Page 49 of The Therapist

TWO MONTHS LATER

Lana

‘I brought coffee,’ says Gemma when she sees me talking to Kirsty at the front counter. Kirsty is different now, a little quieter, less sure of herself. She has also been bruised by what happened. She thought that Ben was in love with her.

They were seeing each other outside of work and she had fallen for him, fallen for his lies and his stories, just like I had.

It was hard explaining it all to her but she’s young and she will be fine.

‘I feel so stupid,’ she told me when I told her what had happened.

‘You aren’t, you weren’t. Don’t think like that. We were all taken in,’ I said.

I’m grateful she’s still with me because we can talk to each other if we need to.

Gemma puts the cup of takeaway coffee down in front of me and then hands one to Kirsty.

‘You’re so sweet – my turn tomorrow,’ I say and Gemma smiles.

Gemma is a child psychologist, specialising in children up to the age of sixteen. She did her thesis on depression in children after the terrible loss of a friend when she was a child. Life can drive a person into becoming a therapist. I understand that.

I know that Gemma is thirty, that she is engaged to her boyfriend of two years, that she wants two children. She lives in a unit on the beach and her parents are from a leafy North Shore suburb. I follow her on Instagram, where she posts pictures of the beach and her cats and inspirational quotes.

At one point during our first meeting, I stopped myself asking what I could see were almost intrusive questions to explain, ‘I need to know that I can trust the person I’m working next door to.’

‘I completely understand,’ said Gemma, and her willingness to talk made me aware that she had probably read the few articles on the internet that had been written about my situation.

I have no idea how a journalist even found out about what had happened but I chose not to worry about that and the story disappeared quickly enough anyway.

I’m still processing what happened. Ben was using a different name but then of course he was.

He is a professional conman and the therapist in the UK who goes by the name of Ben Summers was horrified to learn that his credentials had been stolen.

When I found a Ben Summers on the internet, his picture didn’t match the Ben I knew so I moved on.

‘Ben’ is actually Simon and he has pulled off this particular scam once before, but in a different way. I knew that from the article William found but I think he’s done it many more times, and those times have simply not found their way into the light. Simon may not even be his real name.

Ben’s ‘stalker’ was actually a woman, Carla, he had an affair with after she fell for him as a patient. She was single and wealthy and he left her with nothing.

Her messages to him were an attempt to find him and get her money back, something that will probably never happen.

A detective in the UK tracked Ben down and gave Carla the number, and if she’d had the money, she would have come out here to confront him.

She was in the process of trying to get the police in the UK to take action against Simon.

Simon is a conman but things were taken a step further when he and Sandy met. Two narcissists who didn’t care who got hurt.

Sandy started attending therapy in order to provide herself with a cover story as an abused wife. But then she fell in love with Ben and made him her accomplice. Or he made her his.

Ben/Simon is a psychopath and all he wanted to do was hurt as many people as possible. And he wanted money.

Sandy is in prison awaiting trial. When the police arrived at the hospital, it was to find her holding down a pillow over Mike’s face.

Ben/Simon was nowhere to be seen. He left only moments before the police arrived. And Sandy has told them that she acted alone, a strange decision that I don’t really understand.

The police haven’t been able to find Ben.

Obviously, Ben was involved. I think they planned it together but I think that whatever game they were playing, it was being played on another level by Ben. I don’t know if he even needed the money or if it’s just a game to him, and Sandy didn’t realise she was being played as well.

Leaving reception, I go to my office, where Gemma has left my coffee on my desk.

I dream of that night in the garden sometimes, hear the sound the gun made and see Mike stumble back and fall and then lie still.

Iggy is, thankfully, completely unscathed because he had no idea of anything that was going on. All he knows is that he got to spend an extra night with his father. I needed time to sleep, to process, and I’m grateful to have Oliver and Becky as part of Iggy’s life.

The police have been critical of our plan, as they should be. But they haven’t charged me with anything although they did mention ‘obstruction’ in the first week after the two detectives opened the door to Mike’s hospital room and found his wife holding a pillow over his face.

