The House on the Cliff (22 page)

As we drove along, Nella turned her head away from me, looking out of the window. She didn’t speak a word. I could understand why: she was shocked at my reaction, and she felt thoroughly humiliated by the whole episode. So we sat in silence for a long time until, finally, she spoke.

“Sorry, Mum.” There was a tremble in her voice.

“Why did you do that?” My own voice was shaking. “You lied to me. You could have just asked . . .”

“But the audition was in the evening. And I knew you wouldn’t let me go.”

“We would have driven you up and waited. I told you that.” I gave an exasperated sigh. “You didn’t have to go running off like that, without telling us. . . .”

Nella started to cry.

I wasn’t sympathetic. “Promise me you’ll never, ever do anything like this again.”

“I promise.”

She burst into sobs. I leaned over and patted her knee, then gestured at my handbag. She searched through it, found a tissue, and went on crying into it.

When the tears had subsided I said, “Now listen, I want you to tell me exactly what happened with Emyr, from the beginning. I’m not trying to pry, but it’s important.”

She sniffed, dabbing at her eyes. “Well, he came up to me at the concert after school, and said he liked my singing. I could tell he liked me, too.” She paused for a moment, embarrassed. “And I liked him. But nothing happened before we went to London. When we met up, it was just about recording and stuff.”

There was a silence.

“Go on,” I said.

“After the audition, Tony Andreou took us to a bar, and we all had champagne. Emyr was excited. Happy. And so was I. We got a bit drunk, and then he started kissing me.”

“Did you ask him to stop?”

“No.” She bent her head, so that her hair hung over her face. “I liked it. I wanted him to.”

“Well, that’s nothing to be ashamed of, Nella.” My tone was gentle. I didn’t want her to feel too shy to tell me more.

“Then we went back to Tony’s flat,” she went on, encouraged. “He and Sandy, that’s his boyfriend, they were taking some kind of drugs, I think. . . .”

“Did you join in?”

“Of course not.” Nella was emphatic in her denial. “But then it started to get a bit weird, so Emyr told me to come with him into the bedroom. I think he wanted to protect me.” She hesitated. “He’s not a bad guy really, Mum.”

I let that pass.

“Anyway, once we were on the bed, we started kissing again, and then . . . well, things got a bit out of hand.”

“Why didn’t you try to stop him?”

She looked over at me. I could see, even in the half darkness, that her eyes had gone round.

“Because I wanted him to. I’ve got to lose my virginity sometime. I thought maybe this was my chance.” Her tone was serious. “But when it came down to it, I realized I was scared. I wasn’t ready.”

“Did you tell him that?”

“No. I felt I’d gone too far by that time.”

It began to rain. I leaned forward and switched on the windscreen wipers.

“Listen, Nella, it’s always your right to say no. At any stage.” I paused. “And about losing your virginity. Don’t leave it up to some man you hardly know. Find someone you care about, someone you can trust. Someone who loves you, or at least respects you. Take it slowly. If he’s not experienced, it doesn’t matter. You can work it out together.”

Nella looked skeptical. And although I believed what I was saying, I knew perfectly well, from my own experience as a young woman, that sex is rarely as straightforward as that.

“OK,” I said, after a while. “Lecture over. Let’s listen to some music. D’you want to plug in your iPod?”

She nodded, took out her iPod, attached it to the car stereo, and fiddled with the knobs until the music came through. Then we drove on, watching the windscreen wipers batting back and forth, trying to keep the rain at bay.

When we got home, in the early hours of the morning, Bob was asleep on the sofa. He’d evidently been waiting up. I shook him awake, gave him a brief account of the story, then went upstairs and sank into bed. He didn’t follow me up, and I didn’t wait for him to. Once my head hit the pillow, I was asleep.

Next day I got up late. Bob took Rose out in the morning, and Nella slept till lunchtime. I let her take her meal up to her room, and she closeted herself away in her bedroom for the rest of the day. In the evening Bob went up and talked to her. When he came out, I didn’t ask him what they’d said. We didn’t discuss our argument, either. We’d both apologized on the phone, but now that the drama was over and Nella was safe, it had become clear that neither of us was prepared to give ground. We were still being scrupulously polite to each other in front of the girls, but when we were alone we more or less ignored each other.

