Page 44 of The Therapist

THIRTY-ONE

WEDNESDAY NIGHT/THURSDAY MORNING

Lana

The room is cold, small; the air smells of disinfectant and former occupants.

I lay my head on the table, not caring about germs. I have been here for an hour, a day, a year.

I have no idea. I want to sleep. My mind drifts to my bed at home with its rumpled white duvet.

Every morning, I plan to make my bed but I’m always running late and I always leave it, returning to the mess at night.

I would give anything to be there now, looking down at the crushed pillows and reminding myself to try and make the bed in the morning.

I don’t know how I ended up here. I can’t find the start of the thread so that I can pull the story apart. And yet, I have to. There will be lots of questions and I have some answers but not enough. I don’t know enough.

How do you find the start of such a story? Was it when I first met Sandy? When I first met Mike? Or when I first met Ben? Does it go back even further? Did it begin with my divorce? With the birth of my child or even further than that? My school years perhaps?

How did I allow myself to get here?

I know what I am doing with these circular thoughts. I am avoiding thinking about the small room, the sticky table, the fact that my wrists hurt from the plastic ties that were around them.

I picture Iggy and I see the gap where two front teeth have recently fallen out. He brought me the first tooth covered in blood, tears in his eyes. ‘Why is it bleeding?’ he cried.

‘Sometimes it does.’ I smiled, consoling him. He was ready for the next one, was proud of the little bit of blood there was.

I can’t stop the image of blood running through my head. Thick, red, spreading on the grass. Not Iggy’s. Iggy is safe. Iggy is safely with his father.

And I am here, my head on a sticky table, trying not to think about blood. I have never seen so much blood. Heads bleed profusely and I knew that but I still wasn’t expecting so much blood.

The door to the room opens and two men walk in and I sit up, blink. One of them is holding a cup. He places it down in front of me.

‘Thought you might need this.’ He has a moustache but no beard. It’s not often you see a man with only a moustache these days. I don’t like the way it looks. Wrapping my hands around the cup, I nod. It’s lukewarm and black. I don’t drink my coffee black but I gulp it anyway.

‘Lana Stanton,’ says the other one, no moustache or beard, only a light ginger stubble and very pale skin. ‘You’ve been arrested on the charge of attempted murder. Anything you say in this room may be taken down into evidence and held against you…’

I watch his mouth as he speaks, letting the words wash over me.

I think about Iggy instead. Iggy’s gap-toothed smile, Iggy’s laugh, Iggy’s endless questions about everything from dinosaurs to dinner drown out anything the detective is saying.

Last Monday, only two, no…three days ago, I arrived at work early because Iggy slept over at his father’s house. I wanted to get some work done before I saw my first patient of the week, a patient I had been reluctant to take on.

But she never turned up.

And now I am here and a man is in the hospital and these two detectives are going to ask me to explain it to them but I can’t.

I can’t even explain it to myself.

I listen as the detective with the moustache finishes speaking, telling me my rights. I hear only the word ‘lawyer’.

I have a right to a lawyer and I need one. But I need to ask some questions first and I need to tell these detectives about the scream, about Sandy, about all of it. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. ‘Concentrate, Lana,’ I whisper despite the detectives watching me.

‘Is Mike okay? Will he be okay?’ I ask. He hit his head and that’s what I’m worried about.

‘Hard to tell,’ says the detective with the moustache. ‘We’re waiting for an update from the hospital.’

I send a silent prayer up to the heavens that he is okay.

People die from hitting their heads. Not often but it does happen.

‘Do you want to explain what happened?’ the detective with the ginger stubble asks, and I peer at his badge: Detective Grafton.

‘I do,’ I say although I feel that it would be better to ask for a lawyer and then stop speaking but then what happens to Sandy? Because Sandy needs to be found and the things she has done need to come to light.

I rub my forehead with my hands and then I explain as quickly as I can, starting with Ben asking me to take on Sandy as a patient.

I want to make sure that they understand I would never have had anything to do with her if not for Ben.

Ben, where is Ben? Did he leave the children alone?

Did he just run after shouting at me through the window and startling me into firing the gun? I’m sure he did.

Both detectives are silent as I speak, only stopping me once or twice to get dates and times right. I cannot help but feel that I am metaphorically shooting myself in the foot here. I should have kept quiet.

‘If you ask Ben, he can tell you the same story. Everything I’ve said is true,’ I say. They won’t be able to ask Ben because I don’t think they will find him.

‘And Ben was with you at the house, you say,’ says Detective Grafton, some scepticism in his tone.

‘He was. We just wanted to make sure she was okay after the text she sent me. Have you seen the text on my phone? The constables took my phone, have you seen the text? I mean, that’s why I asked him to come with me…’

Detective Grafton pulls my phone out of his jacket pocket and hands it to me so I can find the text. They sit in silence for a minute as I scroll through my messages, struggling to find the right one, but it’s gone. There’s no record of the text. There’s no record of any text from Sandy at all.

