Dr Robinson sighs and leans forward on the little table. We have a session this morning and then she’s coming back for another session in the afternoon when DS Allen gets here. Dr Robinson has told me that it will be a difficult day for me. But she is on perky form. Perhaps she lives for difficult days – she can go back home to Si Hubby and the kids and feel that she’s really doing something with her life. She is more colourful today. She’s in a different kind of uniform, very straight but trying not to be; she’s wearing a dress with a jaunty design on it. She looks as if she’s stepped out of a Boden catalogue. She might be a French teacher or a shop assistant. I like to watch her contained and measured movements. And there’s something else about her that’s different today. I’m still trying to puzzle out what it is when she smiles at me.
‘Thank you, Connie, for the document. I found it very interesting. And you write very well.’
‘Why, thank you, Dr Robinson. And may I take this opportunity to say how well you do your job too.’ I have always had a problem where I sound sarcastic even when I don’t mean to be. This time I do though. It all seems suddenly ridiculous.
I am smoothing out my magazines. I’ve read them all and the sum conclusion I have reached is that big bottoms are in. What a relief, I can let mine out. I’ve hidden Annie’s diary; it is my secret. When Annie does decide to come and visit me, I don’t want her to think I’ve been reading it. And I certainly don’t want Little Miss Boden forensically examining Annie’s business.
Dr Robinson screws up her face. ‘I was intrigued,’ she says, all Miss Marple now, closing in on the cracked vase. ‘I wanted to know what happened next.’
‘Ah, well, kind of a prerequisite for a writer’s work, I suppose.’
‘How are you today?’
‘Fine, thank you.’
‘You’re looking better,’ she says. I’ll take her word for it; I don’t look in the mirror.
‘And so are you,’ I reply. It’s not exactly true. Her eyes are puffy – she had a few last night – but she has a renewed energy about her, a skip to her step. Then I get it!
‘Ahhh!’ I say, Hercule to her Marple. I chuckle knowingly, cross my arms and lean back in the chair so that the front two legs come off the ground. I give her a cheeky-chappy wink.
She makes the mistake of looking quizzical.
‘So, Si Hubby got lucky last night …?’ I say.
Dr Robinson actually blushes. And her hair slips. Oh, yes. I know I am right. ‘That is good news,’ I continue. ‘It’s great to think that our little chat had such a positive effect.’
She has gone scarlet. She has that sort of colouring. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,’ I say. ‘It’s extraordinary, isn’t it, how our bodies give us away.’
I leave a therapist pause in case she wants to join in with the topic, because it is a fascinating subject and she will be trained in spotting body language. But no, she is frozen in a parody of control, head cocked, pencil held out for effect, and rather sweetly she is still trying to maintain the eye contact that she prides herself on. She’s unsure how to get back on track, so I plough on. ‘Well done you, for putting in the effort! A little bit of Dutch courage and off you went? I like that about you: you’re a real trier, aren’t you, Dr Robinson?’ I’m hoping she notices my parroting of her questioning technique but now she’s busy pretending to rifle in her bag for something.
‘You know nothing about me, Constance,’ she says with a tight-rectum smile.
Gosh, she called me Constance; she must be annoyed. Yesterday she was trying to be so pally. ‘It’s just it’s surprising to me,’ I say, looking out of the window at my leaf, which is flopping around like a drunk this morning, ‘given your line of work, that there you are expecting the truth from me, almost demanding it, and yet you yourself are content to be … well, there’s no other way of putting it … a bit of a fraud.’
I want to get a proper grip of this woman who has been sent to assess me. I want to admire her; if her opinions are to have such sway, I do at least need to respect her. And I’m not quite convinced yet.
‘I’ll tell you what is interesting,’ she says, cool as a cucumber. ‘How you feel the necessity to transfer your own feelings on to mine.’
‘Oh, it is interesting,’ I agree. ‘It’s fascinating … but not unusual in female relationships. We’re always looking for links, connections … And I do believe you and I have some.’
‘We are not here to discuss my private life,’ she says, shifting in her seat. Her hair has slipped out of place again and she hasn’t corrected it. She’s not looking quite so perky now.
