Page 61 of The Therapist
The room is cold, small; the air smells of disinfectant and former occupants. I lay my head on the table, not caring about germs. I have been here for an hour, a day, a year. I have no idea. I want to sleep. My mind drifts to my bed at home with its rumpled white duvet. Every morning, I plan to make my bed but I’m always running late and I always leave it, returning to the mess at night. I would give anything to be there now, looking down at the crushed pillows and reminding myself to try and make the bed in the morning.
I don’t know how I ended up here. I can’t find the start of the thread so that I can pull the story apart. And yet, I have to. There will be lots of questions and I have some answers but not enough. I don’t know enough.
How do you find the start of such a story? Was it when I first met Sandy? When I first met Mike? Or when I first met Ben? Does it go back even further? Did it begin with my divorce? With the birth of my child or even further than that? My school years perhaps?
How did I allow myself to get here?
I know what I am doing with these circular thoughts. I am avoiding thinking about the small room, the sticky table, the fact that my wrists hurt from the plastic ties that were around them.
I picture Iggy and I see the gap where two front teeth have recently fallen out. He brought me the first tooth covered in blood, tears in his eyes. ‘Why is it bleeding?’ he cried.
‘Sometimes it does.’ I smiled, consoling him. He was ready for the next one, was proud of the little bit of blood there was.
I can’t stop the image of blood running through my head. Thick, red, spreading on the grass. Not Iggy’s. Iggy is safe. Iggy is safely with his father.
And I am here, my head on a sticky table, trying not to think about blood. I have never seen so much blood. Heads bleed profusely and I knew that but I still wasn’t expecting so much blood.
The door to the room opens and two men walk in and I sit up, blink. One of them is holding a cup. He places it down in front of me.
‘Thought you might need this.’ He has a moustache but no beard. It’s not often you see a man with only a moustache these days. I don’t like the way it looks. Wrapping my hands around the cup, I nod. It’s lukewarm and black. I don’t drink my coffee black but I gulp it anyway.
‘Lana Stanton,’ says the other one, no moustache or beard, only a light ginger stubble and very pale skin. ‘You’ve been arrested on the charge of attempted murder. Anything you say in this room may be taken down into evidence and held against you…’
I watch his mouth as he speaks, letting the words wash over me.
I think about Iggy instead. Iggy’s gap-toothed smile, Iggy’s laugh, Iggy’s endless questions about everything from dinosaurs to dinner drown out anything the detective is saying.
Last Monday, only two, no…three days ago, I arrived at work early because Iggy slept over at his father’s house. I wanted to get some work done before I saw my first patient of the week, a patient I had been reluctant to take on.
But she never turned up.
And now I am here and a man is in the hospital and these two detectives are going to ask me to explain it to them but I can’t.
I can’t even explain it to myself.
I listen as the detective with the moustache finishes speaking, telling me my rights. I hear only the word ‘lawyer’.
I have a right to a lawyer and I need one. But I need to ask some questions first and I need to tell these detectives about the scream, about Sandy, about all of it. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. ‘Concentrate, Lana,’ I whisper despite the detectives watching me.
‘Is Mike okay? Will he be okay?’ I ask. He hit his head and that’s what I’m worried about.
‘Hard to tell,’ says the detective with the moustache. ‘We’re waiting for an update from the hospital.’
I send a silent prayer up to the heavens that he is okay.
People die from hitting their heads. Not often but it does happen.
‘Do you want to explain what happened?’ the detective with the ginger stubble asks, and I peer at his badge: Detective Grafton.
‘I do,’ I say although I feel that it would be better to ask for a lawyer and then stop speaking but then what happens to Sandy? Because Sandy needs to be found and the things she has done need to come to light.
I rub my forehead with my hands and then I explain as quickly as I can, starting with Ben asking me to take on Sandy as a patient. I want to make sure that they understand I would never have had anything to do with her if not for Ben. Ben, whereis Ben? Did he leave the children alone? Did he just run after shouting at me through the window and startling me into firing the gun? I’m sure he did.
Both detectives are silent as I speak, only stopping me once or twice to get dates and times right. I cannot help but feel that I am metaphorically shooting myself in the foot here. I should have kept quiet.
‘If you ask Ben, he can tell you the same story. Everything I’ve said is true,’ I say. They won’t be able to ask Ben because I don’t think they will find him.
‘And Ben was with you at the house, you say,’ says Detective Grafton, some scepticism in his tone.