‘I… It’s gone,’ I admit, ‘but it said, “Lana, help me. He’s going to kill me.”’

Detective Grafton nods his head as though this is exactly what he has been expecting.

‘Do you remember the number it came from?’ he asks, knowing that there’s no way I will.

‘No, but she did send me a message, she did. Detective Franks told me that she called him and said she was fine. Why would she send me a message saying her husband was going to kill her?’

‘And you’re sure it was her who sent the text?’

‘I had her number saved with her name. If you find her, she’ll tell you, she’ll tell you she sent the text.’ I know that Sandy will do nothing of the sort. She will lie about the text. She’s lied about so much; it’s just one more thing.

‘Here’s the thing,’ he says, ‘we can’t actually find her.

Our constables searched the house, their house, and they found her phone.

It was under the mattress in her and Mike’s bedroom.

We don’t know how long it’s been there but the battery was nearly dead.

A call was made from it on Tuesday to the station where Detective Franks works.

We can’t unlock it yet so we have no record of anything else but the call was logged with our system. ’

‘That’s weird, don’t you think?’ I sit back and fold my arms. I haven’t told them everything, not yet.

I suppose it’s the therapist in me but I am leading them to where I want them to go.

When I reveal all, I need them to trust that I have it right.

Detective Grafton and his colleague exchange a look and I understand that while I believe I am leading them, they believe they are in the lead.

I push my hair behind my ears, wishing I had tied it up. I am starting to feel desperate and I still can’t think how to explain things so they believe me. ‘And have you spoken to Ben? What did he say?’

‘We haven’t been able to locate him. Do you have a number for him and maybe an address?

‘He was with me. Right up until he shouted at me through the window, he was there,’ I say, slapping my hand lightly against the sticky table for emphasis.

‘He wasn’t in the house when police and the ambulance arrived,’ says Detective Grafton and then he stares at me, letting the words sink in.

And of course I understand it all because I was right. But now things have gotten a little more complicated. I didn’t expect Ben to just leave and now I’m not sure what to do. But why would he have stayed? He knew the police were on the way.

‘You can see the messages between us on my phone,’ I say. ‘You can see that we planned to go together and we did.’

Detective Grafton offers me a quick smile and picks up my phone, scrolls through it for a few minutes. ‘What do you have his number saved under?’

‘Ben Summers,’ I reply, holding out my hand. He hands me the phone and I go to find the messages between me and Ben, but they’re gone as well. Ben’s name is no longer in my phone.

I can only shake my head in admiration at Ben’s thoroughness.

I had one objective, but of course, Ben had another.

The objective was to find Sandy and to make sure that the truth was told.

Three days ago, I understood the world one way. I was a therapist who was worried about her patient, a single mother and a woman who was trying to do her best.

But today, many hours ago, everything shifted. And now it’s shifted again.

‘I know you’ve said you got the gun from Ben,’ says Detective Grafton, scepticism at Ben’s very existence in his voice.

‘I did,’ I reply.

‘Right, but we can’t find Ben right now and we’ve had our constables look through records of gun ownership, which is something police have access to, and we can’t find a Ben Summers anywhere.

Also, the rules at gun clubs are very strict in Australia.

He is allowed to own a handgun but he would have had to go through quite a long process to obtain a licence, which as I have said, we have no record of, and once he has the licence, he is required to store the gun at his gun club. ’

‘I know that,’ I say. ‘I mean I didn’t know that when he gave me the gun, but I know it now.’

‘And when did you find out that information?’

‘After I spoke to a private detective.’ Both detectives sit back in their chairs. Detective Grafton gives his head a scratch.

‘You’re going to need to explain that,’ he says as there is a knock at the door.

‘Come,’ he calls and a policewoman in uniform steps into the room and hands the detective a note.

His brown eyes widen as he reads the words and then looks at me and says, ‘The gun was filled with blanks?’

‘Not originally, not at first. Not when Ben gave it to me.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Neither did I but I do now.’

The detective sighs. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Just tell us everything.’

I lean sideways in my chair, try to stretch the muscles in my back. I feel like I have been here forever.

‘I knew something was wrong when I looked at the bullets in the gun. I wanted to make sure there was one in the chamber so I took them out, just to see.’

‘And they weren’t blanks?’

‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘The gun Ben gave me was filled with real bullets. He wanted me to kill Mike.’

The detective folds his arms and I can see him thinking, This is all bullshit.

‘Let me tell you the rest of it,’ I say before he can end our interview.

‘But remember,’ he says, ‘anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.’

‘I understand,’ I tell him, my heart thumping in my chest, and as I start to speak, I know that I am putting my entire existence – my job, my son, my freedom – on the line. I am putting it all on the line so that I can finally be the one in control of whatever has been going on.