Don’t Stand So Close Read online

  Blue shook her head, not looking at Stella, staring at the fire. The shivering had lessened, but now and again a small quiver passed through her shoulders.

  ‘We do need to find a way to get you home,’ Stella said. Her words sounded empty, repetitive, lame.

  ‘I didn’t really use to live here,’ the girl said. ‘I made that up.’ She turned to look at Stella. The colour of her eyes seemed to shift, so that the blue was deeper and more intense, the colour of cold, hard tanzanite.

  Stella tilted her head from side to side, trying to release the muscles that had seized up in her neck and across her shoulders. ‘Then why have you come here?’ she asked.

  If she panicked, if she breathed too fast, if she allowed her heartbeat to thunder out of control, she was lost. She should have gone upstairs when she heard the doorbell, shut the door of her bedroom, swallowed a sleeping pill, ignored the goddamn noise. There was a tightness in her chest, it was impossible to take in enough air.

  ‘I came because I need to see Dr Fisher,’ the girl said.

  ‘My husband?’

  ‘Yes.’ Blue’s mouth set in a stubborn line and she began to scratch at the skin on her forearms.

  Session Four

  At the beginning of the session, he sat all quiet and serious, while he waited for her to say something first. His eyes were hidden away behind the black frames of his reading glasses and she couldn’t see what he was feeling. He always wore suits and ties. As far as she could tell he had two: a navy one and a tan one. His shoes were black and shiny and expensive-looking, with square toes. Under his shirt there was a slight curve to his belly. She didn’t mind at all. She also liked that he wasn’t too tall and that he had a beard. She didn’t know why, but these things pleased her.

  He was still watching her.

  ‘I hate these chairs,’ she said.

  He didn’t say anything, yet.

  ‘Why do you put your chair so far away from mine?’ Her voice sounded a little whiny. ‘I don’t really hate the chairs. I could curl up in this chair and stay here all day and not go back home. I’d just stay here with you.’

  She leaned forward, pulling a strand of her hair into her mouth. Men were always looking at her. He looked at her too, in that same way, she was sure of it, but he pretended he didn’t. He shifted in his chair, changing over his crossed legs to the other direction. He leaned back and rested his chin on his hand. She looked up at the clock. Five minutes gone. That meant forty-five minutes left. She squeezed her bottom lip with the fingers of her right hand. He was still watching. She wondered if he stared at all his patients so hard. She liked his lips – they were sort of thin, but in a sexy kind of way. She had been in therapy of one kind or another for as long as she could remember. So far, he was her favourite.

  She was wearing her school shirt and the top two buttons were undone. She played with the next button, slipping it open. She leaned slightly forward, watching for his reaction. He cleared his throat.

  ‘I think about you a lot,’ she said.

  ‘I’m your doctor,’ he said. ‘Our relationship has boundaries that are very important. Do you understand what I mean?’

  ‘I think about you kissing me. I think about it a lot. I don’t know why, that’s just what I think about.’

  His hands were tightly clasped in his lap, like he was afraid of what might happen if he let go. ‘This is not a seduction,’ he said. ‘It’s a therapy session. You shouldn’t get the wrong idea.’

  But she already had lots of her own ideas.

  ‘It could be a seduction,’ she said.

  ‘There are other kinds of relationships you can have,’ he said. ‘I mean, other than sexual.’

  She slipped her hand inside her shirt and stroked the velvety skin between her breasts. She slid a finger under the cup of her bra to find her nipple.

  ‘You need to stop the acting out, or we will have to end the session,’ he said.

  She removed her fingers from her shirt. She sat on both hands. ‘Fine. What do you want me to talk about?’

  ‘Only you can know for sure.’

  ‘Give me a break.’

  ‘You’re angry now? Shall we take a look at that?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not angry with you.’

  She picked at a loose thread on the arm of her chair. She liked having his full attention, but fifty minutes was much too short, too little time. She sighed. He massaged his forehead with his left hand. Was he left-or right-handed? She watched his hand, still stroking his forehead, and pictured his fingers stroking her. She shifted, uncrossed her legs and pressed hard against the base of the chair. She wanted him to fall in love with her, to take her home with him, to look after her, always. She was pretty. Much prettier than most women. Why should he not want her? Lots of men his age wanted to be with her that way, she had proof. And now she wanted him. She slid from the chair on to the floor, giving him a small smile as she moved. She sat on the floor at the bottom of the chair, pulling her knees up to her chest. She didn’t say anything.

  ‘I can’t read your mind,’ he said. ‘You have to tell me what you want my help with.’

  She lifted her arms up above her head and stretched.

  ‘How are you feeling right now?’ he asked.

  ‘Wet. How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m going to have to end the session for today if this goes on.’

