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LB: He was going to talk to her about it first. He didn’t want an ambulance just turning up like the first time, but they just weren’t communicating. He’d tried to tell her not to do the file, but they’d lost their way to each other and it was so sad to see. They wouldn’t come out for a drink or a meal or anything. And with Patrick gone, that’s my ex, it wasn’t the same without us being two couples. I think they were both trapped. They couldn’t talk. And Katie had dropped out and I suppose she’d disappeared into YouTube, all that make-up, literally plastering on a brave face for the world. She was looking for followers, looking for a party, looking for anything… well, like Rachel was, wasn’t she? Looking for love in the wrong places, I suppose, or at least someone to talk to. We all need it, don’t we? To have someone who cares and who’ll listen? And I suppose if you can’t find it at home… It was heartbreaking to see them unable to talk to each other like they used to, but they just couldn’t get on with each other anymore. Everything Rachel said was wrong, everything Katie did was wrong. And Mark was just standing on the sidelines bleeding.
HS: Ms Baxter—
LB: Sorry, can I just say something? I… I mean… none of us knew what Rach was getting herself into. I just want to say that. How could we have known? It was bad enough to think of her wandering the streets and obsessing over her press cuttings, but we didn’t know she was talking to strangers let alone attacking them. She must have been so bloody lonely, poor thing. So miserable. Not that it makes it right. I’m not making excuses. I just wish she’d talked to me. It doesn’t excuse what she’s done, but she must’ve been in such a bad place. I just wish I’d tried harder to reach her, you know? She deserved better.
46
Rachel
Amanda has the clip file in front of her. She lifts it from the coffee table as if it’s an ancient bible, precious, fragile, liable to disintegrate.
‘I want us to revisit your folder. Is that all right?’
This is a different day. I’m wearing new jogging bottoms and a clean white T-shirt. I can remember having a shower this morning. There was a woman standing outside the cubicle, big bunch of keys on her belt. They gave me some breakfast: cereal and some rehydrated prunes, toast, tea. They brought me along the corridor and Blue Eyes was here. Her name is Amanda. Amanda Frost, which is a good name for someone with bleached hair and blue eyes. Ice Queen. Except she’s not icy, she’s kind. I don’t know why she’s so kind to me.
I don’t want to talk about the file.
‘I’m not going to go through every single clipping,’ she says, obviously not picking up on my reluctance. ‘But now that you’ve told me your story, I think it might be useful to look at some of the things you’ve mentioned. You see, the mind can be a cloudy place and sometimes we have to try and bring it back from abstract feelings of anxiety or fear or guilt and make sense of those feelings. My job is to listen to the way people talk about themselves and their experience, what matters to them, and try and somehow get underneath that. And a very good way to do this is to get them to tell me their story, because the interesting thing about stories is that they help us to process what has happened to us. Most often if that something is bad.
‘For instance, if the bus is late, you don’t arrive for coffee with a friend and say,The bus service in this borough is unreliable, do you?’ A smile itches at the edges of her mouth but it doesn’t take. ‘What you do is set the scene: you were at the bus stop, perhaps you add the weather conditions – it was raining or terribly cold; perhaps you’d run there so as not to miss the bus. The bus doesn’t come, the minutes tick by, the time of your appointment approaches. You run through your mounting frustrations moment by moment, building to a kind of climax – at last the bus arrives! You complain to the driver or whatever. You tell that story and you shake your head and say something along the lines ofI’m here now, thank goodness,and the tension falls away on a kind of slope at the end, do you see?’ She steeples her hands. ‘All of this to say that the stories we tell each other and ourselves are how we process life. Mishaps, disasters. And in your case, tragedy.’
I nod. There’s a feeling in my gut that I can’t name. Anticipation, possibly, something like that. Dread, maybe.
‘I have your statement here.’ She looks down at her notes. ‘But what I’ve been listening for in these sessions, Rachel, is what you included and what you left out of your story. The event that started it, the feeling of not being seen by one’s family or by the world, is common for many women, particularly women your age. If, given your childhood, your recent history and also your medical history, you experienced this as trauma, then that’s valid. The trauma belongs to you and is meaningful to you. You matter, Rachel. What you feel matters.’
She holds my gaze. Embarrassed, it’s me that breaks it.
Amanda lifts a sheet of paper and glances down at it. ‘I’d like to start with your first experiences of your ability to “read” other people. The man in the park and the GP near the canal. I agree with your friend Lisa that an ability to intuit others quickly comes with age. We have more experience, quite simply. We can make educated judgements based on that experience. What’s more interesting is what you surmised.’ She glances again at her notes, back to me. ‘You said the man in the park was lonely. That he was yearning for something lost. Grieving, perhaps, you said. Youfeltit. The GP, you said, was divorced, afraid of losing his girlfriend and his children. What do those emotional details make you feel now, Rachel?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I suppose I’m asking you if they resonate at all. Loneliness, grief, loss of children, marital breakdown, romantic insecurity…’
The tissue box has been replaced with a new one. She pulls out a handful of tissues and passes them to me. I press them to my eyes and nose. My nose is sore, my face is sore. She is leaning down to a soft leather bag on the floor by her chair. She rummages in it, pulls out a small blue and white tin.
‘Here,’ she says, giving it to me. ‘I never go anywhere without this.’
It’s Vaseline. I open the tin and rub some over my lips, under my nose. It smells vaguely of petrol.
‘I must look a sight,’ I say.
‘A little shiny, but it will soothe the skin.’ Her smile reaches further than I’ve seen it in all the time we’ve been here. ‘You can keep that; I have another. I’ll bring you some Sudocrem tomorrow. I’ve got a miniature pot at home.’
‘Isn’t that for nappy rash?’
‘Yes. But when my girls were small, someone told me it’s great for zits and chapped skin, and it is.’
I laugh – I can’t help it. I would never have expected her to say zits, for a start, and for the first time I wonder what she’s like when she relaxes. I suspect she likes a laugh as much as Lisa and I do. But she’s at work now, of course. And I’m in custody for murder.
‘I had you down for more expensive potions,’ I say.
‘Oh, I have those too,’ she says. ‘But sometimes the most basic products are better.’
‘It’s to do with me, isn’t it?’
‘The potions?’
‘No. What I was picking up from that chap and the GP. It’smyloneliness. My grief. My marriage.’
