‘Would you like to give us your
version of events, Dr Klein?’ Thelma Scott, the elderly woman in the neck brace
and ugly jumper, fixed Frieda with her sharp eyes.
Now that this moment, which she had long
dreaded, had at last arrived she felt calm. ‘Alan Dekker came to me in November
because he was tormented by fantasies of having a child. He was childless himself,
although he and his wife had been trying for some time to have a baby. So we talked
about why his childlessness should cause not just grief but severe dysfunction. At the
same time an actual child, Matthew Faraday, had disappeared. The child that Alan
described – the one he had never had – was so like the boy who had disappeared that I
felt I had to report it to the police. And then I told Alan what I’d
done.’
‘Was he angry?’ asked Jasmine
Barber.
Frieda thought for a moment. ‘He
seemed understanding, maybe even too much so. He found it hard to express anger. I found
him to be a gentle, self-doubting kind of man. Carrie – Mrs Dekker – was angry on his
behalf. She was very protective of him. It doesn’t surprise me that she’s
the one complaining for Alan.’
‘But that wasn’t the only time
you crossed a boundary, was it?’ said Krull.
Frieda met his eyes. ‘The case turned
out to be complicated. Alan was adopted. He discovered – no, I discovered and told him –
that he was an identical twin. He had a brother, whom he knew nothing about, and yet
they had an extraordinary psychological similarity and also a kind of connection, an
affinity if you will. They saw things in the same way, to some extent. Not surprisingly,
this discovery was disturbing to Alan. It was this brother who had taken
Matthew: Dean Reeve – a household name now, the nation’s favourite
bogeyman.’
‘Who killed himself.’
‘He hanged himself under a bridge by a
canal over in Hackney when he knew he couldn’t escape us. However much Alan hated
the thought of his brother, he loved him as well. At least, he felt he had lost part of
himself when he died. He must have suffered a great deal. But that’s not what
Carrie means when she talks about me using him.’ Frieda looked at the three of
them with her large, dark eyes. ‘On one occasion,’ she continued, ‘I
talked to him as a way of entering his brother’s mind, of trying to find out what
his brother was thinking. Without telling him. If I’d told him, it wouldn’t
have worked.’
‘So you did use him?’
‘Yes,’ said Frieda. They were
all struck by her voice, which sounded angry rather than conciliatory.
‘Do you think that was
wrong?’
Frieda was silent for several moment,
frowning. She let herself slide back into the darkness of the case, among its shadows
and its inky dread. Her patient Alan had turned out to be the identical twin of Dean, a
psychopath who had abducted not only Matthew but, twenty years previously, a little
girl. And that little girl Joanna, once skinny and gap-toothed and shy, mourned without
cease by her family, had turned out to be the fat, lethargic wife of Dean, hiding in
plain sight, a victim turned perpetrator. It was Sasha’s DNA test that had proved
the obese, chain-smoking Terry was knock-kneed Joanna, that Dean’s willing
collaborator was also his victim. What was more – and this was what Frieda still thought
about when she stalked the London streets at night until she was so tired she could
sleep, and what she still dreamed about – Frieda’s discovery of the freakish
similarity
between the twins had led to the abduction of a young
research student, whose body had never been found. She thought of Kathy Ripon’s
clever, likeable face and the future she would not have. Perhaps her parents were still
waiting for her to return, their hearts turning at every knock on the door. These
people, her judges, asked her if what she had done was wrong, as if there was a simple
answer; a truth that was not slippery and treacherous. She lifted her eyes and faced
them again.
‘Yes,’ she said, very clearly.
‘I wronged Alan Dekker, as my patient. But I don’t know if I was wrong. Or,
at least, I think I was both wrong and right in what I did. What Alan said to me on that
day led directly to Matthew. He saved a little boy’s life, there’s no doubt
about that. I thought he was glad he had helped. I know that time alters the way one
thinks about things, and I have no idea what he’s been through since then, but I
don’t understand why now, a year and a bit later, he would want to complain about
something that at the time he accepted. Can I say one more thing?’
‘Please.’ Professor Krull made a
courtly gesture with his thin, blue-veined hands.
