Page 31 of The Therapist
‘She wasn’t there,’ I interrupt him. ‘He says she didn’t get the kids from school and she’s not answering her phone. He said…’ I take a deep sip of wine. ‘He said that she’s the one who hits him and he told me that she would actually leave her children and that I don’t really know what she’s like.’
Sandy has only ever expressed love and adoration for her children. She has admitted in sessions to yelling at them andI know she gets upset with herself when she does, but what mother doesn’t yell?
Ben is quiet for so long, I take my phone away from my ear to see if he’s hung up.
‘Ben?’
‘You didn’t believe any of that, did you? I mean, look at the size of the guy. And I know she loves those kids. They’re the only reason she hasn’t left.’
‘When did you meet Mike?’
‘I didn’t. She showed me a picture – a wedding picture if you can believe that. They were happy once but…you should not have gone there alone.’
‘Yeah, well,’ I say, taking another sip of my wine, ‘I’m fine but I’m not sure where to go from here. What if he’s telling the truth and she turns up in a day or two?’
‘What if he’s done something to her? You need to call the police.’
‘But…’
‘Lana, don’t mess about with this. Call the police, report her missing and tell them your concerns. I have to go now, my mother’s calling from the UK. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ He hangs up the phone abruptly. He’s angry with me for doing something stupid but I’m angry with him for putting me in this position in the first place. I know what he thinks I should do, but I’m still not completely convinced. If Sandy does turn up and the police are involved, it may make things worse for her. This is such an odd toxic situation.
I try Sandy’s mobile again but only get her voicemail. What do I do here?
The water for the pasta is boiling and the same thoughts keep going round and round in my head. I wish I had never taken Sandy on as a client and I am immediately guilty about this thought. I should be happy to help. That’s my job.
But she says one thing and Mike says another and I know that the truth is obviously somewhere in between unless one of them is an outright liar. But which one?
THIRTEEN
Mike
He locks up the house, checking the back door and the front door twice as the rain ramps up and dies down. Out in the back garden, the scooters and bicycles are rusting in the rain but he can’t be bothered squelching through the downpour to pick them up.
Near the front door, he glances anxiously up at the ceiling, noting that there is a bubble forming, meaning that there’s a leak. ‘Shit,’ he mutters. Roof leaks can cost a fortune to fix. He grabs a bucket to put under the bubble in case it bursts and checks the front door again. He’s already checked everything but he’s anxious, and when his anxiety kicks in, he has to keep checking things, keep taking care of the things he can control.
And then he gets a rag out and some bleach and goes to wipe the red streak on the white wall by the front door. Lana saw it. He knows she did. And now he knows exactly what she must think.
‘It’s my blood,’ he would like to tell her. But there’s no way she would believe him because no one is going to believe him. Three months ago, maybe more, he and Sandy had a fight lateone Saturday night. He was drinking and she was drinking and when her bottle of wine was empty, she hissed, ‘I hate you,’ and lobbed it at him, hitting him in the face. His nose started bleeding and he turned and left, grabbing tissues and going out of the front door, knowing that he needed to give her an hour to fall asleep before things got even worse. He thought he had cleaned up all the blood but he obviously missed some that dried and stained and now Lana has seen it.
Add to that the screenshot on his phone of an email, an email that he never received. Did he? And why is the screenshot on his phone? When would Sandy have had access to his phone?
Last night, after their vicious argument, Sandy slept in their bedroom and he passed out on the sofa.
This morning, she kicked the sofa hard to wake him and said, ‘You take the kids to school,’ and he knew better than to argue. She left him in the kitchen with them and he heard the bedroom door slam and then the sound of water running through the pipes, meaning she was taking a shower. He hasn’t heard from her since then.
He looks through his emails, trying to see if there’s one from Sandy asking for a divorce, but there isn’t one and he knew there wouldn’t be. That’s not the kind of email he would have missed. So how did she get the screenshot onto his phone? His code to unlock the phone is the kids’ birthdays, which Sandy knows. He doesn’t know how to unlock her phone, but he’s never cared.
He picks up some dirty plates to take to the kitchen, wondering exactly how he got here.
He knows he’s one of the few people in his friendship group from school who’s married. The rest of them are still single, still playing the field and enjoying every minute of it.
All week, since the appointment with Lana, he has thought about how to extricate himself from his marriage and his toxic wife. He imagined she was thinking exactly the same thing.
At some point during yesterday’s argument he yelled, ‘You don’t want to be a better person, Sandy. If you did, you wouldn’t have lied to your therapist like a psychopath.’
And she screamed back, ‘You’re the one who lied, Mike – you can’t hide what you are anymore. The whole world is going to know just what a monster I have had to live with.’
They would have gone on throwing hate at each other but then Felix appeared. ‘It’s bath time,’ he whispered, his little face pale and his blue eyes wide with fear.
