Suspicious Minds Read online

  Liz x

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Sent: 12 April 2020 09.12:23

  Subject: Re: FW: New Enquiry from Elizabeth Zahavi via Counselling Directory

  Dear Liz,

  Thank you for your email and enquiry, and for the information you have provided.

  The issues you describe are certainly something that we could work through together, as well as helping you to stabilize your mood.

  It would be helpful for us to meet for an initial consultation first, so that I can get to know a bit more about you, we can think about how we might work together, and this will give you an opportunity to ask any questions you might have.

  So that we can do this it would be helpful if you could advise me on your availability to meet? Also what venue? I have a private practice at my home address in Corbridge, not far from the A68, but am in Durham twice a week, though there is a longer waiting list for an appointment. Do let me know which you prefer? I can then get back to you with some options to meet.

  Should you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact me.

  Kind Regards,

  Dr Anita Hood

  Chartered Counselling Psychologist

  From: [email protected]

  Sent: 12 April 2020 09.53:11

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Re: FW: New Enquiry from Elizabeth Zahavi via Counselling Directory

  Hi Anita,

  I would be happy to travel to Corbridge. As it stands, any day would be good for me. Apologies for throwing so much stuff at you in my initial letter – I have a habit of overloading people with information that they don’t need or haven’t asked for. Am I right in thinking your practice is in central Corbridge? Is there somewhere to park? I’ve recently been struggling to concentrate when driving and have had a few moments of panic when I cannot navigate my way to my destination. I may ask my partner for a lift, though he works 12-hour days and is unlikely to be able to assist. I’m sure he would if it were possible. I’m very grateful to him for funding our sessions. Sorry, I’m going on again. I hope you know what you’ve let yourself in for! Lol!

  Kind regards

  Liz xx

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Sent: 12 April 2020 14.08:13

  Subject: Re: FW: New Enquiry from Elizabeth Zahavi via Counselling Directory

  Hi Liz,

  I work from Corbridge Thursday am.

  I could meet with you this week at 11.20.

  A

  From: [email protected]

  Sent: 12 April 2020 14.23:18

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Re: FW: New Enquiry from Elizabeth Zahavi via Counselling Directory

  Hi Anita

  Yes, that suits me. What is your address and is there a charge for this initial consultation?

  Thank you, L

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Sent: 12 April 2020 16.11:13

  Subject: Re: FW: New Enquiry from Elizabeth Zahavi via Counselling Directory

  Hi Liz,

  Sessions are £65 and 50 minutes and payable in cash initially. Initial consultations are charged at this rate also.

  I do have a 48 hr cancellation policy in place. Sessions cancelled after this time will incur the full fee. I look forward to meeting with you tomorrow.

  I’d ask that you arrive near enough to the appointment time and no earlier than 5 mins before this as I don’t have reception cover.

  Should you have any queries please don’t hesitate to contact me.

  Kind regards,

  Dr Anita Hood

  From: [email protected]

  Sent: 12 April 2020 16.31:55

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Re: FW: New Enquiry from Elizabeth Zahavi via Counselling Directory

  Hi Anita

  Thanks so much. I know you must get all sorts of people turning up and expecting to be fixed and then no doubt forming all of these passionate attachments to you and fixating, but I promise I will be a model patient. I’ve been chewing my fingernails to stumps waiting for your reply and I must have scared the neighbours half to death when your message pinged through. I don’t know if I’m scared or excited. Maybe that’s the problem! Ha! Sorry, wittering again. I’m going to make Jay his favourite tonight to say thank you. You don’t know what this means to both of us. Thanks again.

  L xxx

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Sent: 12 April 2020 18.11:13

  Subject: Re: FW: New Enquiry from Elizabeth Zahavi via Counselling Directory

  Liz,

  I also accept payment via bank transfer though this is less desirable. We will talk about your situation in detail when we meet.

