‘I said, are you all right?’
‘Yes, of course I’m all right, darling,’ I replied. ‘What on earth makes you think I’m not?’
‘The gratuitously vicious way in which you’re chopping up those carrots.’
‘Am I?’ I said wonderingly, sword-sized Sabatier poised in mid-air.
‘Yes. You remind me of Jack Nicholson in The Shining. In fact ever since Matt and I came home this evening, I’ve been picking up a lot of stress.’ Oh God. I had that shrinking feeling. I knew what was coming next.
‘I’ve been detecting a lot of tension,’ Katie went on, ‘and a lot of suppressed anger. You’re feeling pretty hostile, aren’t you Mum?’
‘I am not hostile!’ I spat.
‘Is there anything you want to tell me?’ she continued calmly. ‘There you are, Siggy. Nice and clean.’
‘Tell you?’ I repeated wonderingly.
‘What I really mean is, Mum, is there anything you need to talk through?’
‘No thank you,’ I said as I got down the salt.
‘Because I’m getting a lot of anxiety here.’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes. Have you been having many negative thoughts?’
‘Negative? No.’
‘Are you in denial?’
‘Certainly not!’
‘Disturbing dreams?’
‘Of course not. What a ridiculous suggestion. No.’
‘You see, I’m worried about your super-ego,’ she added matter-of-factly as she laid the kitchen table. ‘I think there are some repressed conflicts here, so we need to work through them to take some of the pressure off your subconscious. Now,’ she said as she got out the spoons, ‘how about a little free association?’
‘No thanks.’
‘I think it would help your ego really open up.’
‘My ego’s busy cooking supper, darling. Sorry.’
‘Really Mum, there’s absolutely nothing to it.’
‘I know,’ I said as I strained the beans. ‘That’s precisely why I’m not keen.’
‘All you have to do, Mum, is just sit down, close your eyes, and say whatever comes to mind.’
‘Oh Katie, please don’t turn me into one of your human guinea pigs,’ I said irritably. ‘Can’t you do that at school?’
‘No,’ she said regretfully.
‘Why not?’
‘Because they’re all in therapy already. Honestly Mum, free association’s easy,’ she persisted as I opened the oven and checked the shepherd’s pie. She took a notebook out of her pocket. ‘You just say whatever pops into your head, no matter how frivolous it might be.’
‘Oh God … ’
‘No matter how trivial,’ she went on reassuringly. ‘No matter how disgusting or depraved.’
‘Katie!’ I said crossly. ‘I object to being psychoanalysed by someone who, until relatively recently, was playing with Barbie dolls!’
‘Yes, but I was only ever interested in Barbies as a paradigm of US cultural imperialism. Please, Mum,’ she said persuasively, ‘just for five minutes – that’s all.’
‘Oh, all right,’ I conceded. ‘I’m prepared to humour you. But let me assure you young lady, that I find all this psychobabble very silly.’
‘That’s absolutely fine, Mum,’ she said soothingly. ‘Go with your anger. Don’t hold back. Just let it out. Whatever you say is OK. Right,’ she went on briskly. ‘Sit down. Close your eyes. That’s good. Relax. Breathe deeply. Let your mind wander. Now, what word springs into your mind?’
‘Um … ’
‘No, don’t think about it, Mum. Just say it. Straight out. OK? Go.’
‘Er, carrot.’
‘Yes.’
‘Chop … ’
‘Carry on.’
‘Knife … sharp … er … stick … beat … time. Fifteen. Happy. Not. Over. Yet. Maybe. Wrigley. Wriggly. Lucky. Strike. Hit. Hurt. Wound. Heart. Flowers. Betrayal. Lying. Cheating. Philandering bastard. OK, that’s it!’ I suddenly got to my feet. ‘I don’t want to play this game any more.’
‘You’re exhibiting classic resistance, Mum,’ said Katie benignly. ‘It’s quite natural, don’t worry, because it means we’re getting close to the source of the problem.’
‘I don’t have any problems. Oh, hello Matt. You’re down.’
‘What we saw there,’ said Katie cheerfully as she snapped shut her notebook, ‘was your unconscious struggling to avoid giving up its dark secrets.’
‘Look, Katie,’ I said patiently as I wiped my brow. ‘I haven’t got any dark secrets, and all this Freudian mumbo-jumbo is simply ridiculous. Now, supper’s ready, so just do me a favour and go and kill your dad.’
Who is Jean? I keep on wondering. My rival. And what does she look like? Is she blonde or dark? Tall or short? Is she younger than me? Is she prettier? Probably is. Is she slimmer? That wouldn’t be hard. Is she wittier, and brighter? How – and when – did they meet? Did she make a beeline for Peter, or did he chat her up? Does he imagine he’s in love with her, or is it just a physical thing? Oh God. Oh God. I’m torturing myself, but I just can’t stop. You see I found another note in his pocket about Jean this morning, and I was doubly upset about it because the weekend had gone quite well. We were perfectly ‘normal’ together, as a family. We walked the dog. We got out a video – ‘Analyze This’ – and the children enjoyed themselves. Matt was closeted in his room most of the time, as usual, although curiously he went out to the post box several times. But all in all, it went well. And I was just beginning to relax and to think that maybe I’d got it all wrong. After all, I still have not a shred of hard evidence that Peter’s up to no good, just these horrible, uneasy feelings which refuse to go away. But this morning, when I got back from work, I saw that he’d left his briefcase at home. So I opened it – it wasn’t locked – and I know you’ll all disapprove, but all I can say in my own defence is that it was something I just … had to do. I feel so tormented, you see. I’ve lost my peace of mind. My life’s in limbo until I’ve found out one way or the other for sure. So I opened it. And I’m glad I did, because there it was. Tucked into the pocket. A note from Peter’s secretary Iris, which said, Peter, Jean called again – sounded rather anxious. Says you’re a very ‘naughty boy’, not to have called back, and ‘please, please, PLEASE’ to ring. A ‘naughty boy’? Good God! She was probably into S and M. And I felt really annoyed with Iris, who I’d always thought was nice, for helping my husband to pursue his sordid little liaison dangereuse. Then I looked at the manuscript he was working on and there was Jean’s name again. It appeared several times. Peter had doodled it in the margin as though he was quite obsessed. Jean, he’d written, and sometimes just a simple J. And the point is that if Jean was purely a professional contact, then Peter would happily have said. But the fact that he vehemently denied that he knew her makes me feel certain that he’s involved.
‘I’m in agonies,’ I said miserably to Lily this evening. ‘I just don’t know what to do.’ We were sitting at the bar of the Bluebird Café in the King’s Road, not far from where she lives.
‘Have some Laurent Perrier, darling,’