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THE CLICK-CLACK OF Alison Riley’s heels fell silent as she stepped from the corridor into the consultation room. She glanced down and suppressed a laugh. The brown swirls on the threadbare carpet had once been vibrant orange. Why, she wondered, hadn’t young Dr Smedley redecorated after his father retired from the practice?
She froze at the sight of a clump of wispy grey hair, sticking up from behind an ancient computer console.
‘Sit,’ said a faceless voice, followed by the sound of clumsy keyboard hammering.
‘Good morning.’ Dusty air wafted onto her face as she sat down on a flimsy chair. A nostalgic flash of bare young legs peeling off plastic made her wince. Infection Control at Saint Mary’s hospital where she worked would have a field day in this room.
‘So,’ said Dr Smedley, ‘It says on here you can’t sleep.’
‘That’s part of the reason I’m here. The insomnia has been much worse since a new manager moved into the office.’ She squirmed in her seat. ‘The thing is... I want to kill him.’ There, she’d said it out loud. No going back now.
‘Stupid...’
Alison gasped. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Dr Smedley’s bespectacled face appeared from behind the computer. He cocked his head sideways at the screen and raised an eyebrow. ‘Idiotic new-fangled rubbish.’
She laughed. She could remember her mother calling it ‘state-of-the-art’, though she had been too young to know what that meant.
He peered at her, a puzzled expression on his face. ‘And what do you want me to do?’
The heat cranked up as the old motor whirred. ‘Help me? It’s not normal for me to want to harm people – even horrible ones – I hate any type of confrontation.’ She took a measured breath. ‘But I have flashes of ripping his throat out. It scares me.’
Dr Smedley gave a sage nod and leaned on the leather-patched elbows of his tweed jacket. He scrutinised her face through grey, bleary eyes. ‘Don’t worry, my wife was the same.’
Alison let out a sigh of relief. ‘She wanted to kill her boss, too? Thank goodness. I thought I was going mad.’
‘No, don’t be silly,’ he laughed. ‘Snappy. Irrational. Flying off the handle for no reason.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Not long before the divorce.’ He gave her a stern look. ‘So, watch your step, my dear. Or else Mr Riley will be off.’
She opened her mouth to speak, but words failed her.
He wheeled his chair along the desk to rummage in a drawer, fishing out a dog-eared pad and a fountain pen. There was an awkward silence, barring the scratching of pen nib against paper. A faint whiff of Brylcreem took her back to childhood – sitting in that seat next to her mother while he scribbled away, his hair shiny with the hair product. It made her feel smaller.
She cleared her throat. ‘This is a serious matter to me. I’m concerned I might hurt my boss. And the insomnia has reached an unmanageable level.’
He raised one eyebrow and continued to scribble. She watched his huge, gnarly hands as he wrote. The same hands that had clumsily wielded a wooden tongue depressor and made her gag as a child. On that occasion she had left with a pink antibiotic syrup that tasted like bubble gum. And her mother had rewarded her bravery with a Cadbury’s Finger of Fudge from the newsagent’s shop on the high street.
The snap of the pen cap brought Alison’s focus back into the room. He sighed. ‘Ah, the problems of the worried-well.’
‘The what?’
Then, as if he had read her thoughts, he said, ‘How’s your mother these days?’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘Dead.’
He coughed. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, I remember.’ He gave a nervous laugh, pulled off the pen top and finished what he was writing with a flurry of over-zealous dotting. He ripped the sheet from the pad and waved it at her. ‘Perimenopause.’
Alison gasped again. ‘I’m only forty-one,’ she whispered, reeling from his insensitivity. ‘And the insomnia started after the twins were born. They’re twenty years old.’
He checked her records. ‘Hmm... Your mother used to say you were a worrier.’ He studied her face. ‘Very ageing.’
‘She didn’t say that.’ Alison took a deep breath. ‘With respect, how can you recall what my mother said, yet forget she’d died?’
He waggled a finger at her and pushed his spectacles further up the bridge of his nose. ‘To be fair, I can’t remember everyone. I see a lot of patients.’
