Page 45 of The Therapist

THIRTY-TWO

Mike

He struggles to lie still while the doctor stitches his head. ‘That’s a nasty cut you’ve got there and you banged your head pretty hard so we would like to keep you overnight and monitor you and get a scan in the morning,’ says the young woman.

‘Who are my kids with?’ he asks. He is lying on his side, facing a wall while she works on him.

‘They’re with social services for the night.’

‘They’ll be scared – can’t they come and sleep here? Their mother is…’ He stops speaking because he doesn’t want to say ‘missing’. Besides he has a feeling she won’t be missing for much longer.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. You may have a concussion and you need to rest. Do you have anyone else who can take them?’

Mike gives this some thought. He could call his mother or Sandy’s mother.

His mother would love to help. But if his mother takes them, then they will be in the house with his father and he doesn’t want that.

He has made very sure to protect his kids from his father, making sure that they usually see his mother alone.

And they can’t go to Sandy’s mother. He wouldn’t want the kids to be somewhere Sandy could get at them. Who knows what else she would do?

‘I don’t,’ he says.

‘What about your wife?’ enquires the doctor as she snips the thread she is working with and drops scissors back into a metal dish. Nobody has told her what’s been happening. The police haven’t briefed her.

‘No, their mother is not…capable.’ Because that’s the truth. She is incapable of being a mother, of being a wife, of being a person. But he didn’t know how incapable until a few hours ago.

And now he’s not entirely sure how this is going to play out. He rolls onto his back, letting his head rest gingerly on the pillow.

‘Oh, your sister called asking about you,’ says the doctor. ‘Maybe she can take the kids?’

‘No,’ says Mike, ‘she can’t.’

‘Okay…’ The doctor sounds like she would like to ask many more questions but then Mike would have to tell her that he doesn’t have a sister, just a wife, a missing wife now found and clearly asking about him. And why is she asking about him? She wants to know if the deed is done.

‘If you have your phone, you can call her and tell her that you’re staying overnight. If she can pick you up and stay with you after that, just for the next day or so, that would be good.’

‘I actually…’ he begins as he tries to figure out how to explain to the doctor that he doesn’t have a sister, that the call obviously came from his wife, who has been planning to kill him.

The door swings open and a nurse pokes her head in. ‘Are you done here? Mr Winston has bled through his bandages.’

‘Yes, right,’ says the doctor and Mike never gets to finish his sentence. He doesn’t know if she would have believed him anyway. It sounds insane.

When the doctor leaves, he closes his eyes, his head throbbing.

Will they give him some pain relief soon?

He hopes so but at the same time he thinks that he needs to be alert.

Because Sandy wanted him dead – he is sure of that.

And he’s not dead. So what is Sandy going to do now? What is she going to do about that?