In The Garden Of Stones (3 page)

“
I take it there was to be no trashing, beating or
stabbing,” says Mal.

“
No, just a solid twenty-four hours of frenetic cleaning,
scrubbing, polishing, dusting, rearranging of furniture, all
accompanied by non-stop gibberish babbling. When my rubber band
finally snapped, I was spark out on Alec’s couch for a full
eighteen hours. I didn’t need the pills. Wearing myself out and
getting a good solid sleep pressed my reset button. A good long
chat and a cry with Alec and his boyfriend, lots of hugs and fine
red wine and I felt pretty okay again. I went home and carried on
where I left off.”

“
For how long?”

“
Nearly two and a half years … until I crossed paths with
that delightful charmer, Connor Mackintosh.”

She spat
out the name as if it were a bitter tasting poison.

Mal
rests his head against the back of his chair. “And would he have
anything to do with what led up to this current event?”

“
Everything. Connor inveigled his way into my life, making
himself my partner, both business and personal. He was that sort of
person … irresistible. He was talented and attentive and life
seemed to be rather peachy … until I got pregnant. That’s when it
all changed. Connor made it perfectly clear that having a kid would
not be the best idea. Business was thriving, we were travelling a
lot, neither of us could give a child the quality time and
attention it needed, or deserved, he said. He told me the best
thing I could do for all concerned was to get rid of it. So I did.
A couple of months later he left me. Just packed his bags and
walked. Said I was spending too much time focusing on the business
and not enough on him. When he’d gone I found out he’d been seeing
at least two other women behind my back, and one of them was within
weeks of giving birth. Talk about rubbing salt into the
wound.”

She
takes a sip from her coffee, letting its bitter sweet heat caress
her tongue before she swallows it and continues.

“
I was distraught, confused, angry, you name it. The man I
thought was going to be my forever partner, both in life and
business, turned out to be nothing more than a cheating, lying,
pump action sperm dispenser. My trust had been betrayed, my baby
gone, and he made it sound like it was all my fault because I
wasn’t paying
him
enough attention. Before I knew it I’d obsessed myself into
a state, feeling guilty, trying to work out what I’d done to make
it all go wrong. I stopped eating and couldn’t sleep, and I
couldn’t face being in the flat with his ex-presence all over it. I
moved out, put it on the market and had to fall on the mercy of my
darling long-suffering Alec once again for somewhere to put my head
down. I got so stressed and depressed my OCD and ADHD exceeded the
limits of my medications, exacerbating to the point where I could
barely function.”

“
So you thought you had to take back control,” Mal says,
“and the only way you could find to do that was to...?”

“
Put a stop to it once and for all. To go into that deep
dark hole where everything is still and quiet and peaceful, where
no one would make demands of me or criticise everything I said and
did, where no one could tell me what to do or what to say, what to
feel and what to think, where to go and when - or who with.
Remember the strong pills my doctor prescribed, but I never took? I
didn’t throw them away. I stuffed them at the back of my sock
drawer as a 'just in case' measure.”

“
And you felt this was a 'case'?”

“
Yes.” A brittle, sardonic laugh. “You’d think swallowing
every last one of them and washing them down with half a bottle of
vodka would do the trick, wouldn’t you? Noooooo. Not me. I made an
arse of it, just like everything else in my life. I couldn’t even
kill myself properly. Can’t do anything right. Never checked the
label. Turns out the bloody things were past their sell by date.
They’d gone off, lost their effectiveness and didn’t do their job.
Never checked the label on the vodka bottle either, so that was
probably fake; methanol mixed with horse piss or something. City’s
swimming in the stuff. All I managed to do was pass out on the
bedroom floor and have a seizure, puking everything up onto the rug
and then, as a final indignity, wetting myself. Can I have a
biscuit?”

Mal
offers her the plate and its tempting contents, and she takes one
of the gaily wrapped oblongs, teasing off the wrapper and forming
it into a neat holder. She takes a savage bite, talking through her
mouthful.

“
My reward for my sterling endeavour - three days in
intensive care on a ventilator in a medically induced coma, to see
whether I’d given myself brain damage, followed by enforced rest on
the lockup ward –”

“
Followed by a compulsory visit to my delightful domain?” he
says.

She
sighs deeply and takes another bite. She really is hungry. She
follows the mouthful with a swig of her coffee. The mixture of
coffee, chocolate and caramel flavours, is like angels dancing on
her tongue, so why doesn’t she feel cheered? Tunnock’s wafers have
always been her go to feel-good food. Have they lost their magic
too?

Mal is
sooking chocolate from his fingers. “Have you spoken to anyone
outside since your admission? Friends? Family?”

Grace
pushes the last of her biscuit into her mouth and picks up the
discarded foil wrapper, smoothing it against her thigh. “No. There
is no one.”

“
What about your flatmate, the one who brought you
in?”

“
Alec? It was his rug I puked and pissed on. It was a really
nice rug, too. Hand made. Brought it back from Tunisia, or was it
Morocco. Some North African Whereverthehellristan. Probably cost
him a fortune, so he’ll be pretty pissed off with me for ruining it
and won’t want to speak to me.”

“
Would it help if I told you he’s rung the ward every day to
find out how you are?”

Grace
feels her stomach shift. “He has?”

“
Twice some days.”

And turn
over. “Really? Nobody told me. Why didn’t they tell me?”

“
I don’t know, but they should have. Maybe he asked them not
to. Do you want to give him a call, just to let him know you’re
okay?”

Shrug.

Mal
lifts his chin and looks down his nose at her. “What’s the real
reason you don’t want to talk to him?”

Silence.

