Die of Shame (19 page)

They talk about the party and what a great time they all had, though it doesn’t escape Tony’s attention that Diana is tense and Robin seems unusually muted. Instead of biscuits they eat some of the leftover sausage rolls and mini pizzas that Heather has brought along, and when they finally take their places in the circle Tony says, ‘That’s a very nice way to start the session.’ He opens his notepad and looks around. ‘And hopefully Heather’s party will have been the high point of a good week for everyone. Yes?’

‘Fantastic week,’ Heather says. ‘Thanks to you. To all of you.’

There are the usual nods and murmurs of affirmation from the others, but before Tony has a chance to note down the response, Diana is speaking up.

‘A good week in the sense of staying clean and sober, absolutely,’ she says. ‘But otherwise a particularly shitty one.’

‘OK.’ Tony waits.

‘Well, the woman my husband chose to leave me for has got herself pregnant.’

‘I don’t think she got
herself
pregnant,’ Chris says.

Diana ignores him. ‘It’s utterly horrendous and to make matters worse my daughter’s antipathy towards me has only worsened. I didn’t think the situation could be any more intolerable, but it looks like I was wrong.’

‘You’ve done well to come through it,’ Tony says.

‘I’m not sure I have.’

‘In terms of not drinking, I mean.’

‘Well, if I began drinking again, she’d really have won, wouldn’t she?’

‘Didn’t we go through all this at the party?’ Robin says, suddenly. He undoes the top button of his shirt. He is sweating a little. ‘It’s all you talked about.’

Diana turns and stares at him. ‘Yes, but as you said yourself, that wasn’t a session, was it?’

‘Felt like it.’

‘I think Robin’s got a point though,’ Caroline says. ‘Do we really want to listen to you moaning about your ex-husband and his girlfriend any more?’ She smiles at Diana. ‘I’m sorry if that sounds mean.’

‘I agree,’ Robin says.

‘Broken bloody record,’ Chris says.

Diana looks to Tony. ‘My relationship with my daughter is the most important thing in the world to me and it feels like it’s been stolen. This is my “here and now” and I thought that’s what you wanted us to talk about.’

It’s not the first time Diana has misinterpreted an important principle of Tony’s work in the sessions. ‘The “here and now” literally means that,’ he says. ‘
Here
and
now
. What’s happening in the group, what’s going on between the members of the group, and not what’s happening to any individual outside it. Their feelings about what you’re talking about are precisely the “here and now” and I can’t ignore them.’ He looks to Chris, to Caroline, to Robin. ‘There are some fairly strong feelings, by the sound of it.’

‘I need to talk about this.’

‘This is group therapy, Diana, not individual counselling with people watching. It’s not a one-to-one session with an audience.’

Diana says, ‘Fine.’ She sits back and folds her arms like a scolded schoolgirl. ‘Whatever’s best for the group, obviously.’

‘Thank you,’ Tony says. ‘I am looking forward to hearing from you later on, though.’

Caroline looks at Diana. ‘Your turn tonight, is it?’ She widens her eyes. ‘Another tale of shame.’

‘If Diana thinks it will be useful.’

Diana says nothing.

Tony waits to see if anyone has anything else to contribute, then says, ‘I’m wondering if you’re OK, Robin.’

Robin says, ‘I’m fine.’

‘You do seem a bit stressed,’ Heather says. ‘Everything all right?’

Everyone is looking at him. He is bolt upright in his chair, knuckles white against the armrests. He nods and says, ‘Stressed is perhaps putting it a bit mildly. What I’m trying to do right now is keep a good deal of real anger in check and it’s not easy, I promise you.’

Tony can see it. ‘So, I’m wondering where that anger’s coming from?’

Robin stares at the floor and shakes his head for a few moments. Then he looks up again and his eyes have narrowed. ‘It’s about feeling betrayed. It’s about being threatened, because frankly there isn’t any other word for it.’ Now, his hands are fists, bouncing against his knees. ‘And the ugly truth is that someone in this circle knows exactly what I’m talking about.’

The others begin looking around.

