chapter fifty
‘Erika?’
‘Mmmm.’ Erika fidgeted and focused on the rain falling outside Not Pat’s window. Was it easing perhaps?
For the first time ever, she was longing for her session with Not Pat to end. Normally, she found therapy such a soothing process, like getting a massage, a lovely self-validating massage of her ego, but today Not Pat was just annoying her. She’d latched onto the subject of Erika’s friendship with Clementine like a little rat terrier with a bone.
Each time Not Pat said Clementine’s name Erika felt like she was being pinched, very hard.
Look, she was paying for this. She didn’t have to put up with it.
‘I don’t want to talk about Clementine anymore!’ she snapped.
‘All righty,’ said Not Pat in her folksy way, and she wrote something down on her notepad. Erika had to restrain herself from reaching over and grabbing the notebook from her lap. Did she have a legal right to demand access to Not Pat’s notes? She would find out.
In the meantime she distracted Not Pat by telling her the story of Ruby’s accident.
‘Oh my goodness me!’ Not Pat’s hand rushed to her mouth.
When Erika had finished Not Pat said, ‘You know, Erika, it’s perfectly understandable if your memory of that afternoon feels disjointed. You suffered a shock. It would have been a traumatic event.’
‘I would have thought that would have made my memory clearer,’ said Erika, and in fact, there were some parts of her memory that were frighteningly vivid. She could feel the shock of the water around her legs as she leaped into the fountain, the plumes of water drenching her like rain.
‘Why do you think you’re so concerned about your memory of that afternoon?’ asked Not Pat.
‘I have this feeling there’s something important I’ve forgotten,’ said Erika. ‘It almost feels like there’s something I’ve forgotten to do. Like when people talk about how they start to get this niggling worry they’ve left the iron on when they leave the house.’
‘I know that feeling,’ said Not Pat with a wry smile.
‘But that’s my point, I do not know that feeling!’ said Erika. ‘I’m not that sort of person. I have perfect recall! I never forget anything like that.’
She never worried that she’d left the iron on because she knew she’d never do such a thing. Once, Clementine had left her house with two hotplates on at full strength. ‘The house didn’t burn down!’ she’d said happily, as if it had been a fascinating experiment. ‘Nothing burned at all!’ Another time she’d gone out with the front door wide open. ‘An open invitation to the neighbourhood burglars,’ said Sam. ‘Come on in, boys, and help yourselves to my three-hundred-thousand-dollar cello. It’s just lying here on the bed for you. Great place for it!’
Clementine’s excuse had been that she was ‘deep in thought’.
‘About your music?’ asked Oliver, respectful of her talent, and Clementine had said, ‘No, I was trying to work out why Caramello Koalas don’t taste as good as they once did. I was thinking: Has the chocolate changed or have I changed?’ Then she and Sam had got into a discussion about Caramello Koalas, as if it mattered. There had been no consequences for Clementine’s negligence. There never had been a consequence for Clementine’s negligence until that Sunday afternoon, and Erika had never wished for that.
Just a financial penalty maybe. Sunburn. A hangover. Clementine never even got hangovers.
‘I just need to get it clear in my head,’ she said to Not Pat.
‘Well, as I said earlier, you could try going back to your next-door neighbour’s backyard, if you haven’t already done so, and some relaxation exercises might help. You could try some of those self-meditation exercises I’ve given you in the past. But honestly, Erika, you might be fighting a losing battle when you consider the medication you took that afternoon combined with the alcohol. It’s possible you’ve remembered as much as you ever will remember. It may even be that you’re subconsciously protecting yourself; that part of you doesn’t want to remember.’
‘You mean I’m repressing it?’ Erika said disdainfully. ‘There are actually no empirical studies on the validity of memory repression! In fact I can send you some links to articles about false memory syndrome if you like –’
But at that point the little timer on Not Pat’s desk gave its smug little click to indicate the session was over. Not Pat jumped up like a jack-in-the-box. She wasn’t normally so fast to get to her feet. Maybe she hadn’t enjoyed this session much either.
Erika hurried out to her car parked in the quiet street outside Not Pat’s home office and sat for a few minutes with the ignition on, listening to the thunderous rain on her roof and watching her windscreen wipers work feverishly.
‘Calm down,’ she said to the windscreen wipers. Their manic rhythm reminded her of her mother when she got herself into a state over something inconsequential. She didn’t want to go back to her mother’s house. She’d taken the whole day off work to help her mother, but she didn’t think she had the fortitude to manage going there twice in one day. That was too much. Like asking someone to get back into a freezing cold swimming pool and swim one hundred laps after they’d already done one hundred laps that morning, and now they’d had a shower and were all warm and dry again.
She closed her eyes and tried some of the breathing exercises that Not Pat had taught her in a previous session. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. She let the memories spin through her head: The fairy lights in the trees. The smell of cooked, marinated meat. The sour taste of too much wine.
She saw that face again. That ghastly, featureless face she’d seen in her office yesterday. Like a ghoul.
She thought suddenly: Harry. It’s Harry’s face. Grumpy old Harry. Was there something important she needed to do for Harry? No. Because of Harry. Something to do with Harry. Don’t chase the memory, or it will disappear. She’d learned this. Relax, breathe. Harry’s neatly combed white hair. No, that wasn’t a memory. That was an image Oliver had put in her mind: Harry’s hair, still neatly combed in death.
Harry at the letterbox, muttering to himself as he studied an envelope. Barney streaking across the yard. Vid coming out of his front door.
An obligation. A request. A responsibility. Something that Harry needed from her. Shards of broken blue crockery on terracotta tiles.
Look up. Look up.
She opened her eyes in the fogged-up car and looked up. Nothing to see except rain.
For heaven’s sake, she was only thinking about Harry because he’d died. It was a casebook example of false memory syndrome. If Erika had a weaker personality, a more malleable mind, then an over-eager therapist could help her fabricate an entire memory about the barbeque and Harry. Next thing she’d be convinced that Harry had been there at the barbeque molesting Ruby or some such nonsense.
She turned the keys in the ignition, indicated and looked over her shoulder at the traffic. She would try Not Pat’s idea of ‘returning to the scene of the crime’. When she got home she would ask Vid and Tiffany if she could stand alone in their backyard in the rain for a while. That wouldn’t sound odd at all. Ha ha. No, the best thing would be if she went over when she knew they were out.
It probably wouldn’t help, but it couldn’t hurt.