‘I had to. You were so convinced about it all. And I did a great deal of research, talked with colleagues, people I respect, and found other cases like yours. Not many.’ She raises her slender hands. ‘But enough to be able to push my cynicism aside and consider that your visions mightn’t be hallucinatory.’
‘They’re not. They’re real … ’
‘Well, that’s the troubling thing about hallucinations, Claudia. They’re extremely good at seeming that way. No –’ she fixes me with a stern glare, stopping me from interrupting – ‘I’m not trying to dismiss what you’ve been experiencing. I’m simply stating the obvious, which is that hallucinations would be by far the most plausible diagnosis. And you really are under a great deal of strain … ’
‘That’s not why this is happening. It’s being here. It’s opened me up.’
‘I’m sure it has. But I’m equally certain you arrived already opentoit. You were an exceedingly lonely and vulnerable little girl.’ Her face softens, just as it did when she spoke about Clare, allowing me another glimpse of her heart, beating beneath her cashmere jumper. ‘Your grandparents did their very best for you, but you had no real-life friends, and you missed your mother desperately. You craved escape. An alternate reality.And,’ she says, her eyes holding mine, ‘I don’t doubt you need one now. Perhaps even more than you did then.’
‘I haven’tchasedthis.’
‘Haven’t you?’ She raises a dubious brow. ‘You keep on sleeping in Iris and Clare’s room, which I have to tell you is inexplicable to me. That attic is the most cold and uncomfortable home I’ve had … ’
‘It doesn’t feel uncomfortable to me.’
‘No, because you’re so unhappy. And I’m sorry for that. I really am deeply sorry, Claudia.’ She leans forward in her chair, so earnest in her sudden sympathy that I have to look away. ‘But perhaps if you weren’t,’ she says, ‘perhaps if you hadn’t come back here heartbroken, you might not have found this all waiting.’
‘I’m glad it’s been waiting though. I’ve needed it … ’
‘That’s my exact point.’
I open my mouth to argue, then, finding nothing to say, close it again.
I feel like I’ve been aced in a game of tennis.
‘You told me you’ve been having dreams,’ Ellen says.
‘Yes.’
‘Would you like to tell me about them?’
‘I’m not sure where to start,’ I reply, feeling increasingly like I am in a therapy session: the most draining one of my life.
‘Wherever you like,’ she says.
So, with a deep breath, I begin with the two I’ve had most often: of that colonel, and my own warning to Iris to go,you need to go;then, that woman in the wheelchair who touches my face.
‘Can you think who she might have been?’ I ask.
‘Can you?’ says Ellen, which isn’t answering my question.
I don’t press it though.
I’m too preoccupied remembering the emotion I’ve seen in the woman’s eyes.
The deep grief, but also hope.
‘I’ve got no idea who she is,’ I say. ‘She keeps telling me something that makes me cry, but I can’t ever hear her.’
‘That’s dreams for you,’ says Ellen. ‘What else have they shown you?’
‘So much,’ I say, and go on, describing smoky pubs, ice-coated windows, blinking switchboards, sticky sweets, tart apple cake, and a smiling boy in tartan slippers.
Ellen becomes very still when I mention him.
Stiller yet when I talk of the other time I saw her: not in a dream, but life, just as I saw her outside the control tower, only this time inside Bettys Bar, all done up and sitting with a man in a USAAF uniform.
‘And have you had any other such …episodes?’ she asks me tightly.