Caroline says, ‘Who you on about?’

‘What’s happened?’ Heather asks.

Tony is quick to raise a hand. ‘OK… I have to hold myself partially responsible for this, because I’ve been happy to encourage a degree of socialising outside the sessions… but now clearly an issue of some sort has arisen.’ He looks around. Robin is staring at Chris. ‘When there is tension between people that has developed in their own time, it simply can’t be allowed to come to a head within the circle.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Robin says.

Tony hasn’t finished. ‘It’s very serious. Something like this is simply not fair to those who aren’t involved.’

Chris stares back at Robin and holds up his hands. ‘What are you looking at me for?’

‘At the risk of sounding like a pub landlord,’ Tony says, ‘you really have to take this outside. I don’t mean now, either. Whatever’s going on, it needs to be resolved, but not in group. I can’t control what happens in your own time, but perhaps I need to seriously reconsider the policy of group members’ meeting up during the week, certainly in terms of my best advice.’ He shakes his head and begins writing in his notebook.

Caroline says, ‘Was it always like this?’

‘What do you mean?’ Diana asks.

‘I’m starting to wonder if this is something to do with me, that’s all. Me joining the group.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Heather says.

‘It’s not your fault,’ Tony says. ‘Yes, any new member will naturally change the dynamic of a group to an extent, but it’s always been… feisty.’

‘
Feisty
?
’ Caroline shakes her head. ‘Bloody hell.’

Tony lets the silence hang for a few moments, then looks at Robin. ‘I’d like to move on, if everyone’s OK with that.’

‘Understood,’ Robin says. ‘I didn’t mean to disrupt things.’

Tony nods and looks to his left, but Chris just shakes his head, still apparently confused. It has begun to rain outside, noisy against the glass all around them.

Tony tries to instigate a general discussion about the positive effects of happy memories, but only Caroline and Heather seem enthused. Heather says that having the rest of the group there to celebrate her birthday will be a happy memory to look back on and Caroline talks for a while about a camping holiday with her mum and dad when she was a girl.

Tony winds the discussion up after fifteen minutes or so, and looks at Diana. He says, ‘So what do you think, Diana? Is there a story you’d like to share?’

‘Well, only if it’s all right with everyone,’ she says, through a thin smile. ‘I don’t want to get on anyone’s nerves more than I already have.’

Heather leans towards her. ‘Don’t be like that.’

‘It’s always counter-productive to harbour a grudge,’ Tony says.

‘Nobody was trying to be nasty.’ Caroline looks around the circle. ‘Were they?’

Robin manages to summon a smile. ‘Of course not.’

‘It’s just about mixing things up a bit. It would be like me talking about my bloody diet all the time. How boring would that be?’

Chris nods and yawns theatrically. ‘Right. Or me banging on about my numerous sexual conquests.’ He grins. ‘OK, bad example.’

Diana says, ‘Well, all right, then,’ but her body language belies her apparent reluctance and Tony can tell that she is itching to talk. ‘It goes back to when I was a lot younger.’ She glances at Robin. ‘Rather like yours. Back to when I was at school.’

‘Private school?’ Chris asks.

Heather looks at him. ‘Who cares what kind of school it was?’

‘Yes, private,’ Diana says. ‘But that’s not strictly relevant, because what happened goes on at every school.’

Tony throws a warning glance at Chris, who is clearly desperate to make some remark about sex and bike sheds. He nods at Diana to continue, his pen poised.

‘There was a girl at my school who was not exactly everybody’s favourite, shall we say. Not hugely popular, not good at games or particularly bright or anything. She was big, you know?’ She looks at Caroline. ‘Not…
big
… I mean she was tall for her age, a bit clumsy.’ She sits back and clears her throat. ‘She wasn’t exactly thrilled about any of this, so she took it out on other girls. Girls who were that bit younger, who she thought were prettier than she was. She was a bully, basically, and she was clever about it. Sly, you know?

