The Doll's House (2 page)

Unofficially, a couple of people close to O’Connor had taken him aside, told him to go easy on the sauce and the late nights. Most had put his recent heavy drinking down as par for the course. You had to let the job seep out of your skin somehow, and booze was legal.

He cursed to hell when he pulled the empty box of painkillers from the bottom drawer of his desk. If he didn’t get rid of his thumping headache, he’d be no use to anyone. Grabbing his heavy woollen coat off the stand, he barely grunted to his colleague, Mark Lynch, as he marched out of the door, heading to the corner shop for paracetamol and juice.

Outside, he felt a little less pressured. If he got the head on him sorted, he’d be fine. No one would be any the wiser, except himself, of course. He waited until he was outside the newsagent’s to pop three tablets into his mouth, swallowing them with a full carton of
orange juice. The morning painkillers hadn’t worked, and it would take another while before these had a chance to do their bit. It was nearly twelve hours since he’d emptied the last of the whiskey bottle, but this time the painkillers should take effect. Once they had, he’d be grand, at least until the end of the shift when the same demons that had fucked up his head in the first place would pay another night call.

Kate smiled as Imogen sat down in front of her. Over the previous few months Kate had learned to let Imogen initiate the proceedings. The teenager had tried to starve herself to death. At least, that was the way everyone viewed it, including her own family.

Severe cases of anorexia nervosa were not uncommon, and since Kate had begun working at Ocean House, it was a condition she had become all too familiar with. In Imogen’s case, Kate was convinced that the girl’s severe and progressive self-harming was connected to some earlier trauma.

Imogen was a cutter too, a condition she had managed to conceal for a long time. That was the thing about cutters: they became expert at hiding the very thing their subconscious mind was doing its best to get noticed. She was an observant girl. Kate had figured that out during their early sessions: her noticing the slightest change Kate made either to herself or the environment.

The previous week Imogen had been completely withdrawn, closed down. But, as with other patients, the intricacies of her mind were complex. At any moment everything could change.

At seventeen, Imogen looked tiny in her pale pink hoody and faded jeans, the heavy sweat top giving her eighty-six-pound body extra bulk – an improvement of ten pounds on her weight after her discharge from hospital. A few months earlier, her heart had nearly stopped, no longer able to pump blood efficiently: her body had turned to her internal organs for its protein needs.

‘You seem in good spirits today, Imogen.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yes, you do.’ Kate smiled again.

Instead of improving Imogen’s form, Kate’s compliment did the opposite, as if she’d been caught out in being happy. Kate let the moment pass, keeping her eyes firmly locked on the girl. Imogen’s eyes had made an irrevocable first impression on her. They held a story: one which Kate believed was her job to unravel.

Imogen had enormous memory gaps. She was unable to remember the names of any of her teachers in National School. She had no recollection of making her first Holy Communion, other than how she had looked in an old photograph. She found it difficult to piece together a cognitive stream of events from childhood, apart from the day her grandmother had died when she was six years old. Unlike her other childhood memories, Imogen could take Kate step by step through the events that had happened, not only on the day of her grandmother’s death but on the days that had followed, from her mother’s initial screams at finding her dead, to the gleam from the brass handles of the coffin being lowered into the ground.

Imogen’s keen observation skills, coupled with the memory gaps, pointed Kate in one direction: disassociation. Opting out of certain times in your life, especially at critical moments, is not uncommon. It is a basic human technique we’re all equipped with, especially for those events when emotion may get in the way of survival. In Imogen’s case, her inability to remember the commonest details, even from a relatively short time back, illustrated that her disassociation was more than a one-off reaction to a particular event. It had progressed, and done so for the most part without Imogen being consciously aware of it.

Kate watched Imogen tuck her hair behind her ears, closing her lips tightly. She waited, sensing that today the girl had something to say.

Imogen sat upright. ‘That thing you were telling me about last week, about how the mind doesn’t always store things in straight lines.’

‘In fragments, you mean?’

‘Yeah, that.’ Again Imogen fiddled with her hair. ‘You said the bits
get divided up, then can be put together differently from how they might have happened.’

