Page 19 of The Therapist

The two of them are so toxic now, so bad for each other and for the kids. But he still went along to the appointment hoping that something, that anything could change.

In his office this morning, he had scrolled through job ads as phones began to ring – customers who had, somehow, already heard the news.

He had given up on looking for a job quite quickly, knowing that he had a long road ahead of him.

He knew Paul was obviously waiting for everyone to leave and he saw no point in waiting so he grabbed his suit jacket and decided on a few drinks in the pub before he went home to confront his wife with the news.

But at 2.30 p.m. his phone rang, and he answered when he saw it was a call from the kids’ school.

‘Mr Burkhart?’ enquired a woman’s voice.

‘Yes.’

‘This is Janet from the front office. Your wife hasn’t picked the children up from school and she’s not answering her phone.’

‘What?’

‘School ended for Felix and Lila at two today because we have some staff training. An email was sent along with text messages to all carers’ phones.’

‘I don’t know anything about that.’

He never reads the messages from the school. That is Sandy’s job. Her only job, despite how much they need the money that her working would add to their lives.

‘I understand, sir, but the children need to be picked up.’ The woman’s voice was smooth and clipped and he could hear her judgement over the phone. She was calling him and Sandy shitty parents without calling them shitty parents.

Mike wanted to fling the phone across the bar. ‘I’ll call her and make sure she comes to get them,’ he said and he hung up before the woman could say anything else and called his wife. Sandy didn’t answer her phone.

He paid for his last beer and went to his car, calling Sandy over and again, leaving voice messages about the kids needing to be picked up.

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ he yelled into the phone as he arrived at the school and it started to rain.

And now they are home and his wife has still not picked up.

‘That looks like a lovely teddy,’ says Lana, dragging him back to the here and now as thunder rumbles across the sky and the rain falls.

‘Lila, your snack is in the kitchen. Can you go and eat it please?’

His daughter looks him up and down and he can see she senses that he wants her away from this conversation.

‘Can I watch Bluey on my iPad?’ she asks, knowing now is a good time to push for what she wants.

Mike sighs. ‘Clear boundaries and rules,’ Sandy likes to say but there are no rules for this situation.

‘Yes, and tell Felix he can use his iPad as well.’ Lila runs off shouting the joyous news to her brother. He had already said no to this in the car because the iPads are supposed to be for later when he needs them to calm down and get ready for bed. No wonder the kids don’t listen to him.

‘Come into the living room,’ Mike says to Lana, but she remains at the front door.

‘I think it would be best if I left.’ Now that Lila is gone, she’s jittery again. Mike hates the way she is looking at him.

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he says through gritted teeth. ‘Just come into the living room and I can explain. My kids are here. What am I going to do to you with my kids here?’

Lana nods slowly and he turns and walks down the passage and into the living room, where he is momentarily embarrassed by the chaos of dirty plates and toys on the floor, a basket full of clean laundry on the coffee table and a heap of coloured blankets draped over a chair from where Felix was making a fort last night.

After mostly avoiding each other, he and Sandy really got into it yesterday. Things got ugly enough for her to storm upstairs and slam their bedroom door, leaving the chaos of the living room for him to sort out. He opened a couple of beers instead.

Usually, Sandy cleans up. She’s home all day, and she likes things to be neat. He dropped the kids off this morning and she was here but she obviously left the house before tidying up. How long has she been gone?

‘Sorry,’ he says, waving his hand to indicate the mess, ‘I’ve been at work, the company’s gone bankrupt and it’s been…

’ He stops speaking, aware that Lana is still hugging her handbag to her chest. He doesn’t know why he has shared this information with the therapist. Sandy doesn’t even know.

Where the hell is Sandy? He needs to check the garage, see if her car’s in there, but first he needs to deal with Lana.

‘I shouldn’t have come here, it’s very… I was just worried about Sandy because she missed her appointment,’ she says, speaking fast. ‘I’ll go and leave you.’ She starts to walk towards the front door, and for the second time, he grabs her arm.

‘Look,’ he says urgently as she shakes him off, shocked at the contact. ‘I don’t know where she is. She didn’t pick the kids up from school. They were supposed to be fetched early today and she didn’t get them and she wouldn’t answer her phone when the school called or when I called.’

Lana stares at him and Mike can see the woman’s mind turning. ‘I tried to call her as well.’

‘She may be…taking some time for herself,’ he says, the memory of the terrible argument they had yesterday making him feel slightly sick.

When the kids were babies, he and Sandy had an agreement that each of them got to sleep in one day of the weekend.

On Saturday morning he got up and took the kids to the park because for once, it wasn’t raining.

It was cold and unpleasant and boring but he had consoled himself with the idea that he would get to sleep in on Sunday.

But on Saturday night, Sandy went to meet some girlfriends for drinks and left him with the kids, coming home after 1 a.m. Mike had consumed a fair few beers himself so when Felix burst into their bedroom on Sunday morning, he simply turned over and ignored him, knowing it was Sandy’s turn to get up.

But Sandy also ignored the kid and so Lila and Felix set themselves up in their bedroom, playing some nonsense Lego game, their voices loud and piercing until Mike roared at them to go downstairs.

Sandy got up and stomped downstairs and Mike stayed in bed, wide awake.

And then he got up and got dressed and left, staying away for the whole day.

He only came home to change clothes and tell her he was meeting Ron for a drink. And that’s when she exploded.

It was the first time they had really spoken since the therapist appointment and he would hardly call it a conversation.

The kids were, mercifully, upstairs. Sandy went nuts, throwing everything he had ever screwed up on throughout their entire relationship at him. And he replied in kind and then everything got crazy.

