Page 52 of The Therapist
There are at least twenty articles, some going back decades. Mike reads snatches of the stories that come from all over the world.
A Minnesota woman was cleared of all charges in the stabbing murder of her husband, telling reporters outside court that, ‘It was him or me. I knew that the next time he started hitting me, he would not stop until I was dead.’
Friends of the Sydney-based woman have expressed gratitude to the judge for finding her ‘not guilty’ of murder in the first degree after she hit her husband with a hammer, killing him in two blows. ‘She suffered for years at his hands. She was always covered in bruises and every time she tried to leave, he found her and beat her again. No one seemed to be able to help. He had too many connections, too much money, and everyone she reached out to failed her,’ a friend who did not want to be named is quoted as saying.
Today, a woman from Manchester has escaped a prison sentence for the poisoning murder of her abusive husband. After many years of emotional and physical abuse, the woman felt she had no choice but to end her husband’s life. Council for the defence stated that she had acted in self-defence and this was accepted by the jury.
The ghoulish collection stuns him. Over the last few years of his marriage, he has seriously questioned the kind of woman he is married to, but looking down at the articles, he understands he has underestimated just how different a human being Sandy is. And now she’s disappeared and the police want to question him.
Incandescent rage floods through his body and he stands, lifting the jar and chucking it across the kitchen, where it connects with a wall and shatters into pieces, blue shards of pottery flying everywhere.
‘Dad, Dad,’ he hears as he stands staring down at the wreckage. ‘What was the noise, Daddy? There’s a noise,’ shouts Felix, and Mike wants to roar with frustration but he can’t do that because now he’s woken the kids and he has to clean up the mess. He hates his life, hates it.
Two hours later he’s dropped the kids at school and he’s parked outside work, giving himself a pep talk so that he can get through the next hour and the one after that. He will have to leave early again today to pick up the kids but Paul doesn’t seem to mind – but then, why would he?
One comforting thought comes to him as he gets out of his car: he is here and Sandy is not, so whatever she had planned, whatever she was thinking, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Even with his heavy day weighing on him, he is able to smile at that thought.
Paul calls him in for a meeting as he walks through the door.
‘I can give you one month’s pay as severance. I know it’s…a paltry sum for someone who’s worked for a company for ten years but there’s nothing I can do, Mike, just nothing I can do.’ The older man shakes his head sadly and Mike wants to protest at the unfairness of it all but then the company going bankruptwill have to get in line behind all the other unfair things he has twisting through his mind.
He shrugs. ‘Not much you can do, Paul. I understand.’
‘I’m not the one making the decisions anymore. It’s the worst feeling in the world, I swear, it’s just the worst.’
‘I hear that,’ says Mike and he gets up to leave.You have no idea how bad things can get, no idea at all.
‘Is your wife back from her…where did you say she’s gone again?’
‘She’s taken herself on a little holiday,’ says Mike, unable to conceal the bitterness in his tone.
Paul looks at him over his glasses. ‘Not the best time for it.’
‘No,’ agrees Mike, ‘no, it’s not.’
He’s grateful to leave at 3 p.m. so he can get the kids, grateful to not be watching the front door, waiting for the police. The detective has not called him either and he debates with himself over calling again but decides against it.
When he pulls up outside school, his phone rings and he sees that, as though he has conjured the man out of thin air, it’s the detective. Lifting the phone to answer it, he watches his finger tremble as it goes to slide across the screen. And then he puts the phone down on the passenger seat, watches it ring until it stops.I can’t do it. I just can’t do it.
He takes the kids grocery shopping, letting them choose what they want as long as it’s on sale. He doesn’t have the energy for an argument. In his head he plans some meals that he knows he can cook while Lila and Felix debate a bar of chocolate over a packet of small chocolates, eventually deciding on the packet so they can share it equally. The total for all the groceries makes him sick and he contemplates putting some stuff back but the kids are ratty and tired and he just wants to get home.
For dinner, he manages a passable spaghetti and sauce for the kids although he assumes that part of the reason they don’t complain is because they are allowed to watch television while they eat, and he gets through bath time and bedtime with the usual issues. He cannot imagine doing this alone for the rest of his life but the kids won’t be little forever. There are plenty of single dads in the world, plenty. He has stuffed all of Sandy’s hideous articles at the top of the cupboard, not wanting to look at them but also wanting to keep them for when she does turn up, if she does turn up.
Just after 8 p.m., he’s in the kitchen, scrolling through job ads, despite having already looked today, hoping that something new pops up, when his phone vibrates with a text.
It’s probably Paul with yet another request from the auditor which Mike has no interest in reading but he opens it anyway without looking at who it’s from.
There’s something you need to know about your wife. Please contact me.
Mike stares down at the words. Is this a joke? And if so, why? He doesn’t recognise the number. It could be the detective again but why would he change numbers? And a detective wouldn’t send a message like that. Maybe it’s Sandy? But she wouldn’t say ‘your wife’. Who knows something more about his wife?
Screw it, he thinks and then he taps on the number.
TWENTY-TWO
WEDNESDAY
Lana