I’ve spoken to a lawyer just in case and I will be prepared if I need to be but I’m hoping that won’t be necessary.

I know they are looking for Ben/Simon but they are not looking very hard.

They believe they have the only culprit of this scheme in custody.

Sandy has refused to talk about his involvement and is still insisting that Mike was abusive and that her actions were that of a battered women who could no longer take the abuse.

She can be very convincing. I was certainly convinced and that’s part of why I’m struggling right now.

Sandy is protecting Ben. Even after everything he did, she’s still protecting him and sometimes I have to admit that I do feel sad for her as she sits in a small prison cell, wrapped in her delusion of his love.

Love makes people do crazy things. Have the police told her about Kirsty?

Have they explained that while he was sleeping with her, he was also sleeping with another woman?

And if they have, does she believe them?

Sometimes the facts don’t matter at all.

Anyway, my sadness for Sandy only lasts seconds before it is replaced with another feeling, one that I can’t admit to anyone.

It’s a kind of smug joy, schadenfreude, at the downfall of this beautiful woman who was a beautiful teenager, a beautiful cruel teenager.

That first day in my office she looked straight at me and didn’t recognise me. I may have changed but no one changes that much. She had simply forgotten me. I was nothing to her.

Janine and I were her targets at school, played with for laughs.

I have hated her every day of my life since Janine decided that she couldn’t take Sandy’s bullying anymore.

To have her look at me like she didn’t know me was galling.

I liked hearing that she was unhappy, that all her beauty had not provided the life she thought she deserved.

She deserved nothing as far as I was concerned.

But she is smarter than I thought she was.

She had me questioning myself, wondering if the way I was responding to her was because of our history, a history she didn’t even remember.

She is smarter than I thought she was but not as smart as I am, and I figured it out so now she is in prison, where her beauty will not be an asset.

She is in prison and I am living my life.

As a sixteen-year-old, I vowed revenge for my friend, but after I left school, the years slipped away and I knew I wouldn’t get it.

I always imagined that Sandy had married a wealthy man and was living a beautiful life.

To have her walk into my office, troubled and suffering, felt like a gift.

Until I realised that she was using me like she used everyone at school, for laughs, for a game, to satisfy her own needs.

But now it’s over, and as I take a sip of my coffee, I send a message to Janine, as I do every day, closing my eyes and imagining her laughing because she and I did laugh together. We got her , I silently tell my friend. We got her.

For now, I’m concentrating on my patients and my son, embracing the mundanity of the everyday and being thankful for it.

‘Vanessa is here for you,’ says Kirsty over the intercom.

‘Send her in,’ I reply, and I stand and open the door to my office.

I’m good at this. I can help , I reassure myself as I do before every session now.

I can help.

Sandy

I won’t be here forever.

He’s not dead after all. I failed to kill him. So, no harm done really. Pity.

And now, all I need to do is to get Mike to use the house as surety so I can get bail. He refused the first time but I’m hoping that he will see that I’m ready to be a mother and wife and that I’m sorry. I’m working really hard to show him that.

It’s the only reason I keep seeing the children, the small alien beings that came from inside me.

I make sure to be the best mother I can be when the social worker is here and she’s so stupid, she believes I love them with all my heart.

I tell her that every time. I cry when they leave, struggling to produce the tears that are needed sometimes but I’ve had a lot of practice at tears.

I tell her that I need to be near my children, that they are suffering without me. I’m getting there. I can feel it. Mike will have no choice. He loves the children in the weird way that I never could. He would do anything for them.

And the moment they let me go, the moment I can leave this terrible place and walk out into the sunshine, I will run.

And I will find Ben. I can’t live without my soulmate.

And I know he can’t live without me. He didn’t mean to leave me, I’m sure of it.

He just got scared and he wants me to find him, to be with him.

When he hears I am free he will contact me.

Of course he will. He hasn’t contacted me in here because he needs to keep himself safe.