Natasha Green is my grief counsellor. Our family doctor, Dr Eric, wanted me to see a psychiatrist instead but there isn’t one in town – the closest is at Bathurst, a regional city an hour’s drive away. They booked me in to see him, but then when Mum and Dad tried to bundle me in the car to drive me over there I completely lost my mind.
I still can’t bear the thought of sitting in a car. Every time I do, I see David behind the wheel instead of whoever is actually driving, and I spin into a panic. I keep telling myself it’s going to pass… maybe it already has passed, and I just don’t know it yet because I can’t bring myself to get in a car to see.
I’m waiting out the front of the house with Zoe when Mum arrives to walk with me to my appointment with Natasha. She’ll sit in the waiting room for the hour I’m in the session, then she’ll walk me home, pick up her car and go to a shift at the little hospital where she’s a part-time registered nurse on the geriatric ward.
Mum and Dad were supposed to retire next month. Dad owns a small accountancy practice. He was going to install a manager at the business, buy a caravan, and travel all the way around Australia with Mum. He told me a few weeks ago that they’ve decided to wait a year, and I know that’s entirely my fault.
‘So you’re staying in town, but will you still retire?’ I asked him.
‘Ah, no point sitting around doing nothing. We’ll just work another year, it’s fine.’
But it isn’t fine, and I feel guilty whenever I think about how hard they’ve worked to get to this point and how much they deserve to make the most of their retirement years. It hardly seems fair that I barely spoke to them for seven years, and then I burst back into their lives and dropped a bomb on them. Even Mum chaperoning me to this appointment each week is a huge inconvenience. She only works part-time, but Natasha only works part-time too, and we couldn’t line up my appointments for a day when they were both off.
So Mum goes to work an hour late every single Thursday and it’s all because of me. She says her boss is fine with it. It must still be a huge inconvenience.
‘How are you feeling, Olivia?’ Natasha always asks me at the start of our session. She is younger than me, which I find challenging. I’m thirty-five this year, and judging by her flawless skin I’m pretty sure Natasha is only in her late twenties – maybe early thirties at a real push. I can’t help but wonder why there isn’t some rule that psychologists have to live some other life before they take up this occupation and start trying to fix people’s minds. If she was sixty, I might feel more confident about her ability to give me advice. But instead, she’s younger than me, and what would she know about life? I know she has a family, two young children of her own. She hasn’t told me anything at all about herself, but I can see her likeness in the children in the photo on the wall beside the window.
Natasha is quite beautiful, and her children are absolutely adorable. I’ll bet her husband is wonderful too. I’ll bet he’s never so much as raised his voice at her. I’ll bet if he did, she’d pack up those beautiful babies and march right out the door. She’d never stand for it, not a woman like Natasha – no, she’d be better than that. Smarter. Stronger.
‘Olivia?’ she prompts me now, and I shake myself and shrug.
‘I’m okay,’ I say, but I never know if I’m lying when I say those words these days. People ask all the time, and they don’t really want to know the answer, so why shouldn’t I reply with something I don’t necessarily mean? It’s habit.
‘Is there anything in particular you want to start with today?’ she asks me gently.
Of course there is. I flick my gaze over Natasha’s angelic children and then focus on my own. Zoe is on my lap, and I tighten my arms around her and raise my chin. I brace myself, in case Natasha thinks this is all a terrible idea. It will take so little to discourage me. If she isn’t enthused…
Everyone treats me as if I’m fragile these days, maybe there’s a reason for that, maybe I am fragile; if I’m so uncertain about these things that I could be shaken by the potential of a single discouraging sentence from a woman I barely know.
Pathetic. Pathetic enough to stay, even when I knew I had to go. And look where that got me? Something has to change. Something has to change.
At the very last second, a burst of motivation resurges and I blurt,
‘I’m going to move house and try to go back to work.’
‘Really?’ Natasha says, and her eyebrows lift, temporarily wrinkling that baby-smooth forehead. I scan her expression desperately, still terrified she will shake her head or frown, but instead, she offers me a soft smile and I release my breath in a rush. ‘Well, okay then. So – moving house? Talk to me about that?’
‘Ivy came to see me to drop off some mail and I just… I need to move away from her. I need to get out of David’s house.’
