‘Jenny Judge, isn’t it?’ he says.
I hope he doesn’t want a response. The sound of his voice has robbed me of mine, temporarily.
Finally, he looks up, and the change in his demeanour makes me want to cry. I have to dig my nails into my palms to make sure I don’t. It’s as if he’s just opened his eyes and realised he’s in heaven.
I am his heaven.
‘Jemma!’ he stammers. ‘I … I can’t … Can we … Jemma, I’ve got a client—’
‘No, you haven’t.’
‘I have.’ He frowns.
‘There’s no Jenny Judge. It’s me. I used a made-up name.’
‘Oh.’ I can’t blame him for needing to take a few moments to consider this. ‘Why?’
‘I wanted to talk to you. And I wanted to lie to you. So I did.’ Lowering myself into the armchair opposite his desk, I drop my bag on the floor and look around the room. I don’t want to miss a single detail. The ceiling is high with lots of tiny lights embedded in it; there’s a brass dimmer switch near the door. Tall lamps stand in two corners: one wooden, straight and tall with a square, grey shade; the other shiny metal with a forward-bending head, like a gold robot praying. A large rectangular sash window takes up most of one wall. The view is of a wide, white building across the road with excessive stucco curls protruding from its exterior, partly covered in builders’ scaffolding.
Behind Olly’s brown leather wing-back chair there’s a glass-fronted bookcase full of books about psychology and therapy. He was always an obsessive reader. I still remember the titles of the four books he brought with him when he came with us to the Cotswolds for Christmas in 2005:Mr Wakefield’s Crusade, The Sacred and ProfaneLove Machine, An Instance of the Fingerpost,and the weirdest one of all:Compositional Bonbons Placate.
At the centre of Olly’s therapy room is a large wooden desk with nothing on it but a small laptop and a boastful mug that reads: ‘As I Suspected, I Was Right About Everything’. A small coffee table with a white marble-effect top and dark orange painted legs stands on a white rug that’s bunched up on one side. No photos, I notice, thinking of Marianne’s eviscerated study and her claim that it had once contained lots of photographs of me. I have no way of knowing if that’s true or not.
‘Jemma, I can’t be your psychotherapist.’ Olly’s voice cuts into my thoughts. ‘There are ethical—’
‘I’m not here for therapy.’
‘Oh. Then … I mean, you know what I’ll start to imagine if you sit there saying nothing for too long.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I tell him.
‘I’ll imagine that you’ve finally decided to leave Paddy. That you want to be with me. You’ve chosen me.’ His voice grows louder and more intent as he goes on. I’m relieved when he says more quietly, ‘But … I can see from your face that I’m wrong. That’s not why you’re here.’
That’s right. Not why I’m here. Good. Nothing scary is going to happen today, nothing irreversible, today or ever. It’s too late for me and Olly. It has to be.
‘So what do you want?’ he says.
‘You’d take me back, then?’ I ask, nervous even though I think … no, I’msureI know what he’s going to say. ‘Even now?’
‘You know I would. I’ve never stopped loving you, Jemm.’
My heart wants to leap out of my body and dance around the room, bounce off the ceiling, in between the tiny star-stud lights.
‘Why haven’t you?’ I ask, determined that he shouldn’t have an easy time of it. ‘I chose Paddy over you, more than once.’
‘You were twenty-one,’ says Olly. ‘And you weren’t thinking straight.’
‘I was twenty-one the first time. Twenty-five the second time, twenty-seven the third.’ Only now does it occur to me that Olly might not think of it as three separate rejections. Perhaps he sees my picking Paddy over him as a single event that went on and on. There was the initial choice in 2006, then my unwillingness to end my marriage after my one-night stand with Olly in 2010. Then in 2012, once Olly had been declared no longer ‘of interest’ in Marianne’s attempted murder case, he got in touch to tell me his feelings for me hadn’t changed, and to ask if I’d leave Paddy now. If I would, he promised to love Lottie and take care of her as if she were his own daughter. At that point, if I hadn’t been convinced he was withholding something about the night Marianne was attacked, I think I’d have said yes, but I wasn’t going to break up my daughter’s home for the sake of someone I believed was lying to me.
‘I’m thinking straight now,’ I say, not at all sure that’s true. ‘I need you to tell me the truth, Olly. About 2012. Was it you who tried to kill Marianne?’
His eyes dart to the left, then back to me. He’s clever enough to know that avoiding eye contact isn’t the way to quell my suspicions.
‘I know you’ve got no reason to believe me,’ I say, ‘butI swear I won’t tell anyone. I won’t go to the police. And I’d forgive you – you know I would.’
His eyes widen.
‘Ihateher, Olly. If it weren’t for her, I’d have left Paddyyearsago, when I decided I couldn’t bear not being with you for a single day longer. It all kind of … erupted one day, all my unhappiness, and I ended up telling Marianne everything. She kind of forced it out of me. And then … I was so confused and felt so helpless for so long – as if I didn’t have the power to make anything happen at all, even in my own life. And then before I knew it, I’d agreed to let Marianne send me and Paddy to a stupid posh hotel in London every Thursday for nearly a year. God!’
