Chapter 24
Mallory
Fag Hag.
I’m not complaining. If that’s what he wants to call me, I’m fine with it. In fact, I would never say this out loud, but it makes me feel a bit like a Spice Girl. Fag Hag Spice. They always needed a sixth member whose trademark was being progressive and socially aware.
I turn the worksheet over and push it towards him.
POST-TRAUMA GROWTH
He stares at it for a moment, and I see the muscles in his face twitch, like he is battling to stop himself from saying something.
‘It’s just a timeline of what has happened to you.
’ As I tell him this, something jars within me.
A fault line shifting, two tectonic plates, their edges grinding together.
Guilt and shame? I can’t help but hear Stanley’s words in my mind.
Mine Liam’s inner world, his emotional life.
He cannot be two-dimensional. It is currently feeling a little that way.
‘It’s so you can figure out your patterns, and then you can try and stop them repeating.
’ Those two tectonic plates grind harder. ‘Isn’t that what you want?’
I’m helping him.
I am.
This is good for him.
Win–win for both of us. Yes.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Yeah.’ He looks to the door, then to the counter.
To Chloe, who is scrolling on her phone, vape now in her mouth.
There are still a few people dotted around the tables.
The two truanting boys continuing to flick things at each other and finding it unspeakably hilarious.
The old ladies not uttering a single word, just earnestly placing down their playing cards.
‘Do you think we can do it somewhere more private? Didn’t you say you work from your house? Can we go there?’
‘Maybe we should get to know each other a bit more first?’ I suggest. If we can avoid my house, clearly that’s for the best. But I need him to feel safe, so he can open up. So I can help him.
I feel panic begin to rise in my chest. God, what am I doing?
‘I just don’t feel safe here, that’s all. I don’t want all these people knowing my shit.’
He looks genuinely scared. I suddenly feel my cheeks redden.
Is this what a normal therapist would do?
Out-of-office work? Maybe they would, in an emergency situation.
Yes. If someone needed urgent therapeutic care, they would do this.
And that’s what this is. Urgent Community-Based Therapy? He said he was desperate.
If you can get to the core of him, Mal, then we can talk properly.
I push the sheet further towards him. ‘We might as well make a gentle start? Since we are here? Just fill it in. No speaking needed.’ He stares at it.
Then looks up at me with what I can only interpret as a glimmer of what seems to be embarrassment beneath the hardness of his features.
Wait. Oh, God. Of course. He can’t write.
Just like he can’t swim. ‘Or you can talk, quietly, if you’d prefer?
’ I add quickly. ‘I’ll just make a few notes, if that’s OK? ’
He nods.
I open my paisley-patterned notebook to see a page of doodles from my last therapy session with Elaine. I quickly turn the page, angling it off the table slightly so he cannot see, and quickly scribble Liam can’t write!
He pulls his hood over his forehead a bit, crossing his arms on the table. ‘Where do I start?’
‘Why don’t you tell me about when you first wanted to get sober. When was it?’
‘Fucking years ago.’
Fucking years ago, I scribble.
‘Do you remember the events that led to it?’
‘No. That’s the point.’
‘Right. Well yes, that makes sense.’
‘Just kept waking up not knowing where I’d been. Or what I’d done.’
Waking up not knowing where I’d been... ‘That must have been scary.’
He pauses. ‘Did you never have that?’
‘Me?’ I lean back, thinking. Thinking like a therapist would think.
‘I have definitely woken up wondering how I’d arrived at where I was.
Many times. Many.’ Wait. And how an addict would think.
Shit. I wipe my nose with the back of my hand, trying to look like Hugs-Not-Drugs Dez might.
‘Lots and lots. Face down. Gutter. You know the story. I know exactly what you’re talking about. ’
‘Fuckin‘ horrible, innit.’
‘Horrible.’
‘All the fucking trembling. The anxiety. The blackout fear. Wondering who the fuck you’ve been with, how many.
If you’ve got some STI, if you’ve been in a fight, if you’re gonna get the police coming round...