‘That’s right, Imogen – it’s something we all do. Our minds don’t operate in an unbroken line of consciousness, rather a stream of discontinuous fragments. It can make recalling certain events tricky, which is why memory can’t always be relied on.’

‘I remembered something. It mightn’t mean anything.’

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘I could have imagined it.’

‘Go on, Imogen. It’s good to talk these things out.’

‘I’m not sure. But once I thought about it, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.’

‘Thought about what?’

‘A smell.’

‘What kind of smell?’

‘Of a wet dog.’

‘A wet dog?’ Kate was intrigued.

‘We used to have a dog when I was younger. I don’t remember him, but my sister, Jilly, she does. His name was Busker, a Jack Russell. Jilly says he was snappy. You know, kind of aggressive when he got excited.’

‘And you remember his smell.’

‘I don’t know if it was his smell, but last week at my friend Alicia’s house, her dog came in from the rain. He came over to me, licking my hand like, and that’s when I got it – the stench.’

Imogen turned away, looking out of the only window in Kate’s office, as if the October sun held answers to this confusing chink in memory. ‘It was so strong. It wasn’t only the smell of the wet dog. It was more than that.’

‘What else?’

‘I thought I remembered Busker. I remembered noises too – doors slamming – and then I must have leaned in closer, because in the memory, the smell became stronger. I could feel Busker’s heart when I put my hands on his body. It was jerking in and out really fast. It
was then I realised I’d never remembered him before. Do you think I imagined it, Kate?’

‘I’m not sure. You could have – but the recall, the feeling, it seems important to you.’

‘Yeah. Like it shouldn’t have meant anything at all when Alicia’s dog licked me, but it felt familiar somehow. Then it was gone, without me knowing why.’

‘That’s not unusual.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Not really. As we discussed, the mind often cuts things up, hides them. As one part of your brain is opening a memory, another part could be shutting it down.’

‘So you think it’s important?’

‘What else did you remember?’

‘Right then, nothing. It was like I’d caught hold of something, only for it to go away again. Later, when I got home, I went to my room. I tried to push myself, to think really hard about it. It felt like an opening.’

‘Go on.’

‘I thought if I tried hard enough, more would come back – but I drew a blank. Then I felt exhausted again, as if I needed sleep. I went to bed. At four o’clock in the afternoon, I curled up under the covers and slept.’

Kate believed Imogen’s intermittent bouts of exhaustion were another side effect of her condition, but she continued to encourage her. ‘And then what? How did you feel when you woke up?’

‘I couldn’t remember my dream, but the dog, the one with his heart thumping inside his chest, the one I thought was Busker – I remembered something else.’

Kate waited.

‘His breathing stopped. I rubbed his coat, and there was that smell again, but he didn’t move.’

‘Did you ask your sister, or your parents, about what had happened?’

‘Not straight away – I wanted to get my thoughts right – but, yeah, I did.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘They said it couldn’t have happened that way because I was at school when Busker was knocked down.’

‘But you felt sure that you’d been there when he died?’

‘Completely, and that was the thing. It wasn’t a happy memory, I knew that, but it felt real. As I said, I stayed in my bedroom for ages, getting more bits, feelings, smells, dragging pieces from my mind, until I felt sure I had it right.’

‘So what happened then?’

Kate saw tears in Imogen’s eyes.

‘When Mum and Jilly told me it wasn’t true, that I must have imagined it, I felt awful.’

‘Because you thought the memory was wrong.’

‘No, that wasn’t it.’

‘What was it, then?’

‘The worst bit wasn’t thinking I’d got the memory mixed up. The worst bit, Kate, was that I didn’t believe either of them.’

My mother was always fond of a good Merlot. She had very specific tastes. She would have liked Hubert’s, our swanky restaurant for this evening’s dinner, recommended by Valerie’s tennis-club friends. My sister-in-law has ‘in-the-know’ social connections. The candles on each of the small tables remind me of Mum too – attractive on the outside, but capable of inflicting pain if you got too close. We’re all trying hard to act normal, except for Martin. He likes to act the arsehole. He has a degree in it.

