As discussed, here are the recordings of our sessions. And to reiterate, this is not a clinical diagnosis as we are not navigating official channels here. I am doing this as a favour to you because of your relationship with the boy and your vested interest in his family situation. More thoughts to follow. In the meantime, I have – albeit withapprehension – set up an appointment with Dr Fernandez-Jones as you asked and have briefed him on the situation. Should you decide to proceed, please keep in mind all I have warned you about. Tread carefully.
Dr Hugo Dahl, BPsych Hons.
Chapter 53
Damon
I assume I am ‘the boy’ in question. But who is Dr Hugo Dahl, and what are these ‘sessions’ he mentions? I’m unfamiliar with the name. But as I’ve become aware of my past, I’ve realised there are more gaps in my memory than a moth-eaten jumper, so it’s not inconceivable that we’ve met.
I take a seat in Helena’s armchair and remove the cassette marked ‘#1’ from its box and insert it into the device. I hesitate, unsure of where this sliding door moment might take me, or if it’s a journey I want to be on. Ten minutes ago, I was done with all of this. But Helena must have left the tapes out for me to find for a reason. I rub my thumb over the empty bare spot on my ring finger and press play.
A man’s voice is audible. It’s deep and has a soft, Scottish lilt. Something about it is vaguely familiar.
‘Hello, Damon, my name is Dr Dahl, but you can call me Hugo if you prefer.’
I don’t move an inch as I wait to hear myself speak. But my present self and the recorded doctor are greeted with silence.
He continues. ‘A mutual friend of ours, Helena, thought it would be a good idea for us to meet because we might get on well. My job is to spend time with young people, like you, who have lived through some challenging experiences. And I’d like to try and encourage you to talk about what you’ve gone through to help it make sense.’
So Helena sent me to a shrink. Is he the reason why I bristled when the hypnotherapist and Melissa suggested I might benefit from seeing a counsellor? Did something bad happen between Dahl and me?
‘Helena told me you’ve had trouble finding your voice since you lost your mum,’ he continues. ‘It’s a perfectly normal reaction to something stressful. Sometimes you want to curl up into a ball in the corner of the room and not say anything to anyone.’
The silence is broken by a faint shuffling, as if someone is moving.
‘The Lego in the corner of the room has caught your attention. Shall I bring it over?’
I imagine myself nodding and hear a large clunk and rattling as a box, I assume, is placed on a table. Now the only noise is the shuffling of plastic bricks, then a clicking as I begin to build.
A few more minutes pass as Dahl explains a little more about what he does. He asks if I’ve heard of the word ‘psychoanalyst’, then explains it’s a fancy term for a listening doctor. Every so often, there’s the sound of Lego pieces falling against a wooden surface. Dahl talks about himself a little longer and I wonder if, back then, I was listening to anything he said or if I was too absorbed by my own grief-stricken building-block world.
He continues to try to engage me like this for another forty minutes until he draws the session to a close, telling me he’ll see me tomorrow, before the recording ends. He doesn’t sounddisappointed, though. Perhaps he relishes a challenge. Some people thrive on that. I press eject and turn the cassette over.
We are twenty minutes into our second session before I finally find my voice. Hearing it catches me off guard. It’s familiar, yet alien. I was twelve and it hadn’t broken, yet it still surprises me how childlike I sound. Dahl has been asking me about Mum and our relationship.
‘When can I go home?’ I ask optimistically.
Dahl pauses, considering his answer. ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible,’ comes his gentle reply. ‘Sadly, your mum passed away the day of the fire. Do you remember?’
‘No, she didn’t,’ I say adamantly. ‘She’s in hospital. She’s getting better. She will be home soon. I always help her get better when she’s sick.’
My heart breaks for this version of me, convincing himself there is hope. That things will return to our version of normal.
There’s a rustling of papers before I speak again.
‘It’s like last time,’ I insist, ‘when she was too sad to look after me and the doctors sent her to hospital. After a week she was better, and she came home.’
Adult me doesn’t recall that.
‘Where did you stay when that happened?’ Dahl asks.
‘With my dad and my gran.’
My gran? I have absolutely no memory of her, or of this happening at all.
The conversation between Dahl and me travels back and forth, like two tennis players competing in a rally. Dahl keeps attempting, in the gentlest possible way, to convince me that Mum is dead, while I try to make him believe she’s in hospital. Listening to myself now, I understand why I couldn’t accept it. God only knows what it must have been like for a twelve-year-old to process watching his mum fall six storeys to her death on to the concrete before him. But eventually, I waver.
Both versions of myself, old and new, begin to weep.