‘Mangled up in car parts?’ She ran her fingers over her brow – the skin was smooth. ‘Anyway, it can’t be the peri–’
He shook the prescription at her.
‘I don’t need hormone replacement therapy.’ She reluctantly took it and squinted at the untidy scrawl. ‘Seriously? B vitamins...?’ If she didn’t already know him, she’d think he was a clown doctor, like the ones she had seen around St Mary’s. She glanced at his enormous hands – all he needed was a pair of white gloves and a red nose.
He gave a solemn nod of his head. ‘Low levels can affect mood.’ He leaned towards her. ‘You should have brought Mr Riley; I’d have been most interested to hear hubby’s side.’
Alison slowly exhaled through pursed lips. ‘My husband’s side?’
He leant on his elbows again and steepled his hands, his bushy eyebrows knotted. ‘I expect he’s noticed the change in you. Must be trying for him.’ He shook his head and pulled a tooth-baring grimace. ‘I know I had a dreadful time with my missus.’
She looked towards the door, half expecting someone to burst through shouting, ‘Candid Camera’ – another throwback from the era Dr Smedley was clearly trapped in. ‘Martin and I are fine. It’s only my boss, Billy Chapman, who I can’t stand. And wouldn’t I need blood tests to check my hormone levels before making that diagnosis?’
He gave a weary head shake. ‘Now, now, Alison. I don’t tell you how to fill in forms, do I? This is my job.’ He reached over and patted her hand. ‘It’ll pass – in a few years. These will help in the meantime.’
She pulled her hand away. ‘Fill in forms? I’m a senior Patient Services Coordinator.’
He chuckled. ‘Is that what they’re calling it these days?’
The Newton’s cradle on the desk clacked as his arm brushed against it. When she was little, the momentum and sound of the shiny chrome spheres used to mesmerise her. Right now, she wanted to clack the tarnished old eyesore off the wall. ‘And what about the insomnia? I can’t go on like this.’
‘As you said, my dear, you’ve had it for years.’
My dear? He stared at her, an inane grin on his face, oblivious to the inappropriateness of his behaviour. ‘I know it started when the twins were babies and wouldn’t sleep, but I don’t know why it didn’t get better. I’ve tried everything to put it right over the years, yet now it’s worse than ever. There must be something that could help?’
‘We all get weary from time to time. I mean, it’s not as if you have cancer, is it?’
Her eyes widened in shock. ‘What on earth...?’
Dr Smedley stood up and laughed again. He gestured towards the door. ‘Take the vitamins for your little mood-swings. As for the insomnia, well I can’t give you a magic pill. And even if I could, we wouldn’t want you becoming a slave to drugs, now would we?’
She remained in her seat. ‘I don’t want drugs. But vitamins can’t possibly stop me from wanting to throttle my boss.’
He nodded at the prescription. ‘Try them.’
Alison picked up her bag and reluctantly tucked the prescription into her jacket pocket. ‘Surely –’
Dr Smedley opened the door and waved her through. ‘Bye-bye, my dear. Give my best to Mr Riley.’
On the way out of the health centre, the patient feedback screen caught her eye. ‘How was my experience today?’ She thumped the red, unhappy-looking face. ‘Bloody awful.’
She stormed along Earlby High Street, muttering to herself and cursing Dr Smedley’s incompetence. She had wanted to kill Billy Chapman before her appointment but would now happily do it with her bare hands. If he wasn’t such a horrible boss, she would have been able to continue coping. ‘Vitamin B,’ she fumed, marching into the newsagents.
Alison stepped out onto the busy street, clutching a Cadbury’s Finger of Fudge and a packet of red liquorice shoelaces. Glancing up, she caught sight of the wrought iron entrance gates to Cherry Park. Her mood lifted. They had also gone to the park after the tongue depressor incident. She didn’t recall seeing Dr Smedley again. Her mother must have requested another doctor after that.
‘Perimenopause. I’m forty-bloody-one,’ she muttered, wandering through the gates. If she were a vindictive, or maybe braver person, she would report him.
The park opened out onto vast grassy areas, bordered by cherry trees, with a small man-made lake at the far end. She recalled happy trips there with her parents as a child, and then with her twins. Chloe used to love feeding the ducks. Jack liked to eat the bread himself.
