One June morning, summer arrived with unusual energy, as if to make up for the miserable weeks before. Under the cloudless blue skies and glorious sunshine, the famous rose beds in the town’s municipal gardens burst into spectacular life, which Tara thought was some compensation for the lunchtimes now spent pounding round the park with David, listening to him deliver fascinating local-history nuggets like an off-duty tour guide. She tried to resist, claiming conversation interfered with her breathing patterns, but he seemed determined to find a way to make her talk, even if it was only to challenge whether the bandstand really was the site of an original Roman temple.
But inside her consulting room, the floods still lingered.
Sonia Wozniak’s face was grey, like her mood. ‘The clearing-up’s messing with my head more than the actual flood, if I’m honest. Have you been into a flooded house? You know what it smells like?’
Tara nodded. She’d helped rake the mud out of houses, and the smell had been stomach-turning; she’d had to stop to retch every so often. The lingering aftermath of water that had filtered through sodden fields, through drains, through drowned vermin: a reek of decomposition that clung to the inside of your nose long after you’d left.
‘Well, I feel like I can’t stop smelling it,’ Sonia went on, ‘everywhere I go, even now everything’s clean. It got everywhere. Everywhere. Even the tiniest little speck on something, and I had to throw it away. Precious things. Josie’s baby stuff. We started off trying to bleach things but Chris just got a skip in the end. I cried, Tara. I just sat down on the steps and cried.’
‘I’m sorry. That must be very hard.’
‘My partner’s OCD’s off the scale,’ Sonia went on. ‘He’s obsessed with what might have been in the water. Parasites, germs, chemicals, dead things. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to go back.’ She wiped her eyes and stared out of the window.
‘Are you still at your mum’s?’
She nodded bleakly. ‘I can’t bring the kids home. All their toys are in the skip outside. I have to walk past it every day. That’s our life.’
Tara was conscious of her phone buzzing on the desk. She always had it set to silent during sessions. As usual, her first thought was: Phil? followed by a series of calculations: seven weeks since he’d dropped Sybil off at her house ‘just for a few nights’; two weeks since she’d watched him lever himself off her bed and saunter naked into the ensuite, whistling the theme from Top Gear.
But unusually, Phil vanished, to be replaced by a new possibility: Dad.
This time Tara’s stomach did a proper anxious roll, followed up with a patter of panic in her chest. She glanced at the phone out of the corner of her eye. He hadn’t replied to her email yet. Maybe this was it.
‘Tara?’
Sonia was glaring at her.
‘Sorry, Sonia, I was just …’ There was no excuse for getting distracted during sessions. It was the one thing she could promise her clients: her focused attention. ‘Last time we discussed a self-care plan. How’s that going? Getting enough sleep’s so important.’
‘I wish. We’re on my mum’s sofa in a sleeping bag. It smells of mice.’ Sonia looked exhausted. ‘Sounds stupid now, but I’d literally just bought everyone new bedding in the sales. Really nice stuff, I’d been saving up for it.’
Impulsively, Tara reached behind her desk. ‘Listen, I was going to take this down to the crisis centre in case someone needed it, but would you like this bedding? It’s new, hasn’t even been out of the packet. I’ve got a duvet in the car, if you want that?’
‘Really?’ Sonia peered into the bag, then looked up, overwhelmed. ‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m clearing out my mum’s house. She had an interiors business.’ Two hours Tara had spent ‘sorting’ the previous night, and she’d barely emptied one tightly packed cupboard of pillow cases, duvet covers, linen and 800-thread-count cotton. It was the fourth cupboard she’d tackled, and still she’d found almost nothing personal. No photos, no school reports, no hoarded hand-scribbled cards or tiny stuffed school-trip teddy bears. Twenty scented candles, though. Tara wondered if she should have donated them too, to help with the smell, or if it would come across as flippant.
‘This is amazing, thank you.’ Sonia hugged the bag to her chest. ‘You didn’t get any flooding up your way, then?’