First thing on Monday, when I got to my office, I made a phone call to Emyr’s place of work, Safe Trax. I asked to speak to the director, told her what had happened, and threatened to issue a formal complaint. She was horrified—although she didn’t sound very surprised—and begged me not to, promising that the matter would be resolved immediately.

After I’d put the phone down I wondered whether I should have gone further and insisted that Emyr be dismissed from his post; but, on reflection, I realized that he hadn’t actually committed any crime. Nella wasn’t underage, and it was quite clear that he’d taken her off to London with her full consent. Whether or not he would have forced her to have sex with him against her will, I couldn’t be sure; her own feelings about the encounter also seemed to be ambivalent. Clearly his behavior had been morally wrong; she was an impressionable teenager, and he’d taken advantage of her. But as far as I could see, he’d done nothing strictly illegal.

And, to be honest, I had another reason for hesitating over whether Emyr should be severely punished for his actions. I was uncomfortably aware that, in essence, my lusting after Gwydion hadn’t been so very different. Of course, Gwydion was a man in his twenties, not a teenager, but there was still a big age gap between the two of us; not only that, but I was married. What’s more, I’d been in a position of authority over him. Gwydion had trusted and respected me; and I’d been tempted to abuse that trust. I was ashamed to admit it, but to that degree, my motives hadn’t been much more honorable than Emyr’s.

As the day wore on, I began to feel more and more exhausted. That morning I had a run of particularly wearing clients. First, there was Bryn, a middle-aged man with an unrelenting hatred of his controlling mother, which he had transferred to me, lock, stock, and barrel, and which showed no signs of abating in the near future; next, Maria, a severely depressed woman whose husband had left her, and who sat in silence most of the time, occasionally dissolving into tears when I raised the subject of how she could get help to care for her emotionally neglected children; and finally, Frank, a seventy-five-year-old man with prostate cancer, whose anger and grief at his illness took the form of what he called sex addiction, and what I called staring fixedly at my breasts and making lecherous remarks.

After Frank left, I managed a short lunch break, nipping over to the deli to get a takeaway sandwich and a cup of coffee. It was a bright, sunny day, and I could have gone over to the park to eat, but instead I decided to get back to the office so I could take a nap on the couch. That didn’t work out, though. Instead, I had a series of irritating interruptions: Branwen appeared with a card to sign for Meinir, the hypnotherapist upstairs, who was leaving that week; Dougie, the cognitive behavioral therapist, dropped by for some advice on a client; and, to cap it all, a workman started drilling the road outside.

Just as I felt I was going to scream, there was another knock at my door. I glanced at my watch. My first client of the afternoon wasn’t due for another hour. And then I remembered that I’d scheduled a meeting with a policewoman about the Morgan case. She’d phoned to ask if I could answer some general questions, even though I hadn’t yet agreed to become a witness, and I’d made an appointment with her at the office. I’d meant to think about what I was going to say, but I’d completely forgotten about it. And now she was here.

I took a deep breath, got up, and showed the woman in, sitting her down in the armchair I normally use for my clients. I asked if I could get her a tea or coffee, but she refused, so I sat down in the chair opposite and waited while she got out a warrant card and flashed it at me briefly. There was a picture of her on it, looking rather startled by the bright light of the camera, and a name: Detective Sergeant Lauren Bonetti.

“Thanks,” I said and she put it back in her bag. She got out a reporter’s notebook and a pencil. I was surprised she wasn’t using some kind of electronic gizmo to log her thoughts, instead of such an old-fashioned device. In fact she was rather surprising all round. I’d vaguely imagined an older woman, possibly in uniform, or at least dressed in some kind of dowdy navy-blue outfit, but she wasn’t in the least like that. She was about my age, possibly a little younger, with curly brown hair, dark eyes, and freckles, dressed in a rather stylish asymmetric top, shortish skirt, patterned tights, and chunky-heeled boots.