Mike knows, from looking at the therapist, that there is no way he will share any of this with her.

‘Have you reported her missing to the police?’ asks Lana, and Mike can hear her scepticism.

‘Not yet. Don’t you need someone to be missing for twenty-four hours before you do that?’

‘Um…no, but I do know you have to do it in person.’

‘Well, I can’t do that now. I have to feed the kids and get them to sleep.

I can’t go now.’ Mike folds his arms, wondering exactly what the therapist hoped to achieve by turning up here.

It’s a strange thing to do. Therapists don’t make house calls.

Maybe Sandy told her to come? Does she know something about where Sandy is?

‘Have you heard from her at all since last week?’ he tries, in case the therapist is lying to him.

‘No…not at all. I can go and report her missing. I have to get my son but I can go afterwards.’

Mike had not expected this but then he hadn’t expected his whole awful day. Why is she so keen to involve the police already?

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow. We had…

Things haven’t been easy since our appointment with you.

Maybe she just needed some time away.’ He can imagine Sandy doing something like checking herself into a hotel for the night, ordering room service and leaving him to deal with everything.

After last week, he can see that’s probably exactly what she has done.

He will check the banking app after the therapist leaves, after he checks to see if her car is here, and then he has to figure out dinner and… His mind whirls.

‘Isn’t there someone you can call to stay with the children? I think you should report it to the police tonight. She wouldn’t leave her children.’

Mike looks at the woman and wonders exactly what kind of a therapist she is. There’s no way she has even the faintest clue who Sandy is, that much is obvious.

‘She would,’ says Mike softly. ‘You think you know her but you don’t.

’ He understands it, he really does. It’s always the husband, isn’t it?

Anytime he has ever seen or read anything about a missing wife, his mind automatically blames the husband.

Because it usually is the husband. Men are bigger, stronger, angrier.

Men are the perpetrators of violence. And women are the victims. But not all men and not all women.

Although how is this particular woman to know that?

Sandy has had a good few weeks of talking to Lana to convince the woman that Mike is an abuser.

And Sandy can be very convincing when she wants to be.

But surely a therapist can see through obvious lies?

‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Lana asks and Mike wishes that he had stuck around at the appointment, maybe convinced this woman of the truth about his wife.

In the kitchen Lila shrieks and Felix shouts, ‘No, Lila, that’s bad.’

‘Give me a second,’ says Mike and he goes to the kitchen, where Lila has taken Felix’s iPad and is trying to find Bluey on his screen. ‘Mine is flat, Felix, it’s flat.’

Irritation and anger mingle inside Mike.

He needs to sort this out. He can see that Sandy’s therapist thinks he did something to her and she can believe whatever she wants.

He needs Sandy to come home so she can sort out the house and the kids and then they can talk about him losing his job.

She’s going to be beyond pissed and he just wants to get it over and done with.

‘Right, both of you lose iPads now,’ he yells, hating that he can’t control his anger even with someone in the next room who thinks the problem is that he can’t control his anger. But that’s how it goes sometimes. It rises inside him, a tsunami of rage that he can do nothing about.

‘But, Dad!’ shrieks Felix.

‘Go to your room,’ bellows Mike, and Felix darts out of the kitchen, followed by his sister. He is the worst parent in the world. He groans and feels a sharp stabbing pain join the low-level tightness in his head.

In the living room Lana has her phone in her hand. ‘I’m calling the police,’ she says and Mike lunges forward and grabs the phone. ‘Just wait,’ he snaps. ‘Let me explain.’

And now he can see she’s not just scared but terrified.

He has grabbed her phone and she’s no longer close to the front door.

Outside, the hailstones hit the house, clattering as they smash against windows and the roof, and it occurs to Mike that Lana could scream as loud as she liked and no one would hear her.

If the kids are in their rooms with their doors closed, they wouldn’t hear her either, and if they did, they would probably be too scared to come out.

Right now, he could do anything he wanted to this woman.

‘There’s nothing to explain,’ says Lana, her voice rising over the noise outside. ‘Your wife is missing. The police need to know.’ Her face is flushed and he can see her eyes darting from side to side, seeking out an escape.

Mike would like to roar his frustration but instead he takes a deep breath and hands her phone back to her, which she takes with two fingers, like he’s made it dirty. ‘Lana, you need to let me explain, and after I explain, if you think we should call the police or go to the police, we will, okay?’

He can see she wants to leave but she nods slowly, stepping back, the phone in her hand, where she taps the screen and then turns it to show him. ‘All I need to do is hit the call button.’

‘Do you want to sit down? Can I get you a drink?’ he tries.

‘No.’ She steps back again, closer to the door of the living room. ‘Just tell me what you have to say. I have to go and get my son, and if I’m late, everyone will worry. They know I would never be late. And I’ve told…I told the receptionist at the practice that I was coming here.’

He knows that’s a lie. Therapists don’t visit their patients at home. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to know.

Mike shakes his head. ‘You think I hurt her right, that I hit her?’ He locks eyes with Lana.

‘I need to go and get my child.’

Mike knows he’s going to get nowhere now. This woman is not going to believe a single thing he says.

Upstairs he hears Lila shout at Felix and he gives up.

‘Fine,’ he says, going to the door and opening it, letting rain blow into the entrance hall.

‘I’m going to the police tomorrow if you don’t,’ says Lana.

‘Before you do, you should know: I don’t hurt her.

It’s actually the other way around.’ He feels the heat of a blush on his face.

He’s a man but he doesn’t feel much like a man right now.

He feels like a boy. A scared stupid little boy.

And he hates feeling like that because that’s when he does things he knows he’s going to regret.