‘No, we’re on a hill. Didn’t reach us.’
‘Lucky you.’
Tara nodded. Lucky her.
She checked her phone as soon as Sonia had left, but didn’t recognize the missed-call number. That didn’t mean it wasn’t Phil, of course. He frequently rang from numbers she didn’t recognize; ‘I’m on the office mobile,’ he’d say airily by way of explanation.
There was no message. Was it Dad? Should she phone him back, just in case?
Tara put her phone down, then picked it up again. Then put it down. What did he want? What would she say? What would he say? She needed to be in a calm space, when she’d had time to plan her responses, so they were dignified and memorable. Ideally when she knew what he was going to say.
An embarrassingly loud rumble broke her train of thought, and she checked her watch. It was ten past three. She’d worked through her lunch break, and the sandwiches she’d packed for lunch had been eaten long before her second client arrived at half past ten.
Food first, she decided, and headed down to the kitchen to forage for snacks. It was Harry’s turn to provide the Cake of the Week, and thanks to the note propped up next to it, inviting colleagues to guess the ‘surprise mystery ingredient!’, there hadn’t been any takers so far. Cake of the Week was a popular tradition in the Wellness Centre, especially since the vegans and sugar-refusers felt they had something to prove to the chocolate-addicted. Most cakes didn’t last beyond the first socially acceptable coffee break of the day; if it got to three and no one had braved the first slice, Jacqueline snuck in, cut a piece and carried it away at arm’s length, to spare everyone’s feelings.
This would have to do, thought Tara, eyeing Harry’s oily green icing with some suspicion, and cut into it with the big knife.
As she was psyching herself up to swallow the first lumpy forkful (cornflour? Courgettes? Piccalilli?), her phone rang, and automatically, rather than eat the cake, she put down the fork and answered the phone instead.
A familiar voice said, ‘Hello, Tara, it’s Dad. Is this a good time to talk?’
The fluttery feeling returned. Tara glanced at the old clock that loomed over the tea urn, for reassurance. ‘Um, it depends what you want to talk about. I’m at work. I’ve got a client at half past.’
Was her hand shaking? Her knees felt wobbly. All the effort of sounding unbothered was going into her voice. She was glad her dad couldn’t see her. The hot-water urn was reflecting a red shape where her face was.
‘OK, well, I’ll make it quick. I just wanted to say thank you for your email and to apologize again. I can see now how unfair it was. I really am sorry if you felt ambushed. That’s the last thing I meant to do. The very last thing.’
Tara had half expected the apology – Mum had always said Dad did a good apology – but she hadn’t expected it to sound so contrite.
‘You’re right, I should have called ahead,’ he went on. Tara noted, in a distant, rational corner of her brain, that he didn’t take the easy route of blaming Toby for not tipping her off. ‘But it was really good to see you and I appreciated the cup of tea.’ He paused. ‘And what you said in your email about your mum – that she was loved and happy. I’m glad. Glad to know that too.’
Again, the emotion in his voice took Tara by surprise. This wasn’t the Dad she’d been expecting. The selfish bastard who did what he liked, never bothering with an actual apology when an expensive bunch of flowers would do the job. Tara’s mouth had gone dry. Weirdly, now she felt bad for upbraiding him.
Which is exactly how he gets away with it, sighed her mother’s voice in the back of her mind. Or was it her own counselling training?
‘Tara? Are you still there?’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m here. I’m just …’ Just what? She didn’t know.
‘Another thing – I’ve been thinking about these floods, and I was wondering if there was anything I could do? I mean, with this community action group you’re involved with? I can put you in touch with a grant hunter, for a start – Jake’s brilliant at tracking down funding and charities and whatnot, to get projects up and running. And if you needed someone to have a look at that village hall that was affected – Troutbridge, wasn’t it? – we could send someone to assess the structural damage.’
