She should be overjoyed, but the Greenlake case threatened to torpedo everything. She angled the photo towards the light. Pale skin. A blank stare. It was the Whidby case all over again. Her instincts were off that time, when youth and inexperience had given her an overconfidence she hadn’t earned. Faced with a similar scenario, how could she be sure her instincts wouldn’t be off again? She hadn’t even met the patient and already her inclination was to keep him locked up. A clear conflict of interest, surely, and the perfect excuse to refuse the case. Niels couldn’t argue with that.
She turned to the window. In the middle of the vast grounds, the branches of the big copper beech swayed and creaked in the cold. After locking the Greenlake file in a drawer, she opened the blinds wide to let in more light. The clouds sweeping in from the river shed a few flakes of snow that soon became a torrent.
Three o’clock. She would give Cassie until five to consider her options. Then, ready or not, she would have to talk.
*
By the time Erin hurried into the coffee house, half-frozen from battling the snow, Niels was already seated by the window. A short walk from the clinic, the newly opened establishment was a beacon of warmth in an otherwise deserted street. For Niels to suggest they meet here to discuss Cassie Gray wasn’t all that unusual – he liked to mix things up a bit – but in this case, it seemed like a ploy. Erin had a feeling she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.
She shrugged off her parka and slung it over the back of a chair. Other than an elderly woman in a red scarf, warming her hands on a mug of coffee, they were the only customers. Niels closed his notebook and slid it into the pocket of his shirt.
‘Tough case at St Vincent’s.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Sixteen years old. Poor girl thought one of the staff was her father and she practically tore the place down. It’s her second psychotic episode, with no signs of mania, so I’m pretty sure we’re dealing with schizophrenia.’
While she studied the menu, Erin listened with half an ear to his rundown of the case. Twenty types of coffee with all the bells and whistles, but only a single choice of tea. With any luck it was a proper blend, and not a stale teabag scrounged from the back of a cupboard.
‘It always goes back to the parents, doesn’t it?’ she murmured, placing the menu on the table.
‘Not with psychosis.’
His tone was sharp, and she suppressed a sigh. Here we go again. When it came to mental illness, Niels leaned heavily on the side of biology. Brain chemistry first, psychodynamics second. Which put them in opposite corners of the therapeutic map. Though family wasn’t the only source of their patients’ woes, it played a significant part. And much of their work, whether Niels cared to admit it or not, involved protecting their patients from the very people meant to nurture them.
‘Though in this case,’ he said, flicking a crumb off the table, ‘it does appear that childhood trauma is a factor.’
Across the street, the abandoned warehouses and woollen mills from the city’s industrial past imparted an aura of desolation to this section of the riverfront. A plough rumbled past, heaping dirty snow across the pavement. A barista with a painful-looking eyebrow piercing set a mug of hot water on the table, with the inevitable bag of Lipton balanced on a saucer. How Erin longed for a proper cup of tea, a rich blend of Assam and Ceylon brewed in a pot.
Niels pointed to the mug. ‘A tea drinker in the land of coffee addicts.’ He slurped his cappuccino. ‘You miss London?’
‘Sometimes.’ She poured milk in her tea. ‘Not the rain, though. Or the Tube breakdowns. But a good pot of tea, yes.’ Had she hit all the right clichés? Bad weather, the London Underground, afternoon tea. Anything else might unleash a rash of unwelcome questions.
He wiped a spot of foam from his lip. Freckles dusted the back of his pale hands, the nails clean and neatly trimmed. Not the hands of a Nebraska farm boy, although mucking out stalls and driving a tractor may not have been on his roster of chores.
‘But you’ve been to the States before, right?’
Her face grew hot. ‘Sure. Medical conferences, mainly. Chicago, San Francisco.’ She made a show of rummaging through her bag to shut down the questions. Amongst the crumpled receipts and tubes of lip balm, she located a notebook and snapped it open. ‘Can we talk about Cassie Gray now? We’re running out of time.’
‘Time for what?’ His face was blank, but then the light dawned. ‘You mean put her on a hold?’ He stirred more sugar in his cup. ‘She said the pills were an accident not a suicide attempt.’
‘She talked to you?’ Erin felt stung. Why would Cassie open up to Niels and not to her? Her ability to bond quickly with a patient had always been a source of professional pride.
‘Sure. I couldn’t get her to stop. Said she was at a friend’s, where they took some pills from the mom’s medicine cabinet. Later on, they snuck into a club, where they drank a bucketload of tequila.’
‘Did she say what happened to her hair?’
‘A joke that got out of hand.’ He popped the rest of the brownie in his mouth. ‘As for the home situation, she claims she and her mother are the best of friends.’
‘Foster mother.’
He licked chocolate from his thumb. ‘Foster mother? She didn’t mention that.’
What was Cassie playing at? ‘Okay,’ Erin said. ‘Let’s say, for the sake of argument, she’s not a suicide risk, but she still needs help. If not for the
