Four p.m. Every Monday. For one hour. For the next eight weeks.
In roughly the same timeframe I could achieve something tangible, left to my own devices.
I could learn to code like every good little Millennial, or master the perfect soufflé.
But what I can’t do is change the past. I can’t redraft the god-awful ending or whitewash the dirt. These cosy, weekly, early-evening chats, well-intentioned as they are, can never obliterate the memory of tiny red footprints on cream kitchen tiles, nor wash crusty dried blood out of baby-fine hair. Nothing we discuss in this room can ever change what happened, and so it makes it all rather pointless in my book. Just a weekly invitation to my own private pity-party.
‘Why are you here, Catrina?’
Dr Dolores Allen, playing beautifully to type, glances furtively at the clock – the signature move of her profession. I follow her gaze and see I’ve got eight minutes left.
I keep it brief.
‘Because DCI Steele needs to tick a box so she’s outsourced the problem to you.’ The window’s open a crack and in the distance I can hear a group of toddlers chirping ‘Little Donkey’, out of tune and out of rhythm. The sound soothes me and then savages me with each jarring note. ‘Basically, she thinks I need my head sorted and, lucky old you, she thinks you’re the woman to do it.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘Little Donkey. Carry Mary, safely on her way . . .’
‘I think she might be right.’ I nod towards a wall peppered with achievements. ‘I mean, Masters from Queens, BPS, BACP. Very impressive. A BA in Textile Design, that’s me. Or a BA in Colouring In, as Steele calls it.’
She smirks. Or at least I think it’s a smirk. Dr Dolores Allen has one of those Mona Lisa mouths, the kind that makes you think that you’re not quite in on the joke. It’s an unfortunate mouth for a psychologist to have when you think about it. Wry smiles rarely win deep trust.
‘Catrina, I’m interested that you referred to yourself as a “problem” just now. Is that how you see yourself?’
I shift awkwardly in my chair and the scrunching of the leather fills the silence while I try to work out how to answer without digging myself in deeper. ‘Everyone defines themselves by their problems, don’t they?’
‘They do?’
‘Of course. Everyone beats themselves up: “I’m fat,” “I’m single,” “I’m broke.” Take my sister, Jacqui, for example . . .’
‘Your sister didn’t walk into a prostitute’s bedsit to find a blood-soaked child brushing the hair of her horrifically mutilated mother.’
Emotional bushwhack.
Dr Allen’s face is blank, her tone entirely neutral, but her words are like spears prodding me back into that room with all the blood and the piss and the cheap, slashed-up furniture. I stare her down while desperately scrabbling about in my brain for something vacuous to focus on. Anything just to block it out. I settle on a puerile joke DC Craig Cooke sent me this morning. Something about his penis and a Rubik’s Cube but I can’t remember the punchline.
She leans forward and I instinctively lean back, an animal scolded. ‘I’m sorry to provoke you, but you have to think about what happened. You have to confront it.’
‘Don’t give up now, Little Donkey. Bethlehem’s in sight . . .’
I pull my coat tight around me, a textbook defensive stance. ‘The only thing I need to confront is how to stop Steele shipping me out on secondment. Have you heard the latest? The Financial Intelligence Unit! I may be many things, Dr Allen, but “financially intelligent” isn’t one of them.’
‘You should keep an open mind. Maybe Murder isn’t right for you?’ It’s a loaded statement dressed up as a question. Fair play to her. ‘Why do you view a move as a negative thing? My understanding from DCI Steele is that it’s quite the opposite. A secondment could be . . .’
‘Beneficial? Good for my development? I see you got the same memo.’
‘Cynicism is a common state of mind for people who’ve experienced a traumatic event.’
I laugh quietly into the collar of my coat. ‘Cynicism is a common state of mind for a police officer, Dr Allen. In fact, I’m fairly sure it’s part of the entry criteria. That, and the ability to lift thirty-five kilos.’
She reaches for her coffee, eyes locked on mine. ‘Do you believe I can help you?’
I stare at my palms, pretend to mull this over. A clairvoyant once told me that the curve of my heart line means I only ever open up in one-to-one situations. I’m not sure Dr Allen would agree.
Eventually I look up. ‘Honestly? No. But that isn’t a reflection on you. I’ve had counselling before, for other stuff. That didn’t help either.’
She keeps her voice casual. ‘Anything that feels relevant to discuss here?’
‘Not really. Some cognitive behavioural stuff for a minor eating issue. Family mediation after I keyed my dad’s Audi TT and he threatened to break my arm.’
She doesn’t react. ‘Do you think you’re beyond help, Catrina?’
‘It’s been said.’
‘Oh yes? By who?’
I resist the urge to start counting people off on my fingers, aware that it might look a tad neurotic. I don’t want to add ‘paranoid personality disorder’ to my school report, after all. Although it’d almost be worth it for the look on Steele’s face.
‘So this is what I’m paying ninety pounds an hour for? To be told something I already fucking know. Cat Kinsella came out of the womb thinking the midwife was looking at her funny – anyone will tell you that . . .’
‘My dad,’ I say. ‘Repeatedly. And DCI Steele, obviously.’
She sidesteps the Dad thing again – different therapy, different hourly rate. ‘Surely the fact you’re here shows that DCI Steele believes you’re worth helping?’
