CHAPTER 2
‘Yup?’
Sue was busy. She always answered the phone as if it were interrupting something important.
Which it invariably was. She worked in a frantic, overstretched partnership of twelve solicitors, just off Chancery Lane, which specialised in family law, divorce and all things personal.
She was a solicitor advocate, so was often in court, a horsehair wig on top of her smooth, sleek blonde blow-dry, and difficult to track down.
Time was actually money. Her time was charged by the minute; even her thinking time was paid for, detailed as ‘considering’ on the invoice.
As a result, Pat very rarely called her ex-girlfriend at work.
‘Oh, it’s you, sorry, I didn’t see the number.’ Sue’s voice mellowed. ‘Everything OK? I don’t have long …’
‘I’m not sure how to put this, so I’ll just say it.’ Pat swallowed. Her mouth was suddenly dry.
‘What?’ Sue was rustling papers on her desk.
‘Henry Clayton was found dead this morning. Washed up on the beach at Birling Gap.’
There was a long pause.
‘Sue?’
Silence.
‘Are you there? Did you hear me? Henry Clayton is dead.’
‘That’s very sad,’ replied Sue, before emitting a long, sombre sigh. ‘That’s very, very sad. He was such a lovely boy. Birling Gap? Near you? How?’
‘Suicide, apparently.’
‘Suicide? I doubt that.’ She paused again. ‘Sorry, you’d know best, of course, but … really? What d’you think? That doesn’t sound right, does it?’
‘I think the same. He showed none of the usual signs. Not that people haven’t been shocked and surprised by suicides before, but I feel in my gut that he wasn’t in that frame of mind. The police think otherwise.’
‘Do they now?’ Sue inhaled deeply down the line and then sighed again. ‘The police taking the path of least resistance. Why doesn’t that surprise me? Although I suppose they do get a lot of that down there.’
‘How was Henry when you last saw him?’
Turned out Sue had seen Henry just two days before.
He’d come to her office – an oak-panelled room at the top of a narrow, twisting staircase – for a coffee and legal advice about issuing a non-molestation order, a ‘cease and desist’, against his boyfriend, Derek, who’d been causing him some problems.
Henry had originally been put in touch with Sue by one of his stockbroker colleagues.
She’d come highly recommended. Cool under pressure, a stickler for fairness, she was well known for championing the underdog and getting wronged women generous divorce settlements.
She had taken Henry under her wing and suggested that he might want to remove Derek entirely from his life.
Legally force him to leave his flat in London.
She had subsequently suggested that a few sessions with Pat might be helpful with the fallout from the breakdown of his relationship, as Henry kept wavering and getting back together with Derek and Sue kept having to put the legal work on hold.
‘It doesn’t make sense, though, does it?’ she said now, clicking the end of her biro down the line.
‘No, not to me, but the police aren’t looking for anyone else. They seem convinced that he committed suicide.’
‘How can they be so sure? And what did they want from you exactly?’
‘They probably thought that the fact he had an appointment to see me was enough to prove their theory.’
‘But you wouldn’t have been able to confirm or deny he was a client.’
‘Technically. But I slipped up. Don’t tell my governing body.’ Pat paused, a myriad of thoughts circling in her mind. ‘But, you know, if he didn’t jump, he might have fallen. An accident. What d’you think?’
‘Or murder,’ declared Sue.
‘Oh God!’
‘Well, you never know.’
‘That might happen regularly in your circles,’ said Pat, ‘but down here, we mostly settle things over a glass of sherry in the pub.’
‘Sherry!? And I’m afraid to say that domestic violence, a common cause of murder, is rife everywhere, and isn’t necessarily anything to do with class either.’
‘Yes, you’re right.’ Pat gazed out of the window of the hut, taking a deep breath. ‘Are you really suggesting that Henry could have been murdered?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything. I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s just a possibility.’
‘A possibility? Murder! What am I supposed to do about that?’
‘Find out who did it?’
‘That’s easy for you to say. I’m not a detective, I’m a psychotherapist.’
‘I’d say that’s probably better. You understand people, you see things no one else does. You’re canny!’
Pat laughed.
