7

11 September

EVI WINCED.SOMEONE HAD BORROWED HER CHAIR AND altered the height. It forced her to lean forward across her desk at an odd angle and put extra pressure on her damaged nerve. She looked at her watch. She had to be in court in thirty minutes. She’d fix the chair when she was next in.

She opened up the story she’d saved the previous week from the Telegraph’s website, wondering if there was something she’d missed. Gillian Royle had just left, following her second session. On the surface, progress seemed to have been made. Gillian was taking her medication, had noticed a difference already in her ability to sleep, and had arranged her first AA meeting. She even claimed to be trying to eat. Plenty of boxes to tick. Something, though, didn’t feel quite right.

Since qualifying as a psychiatrist, Evi had worked with many patients who had been struggling to come to terms with loss. She’d treated several parents who had lost children. Gillian Royle, though, was something new. There was more going on in Gillian’s head than grief for her daughter. After two sessions Evi was sure of it. Her pain was too fresh, too intense, like a fire that was being continually stoked. A horrible image in the circumstances; still, something was getting in the way of Gillian’s recovery, preventing her from moving on.

Evi had been lied to many times; she knew when a patient wasn’t telling her the truth; she also knew when someone wasn’t telling her everything.

She re-read the newspaper story. The town of Heptonclough is in shock … She’d read that bit several times, nothing new there … blaze could have been caused by a gas ring left burning … if Gillian had left the cooker switched on, the fire would, technically, be her fault. Was she torturing herself with guilt?

During the previous hour with Gillian, following normal procedures, Evi had steered the girl towards talking about her early years. It hadn’t gone well. She’d sensed tension in Gillian’s relationship with her mother and wondered if a lack of parental support had contributed to Gillian’s breakdown following Hayley’s death. Gillian had talked briefly about a dead father whom she could barely remember, and had gone on to mention a stepfather arriving on the scene several years later. Evi was still scanning the story on her screen. This latest tragedy comes barely three years after the loss of Heptonclough child Megan … The story moved on to a different incident and Evi closed the page down.

The more she’d probed Gillian about her childhood, the more agitated the girl had become, until she’d flatly refused to talk about it any more. Which was interesting in itself. Conditions as acute as Gillian’s rarely had a single cause, in Evi’s view. What was often seen as the primary cause – in this case the loss of a child – was all too often just the trigger; the final straw in a chain of events and circumstances. There was a lot more about Gillian to learn.