Spider in the Corner of the Room (The Project Trilogy) (11 page)

I sniff. ‘Prison is very loud, Mama.’

‘Are they helping you?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘How?’

‘There is a psychiatrist. Dr Andersson. She is—’

‘What does she look like?’

I pause. ‘Why do you want to know?’ I look at Patricia. She smiles.

‘Oh, you know me,’ my mother says, ‘I like to know who is looking after my daughter, like to know every single detail. To picture it, if you will. Her hair, for example. What colour hair does she have?’

‘Blonde.’

‘Long?’

‘Yes. She is Swedish.’ Total silence. ‘Mama?’ A crackle echoes then a sharp bang.

‘Maria? Sorry. I dropped the telephone.’

I start to bite my nails. Something is not right. ‘Mama, I have a question that I need to ask you.’

‘Yes?’

‘Something I remembered about Father Reznik.’

She does not reply. Only the rasp of her breath fills the line. ‘Maria, my dear,’ she says finally, ‘he left. I’m so sorry, I know you adored him, but people leave. That’s just the way the world works. It wasn’t your fault, I have told you this. Your therapist from when Papa died told you this.’

I swallow a little. ‘Mama, I remembered something.’

A small sigh. ‘Okay, dear. What did you remember?’

I glance to Patricia then back to the phone. ‘I remember seeing you and Father Reznik…kissing.’

‘Oh, Maria.’

‘What?’

‘It is happening again.’

A flush of anger. ‘What is?’

‘Your mind making things up. Darling, this is what you do. I have been trying to help you for so long now.’

I grip the phone. ‘But I saw the two of you! Kissing near the vestry when I was supposed to be outside waiting for you. And…and you gave him something, some sort of letter or…or package. I know what I saw.’ Patricia steps forward but I ignore her, my fury feverish now, lethal. I cannot believe my mother is saying this again about me. I do not want to believe it. To believe her.

‘Maria, just calm down a little.’

‘No. You are denying it, but you know it is true. You and Father Reznik.’

‘You are still upset that Father Reznik left you.’ I go still. ‘Maria, I am right, no?’

I shake my head, blink. ‘I…What are you trying to….’ And then it steps into my view, an image, a memory, strong this time, all the colours clear, the image crisp. Father Reznik is waving goodbye to me, an aeroplane in the background, me watching, enraged, for some reason, that he is leaving me. My hair is long down to my back, so I am fifteen, perhaps sixteen, and I break free from my mother, her calling out to me that he will be back, but I am running to him, and when I get to him, just as Father Reznik opens his arms to hug me, saying he is leaving for just three months, I kick him hard in the shin.

‘Maria.’ My mother’s voice slices through the memory. It shatters into a thousand pieces. ‘Maria, you were always so angry when he left Spain, angry at the Church. The Catholic Church has been in Spain for hundreds of years, that’s just the way it is, but I know that always frustrated you, that control that you say they had, the lies that you said they told.’ She pauses, a petite cry. ‘You shouldn’t have taken out that anger on someone else, on that poor priest, poor Father O’Donnell at the convent.’

‘But I didn’t. I…’ A slow shriek. It spurts out from me. My mother. She doesn’t believe me.

‘Maria, sssh. There, there. It’s okay. It’s okay.’

Patricia steps over, stands beside me, not touching me, but there, real. I scratch at my scalp, my mind jumbled, exhausted. I let out a long breath and feel my shoulders finally loosen. I simply want to go home.

‘Maria, I’m going to come over to see you, okay?’

I drop my hand. ‘What?’ I sniff. ‘How?’

‘I’ve looked into it. You just need to request a visiting
order. Ramon will accompany me. He’s very concerned about you.’

My brother, too? ‘But he has never been concerned about me before.’

Another sigh. ‘Maria, you’re his sister, of course he is concerned about you. We need you to arrange the visiting order. Can you do that?’

Visiting orders. Prison. Iron bars. Loud screams. So much to process, to consider. I feel smothered by it all.

‘Is there anyone that can help you?’ my mother says.

Patricia tilts her head and smiles. ‘Yes,’ I say, after a moment. ‘I have someone who can help me.’

A whoosh of exhalation. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful. Wonderful. Does this mean you are making friends? Actually, no, don’t answer that. Tell me all about it when I see you, okay?’

I nod.

