'A moment ago you were saying I couldn't bear to hurt people.'
'Your defensiveness tells me I'm onto something. People's emotional responses break down when they can no longer bear the burden they are consciously or subconsciously placing on themselves. Believe me, it's becoming obvious you have an overwhelming sense of responsibility for things beyond your ability to control.'
'Is this a eureka moment? It doesn't feel like it.'
'The dream you mentioned last time - the children vanishing into thin air. Nothing, not a thing you could do to help them. It terrified you.'
'I can't fault your logic,' Jenny said drily.
'And the other image that haunts you: the crack opening up in the corner of your childhood bedroom; the monstrous, unseen presence in a secret room behind it. It's the realm beyond your control where the horrors happen.'
Jenny let out a heavy sigh. She had lost the ability to be excited by potential revelations.
Dr Allen continued undaunted. 'What have you been writing about in your journal?'
'Hardly anything.'
'Really?'
Just the mention of it consumed her with yet another more powerful wave of shame. There was no question of confessing to him that Ross had found it. She couldn't even deal with the thought herself. She parried him with a partial truth. 'Mostly stuff about wanting to feel real again, connect with myself.'
'To find what you haven't got.' He presented it as a statement, an answer that neatly completed his theory.
Jenny felt a sense of disappointment, of having been here so many times before. Dr Travis had had at least half a dozen big ideas that had come to nothing.
'We're going to try regression.'
'Again?' Jenny said, failing to conceal her cynicism.
'Please, go with me,' he insisted urgently. 'It's for your own good.'
She was taken aback. In eight months of consultations he'd maintained an unbroken mask of passivity. This was something new.
'Close your eyes, feel yourself sinking into the chair . . .'
She forced her eyes shut and unwillingly submitted to the well-worn routine. He talked her down through the gradual stages of physical relaxation. Feet, ankles and legs grew heavy, hands, arms, head, chest, then abdomen, and lastly internal organs. As she sank deeper, Dr Allen's voice became fainter, more remote, until it was little more than a distant echo in the comforting darkness that was her envelope of safety between sleeping and waking.
She wanted to slip quietly under.
'Stay with me, Jenny,' Dr Allen said. 'You're perfectly safe. Nothing can happen to you here. I want you to go back to where we've been before. You're a child upstairs in your bedroom, playing by yourself. You hear the banging on the front door, the raised voices - it's your grandfather. He's shouting, screaming.'
Jenny's body gave an involuntary twitch.
'Tell me what he's shouting.'
'I can't... I can't hear.'
'You can't hear the words?' 'No.'
'Are there other voices?'
A pause. Jenny's eyes moved sideways under their closed lids.
'It's a woman . . . sobbing, wailing . . . my mother.'
'Is she saying anything?'
'She's crying out, 'No, no —.' She keeps saying it. . . over and over.'
'Then what?'
Jenny shook her head. 'It just goes on and on.'
'What about the men? What are they saying?'
'They've gone quiet. It's just my mother . . . It's just her crying. Her voice carrying up the stairs.'
'How are you feeling about this? What are you doing?'
'I just want to get away ... I want to go, get out of there.'
'Why?'
'I don't know ... I just want to go.'
'What are you frightened of?'
Tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes. 'I can't . . . It's nothing to do with me. It's not my fault.'
'What's not your fault?'
'The screaming ... I can't stand it.'
'Why would it be your fault?'
'I don't want this ... I hate it here ... I
'Where do want to go, Jenny? Tell me where you'd go.'
'There isn't anywhere . . . They'd see me . . . There's nowhere ... I can't even go to . . .' Her body convulsed as violently as if she touched an electric wire. She bolted back to consciousness, staring into space with wide, blank eyes.
Dr Allen gave her a moment. 'You couldn't even go where?'
Jenny blinked. 'Katy's,' she said, with a rising inflection, as if the name was unfamiliar.
Dr Allen tugged a Kleenex from the box on his desk and handed it to her. Jenny dried her eyes feeling oddly empty, neither calm nor anxious.
'Who's Katy?'
'I've no idea.' She sniffed back the tears and shivered.
'A sister, relation, friend?'
Jenny glanced upwards. 'God, I don't know. Not a sister . . .' Dr Allen was staring intently at her face. 'What?'
'Your grandfather came with bad news that made your mother wail. You said it wasn't your fault. Were you referring to whatever it was he told her?'
'I can't say . . .' She shook her head. 'The moment I'm awake it hardly seems real ... I could even be making it up.'
'You've got a name: Katy. I want you to find out what that means.'
'I told you—'
'Please, do what I say. I'm going to make it a condition of you coming back here. You're going to do something positive for yourself. Next time I want to hear about your research.' He turned to his notebook and wrote the instruction down.
'You're getting impatient with me, aren't you?' Jenny said.
'Not at all. You're just in need of a push. You're also going to stick to the medication this time.' He reached for his prescription pad. 'I don't suppose there's any chance of you easing off at work?'
'Not unless you section me.'
'When you're abrasive it suggests to me you're feeling delicate. If you must carry on as normal, just be on your guard. Try to avoid emotional responses.' He tapped his temple with his finger. 'You'll always make your best judgements up here.'
She collected the drugs from the dispensary and swallowed her first dose in the ladies' room. They were both new brands to her: one blue, one red, like jelly beans. The world they led her to was less colourful. They took away her excitement and any sense of danger. Her attention was held by the immediate and the mundane: the instruments on the dashboard of her car, the squeak when she touched the brakes. She was aware of her emotions, but they were pale reflections of what she'd experienced during the last two days. She turned her thoughts to her inquest and without any conscious effort they lined up in logical order as a neat list of tasks waiting to be performed: jurors to be telephoned, witnesses to be summoned, law to be researched. Dr Allen had given her the mind of a bureaucrat.
The sensation was short-lived. She wasn't yet halfway home when her phone beeped, signalling a message. She glanced at the lit-up screen: Call me. Urgent. Alec.
