Page 5 of The Therapist

THREE

Lana

I show Elizabeth and her husband, Jack, out of my office and close the door on them gratefully.

They were my fifth session of the day. A married couple trying to regroup after Elizabeth had an affair.

Now I have an hour to eat a late lunch and get ready for my last patients of the day. I always like to start my break with a ten-minute meditation and stretch.

I lie on the floor of my office with my legs up against the wall and close my eyes, breathing deeply and relaxing my shoulders.

Sometimes my sessions with couples hit a little too close to home and I cannot help but remember the end of my own marriage.

Oliver and I were in therapy and we were, ostensibly, fighting to save our marriage, slogging through the he said/she said of it all, exhausted but still trying.

And then I noticed a sudden withdrawal from Oliver, a stepping back from the drama of our failing union.

He was almost disinterested in our therapy sessions and I believed I knew what that meant.

It was not the first time a man had cheated on me. I knew the signs.

My boyfriend before Oliver had cheated as well and it made me distrustful of men in general.

When we began dating, Oliver was aghast at the idea of cheating on someone, telling me, ‘It’s morally wrong.

’ But he seemed happy enough to push his morals aside as our marriage foundered.

People say a lot of things at the beginning of a relationship, make a lot of promises and mean them then.

Oliver and I met at university, where he was studying architecture and I was studying psychology, our paths crossing at the bar and our glazed eyes meeting at the toga party.

I had, by then, discovered that alcohol loosened me up, made me forget my ever-present insecurities.

It was after I had lost the weight and dyed my hair and I felt as good as I had ever felt about myself, helped along by three glasses of Roman punch, which tasted like cough syrup but went straight to my head.

We clicked, and the next day, we still had stuff to say to each other.

He told me I was beautiful and clever and he made me feel like I was.

I was attracted to his green eyes and his passion for his work.

We dated, lived together and then slipped into marriage easily; both sets of parents were delighted.

We should have known each other better after being together for some time but we hadn’t anticipated what a baby would do to our marriage.

Things began to go wrong when we had Iggy – I was stuck at home while he was growing his practice and meeting glamorous clients with millions to spend on houses. And for some reason, even after I went back to work, we couldn’t rescue it.

When I felt Oliver disengaging from our therapy sessions, I should have gone to him with my suspicions.

That would have been the mature thing to do, the thing that I, as a therapist, would have advised a patient to do.

But I was hurting and unable to apply logic right then.

So, I found a private detective named William Owens online.

I called him and explained my dilemma over the phone and paid the fee.

And a few days later, I had my evidence.

I never even met up with William. It was that fast, that easy to catch my husband out.

Oliver wasn’t really trying to hide anything.

When I confronted him with evidence of his affair, William’s damning pictures in my hand, he was mortified and I was…

relieved. He and the woman, a twenty-three-year-old named Ariel with long blonde mermaid hair, were still texting each other when I found out about them, even though he had no real interest in seeing her again.

She was pretty, obviously, younger than I was and slim as a willow, everything Oliver always told me he had no interest in.

Whatever was between them ended as soon as we decided on divorce. She was the proverbial straw that finally broke the camel’s back.

‘It made me see that there is life beyond this,’ he told me apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, Lana, but I think we’re done.’

I wanted to be angry, to accuse him of killing whatever was left between us, but I saw the affair for what it was: a desperate attempt to find a way out.

Oliver is not one for confrontation. He would probably have never revealed the affair to me if I hadn’t caught him. But he was right. We were done.

We spent our next few therapy appointments figuring out how to parent Iggy and how to do divorce better than we had done marriage.

Oliver was effusive in his apologies and he gave in on a lot during mediation, letting me have Iggy for every Christmas Day and the apartment where we lived at the time and asking for nothing even though he had contributed to the mortgage for years. I was indebted to William for his work.

Oliver was only single for six months before he met Becky, and now, they’re married and she is my son’s stepmother. Every time I look at her, I feel like I am doing womanhood wrong.

The couple I have just seen did not need a private detective.

Elizabeth confessed and I do believe that eventually, they will be able to move past the affair as a couple.

And maybe they will look back on all of this one day and believe it has brought them closer.

Sadly, most affairs end a marriage, like it did with mine.

They are usually the final nail in a coffin that has already been built out of resentment and disdain.

Knowing I need to let go of all thoughts about my last patients and my ex-husband, I imagine myself on a beach, hear the crashing of waves against the golden sand I am walking on.

And then I hear yelling.

Alarmed, I drop my legs and stand up, opening my office door. Ben is standing in front of reception with a woman who is shrieking, ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do this.’

Ben raises and lowers his arms. ‘Sandy, listen to me, listen to me, I understand how hard this is. Let’s go back into my office and talk…’

‘I don’t want to talk in your office, Ben.

I don’t want to have you tell me how to feel about this.

You’re abandoning me when I need you the most.’ She rubs at her cheek, getting rid of tears, and then she sniffs loudly.

‘You’re an arsehole, a complete arsehole.

’ Her voice is loud in the small office space.

‘I understand your anger,’ says Ben firmly and I know he’s trying to de-escalate the situation but he’s not having much luck.

‘Don’t use that therapist bullshit on me,’ she shrieks and then she steps towards him and shoves him so that he steps back, his hands going up again. ‘You can’t just decide this, you can’t,’ she spits.

I step forward, glad that Kirsty must have gone to get coffee so she’s not watching this.

‘Hey, hey,’ I say softly, alerting them both to my presence.

They stop speaking and turn to look at me.

The shouting woman is petite, pretty with porcelain skin, deep green eyes and fine highlighted brown hair that tumbles over her shoulders in perfect waves.

I feel my breath catch as I stare at her.

The most noticeable thing about the woman is the black eye, discoloured and puffy, already yellowing around the edges.

This is obviously the woman Ben came to me about last week. His attraction to her makes perfect sense. She is everything that society requires of beauty, except for the black eye.

‘Sorry, Lana.’ Ben’s face flushes. He is embarrassed at not being able to control the situation, I’m sure.

Our practice specialises in helping people who are struggling with everyday life.

We don’t have violent or very disturbed patients.

It’s unusual to ever hear shouting in our office, although voices are sometimes louder than usual during marriage counselling sessions.

‘No, you’re not sorry!’ the woman yells.

‘If you were, you wouldn’t be abandoning me.

’ Tears fall and she scrabbles in her bag for a tissue.

I grab one from the box on the reception desk and hand it to her.

There are boxes of tissues everywhere in the office.

Tears are a by-product of a therapy session.

I’ve shed a fair few myself in conversations with SueEllen.

The woman takes a tissue from the box and dabs at her eyes without acknowledging me.

‘I am sorry,’ says Ben firmly. ‘This is just not working for me anymore or for you. I have given you the list and you will find someone who can help you, I promise.’

The woman blows her nose dramatically, more tears falling. ‘Please, Ben,’ she says, defeat in her stance, ‘please, I can’t explain to anyone else, I simply can’t. I would rather die than start this process again.’

Ben shrugs his shoulders and glances at me, anguish on his face. I should never have come out here. I should just have left Ben to sort this out himself, but now that I’m here, I can feel this woman’s desperation.

‘Please, Ben,’ she begs, her voice just above a whisper. ‘I can’t go on like this.’

‘I’m just so sorry, I will try and help you find someone else.’

‘I can’t.’ She shakes her head. ‘I will never talk to anyone again. I don’t care anymore. I’ll just?—’

‘Perhaps you can come and have a chat with me,’ I say, dragging the words from inside myself. ‘I’m a therapist as well.’