‘Not essentially, no. Yet it might prove fruitful. I think we need to get to the bottom of why we – you, I, so many of us – feel the need to be fraudulent. I doubt your reasons are very exceptional. It’ll be the usual trappings: safety, financial security, better the devil you know, mortgage, kids …’
She gives me a sharp look. She has no idea how easy she is to read, how many tells she has. When she tried to open the window yesterday, her shirt rode up and I saw her belly. It was loose and as creased as a relief map, stretch-marked, just like mine: the scars of child-bearing that no amount of downward dog or sun salutations or whatever the hell she does will rectify. I always like that about Ness; she doesn’t care about her mum tum. I suppose the rest of her is so perfect it would seem ungracious.
For a moment I lose focus. When I look back at Dr Robinson, I see a shaft of steel in those blue eyes.
‘DS Allen will be here this afternoon. Are you ready for that? I warn you, he’s not as nice as me. He’s not going to beat about the bush, Connie.’
‘Is that what you do? Beat about the bush? I don’t think that’s fair.’
She has a light glow on her skin; she is perspiring. It is too warm in here. Her lips are puckered with intent and too many cigarette inhalations.
‘Why do you think you’re here, Connie?’ she says.
I like her like this: hard, flinty. My respectometer goes up.
‘You mustn’t be so harsh with yourself,’ I say. ‘You mustn’t feel bad. Everyone fakes it. Maybe the lucky few feel it. I hope so. God, I hope so. I hope someone out there is leading a genuine life. But for the rest of us, faking is so important. I understand that now. I’d go so far as to say faking is vital. It is the foundation we build our worlds on.’
I glance at my leaf. There’s a silence. She’s thinking. Then she makes a conscious decision to go with me. ‘Are you saying that you believe there is no place for truth in relationships?’
It’s a good question and it takes me back a year. I’m in bed, our bed – I love this bed: it’s new, it’s huge, it’s so comfortable, it’s like a home in itself – on a Sunday morning. Karl has brought me a coffee and it’s a beautiful day outside. I’m utterly content. I can hear cartoons on the telly downstairs and the thud of Josh’s football hitting the wall outside.
‘One morning,’ I say, turning to look at her, ‘out of the blue, so it seemed to me, the Weasel woke up, sipped his coffee, and told me that he’d been unhappy for years.’
I pause; I can’t speak. I still find it shocking. How can one be oblivious to one’s partner’s unhappiness?
‘Go on,’ she says. She’s really listening to me. Forensically, you might say.
‘I mean, I didn’t expect him to be skipping about with jollity after fifteen years. But he had never struck me as unhappy.’
She waits. ‘And how did you respond?’
I pause. I think hard, remembering how we had sat side by side in bed, driver and passenger in the marital vehicle. ‘I had to admire him for his honesty. But once those words are spoken, once those doubts are voiced, there is no going back. That is the beginning of the end of something …’
‘But it could also be the beginning of something …’
I wait for her to expand on this.
She adjusts her hair. ‘You think honesty stands no chance?’
‘Honesty brings chaos.’
‘But relationships change, they are evolving things.’
‘Did you settle for Si Hubby?’
‘Did you settle for Karl?’ Oh, she’s rising to my bait.
‘I think a relationship stands more of a chance if you at least once had passionate feelings for each other. But our generation, who met our partners round about thirty … a lot of us have settled. Unlike our parents, we’d already known passion, and therefore we also knew when it wasn’t there. And if you’ve never felt it with this person, I think you’re pretty doomed. Did you and Si Hubby ever have passion?’
‘So you are an advocate of faking it? Carrying on when you know you’re not happy?’
I laugh. I look about the room as if surely my circumstances speak for themselves. She stares at me. In that moment, her eyes are rather beautiful, so alive and blue and full of empathy. But I’m wary; I’ve seen the steel in her, I know she can hurl daggers out of them.
‘I’m just warning you,’ I say quietly. ‘Be prepared. Dib dob.’
‘We’re talking about you and Karl,’ she says. ‘Why do you think he was unhappy?’
