nineteen

First thing next morning I spoke to Jim and explained the situation. Actually that’s a lie; I explained some of the situation. Heavy on my mother’s sudden return, light on the investigation by the police.

Jim is sometimes given to hyperbole. He leaned right back in his chair, crossed his arms, planted two feet on his desk, and stretched out like an adder enjoying the sunshine. “The return of the prodigal mother,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Fascinating.”

The way his hooded eyes lit up, I had the nasty feeling that he was mentally doing the equivalent of rubbing his hands together in feverish anticipation, Monica lined up as a fitting subject for a case study. Jim couldn’t help himself and persuasive was his middle name. He’d often wheedle his way round me and get me to do publicity stuff for the Lodge even though I wasn’t that keen.

“So I need tomorrow off. She has to return home on Saturday,” I fabricated, fronting it out.

“I see,” he said. Tell me more, his voice inferred. “Where’s home exactly?”

I opened my mouth to answer when a thud of realisation struck me hard. Given her sudden change in circumstances, Monica no longer had a place to call her own. “Um … Midlands,” I bluffed, thinking it covered a large enough geographical area.

“And next Tuesday?” he said. I sometimes found it tricky to keep up with the way in which Jim’s grasshopper mind worked. Then it dawned on me: Mimi Vellender’s funeral.

“I’d hoped to pay my respects,” I said, amazed by the ease with which I continued to tell porkies.

“Fair enough. I’ll get Cathy to rejig your appointments. Terrible business,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“Yes, thanks,” I said before Jim had a chance to pick up and run with it. Escaping to my office, I closed the door and leant back against the solid wood, desperate to ignore the screeching in my head that suggested poltergeists had taken up residence and were messing with my brain. I’d swallowed my medication that morning and wished now that I’d doubled the dose. Warned that any extra stress when I was still in healing mode could cause me problems, I’d nodded blandly at the time, never envisaging that life could veer off and haul me onto a rodeo ride.

Pouring a glass of cold water from the dispenser, I quietly sipped and composed myself for my first client of the morning, Imogen Miller, the girl intent on expressing her pain by carving it into her thigh.

Gingerly lowering her gaunt frame into a chair, Imogen viewed me with exhausted, hollow eyes. Her thickly bandaged leg was visible beneath her leggings, an item of clothing routinely banned unless worn beneath a skirt.

“It must be sore,” I said sympathetically.

She shrugged, like it was no big deal.

I didn’t ask why she’d done it. No point. Unresponsive to direct questions, she needed a more nuanced approach. “Are you settling in okay?”

She nodded.

“Nobody giving you grief ?”

She shook her head.

“Did I put pressure on you the other day?”

Another shake.

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

A single word spoken and I felt as if I’d hit a bull’s-eye. It was a start. “Talk to me about you. How are you feeling?”

Another shrug.

“You must have been pretty low to hurt yourself like that.”

She gazed right through me, blank-eyed. It shrank my insides. A haunting image of Mimi dying in her hospital bed, deep scars on her arm, trophies of self-mutilation, loitered in the back of my mind. I pressed on.

“Your notes say that you’re a gifted musician, is that right?”

“I play the piano a bit,” Imogen said, toneless.

I smiled. “Grade eight with honours is more than a bit.”

Imogen maintained a disinterested pose. Sprawled body, head lowered, but the flicker in her eyes told me that I’d piqued her interest.

“Recently, I’ve got into classical; listening, not playing,” I added with another smile.

“Whatever.”

“Got any favourite composers?”

Another world-class shrug.

“I love Rachmaninov,” I coaxed her.

“Awesome.”

“You play Rachmaninov?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’m impressed. What a great gift.” I paused, trying to connect with her. “Surely, it’s worth getting better for?”

She looked momentarily startled then furious. “You sound like my mother.” Her eyes darted to the door. If she wanted to get up and leave, there was nothing I could do to stop her. I made a note and waited while Imogen floundered in a deep, stagnant pool of her own creation. At last, she gathered herself, mentally regrouped, and glowered at me with defiant eyes. “I am not throwing it all away.”

“I don’t think I suggested you were.” I spoke quite neutrally.

“Course you didn’t,” she said with a sneer.

“About the cutting,” I said, trying to roll the conversation once more.

“It’s fantasy, pretend. It’s actually fun.” She flexed one foot in a challenging motion and glanced down at her bandaged leg.

“Five stitches isn’t a figment of your imagination. It’s real. It hurts.”

