7

DR WISEMAN WAS a man of angular leanness, with a pair of square reading glasses that he took on and off as he alternated between asking questions and writing down her answers long-hand in a huge exercise book in the centre of his wood and chrome desk. He had a wide forehead, curly dark hair and a steady, level gaze. He reminded Kate of her first tutor at Cambridge, and her faltering attempts to explain herself were an uncomfortable echo of those encounters.

‘It’s really hard to describe,’ she said. ‘I usually feel all right when I first get up in the morning. I think. When I’ve slept. But then, as I said, I’m not sleeping well, and sometimes barely at all. In any event, once I get into the flow of the day, it’s as if someone has crept up and injected some kind of diabolical chemical into my bloodstream, adrenalin or cortisol – or whatever. And then I just feel . . . awful.’

‘In what way?’

‘Just this nameless sense of dread, of being permanently on guard and anxious, as if someone is about to come around the corner and shoot me at any moment or, worse, the children.’

‘And you say you felt like this before the events of six months ago, your husband’s betrayal and the deaths of the young woman you recruited as an agent, then your deputy, Ravindra?’

Kate hesitated. Unburdening herself was painful. She felt as if she was standing on the edge of a precipice and all she could see was how far there was to fall. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘When would you say it started?’ He was looking at her over his glasses.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did you feel anxious as a child?’

‘No. I was pretty confident.’

‘One can be confident and anxious.’

There was a long silence. Kate stared at the floor as she racked her brains. And suddenly it was as if a window opened to allow a chink of light into the darkness. ‘I guess I was, yes. Anxious, I mean.’

‘About what?’

‘Not the usual things, like exams. I was pretty cool about all that. I didn’t mind very much what other people thought of me, either. I wasn’t anxious about friendships, or whether anyone did or didn’t like me or approve of what I was doing. But . . . I suppose loss . . . death.’

‘Loss of what? Or whom?’

Kate thought hard about that, too. It was bloody difficult casting her mind back across the years and trying to unravel the complex weave of thought and emotion. ‘Death, generally. The loss of someone or some people I loved, or of letting them down in some way. My own death, too, I suppose. Just the vagaries and impermanence of human existence. There were times when that uncertainty, the unpredictability of life, was paralysing.’

‘Did you fear you would lose your mother?’

‘No. I never had a relationship with her. I wasn’t close to her as a young child, and after I learnt of her infidelity – she had a long-running affair with my best friend’s father, a guy called David – I would say I came actively to hate her. I was brought up by my father. I understood from an early age that my mother was unreliable and often quite undermining, even poisonous.’

‘Did your father challenge that?’

‘No. That was the only issue I ever really had with him. I could never understand how he could love my mother. And, particularly, how he could go on loving her after she had treated him so badly. But he just quietly took me out of her orbit, which wasn’t difficult because she is the most self-absorbed and, indeed, selfish woman I have ever met.’

‘You were worried about losing your father, then?’

Kate had never thought about it like that. ‘Yes, I suppose I was.’ She stared at her hands. ‘I definitely was. I had no siblings, so I guess my father was all I had. I was petrified something would happen to him.’

‘Or that he would leave, that your mother would drive him away? Is that what lay beneath your resentment of her?’

‘I knew he would never leave me.’

‘Do you think you were the reason he stayed?’

Kate had never thought about it like that, either. It was an uncomfortable idea. ‘I suppose so.’

Dr Wiseman continued writing. Kate glanced at the clock on the wall beside her. They had only ten minutes left and she was starting to panic it would not be long enough. Reluctant as she had been to start this process, now that it had begun she didn’t want it to end. When was she going to get an answer? ‘Was your father anxious?’ he asked.

‘About what?’

‘Anything. You, your mother, life in general.’

‘No.’ She looked through the blind at the blurred figures hurrying by in the rain outside. ‘Actually . . . yes, perhaps he was. I . . .’ She sat up straight. Memories were crowding in on her. ‘When I was about eight, or maybe nine, a friend of mine at school died very suddenly of meningitis. She sat at the desk next to me and she said she had a headache. I told her to go and see the nurse. The following day, the teacher came into the class to say that Jane had died in the night. I didn’t know what to think or how to react. It was incredibly sad, but I didn’t know what death meant. And in an awful way, life went on as normal.’

‘But not for your father.’

‘Exactly. Not for him. You see, Jane was also an only child. I think I understood then that my father was terrified of losing me. I remember him being quite strange around me for a while. I’d always been a bit of a tomboy, into climbing trees and fighting with the boys, and he had been very relaxed about that. But after Jane died, he was much more tense around me for a long time.’

‘In what way?’

‘Every way, I suppose. If I was going out into the garden, he wouldn’t forbid me to climb the trees, but he’d come out and watch me, just to check I came to no harm.’

‘How long did that last?’

‘I don’t know. A year, maybe.’ Kate thought about it. ‘But I suppose, in another way, a lifetime. I mean, he really worried about me a lot. I knew that. If I came home for the weekend, he would always say, “Drive carefully,” at the gate when I was leaving.’

‘Doesn’t every parent say that?’

‘I suppose so. But there was an intensity to it that I haven’t really thought about until now.’

Dr Wiseman nodded. ‘Given everything you’ve said, what do you make of the profession you’ve chosen?’

Kate took a long time to answer. It was a good question. ‘I suppose there is a disconnect, as with many people, I should imagine, between what drives my intellectual curiosity and what ideally suits my psychological temperament.’

‘Except that cannot be true. I imagine your job requires high degrees of natural empathy. How else would you have persuaded the girl you lost to work for you?’

Blackmail, Kate thought. Bullying. But she decided not to share that. ‘I think I feel more in control the closer I am to the things I fear. I always worried about someone hurting someone I love, but this way I can seek out threats and defend myself and those I care for against them.’