‘There was hair-pulling and pinching and that kind of thing, but it was never when there were others around to see it. Sometimes it was worse than that. A compass in the back of the leg, breaking other girls’ things, taking money from them… and sometimes, when she really got angry, the violence would… escalate. Kicks and slaps and so on.’ Diana’s hand moves slowly to her face and presses. ‘You could see the marks of her fingers afterwards, the outline of it…

‘It was the emotional stuff that was the worst though. That’s what she was really good at. Turning one girl against another, or two against one, then standing back to watch them tearing each other to pieces. She could make someone cry with very little effort. She had a talent for it. She would seek out the weaknesses in those girls who seemed to have everything going for them and just… reduce them. A couple of the girls she targeted had to leave in the end. She was actually proud of that, if you can believe it. Better than being popular or being in the hockey team or whatever.’

She lets out a long breath and swallows hard. ‘She was truly vile. Back then, there wasn’t such a fuss made about bullying, so the stupid thing is she got away with it. For years, she got away with it.’

After a moment or two she looks at Tony, to let him know that she’s finished, but he is busy writing.

‘That’s horrible,’ Caroline says. ‘I hate bullies. They’re basically just cowards.’

‘Why didn’t you ever tell anyone?’ Heather asks.

Tony looks up. ‘I think Diana is trying to tell us that she was the bully.’ He looks across. ‘Correct, Diana?’

She nods.

‘I got that,’ Chris says, pleased. ‘I’d worked that out.’

The others are looking at Diana. Robin leans across. ‘Well, cowardly or not back then,
that
was brave,’ he says. ‘Thanks for telling us.’

Tony closes his notebook. ‘I’m wondering, Diana, bearing in mind what you wanted to talk about at the start of the session, if you think it’s relevant that the girls you targeted back then were younger than you. Younger and prettier, you said. Is that something you’d agree is worth thinking about?’

Diana smiles. ‘It’s something I think about every day,’ she says.

Chris folds his arms and lets out a whistle. ‘Well, I’d be worried,’ he says, ‘if I was that young piece your ex-husband’s got up the duff. Seriously, I’d be shitting myself.’ He looks around. ‘I’d be watching out for a compass in the back of my leg.’

On a different night, they might have kicked things off by pulling Diana’s story apart, demanding more detail from her, more disclosure. The session would have continued, albeit more informally and without its leader. The mood around the pub table is that little bit darker tonight though, the conversation subdued and unusually prosaic.

Heads are down.

Diana is all but wrung out, or giving a good impression of it. She chips in now and again, nods and smiles, but to all intents and purposes, she is elsewhere. Next to her, Robin contributes even less than she does. Though there is a drink in front of him, he has not touched it and he does not react when Heather or Caroline looks towards him or provides a verbal cue that he might normally pick up on, trying and failing to drag him into the conversation. He is animated only briefly, once every few minutes or so, when he turns to look at Chris, who is busy at the fruit machine on the other side of the pub.

This does not escape anyone’s notice, but they try to ignore it. Heather and Caroline – who are doing enough talking for everyone – have taken Diana’s story as the starting point for a series of largely comical reminiscences about their own schooldays. They swap tales of dodgy teachers and classmates, bad behaviour on school trips and assorted academic disasters.

‘Did you have a nutter at your school?’ Caroline asks. Seeing Heather think about it, she says, ‘If you didn’t, it was probably you. Come on, there’s always a nutter. We had a kid called Mickey Fox, who’d do anything you told him to. Literally, anything. He chucked his entire desk out of the window once because someone told him to. Kicked a squirrel to death in the playground one morning.’

‘I don’t think we had anyone that bad,’ Heather says.

‘He got done for stabbing a taxi driver after he left school.’ Caroline nods. ‘Should have seen that coming, I suppose.’

‘We had a bullshitter,’ Heather says.

Caroline laughs. ‘Yeah, so did we. There’s always a nutter and there’s always a bullshitter.’

‘Colin Goodman.’ Heather smiles, remembering. ‘Came back after the holidays and told us he’d shagged his scoutmistress. Gave us all the juicy details. We were only eleven, or something. Told us his mum was in a James Bond film and his dad invented the PlayStation.’ She shakes her head. ‘He just lied about everything, all the time.’

