hovered over the call button but reception faded and vanished, saving her from
the decision. She had the ten minutes until she arrived home to sober up and
get a grip.

As
she pulled into the cart track at the side of the house she had worked out a
strategy: call Alison and tell her to take any message from McAvoy. Tell him
the inquest would resume on Wednesday morning and request that he attend to
give evidence. Keep it all businesslike and at arm's length. She could deal
with the feelings he had stirred in her afterwards. She would have something
by which to judge him then, a clearer insight into his motivations.

She
reached over to the glove box to get the torch she used to navigate the ten
yards along the path to the front door. She found it and was searching for the
switch when the car lit up. Startled, she looked up to see a tall, male figure
beneath the halogen lamp that automatically triggered on approaching the
porch. He was featureless with the bright light behind him, but the silhouette
was unmistakable: the long dark coat, the scarf, the unruly wisps of hair. He
raised a hand in a tentative wave that acknowledged her alarm. Arrested by the
drugs her heart held steady, but a fierce heat spread across her chest and neck
and prickled across her lips as fear blazed another pathway to the surface.

'It's
only me,' he called out. 'It's Alec. It's OK.'

She
thought about driving off and hoping he'd vanish, but she knew he wouldn't. He
was the kind who'd walk all night and go days without sleep; he had a
prisoner's patience and a madman's will.

She
left her keys in the ignition and stepped out into the biting air, holding the
torch defensively in front of her as she stepped around the car.

She
stopped by the passenger door, still some twenty feet between them. 'What are
you doing here?'