‘In order to keep your home life pure?’

‘In what way?’

‘To avoid the hurt your mother’s betrayal caused?’

‘I . . . don’t know. Perhaps. But there is no perfect spy. We’re as flawed as everyone else.’

Dr Wiseman glanced at the clock. He shuffled his notes. ‘All right, I suggest we continue in a week or two. Please call Sarah to make another appointment.’

‘How do we proceed? I mean, what’s happening to me?’

He stapled his notes together. ‘I’m going to refer you to Cognitive Analysis. That should take around twenty sessions—’

‘Twenty?’

He didn’t blink. ‘We’ll explore issues relating to your work, your past and your family of origin. I’ll continue to see you at the same time. We’ll need to consider pharmacology—’

‘I really don’t want to take drugs.’

He looked up at her sharply. ‘Medicines,’ he said. ‘We call them medicines.’ He smiled. ‘And how interesting. You would take penicillin without a moment’s hesitation, I have no doubt, so why would you not take a medicine that might help you recover from the highly anxious state you find yourself in?’

Kate felt pretty stupid. She didn’t argue. ‘What is wrong with me?’ she asked.

Dr Wiseman closed the file. He took off his glasses, placed them carefully in the centre of the folder and looked up at her. ‘I suspect that some genetics is involved and some imprinting. You may have a natural predisposition to anxiety, as it seems your father had, and in turn his behaviour, his fears over your safety, may have helped further imprint that natural tendency into you.’ He wiped his forehead and began to clean his glasses. ‘You spoke earlier of the impact of your father’s death. Up until that point, you had looked to him to soothe your fears. After his departure, there was no one left to do that for you, save your husband, whom, as you also said, you clung to with too great a force.’

‘But what can I do about it?’

‘You will need to learn to self-soothe. To care for yourself, rather than rely on others to provide comfort. In short you must leave the anxious child behind you and learn to be comfortable in the adult and capable Kate, who is a mother to two children and a senior executive officer in one of our nation’s most demanding professions.’ He put his glasses back on the folder. ‘It would help, I think, to begin that conversation quite consciously.’

‘Between?’

‘Your adult self and the frightened child within. The adult Kate Henderson is an incredibly accomplished and confident woman, making decisions of enormous importance for the nation at large. She is surely the person you need to soothe the scared child. If you can open up that conversation within you, it would help.’

That made a lot of sense. She stood. ‘Thank you . . . thank you, Dr Wiseman.’

She left his consulting room and hurried out into the light drizzle. She turned her face to the sky and let the cool drops fall upon her cheeks, then roll over her chin and down her neck. The relief was immense. Someone understood.

Dr Wiseman’s room was in Ealing Broadway, so she caught a cab all the way back to Vauxhall Cross and returned to her office with a spring in her step. She had barely got back to her desk before her new deputy was slipping through the door behind her. ‘Kate . . .’

‘Hi.’

Suzy closed the door. ‘I read the file. Operation Sigma.’

‘Good.’ Kate waited, but nothing further was forthcoming. ‘So now you’re up to date.’ She turned to her computer.

‘Are you sure your analysis on Viper was correct?’ Suzy asked. Kate turned back to her. ‘I’m not trying to be difficult,’ Suzy went on. ‘It’s just that, over at Five, I did quite a lot of mole hunts. You might even call it my speciality. And I’m not sure it makes sense that your husband was Viper.’

Kate tried to contain her irritation. This was about the last thing on the planet she wanted reopened. ‘My husband admitted his betrayal.’

‘I’m not disputing that, only the conclusion that he was actually Viper. We know how much effort the Russians have put into seducing and corrupting people across Whitehall. It makes sense that they have more than one – perhaps multiple – corrupted agent of influence. Stuart was expendable.’

‘Not to me.’

‘I’m sorry, bad choice of language.’

‘Indeed.’

‘I just mean . . . if you go back to the beginning of the operation on Igor’s yacht, he’s overheard saying, “Viper can help.” If you consider the stakes, does it really make sense that Igor would be referring to a relatively tangential player in those terms?’

‘Stuart worked for the prime minister’s principal rival. He was married to me. I am not sure he was tangential.’

‘I get that. Stuart was betraying you. In the heat of an operation, I totally understand that, as you began to appreciate his treachery, you would naturally conclude he was Viper.’

‘But I was wrong?’

‘I’m not saying that. It’s just, to me, as an outsider, looking at this afresh, it doesn’t make sense of Igor’s comment. “Viper can help” implies someone more important in the food chain than your husband.’

‘Perhaps, perhaps not.’

‘And yet how could they possibly have known what Rav was up to in Geneva? According to the file, your husband had no idea of that.’

‘They must have been monitoring his phone.’

‘Rav was surely much too experienced and capable to have communicated with anyone in a manner that was less than secure.’

‘He called the Guardian journalist.’

‘True. I saw that. But he was unlikely to have told him what he was really up to.’

Kate thought about this. On Rav – perhaps – Suzy might have a point. And now that she had brought it up, Kate wasn’t sure this doubt hadn’t been nagging at her ever since Rav’s murder. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’ She debated telling her of the way in which someone in the Russian hierarchy had started the Night Wolves retreat from Estonia at nine the previous evening, but thought better of it.

The circle of knowledge had been the same small group: C, Ian, Julie, Danny and Kate. The betrayal of one or another was unthinkable.

‘I’m not trying to be difficult, Kate.’

‘I understand that.’ She nodded. ‘I do. You make valid points. I don’t know how profitable it’s likely to be to reopen this right now, but I will give it some thought.’

Suzy slipped out and Kate closed her eyes. ‘Fucking hell,’ she whispered to herself.