Mind Games (6 page)

‘I think it’s a good idea,’ Grace said, easily. ‘Want me to come along, or do you want to run alone?’

‘Alone. If that’s okay?’

‘Sure it’s okay. Mind if I wait for you here?’ Grace nodded towards the edge of the golf course beside them. ‘I’d be glad to sit down for a while.’

‘You’re very nice,’ Cathy said, and then, as an afterthought, added: ‘I’ll be more careful – I won’t get knocked down or anything.’

‘Go run,’ Grace said.

She watched the teenager run to the end of the road, then, as she disappeared from view, forced herself to sit down on the grass and try to relax. Grace was aware that there was some risk in
what she was doing – that for all she knew, Cathy Robbins might just keep on running and not come back. But at the same time, Grace also realized that Cathy desperately needed the release
and, perhaps, the simple freedom. And even though she was right in saying that there was no escape, and even though it was perfectly true that there could be no escape from her nightmare for Cathy
Robbins for a very long time, there was probably less harm in trying for a quick burst of freedom than in just sitting and letting it all roll over her.

She came back, cheeks flushed, breathless, at least physically better for the exercise. ‘That felt good,’ she said, stretching out her muscles. ‘Thank
you.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ Grace said.

‘You let me go without making a fuss. I might have done anything – I might have run straight under a bus.’

‘You told me you wouldn’t.’

‘And you trusted me.’

They headed back to her aunt’s place at a comfortable pace, neither of them saying much. Grace wasn’t about to push Cathy into disclosing anything she was reluctant to, not at that
time, anyway, though she did ask her, before they parted, if Cathy wanted to see her again.

‘I don’t mind,’ she said.

‘Just to talk,’ Grace told her easily, ‘about anything you want to.’

‘I don’t want to talk about what happened.’

‘That’s okay. We wouldn’t need to. You could come to my house. We could talk about your mother, if you felt you wanted to – we could talk about good, happy times.’
Grace paused. ‘You could tell me some more about those flashes.’

‘They’re nothing,’ Cathy said, as she had when she’d mentioned them earlier, but her eyes veered away as she said it.

‘I get them, too,’ Grace told her. ‘At least, I think I probably get something similar. I think of mine as snapshots – they come and go very fast, but they’re quite
clear.’

Cathy shook her head. ‘Not mine.’

Grace gave a swift, easy shrug. ‘Maybe they’re not so similar.’

The girl looked at her for a moment. ‘I think I would like to talk to you some more, Grace. If you don’t mind.’

‘I wouldn’t have suggested it if I did.’

‘If I do come,’ Cathy said, cautiously, ‘I don’t have to talk about stuff I don’t want to, do I?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Only I went to a therapist once before.’ She paused. ‘I didn’t like her much.’ She was still watchful. ‘I didn’t feel I could trust her.’

‘It happens,’ Grace said.

‘She’s very intuitive,’ Grace told Sam Becket later on the phone.

‘I noticed that, too,’ he said. ‘Any progress?’

‘Not the kind you’re hoping for.’

‘Pity.’

‘How about your end?’

Grace could almost hear Becket considering his words.

‘Our people have analysed some ashes we found in the Robbins’ garbage incinerator,’ he said, finally. ‘Apparently they may have been from a fabric similar to the
nightgown Cathy was wearing when she was found with her parents.’

‘Which means what?’ Grace had a bad feeling.

‘I’m not convinced it means anything at all, except that someone in the household burned some voile fabric, and obviously we’re going to be trying to find out who that was, and
why they did it.’ Becket paused. ‘But one theory on the squad is that Cathy might have stabbed her parents, burned the nightgown she was wearing, then showered and put on a fresh gown
before lying down with Marie and Arnold and waiting for the housekeeper to arrive.’ He heard the shocked heaviness in Grace’s silence. ‘Personally, I think the theory’s full
of holes.’

‘Glad to hear it.’ Grace knew she sounded stiff. ‘None of it rings true to me.’

‘I didn’t think it would,’ Becket said.

Uncertain if that was a slight or encouragement, she went on. ‘I’ve spent a little more time with Cathy now, and everything I’ve observed to date convinces me that she’s
a sad, bewildered, haunted child who loved her mother and stepfather.’