Our attentive waiter with his tight black hair and Mediterranean skin stands back from our table of four, waiting for Martin to taste the wine. My charming husband winks at me before lifting the glass, as if we’re a pair, and the two of us are in some kind of secret game together. Val, always quick to pick up on things, gives Dominic a fleeting glance, a code to my brother that this could blow up at any moment.

‘Beautiful restaurant,’ Val says to no one in particular.

Martin tilts the glass, and the blood-red wine stops halfway up. His sharp, narrow nose reminds me of an overzealous badger as he sniffs the aroma, his eyes closed for an irritatingly long time. The waiter, like Val, Dominic and I, waits for Martin to give his approval.

Lifting his head back, he swirls the wine inside his mouth, then swallows it, before looking at me again. No wink this time.

Dominic is the next to break the ice, another alcoholic connection. They’re bloody everywhere. ‘Well, Martin,’ my brother raises his eyebrows, ‘what do you think?’ He’s hoping his facial expression will speed things up.

‘Fine. Perfect, actually.’ Martin barely turns to the waiter as he says, ‘Ladies first,’ gesturing to Val. She smiles in that polite, stiff way.

I already know my glass is the next target. ‘Bastard,’ I mutter, below my breath. They all pretend not to hear me, including the young waiter who catches my eye. I can see he’s balancing Martin’s instruction against my obvious hostility. It’s not the waiter’s fault. I give him a reassuring look, covering the top of my glass with my hand, saying, ‘Not for me, thanks.’

Martin smiles again. He’s enjoying himself now. ‘Let me,’ he says, reaching for the water jug at the centre of the table. The ice cubes tumble into my glass. I look away.

With everyone’s glass full, Martin lifts his towards Dominic. ‘To Lavinia,’ he says. Val shifts awkwardly in her chair, raising her glass alongside my brother’s. Our four glasses clink above the flickering candlelight.

‘Cheers to Lavinia,’ I say, with more than a hint of sarcasm. They all look at me.

‘“Cheers” is hardly appropriate, darling.’ Martin’s voice is smooth and patronising.

‘I don’t see why the hell not. No point in being miserable.’ Inside I’m thinking, I don’t feel like his darling or anyone else’s for that matter.

Dominic gives me the dagger eyes. Then, to Martin, he says, ‘Let it go.’ This is new for Dominic, the role of peacemaker. There was a time when he would have given Martin a dig just for the hell of it.

‘I don’t see why you’re taking his side.’ I can hear the hurt in my voice, even if the others don’t.

‘Christ, can’t we have a civilised meal out without picking on one another …’ Val gulps some more wine ‘… even for Lavinia’s sake?’

She wasn’t your mother, I want to say. You can’t know. But instead I let it go.

‘It’s not about taking sides, Clodagh. There’s been enough crap, that’s all.’ My brother eases the conversation.

‘Your sister’s bloody-minded, Dominic. She likes to stir things up.’

Martin’s tone is measured, like he’s some kind of expert. ‘She was the same when she was younger, just like Ruby is now.’

‘Leave Ruby out of this, Martin,’ I snap, but I know he’s on a roll.

He directs his next comment at Val. ‘You and Dominic are so lucky not having any children.’

Once, I would have kicked my husband for saying something like that. But what’s the point? They both know what he’s like.

Val shifts in her chair again. Martin takes the silence as an invitation. ‘There was a time when our daughter looked up to her parents. Not any more.’

‘Ruby’s fine,’ I say. ‘She’s like any other teenager.’ They’re all probably thinking she’s like me at that age, only perhaps not quite so bad. But then again, I know only the half of it.

‘Ask a teenager now while they still know everything. That’s what they say, isn’t it, darling?’ Martin laughs.

I wish he’d quit the ‘darling’ crap. We all know each other too well for that. ‘I’m not sure,
darling
. You seem to be the expert here.’

Martin smirks. ‘Clodagh was the same, wasn’t she, Dominic? Always headstrong.’

‘We were all headstrong, Martin. It comes from being young and foolish.’ My brother isn’t ready to give Martin free rein.

Val smiles at the waiter as he delivers our starters, maintaining a civilised overture to our family meal out. That is, until the young man is out of earshot. ‘Don’t start bringing up the good-old bad-old days. Lavinia’s death is still raw. And I’m sure Ruby misses her as much as we all do.’