  Regards,

  Dr Anita Hood

  From: [email protected]

  Sent: 12 April 2020 19.06:25

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Re: FW: New Enquiry from Elizabeth Zahavi via Counselling Directory

  Dr Hood,

  So sorry if I sounded like a crazy person in my last message. I’ve Googled you and seen that you have lots of experience of Inner Child Therapy for Trauma and Abuse Resolution. This may be something we could factor into our sessions, though I don’t want to be one of those people who blame their mum for everything. Really sorry to be a pain before we even get to know each other but could you please send me the postcode for your house so I can be super-sure I’m going to the right place? I’m awful at directions and end up going the wrong way, even without the satnav. As I feared, Jay won’t be able to take me but he says I’m a grown woman and this is all part of the process. I’m sure he’s right – though don’t tell him I said that. Lol!

  Very best wishes

  Lizzie Z xxxxx

  THREE

  She’d given herself more than enough time. Set three alarms on her phone and laid out her clothes the night before. Khaki-coloured jeans, a sensible T-shirt and a tight lambs-wool cardigan, its snug dimensions more a result of inadequate laundry skills than her recent carb-heavy diet. She was feeling too sick and nervous to eat, but she’d drunk one coffee at home and tipped the remainder of the cafetière into her travel mug, and she was pretty sure there would be enough sugar and caffeine in her system to keep her motor running until lunch. She gave herself a two-hour window for a journey that could be done in forty-five minutes. Too much time, as it turned out. She was rich with it, able to luxuriate in her wealth of unspent minutes. She had time to spare. Time to take the long way round. To drift on to the scenic route, her radio blasting out Adele and Amy Winehouse, feeling pretty damn good about herself as the little black car zipped along the grey road, blue sky overhead and green fields as far as she could see.

  The satnav stopped co-operating ten minutes after she left the A68. She’d been revelling in the view, gazing to her left at a big sky and a patchwork landscape; greys and browns and so many shades of green that she started trying to name them all. Jade. Green. Khaki. Olive. She saw a paddock that reminded her of the duffel coat she had worn to school when she was nine; another, more lurid shade that filled her mind with hallucinogenic flashbacks; the night she drank absinthe with an artist friend and ended up sleeping in the bath, wrapped up in a pedestal mat and a dirty kimono.

  She’d followed a sign to a place called Muggleswick. It sounded pretty, and familiar. She’d been to Corbridge this way some time before, she was sure of it. Nothing to worry about, plenty of time …

  Five miles later she was starting to feel anxious. Jittery. Paranoid. She’d drained her coffee mug and was fairly vibrating with unspent energy. You’ve fucked up, said the voice, almost apologetic. You’re going the wrong way and you know it. Couldn’t even get this right. Fucking useless …

  She turned the radio down. Started jabbing at the screen of the satna
v. The menu wouldn’t let her re-enter the postcode and when she tried to prod the first three letters of Corbridge, it kept auto-completing and giving her the route to a village called Cockfield, which would have made her laugh if she wasn’t feeling so close to losing it. The little arrow kept spinning, pointing back the way she had come, but each time she performed a three-point turn it went back on its earlier advice and insisted she keep going west. The road looped back on itself, passed over old stone bridges, offered up glimpses of impenetrable forest one moment and then wide expanses of green the next; a great bowl of silvery-blue water identified on the GPS screen as Derwent Reservoir, and overhead a wagon train of gathering clouds.

  Now she’s sitting in the driving seat like a fist. She’s ten miles from Corbridge and getting further away rather than closer. She’s telling herself that if she just keeps going, she’s bound to get there eventually. The earth is round, she thinks, her thoughts a jumble, her vision all steam and tears. You just have to keep going …

  She does. Drifts into Weardale. Looks out through darkening glass at a panorama so timeless that she would not be surprised to see herself transformed: to look down and see herself in Victorian garb, bouncing and swaying in a black-lacquered carriage pulled by clip-clopping horses: a Cathy on her way home to the Heights. She peers at the great swell of stone-walled fields topped with vast, buckskin-coloured moors and the crumbling exclamation marks of abandoned industrial chimneys.