‘Actually,’ Becket said, ‘Arnold Robbins adopted Cathy.’ He paused. ‘Has she talked about her relationship with them?’

‘No, not really. No protestations of love or devotion. It’s all too deep, too real for that. Cathy Robbins doesn’t seem to have any idea that she has to prove her love for her
parents.’

‘Any chance she might just be a fine actress?’

Grace bit down the urge to answer sharply. ‘If my instincts are at all sound,’ she answered steadily, ‘the Cathy I was with this afternoon was not play-acting.’

‘Let’s both hope your instincts are very sound,’ Becket said, quietly.

Cathy arrived at Grace’s house just before a quarter to three in the afternoon, it having been arranged with Frances Dean that she would come in a cab, and that her aunt
would come to collect her at four.

‘I’m sorry to be early,’ Cathy said at the front door. She was unsmiling, her eyes and mouth betraying her nervousness.

‘No problem.’ Grace kept her voice low, mindful of the twelve-year-old boy waiting for her. She’d left him out on the deck with Harry, but he was an inquisitive child with a
tendency to wander around and, almost certainly, to eavesdrop. ‘If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll try not to be too long.’

Grace drew Cathy through the entrance hall and into the den, a cosy room lined with books, photographs and paintings by former child patients, most of them colourful and hope-bringing. ‘I
shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes. Will you be all right in here?’

Cathy was already looking at one of Grace’s favourite paintings, of a vivid red balloon floating free in a pure blue sky, only a white dove for company.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, not looking away from the painting.

Grace closed the door quietly, and left her.

The twelve year old collected by his mother and his case notes filed away, Grace grabbed a dish of cookies from the larder and a jug of juice from the refrigerator, and, with
Harry trotting alongside, took Cathy out to the lanai.

‘We can go out on the deck if you prefer,’ she told the teenager, ‘but this is more comfortable.’

‘This is fine,’ Cathy agreed. ‘And no bugs.’

They sat on a pair of shabby old cane chairs, made bright and welcoming by blue and white cushions, the cane itself scuffed and bowed by scores of restless young bodies and feet and all the more
homely for the abuse. Harry, having investigated the new visitor and been duly ruffled and scratched between the ears, came and lay down, as usual, at his mistress’s feet.

‘He’s a cool dog,’ Cathy said.

‘Yes, he is.’

‘I’ve never had a dog.’

‘Would you have liked one?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I guess.’ She paused. ‘I can’t imagine Aunt Frances having a dog in her place.’

Grace smiled. ‘It is immaculate.’

They sat awhile. Cathy drank some juice and nibbled at a cookie. A crumb fell to the side of her chair. Harry stood up, went over and licked it up. Cathy looked to Grace for assent, then dropped
the rest of the cookie. Harry-the-Hoover made short work of it, then lay down beside Cathy.

‘You’re in,’ Grace said.

‘What kind of dog is he?’ Cathy asked.

‘A West Highland Terrier.’ Grace paused. ‘So, is there something you’d like to talk about, Cathy?’ Starting out was difficult with many patients, but with children
it tended to be tougher, given that none of them ever saw her for the first time entirely of their own volition.

‘I don’t know,’ Cathy said.

‘How are you feeling?’

She shrugged. ‘Oh, you know.’

‘Not really.’

‘How would you feel?’

‘I don’t know,’ Grace said.

‘If your parents were murdered, and you found their bodies,’ Cathy responded with a degree of hostility, ‘how would you feel?’

It seemed a perfectly normal reaction to Grace. She’d often felt, when she asked those first awkward questions in her effort to start the ball rolling, that she sounded too much like those
news reporters who badgered people after hideous tragedies.

She decided to answer honestly. ‘I don’t get along with my parents.’

‘Oh.’ Cathy digested that. ‘Would that make it better or worse?’

Grace shook her head. ‘Hard to say.’ She paused. ‘Hope I never find out.’

‘Me, too,’ Cathy said.

They sat quietly for another minute.

‘I got on great with Mom and Arnie.’ Cathy’s voice was softer.

‘I’m glad,’ Grace said.

‘Me, too,’ Cathy said again.

Grace let her take her time. Her head was down, so it was impossible to see her eyes, but she was chewing her lower lip.