‘Carrie talks about me putting my
career before her husband’s peace of mind and happiness. I did not further my
career. I do not work for the police and have no interest in being a detective. A young
woman disappeared because of my actions, and I live with that. But that is a separate
issue, not what we’re talking about now. As a therapist, I believe in
self-knowledge, in autonomy. What people discover about themselves during therapy may
not lead to peace or to happiness. Indeed, it often doesn’t. But it can lead to
the possibility of turning what is unbearable into what is bearable, of taking
responsibility for yourself and having a degree of control over your own life. That is
what I do, as far as I
can. Happiness …’ Frieda raised both
hands in an expressive gesture and fell silent.
‘So if you were asked to
apologize …’
‘Apologize? For what? To whom?
I’d like to know what Alan has to say in all of this. He shouldn’t be
letting his wife be his mouthpiece.’
There was an awkward silence, and then
Thelma Scott said in a dry voice: ‘As far as I know, Mr Dekker has nothing to
say.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I imagine you don’t. The
complaint appears to come from Mrs Dekker.’
‘On his behalf.’
‘Well. So one would assume.’
‘Wait. Are you telling me that Alan
has nothing to do with this?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Professor
Krull looked embarrassed.
‘What’s this for?’ Frieda
made a gesture at the long oval table, the woman taking the minutes at the far end, the
portraits of august members of the council hanging on the walls. ‘I thought it was
to investigate a complaint made, however indirectly, by a patient. Since when are we
responsible for dissatisfaction felt by the partner of a patient? What am I doing here?
What are
you
all doing here?’
Professor Krull cleared his throat.
‘We want to head off any possibility of litigation. Smooth things over.’
Frieda stood up abruptly, her chair scraping
over the wooden boards. Her voice was quivering with suppressed fury as she said,
‘
Smooth things over?
You want me to apologize for something I believe
to be justified, or at least not unjustified, to someone who wasn’t involved
anyway?’
‘Dr Klein,’ said Krull.
‘Frieda,’ said Jasmine Barber.
‘Please wait.’
Thelma Scott said nothing;
her grey eyes followed Frieda.
‘I’ve got better things to do
with my time.’
She took her coat from the back of the chair
and walked out, making sure not to bang the door behind her. As she went along the
corridor towards the front entrance, she caught a glimpse of a woman going down the
stairs on her left and stopped. Something about the sturdy frame, the short brown hair,
was familiar. She shook her head, continued towards the exit, but then changed her mind
and turned back, taking the stairs to the canteen. And she was right: it was Carrie
Dekker, Alan’s wife, the woman who had just made her sit through the charade
upstairs. In the year since she had seen her, she seemed to have grown shorter,
stockier, older, more tired. Her brown hair was shaggy. Frieda waited while Carrie got
herself a mug of coffee and took a seat in the corner, next to a radiator, then
approached her.
‘Can I join you for a
moment?’
Carrie stared at her, her face tightening
with hostility. ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she said.
Frieda took the chair opposite her. ‘I
thought we should talk face to face.’
‘Why aren’t you still being
interviewed? You’ve only been in there for a short while.’
‘I wanted to ask you
something.’
‘What?’
‘Alan was my patient. Why are you,
rather than him directly, making the complaint against me?’
Carrie looked startled. ‘Don’t
you know?’
‘Know what?’
‘You’ve really got no idea? You
came into our lives. You talked about safety. You told Alan he could trust you. You fed
him with ideas about knowledge, about being true to himself.
You told
him not to be ashamed of anything he felt. You gave him permission.’
‘And?’
‘I just wanted him cured.’ For a
moment her voice wavered. ‘He was
ill
and I just wanted him to get
better. That’s what you were for. Is that what you mean by cured? You find
yourself and leave your wife.’
‘What?’
‘You changed him.’
‘Carrie, stop a moment. Are you
telling me that Alan left you?’
‘Didn’t you know?’
‘No. I haven’t seen or talked to
Alan since the December before last, when his brother was found dead.’
‘Well. Now you know.’
‘When did he leave?’
‘When?’ Carrie lifted her head.
