My client list for Thursday afternoon stares back at me from my computer. I still haven’t called Tony. I’m avoiding it. Besides, my morning has been filled with my parental shortcomings.
Ewan didn’t say much when I dropped him at school to face his daily reality. The look on his face when I refused to allow him the afternoon off was full of hatred. Admittedly, the kind of loathing wielded by a child is somewhat softer than that thrown about by fully grown sociopathic adults. However, it hurt more than I ever imagined.
I take a deep breath before my first client walks into my office, and I try to prepare myself mentally. A quiet tap on the door indicates that she is here, and the tiny hesitant sound is typical of her quest for invisibility.
I want her to be comfortable and safe but I don’t feel either of those things myself. There is no avoiding the fact that the office is my turf and all clients unwind in different ways. That’s why it’s neutral. Once inside, clients can sit on the couch, or lie down if they wish, or they can pace around too. Anything to get them relaxed enough to talk. The last thing they’re interested in is my own sense of peace and so I know they won’t notice if I’m out of sorts.
The girl comes in. I call her a girl, but she’s a woman, it’s just that she looks like a girl to me. She reminds me of Lydia, and I go gently with her.
‘Morning, Grace. How are you today?’
I know she’s a fitness trainer. She trains some of my clients. And Monika too, but that information is confidential. In a small overgrown suburb, such as Cambridge, which pretends to be a city, but is really a hamlet, it’s impossible not to cross lives. Grace is also a social media personality, and therein lies her contradiction. Invisibility comes at the cost of diversion, and Grace’s YouTube account does a sterling job of it.
Grace walks in and closes the door. She settles in her usual place and I smile at her, allowing her to adjust from the frenetic outside world. She’s one of my youngest clients. I don’t counsel teenagers. It’s a specialist field and laden with pitfalls. Grace is barely out of that transitional phase but her birth certificate allows me to treat her. She’s an irresistibly intriguing subject and of all my clients probably has the most personal wealth. She comes from old money, with parents embedded in noble heritage. But she shuns it, and all it stands for. What Grace hasn’t quite worked out yet, though, is that it’s her wealth that affords her self-reflection.
She crosses her legs and picks her fingers. I notice they’re bleeding again. Grace is recently washed. I pick up on these things because it indicates much about a client’s mental state. How they take care of their basic physical needs indicates a lot about their emotional health and Grace still wakes up every day and washes away the grime. It’s important.
We chat about the weather and her YouTube channel. I don’t understand much about social media but I know enough to stay away from it, mostly. I check it to monitor what the kids are watching. Lydia follows her. So does James, for very different reasons. Ewan’s search history remains mostly in the realms of video games and anime. For now.
Grace has got thinner, and I know her purging continues. Her expensive watch rattles around her wrist. She wears more make-up than usual, indicating to me that she’s had a rough night’s sleep. She looks prettier in her videos, wholesome and healthy, not broken. I merely get the shadows in my office. I dive in.
‘We were talking last week about how you were uncomfortable with your parents paying for your treatment.’
Grace takes her first long inhalation. I wait. She has large, sad eyes. But she’s no fairy-tale princess, the last thing Grace Bridge needs is a handsome prince to save her.
‘I don’t want their money.’
‘But they want to give it to you. Whether you accept it is entirely your choice.’
‘I’m letting them do it for peace.’
I don’t comment. It’s not my job to lead, or admonish, or give my expert opinion. This isn’t a trial, and I’m not a witness for the prosecution. It’s not how it works. I let her think. Meanwhile, I brood about Ewan. I can’t get him out of my head. Grace’s parents couldn’t protect her when she needed it either…
She takes a deep breath and I can tell she’s loosening up. She trusts me.
‘I had a client last night and she got under my skin. I’m normally really open and friendly, and I talk about anything they want to talk about, and believe me, they talk about some crap,’ Grace says.
It’s like a machine gun when Grace finally wakes up.
‘How did she get under your skin?’
‘She implied, in a really dirty and suggestive way, that I was having a relationship with another PT.’
‘Dirty and suggestive?’ It’s the way she spits out the two words that I pick up on.