A brittle bright laugh escaped from between her dry lips. “That’s the point.”

“You feel more real when you’re cutting than when you don’t?”

“It’s the only part that makes sense.”

“You view mutilation as a valid activity?”

“Why not? It’s what I do.”

“For kicks?”

“For the buzz.” She might as well have added you stupid cow, judging by the malevolence in her expression.

“And when you don’t do it, you feel unhappy?”

Her face fell, a look of genuine despair flaring behind her eyes. In that fleeting moment she looked as fragile as a reluctant child left at the school gate on the first day of term. “It’s the only way to connect.”

“To what?”

She chewed her lip, looked straight ahead, stony.

“The fantasy side?” I said.

“I guess.”

I twigged and almost let out a groan. Dismay rippled through me. “Imogen, are you talking about your online persona?”

Face drawn with rage, she braced and shrank back into the chair as if trying to make herself disappear. “Why do you say that? Everyone my age goes online.”

“Not here.” Those were the rules. No phones, no laptops, no cameras. She must have smuggled in a device. “You know I’m going to have to ask you to hand whatever it is over.”

Her chin jutted out, mutinous.

“Is it on you?”

She shook her head.

“Okay, but you’ll have to give it to Cathy.”

“If you say so.”

I took a drink of water. “Want some?” I gestured with my glass.

Another shake of the head.

“Do you use self-harm websites, Imogen?” The proliferation of these and suicide websites targeting young people and offering them what they deemed valid life choices had become a major problem. It felt like the never-ending war on drugs. The only thing we could do as professionals was to treat the addiction.

“So what if I am?”

“But don’t you see how destructive that is?”

She threw me a black, sullen look and snarled. “What would you know? I’ve got thousands of friends who follow my blog.”

“I’m sure you have but these people are not your real friends, are they? You don’t know them and they don’t know you.”

“So? Nothing is real.”

“This is real,” I said, glancing around the room. “Us talking here and now, together.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Okay,” I said evenly. “Help me out.”

Her response was to fold her arms tightly across her flat chest, close her eyes, and tune out.

“Imogen, these people—”

“My friends.”

“Your friends,” I corrected myself. “They’re only talking to one part of you, not all of you.”

“That’s not true. They encourage me.”

“Encourage you to do what?” I needed her to spell it out, to say and admit it.

Her eyes opened. “To express myself.”

“By cutting into your own flesh? What else do they want you
to do?”

She glanced towards the door again, no doubt plotting a fast exit.

“They don’t know the real you,” I explained, “the talented and bright musician, the daughter and sister and friend. They’re just engaging with one facet of your personality, the damaged side.”

She pushed forward, making me jump, and bellowed, “It’s no business but mine. You have no right to discuss or have an opinion on what I do in my time. It’s private.”

“Imogen,” I said, keeping my voice steady, “I’m not here to interfere in your life. I’m here to help.”

“Well, I don’t want it so you can fuck off.” She hauled herself to her feet. Awkward and disorientated, she staggered to the door, wrenched it open, and almost mowed Cathy down lurching to the corridor.

“What the hell was that about?” Cathy said, planting a mug of coffee on the desk.

“Another damn website. I wish there was something we could do to close them down.”

Self-harm and Pro-ana (code for anorexia) forums and websites, promoting “thinspiration,” remained a constant devil on our client’s thin and bony shoulders. Jim had even made representations to our local MP. The real issue was that, as one website was taken down, another popped up to take its place. Intervention was critical but it was an uphill climb. Girls like Imogen were too sucked in to want to stop.

“I think she has a phone on her.”

“I’ll confiscate it,” Cathy said.

“Good luck with that. She’ll probably smuggle in another. Who does she hang out with?”

“She doesn’t.”

“To our advantage in some ways, I guess. This stuff is poisonous. I don’t want any of the others seduced. I’ll talk to Jim, see how to play it.” I wondered whether to try and slide the Vellenders into the conversation, see if I could fish and find out if Cathy had heard anything on the grapevine about the Vellenders’ missing son—or any information, come to think of it. I opened my mouth but chickened out. Openly messing with a family’s DNA was bound to draw unwelcome attention.

“Everything else all right?” Cathy said, pausing by the door.

“Sure.”

“With your mother, I mean.”

“Fine,” I said, curt. “Thank you,” I added as if I’d forgotten my manners.

Her face widened into a broad smile. “I’m really pleased for you.”