“
Truth be told? I’m too embarrassed,” she admits. “I made a
real show of myself, left him to clean up an awful mess, and
–”

“
Nobody ever died of embarrassment, Grace. It’s an
uncomfortable feeling to be sure, but it’s completely natural, and
people who care have short memories.” Mal screws up his foil
biscuit wrapper into a tight ball and drops it onto the plate,
where it sits like a jewel. “Do you want to call him
now?”

“
I, er –”

“
No time like the present. Grab the bull by the horns. You
don’t need to say much. Hi. How are you? I’m fine. No need to
worry. Sorry about the rug. Short and sweet. I’m sure he’ll
appreciate it.”

“
I don’t know –”

Mal is
already on his feet. “I need a pee. Coffee goes right through me.”
He heads for a door at the back of the room. “Phone’s on the desk.
I’ll leave you to it. Dial 9 for an outside line.”

“
What if I try and run away while you’re having a
slash?”

“
I wouldn’t even think about it. Denise is a black belt Feng
Shui or some such. She’ll have you on the ground and tied in a knot
before you get halfway to the door.”

In the
eight minutes it takes Dr Mal to empty his bladder and wash his
hands, Grace makes a short and emotional call to her best, her only
friend, to put his mind at ease and to apologise for ruining his
rug, all the while fiddling with the gold and red biscuit wrappers,
smoothing and creasing and folding them industriously against the
desktop blotter.

When Mal exits the small washroom in a waft of soap scented
air, she bounds to her feet and snatches something off the desk and
stands fidgeting like a schoolgirl before the head teacher, her
face, her entire stance screaming
Guilty!

“
Everything okay?” Mal says, suspicion in his
eyes.

“
Fine.”

“
You done it?”

Grace
bobs her head.

“
What did he say?”

She
clears her throat and shrugs. “Once he has stopped crying he’ll be
fine.”

“
Good.” Mal indicates the closed hand Grace has tucked
behind her back. “What have you got there?”

“
Nothing.”

“
Let me see.”

“
It’s nothing. I was just –”

“
Show me.”

She
brings out her hand and uncurls her fingers to reveal two small
perfectly folded red and gold foil squares sitting in the palm of
her hand like a pair of earrings. “I like to keep my hands
busy.”

Mal
picks up one of the tight little treasures, examines it, and then
places it back in her palm. “Very nice. Shall we crack
on?”

He drops
into his chair and waits until Grace has made herself comfortable
in hers again.

“
Right then, let’s get to work,” he says. “What say we try
and start with a clean slate? Easier said than done, I know, and
obviously we can’t simply wipe out every bad memory as easily as
erasing a video, and we wouldn’t want to, because horrible though
they are, they are valuable lessons to be learned from. Once we
accept that what’s past is past and there’s nothing we can do to
change it, we can move on and make progress toward making the
future a little rosier for you. Is that worth a little time and
effort?”

A silent
nod.

“
I want this to be a team effort, Grace. I want us to work
together, and I promise I won’t ask you to do anything you are not
totally comfortable with. Deal?”

He leans
forward in his chair with his hand outstretched, ready to seal
their bargain of co-operation. She cannot deny his sincerity and
enthusiasm, yet she remains in the chair, legs folded firmly under
her, hands clamped together in her lap.

His hand
hovers unshaken for a beat before he takes it back.

“
I want to try something new with you, Grace,” he says,
seemingly unperturbed by her rejection. “Something I’ve never used
on anyone before.”

Grace
takes up the cushion and places it on her lap. Aware she appears to
be using it to hide behind, she puts it back. “I’m not taking any
experimental drugs. I’m not being anyone’s guinea pig.”

“
No-one is asking you to. There are no drugs involved apart
from the odd cup of camomile tea. I’m a therapist, not a
psychiatrist. I can’t prescribe.”

“
And you can forget about zapping my brain with electricity
as well, it isn’t going to do any good. It just resets itself and
we’re back to square one.”

“
No ECT either. It’s old fashioned and barbaric.”

“
What did you have in mind then?”

“
Something a little more personalised. Bespoke treatment you
might say.”

“
Okay, I’m intrigued.”

Mal sits
forward in his chair again, his elbows on his knees, his fingers
steepled in front of his mouth.

“
I want you to think back to your childhood and tell me
whether you ever had an imaginary friend.”

“
Oh.” Grace scratches at her throat. “Erm… no, I didn’t. In
truth of fact I didn’t have any friends at all, imaginary or
otherwise. A real Billy No-Mates me.”

A sad and lonely childhood… just like yours.

Oh, God!
Did she say that out loud? She’s not sure, but judging by the way
he’s staring at her, the corners of his mouth twitching, she
did!

Bite your tongue, don’t speak, don’t even breathe.

Mal
clears his throat, snatches up one of the digestive biscuits and
dunks it in his coffee, biting off the soggy end. “As I was saying,
about imaginary friends?”

“
Sorry. Please continue.”

“
I want you to find one,” he says.

Grace
blinks at him. “Excuse me?”

“
This new therapy I want to try on you, it requires you to
find yourself a friend. An imaginary friend. Someone to talk to, to
argue with, to bounce ideas off, to unload your feelings
on.”

“
Ooo-kaay.”

“
I want you to take time every day to talk to him … or her …
it doesn’t have to be for long. A few minutes here and there
–”

“
Out loud?”

“
Well, in private at least. While you’re wandering through
the supermarket you might want to keep it in here...” He taps his
temple. “...else someone’s going to think you’re some kind of
nutter. It mustn’t be a one way street, though. In turn, I want you
to listen to what they have to say back to you. I want you to enter
into discussions, arguments if necessary, debates and frank
exchanges of views – whatever you would do with an actual, living,
person.”