John

‘BREAK THE CYCLE, THAT’S the trick.’ Angie Bliss handed John an ordinary rubber band. ‘Put it on your left wrist,’ she ordered. ‘No, I’m serious, put it on.’ As he did what he was told she leant over his arm and said, ‘You’re lucky you’re not hairy.’

‘Am I? Right. Now what do I do?’

‘It’s simple. Every time an obsessive thought enters your mind you snap the band.’

‘I snap the band?’

She leant forward again and took his wrist.

‘You snap the band – like this.’ She inserted her finger between his skin and the band, pulled it out and let go. ‘Snap,’ she said, her voice husky.

John looked at the red band.

‘I’ll give it a go,’ he said. ‘I just need this whole thing sorted out. I’ve wasted enough time. I’ve got my daughter staying this week. I want to be able to focus on enjoying my time with her.’

‘Lovely. And how about Rebecca Finch? Have you seen her lately?’

‘I spoke to her on the telephone – last night, as it happens. I told her that I would be happy to help should she require any further information.’

‘She’s a very attractive woman, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose she is.’

‘What do you mean you suppose she is?’

John frowned.

‘I haven’t really thought about it. I’m helping her with her research, not asking her for a date. You really think this rubber-band business is going to help?’

‘You’ll have to work at it,’ the therapist said. ‘As I’m sure Rupert would have told you, this is a long process. Now, I know I’ve asked you this before, but there’s no harm in a little reiteration, is there? What would you say your ideal woman was like?’

‘Ideal woman? I don’t know that I have one.’

‘Try. There is a point to all this, I assure you. You do want to get on top of this OCD thing?’

‘Of course I do. But I don’t see what that has to do with my ideal woman.’

‘I don’t know if Rupert ever explained this to you, but for therapy to work there has to be trust. So trust me. Tell me, what is she like, your ideal mate?’

John raised his hands in resignation and sat back in his chair.

‘Lively,’ he said.

‘Good.’

‘Energetic, interested.’

‘Excellent.’ The therapist nodded in approval and John began to feel as if he were answering a quiz rather than giving his opinion.

‘And pretty would be nice,’ he said.

‘Personally I’ve always had a weakness for freckles.’

‘Freckles?’

‘Freckles. Not all over, perhaps, but a becoming sprinkle across the nose and maybe some on the forearms and a tiny little bit on the decolletage. As for age, I don’t know about you but I always think it’s so much more impressive to see a successful man with a woman his own age at his side, an interesting-looking woman as opposed to some pretty-pretty bimbo.’

‘I can’t see why she can’t be interesting-looking and pretty.’ John realised he sounded as if he were negotiating.

‘Well, yes, yes, it’s not impossible. Depending of course what you define as pretty. Now what about noses? The most attractive woman I’ve seen for many a day has what I’d call a proper nose. Not one of those cosmetic-surgery teensy-weensy things.

‘A big nose?’

‘I did not say big. I said proper. How about hair?’

‘Hair is good.’

‘We won’t get anywhere if you won’t take this seriously. Hair?’

‘Blonde, I suppose.’

A small frown appeared on the therapist’s alabaster brow.

‘Are you sure? You don’t think light-brown, for example?’

‘Brown hair can obviously be …’

‘I didn’t say brown’ – the therapist’s tone was sharp – ‘I said light-brown.’

‘The hair colour really doesn’t matter that much,’ John said.

Angie Bliss relaxed and continued.

‘Long?’

John nodded.

‘Long’s all right. Short’s all right too.’

‘Thick, shiny and wavy?’

‘Obviously all of that would be very nice.’

‘Of course it would be. And we don’t like small button noses?’

‘Don’t we?’

‘No. We like noses with character. And eyebrows. Proper eyebrows.’

John looked at the therapist’s nose and wondered if perfection came under the heading of character.

He said, ‘She should be independent.’

‘Career woman?’

‘I think so. Someone with her own life, her own interests, although not a lawyer, preferably.’

‘Absolutely,’ the therapist said. ‘Opposites, that’s what one wants.’

‘Yes, complementary but different. And I’d like her to have children of her own. One of the problems with Melanie was that she didn’t understand that Susannah was a priority. So definitely someone who has children.’

‘Or someone who has lots of experience with children, many godchildren, for example. Yes, that would be the best of all worlds. She will have the experience and temperament to deal with your daughter, she will understand your child’s needs but she won’t be preoccupied with her own offspring. Perfect.’