‘Maria? I said, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Good.’ There is a tinkle of silver, the coffee pot being poured. ‘Darling, keep your chin up in there, yes?’

‘My chin?’

‘It means stay positive. As much as you can, anyway. At least being in prison means you can get help now, where no one can be hurt.’ She sniffs, lets out another dainty cry. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Ignore me. It all gets a little much for me at times.’ I hear her breathe in. ‘But no matter. We will fly over to see you.’

Pips sounds. The prison phone. ‘I have to go, Mama.’

There is a stillness. ‘I know,’ she says, after a brief moment. ‘You look after yourself.’

‘Yes.’

She goes quiet. The pips patter again. ‘Maria, you’d better go. Take care. And—’

But she is cut off. For a few seconds, I do not move, just stand, staring at the receiver. Have I remembered everything incorrectly? I have just accused my mother of kissing another man. What sort of person does that make me? Slowly, Patricia reaches forward and prises the phone out of my hand. She returns it to its holder and looks at me. ‘How are you?’

I blink, find a focus. ‘She said they never kissed. That my memory is impaired.’

‘Oh.’

I roll my shoulders, pinch the folds of skin on them to try to get some blood flowing again through my muscles. Maybe everything I have believed is not true. Maybe life has jumbled everything up in my head, mixing memories like the shuffling of a deck of cards, throwing them in the air so they land randomly, out of synch. I drop my head to my hands. All I have are facts. If I stuck with them, if I used the facts I have to piece it all together, would I see the final picture on the puzzle?

We walk away from the phone bank in silence. Only the shuffle of our feet fills the air, the regular prison screams in the distance temporarily suspended.

‘Hey,’ Patricia says as we stop at the next door, ‘you’ve met the Governor, haven’t you?’

I nod.

‘Well,’ she says, rubbing her palms together, ‘listen to the gossip I discovered about him earlier. It’ll take your mind right off the phone call with your ma.’

Kurt is writing notes.

A wind shoots through the window and a shiver runs down my back. Kurt does not flinch.

I scan the edge of the room. Kurt’s talk of memory, of its distortion, is unsettling. Therapy is supposed to help you understand yourself, to feel better. But this? Now? I don’t feel better. I just feel frustrated. And frightened.

‘Maria?’

I turn. Kurt’s file rests on his lap, the Dictaphone lying on the edge of table, red light flashing.

‘I am going to ask you some more questions now.’ He crosses his legs. ‘You said, that when you spoke to Patricia in your cell after the call with your mother, she told you something about the Governor. I want you to tell me what she said.’ He clicks his pen and waits.

I sit up straight. This is not the right question. ‘Why are you discussing this instead of what my mother said about my memory?’

He tilts his head. ‘Do you not want to tell me about the Governor, Maria. Is that it? Is there some reason, perhaps, why you won’t talk about him?’

‘What? What do you mean?’ I press myself back against the lip of my chair. His eyes are suddenly steel, his voice prickles. The urge to flee wells up inside me again.

He leans in to me. ‘I want you to tell me exactly what Patricia said.’

Kurt is so close to me, so near that I can see every sinew of his skin. Not a blemish, not a stain. He has me chained to him. What choice do I have?

‘Patricia…’ I stop. Swallow. ‘Patricia said that the Governor was married to the UK Home Secretary.’

‘And you did not know this already?’

‘No. I…I did not realise.’

‘But everyone knows. It’s news. Are you telling me you didn’t hear about it?’

‘I do not follow such things.’

He sits back. ‘Maria, would it be true to say that when it comes to relationships, when it comes to men, women—or whatever your persuasion—you have difficulty understanding the situation?’

‘I…Yes,’ I say finally.

‘Have you ever had a relationship yourself? A boyfriend? Girlfriend?’

I sit and stare, the question hanging there, hovering like a floating ghost. The loneliness of my life is something I have been able to push to one side, to hide in a box, keep the lid tight shut. Until now.

A gust of wind bursts in and the window slams shut. I jump. Kurt glances over to it but says nothing, does not move. I slap my hand to my chest, slow myself. Something is happening here. Kurt was different just now. He was. I am positive. I have to try to seal it all in my mind, protect it, try to keep learning his contradictive nuances so I can paint the whole picture. So I can always remember.

A knock sounds on the door, breaking the suffocating silence. Kurt looks up. ‘Come in.’

The coffee woman enters, the same one as before. Why is she back? She passes Kurt a message on a square yellow piece of paper.

