'I've heard you on the phone to your husband. She's living with another woman. What's Pironi told you - that she can be healed by the power of prayer?'
'I'll tell you about my daughter,' Alison said. 'When she was seventeen years old, a young man forced himself on her. You can call it rape, if you like. For two years she would hardly leave the house. And even then she wouldn't be alone in a room with another man, even her father. And Dave Pironi didn't seek me out. I went to him. I'd seen him lose his wife to cancer and cope with his son being out in Afghanistan; I wanted to know what he'd got that I hadn't. It may not suit your way of seeing the world, but you of all people should know that the truth isn't always what you'd like it to be.'
The kettle clicked off as it came to the boil. With trembling hands Alison poured water over her tea bag and doused it with milk. 'I got your copies of Dr Levin's records, by the way. She was diagnosed with chlamydia in April 2002. Too late, poor girl. She lost her fallopian tubes to it.'
Chapter 21
'Where were you when this blackout happened?'
'In my office . . .'
'You became unconscious?'
'Not quite. My heart started racing. It wouldn't stop. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move, not for half an hour or more.'
'And then you called me?'
'Yes.'
'And then?
'I took some pills and carried on working.'
'What pills?'
Jenny paused and briefly considered lying but couldn't summon the energy to face the cross-examination that would inevitably follow. 'Xanax.'
Dr Allen's registered no surprise. He simply made a note. 'In addition to your other medication?'
'No ... I stopped taking that several days ago.'
'For any particular reason?'
Jenny faltered. 'I thought it would make me more effective, give me some passion back.'
He nodded with no hint of judgement. 'Did it work?'
'I suppose it heightened everything.'
'Did you experience mood swings?'
'I'm not sure.'
'Erratic behaviour?'
She cast her mind back over the past several days. 'I felt driven. Less inhibited . . . but anxious, on edge.'
'Yes, you would have done.' He gave her a look as if to say he was sorry he hadn't been there to intervene.
If I was him I'd be furious, Jenny thought. I certainly wouldn't have come running all the way from Cardiff to Chepstow because an irresponsible woman had deliberately ditched her medication. But that's precisely what he had done, and not for the first time. She felt ashamed of herself. Her stupidity seemed all the more unforgivable in his benign, unruffled presence.
'Tell me what was going on just before the attack,' Dr Allen said.
Jenny cringed. 'I argued with my officer. She'd given out information I thought she shouldn't have . . . and then I accused her of something.' Her voice deserted her.
'What?'
Jenny forced the saliva pooling in her mouth down her throat.
Dr Allen smiled calmly. 'Take your time.'
'She had an issue with her daughter . . . She's been preoccupied with it. I was annoyed that it was affecting her work, but it turned out I'd misread it all. I'd leapt to the wrong conclusions ... I hurt her badly.'
'Do you want to tell me what the issue was?'
'Not particularly.'
'I think you should, Jenny. It might help.'
She rolled her head from side to side trying to release the tightness in the back of her neck.
'Try,' he said, coaxing gently.
'It's not what it was about, it's the fact I got it so wrong. I was so sure of myself . . . It's why I stopped the pills, to get the certainty back, the fire ... I felt so deceived.'
He noted down her answer. 'Are you going to tell me or not?'
Jenny let out an angry sigh. 'Her daughter's a lesbian. She's been praying with a man at a church for her to be healed. He's a detective I don't happen to trust. I said this man was using and misleading her. But it turns out the reason her daughter is living with a woman is because when she was a teenager she was raped. And the detective's had more than his share of suffering too.' She dug her nails into the arms of her chair. 'God, I feel so much better.'
Ignoring her sarcasm, Dr Allen looked up from his notes and regarded her thoughtfully. 'You hurt her and, what's worse, you felt deceived into hurting her?'
'It was just an incident. It was probably coming off the pills. It's not as if you hadn't warned me.'
'Now you're avoiding the issue.'
'I'm not avoiding anything. I came straight here.'
'Then if you want my help, you'll let me offer it.' It was first time she'd heard him issue anything like a rebuke. He continued in this sterner vein. 'You practised family law for fifteen years, is that correct?'
'Yes.'
'You represented the local authority, taking vulnerable children into care.'
'Mostly.'
He flipped back through the pages of his notebook. 'Yes, here we are. And the first time you had a full-blown anxiety attack was in a courtroom. You were reading out a medical report. . . Can you remember anything about the case?'
'I could hardly forget it.' She felt her heart beat faster. She closed her eyes and took a breath, fixed her mind on a vision of a Mediterranean sunset. It helped a little, but not much. 'There was an eight-year-old boy, Owen Patrick Lindsey. I'd dealt with his case off and on for two years. His mother wasn't coping so we took him into care. Most kids are glad to be out of a chaotic home, but he kept trying to escape and get back. I went against the social worker's advice and chose not to contest his mother's application to have him returned to her. The first weekend he was at home she got drunk and threw a pan of scalding water over him ... It was a report from the burns unit I was reading out.'
Dr Allen scribbled rapidly. Still writing, he said, 'And you went from the vulnerable to the dead - dead people beyond help, or your ability to harm them, at least.'
'Hmm. Maybe.'
He lifted his pen from the page and fixed her with a look of intense interest. 'You don't like hurting people, do you, Jenny? In fact, I'd say you'd do almost anything to avoid causing pain.'
'I don't make a very good job of it.'
'When you've spoken of your ex-husband it's always of his arrogance, the offhand way he treats you and his patients. Yes, I remember: you once said it infuriates you how little he's affected by what you see as the damage he causes.'
'A heartless heart surgeon. Work that one out.'
'Perhaps he's just reconciled to a basic fact of life. You can't live without causing some pain. And we do tend to marry people with qualities we lack.'
'I despise his attitude.'
'But you try to mimic it. It's not a submissive, motherly woman I see sitting in that chair twice a month.'