‘I suppose that could work. If there really is someone like that.’

‘Trust me, there is. So, you want someone who’s maternal yet career-minded, sharp and independent yet kind and feminine with pretty, light-brown hair and a sprinkling of freckles. Self-reliant but affectionate, and you said energetic. Personally I think someone who’s happy in their own company, doing nothing, just being, is very attractive.’

‘I suppose so,’ John said again. ‘But I still don’t see what this exercise has to do with OCD.’

‘You wouldn’t. That’s why I’m the therapist and you’re not. And please remember why you sought help from professionals in the first place.’

‘Because my ex-girlfriend told me to.’

‘What are you, a man or a hen-pecked wimp?’ She paused for a moment and then, as if she had had a sudden inspiration, her brow cleared and she told him, ‘Anyway, quite apart from all of this, the latest research shows that a supportive spouse is key to conquering OCD.’ She leant across and patted him on the knee. ‘But we’ll get there, don’t you worry.’

In preparation for Susannah’s visit John went to Hamley’s to get the latest Barbie doll. Last time his daughter had stayed the night he had incurred his ex-wife’s wrath by getting the Barbie Floral Vanity Unit. It had been unpacked and assembled ready for Susanna’s arrival when Lydia, marching ahead to her daughter’s room, had taken one look at the toy and hissed, ‘Could I have a word?’ While their daughter rushed over to the pink plastic furniture, Lydia told John that he was out of order, spoiling the child, trying to buy her affection, attempting to outdo Lydia and Adrian … The accusations had got shriller and Susannah, roused from her play of dabbing imaginary blusher on her peach cheeks and mascara on her dark silky lashes, had turned round. Seeing the looks on her parents’ faces, she had burst into tears.

Lydia, unable to hide a glint of triumph in her eyes, had knelt down in front of the child and explained in a sorrowful voice that Daddy had made a mistake and that the vanity unit would have to go back to the shop.

‘Maybe Santa …’

‘Father Christmas,’ John muttered.

Lydia had glared at him, shaking her head before continuing with exaggerated enunciation, ‘Maybe Father Christmas will bring you one for Christmas.’

John had looked from his weeping daughter to his ex-wife, who was still squatting in front of the child. He remembered the time, not so long ago, when Susannah was born. He had stood by, unable to do anything much other than be in the way, as his wife went through the pain of labour. As the hours wore on he had wished fervently for a dragon or two to appear so that he could prove to his wife his love and gratitude. Yet now, barely six years on, if a dragon knocked on the door he would keep hold of Susannah and then stand back, politely offering him Lydia.

‘Be my guest, dear fellow, and enjoy.’

This time, determined to get the visit off to a good start by pleasing Susannah without enraging his ex-wife, he had stood before the rows of California Surfer Barbies, Fairy-topia Elina Barbies and Barbies On the Go at a loss to know which one to chose. A young woman shopper with a toddler in a pushchair smiled conspiratorially at him. A female sales assistant with an air of motherly competence asked him if she could help. He said he was unsure which one his six-year-old daughter would like the best. The sales assistant said that California Surfer Barbie was very popular at the moment.

The young mother interceded with, ‘My eldest is completely in love with her Fairytopia.’

She and the sales assistant exchanged amused glances as John picked up one of the dolls, looking at it with complete bafflement.

The assistant said, ‘Why don’t you go for Fairytopia Elina? As this lady says, all the little girls adore her.’

John nodded.

‘Yes. Yes, I think I shall. Thank you both very much.’

As he wandered off towards the cash point the assistant shook her head and smiled at the young mother.

‘Bless.’

Now he was pacing the sitting room of his Primrose Hill house, pausing every minute or so in front of the window to look for the silver Mercedes Estate. He had checked Susannah’s bedroom twice already, making sure it was aired and that her toys were arranged just the way she liked them. Then he had worried, the way he often did, that Susannah’s desire for order and straight lines might be the beginnings of obsessive-compulsive behaviour.

A couple of weeks back, when he and Lydia had been having a particularly vicious row, Lydia had turned on him, her dark eyes sparkling with malice, and said, ‘Maybe it’s best Susannah doesn’t spend too much time with you; I mean what with your problems.’ She had rolled the word ‘problems’ around her mouth as if it were a chocolate, melting deliciously on her tongue.

He had felt doubly betrayed; she knew about his OCD only because he had confided in her during a recent truce, telling her to watch out for signs of related behaviour in their daughter.