  The sunshine folds in upon itself as she pushes into the valley. The blue sky of the main road is snatched away without preamble and in moments the little car is shaking, banging: the thunder of raindrops on metal and glass: the wind screaming as if in pain. She fumbles with the wipers, prods at the air-conditioning as the windscreen steams up and the view becomes nothing but boiling paint; grey and green and brown and the screech-screech-screech of wipers flicking away the monsoon like the tail of an excited dog.

  Forest now, to her left. Too tall for Christmas trees, but they smell the same. The trunks are pushed up against each other like rockers at a concert; the darkness behind them almost impenetrable. The tyres slip and she jerks right, drifting down into a village that is little more than a row of cottages and one great abandoned Victorian building, its windows smashed and holes punched in the roof. She comes to a halt in the driveway of a big house. A man in a flat cap is holding a wriggling toddler in his arms by the roadside, whispering in her ear and making her laugh. He looks at her, his face an enquiry. Can I help?

  She buzzes the window down. ‘I’m so lost! I’m really sorry, I think I’m going a bit mad. Or maybe I’ve always been mad, I don’t know. Your son’s a cutie. How old? And, erm, where am I?’

  Pleasantly, calmly, he tells her where she’s gone wrong. Chiefly, she shouldn’t have misidentified his darling daughter as a bouncing baby boy. She’s in Allendale, apparently. Miles from where she should be. She can go back the way she’s come if she carries on another half mile and then does a loop, or she can do a three-point turn and chug her way back up the hill.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, trying to find first gear. ‘I’m sorry. She’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  She moves off. Follows his instructions. She’s lost again inside thirty seconds. Screams, in despair. Jabs again at the control panel, one hand on the wheel. She’s frightened. Furious with herself, disgusted at having failed so spectacularly despite trying so hard. Afraid, too. She has never been a confident driver but in this hygge, rugged landscape the tiny car seems dangerously insubstantial. She imagines great hands taking the corners of the quilted landscape and shaking it out; imagines the gale simply lifting the tyres from the road and pitching it into the air.

  ‘Where the bloody hell …?’

  The road is getting steeper. She peers at a grubby road sign. Can’t make out the name of the three-house hamlet she’s passing through. It ended in ‘hope’, which strikes her as horribly apposite.

  The radio suddenly explodes into sound as she passes an abandoned farmhouse. She slaps the controls, changing channels without meaning to. Local news, a pleasant Geordie brogue, giving listeners hourly confirmation that the world is shite.

  ‘… protesters react with fury after charges were dropped against a country estate in the Allen Valleys, three years after an incident which left a teenage girl blind in one eye.

  ‘Swinburn Estates, owned by Campion and Candace Lorton-Cave, has been warned by the Health and Safety Executive that they must improve safety measures if they are to proceed with a planned extension. However, a spokesman said the public interest would not be served by bringing charges against any individuals.

  ‘Anti-shoot protesters said the decision was “grotesque” and further proof that those with deep enough pockets are considered above the law.

  ‘The decision brings to an end a three-year saga, which began when a beater working for the shoot was blasted in the face by one of the shooters who pay thousands of pounds a day to shoot grouse. The victim is said to have reached an out-of-court settlement with the estate, which has owned a great swathe of the Allen Valleys since the 17th century …’

  Betsy slaps at the controls. She can feel her chest growing tight. There’s darkness at the edges of her vision, a smell of chemicals and metal in her nostrils; the sound of surf grinding over pebbles surging in her ears. She hears church bells. Glimpses white light. Her feet and lips tingle. She has pills for this. Diazepam. Little white pills to take when the panic threatens to pull her under. They’re in her bag, in the boot of the little car. She glances back, her vision a fish-eye lens. If she could just reach them, just stretch her fingers and fumble around for the strap of her bag …

  The road swings suddenly to the right. She yanks at the wheel, a screech erupting from her lips. A wheel chews at nothing for a moment, and then finds purchase on the greasy black road.