‘Wow,’ said Tara. Even the way he was talking about it, so positive and upbeat, felt light years away from the growing weariness overwhelming the volunteers now. They were tired, and mostly out of their depth, especially on matters of building work, as well as conscious that there was almost no money available to help the people turning to them for answers. ‘We’d appreciate any help. But there’s no budget,’ she added. ‘We can’t pay you.’
‘Don’t worry about that. We’ve got a company commitment to provide a certain number of hours pro bono for community projects. There wouldn’t be any charge. I can send you a link to our website, you can see some of the things we’ve been involved with. We built an outdoor community kitchen last year: sustainable vegetable beds, solar panels for the ovens – that sort of thing. Playgrounds are another popular one. We do a good playground!’
It sounded too good to be true. ‘Is there a catch? If I say yes, do we have to be in a documentary?’
‘Ha! No! No catch. I just want to help. I admire what you’ve done, Tara. It takes a lot of energy to rebuild after flooding. And I know expertise and time are sometimes more useful than cash.’
Tara stared at Harry’s greasy cake, already crumbling on the plate, its mystery ingredient still undetected. Dad’s voice hadn’t changed, unlike his physical appearance. When she saw him again, that too would be less strange. The real ghost was the man in between, the man with her dad’s face who’d lived most of Tara’s life in a different family, in a different place. Still her dad, but with no interest in anything she’d done, anything she’d achieved.
And NOW he’s proud of you? Her mother’s voice again, eyebrow arched.
She’d left it too long to reply.
‘It’s just a suggestion,’ said Keith breezily. Too breezily, maybe? ‘If you don’t think it’s a good idea …’
Tara thought of Sonia’s wrecked house. The food bank. The people without beds, without pets, without the comfort of their homes. She’d be churlish to refuse help, just because she wasn’t sure of her dad’s motives. Wouldn’t she?
‘It’s a kind offer,’ she said. ‘But you need to speak to Alice, she’s the parish council contact.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Keith, ‘send me her details.’
As she walked back to her room, two things occurred to Tara. One was that her dad hadn’t mentioned Toby once – neither to dob him in for not warning her, nor to ask how he was – and the other, as the cake began its quick retreat up her throat, was that Harry’s secret ingredient was probably spinach.
Tara had one more appointment before the end of her working day: the Wilsons, a disastrously matched couple who’d been on the verge of divorce before the floods, but who had now achieved an unexpected rapprochement after spending two weeks in emergency accommodation without any of the things (his road bike, her parents, an unemptied dishwasher) that used to give the other the red mist. The floods, Tara conceded, had done more to bring them back together than she had.
She was packing up her bag when there was a knock on the door, and Jacqueline’s head popped round.
‘Good time for a word?’
‘Of course.’ Tara put her bag down as Jacqueline was already making her way in, heading for the sofa. ‘Cup of tea?’
‘Peppermint, please. Kasia’s advised me to give up caffeine after lunch and I must say I’m feeling the benefits! You should try it!’
‘Ha ha ha!’ said Tara, which was as polite as she could manage off the top of her head.
As she flicked the kettle on under her desk, Tara rapidly considered the options: something to do with David? Had he tipped Jacqueline off about her driving to work? Had Harry’s cake been declared unsafe to consume?
‘I see you’ve got your own kettle in here!’ Jacqueline observed, sweetly.
‘Well, for clients, really. And sometimes there’s a bit of a crush in the kitchen and I don’t have a lot of time …’
The kitchen was big enough to host a low-key wedding. They both knew the reason Tara’s kettle was there was so she could avoid mingling.
‘And sometimes I’m in the zone and don’t feel like chatting,’ Tara admitted, under the pleasant scrutiny of Jacqueline’s gaze. ‘Don’t want to seem rude. You know what it’s like. I need my coffee. I don’t have time to get into a discussion about caffeine after lunch. Well, not until my workload eases off a bit! Ha ha!’
‘Well, yes. Although sharing our opinions is what makes this such a vibrant place to work, I always think.’