Alison set off along the pathway running the perimeter of the park, pleased she had booked the entire morning as annual leave. She had expected to leave the surgery feeling positive after plucking up the courage to get help for her problems, and she had planned to celebrate with a bit of shopping and a coffee in Caffè Alessandro on Earlby high street. But the prospect of no end to her sleepless nights or murderous thoughts had quashed all hope of a happier future. She couldn’t face the shops.
She was pleased there weren’t many people around, barring the local junior school team who were practicing on the football pitch, and the odd dog walker. It was peaceful. As she marched along, she replayed the conversation with Dr Smedley. She gave him a mental ear bashing for his patronising manner and inept medical practice, and she chided herself for not standing up to him.
Alison wondered why her mother had entrusted her child’s health to him, then rationalised that he’d have been much younger and his knowledge more up to date for that time. Thankfully, she had registered Chloe and Jack with one of the other GP’s in the practice.
The sight of an odd-looking man heading her way made her stop in her tracks. She assumed it was a man because of his gait, though it was difficult to tell due to the copious layers of clothing. Despite the mild weather, he was dressed more for the Antarctic than a stroll around the park, with heavy waterproof trousers, jacket and scarf. His zipped-up collar covered the lower half of his face, so that all Alison could see were his eyes beneath a hood which, on closer inspection, sat on top of a woollen balaclava, further unnerving her.
The nearest people were a couple of hundred metres away. Her heartbeat quickened. As she stood worrying about a pending attack, a little white Westie in a tartan coat hurtled out of the bushes and shot off across the park towards the football field.
‘Angus come back here this minute,’ called the well-spoken Antarctic man.
She felt guilty for assuming the worst.
The Westie carried on tearing across the pitch, disrupting the game as he chased after a football almost as big as him. The referee blew his whistle to halt play while the team dealt with the ensuing mayhem. Alison laughed at the scene, made more comedic by the sound of the man’s waterproofs, rustling into the distance as he darted off after Angus.
Danger averted, she carried on along to the lake and sat down on a park bench to watch the ducks and eat her sweets. Although there was no one around, the public footpath on the other side of the bushes behind her seat gave her a sense of security. She pondered over how she could be such a coward yet spend so much time fantasising about murdering another person.
She pulled out the prescription and stared at Dr Smedley’s scrawl. She wondered how her mother would have reacted. She’d no doubt think it was a load of rubbish, too. In fact, she’d be in fits of laughter at the very idea. But she’d more than likely try them, if for no other reason than to prove the doctor wrong, before telling him so.
She knew one thing – vitamins would not stop her from wanting to throttle Billy Chapman. Until he had turned up in the department, Alison hadn’t given him a thought since her first day at Saint Mary’s. She had only been twenty-one. Leaving tiny Chloe and Jack had been heart wrenching, but she’d had no choice – a family of four couldn’t live off Martin’s student grant.
Billy had plonked himself next to her in the lecture hall on induction day and irritated her from the outset – with his noisy gum-chewing and domination of the shared armrest. She never expected him to turn up as her boss so many years later – or for him to pick on her so much. He had started out in Sterile Services, so how he had ended up as Team Lead for Patient Services, she had no idea. She remembered him boasting about having only two GCSE’s, and how he had blagged his way through the interview to get the job. He had planned to scale up the career ladder doing as little as possible. His tactics had obviously paid off.
Until Billy burst into the office and rolled his eyes at the sight of her, she had coped with the insomnia.
She bit into the Cadbury’s finger of fudge and closed her eyes in delight as it melted in her mouth. At least, she thought, she had a supportive husband. Martin had said on many occasions that he wished he could swap places with her, so that she could have a good night’s sleep. He reckoned that would solve the problem with Billy, too. But he didn’t believe she was capable of murder, even without sleep. To a certain extent she could understand it – it was completely out of character for a placid, people-pleaser like herself. But Martin also knew she wasn’t a liar, so why didn’t he believe her?
Alison watched a family of ducks glide across the pond and pulled out the liquorice shoelaces. She sighed in resignation – there was nothing anyone could do to help her.
