Page 20 of The Therapist

TWELVE

Lana

As I stand in the entrance hall, the rain flying at me as the wind blows in, I have no idea how to respond to what Mike has said.

He must be at least six feet tall, if not more, and he has broad shoulders.

He looks like he works out and like he could lift his wife in a single hand. How stupid does he think I am?

‘Before you laugh at me, let me explain.’

My instinct is to run, to get out of this house and go straight to the police, but there is something in the way he’s looking at me that makes me stay.

I step forward, allowing him to close the front door, relieved to be out of the cold and the rain.

Is this a lie, and if it is, why? What kind of a person says something like this and thinks they will be believed?

And if I stay and listen, will he tell me where his wife is?

I glance down at my phone and see that it’s nearly 5 p.m. ‘I have to fetch my son,’ I tell him again. ‘It’s at least a half-an-hour drive, talk fast.’ I lower the tone of my voice and try to sound calm, in control.

‘I understand,’ he says. ‘But please, this is very important. You need to understand about Sandy before you call the police. You need to know that I’ve never hurt her, not ever.’

I swallow. ‘I have a few minutes.’ I could ask Oliver to get Iggy, of course, or my mother but there’s no way that I’m stupid enough to put myself in a position where no one is expecting me.

‘Okay, okay.’ He raises his hands. ‘Just let me explain. He steps towards me and I instinctively step back, feeling the handle of the front door dig into my back. I push harder, move one hand behind me, so that I can open it fast. I will need to run. I think I will need to run.

‘I know that she and I are not good together,’ he says, pulling his phone out of his pocket.

‘I don’t know how much she’s told you about her childhood but it wasn’t the greatest. She’s believed all her life that her mother was jealous of her looks and so they were never close.

But she had some horrible experiences too. ’

‘Okay,’ I say, unsure where this is leading.

‘Like when her father was teaching her to swim, he refused to get her lessons, refused to let anyone else teach her. Instead, he would just throw her into the pool, just chuck her in, and every single time, she would sink like a stone. She was only four years old and each time, she panicked and sank and he left her there until she nearly died. She can’t go anywhere near a pool or the ocean because she’s terrified of dying. ’

I can hear alarm bells ringing in my head at the repetition of exactly the same story that Sandy told me about him. Why is he making the story about her or did she make it about him? She was very reluctant to discuss her parents. So is he telling the truth?

‘I didn’t have the greatest childhood either. My dad…liked to hit, both me and my mother. What I’m saying is that both Sandy and I are damaged and I know, especially now, that we are not good together. But because of what my mother went through, what I went through, I would never hurt her.’

I don’t know what to say to him. Does he think that I can believe him? His wife is missing and he’s here.

‘Look,’ he tells me, opening his phone. ‘I never wanted to…I hate that I have to do this but I’m going to show you some pictures, okay?’

I nod, glancing down at my phone. I only have a few more minutes.

He finds his photo gallery and flicks through his pictures until he finds what he wants. ‘Look.’ He turns the phone around and I see a picture of him with a gash on his forehead and what looks like a few stitches.

‘She threw a mug at me and it hit me in the head. We were arguing about money and I told her that she needed to get a job but she really doesn’t want to go back to work.

We were standing in the kitchen and it was a Saturday morning and the kids were in the other room.

They were watching television and we were talking…

arguing. I said she needed to start contributing because both kids are in school and she chucked the mug at me.

It had coffee in it and it burned my face a little but it also hit me on the temple and caused this gash.

’ He lifts his blond hair away from his forehead with his other hand and I see the raised scar, still red and healing.

I study the picture, where I can see that, in addition to the gash, one cheek is a bright, angry red. It looks painful and real but you can create anything on the internet these days. He could have gotten the gash anywhere at all.

‘And here…’ He flicks through the phone again and then shows me another picture.

In this one his lip is swollen, crusted with dried blood on one side.

‘We were arguing about money again because she wanted to go on vacation and I told her we couldn’t afford it.

It was a couple of months ago, in our bedroom and late at night.

We were both in bed and she was reading a book, a hardback, and I said, “The answer is no, Sandy,” and she swung the book at my face. ’

‘Can I see?’ I ask, holding out my hand for his phone.