Bollocks, thought Tara, hunting for the herbal tea bags. This was going to be about the Magic Divide, wasn’t it? Had Emily been bitching about dowsing again? It wouldn’t be the first time Jacqueline had had to tell Emily to ‘share some professional respect’ with the unicorn fringe. Was there a discreet way she could slip on Hero’s crystal bracelet? It was gathering dust in her drawer – conveniently one of the ‘hollow spaces’ Hero had been talking about fixing. She slid it on as she pulled out the peppermint tea, and whatever the black bits were dug into her wrist.
But Jacqueline didn’t seem to want to talk about that. ‘How are things? There’s so much going on for you right now, I feel we should be checking in with you a bit more.’
‘Oh, fine,’ said Tara guardedly. Did Jacqueline mean her mum dying? Or just the floods? When you put it like that, she thought, there was quite a lot.
‘Getting plenty of rest?’ Jacqueline reached out for the mug of peppermint tea Tara was offering her. ‘And support? Because as Kasia was saying just the other day, self-care is such an important—’
On cue, Tara’s phone rang and she turned it over without looking at the screen.
‘Sorry, Jacqueline, self-care?’
‘Self-care and boundaries between—’
It rang again, and Tara clicked it to voicemail with an apologetic look. ‘Keeping busy works for me,’ she said, which was true.
Jacqueline sighed and gave her the familiar ‘Are you sure you’ve told me everything, Alfie?’ look that had been so effective in her previous career. Tara didn’t bite; there were things Jacqueline didn’t need to know.
‘So!’ She sipped her own mug of peppermint tea. It was basically hot scented water. ‘What was it you wanted to chat about?’
‘As you know,’ said Jacqueline, settling back on to the sofa, ‘I’ve been juggling home and work recently too.’
Tara nodded. What was Jacqueline talking about? Was it her husband who’d had the knee replacement? Or her son? She kicked herself: she never used to forget this sort of detail, but lately the pressures of work had developed unsettling sinkholes in her brain.
‘I’m so sad it’s come to this,’ Jacqueline went on, ‘but I’ve been advised by the specialist that I have to scale right back – apparently stress is a major factor in irritable bowel syndrome.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Tara quickly. IBS. She knew it was something medical. ‘So I’ve heard. The coffee probably doesn’t help either.’
Jacqueline gave her an ‘Exactly!’ look. ‘But it leaves me with an impossible choice. Do I reduce my practice hours, or step back as Centre Director? I can’t do both.’
Tara continued nodding, although now her brain was flipping through a Guess Who? version of the rest of the staff, trying to recall who it was who’d had the knee replacement. She made an effort to focus. Jacqueline seemed to be asking her for advice.
‘Your own health has to come first, Jacqueline,’ she said. ‘Oxygen masks, planes, and all that.’
Jacqueline sighed. ‘That’s what Paul says.’
Paul was Jacqueline’s husband; from what Tara could remember of him from the last Summer Party, he spoke entirely in management jargon.
‘So, strictly between us,’ Jacqueline leaned forward, ‘what would your feelings be, were the director’s role to become vacant, as it were?’
‘What?’ Tara was caught on the hop: she hadn’t expected Jacqueline to sacrifice her team-leader role for her counselling, which was, at best, the therapy equivalent of a supermarket Lemsip. ‘Me?’
She nodded. ‘Obviously it’s got to be advertised externally, but my greatest wish – as a team member myself – is that the board appoints someone from within our community. Someone who understands the dynamics and history of the Centre. Someone who truly cares. And can also operate spreadsheets.’
Tara’s heart beat faster. She had often daydreamed about changes she would make to the Centre, if she were in charge. Mainly tactical changes to personnel – a bit like Fantasy Football, but with more psychoanalysts and fewer mistletoe therapists. ‘What would it involve?’
‘Oh, you know what I do, more or less!’ Jacqueline waved her hands. ‘Admin, reporting to the trustees, talking to the accountants, allocating clients to the right counsellor … Of course, the time you can allocate to your practice is limited, but to compensate for that there is, of course, a salary.’