‘You could move back into your parents’ house for a while?’ Natasha suggests, and I shake my head automatically.
‘I can’t. I need my own space – and I need to make my own space.’ I look down at my lap, then back to her and ask hesitantly, ‘Do you think it’s a terrible idea?’
Natasha stares at me, tilting her head just a little, but then she shrugs and offers me a smile as she says, ‘Actually, I think it’s a fantastic idea.’
I return her smile and my enthusiasm grows.
‘I want a dog. I’ve always wanted a dog of my own.’
‘So why haven’t you had one?’
‘David,’ I say simply, as if his name explains everything. Natasha gets that gleam in her eye – the one she always gets when we’re about to talk about him, as if she’s thinking Now we’re getting to the juicy part. I’m sure she’s dying to understand, just as everyone else is – the difference is she can ask me about him without things getting awkward.
‘Tell me about it?’
I remember David, sitting up in bed late one night early in our marriage, a year or two after we finished building the house. I had mentioned so casually that I’d done a health check and vaccination on a litter of Dalmatian pups at work that morning. The mess of squirming puppies had been such a delight – all six of them pressed into a box, tumbling over one another, a blur of white fur and black spots.
‘They’re selling them soon, and at quite a good price. Don’t you think our yard is big enough for a Dalmatian? We have all of this space.’
‘I don’t want a dog shitting all over the turf,’ David said. He was peering down at the business magazine that rested on his lap, and he seemed relaxed. I decided I would press just a little harder.
‘You said when we finished building the house we could look into it. I think now would be a really good time – we’re coming into the spring, and the landscaping is really established now so—’
‘Liv. No. It’s not happening.’
‘But, babe—’
‘I said no.’
‘Perhaps we could consider—’
‘Olivia – would you drop it? Christ, you’re harping on about it like I’m being a monster – you’re around animals all bloody day. Why would you want a dog at home too? No.’
‘How did that make you feel, Olivia?’ Natasha asks me, as she drags me back to the present with that question. Maybe part of the problem is that I don’t really feel anything these days, not at the surface anyway – only numb, although occasionally I’m aware that there’s a swirling turmoil deep down somewhere that I just can’t connect with yet. That’s probably at least in part because of the anti-depressants Dr Eric is insisting I take, and also… maybe I’m still in shock. But Natasha isn’t asking me how I feel now, she’s asking me how David’s refusal to let me get a pet made me feel back then, and there’s no avoiding that emotion. My arms are still around Zoe, but my hands clench into fists. I watch this happen, and I focus hard to release them, but as soon as I do, there are heavy, hot tears in my eyes.
‘It was such a small thing, wasn’t it?’ My voice breaks, and then the crack becomes a sob.
‘A reasonable request,’ Natasha agrees quietly.
‘He used to tell me we’d get a pet as soon as we built our own place, but he never really meant it. He didn’t want to share my attention.’
‘And that made you feel… ’
‘Angry.’
I didn’t bring it up again with David for months, but the next time I did, he silenced me with a fierce wave of his hand and a raised voice. By then, I knew what came after that raised hand. I knew that it meant tears from me, and then guilt from him later. I didn’t know which was worse, physical pain when he struck me, or his pitifully pleading remorse afterward. By then, I knew that it was my fault he hit me. He’d told me so many times… I was so beautiful and so brilliant that I drove him to distraction – his love for me so intense, he actually lost control because of it. My fault.
At first, I knew that all of this was nonsense and I simply expected that I’d change him. I was lucky to have him. I was living every little girl’s dream, a handsome husband, plenty of money, a comfortable life. And I genuinely adored him and believed the best of him – I believed the best in me. I thought if I stuck around and was patient enough, I’d learn to help him control his anger.
Hadn’t David told me that, a million times? I was his soul-mate. He needed me to overcome this problem. I just had to stop provoking him, and then I could help him.