‘I can’t believe it’s happened,’ she said after a few moments. ‘I mean, I was there – I saw them.’ She stopped again and swallowed hard. ‘I keep
waiting for them to come and get me from Aunt Frances’ place. I hear cars stopping outside, and I go to the window, and I keep expecting to see my mom.’ She looked up, and her eyes were
bright with tears.

Grace said nothing, just pulled out a bunch of tissues from the box on the cane table between them, and gave them to her. A shrink couldn’t function without a clock and a box of Kleenex,
one of her first tutors had told her. Grace had never found it easy to follow the timer on the table routine; she understood its use, but personally found it offensive and intrusive. Which
didn’t mean, of course, that she didn’t keep a close eye on time when with a patient. Time control had many functions, after all, one of them being that the end of a session – and
the note-making that followed it – was supposed to spell a temporary end to her own involvement in a patient’s world. Healthy and essential and undoubtedly sensible, Grace accepted, but
as was the case for many of her colleagues, that ending was often an illusion for her.

‘Do you want to talk about your mother, Cathy?’

Cathy shook her head.

‘It might help,’ Grace said.

‘Might it?’ The teenager sounded doubtful.

‘It helps some people.’

‘I’m not going to forget Mom,’ Cathy said.

‘I’m sure you won’t,’

‘Or Arnie.’

‘He was your adopted father, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, he was.’ Cathy paused. ‘I called him Arnie because —’

Grace waited a moment before prompting. ‘Because?’

Cathy licked her lips. ‘Because I didn’t want to call him Dad or anything, because of my first father.’

‘Your first father died, too, didn’t he?’

Cathy nodded. ‘A long time ago.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Five.’

‘Do you remember him?’

‘Not really.’

Grace watched her. ‘You mentioned flashbacks, Cathy.’

She shifted in her chair uneasily.

‘Are you uncomfortable talking about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘We don’t have to, if you don’t want to.’

‘Okay.’

‘Maybe another time.’

‘Maybe.’

Cathy picked up her glass of juice, and Harry, down by her side, sat up, poised for action if she took another cookie.

‘Can I give him some more?’ she asked.

‘So long as you have some too.’

Grace watched Cathy break up a Pepperidge Farm Brownie, eat one small fragment, then pass the rest to Harry a piece at a time. She was gentle with him, didn’t tease him with it. Grace
always paid attention to the way young people were around animals.

‘Are you finding it hard to eat?’ she asked, after a while.

‘A little, I guess.’

‘It’s a normal reaction,’ Grace said, ‘though some people react to grief by eating nonstop.’

‘Aunt Frances keeps telling me I’m going to get anorexic.’ Cathy pulled a disparaging face. ‘But she’s not eating any more than I am.’

‘You should both stick to easy things. I always find sandwiches are easier than real food when I’m churned up.’

Cathy seemed about to speak, then hesitated.

‘What did you want to say?’ Grace asked.

‘You said – yesterday, when we were out walking . . . You said you had flashes, too.’ Cathy paused. ‘You said you called them snapshots.’

‘Because that’s the way they seem to me.’

Cathy was wary, feeling her way. ‘Did something bad happen to you, Grace? Is that why you get them?’

She answered steadily. ‘My childhood wasn’t easy. I’m okay now, but I guess we all carry our past around with us in different ways.’

‘I hate mine,’ Cathy said. ‘My flashes, I mean.’

Grace noted the swift clarification, made lest she thought Cathy might be referring to her own childhood. She’d mentioned yesterday that she’d suffered from them for years. That,
combined with what Frances Dean had said about her past, made Grace itch to try taking her back, but she knew she was going to have to take this slowly. Cathy Robbins wanted to talk, that much she
was pretty certain about, but it was going to have to be in her own time.

‘The police came to my aunt’s house again,’ she said, suddenly.

That startled Grace. ‘When?’ Becket hadn’t said anything yesterday about plans to go back.

‘This morning,’ Cathy answered.

‘What did they want?’

‘They asked us a lot of questions.’ Cathy paused. ‘Aunt Frances got real upset. She told them to leave me alone.’

‘You aunt wants to protect you.’

‘I know. Detective Becket said I could go, but I heard Aunt Frances tell him it was monstrous for them to be treating me like a suspect.’ Cathy looked down at Harry, fondled his
ears. ‘I guess I shouldn’t have been listening.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ Grace told her. ‘I don’t like it when people talk about me behind my back.’