“Just a few questions,” she said, flipping over the cover of the notebook. “I just want to establish a few facts before you decide whether you want to make a statement or not. I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”

There was a pause. I said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

“I need some basic information, that’s all. Just to get a picture of how you work.” She hesitated. “You see, it’s rather unusual for us to take this kind of evidence. I haven’t had a case like this before.”

I nodded in what I hoped was a noncommittal way. I didn’t have anything to hide, but I was well aware that this wasn’t an informal chat, either. So I was careful not to say anything more than I needed to.

“Now, when was it that Gwydion Morgan first came to you?”

“Back in September. I can tell you the exact date, if you like.”

“That would be useful.”

I got up, went over to my desk, and flicked through my appointments diary. “Here we are.” I read out the date. “And there were several more sessions after that.” I leafed through the diary, giving her the dates of each one as I found them.

I came back and sat down.

“Thanks. That’s great.” She noted something on her page, then looked up at me. “He didn’t stay long, did he?”

“No.” Once again, I didn’t elaborate.

“Is that normal? For someone to leave so soon?”

“Yes and no.” I paused. “Some people stay for just a few sessions, others go on for years. It all depends, really. On what they think they need.”

“I see.” She looked thoughtful. “So he felt he didn’t need more, did he?”

“That’s what he said.”

“And what did you think?”

I chose my words carefully. “He seemed to have found some benefit in the therapy.” I paused. “But I expect we could have got further, had we carried on.”

She nodded. There was a short silence, and then she said, “Do you keep files on your patients, by any chance? Case notes, perhaps?”

“Yes. But they’re mostly quite brief. These days I tend to rely on this.” I tapped my head.

“No problem.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “I wonder if you could tell me about those sessions with Mr. Morgan. Describe how the dream came out, in your own words.” She paused. “Don’t worry if you get anything muddled up. This is just a preliminary interview. We can take a proper statement later.”

I did my best to run through what had happened in my meetings with Gwydion, starting with the second one, in which he’d mentioned the recurring dream about being locked in a box, and going on to describe, as the sessions progressed, how he’d begun to remember more and more: hearing voices outside the box, realizing that the box was a boat, hearing a scream and a splash as something big, like a body, hit the water. She listened attentively, continuing to make notes, until I came to the end of my story.

“Thank you, Dr. Mayhew,” she said. “That’s just what I needed.” She paused. “So this dream went on to trigger Mr. Morgan’s conscious memory of the events that took place on the boat when he was a child. All those years ago. Is that right?”

“Yes. That’s what he told me.”

“Is that a common phenomenon? A dream triggering a childhood memory like that?”

“No. Not common. But it does happen. There are some well-documented studies in the literature.”

“And is the memory of a child as young as six reliable, do you think?”

“I would say so. Theoretically, a child of that age would be quite capable of understanding the significance of a traumatic event and remembering it later.”

She looked satisfied, and I began to congratulate myself on my authoritative tone. But then the conversation took a turn for the worse.

“Now . . .” She flipped back through her notes. “There are just a couple more things. . . .”

“Go ahead.” I tried not to sound alarmed.

“Did you have any contact with Gwydion Morgan outside your sessions with him here?”

Now that she’d asked me, I realized this was the question I’d been dreading.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I did.”

“Would you mind telling me more about that?”

“Not at all.” My neck began to feel hot. “His mother phoned me after our second session. He was depressed, she said. She was worried that he was suicidal, so I agreed to drive down to the family home to see him.”

“And what happened?”

“Nothing much. It wasn’t that serious, he was just feeling rather low. I did my best to talk to him, but he wasn’t very communicative. However, he came back for his session the following week.”

I saw no need to mention my other meetings with Gwydion, either at Creigfa Bay or the Travelodge—certainly not the Travelodge—unless she pressed me further, which, to my relief, she didn’t.

“Do you usually visit your patients—sorry, I mean, clients—at home?”

“Not as a rule.” I could feel the heat rising up my neck into the back of my head. “But this seemed to be a genuine emergency.” I hoped it wouldn’t spread to my face. “And I don’t like to be too inflexible.”