Sonia gestures for me to take a seat and smiles warmly. The box of tissues that normally sits on the windowsill behind her has been relocated to the coffee table next to me. I don’t know if that’s because her last client was a crier or because she’s expecting me to be.
“Thanks for seeing me,” I say. “If you hadn’t had a cancellation I don’t know what I would have done.”
“No problem at all.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and settles herself in the seat, neatly tucking one ankle over the other. “Tell me what’s going on with you, Claire.”
She listens silently as I tell her what happened after I read the message on Jake’s phone. Almost everything. I don’t mention the blood or the knife.
“Then,” I say, “when Kira came home I managed to have a quick word with her before she went up to Jake’s room. I told her he was in a bad way. That he felt guilty about Billy’s disappearance but that didn’t give him the right to talk to her the way he had. I said that if he spoke to her like again she needed to tell me.”
“How did she respond?”
“She looked shocked.”
“Did you ask her about the night Billy disappeared?”
“Yes. She said it happened exactly as Jake had described. She said she’d been angry too, that Jake would believe that she’d cheat on him. That’s why she wouldn’t talk to him.”
“How do you feel, Claire? Knowing more about that night?”
“Confused.” I run a hand over my face. The window on the other side of the room is open a few inches but the air feels too thick to breathe. “If Billy did run away there were a lot of reasons why, not just because he was in trouble with the police and us.”
“And how do you feel now, about spending that night at your mum’s?”
“I don’t know.” My head is pounding so I close my eyes.
“What is it, Claire? What’s wrong?”
“I just . . . there are so many things going around in my head and none of it makes sense. I thought the fugues would stop after I started seeing you but the last one was terrifying.”
“Because of where you were?”
Do I tell her? I didn’t tell Mark about my blackout when he came home. I don’t know why. Maybe because there’s a tiny part of me that’s worried he’s lying about the photo album? What if there is more evidence that links him with Billy’s disappearance? But what? None of it makes sense. Mark loved Billy. He’d shout at him and come down on him hard but he’s not a cruel or violent man. So why is part of me so suspicious? What is it that I don’t know?
“Claire?” Sonia says. “What is it?”
I look at her through my fingers. If I tell her about the knife will she inform the police? My GP? Could she have me sectioned if she thinks I’m dangerous?
“If I . . .” I falter. “If I tell you there’s a chance I’ve committed a crime will you tell the police?”
“A chance?”
I sit forward in my chair. “Will you tell the police?”
For the first time since I sat down Sonia looks ruffled. “I am not legally obliged to report any crimes that my clients may confess to but it does present me with an ethical dilemma.”
“So you would, then?”
“No.” She regains her composure. “That’s not what I said. I’d use my professional judgment to work out what to do, and what to advise you.”
“You’d tell me to go to the police?”
“Well, yes. I’d be more likely to advise you to go to the police than do it myself but if I did report the crime to the police it wouldn’t be without your knowledge. And I would discuss it with my supervisor first.”
I weigh up my options. I could keep quiet and get rid of the knife. I could talk to Liz about it. Yes, that’s what I should do. I should tell Liz. But if I have committed a crime that would make her an accomplice. And what could she do, anyway, other than tell me to go to the police, tell Mark or keep quiet about it—all possibilities I’ve already considered myself.
If I tell Sonia, I get a psychologist’s insight into what happened. And if she can’t help me maybe I should go to the police? The only way I’ll find out whose blood is on the knife is for them to check it for DNA and ask the car park company to look at the CCTV. But what if it reveals that I stabbed someone? I kicked a cyclist after I came around from my second fugue. What if I’m capable of worse? If I killed someone I’d be jailed for murder.
“Claire.” Sonia moves the box of tissues away from me. “Claire, it’s okay.”
There is a pile of torn tissues on the floor in front of me. I don’t remember reaching for the box. How can I have shredded that many and not noticed?
“Whatever happened”—Sonia crouches on the floor beside me, her eyes soft and non-judgmental—“it has obviously really upset you. Have you spoken to anyone about it? A member of your family, or a friend?”
I shake my head.
“You said you might have committed a crime, not that you did,” she says softly. “There’s a difference. Tell me what happened.”
“I can’t.” I shake my head. “I can’t remember.”
“Then what makes you think that’s a possibility?”
“There was a knife”—the word catches in my throat—“on the floor next to me in the car park toilet. It was covered in blood.”
She nods, gently urging me to continue.
“It was one of my steak knives. I checked the drawer when I got home. There are supposed to be six, but one is missing.”
“I see.” Her expression remains impassive. “And when was the last time you counted the knives? When did you last check that there were six?”
“I don’t think I ever have. I bought them years ago and put them in the drawer. I’ve never bothered counting them because we only ever needed five.”
“Are you the only person in your family with access to those knives?”
“No, of course not.”
“Claire,” she says softly, laying her hand on the table, “what if you weren’t the one to commit the crime? What if someone else took that knife?”
“But it can’t have been anyone else,” I say. “Jake was at home, Kira was at a friend’s house and Mark was away.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Sonia’s knees click as she eases herself up from her crouched position and returns to her chair. “The knife could have been taken from the drawer months ago and you wouldn’t have noticed.”
“You think . . .” My heart double-beats in my chest. “You think Billy could have taken it?”
“I think anyone could have. But what I’m most interested in is why you’ve jumped to the conclusion that you were the one who used the knife to commit a crime.”
“Because it was right next to me and I was alone. Wait!” I jolt forward in my seat. “The couple who found me saw a man running across the car park. He told them I’d collapsed. I thought it was Billy.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it could have been someone else?”
“Yes, yes, it could.”
“Which means there’s a possibility that you witnessed a crime. Claire, I’m going to be completely honest here. I think you should go to the police and tell them what happened. Do you still have the knife?”
Yesterday, before Mark came home, I wrapped the knife in a plastic bag and hid it in an old tote bag in the bottom of my wardrobe.
“But what if you’re wrong? What if . . . I don’t know . . . what if the man who was running away was a witness and I had stabbed someone?”
“Why would a witness run away? And why would he ask total strangers to help you?”
“I don’t know.”
Neither of us says anything for several minutes.
If I contact the police I could be turning in someone I love without knowing what they did or why. Just yesterday Jake was asking me if I’d still love him and Billy if either of them did something awful. What if it was him? What if I caught him stabbing someone? But he wouldn’t run away and leave me in such a confused state. Or would he? No, I won’t let myself go there. I can’t.
“Claire,” Sonia says. “I have a suggestion. In our last session we tried to make sense of the causes of your fugues so we could work on preventing them from happening again. Unfortunately it seems that it didn’t have enough of an effect so I have another suggestion.”
I eye her warily. “What kind of suggestion?”
“Would you agree to be hypnotized by me?”
I make my decision in a split second. “Yes, yes, I would.”