Why there’s blood on your T-shirt and you can’t find the cut – so it must be someone else’s – why there’s sick on your T-shirt, why there’s no T-shirt, no trousers, no shoes.
Where the fuck they all went and how the fuck you’re gonna get new ones.
’ I just nod, and scribble. Nod. Scribble.
Nod. Scribble. STI, HIV? No trousers, no shoes...
‘I was clever, you know. At school and stuff.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘I got eights in English.’
‘Oh!’ Interesting. I quickly go back to the top of my page and cross out Liam can’t write.
Actually, this is better. It’s useful. Liam is clever, but flawed.
It might be a bit cliché, but I do like that he could be good with words.
Something he could regularly use as a strategy for manipulation.
And the reader will empathise more with this scenario, surely: his potential stolen by his struggle with addiction.
Yes. Good with words... ‘Did you do your exams?’
‘Nah. I was smoking pot by then.’ Potential stolen. See? ‘But in classes the teachers said I had a very active imagination.’ Interesting. They said that about me too. ‘I have ADHD. My brain moves rapid fast. Not when I’m high, mind.’
ADHD.
I underline it twice.
And then put a circle around it.
I hadn’t actually thought about Liam’s mental health diagnoses.
I mean, addiction, of course. But the deeper roots of other conditions could be a useful delve into his psyche.
How does ADHD develop? I can’t remember – I’m not sure I actually know.
Does it develop? I must look it up. LOOK UP ADHD! ‘Have you been diagnosed with that?’
‘Nah, but I know.’
‘You know?’
‘Yeah. Self-diagnosed from Instagram.’
‘I see.’
‘Was proper bad in school. Got kicked out of a few. Bad concentration.’
‘Tell me more about your behaviour.’ My hand is beginning to hurt from writing so fast.
‘My behaviour at school?’
‘Yes.’
‘I got in loads of trouble.’
Come on... Give me the good stuff. ‘What for?’
‘I just pissed about.’
I don’t know if pissing about is what Stanley was after. ‘Anything in particular?’
‘What do you mean?’
That’s a good point. ‘I just wondered if there was anything that happened at school that might have led you to feel unhappy.’
I stop. Hoping to God this isn’t too much, I start writing the word unhappy, over and over again. Scratching it into the paper.
‘I guess.’
‘Can you remember what? Did you have friends?’
‘At school?’
‘Yes.’
‘Course I fucking did.’
‘You were popular?’
‘Me? Yeah. Snogged all the girls. Lots of the boys.’ Oh, great material. This could be quite humorous, actually. Liam needs a bit of light relief. Liam snogging people behind the chapel, exchanging cigarettes. ‘And a few teachers.’
I look up. ‘Teachers?’
‘Yeah. Actually shagged one of them in a store room.’ He says this so casually that I nearly miss it. ‘Mr Preston. Proper fit, like.’
As I look at Leo, his words landing, something shifts. I see him as a boy at school. Vulnerable. In need of support. Manipulated. And I immediately feel sick. ‘That’s... not OK, Leo.’
‘What?’
‘Leo, I just think...’ What am I doing? This boy needs proper therapy. Not me. ‘Have you spoken to anyone about this before?’
‘What, snogging everyone at school?’
‘No, I mean about Mr Preston.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because...’ Because it’s not OK.
‘What about your parents?’
‘What about them?’ He starts tugging on his sleeves.
‘I just think, maybe...’ I stop. The tectonic plates – the fault lines – suddenly part. It is as if they leave a chasm, and I’m teetering on its edge. I realise I have absolutely no idea what to say. I am incredibly out of my depth. And if I fall, it looks very, very deep. ‘Leo, I’m not sure...’
I put down my pen. Close my notebook. ‘I think maybe we should stop.’
This does something to Leo that I didn’t expect.
Not at all. He stands up, immediately, and for the first time since I’ve known him, looks blank.
Like there is no plan, no way out, no answer.
‘This was a fucking stupid idea,’ he says.
Then something lands in his eyes. A blackness.
Like he has inserted it, stopping me from seeing beyond.