Tara realized her hands were shaking. She put down her mug before she spilled her own peppermint tea. A salary. This was the answer to her house problem! If she had a salary, she could get a mortgage. If she could get a mortgage for Toby’s half of the house, she could give him what was rightfully his and stay on in an architect-designed dream home she’d never otherwise be able to afford. Everyone was a winner.
She took a deep, shuddery breath and glanced at her wrist. Maybe there was something in Hero’s crystals.
Jacqueline leaned forward to indicate she was imparting something she strictly shouldn’t. There was a reason, Tara realized, this conversation wasn’t happening in Jacqueline’s own office.
‘One thing I feel I should mention, off the record.’ Her eyes darted towards the door. ‘The trustees are very committed to the holistic nature of the therapy provision here. If you went for the Centre Director role, you’d have to persuade them you’d be fighting for the whole centre.’
Tara sat up straighter in her chair. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I think it’s fair to say that you rather lean towards one branch of the Centre’s practitioners over the other.’
‘No, I don’t!’
‘Oh, Tara. Hand on heart, you don’t really believe that Hero and Anji and our more … esoteric colleagues are quite on the same plane as the traditional counsellors.’
That was the thing about Jacqueline: she had a way of making you feel not exactly guilty, but as if you’d let yourself, and the school, down. Tara started backpedalling. ‘Well, obviously my own practice is theory-based, but I’ve always said, as long as the client believes in the benefits of a course of therapy then …’
‘… you’ll overlook the fact that you think it’s a lot of tosh.’
‘What? No! I fully respect their training and commitment to … alternative belief systems.’
Had that sounded convincing? Tara wasn’t sure.
Jacqueline fished out her tea bag with the purple biro she always seemed to have about her person. ‘Even angel therapy?’
Tara couldn’t stop her eyes rolling. ‘Angel therapy’ was Anji’s latest offering, and proving depressingly/wonderfully popular. ‘Come on, Jacqueline. If there are such things as angels, don’t you think we should be encouraging them to sort out the Middle East? Or liaise with the crystals to eradicate flu viruses? Instead of wasting their time consoling someone from Yarrold whose cat’s gone missing?’
‘Tara!’
‘I’m sorry.’ She kicked herself; this wasn’t Emily sitting in front of her. Or Bryan. ‘I didn’t mean that to sound dismissive. My aim’s exactly the same as everyone else’s here – engaging clients in positive thought and helping them to create strategies for a happier life. Via whichever route works best for them.’
‘I’m not saying I agree or disagree with you, but you have to take a different stance when you’re representing everyone.’ Jacqueline looked over the edge of her mug. ‘It’s not just you; I’ve noticed there’s a bit of what we used to call playground division going on. Hence my new strategies to foster a bit more team spirit.’
Tara’s heart sank. They’d been here before. The last ‘team spirit’ challenge had involved the various therapists drawing each other in charcoal. Emily hadn’t spoken to Kemi, Anji or Kasia for six months, and a hurt Bryan had gone on a juice cleanse that had had unpleasant side effects for everyone.
‘Besides,’ Jacqueline added, ‘everyone benefits from having their belief systems challenged from time to time. You can get stuck in your own rut. This peppermint tea, for example – it’s made a real difference to my IBS.’
Tara noticed the jagged chunk of rose quartz dangling over Jacqueline’s bosom. She wondered which crystal was best for IBS. Apache tears? Wasn’t that about protecting voids?
‘So, anyway, have a think. I haven’t mentioned this to anyone else, and I’d be grateful if you could keep my stepping back between ourselves. There’ll be an announcement in the next fortnight or so.’ Jacqueline gave her a stagy wink. ‘But I wanted to give you the heads-up. Perhaps have a think about how you might, ah, jumble things up a bit.’
‘Of course,’ said Tara, but her mind was already doing sums.