Page 23 of The Therapist

FOURTEEN

TUESDAY

Lana

I wake with an already pounding headache after a restless night filled with horrific dreams of Sandy’s body, bloodied and bruised, floating in a dam somewhere.

Was that blood I saw on the wall? Why was the screenshot of Sandy asking him to let her go on Mike’s phone, and were the pictures of him hurt real? More or less real than Sandy’s black eye?

Grabbing my phone, I check to see if, somehow, Sandy has messaged me but there’s nothing from her.

‘I don’t want Vegemite sandwiches for school,’ Iggy shouts from his bedroom.

‘What do you want?’ I call back, wincing as the headache intensifies.

‘Cheese and jam. I’m getting my breakfast now.’

I hear him jumping down the steps one at a time to the first floor of our small terrace house and then the clatter of dishes as he gets himself a bowl of cereal.

Sandy’s son is the same age Iggy is, and I can’t help touching my chest over my heart as I think about a little boy who has no idea where his mother is.

Children rely on their parents, especially their primary carers, to make the world a safe place filled with routine and predictability.

Sandy was the one who took care of the children, staying home and dedicating her time to them.

Her parents live hours away and I know that she has mentioned that Mike doesn’t speak to his family much at all. It’s such a mess.

Swinging my legs out of bed, I opt for a long hot shower to shake off the terrible night. I run late as a consequence and then have to hustle Iggy out of the house with a piece of toast in my mouth.

Iggy’s chatter along the way to school keeps me distracted until I’ve dropped him off and he’s waving enthusiastically from the gate. And then I am alone with my thoughts.

There’s no question about what I’m going to do. I keep letting the thoughts go around in my head but, ultimately, I think I’ve already made a decision.

I drive to the nearest police station and park.

Before I go inside, I call Sandy’s mobile again, hoping that she will pick up and ask me what I want.

But as I have done since yesterday morning, I only get her voicemail.

I could call Mike and ask if she’s home, if she’s returned, but I don’t want to do that.

I don’t want to have to speak to him again.

I don’t have his number in my phone anyway, although it is on Sandy’s records at the clinic.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I get out of the car into the bright September morning. It’s cold but at least the sun is out.

Inside, the police station is empty, no one behind the counter, and I stand awkwardly looking around before a door opens and a policeman comes out.

‘Sorry,’ he says as a greeting, and he flushes slightly. ‘How can I help?’

‘I need…’ I stop speaking, aware of how warm the room is.

The policeman leans slightly over the counter towards me. ‘Take your time,’ he says softly, his dark eyes focused on my face.

‘I need to report someone missing.’

I had imagined that I would simply walk into the station and report Sandy missing and leave the police to do their job. That’s what I imagined and even that felt like an impossible thing to do. But it’s a lot more complicated than that.

The policeman, who introduces himself as Constable King, asks me what feels like a hundred questions.

How do you know Sandy Burkhart? Have you tried calling her?

Why is her husband not reporting her missing?

What makes you think something has happened to her?

When did you last see her? How did she seem?

Why are you concerned? Is there no one else who may know where she is?

Have you spoken to her friends, her family?

Have you called the school today? Why didn’t you report this earlier?

I am glad I have a late start at work as the questions keep coming, but eventually, I seem to have satisfied the constable that I have a legitimate reason to be concerned and he shows me into a small room with a chipped laminate table and three plastic chairs.

A stale odour permeates the air and there is a garbage bin filled with paper cups in a corner.

I don’t know if I should sit down or stay standing.

I send a quick text to Kirsty.

Something has come up. I don’t think I will make my 11 a.m. Can you cancel for me, please? Apologise for me.

Peter actually just called to cancel you so all good.

She adds a thumbs up emoji. I’m happy Peter cancelled. I had forgotten he was on my schedule for today as he comes in every few weeks depending on how he feels.

I sit down, wondering how many other people have sat on this chair and what kind of people they were.

A few years ago, I was stopped for a roadside breath test, and after I drove off, I realised that it was the first time I had had any interaction with the police since I was a teenager and my small world fell apart.

As the minutes tick by, I remember two constables coming to my front door one hot February morning.

I had just started year eleven, just turned sixteen, and even though I had hoped, all through the summer holidays, that this year would be different, the bullying had begun on day one. Loopy Lana, Lardy Lana, Lame Lana.

Each morning that I got up for school, I comforted myself that at least I had Janine, my one friend who was as much of a target as I was.

She was taunted for her bad skin, for her red hair and her freckles.

I never understood why the pretty, popular girls in our year needed to do it.

I didn’t know what they gained except for laughs but maybe that was all they wanted.

As an adult and a trained therapist, I now know that each of those young women was suffering in her own way, as we all are as human beings, and taking it out on me and Janine, the easy targets.

But as a teenager, you can’t think about anyone else’s pain, only your own, and Janine and I were in pain every day, making our way around the school looking over our shoulders and hoping that we did not run into the beautiful clique of girls who made fun of us.

Despite this, it felt like we would be okay because we had each other.

We would meet outside school every morning, each waiting for the other to turn up so that we wouldn’t have to walk in alone.

We had a calendar countdown in our school diaries for how much longer we would have to endure the experience – how many days until graduation and the shining star of our futures at university where everything would change.

I wanted to study something in the medical field and Janine wanted to study fine art.

She was a beautiful artist. The bullies at school had been particularly relentless with her at school the week before.

She was in her element in art class and all the girls who took the subject because they thought it would be easy to simply float through the year doing nothing disliked how much the teacher praised her and her work.

She had called me the night before but I hadn’t felt like talking.

I was reading a novel, a fantasy, and I was lost in a world of dragons and knights with no desire to leave.

I thought I would see her on Saturday afternoon.

We were meeting up to go to the library and study for an English exam on Monday.

The sound of our doorbell ringing early on a Saturday morning pulled me, my mother and my father out of bed because it was so unusual.

The two constables spoke to my mother first and I heard her cry out at what they said.

And then the constables and my mother took me into the lounge, where I sat, still in my pyjamas, wrapped in an old dressing gown covered in pictures of cupcakes, while they told me that my best friend was dead.

They had questions for me about why it might have happened.

‘She was bullied at school all the time,’ I told them.

‘We both were.’ It was a different time and I don’t think they thought that was enough for someone to take their own life.

They assumed there had to be more. Maybe there was.

I knew Janine well but no one knows everything about a person and their life.

I have never forgiven myself for not taking her call, for not being able to help her to hold on through what must have been a very dark night.

When I returned to school two weeks later, I was shielded from the bullying by teachers and other students who were watching me intently.

When they eventually forgot about Janine and everything started up again, I felt able to deal with it because I had a plan in place.

I was going to be a psychologist. I was going to help people who were suffering.

It had been my intention to focus on adolescents but I found that too hard and so moved to working with adults.

I have been conscious, since I lost my best friend, that people can be struggling even when they are winning praise and they seem to have everything to live for.

The pretty girls didn’t get away unscathed by life.

Two of them left in the middle of year twelve to deal with eating disorders and they never returned to school.

Being pretty doesn’t make your life perfect.

If it did, I wouldn’t be here to report my beautiful client missing and to tell the police that I suspect her husband of hurting her.

Only ten minutes have passed but I stand up again, feeling a cramp in my back. I hate revisiting my past failures. I need to make sure that Sandy is safe and that she does not become someone else that I’ve failed, and I worry that I have not worked hard enough to make sure that happens.

The door swings open and a man walks in, casually dressed in jeans and a jumper. His brown hair is cropped close to his head.