Her eyes met Frieda’s. ‘Christmas Day, that’s when.’
‘That’s hard,’ said
Frieda, softly. She was beginning to understand why Carrie had complained. ‘So
it’s been just over a month.’
‘Not this Christmas. Last
Christmas.’
‘Oh,’ said Frieda. For a moment,
the room around her seemed to lose its definite shape. ‘You mean straight after
his brother killed himself?’
‘As if he was just waiting. You really
didn’t know? I assumed he’d talked to you – I assumed you’d
encouraged
him.’
‘Why did he go?’
‘Because he felt better. He
didn’t need me any more. He’s always needed me. I looked after him. But
after you’d got to him, he was different.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘Not in so many words. But that was
how he behaved. For
a few days after Dean killed himself, he was – I
can’t describe it. He was cheerful, full of energy, decisive. It was the best few
days of my life. That was what made it so hard. I thought everything was going to be all
right. I’d been so scared for so long, and suddenly there he was, the old Alan.
Or, rather, a new Alan. And he was so – so affectionate. I was happy.’
She turned her head so that Frieda
wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes, and sniffed angrily.
‘He must have given some
explanation.’
‘No. He just said it had been good but
now it was over. When I think of what I gave up for him, how I looked after him, how I
made him safe in the world … I loved him and I knew he loved me. Whatever else
happened, we had each other. Then he just left without a backward glance – and what have
I got now? He took everything – my love, my trust, my child-bearing years. And
I’ll never forgive you for that. Never.’
Frieda nodded. Her anger with Carrie had
long gone.
‘You know, Alan went through a
terrible trauma,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he just couldn’t bear to be in
his old life for a bit, so he ran away from it, but it doesn’t mean it’s
permanent. The important thing is to keep communicating with him, keep doors
open.’
‘And how am I supposed to do
that?’
‘Won’t he talk to
you?’
‘He’s gone.
Disappeared.’
Frieda felt suddenly cold in spite of the
radiator blasting out heat beside her. She spoke slowly and carefully. ‘Do you
mean you don’t even know where he is?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘He didn’t leave a forwarding
address?’
‘He just walked out with a few clothes
and that bag of tools his psychopath brother left him just before he killed
himself. Oh, and almost all of the money in his bank account. I opened
his statements. I’ve tried to find him but he obviously doesn’t want to be
found.’
‘I see,’ said Frieda.
‘So that’s why I made a
complaint. You stole my life from me. You might have found that little boy, and rescued
Dean’s wife, who didn’t seem to want rescuing, but you lost my
Alan.’
Carrie stood up and buttoned her jacket; a
skin was forming on the surface of her untouched coffee. Frieda watched her as she left
but didn’t move for several minutes. She sat quite still, her hands on the table
in front of her, her face without expression.
As Frieda walked away from the Institute
she was thinking so hard that she scarcely knew where she was. When she felt a nudge on
her shoulder, she thought she had bumped into someone.
‘Sorry,’ she began, and then
gave a start. ‘What the hell are
you
doing here?’
Karlsson laughed, feeling his grim mood lift
at the sight of her grumpy face. ‘It’s good to see you too, after all these
months,’ he said. ‘I came to find you.’
‘This isn’t a good time,’
said Frieda.
‘I can imagine,’ said Karlsson.
‘I saw Carrie Dekker leave a few minutes before you came out.’
‘But why are you here at
all?’
‘Charming. After all we went through
together.’
‘Karlsson,’ Frieda said
warningly. He had never persuaded her to call him by his first name.
‘I had trouble reaching you. Why
don’t you ever switch your mobile on?’
‘I only check it about once a
week.’
‘At least you got round to buying one.
I talked to your friend, Paz, up at the clinic. She told me what was up. Why
didn’t you call me?’ He looked around. ‘Can we go for a coffee
somewhere?’
‘I was just in the canteen with
Carrie. Alan’s left her. Did you know that?’
‘No,’ said Karlsson. ‘I
didn’t stay in touch.’
‘And when I say
“left”, I mean really left. He’s just gone. Don’t you think
that’s strange, for someone who was so utterly dependent on her, and
adoring?’