It’s humiliating to look back now because it’s all so obvious. But if you hear something often enough, and if the lie is repeated to you with enough sincerity by someone that you love with all of your heart, rationality eventually does give way to trust. Self-belief is a fragile thing – it can be bent so easily under the right circumstances; a closed-circle like a marriage is the perfect environment for that. There was never a single day when I was finally convinced by David’s warped logic – never a single moment when I realised that Aha! So this is my fault after all. It was a subtler process, the gradual intermingling of his perspective with mine, so slowly that I was completely unaware of it happening. Little by little, over weeks and months and years, my confusion and shame turned to a confused acceptance and even gratitude – somehow, I came to believe that when he hurt me, he was doing it for me. I bought into the lie that I needed his correction. I bought into the lie that it was simply tough love from a husband who wanted the absolute best for his wife. I fell victim to a twisted psyche of my own. I began to mirror David’s perspective on the ugly aspects to our marriage – he was a good man, and I just kept on goading him, so who was really to blame in the end?
‘A person is always responsible for their actions. Even if they are provoked, and given what you’ve just said, I’m not even convinced David was provoked,’ Natasha murmurs.
‘If it wasn’t really my fault,’ I ask her, ‘why did I keep asking him about a pet, even when I knew it made him angry? Because I did keep asking. Even when I knew it enraged him, I’d still bring it up from time to time. Why would I do that, if I didn’t know on some level that I needed the punishment, or if I didn’t like it somehow?’
‘How did you feel after David hit you?’
‘He loved me harder after he had hit me,’ I say, around the lump in my throat.
‘He was remorseful?’
‘I knew I could look forward to several days or even weeks where he would almost drown me in care. The pain became secondary to the nurturing.’
‘Do you feel guilty that you liked the attention after he was violent, Olivia?’
‘Of course I do!’ I gasp, and the shame is so intense I shift away from her a little to face towards the window. I would come home from work to find David home early, having run me a hot a bath with exotic bubbles, a glass of wine sitting at the edge and candles all around as soft music played in the background. Or he’d surprise me on my lunch-break with jewellery, or a romantic weekend away where I would have his fullest attention. David was a charming man, but he was never more seductive than when he was guilty. And that’s absolutely the right word for it – he’d seduce me all over again, with excuses and with gifts and with promises of a better future.
Sometimes, I actually believed that the post-violence David was the real David.
‘The two things don’t cancel themselves out. It’s not a transaction – he hurt you, but it was all made okay because he did something you liked afterwards. That’s not how life works.’
‘But I kept asking about the dog,’ I tell her. ‘I knew that he’d hurt me and I asked him anyway. So can I really blame David, if I was the one who initiated the argument even though I knew it would make him angry?’
‘Sometimes in an abusive relationship, the victim convinces themselves that they are responsible for the trauma as a way of feeling in control again. Do you think that might be what you did, Olivia?’ Natasha asks me now, and I look at her blankly. She offers me a gentle smile. ‘You’re a vet, Olivia – obviously you love animals, and you wanted a pet of your own, and David had already told you that he was supportive of you getting one earlier in your relationship. You were simply reminding him of a very reasonable request that he’d actually already agreed to. The dog became a battle ground for you not because it was a big deal, but simply because David used it to control you.’
I don’t wear glasses, but I imagine if I needed them, the first moment I pulled them on might be like this one. It’s like I see ideas that I think I understand, but they are blurry until Natasha fixes a different lens to my eyes, and suddenly the ideas come into focus. I think about all of those conversations with David about dogs and all of the times it enraged him and all of the guilt I had that I was driving David to hurt me, and I realise that this is yet another thing I have misinterpreted in the way that I understood my life. And I’m angry, but it’s not the same futile, helpless anger at myself for being so stupid – finally, I’m angry that he treated me in this way.
I hate these sessions, but this is why I come. Once you see something for how it really is, you don’t unsee it. It’s in refocusing my life like this that I’m starting to find healing. I sit up a little straighter, and my tears – for the moment – slow.
‘He can’t control me now.’
‘No, he can’t.’
There is absolutely nothing to stop me from taking ownership of this small thing now. There is no reason at all why I cannot have what I have always wanted, why I cannot satisfy this simple need which has been denied.
‘I’m going to get a dog,’ I say, but then I remember the whiteboard. ‘But not yet.’
‘Why do you need to wait?’
‘Because I have to do all of the hard things first, and then once I’ve finished them, I’ll get the dog as a reward.’
With five minutes left in our session, Natasha turns the conversation to the same topic she’s always hoping we’ll get to. Today, she seems impressed with my plan to move forward, and there’s a hopeful lilt to her voice as she asks,
‘So, are you ready to talk about Sebastian yet, Olivia?’