  Jab. Jab … fingers punching at the controls, music and static and the satnav suddenly speaking in a foreign tongue, some Scandinavian-sounding man instructing her to lav-en-sving …

  Ringing, suddenly. The trill of a call. The satnav has finally located the Bluetooth connection of her phone.

  ‘Liz? You there? I’ve had a call from your therapist, wanting to know if you’re still coming? What’s going on? I had to come out of a meeting for this …’

  ‘Jay?’ Her voice is shrill – a squawk lost in the storm. ‘Jay, I’ve got lost. I’m losing it … I don’t know where I am and it’s raining and nothing’s working and I swear to God I gave myself enough time, I really do …’

  ‘Liz? Elizabeth, I can barely hear you, where are you?’

  ‘Oh shit oh shit, she’s still going to charge for the session! She said there was a cancellation policy. I can’t even see!’

  ‘Elizabeth, you have to speak up. Did you say you’d missed the appointment?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m just so sorry – it looked so pretty before and now it’s … I don’t know … like the windscreen’s simmering, boiling, like, I don’t know what to do …’

  ‘Elizabeth! I have to go back in to my meeting. Call me when you get into a better signal zone. I can barely hear what you’re saying. I’ll see you when I get home. Did you say there might be maids of honour in the oven? I won’t get my hopes up, but …’

  Liz hears the scream before she registers the pain in her throat. Looks for the danger before she realizes that it is she who is screeching, wild and furious, in the cramped, sweaty confines of the car. She who is gawping out through a shattered spy-glass at the big yellow headlights of the big silver car. She whose world is suddenly full of terrible, blaring honk and screech of horn and brakes. She who is yanking at the wheel, muscles straining, fists white around the leather.

  Somewhere, out in the storm, she registers the sound of metal on metal; the clang and crunch and the squeal of rubber against stone; the swell of pain in her shoulders; neck and back as she is flung forward and back and her head whips forward as if on springs.

&n
bsp; And she is spinning. Whirling. Turning in raucous pirouettes across the black road beneath a grey sky, her vision full of forest and stone and sky.

  She does not register the little stone wall until the car has already smashed through it; tyres chewing stone, then air, then grass and earth and … and she is slaloming down the steep bank towards the frothing, swollen river in the valley floor.

  The airbag explodes in a shower of sparks and stars. Her head strikes glass. Fractures it into cobwebs and diamonds, and then it crumples entirely and the cold wet air rushing into the car slaps her like so many fists. Pennies of cold rain strike her face, her eyelids, her lips. For a moment it feels as though claws are reaching out to scrabble madly at her eyes and throat, and then the windscreen is caving in and the branch is spearing the headrest and grinding along her jawline; spears and splinters of ancient wood shooting into the car like a rain of arrows.

  And then the awful realization: I’m going to be in so much trouble …

  FOUR

  She can smell sap; an eerie Christmas-tree scent that fills her head with pine needles and sugared almonds. Fuel, too. Pulverized earth. And blood. She can taste it, in the back of her throat.

  She lies for a spell. She knows, with atypical certainty, that she is injured. Her face feels wet. She can’t be sure whether she is facing the right way up, or if the sensation of moisture at the corner of her mouth is saliva or blood.

  After a while, she becomes aware of the sound of her Scandinavian satnav. She wonders if he is telling her she has made a wrong turn, and the thought seems to cut through the thick carpet of numbness that dulls her wits.

  She realizes the car has come to a stop halfway down the embankment. Hears the dentist-drill whirr of tyres spinning on nothing. She adjusts her position and pain shoots down her arms, her legs, her neck. She grimaces, and tries again. The airbag lies in her lap, hanging from the steering wheel, all powder and glass.