‘I need to get home. Can I have a tenner?’
Home. The bridge. He calls the bridge his home.
‘I don’t have any change. Please, Leo. I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘Nah.’
‘I didn’t mean to—’
He thrusts his hand across the table, so it is an inch from me. ‘You giving me the money or what?’
‘I don’t have any.’
For a split second, I see his fingers tense, and my immediate instinct is to flinch and raise my hand in front of my face. But he just drops his arm to his side. ‘Crazy bitch,’ he says. And then he is moving towards the door.
‘Wait, Leo—’
I am up, behind him. ‘Listen, perhaps doing it here was a bad idea. You’re right. I can find somewhere more secluded?’
He smashes the door open, out onto the alleyway, right into the back of a lady. She stumbles, throwing him a middle finger. ‘Dick!’ He storms on, not turning to her as she carries on, ‘What the hell? Not even gonna apologise? Oh my God, what is that smell!’
But he keeps moving up the cobbles.
‘Sorry,’ I mumble, passing her. ‘Leo!’
He doesn’t turn back, but I hear him. ‘Fucking leave me alone.’
And then we are at the top of the alley, turning off it and onto Muswell Hill Broadway.
‘Leo, wait—’ But the pavement is packed with people waiting at the bus stop, pushing past one another, and it’s difficult to follow him through the melee, weaving between the bodies to keep up.
I’m not even sure what I’m pursuing him for – I have no idea at this point – but he seems so angry, at what I said, and I want to – I don’t know – apologise, to stop this, to delete everything and—‘Leo!’
He stops dead. Turns to me. ‘What? I don’t get it. What do you want with me?’
‘I just... I want to help you...’
‘You fucking—’
‘Mal?’
A voice behind me. A voice I know well. Oh, God.
Oh God, no.
I turn to see Joanie.
Staring at Leo. Then at me.
Standing next to her two six-year-old children, eyes wide.
‘What’s going on?’ she says. ‘Is this person bothering you?’ Her nose wrinkles at his smell.
She looks at me for an explanation, quickly pulling her children away from Leo.
An image of the text she sent to Ronan flashes in my mind. Meek Mal.
‘Mal?’ Leo says, looking at me. ‘Who’s Mal?’
Oh God.
‘Who is he?’ Joanie continues, pointing at him now.
‘He’s...’
Time seems to momentarily stop.
Can I tell her I know him from AA? I absolutely cannot tell her that. Can I? Can I convince her that in the past two weeks I’ve become a raging alcoholic? Or do I say client? That’s breaching patient confidentiality, but he won’t disagree so it’s possibly the only option I—
‘I’m her boyfriend,’ Leo says.
I look at Joanie to see her face almost slide off her skull.
‘He’s not,’ I say. ‘Leo, please.’
He shrugs. ‘What am I then?’
Joanie looks like she is going to combust. Her children are staring at him like he has descended from another planet. ‘Yes, who is he Mal?’
Meek Mal.
‘This is Leo,’ I say. ‘He’s a client of mine. I’m helping him.’
I see a smirk cross his lips.
‘I’m fucked in the head,’ he says to Joanie, tapping his forehead.
I can’t read her. She pulls at her children so they are directly behind her.
‘I’ll speak to you soon, Leo,’ I say, trying hard not to sound too pushy, but desperately hoping he will take his cue to get the hell out of here. But he won’t take his eyes off Joanie. He’s doing that stare he does. The one that looks like he might bite your head off.
‘You got a tenner?’ he says.
‘Excuse me?’ Joanie spits, offended. ‘No, I do not.’
‘Fuck you then.’
Before I can tell him to stop, he turns, right into the path of an elderly woman stood patiently waiting for the bus. She must be in her seventies, wearing a little purple fleece.
Before she can step aside, he lunges at her.
It happens too quickly for me to stop him.
Leo grabs hold of the old lady’s handbag. She tries to keep hold, but he pulls so forcefully that she lets go, sending her backwards. The shock of the noise that follows makes me feel instantly sick. The deep thud of her back on the concrete.
And he is gone.