‘Oh come on. You don’t get all those letters after your name for being gullible. Steele’s covering her arse, plain and simple. She’s worried I’m going to start wailing “PTSD” if someone has so much as a nosebleed, so she’s dumped the problem on you.’ I know I sound snide and disrespectful and a whole host of other things that I try hard not to be, but I’m a work-in-progress, what can I say. ‘Sorry, no offence . . .’
‘None taken, Catrina.’ She waves away my apology with a bony, jewelled hand and I notice a small gleaming Peridot, similar to the one I used to steal out of Mum’s jewellery box so I could pretend I was married to Gareth Gates.
‘By the way, no one calls me Catrina. I prefer Cat, if that’s OK.’
‘Of course. Although you didn’t need to wait three sessions to tell me.’ She rests her hands in the nook of her lap and I sense she’s about to go all counsellor on me. ‘Do you often find it difficult to say what you want?’
Et voila.
‘Nope.’ I say, draining the dregs of my coffee. ‘Although while we’re at it, I much prefer tea.’
She smiles, jots a few words down. I suspect it’s something along the lines of ‘uses humour to deflect discomfort’ rather than ‘remember to pick up some PG Tips.’
Outside the toddlers have stopped singing.
‘Look, honestly, I’ll be fine,’ I say, a bit too full of beans to convince anyone. ‘It’s the little girl I feel sorry for.’ I slow my breathing, steady my voice. ‘Tell me, will she remember everything that happened or could she forget, given time?’
I call her ‘the little girl’ so Dr Allen doesn’t start bleating about ‘over-empathy’ but her name is Alana-Jane and her favourite song is ‘Five Little Ducks’. I know this because she told me she sang it to her mummy to try to wake her up, and I know that she ate dog biscuits for two days because it was all she could reach, even when she stood on the pink bucket. I also know she wore a ‘Daddy’s Little Girl’ vest under her blood-spattered hoody and I absolutely know that her daddy killed her mummy, even if the CPS ruled that we’d face an impossible task proving it.
‘My only professional interest is in what you remember, Cat. What you might forget, given time.’ She closes her pad, signalling the end of our tête à tête. ‘You mentioned in our first meeting that you weren’t sleeping very well? Any improvements?’
‘Nah. But then I’ve never been one of life’s great sleepers.’
She shifts position, briefly energised by this admission. ‘Any ideas why?’
I shrug. ‘I lived above a pub until I was eight – it doesn’t exactly cement regular sleeping patterns. Or maybe I eat too late? And then there’s the cheap, crappy pillows . . .’
Dr Allen stands up and walks slowly towards the door. She doesn’t exactly look annoyed by my flippant response – I’m not sure ‘annoyed’ is licensed for use on the ‘Counsellor’s List of Appropriate Faces’ – but there’s definitely a flash of something human. A silent scream of ‘why do I do this fucking job?’ that we’re all probably entitled to by the twelfth month of a hard year.
‘So, er, the little girl?’ Determined to get an answer, I stall for time, making a huge, almost slapstick performance of buttoning up my coat. ‘Do you think she’ll definitely be affected by it, long-term?’
‘At three years old, it’s very difficult to predict,’ she says eventually. ‘She’s unlikely to remember the details. She might even forget or block out the “event”. But it’s likely she’ll remember the feelings. And she’ll carry those feelings through life, into her relationships, her work and so on. Strong, innate feelings of fear, anxiety and insecurity, that she may never fully understand.’
Spikes of deep discomfort when you least expect them.
The constant low-level dread that taints everything you do.
‘And of course at three years old, she’s not really old enough to understand the finality of her mother’s death. The irreversible nature of it. That concept will add a whole new complexity in a few years’ time.’
I picture my nephew, Finn – six years old and struggling with the concepts of broccoli, backstroke and three-digit sums.
‘I’ve bought her a Christmas present,’ I say quickly, just to stop the flow of her gloomy predictions. ‘One of those Frozen dolls. It’s Anna, I think. They’d sold out of Elsa.’
Dr Allen says nothing. In our fairly limited time together, I’ve come to realise that ‘nothing’ generally means ‘bad’ and that I’ll be held to account for the ‘over-empathetic’ Christmas present at a later date. Probably when I least expect it. But then maybe I’ve got her all wrong? Maybe she just has to get on. Maybe she has another soul to save, or Christmas shopping to do. Maybe she actually doesn’t care once the sixty minutes are up. I have no idea what drives her to do her job. She probably feels the same about me.
‘Merry Christmas, Cat.’ She flicks the catch on the door and a whoosh of relief shoots through me. ‘Look after yourself. You’ll be with your family, yes?’
‘Of course,’ I lie. ‘Twelve hours of rich food and poor conversation, same as everyone. Merry Christmas to you too, Dr Allen.’
The assumption that ‘family’ equals ‘nurture’ seems a little utopian coming from someone who deals in the science of dysfunction, especially after my ‘family mediation’ remark, but then a frosty Christmas week in a twinkly, bustling London can do that to a person and I’d feel mean-spirited not playing along, even though I’m not sure I’ve got the stomach for Christmas with my family.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve got an invite.