Page 24 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
“It won’t the longer we’re sat outside here.”
Chapter Six
Lady Phoebe
“Arthur’s back.”
“And how do you feel about that?” Dr. Kane asks.
I give him a dumb look. “How do you think I feel?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “You tell me.”
“Messed up.”
He tilts his head. “Why?”
I roll my eyes, get up, walk around his office. It’s very boring. Grey, black, white. Nothing for me to look at and distract myself—apart from that picture of his family on his desk but his son kind of resembles mashed potatoes, you know, pale, fat, chubby, so whenever I look at it, my stomach starts rumbling—so I go over to the window, stare down at all the tiny Londoners going about their days.
“What are you thinking about, Phoebe?”
“Like, right now?”
“Yes.”
“What my brains would look like splattered on the concrete if I jumped out this window.”
“Okay,” he says slowly. “That’s an intrusive thought and what do we do about those?”
I turn to face him. “I’m obviously not going to jump.”
“I know,” he smiles. “But when you get those thoughts, you have to acknowledge and ignore them.”
I start to wonder why I came today. We don’t have appointments, I just ring or text and if he has a free couple of hours, he tells me to come over. His clientele are people I’d never know but chances are, I’ve sat next to them at dinner parties ordanced with them at gala’s. So it’s a different type of therapy. A tucked away building in Knightsbridge with no name on the front, nothing advertising that it’s a shrink.
Maybe I came because of Arthur, maybe I came to get away from Digby, maybe I came so I didn’t have to work today. Or maybe I came just to talk. I don’t know. Coming to therapy always made me feel guilty. I haven't been through trauma. I’m not mentally disturbed. My heart sometimes just feels too heavy for me to carry, and some days I feel physically incapable of getting out of bed.
Those, to me, aren’t flashing signs of needing therapy but after what happened the October I was in New York when Arthur left, the first thing my mum did was call up Dr. Kane and book me in.
“Sit down,” he tells me.
I cross my legs on the grey couch.
“What do you plan on saying to Arthur? Have you spoken to him already?”
“No—there’s too much to say that it feels like there’s nothing to say.”
“Okay,” he nods again because he’s very understanding like that. “Have you told Digby yet?”
I laugh. “About what?”
“Either things but let’s start with The Nightmare.”
Everything inside of me stills as it typically does at the mention of The Nightmare.
“No, I don’t have any plans to, either.”
“Why not? He is your boyfriend, isn’t he?”