I sigh. ‘Why’s anyone unhappy after all those years? Familiarity had bred contempt. He didn’t feel loved any more, emotionally, physically. He needed to be desired. He irritated me. I nagged. Apparently I had emasculated him … funny there’s no word for de-feminization … Our very language is misogynistic.’
‘Sounds like you took all the blame?’
I smile. ‘I didn’t have all the facts.’
‘Do you think we ever have all the facts?’
I laugh. That’s the first really good question she has asked me. I wouldn’t mind sharing my leaf with her. I look out. We sit in silence for a good minute – marvellous for her if she’s paid by the hour.
‘I think he’s selling the house,’ I tell her. I’m feeling low again. ‘Will you talk to him? Ask him just to wait a while.’
‘To wait for what?’
‘To-wit to-woo.’ I do an owl impression, just because I can – nothing to lose and all that. But it’s not quite as satisfying with Dr Robinson as it is with the Squeak. Anyway, she ignores it.
‘I don’t know about that …’
She’s such a jobsworth.
‘Do you know why you’re here, Connie?’ she says again. She sounds genuinely curious. Not tricksy.
‘I do,’ I say.
‘Tell me.’
‘They found me naked by the river …’ This is not the answer she is waiting for, I can tell by the way she purses her lips. I continue, ‘There was an explanation for that, by the way.’
She shakes her head. She’s not interested in my explanations. ‘Do you know why you are here, Connie?’
We have a little eyeball-off. I shrug.
‘A week ago you drove your car into the river.’
I stare at her. ‘I think I would remember that.’
She has that wrong. She’s got it all wrong. She gives a measured sigh that is difficult to read. Then she crosses those thick, strong legs of hers. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Let’s get back to Ness.’
‘Sure,’ I say. She needs to get this right. Besides, I don’t want her to leave. She’s the only person I get to really talk to. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘What do you want to tell me?’
‘I want to tell you the truth,’ I say, like a very good girl. She likes me a bit more then; I see it in her eyes.
‘That’s what I want too,’ she says quietly. I’ve given her control again; everything is how it is meant to be. ‘So you met her in the playground, you got chatting, the kids are playing, you find out a few things about each other, she compliments you …’
‘That’s right. This is important … so the next time I saw her, it was a few weeks later. I was posting a letter at the corner of our street or something, I can’t remember exactly – this is all years ago. Anyway, Ness was trying to get Polly out of her car seat. I didn’t recognize her at first. I was just thinking what a funky car it was – retro and a nice blue. Then when she stood up straight, I recognized her and the funny thing was she’d had her hair cut – just like mine! With the fringe and everything!’
Dr Robinson leans in and slowly recrosses one leg over the other, smoothing out her dress.
‘I commented on it. I expected her to refer to the fact that she’d copied my hairstyle, after our previous conversation, or … some reference to it at least. But she didn’t.’
‘And what did you think about that?’
‘I just thought it was a bit odd. I thought that perhaps she wasn’t very self-aware. Or that she’d forgotten that it was me that she’d copied.’
‘Fringes are very common. People are always getting fringes.’
‘Yes. That’s what I said to myself. And so I helped her unclip the strap of the car seat. And there was something else about her that bothered me, something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Anyway, that same week there was a Christmas Fair at school. Ness and Leah were quite a hit, this new ‘celebrity’ family. It was because of Leah. Leah Worthington, the newsreader. You know the one: glasses, cool, serious, clever, always looks a bit miserable …’
‘I know who she is.’
Fame is such a head-fuck. Leah’s just a normal woman; it’s everyone else who acts differently. Or maybe fame had changed her, I don’t know. She did have that aura of success, a kind of affected nonchalance. Being with her was so odd. Once you’d forgotten who she was, you’d see how people changed when they recognized her: shop assistants, waiters, postmen, bank clerks, teachers, the headmaster – everyone would get a bit giggly around her, a bit flirty. People behaved bizarrely once sprinkled with the fairy dust of fame. Evie and Polly have got used to having special dispensations and privileges they take for granted: straight to the front of queues, friendly faces. Ness is warier of people, doesn’t trust them easily; they’re suddenly much nicer to her when Leah turns up.