Even the sound of his name is both a relief to my ears and a source of torture. Maybe I want to talk about David, but on some level, I do wish I could hear about Sebastian. I can’t even help the way my heart beats faster at the sound of his name. If David brought me pain and control, Sebastian only ever offered me love.
I wish he could say the same about me.
But I can’t think about that yet, let alone talk about it. I hold Zoe closer to my chest and I shake my head.
‘Soon.’
I get out of bed on Friday morning and I shower and wash my hair for the first time in months. I even blow-dry it.
Perhaps that achievement doesn’t seem worthy of celebration, but it’s actually a significant milestone. I dress myself in an entirely fresh outfit, in clothes that have actually been washed, then I put proper shoes on. Not flip-flops, not slippers – closed-in shoes.
I stare at myself in the mirror and I can’t help but be disappointed by how tired and aged I look these days. There’s make-up in the cabinet in the en suite off the master bedroom… The foundation would go a long way towards hiding at least the ghostly paleness of my skin. But that was the room I shared with David, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to go in there yet. Besides, the bottle represents too many memories. I used that very bottle of foundation to cover my bruises for work in the past. Not that it ever fooled Sebastian. Maybe the vet nurses might have noticed marks too from time to time, but they were all too polite to ever mention them. Not Sebastian.
I dismiss the thought of make-up. So I look tired, well… I am tired. Besides, I’m not ready to try to emphasise my features or try to make myself shine. To start with, it’s enough of a stretch just to let myself be visible again.
Next, I clip Zoe into the baby carrier. I love carrying her within it – she rests right against my breasts, close to my heart. It means that I can hold her but my arms are still free to do things, and over these past awful weeks I’ve wanted her close to me all of the time. Now, once she is safety strapped against my body, I slide my handbag onto my shoulder and I walk to the front door.
I unlock each latch, and then with my hand on the doorknob, I pause.
This is going to be a difficult day. There is no doubt at all that I will be uncomfortable. I am going out of my house with Zoe, and this will be the first time I’ve done that on my own since The Tragedy. I’ve done it with my sister Louisa in tow, and with Mum and Dad a few times… but even with my family to stand guard, trips into the village centre have still been awkward. I see the way that people look at me. I feel their pity acutely, like barbs into my skin. I feel their guilt too, and I hear the questions that they don’t dare ask.
But today, I won’t let my fear of any of that stop me. I turn the doorhandle, and I step out into David’s front yard.
Our house is close to the centre of town, just three short blocks to the shops. David always wanted to live in the established part of town close to his parents – we lived in a rental for an extra two years so that we could buy two small house blocks side-by-side here, rather than one of the relatively cheap blocks of land in the new estate at the edges of town. We then knocked down the old-style houses on both blocks and he personally oversaw the building of the house we came to call home.
That house is two stories of rendered white cement. It is shaped like a giant box, with four flat sides and a flat roof. Other than windows, the only external feature is the huge charcoal door right at the centre for the entrance, and the door at the laundry at the back. There is a high fence along the front yard and the plan was that eventually we would grow hedges all along it – for privacy, David always said – but the hedging plants he chose are taking forever to grow. Our house is probably one of the flashiest homes in Milton Falls. It is the ultra-modern equivalent to the older style, apricot-bricked two-storey house that Ivy and Wyatt own around the corner – both houses bigger than just about everyone else’s, as if both Wyatt and David needed their homes to make a statement.
David wanted to fill our house with a huge family one day, but I’ve never understood why Wyatt and Ivy needed such a large place, given it was always just the three of them. Their home is immaculate – Ivy keeps it like a museum. It is always pristine, decorated and redecorated on a yearly basis. She would never admit that she’s bored – but you can see the landmarks through her life that give it away – and the compulsive redecorating is certainly one of them.
David used to say that he was actually born into the wrong region. Because he grew up here, he hated the city – but maybe he should have been born in Melbourne, or maybe London or Paris or Manhattan – maybe he should have been a Kardashian, he would have loved all of the meaningless attention. It was a trick of fate that he was instead born to Ivy and Wyatt. They are big fish, but instead of shining in the spotlight of the world stage, they live in a teeny tiny little pond.