‘Well, you can’t do any worse than the police, that’s for sure. Listen, I’ve got to go. See you soon, good luck.’
Pat sat in the shed with her chin in her hands.
Dave was curled up on the soft, fat armchair where Henry should have been.
What could possibly have happened to poor Henry for him to have ended up dead on the beach?
And why was he in Westlinke in the first place, when he should have still been at work in London?
He was going to catch the 1.15 p.m. train from Victoria, if Pat remembered correctly. Why hadn’t he done that?
She got up and crossed the hut, with its sheepskin rug and sage-green-painted floorboards.
Opposite the desk and the window, three of her watercolour landscapes hung on the wooden wall.
Next to a bookcase of academic journals and psychotherapy textbooks was a tall grey metal cabinet that contained the files on her past and present clients.
Her professional code of ethics dictated that her client records should be filed under code numbers rather than names, but that was too far-fetched for maverick Pat.
Technically she could’ve locked the cabinet, but she had no idea where the key was.
She pulled out the top drawer and began flicking through the files.
They were supposed to be stored in alphabetical order, but somehow that system had slipped.
What was the point of having Mark Allen’s file right at the front when he was no longer on her books and had moved to San Francisco at least eight years ago?
Although, to be fair, Mr Allen was something of an exception.
Pat’s patients rarely seemed to leave the practice.
One of the problems of being a successful psychotherapist was that no one ever wanted to move on.
They’d understand their issues, even make changes and improve their lives, but they seemed to like to stay on for maintenance.
‘A bit like Hotel California,’ had been Sue’s response to Pat’s conundrum.
Scaling back the practice was one of the reasons why she had left London.
Some patients didn’t seem to make any progress but repeated the same patterns and circles and stayed in the same lane, no matter how many times they’d come to see her in her Covent Garden office.
Obviously, as Pat would say many times over, you couldn’t go to the gym once and expect to leave with abs.
Therapy took time, but it also took effort.
And there were a few stuck clients who wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t, do the work.
She continued searching through her files.
There was the angry banker who used to shoplift to help express his suppressed feelings.
The unhappy loner who would physically ‘dump his shit’ at her door by using the lavatory in her office every Monday morning, leaving it in a terrible skid-stained state.
The yearner who never felt she had her mother’s love and had been chasing various unobtainable amours ever since; and the people-pleaser who attuned so acutely to everyone else she had lost sight of who she was. And then there was Henry.
‘At last,’ mumbled Pat, tapping the folder lightly, ‘here we go. Filed under H for Henry rather than C for Clayton.’ She pulled out the file, sat down and opened it on the desk.
There was a printed copy of an email from Sue explaining the reason behind Henry’s desire to contact her.
There was their agreement that Henry would undertake eight sessions.
There was his personal information form, which he had filled out in his sophisticated handwriting before sending it to her.
She also remembered his first Zoom session.
He was nervous, but quite talkative, as if all his worries and grievances were ready to burst out of him, like a fizzy drink that had been shaken before being opened.
His life was seemingly great. He enjoyed his job, had plenty of friends and got on with his family.
His father had loomed large in his psyche, although he’d been in denial about that at first. His mother was a healthy, loving presence and he had a good relationship with his stepfather and stepsisters too.
The only problem was his love life. He kept falling for men who went hot and then unfortunately cold on him, meaning he was hurt time after time.
One of his aha! moments had been when he realised that these emotionally unavailable men were just a replacement for his father.
He craved his approval, his recognition, his affirmation and yet had no way to get it.
He’d thought his latest relationship was going to be different, but Derek, for whom he had fallen hard, might have been his most disastrous love affair yet.
Pat had been helping him become aware of the ways Derek didn’t respect him, let alone love him.
The most important factors for a successful outcome in therapy were the client’s expectations, motivation and hope.
As well as, of course, the relationship between client and therapist. And Henry had thrived in both areas.
He was excited for change. And Pat had really liked him.
Looking at the file, she realised it didn’t really sum him up.
There was so much more to him than any piece of paper could ever convey.
But she remembered what it felt like to be in his presence, and it was not how she felt when she was with patients who were likely to harm themselves.
‘Knock, knock!’