8
The London traffic was chaos. There were plenty of shopping days left till Christmas, but you wouldn't have thought so from the number of cars.
As I rode down from Norfolk it had been cold, overcast, and dull, but at least it was dry. Compared with Finland it was almost tropical. I got to Marble Arch in just under three hours, but progress was going to be slow going from now on. Weaving my way around stationary vehicles, I looked down Oxford Street, where the decorations blazed and twinkled.
The season of goodwill was everywhere, it seemed, except behind the steering wheels of gridlocked vehicles and inside my head.
I was dreading this. The house I called in Hampstead last night was staffed by two nurses who, under the psychiatrist's supervision, were looking after Kelly twenty-four hours a day. They took her to a clinic in Chelsea several times a week, where Dr. Hughes had her consulting rooms. Kelly's round-the-clock attention was costing me just over four grand a week. Most of the 300,000 I'd stolen from the drug cartels in '97, together with her trust fund, had been spent on her education, the house, and now her treatment. There was nothing left.
It had all started about nine months ago. Her grades since coming to England had been poor; she was an intelligent nine-year-old, but she was like a big bucket with holes in it-everything was going in, but then it just dripped out again. Apart from that, she'd shown no visible aftereffects from the trauma. She was slightly nervous around adults, but okay with her own age group. Then, at boarding school, she'd started to complain about pains, but could never be more specific or explain exactly where they were. After several false alarms, including the school nurse wondering if she was starting her periods early, her teachers concluded that she was just attention seeking. Then it slowly got worse; Kelly gradually withdrew from her friends, her teachers, her grandparents, and me. She wouldn't talk or play any more; she just watched TV, sat in a sulk, or sobbed. I didn't pay that much attention at first; I was worried about the future and was too busy feeling pissed at not having worked since the previous summer while I waited for Lynn to make up his mind.
My usual response to her sobbing bouts had been to go and get ice cream. I knew this wasn't the answer, but I didn't know what was. It got to the point where I even started to get annoyed with her for not appreciating my efforts. What an asshole I felt now.
About five months ago she'd been with me in Norfolk for the weekend.
She was distant and detached, and nothing I did seemed to engage her. I felt like a school kid jumping around a fight in the playground, not really knowing what to do: join in, stop it, or just run away. I tried playing at camping with her, putting up the tent in her bedroom. That night she woke with terrible nightmares. Her screaming lasted all night. I tried to calm her, but she just lashed out at me as if she was having a fit. The next morning, I made a few phone calls and found out there was a six-month waiting list for a public hospital appointment, and even then I'd be lucky if it helped. I made more calls and later the same day took her to see Dr. Hughes, a London psychiatrist who specialized in child trauma and who accepted private patients.
Kelly was admitted to the clinic at once for a temporary assessment, and I'd had to leave her there to go on my first St. Petersburg recce, and to recruit Sergei. I wanted to believe that everything would be fine soon, but knew deep down that it wouldn't, not for a long time. My worst fears were confirmed when the doctor told me that besides regular treatment at the clinic, she'd need the sort of constant care that only the unit in Hampstead could provide.
I'd been to visit her there a total of four times now. We usually just sat together and watched TV for the afternoon. I wanted to cuddle her, but didn't know how. All my attempts at displaying affection seemed awkward and forced, and in the end I left feeling more fucked up than she was.
I swung right into Hyde Park. The mounted soldiers were out exercising their horses before perching on them for hours outside some building or other for the tourists. I rode past the memorial stone to the ones who were blown up by PIRA in 1982 while doing the same thing.
I had some understanding of Kelly's condition, but only some. I'd known men who'd suffered with PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) but they were big boys who'd been to war. I wanted to know more about its effects on children. Hughes told me it was natural for a child to go through a grieving process after a loss; but sometimes, after a sudden traumatic event, the feelings can surface weeks, months, or even years later. This delayed reaction is PTSD, and the symptoms are similar to those associated with depression and anxiety: emotional numbness; feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and despair; and reliving the traumatic experience in nightmares. It rang so true; I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen Kelly smile, let alone heard her laugh.
'The symptoms vary in intensity from case to case,' Hughes had explained, 'but can last for years if untreated. They certainly won't just go away on their own.'
I'd felt almost physically sick when I realized that if only I'd acted sooner, Kelly might have been on the mend by now. It must be how real fathers feel, and it was probably the first time in my life that I'd experienced such emotions.
The road through the park ended and I was forced back onto the main drag. Traffic was virtually at a standstill. Delivery vans were stopping exactly where they wanted and hitting their flashers.
Motorcycle messengers screamed through impossible gaps, taking bigger chances than I was prepared to. I slowly worked my way in and out of it all, heading down toward Chelsea.
Things were just as bad on the sidewalk. Shoppers loaded with shopping bags collided with each other and caused jams at store entrances. And as if things weren't bad enough, I didn't have a clue what I was going to get Kelly for Christmas. I passed a phone shop and thought of getting her a cell, but fuck it, I wasn't even any good at talking to her face to face. At a clothes shop I thought of getting her a couple of new outfits, but maybe she'd think I didn't think she was capable of choosing her own. In the end I gave up. Whatever she said she wanted, she could have. That was if the clinic left me any money to pay for it with.
I eventually got to where I wanted to be and parked. 'The Moorings' was a large town house in a leafy square, with clean bricks, recent re pointing and lots of gleaming fresh paint. Everything about it said it specialized in the disorders of the rich.
The receptionist pointed me to the waiting room, a place I was very familiar with by now, and I settled down with a magazine about the sort of wonderful country houses that mine would never be. I was reading about the pros and cons of conventional compared with under floor heating, and thinking that it must be rather nice to have any sort at all, when the receptionist appeared and ushered me into the consulting room.
Dr. Hughes looked as striking as ever. She was in her mid to late fifties, and looked like she and her consulting rooms could have featured in Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. She had the kind of big gray hair that made her look more like an American anchorwoman than a shrink. My overriding impression was that she appeared incredibly pleased with herself most of the time, especially when explaining to me, over the top of her gold-rimmed, half-moon glasses that no, sorry, Mr. Stone, it was impossible to be more definite about timetables.
I declined the coffee she offered. There was always too much time lost sitting around while waiting for it, and in this place time was money.
Sitting down on the chair facing her desk, I placed the backpack at my feet. 'She hasn't got worse, has she?'
The doctor shook her unusually large head, but didn't answer immediately.
'If it's about the money, I-'
She lifted her hand and gave me a patient, patronizing look. 'Not my department, Mr. Stone. I'm sure the people downstairs have everything under control.'
They certainly did. And my problem was that supermodels and football players might be able to afford four grand a week, but soon I wouldn't be able to.
The doctor looked at me over the top of her glasses. 'I wanted to see you, Mr. Stone, because I need to discuss Kelly's prognosis.
She is still really quite subdued, and we aren't achieving any sort of progress toward her cure. You will remember I spoke to you a while ago about a spectrum of behavior, with complete inertia at one extreme and manic activity at the other?'
'You said that both ends of the spectrum were equally bad, because either way the person is unreachable. The good ground is anywhere in the middle.'
The doctor gave a brief smile, pleased and perhaps surprised that I'd been paving attention all those weeks ago. 'It was our aim, you will also remember, to achieve at least some movement away from the inertia! state. Our