I stare at the pavement as I walk past their house. It is 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, so I know that Ivy will be home. Most likely she will be doing the laundry – she likes to get it done first thing in the day. She should be out the back of the house hanging the clothes on the line. Just in case I’m wrong about that, I stare hard at the pavement, and I count my footsteps as I pass – saying the number under my breath and focusing on the sound of that counting. Perhaps I look like a mad woman, walking past my in-laws’ house muttering to myself, but it stops me from obsessing about whether Ivy is going to try to talk to me and by the time I say the number ‘forty-eight’, I am into safe territory – out the front of the Walton’s house next door.
This feels like a triumph, and I suddenly wish that someone was keeping score of my progress today.
I need milk and that means I’ll need to go to the supermarket, and of course, Wyatt still works there – he does own the place, after all. He’ll be in the office, and I have been in that room a million times myself, so I know there is an entire wall of security cameras right in front of his desk. He’ll see me walking the halls of that store with his granddaughter fixed against my chest. He won’t come down to say hello – unlike Ivy, he has been avoiding me with stark determination since The Tragedy. That’s why I’m so confident he won’t even leave the office while I’m in his store, and that’s the only reason I’m going there at all.
I round the corner before the grocery store, but as I pass the little café there, the scent of ground beans wafts past me and I pause. How long has it been since I had a barista-made espresso, let alone sat in one of those familiar padded wing-chairs to read a magazine? The thought is just too tempting. I push the door open and step inside. The place is quite busy – lots of workers are standing in line waiting patiently for their morning caffeine fix on their way to the office.
I tell myself that I am imagining the chatter in the room fading off as I step inside, but when I find the courage to shoot a quick glance around, there’s no denying the tension. A couple of men in suits whisper to one another while flicking hesitant glances in my direction. The barista is frothing milk, but she’s staring at me as she works the jug and her jaw is hanging open. Two students waiting in the line are facing away from me, but they take turns sneaking a glance back at me.
The barista’s gaze is still on me as she calls, ‘Can I help you?’
‘These people are in front of me,’ I point out, and heat sweeps up my face. The students step aside hastily, but the two women in front of them don’t move, and I add, ‘I’m not in a rush. Honestly.’
So I wait in the line while the barista serves the other customers between stints at the coffee machine. When it’s finally my turn, she greets me with, ‘What can I get you, Olivia?’
I look at her nametag. Brontë. She’s new here, and I’ve never seen her before in my life.
‘A flat white, please. In a mug.’
‘Okay,’ she says, then another bright smile. ‘Take a seat, I’ll bring it over to you.’
‘How much is that?’
‘Oh – err – it’s on the house.’
‘You don’t have to give me free coffee,’ I say, bewildered, but she offers me a weak smile as she insists, ‘Please, I’d like to. Take a seat?’
‘Since when do you have table service here?’ I mutter, but there’s already more customers behind me and the more I protest, the more attention I seem to be bringing to myself, so I walk to an empty set of chairs and I sit down. I push aside a news and current affairs magazine at the top of the stack on the table – too risky – in the early days, I know the national media covered what happened. I dive into a glossy rag full of likely fictional celebrity gossip. When Brontë brings my coffee over a few minutes later, she pauses at my table, and offers me another smile. She’s young – maybe only nineteen or twenty, which somehow makes her pity harder to bear.
‘I think you’re really brave,’ she whispers as she sits the coffee down in front of me. I look at the coffee, then at the well-intentioned, if somewhat patronising barista, and I clear my throat and mutter, ‘Thanks?’
I don’t intend the question that slips out with the word. Brontë gives me a gentle smile and pats my shoulder as if I’m a tragic invalid of some sort, and returns to the line of customers waiting for her attention.
Fortunately, the coffee is so good that it’s almost worth the ordeal. It is creamy and perfectly bitter and a little too hot… The taste is full in my mouth and I savour the feel of it on my tongue. This is one of those luxuries I haven’t even thought to miss; a simple enjoyment I once absolutely took for granted.
Perhaps the little pit stop has been anything but ordinary, but this first venture alone into town was always going to be difficult, and I promise myself that every time I come it will be less so. I catch up on celebrity gossip and I enjoy the coffee, and then I rise and I continue on my way.