Page 18 of Parker

Chapter thirteen

Sophie's Apartment, Glasgow

Nicky

“Tell me again,” Sophie gushes, practically bouncing in place. “It’s so romantic.”

Her negativity toward Joel disappeared the moment I walked through the door. One look at me, grinning like an idiot, and she was all in. She could see it—I was completely and utterly besotted.

“It’s like a Hollywood movie,” she gushes. “You’re the broken ex-convict who falls for a millionaire business owner while trying to rebuild her life.” She hugs herself like it’s her own fantasy.

“He takes you into his arms, and together you heal your wounds. His. Yours. It’s perfection.” A dreamy smile curls on her lips, and she giggles like a schoolgirl.

I roll my eyes. This is the tenth version of our ‘love story’ she’s crafted in the past hour. Everyone paints Joel as my shining knight on a white horse, and me as the damsel in distress. It makes my skin prickle.

“This isn’t a movie, Soph. I’m not healed because he looks at me like I’m worth loving.” Some wounds don't heal just because you find love, they gape open and weep.

Prison was hard.

Actually, it was fucking torture.

My sentence started the week after my twentieth birthday.

Overall, the trial had been quick, because of my pleading guilty to manslaughter with diminished responsibility.

Graham, my lawyer, steered me through the process as painlessly as possible.

Sophie came to every hearing she could as moral support, but everyone else stayed away, not wanting to be connected to someone like me.

“Have you always had a temper?” Graham had asked.

He sat silently, allowing me to contemplate my answer.

“Take your time. It’s just us here. I need as much information from you as possible to build a defense.

” He looked me straight in the eye, never mincing his words.

“Getting this right is the difference between a decade in prison or life.”

I wept again. It was all I’d done since that horrid police officer slammed the cell door shut behind me.

Because of the severity of my aggression and the ultimate consequence of my actions, I had to be kept locked up until my hearing. Graham tried to argue for bail. Sophie had offered her home as a safe place, but the judge refused due to my unstable mental state.

The door was closing on my life. It felt like the bolts were sliding across to seal my fate.

“Nicky, tell me what happened that night.”

“Again?” I sighed, like he’d just asked me to climb Everest.

“Yes, again.” His voice was authoritative. “Your best chance is to listen to me and take my advice.” I tutted like a petulant school child, and he raised his eyebrows in a warning.

After rehashing the events for the thousandth time, he nodded, convinced. “This is good.” He placed his hand on mine and squeezed gently. “Your story is consistent. It’s always more believable to the judge if a defendant’s story doesn’t change.”

“I’m telling the truth,” I mumbled, my temper fizzing beneath the surface.

“I know that. You know that. But the judge doesn’t. They deal with liars in their court every day. People trying to twist a situation to ensure their release.” He drummed his fingers on the table and surveyed me quietly. “How do you feel about speaking to a psychoanalyst?”

“Like a shrink?” I spluttered.

“Not exactly. Something triggered your anger and violence that night. We need to find out what it was. We need to make the judge understand why your father ended up dead. You’re taking responsibility for your actions, and you deserve to serve the correct punishment. No more.”

I stared at his lips as they moved, panic rising like bile. I was going to end up in the nuthouse. My mother told me about a great aunt who began losing her marbles. They carted her away, and none of the family ever saw her again.

“A psychoanalyst,” Graham said, more loudly than necessary.

I brought my eyes back to his, so he knew I was listening.

“They’re specialists in helping people recover repressed emotions and forgotten experiences.

Their role will be to help you find insight into why you reacted as you did. Identify your trigger.”

I sat silently in contemplation. His words made sense.

“This is about you and your future, Nicky. I know this is the last place you expected to be. But you are here now, so we need to work with the toolkit we have to ensure the best possible outcome.”

“Does not feeling guilty make me a monster? Evil?” I’d been considering this question for the past twenty-four hours. As upsetting as my situation is, my father’s death didn’t sadden me. No guilt was hiding in my heart. The fact he was dead didn’t bother me.

“You? No. You don’t strike me as evil. And believe me, I’ve stood beside worse than Satan.”

Guards removed me from my cell and took me to an unfamiliar room the next day. This one was smaller, but still clinical.

The furniture was basic: a steel table bolted to the floor, four hard plastic chairs arranged around it, a narrow shelf mounted on the wall holding a few old books—dog-eared paperbacks with titles faded from the sun or age. A half-hearted attempt to make the place feel normal, maybe.