‘They were an “unconventional” family, the Joneses. I’d heard people talking about them; everybody was falling over themselves to befriend them. They were glamorous, you see. They were an attraction.’
Dr Robinson hasn’t moved a muscle, but her eyes are all lit up; I can tell that even she wants to ask me what Leah’s like and all that bullshit. I mean, she’s pretending to be cool about it but underneath that B-is-for-Boden dress, she wants to flash those B for bazookas.
‘At first, I was definitely the exception. I stayed away from them once I realized Leah was famous.’
‘And Karl? Was he impressed?’ she asks.
‘That’s not the point. The Weasel does the impressing. And after much perseverance he succeeded with Leah. She thought he was hilarious. He can make anyone like him; he kind of hijacks them until they relent to the charm onslaught. That’s why he’s so good at his job, after all: getting everyone on side. It’s odd, he even wants strangers to like him – he used to lift the kids up on to his shoulders with loud whoop-di-doos in public spaces, just to be sure everyone noticed what a cracking father he was … It’s extremely important to him that everybody thinks he’s fantastic. I expect you already do.’
‘I haven’t met him.’
‘Oh, you will. And you’ll think he’s fantastic, he’ll make sure of that. The irony is he is fantastic; he just doesn’t need to try so hard.’
She cocks her head, her eyes not leaving mine. ‘And why do you think he does that?’
I shrug. ‘You tell me, Shrink.’
Dr Robinson nods to signify that the subject is now finished with and she will retain this information for a later discussion.
‘Back to the Christmas Fair. Did you and Ness speak?’
‘Not at first. But she seemed very different to how she was in the park. At first, I’d got the impression that she was a bit square – her clothes were pretty sensible, she seemed stilted. But here at the fair, she looked completely different. She was glamorous, more confident – perhaps because she was with Leah, or maybe it was the alcohol, I don’t know. She wasn’t nervy and twitchy at all. Anyway, later on, Leah had taken the kids home and some of us were in the playground, a bit pissed, and Ness came back from the loo with a piece of toilet paper hanging off her skirt and neither she nor I could get it off. We were laughing and mucking about; I smeared some chocolate soldier on it, just being stupid. That was when we connected, I’d say. She was really beautiful. I could see it now, this beauty everyone was talking about. It was quite extraordinary. How on earth could I have missed it? Anyway, she was laughing so much, leaning on me to try and pull it off. She was very close. And then, wham! My God! I got it! That scent! She was wearing the same Jo Malone perfume!’
‘Your perfume? The same perfume she had commented on in the park?’ Dr Robinson asks, reassuringly affronted. (That’s all you really want from a psychologist: agreement.)
‘Yes.’
‘Did you say anything?’
‘I did! I said, Oh! You bought the Jo Malone? But she looked nonplussed, as if she had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.’
‘How peculiar.’
‘Very. I thought it most strange that she made no mention of our previous conversation in the playground. It struck me again that she wasn’t very self-aware.’
‘And how did it make you feel, the fact that she was wearing your perfume?’
‘I suppose I felt flattered …’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I felt a bit robbed. Like she was stealing from me by not acknowledging that she’d copied me.’
She nods. She’s taking it in, frowning. ‘Which scent was it, out of curiosity?’
I smile. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not the same one you’re wearing.’ We’re not allowed scent in here, so you can smell the outsiders a mile off. She looks caught out.
‘Mine’s bath oil,’ she says, leaving us both with the intriguing image of her standing naked by a bath pouring grapefruit oil underneath a hot running tap.
‘Did you feel jealous?’ she asks.
‘Of whom?’
‘Of Ness and Leah, of their life together?’
I’d never been a particularly jealous person; I had always been innately confident in myself. But I’m trying to be honest with my feelings. I was intrigued by them. And I thought I did see passion there, between Ness and Leah, and I was envious of passion. ‘Perhaps,’ I say.
‘And were you jealous of Ness’s beauty?’
I smile and shake my head. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m a great fan of beauty.’
She glances at my scars as we both let that comment hang in the air, its repercussions wafting around the room with the grapefruit.