Treading carefully – he knows which floorboards creak and which are silent – he crosses to the window. Her car is parked outside. He lets the curtain fall back and returns to the bed. He straightens the quilt and plumps up the pillow. It looks the same as when he got in, but he knows it will smell of the streets now and that she will know he has been here again. She always knows.
He leaves the room and heads for the stairs. Several of them creak, but he has learned to walk at the very edges. As he reaches the ground floor, he hears a church clock striking four in the morning. It will be getting light soon.
The door to Felicity’s room is ajar. He pushes it slowly and it inches open.
49
Joe
Joe almost expects Felicity to cancel their Friday appointment. He sits at his desk, waiting for the phone call that will tell him he won’t be seeing her again, and wonders, a little curiously, about the impending sense of loss that he feels. He tells himself that she is just a patient, and once again, that not all patients can be helped. Or even understood. The sound of the doorbell startles him, that of her voice over the intercom even more.
It will take her two minutes to climb to the second floor. He crosses to his bathroom and checks his face in the mirror. He looks pale, the creases from the corners of his eyes more pronounced than usual. She is at the top of the stairs when he steps back out onto the landing.
‘Hi.’ She is flushed, having taken the stairs at a run.
‘Good evening,’ he replies. ‘Come through.’
She follows him into the consulting room and closes the door. She looks different. He’d spotted it immediately but in the better light can properly appreciate quite how much. She is wearing a dress of white lace, cut high at the neck and with sleeves to her elbows. It has an underskirt of bright fondant pink. It should be demure, and it is far from revealing, but it is tight and ends a couple of inches above her knee. Her hair is curled and she is wearing make-up.
‘Are you on your way out?’ he says, because to ignore such a transformation would feel dishonest.
‘We had a drinks reception at work,’ she says. ‘These heels are killing me.’
He looks down at her high-heeled pink shoes and sees, as he is intended to, that she is barelegged, that her skin is a pale apricot colour and that her ankles are very slim.
‘I’m so sorry about Tuesday,’ she says.
‘Have a seat,’ he tells her. ‘And please don’t be sorry. You became distressed and you let me know about it. That was absolutely the right thing to do.’
She smiles, letting him see her white, even teeth, and sits, crossing her legs. She has great legs. And, just like that, he knows he is being played.
He comes out from behind the desk and walks to his armchair. Pulling it back a few inches he sits.
She does not wait for him to ask her any questions. ‘The truth is,’ she says, ‘I’ve never had a long-term relationship. I was embarrassed to tell you that.’
‘Why would that be embarrassing?’
She half shrugs. ‘Because it’s weird. I’m twenty-eight. Most women my age are married with babies or planning their weddings.’
‘I’m not sure that’s true. Lots of young women put their careers first until they’re well into their thirties.’
She looks down, then peers back up at him. ‘It’s kind of you to say so. But I feel weird.’
Conscious of feeling stiff and uncomfortable, Joe tries to relax a little in the armchair. ‘Why do you think you’ve never had a relationship?’
She answers quickly. ‘I think it’s partly circumstantial. I work overseas a lot, and it’s difficult to put down roots when you’re never in one country for more than a couple of months. But also, on some level, I think I’m afraid of intimacy. I lost my parents very young. I didn’t have the normal opportunities to bond at an early age.’
This is starting to feel like a rehearsed speech.
‘Do you remember your parents?’ he asks.
‘Not really. I remember my grandmother. She didn’t die until I was thirteen.’
‘Were you close to her?’
She makes a thinking face. ‘I’m not sure I’d say close. She took good care of me. But she was quite elderly and also, I think, a bit detached. In any case, it’s not the same, is it? Not the same as having an actual mum and dad.’
Joe thinks about his own relationship with his mother, how at times it seems too close, almost claustrophobic.
‘Did she talk to you about your parents?’ he asks.
‘Never.’ Felicity frowns. ‘I’m not sure I realised that before. That she never mentioned them. I don’t even have any photographs.’
‘What happened to them?’
For a second, Felicity’s face becomes entirely vacant, then she looks bewildered. ‘I don’t think she told me that either. I’ve always assumed it was a car accident but I can’t actually remember her telling me so.’
He waits, to see if she has more to say. She doesn’t. He writes, Parents. What happened?
‘Do you think your difficulty making connections with people is what draws you to extreme environments?’ he asks. ‘On glaciers there can’t be many people to worry about.’
‘That’s true. Maybe my career choice does spring from being uncomfortable around people.’ She matches his smile. ‘Mind you, it’s never going to get any better if I keep jetting off to the other side of the planet.’
‘Are you having second thoughts about South Georgia?’
‘No, I still want to do that. It will be good for me. I think now that these problems I’ve been having, the memory lapses, the confusion, have been my subconscious trying to tell me something’s wrong. South Georgia will give me some breathing space. Some time to think about what I really want. I feel I’m really on the way to getting better. You’ve helped me so much.’
She smiles again. It becomes a little fixed when she sees that he doesn’t return it.
‘Why do you think refusing to admit the truth about commitment issues has manifested as a belief that someone is stalking you?’
Her smile fades. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Under hypnosis, you talked about someone watching you. Someone you called “he”.’
She takes her time. ‘But I never actually saw anyone, did I? It was just a vague uncomfortable feeling. Maybe it isn’t a stalker so much as an unwanted presence in my life.’
Joe wonders how much time she has spent planning this.
‘Are you afraid of men?’ he asks.
She answers a little too quickly. ‘No, of course not.’
‘What are you hoping to get out of the session today, Felicity?’
‘Well, I thought I’d thank you, for your time. And say that you’ve helped a lot and that I’m grateful. And I suppose, I wanted to say goodbye.’
He glances at the clock. They are barely halfway through their allotted time. ‘You want this to be our last session?’ he asks.
Maybe it is a good thing, that this is the last he sees of her.
‘Well, we agreed to six, not including the first time we met, and then we added Friday appointments as well. We’ve covered a lot of ground in that time.’