  He was nervous. She could see it in his eyes and she could hear it in his voice, all tight and squeezed up. She held on to her knees and rocked, looking up at him. The buttons of his shirt were done up all the way to his throat. He wore a pink tie. He also wore a wedding ring. She wondered what it was like, when they had sex. She hated his wife. It wasn’t fair, she was probably some woman who had always had everything: parents who loved each other, and a nice house to grow up in with cats and bloody dogs. A really big, clean house with no shouting and screaming and definitely no drinking. With a bedroom that her parents had decorated for her with pink girly stuff, a bed with a pink duvet and matching pillowcase, a pleated bed frill, a pink wallpaper strip with fairies. She could see it all. Dolls and soft toys. And his wife-to-be would grow up all safe and liking herself and she would go to university and meet a man like him.

  It wasn’t fair.

  But then she was beautiful and she was young. And some men liked young girls. Being pretty could get you a lot. She wanted him. And not just for fifty minutes once a week.

  ‘You asked me how I felt,’ she said. ‘And now you’re going to punish me for telling you the truth.’ She was pissed off.

  He softened, she could see. ‘Do you think that sex is going to help you? To get the relationships you want?’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

  ‘Who taught you that the only thing important about you, the only thing of value, is your sexuality?’

  ‘Nobody taught me anything.’

  ‘And you have feelings about that?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about my feelings.’

  ‘So you put a wall between us. A wall of sexuality. And we never get to know the real you, under that barrier.’

  ‘It’s not a wall. I want to be close to you. I don’t want any wall.’

  She crawled towards him on her hands and knees, until she was at his feet. He didn’t move, legs crossed and hands folded in his lap.

  ‘You know our agreement,’ he said. ‘No acting out. No touching.’

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I just want to rest my head against your knee. No one’s ever touched me, or hugged me, never.’ OK, that was all lies.

  She leaned forward, touching her forehead to his leg. The linen of his trousers felt a little rough against her skin. She could feel the hard edge of his knee as she pressed against him. She closed her eyes.

  Grove Road Clinic, April 2009

  Stella pulled out the file marked Simpson and skimmed her notes one more time. The family had first come to the attention of social services, and then the Courts, more than a
decade earlier; now the case had been handed to her as a twisted mess of accusations and counter-accusations between two warring parents. There were several professionals involved already, and a general air of pessimism prevailed about ever making progress in a case where hatred between the parents obscured every fact and where the child remained a pawn between two factions. Court proceedings had already been lengthy and acrimonious and the state was paying a high price for their domestic warfare.

  Nobody knew the truth. Not social services, not the solicitors, not the children’s guardian and certainly not the judge – which was why he had asked for a psychological and psychiatric evaluation of both parents.

  Stella had summarized two lever-arch files of background documents in preparation for her first appointment with Lawrence Simpson. His daughter had been taken into foster care three months earlier, after she had called emergency services to tell them she had found her mother unconscious in the bathroom after a drinking binge.

  According to the most recent statement he had filed, Simpson claimed his ex-wife was an unfit mother and he was seeking sole custody. The mother had a history of alcohol problems and had admitted a relapse, but she was keen to seek treatment.

  This most recent incident was not the first time the child had been placed in care: there were three previous incidents, all when she was between the ages of six months and three years old. Each time was related to the mother’s substance abuse. Simpson had sought custody before, when his daughter was still a toddler, but in spite of the mother’s difficulties, the relationship between mother and child was always described as warm and loving, and Simpson had not succeeded. For the last few years, things seemed to have settled down, and the case had been discharged from social services until the mother’s most recent relapse had set the process in motion once more.

  Simpson said his ex-wife had a drinking problem long before she met him. But, according to the ex-wife, she had turned to drink when faced with his ongoing abuse, physical and emotional. The ex-wife’s credibility was not particularly good. She had been unemployed for several years, after being fired for stealing codeine-based painkillers from the pharmacy where she had been all too briefly employed. She had several admissions to National Health Service rehabilitation facilities.

  Details about the relationship between Simpson and his ex-wife over the years were patchy. It seemed that they had separated and re-united several times, but had been living apart for at least six years. Mother and child had lived on benefits in a council flat in a dodgy area where schools were poor. Simpson, on the other hand, had gone from strength to strength after their marriage broke down. He was a general practitioner with a thriving practice in an affluent area, he had a new, steady girlfriend and a three-bed semi.

  Stella’s boss, Max Fisher, would see the mother and would give an opinion as to whether she suffered from any psychiatric illness, as well as a prognosis regarding her substance dependence. He had asked Stella to formulate a personality profile for the father, a request that pleased her because she thought it reflected a certain level of confidence in her ability. Max had been a consultant for over ten years, while Stella had been qualified for just over two years; it was both a learning curve and a thrill to work alongside him in such a complex case.

  Max thought, as a team, they might be the first to succeed.

  Stella laid out three blank questionnaires on her desk and placed a pencil and eraser next to the forms. She took a slow breath. She was always both nervous and pleased to meet a new client. Her job involved pronouncing on whether or not people were fit to look after their own children and always, for a moment or two, she felt a fraud: young and inept, hiding behind her title and the posh consulting rooms.

  The Grove Road Clinic was housed in three grand redbrick Edwardian buildings. Anne, the practice manager, had created a slick and professional suite of offices, all equipped with antique desks and sleek laptops. The cream walls were adorned with a mix of oil paintings, mainly of flowers and boats. Shutters and double-glazing throughout the building created a tranquil atmosphere, far removed from the busy road outside. It was a great place to work.