‘There is a slight genetic component to the whole thing,’ he had explained.

And at the time, Lydia had smiled and thanked him for being so frank. She was an expert, his ex-wife, in drawing out a confidence, storing it up and throwing it back in your face.

He went into Susannah’s bedroom one more time and having studied the row of soft toys lined up on the bed he picked up Pooh and moved him away from Mr Woofy, sitting him next to Polly Pig instead: a small break in the order would be healthy. He took a step back, studying his handiwork. Then again, maybe it wasn’t right separating the two friends. Maybe instead of gently discouraging any obsessive-compulsive tendencies in his daughter, it would simply upset her to see her possessions rearranged. So what about if he moved both Pooh and Mr Woofy away from their spot just below the picture of the funfair and placed them further down towards the foot-end of the bed? Yes, that was better, enough of a disruption of what could be developing into an obsessive arranging of her toys by his daughter but not so much as to unsettle her.

Back in the sitting room he was half expecting the phone to ring and to hear Lydia’s voice, faux-commiserating, informing him that Susannah would not be coming after all. These conversations would always begin with, ‘It’s not about us, it’s about a little girl.’ He, so accustomed to dealing with other people’s imploded lives, other people’s messes, was powerless. ‘Susannah has been invited to a sleepover and I really don’t think we should be selfish about these things.’ Or, ‘Susannah didn’t want to tell you herself, you know how kind she is, but she was getting quite agitated and it turns out that she really wanted her Aunt Jenny to come over and look after her.’

A large framed school photograph of their daughter stood in the window alcove. Rosy-cheeked, a little plump, with her auburn hair brushed glossy and tied back with a regulation red ribbon into what she had informed him was ‘a half-ponytail’, she smiled out at him with her best gappy smile. He smiled back. He did this every time his gaze fell on her picture.

He could not remember when this latest tic had begun (he called them tics, the compulsions, as if using such a harmless little word would make them less disruptive). He would feel the dead-weight of fear in his stomach as he thought how just such photographs like that one of Susannah were plastered across the front pages of the newspapers with heartbreaking regularity because the child in question, the shiny-haired, trusting little girl, or the grinning, self-conscious boy, had been lost to some terrible calamity or brutal crime. His thoughts would circle the pain of the parents, tiptoe up to the moment when someone is told that the worst that life could do to them had been done, the moment when the light goes out of their lives never to return other than as a pale reflection. Then he would make it doubly worse by asking himself if all these thoughts, heavy with negativity and doom, could somehow invite the very disasters he so feared. In order to disable such dark thoughts he had to smile and smile again at his daughter’s photograph.

What was he doing, a man of forty-three, a successful, well-respected professional, pacing up and down grinning like a monkey at a photograph? It had to stop. It could not be allowed to go on. He looked down at his left wrist. When Angie Bliss had suggested it, he had thought the idea of wearing some rubber band round his wrist, twanging it at every marauding thought, faintly ridiculous, but not, he decided, as ridiculous as his behaviour right now. What he aimed to give his daughter, what mostly he managed to give her, was a calm and collected father, a robust and fatherly father, and if twanging a red elastic band round his wrist would help him to continue to achieve that aim, then twang it he would.

Finally, and almost half an hour late, the silver Mercedes estate drove up outside. He hurried to the door, pausing for a moment in front of the hall mirror to smooth his hair. He flung open the door, bent down and picked his child up in his arms, lifting her high before hugging her.

‘Daddeee.’ Susannah squirmed in his arms, pulling at her skirt that had ridden up at the back.

He put her down and met his ex-wife’s eyes. She gave a little shake of her head, managing to look pitying and reproachful both at once.

‘Daddy, guess what?’

‘What?’ He smiled at the excited child.

‘I’ve got a puppy and you’re going to help me look after him while Mummy and Adrian are away.’

‘A puppy?’ John looked at Lydia.

‘It was a surprise. I told Adrian it wasn’t the best timing.’ She smiled indulgently. ‘But he was so excited.’

‘Was he? How sweet.’

She narrowed her eyes at him.

‘Don’t be childish.’

‘Well, I just think it would be nice to be consulted once in a while, especially if I’m supposed to pick up the pieces.’

‘What pieces? You’re looking after a puppy, for Christ’s sake. You want to be consulted? You should have thought about that before playing away from home.’

They looked at each other: High Noon.