It means I have to slide my own phone into the pocket of my pants and let go of the door handle.

If he hands me the phone, I can blow up the picture, try to figure out if its real or not; if he hands me the phone, I will be more inclined to believe him.

You don’t hand over your phone to someone if you have something to hide.

We lock eyes and then he gives me the phone. Using my fingers, I blow up the picture but I still can’t tell whether it’s fake or not. He drops his gaze and pushes his hands into his pockets as I look down at his screen, quickly flipping through the last few pictures.

I expect to find pictures of his children but there are only pictures of mattresses, and then I stop on one that is not a picture but rather a screenshot of an email of a few lines.

We can’t be together anymore. We both know that. I don’t want one of us to get hurt. You need to grant me a divorce, Mike. You need to let me go.

I cannot help gasping and he looks up, grabs the phone away from me and looks at what I’ve seen.

‘I’ve never seen that,’ he says, gritting his teeth. ‘I don’t know how that got on my phone. I’ve never had a message from her like this.’ His voice rises with panic as I stare at him and then he looks down at the screen again. ‘That bitch,’ he whispers.

I have no idea what to say to him. In my pants, my phone buzzes with the alarm I set so I would have enough time to get to Iggy.

My heart is racing and I struggle to take a deep breath. I don’t know what to say, what I should say so that I can get out of here.

‘You need to go,’ he says quietly, ‘and I understand you may not believe me. I mean, who would?’ He shrugs his shoulders and offers me a sad smile.

‘But Sandy is not the one being hurt here and I haven’t told anyone because, well, to be honest, it’s humiliating as hell.

I love her…loved her… I mean it’s complicated now but the truth is she has these rages and she comes at me and of course I can’t hit her or fight back because if I did…

’ He leaves the words hanging in the air.

If he did, he would easily kill her. ‘I would never hurt her. She knows that. She relies on that. And that screenshot wasn’t on my phone yesterday.

I promise you it wasn’t. She’s a conniving liar and you need to know that’s the truth. ’

‘Her eye…’ I touch my face. ‘When I first met her, she had a black eye.’ If this man is telling the truth, I need to know, and if he is lying, I need to know that too because if I can determine that he’s lying, I’m going to the police tonight.

As quickly as it began, the hail outside stops and silence abruptly falls, the rain trickling down to a drizzle.

‘I didn’t do that. I never saw her with a black eye.’

I question the smudges of colour on the tissue again. It’s exhausting to be doing this back and forth all the time. But that screenshot? What if it’s true and she wants out and he won’t let her go? Why take a screenshot of it?

‘Dad, Dad, Lila took my Lego,’ his son shouts from upstairs.

‘I can’t…’ I shake my head. ‘I need to go.’

‘Okay, but you need to know that she disappeared because she wanted to. She must have wanted to. I’m sure she’ll be…back.’

It doesn’t seem like he is that worried about her, or that he wants her back. Maybe that’s because he knows exactly where she is.

He says he loved her, what does that mean? Is he no longer in love with her or is she gone?

I turn around and struggle to open his front door.

As I pull it open, I look down and a flash of red on the white wall catches my eye.

I hold my breath, feel him behind me as I take a giant step out of the house and onto the front path, feeling myself sway and twist as I struggle to find my footing on the wet ground.

I take a deep breath of cold air. Under the now shining streetlights the quickly melting hailstones cover the grass in a crystal sheen. ‘Lana,’ he says but I don’t stop to listen. Was that blood? It could have been blood.

Oh God, it could have been blood and that means everything he has said to me is a lie, a complete lie.

Without stopping, I dash across the road to my car, my keys in my hand.

Once I am inside, the doors locked and my heart thudding in my ears, I glance over at the house.

He is standing with the front door open, staring at me.

His legs are wide apart and his arms folded over his chest. Does he know I saw it?

I pull off slowly, biting down on my lip. I try to calm myself down as I drive to get Iggy, taking deep breaths and repeating, Nothing happened, nothing happened. Nothing happened to you, not to you.

I want to go straight to the police but I have no idea what to say, how exactly to explain it, and I need to get my son. I need to be his mother now.