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“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. “However the first step to recovery is somebody genuinely knowing that they need help. Not asking for it because someone else has told them to.”
“Wow, you’re not making this easy for me, are you? I do need help, okay? Satisfied?”
“What sort of help?” She nudges in that gentle little voice.
“If you must know, I’ve been feeling a lot of anger recently. Somebody close to me was murdered, and maybe I could have stopped it if I tried hard enough, but I didn’t. And now there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“That must have been very difficult for you to admit. That was a good start. I’m sorry you went through all that.”
“Does that mean you’ll help me?”
“I sense there’s still something you’re holding back,” she says. “Some deeper issue that pre-existed before the death of your loved one, which made the grief even more difficult to manage. You’d need to be open with me for this process to work. I sense that you are not able to easily trust people.”
Just tell her already, the little voice snaps. We need her to trust us.
I grit my teeth. T
he last thing I want is to bare my soul to this woman. I take a deep breath and do it. “I lost my adoptive mother in a car crash when I was fifteen. I don’t remember her at all. I don’t remember what happened in all my life before that, because the crash left me with amnesia. It’s always left me feeling alone and incomplete. Is that what you want to hear?”
There is a momentary glint in her eyes that almost seems like a victory. It makes me want to slap her. But it disappears before I can be sure it was there.
When she speaks her voice is gentle. “I see. It’s not difficult to imagine in those circumstances why the death of a loved one must have impacted you particularly hard.” She frowns. “I usually only work with otherkind.”
“You could have said that at the start,” I say, feeling resentful. If she is trying to find out about my origins, that is a step too far. I have no intention of discussing my confusion about what I am with her or anyone. Ever. “I’m human, as far as I know.”
“You’re not a succubus?” she says with a frown.
“What makes you say that?”
“Experience,” she says, but something in her eyes tells me that this was not it at all. “I sense that you’re not accustomed to asking for help. It means a lot to me that you did, Diana. So I will book you in for a couple of sessions and we can see how it goes from there.”
“Oh thank God,” I say in a rush. I had been severely worried that she was going to refuse me. “Storm said if I got some professional help it was the first step towards getting my job back. I means a lot to me. Thank you.”
I reach out and I hug her. She stiffens in my arms, as if shocked. And then her one arm pats me gently on the back, reassuring me that everything is going to be okay. When I step back from her, I quickly wipe away tears from my eyes.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “I never cry. I thought it was going to be really hard to trust you because—”
I cut myself off abruptly, averting my gaze and looking down at the ground.
“Because what?” She sounds curious.
I shake my head. “It’s stupid.”
“Tell me.”
“I used to see this psychiatrist back when I lived in America, and he was helping me with trying to recover my memories and other things. His name was Dr Carrington.” My eyes flick up to check her reaction.
She has gone still. She waits for me to continue, not giving anything away.
“Dr Carrington was the one who tried to abduct me and nearly got me killed,” I say.
“How terrible.”
“It’s just your perfume,” I say. “That apple scent. But it’s smoky too, because it’s not just perfume is it? It’s an e-cigarette. Apple flavored. That’s where you were going right now, isn't it? For a smoke?”
Her eyebrows rise. “Not exactly a pleasant habit to admit to,” she confesses. “But what of it?”
“I’ve smelled it before once. That exact same scent. It was the last time I saw Dr Carrington. He’d come to my house for a visit, and the car that he’d used was parked in our driveway. There was someone still inside it. Someone smoking that same apple-scented cigarette. So I guess when I met you I must’ve subconsciously remembered that and my old life, and felt uneasy.”