‘Can we do this later,’ he said, directing a meaningful look at Susannah and praying that Lydia’s maternal side would win over her ball-breaking side so that, for once, their daughter could be handed from one parent to another without feeling she was passing through a war zone. Lydia said nothing, confining her animosity to another glare, so he turned to Susannah, saying in what he hoped was a light and jolly manner, ‘A puppy, eh? I hope it’s house-trained.’

Lydia rolled her eyes.

‘Do you have to be such a stick-in-the-mud?’

John took a deep breath and counted slowly to ten before saying, ‘OK, let’s meet it.’

‘Him,’ Susannah said. ‘He’s a him and he’s called Albie.’ From the tone of her voice to her stance, head to one side, hands on hips, she seemed suddenly very much like her mother.

‘OK, let’s go and meet Albie.’

A small sticky hand was placed in his, pulling him over to his ex-wife’s car.

Susannah was asleep. The lamp on the white-painted chest of drawers was left on, rotating gently, throwing its patterns of moons and stars on to the ceiling. His daughter lay tucked up in a nest lined with soft toys with the puppy curled up by her feet.

There had been a tricky half-hour after John had placed the tiny Border terrier in his basket on the floor by the bed.

‘But he won’t like it.’

‘What won’t he like?’

‘He won’t like sleeping on the floor when all the toys are on the bed.’

‘He’s not on the floor, darling, he’s in his own comfortable bed. Anyway, dogs don’t think like that.’

‘How do you know?’

‘OK, I don’t know, not for sure, I’m extrapolating, but even if I were wrong and he had similar thought processes to us, he would probably be thinking how lucky he was to have his own cosy bed and not have to share.’

Susannah thought about this for a moment then she sat bolt upright and said, ‘No, he gets really jealous.’ And with that she made a sweeping movement with her arms, pushing most of the toys on to the floor, picking the remaining ones up by a leg or an ear and chucking them over the side to join the others. ‘There,’ she said, arms crossed against her round belly.

John looked at his small daughter, at the defiance mixed with a little bit of worry at maybe having gone too far, and tried not to smile.

‘Goodnight then, darling.’ He bent down and kissed the downy cheek.

He got no further than the kitchen when a small voice called out, ‘Daddy?’

‘Yes?’ he said from her doorway.

‘Daddy, I can’t sleep without my toys.’

He picked his way across a floor that looked like an illustration of massacre in Toy Town.

‘Well, let’s put them back on your bed then.’

‘But Albie will be upset.’

What he felt like saying was, ‘Albie can piss off, as can the little prick whose bright idea it was to get him in the first place.’ But what he actually said was, ‘Dogs really shouldn’t be in the bed with you. He’s happy in his basket – just look at him.’

Susannah leant over the side of the bed, peering down at the puppy.

‘I think he looks sad.’ At this she herself began to cry.

He picked her up in his arms, where she lay limp against his shoulder, weeping.

‘Darling, Albie is fine, I promise you. Happy as a sandboy.’

Hiccuping and sniffing, Susannah wailed, ‘It’s not him that’s sad, it’s me. I miss my mummee.’

John stroked her slippery hair thinking, why does she not use her little fist to punch me in the heart while she’s at it?

‘And I’m sure Mummy misses you, but it’s nice for Daddy to see you. I miss you lots too, when you’re not here.’

Susannah wiped her nose on his shoulder and struggled out of his embrace, sliding back down under her duvet.

‘Mummy said you should have thought about that before you went off with the trollop.’

He winced.

‘Sarah. Her name was Sarah. And I didn’t go off with her. I … I spent time with her, which was very wrong of me because married people should not spend that kind of time …’

‘What kind of time?’

‘The kind of time you should only spend with the person you’re married to.’

‘What kind of time?’

‘Bed time. I spent bed time with Sarah and that was very wrong and Mummy was quite within her rights to be very angry. But I didn’t go off with her.’

‘So why are you and Mummy not together?’

‘Because sometimes, although you think you’ve repaired the damage you caused, you haven’t actually done such a good job. There’s still a tiny crack and, if you’re unlucky, that crack just gets wider and wider until all the nice feelings fall into it and disappear.’ He glanced at Susannah, who was looking worried again, and he added, ‘Although they are still there; just … well, further down.’

‘Mummy spends bed time with Adrian, so are you angry?’

‘No. No, I’m not angry because Mummy and I aren’t married any more so Mummy can spend as much bed time as she likes with Adrian.’

‘I’m not married.’

John laughed.

‘No, you’re not.’

‘So I can spend bed time with Albie.’