The doctor was already in the room when I entered. She smiled kindly and gestured for me to take a seat at the table.

The elderly woman across from me was the last person I expected a psychoanalyst to look like.

Dr. Cheryl Petrie sat at the table on the black plastic chair.

I swear she could see through me. Her tightly permed gray hair was so firmly in place that I doubted a single strand could move.

Age and laughter lined her face, and thick-rimmed glasses perched on her nose.

She looked more like someone’s granny than a professional qualified to crawl through the wreckage of my mind.

A larger woman, she had to squirm in her seat to get comfortable as the ankle-length floral dress she wore floated around her.

From her gigantic tweed shoulder bag, she removed her phone, a flask, an old-fashioned biscuit tin, and a notebook.

I noticed she had tucked her pen behind her right ear.

She continued to rummage around in her bag.

“Where’s that blasted pen?” she mumbled.

I cleared my throat to get her attention, and clear blue eyes met mine. “It’s there,” I said, gesturing to her ear, and she laughed.

“Silly me. Cup of tea?” she asked, like we weren’t in prison discussing manslaughter.

Being disarmed by biscuits and kindness was the last thing I expected, but she was successful.

This graying granny peeled back my layers and got me to bare my soul to her.

So many memories rushed to the surface, prompted by her questions, events buried deep inside me, hidden from view.

We hadn’t talked about that night during this session; she said it was too soon, and she wanted to get to know me first.

“When will I see you again?” I asked, not wanting her to leave. There was something calming about her presence.

“Graham requested two sessions per week now. Your sentencing is scheduled for six weeks’ time. We have plenty to discuss between now and then. We’ll sort this out, Nicky. Believe me when I tell you this is a glitch in the road. Life doesn’t end in prison—for some it begins there.”

Back in my cell, I laid on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Throwing and catching a tennis ball kept me sane as I reran my first psychoanalyst session in my head. The process was surprisingly freeing. Digging through the old ground, unearthing issues long suppressed, had been cleansing for me.

Q. What is your earliest memory?

A. I was six and attending a friend’s birthday party. Everyone was in fancy dresses, but my mum had forgotten mine. I sat in the corner and cried for the entire party. The other kids kept teasing me and pulling my pigtails.

Q. Do you remember the last time you lost your temper?

A. The night I killed my dad.

Q. The first time you remember losing control of your temper?

A. I was thirteen. Back then, I played on a girls’ football team, and neither of my parents came to my matches.

But this one Saturday was the area cup final.

They told me they would come. On the morning of the game, my father told me he had to work.

I found out a week later he had been drinking with his mates at the pub.

My fury stemmed from him letting me down and prioritizing himself over me. I smashed up the TV.

Q. A regret from your childhood?

A. Never meeting anyone’s expectations. I constantly felt inadequate, failing to meet my expectations in both my studies and sports. In the end, it left me feeling hopeless and unwanted. I regret not trying harder.

Q. A special moment with your dad?

A. Um… I’ll need to think about it. A family holiday in the caravan, perhaps. Nothing comes to mind, but there must be something. There must be.

Cheryl hadn’t voiced her opinion on any of my answers. She’d just listened and let me mull over the words. With sudden clarity, I knew what my trigger was—betrayal.

That night, seeing my father in bed with another woman was the last treachery I could deal with. He put everyone before me, every time. I was never the focus of his attention. Never felt important enough to count.

The night it happened, the night my father died, I’d been working in the bar since six in the evening, a tough night with many unfamiliar faces.

One man had laid himself across the counter to talk to me.

The reek of alcohol on his breath made my stomach churn.

He reached over and stroked my breasts suggestively.

I had batted his hand away and screamed at him to fuck off.

My manager, after hearing the commotion, came to see what the issue was. The situation was straightforward in my eyes. A customer had violated me. He needed to leave.

With a shake of his head, my boss told me not to wear such a low-cut top if I didn’t want attention. It was my responsibility to ensure I wasn’t encouraging the punters to act poorly.

If I was attracting male attention I didn’t want, he told me to take a long, hard look at myself in the mirror because it didn’t match the vibe I was giving off.

Easy meat was the phrase the conceited asshole used to describe me. Gagging for it .

In his eyes, it wasn’t the man’s problem. It was mine.

Returning to the house that night and seeing my father’s betrayal of my mother had been the final straw. I’d released years of buried hurt and shame. Something inside me snapped.

That night, I’d truly understood what betrayal was, and I’m still working out if love can undo it.