  A winding, carpeted staircase took Stella from her office on the first floor to the waiting room downstairs, where the reception area was gently jasmine-scented.

  ‘Your next client is waiting,’ Anne said. She tended to hover around the reception desk, keeping an eye on the comings and goings of both patients and staff. She was a study in controlled perfection, with perpetually sleek hair and glossy nails. Her blouse was, as usual, low cut and invited attention to her breasts, which in Stella’s opinion were suspiciously firm and upright. Anne arranged her pens, telephone and iPad in lines far too precise and she made Stella apprehensive for no good reason.

  She pointed towards the waiting room with the air-conditioning remote control. ‘Dr Simpson has been here for twenty minutes,’ she said.

  Anne managed to imply that Stella was late for her appointment, when in fact the client was early and Stella was precisely on time.

  He was waiting for her on the red-leather chesterfield, his arms and legs tightly crossed and his slender body tensed from head to toe. Next to him was a stack of magazines: the latest issues of Hello, Vogue and Men’s Health artfully arranged in a spiral by Anne. The light reading matter was untouched.

  ‘Dr Simpson?’ Stella asked.

  He nodded, unsmiling and ill at ease. Most of her medico-legal clients responded this way on meeting her for the first time, and she did not take it personally. They were required to see her, forced, essentially, by the judges of the family courts. There was tremendous pressure on these parents to present in the best possible light and so they feared her.

  Simpson’s angular face was clean-shaven. His fair hair was sharply cut and combed to the side. He wore a navy suit with a pristine white shirt and a yellow tie. His black brogues shone. She would note this for her report; he was ‘well-groomed’ to say the least.

  ‘I’m Dr Davies,’ she said. At the mention of her title, she thought she saw him flinch.

  He stood and extended his hand, slowly. His eyes flickered up and then down, over her black suit jacket, her skirt and her heels. His handshake was firm and warm. Stella smiled. ‘We’re on the first floor,’ she said.

  As he followed her up the stairs, she couldn’t help but wonder where his eyes rested. She held open the door to her office and he took his time stepping over the threshold.

  She had arranged two chairs at right angles to each other, along the two sides of the desk. ‘Take a seat,’ she said.

  The moment he sat down, he resumed his position from the waiting room, with his arms and legs tightly crossed.

  ‘Before we start, I need you to sign a consent form,’ Stella said. ‘Please read it carefully. This gives me permission to release the contents of my report to the court.’

  She handed him the standard form on a clipboard. He frowned at the page and then signed. His expression was rather acid as he handed it back to her.

  ‘Is it all right with you if I record our interview using my Dictaphone? That way I don’t need to take notes.’ She smiled once again, pretending she did not notice his displeasure.

  ‘No, it’s not all right,’ he said.

  Stella had never had a client refuse this request. Her clients were told by their solicitors that everything discussed in the interview would be taken down for the report anyway, so there seemed no reason to refuse other than the desire to make her life more difficult.

  ‘It saves me time taking notes as I talk to you,’ she said, hopefully.

  ‘No recording,’ he said. He glanced around the room as though checking for covert surveillance equipment. He seemed restless, uneasy. It was clear that he found it difficult not to be in charge. He was used to being the person behind the large desk. Stella could relate; she too liked to be in control.

  ‘No problem. I’ll type as we talk. I type much quicker than I write.’ She kept her tone light, but there w
as no glimmer of a smile to acknowledge her banter.

  She needed to win him over somehow, to find a way to engage him. The shape of his personality – or the personalities of any of her clients – could not be truly known or understood without some level of cooperation. Simpson could, if he wished, say nothing and give nothing away. And then Stella would have to base her opinion on a negative space, on his desire to remain unknown. This would be of little help to either judge or child. Her biggest challenge was to find a way in, a way to earn his trust and to convince him that it was in his best interests to talk to her. She had to convince him that this was his opportunity to tell his side of the story.

  She decided to begin with the pen and pencil questionnaires. That way he would not have to answer probing questions straight away.

  She pushed a sheet of paper towards his side of the desk. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s start with this one – the instructions are on the top.’ She pointed. ‘It’s straightforward, just true or false answers. But it takes quite a while to complete, about an hour. There are just over five hundred questions.’

  She could not help but feel a spark of satisfaction at the look of dismay on his face. It was her turn to score in their subtle battle of wills. Simpson would cooperate, he would complete the questionnaire – he had to if he wanted a chance to gain custody of his daughter, and they both knew it. He lifted the pencil, albeit grudgingly.

  He took a very long time over each question.

  ‘I can’t say true or false to this statement – it doesn’t apply to me,’ he said.

  ‘Just pick the one that is closest to the truth for you.’

  He delayed, frustrated, Stella guessed, at having to choose between two options that did not reflect his state of mind precisely. But after ten minutes, he seemed to be marking the answers more readily, and she could see he was progressing more quickly down the endless rows of statements.

  At one point he laughed, a bitter sound. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. Nevertheless, he made his choice, colouring in a small, dark circle with the tip of his pencil.