‘He’s probably an MP or something now,’ Caroline says.

They laugh and drink. They each cast a glance towards Robin and Diana, then further, to where Chris is slamming his hand against the fruit machine in frustration.

‘Was it hard for you at school?’ Heather asks.

Caroline looks at her. ‘Not particularly.’

‘You never got… picked on?’

‘No more than anyone else.’

‘Because of being big, I mean.’

‘No, because I wasn’t actually overweight at school.’

‘Oh…’

‘Not for most of the time anyway. Actually I was pretty sporty, in all the teams and that. I didn’t start overeating until I was sixteen.’

‘I should probably go,’ Diana announces, suddenly.

Heather and Caroline both look across, then look at each other. ‘Don’t be silly,’ Caroline says.

‘It’s really hard to just sit here, that’s all, after you’ve told a bunch of people something so horrible.’ Diana empties her glass and dabs at her hair. ‘Wondering what they must think of you.’

‘There’s no judgement,’ Heather says. ‘Never. Nobody is forced to say anything and nobody can judge them for anything they do say, or punish them for it.’ She waits until Diana finally meets her eye. ‘You know that. You’ve heard Tony say it a dozen times.’

‘Nobody can stop you judging yourself, though. Doesn’t matter what the rules are.’

‘I think that’s all part of it,’ Caroline says. ‘What we’re there for. Maybe not judging, but trying to understand ourselves at least.’

‘Well, I’m certainly not there yet,’ Diana says. ‘I’m a long way —’

She stops when Robin pushes the table away and gets quickly to his feet; when he says, ‘Right, that’s it,’ and turns to walk quickly towards the far corner of the pub. The three women watch him go and it is all too clear who he is heading for.

Heather starts to stand up. ‘I should stop him.’

‘Don’t,’ Caroline says. ‘Whatever the hell this is about, I wouldn’t get involved. I think Robin can take care of himself.’

‘It’s not Robin I’m worried about,’ Heather says. ‘Did you see his face?’

Chris is digging into his pocket for more coins when he catches Robin’s approach from the corner of his eye. He turns to face him, grinning, ready to ask if Robin has any spare change. Then he sees the expression and takes a step back, until he is hard against the fruit machine.

‘You’re not going to get away with this, you know,’ Robin says.

‘Oh, I’ve been getting away with it for years, darling.’ Chris looks for a reaction, but it’s not a comforting one. Robin appears ready to kill. ‘What’s your problem?’

‘You. You’ve always been my problem.’ The South African accent is suddenly more pronounced, that dangerous-sounding rolling R. ‘This is something else, though. This is a threat, pure and simple. Well, let me tell you that I’ve been threatened before and I didn’t cave in then, and I will not cave in now.’

‘You’ve lost it, mate,’ Chris says. ‘You back on the drugs?’

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

Chris looks at him.

‘Might be able to up your price if I was using again.’

‘What price?’ Chris laughs, quick and nervous. ‘I’ve got no idea what —’

‘Trust me, I’ve never thought more clearly in my life. I know exactly who I am, even if you don’t, and I will not be threatened by a worthless piece of scum like you.’

‘When am I supposed to have threatened you?’

‘I’m not scared, you know,’ Robin says. ‘You carry on with this and I’ll go straight to the police.’

Chris throws up his arms. The nerves, the apparent confusion, have now been replaced by irritation. ‘Do what the fuck you want. I haven’t got a clue what you’re banging on about, mate, so why should I give a toss what you do?’

‘You’ve been warned,’ Robin says.

‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

‘Are we clear?’

‘Oh, definitely.’

Robin nods, his point made. He jabs a finger towards Chris, then turns and marches away.

‘I don’t suppose you could lend us a few quid?’ Chris shouts after him. He looks past Robin to the table from where Heather and the others have been staring. Seeing them, he raises his arms again. He laughs and shakes his head and the four of them watch as Robin stops, turns and pushes through the pub door, out into the street.