Her One Mistake(96)
“Do you?” I ask her.
She moves her head, but it is so slight I can’t tell if it’s a nod. “I can’t not know it now, can I?”
I shake my head. No, she has to face the fact her husband once slept with someone else. I consider telling her to come back and see me on her own, but already she is talking to Tanya, fixing a date for them both the following week.
When they’ve left, I lock up my room and wander over to the desk, where Tanya is pushing her thick glasses higher up her nose and tapping furiously on her keyboard. She doesn’t look up until I’m almost on top of her. “I’m off, then,” I say. “Sorry I was a little late.”
The phone rings and she checks the line before answering, “Stella Harvey’s office.” I still feel a tingle of pleasure every time I hear her say those words. As she explains the pricing structure of my family counseling sessions I wonder, not for the first time, how much I could save if I didn’t have to pay a share of Tanya’s salary. I’d had little choice when I’d rented the room with the others in the building. Next to me is a physio and farther down the corridor a podiatrist and a Reiki healer, but none of us work full-time and I don’t believe we really need a receptionist.
Tanya hangs up and turns back to her keyboard. A few more taps and she closes down the computer. “Prospective clients,” she tells me. “A young couple having problems with their daughter. They’re going to call back next week.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Are you up to anything nice this weekend?”
“Mike and I are visiting his parents. What about you?”
“I’m having lunch at my sister’s tomorrow,” I tell her.
“And how is Bonnie?” She raises her eyebrows.
I laugh. “She’s fine. Her husband’s away this weekend,” I say, though I’m not sure why I mentioned it. I don’t even know whether this means Bonnie will be happier or more pissed off.
Tanya nods, her lips pressed into a thin line, and I imagine her thinking back to the one and only time she met my sister. I know she wasn’t all that impressed, but I stopped bothering to defend Bonnie long ago. At some point I got past caring what anyone else thought or feeling the need to explain that, with so little family left, can anyone blame me for wanting to cling to what I have?
Besides, no one has ever been able to understand our relationship. Not even I could explain all the intricacies that tie us together. In most ways we are polar opposites. But I’d made an unspoken promise soon after Danny left that I would always be there for my sister. That was when I began to wonder if it wasn’t all Bonnie’s fault she was the way she was.
Mum used to whisper to me at night sometimes. When she thought I was sleeping, she’d creep into my room, pulling the duvet back over me where I’d kicked it off. I’d liked her kneeling on the floor beside me, her warm breath on my face, the smell of her perfume washing over me, which lingered long after she’d left the room.
“My everything, Stella,” she would whisper as she gently stroked my hair. “You’re the only baby I’ll ever need.”
I always used to wonder if that left no room for Bonnie.
? ? ?
Tanya and I leave the offices together. She turns left as I cross over toward the park, a cut-through on my twenty-minute walk home, past the cathedral and to my flat that sits just on the outskirts the other side of Winchester.
I like the walk home, even in January when the only light is from the streetlamps and the cold air bites at my skin. It gives me a chance to mull over my client list for the following week and, as I always do on a Friday, vow to invest more time in building up my business.
Making a decision to set up on my own as a family therapist hadn’t been done on a whim. I was never one of those children who’d decided early on what job they would do. When I was young, I’d thought I’d most likely end up drawing pictures for books just because my best friend, Jill, wanted to be an author, though I didn’t have an artistic bone in my body. Even after A-levels, I still had no idea, and it took ten unhappy years in recruitment and a satisfying severance package for me to make the break.
It was eleven months ago that I signed up for the training and obligatory therapy I had to undertake myself before I could counsel others. My therapist had underlined the importance of the latter early on. Carrying childhood scars or unresolved issues from previous relationships could make my advice biased.
I’d tried to decline the opportunity, but it was clear this wasn’t something I was going to be able to get out of and I knew if I pushed much harder I would raise suspicion. I was sure they’d think it highly unusual that I didn’t want to dig into my own family dynamics. But I had filed away most parts of my life into a neat little box and hidden it deep. We were very good at that as a family. I had learned from the best, even if it did go against everything I expected from my clients.
So why are you interested in family counseling? was the first question I’d been asked in my introductory session.
I told the therapist how lucky I’d been growing up. That I’d had very loving parents and my upbringing on the island of Evergreen has been idyllic. I said I was interested in familial relationships and always thought I had an ability to listen and help. I told her the truth to a point. The point where we left the island. Or maybe just before that.