‘This came for you,’ she says, her voice a punnet of
plums, a swollen bunch of black grapes. ‘They need to speak to you for a moment.’

The women then turns, stares at me, her mahogany hair bobbing by her shoulders, skin the colour of buttermilk, jeans black, painted on, her leather jacket studded, worn. She continues her gaze for three seconds then, throwing Kurt a smile, she leaves, clicking the door shut behind her.

‘Who is she?’

Kurt reads the note then stands. ‘She’s my…girlfriend. She helps out here sometimes.’

I look at the door where she exited. He has someone. Someone to hold, to love. I wonder what that must feel like.

Kurt scrunches up the note and drops it into the wastepaper basket. ‘That was a message about a patient. The service need to speak to me straight away,’ he says. ‘I have to leave. I will just be a few minutes.’ He turns to exit then pauses. ‘Maria, I’m sorry if I make you feel uneasy sometimes. I know I must do. It’s just the therapy technique. Let yourself trust it. That’s the best advice I can give to you.’ He applies a quick smile. ‘Well, excuse me.’

After he has left, I breathe out and stand. My legs feel like two dead limbs. I shake them, blood rushing to my feet, and think. What Kurt said about his therapy technique, perhaps he has a point. Perhaps I am fighting it too much, reading too much into it, looking for clues and lies that simply aren’t there.

The air feels woolly, thick, and I remember: the window slammed shut earlier. I walk over to it and thrust it open. Wind rushes in, and I allow myself to savour it for a second, this glimmer of freedom, of the world below. Through the bars, the bustle of the city street rushes past in a blur of
watercolour paint. Though the noise is loud, I force myself to scan it all. Because it is here. All this life beyond—it is here. It exists. And I have to picture it exactly as it is. Like taking a photograph.

Soon, Kurt will return, and if I want this therapy to help me this time, I must have a clear head. I walk back towards my seat, spot the wastepaper basket and hesitate. The note about Kurt’s patient is there, the paper yellow, words and colour together in one place just like an encoded memory. Maybe if I read the note, it will settle my mind, help me to see reality in action—real words, real colours. Then, perhaps, I will cease worrying about contexts and hidden meanings and distorted memories.

Without allowing myself a change of mind, I quickly bend down and grab the scrunched note. Returning to my chair, I flatten the paper ready to read it then stop.

I turn the paper over. Then over again. But still, I am right. Because it is blank. The paper is blank. No writing on either side. No message about a patient.

Which means only one thing: Kurt lied.

The door handle rattles and I freeze. He is returning.

T
he door is opening. I re-scrunch the note and throw it towards the bin, but it lands on the floor. I scramble up, fling the paper into the wastepaper basket and dart back to my seat. My heart bangs against my chest, violent, crazed. I can’t let him catch me.

Kurt enters and stops. He looks at me then glances to the wastepaper basket. ‘What were you doing?’

My chest heaves up and down. I don’t know what to do. I have a split-second decision to make: truth or lie.

‘I said what were you doing?’

‘I read the note.’

He shuts the door, stands, levitating almost, unreal. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds pass. My pulse pounds in my neck.

‘There were no words on it,’ I say, fearful of how he is going to react. ‘The paper you threw in the bin—it was blank.’

He draws in a long breath then stares straight at me.
‘Are you sure about that, Maria? There was writing on it when it was first given to me.’ He walks to the wastepaper basket, retrieves the note and sits down. He slips the paper into his pocket and picks up the Dictaphone.

I look at the bin, at where the note lay. Writing on it? How can it be?

Kurt brings the Dictaphone to his mouth and presses the record button. ‘The patient appears to be having episodes of confabulation.’ His eyes find me. ‘She is experiencing severe distortion and fabrication of events, all of which are affecting her memory. The subject has retrieved a note written to me, and has convinced herself that it contains no writing when in fact, it does. Furthermore, the level of paranoia…’

And, as Kurt records his notes, I touch my forehead and blink over and over at the criss-cross pattern of the wastepaper basket.

What is happening to me?

I am in the Plaza Mayor, the outdoor living room of Salamanca.

It is summer. The month is August. Heat shimmers from the stonework like a mirage, like a cloaked vision, and I prop my hand on my brow, squint and observe. The square is brimming with summer students, tourists, bronzed locals, their skin glistening in the sun.