‘I think she said something like “I see the way he looks at you”, but it was the way she said it, the look in her eyes, and what she was implying. It made me see red.’
‘What do you think she was implying?’
‘That a woman should give herself to anyone who finds her attractive.’
Strong stuff.
‘So, let’s talk about what happened there. Rewind to before you saw red. What is the client’s normal character? Do you ordinarily have a good relationship with her?’
Grace explains that she’s known the client for a long time and she enjoys training her. She describes the older woman and I know she’s talking about Carrie Greenside. Her acidic sense of humour comes from years of sniffing out bullshit, there’s no surprise that a twenty-one-year-old girl wouldn’t appreciate it.
I listen. But I’ve also got to concentrate. There’s a difference. I have to push Ewan to the back of my mind if I’m to pull it off. I’m also compelled to forget that she’s talking about Carrie.
I can’t.
‘So this woman might be wistful and nostalgic about her own youth, when she would have wanted a relationship with the PT. It could have been nothing to do with you.’
Grace nods. She understands, but that’s not the point. Carrie has hurt her.
‘Yeah, I see that. She definitely fancies him.’
‘So, leaving her out of it, tell me about the anger. What did it feel like?’
‘I was lifting a weight above her head and I felt like smashing it down in her face. I really wanted to hurt her.’
‘And would that have made you feel better?’
Grace shakes her head and the tears come. She sobs and I push the tissues towards her, and wait.
‘I just want to fucking kill him!’
I say nothing. Now we’re on the money.
The curtains billow through the open windows on the breeze, though it is neither cool nor refreshing. Grace’s shoulders shake. It’s powerful work. Grace never used to cry. Gradually, it subsides and the sniffs get quieter.
‘Oh, God, where did that come from?’ Grace asked.
‘Inside you.’
‘Why?’
Because your mother and father’s money can’t fix you, but you haven’t found anything else yet.
‘Because you’re allowed to feel hurt. You’ve been violated in the most horrible way and you seek justice. But you want retribution too, it hurt that much. This wasn’t someone bumping into you at the supermarket, this was deep trauma on so many levels. It has such an impact on your physical and emotional existence, and the pain is very intense. It’s real. That pain has to go somewhere, and – right or wrong – we no longer live in a society where law and order is settled on an eye-for-an-eye basis. The village elders aren’t going to throw him off a cliff.’
‘We’re civilised?’ Grace says, smiling through her tears. It’s a touchingly light moment, and one grounded in maturity beyond her years. I don’t normally talk so much, but my nerves are jangling too and I can see that Grace needs it. Some do. Some don’t.
‘Allegedly.’
‘I hate this body.’
Her voice is full of self-loathing. I question if I’m counselling Lydia after all.
‘So do you think the “dirty and suggestive” used by your client is actually your opinion of yourself?’
I’m pushing her. The tears come again. She nods, taking handfuls of tissues.
‘Because what happened was your fault?’
Another nod.
The blame-shame game is my biggest paying customer. Humans are riddled with it, including me.
‘Do you really think that him raping you was your fault?’
Grace looks up at me and wipes her eyes. She shakes her head.
‘But that’s how he made you feel because you could do nothing about it.’
‘I should have…’
‘Should’ve what?’
She takes a deep breath.
‘Fought back.’
‘Because that’s what they do in the movies? Your brain’s first instinct was to protect you, and it’s cleverer than you think. If you’d have fought back against a seventeen-stone body-builder, you probably would have been severely wounded, or worse. Your primitive brain made all these assessments in a fraction of a second, before you did, and decided to freeze. To save your life.’
She looks at me like Ewan does when I’ve got his back, and I guess I’m a parent to some of my clients.
‘What did we say about compassion?’ I ask her.
‘Suffer with?’
I tell all my trauma clients about the Latin translation.
‘So can you give yourself compassion? Be your own best friend? You wouldn’t blame her for being raped. You don’t get raped. You are raped. It’s done to you, you don’t participate. So what would you say to your friend who feels dirty?’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
It’s a whisper.
‘And what can you say to yourself?’
‘It wasn’t my fault.’
Good girl.