The House on the Cliff (30 page)

“I’m glad you told me the truth,” I said. “I think you’ll feel better for it.”

He nodded.

“It’s usually best to be honest, even if it hurts,” I went on. “It’s too much of a strain on our minds if we don’t.”

“You think so?”

I nodded.

“Well then, I might as well also tell you . . .”

I wondered what was coming next.

“I think I’m in love with you, Jessica.” He turned to look at me. The pupils of his eyes had widened, so that they looked darker, softer.

Transference, I thought. Same old, same old. And then I remembered kissing him on the jetty at Creigfa Bay, and rolling around on the bed with him in the Travelodge, and felt ashamed that I’d encouraged him in his fantasy. I’d been in lust with him, not in love. I’d used him, for my own selfish reasons.

“I don’t think you are, really, Gwydion.” I spoke gently. “It’s quite common for clients to attach themselves in this way to their psychotherapist. . . .”

“And you? What about you? Do you normally respond in that way?”

“No, of course not.” It was my turn to feel ashamed now. “I’m very sorry about that. I got carried away.”

“So you do feel something for me?” He was looking at me intently. “Tell the truth. Go on. If you’re so keen on all this honesty.”

“Gwydion,” I said. I was flustered, but trying not to show it. “You’re a very attractive man. You must know that. I couldn’t help responding to that. . . .”

He frowned. “So what you’re saying is, you just wanted a quick fling? And that’s all.”

“No.” I could feel my cheeks flushing, and I knew that, as I spoke, I was lying. Now that he’d raised the issue, I realized that was probably what I’d wanted from Gwydion. But there was no way I was going to tell him that. Sometimes the truth hurts, and it’s better not to tell it.

He was looking at me questioningly, as if expecting me to explain myself further.

“I’m a married woman, Gwydion.” I paused. “You know that, don’t you? And you are—you were—my client. It wouldn’t have been right to pursue the relationship, and that’s why I stopped it.”

That was true, too, of course. Sometimes there are many truths, and you don’t have to tell them all.

“And I don’t think you really are in love with me,” I went on. “I think you’re hurt and confused and you’re looking for a mother figure.”

“Maybe. But what’s so wrong with that?”

He had a point. You don’t have to be a card-carrying Freudian to agree that it’s perfectly normal, commonplace even, to look for a distant echo of a parent in a romantic partner.

I shook my head. “It’s just not on, Gwydion. Sorry.”

Gwydion sighed, but it wasn’t a very deep sigh, I noticed. I sensed that his fantasy of being in love with me was a fragile one, more a type of daydream than a deep, painful attachment, and that, in time, it would pass as he became stronger and more able to cope with the world. But even so, I could see that it was going to be difficult for him to let it go, in the short term anyway.

He began to stare out of the window again. I sat with him in silence for a few minutes. Part of me wanted to raise the subject of the hearing, and how what he’d told me about lying to me in the sessions would affect that, but I sensed this wasn’t the time or place.

Eventually I said, “I really must be going now. Good luck with everything.”

“Thanks.” He paused. “There’s a chance I’ll be out of here in time for the rehearsals, I think. I feel pretty down, but I’m sleeping better. And the button problem seems to have resolved. For the moment, anyway.”

“That’s good.” I got up, went over to his chair and patted him on the shoulder. To my surprise, he grasped my hand.

“Thanks, Jessica. Thanks for everything.”

“D’you want me to come over and see you again?”

“No.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m going to have to do this on my own. But I know I can. I’ll be out of here soon. I think I’m going to be all right.”

“I think you are, too.” I squeezed it back.

He bent his head and pressed his cheek against my hand. It was a touching gesture, like that of a little boy.

I leaned down and brushed my lips against the top of his head. “Good night,” I said.

We both knew that good-bye was what we meant, but we didn’t say it. Somehow the word would have been too harsh.

“Take care driving home,” he said. “It’s dark out there.”

“I will.”

He got up, walked me over to the door, and closed it behind me. I went downstairs and out of the front door. When I arrived at the car, I looked up at his window and saw him standing there, looking down at me. He waved, and I waved back.

Sometimes there’s no need to tell the truth because it’s already been told.

20

The next day I canceled all my appointments with my clients and drove down to see Arianrhod at Creigfa House. That’s not something I do at the drop of a hat; letting my clients down at short notice, quite understandably, provokes distrust and endless recrimination. But I was furious. Furious with Arianrhod for duping me, of course, but even more furious with her for using Gwydion to get at his father, out of sheer spite. I knew that she had every reason to hate Evan; she’d been serially betrayed and humiliated by him over many, many years; but nothing could possibly justify the way she’d gone about taking her revenge. I was going to confront her with what she’d done, make sure she retracted the entire story before any more harm was done.

I didn’t tell Bob where I was going. I didn’t want to involve him at this stage of the proceedings. We were still on bad terms and, to be honest, I felt extremely foolish about my credulity in the whole Morgan affair. I was in no rush to tell him what an idiot I’d been—particularly as I’d realized that my willingness to believe Gwydion’s story had been motivated, to some degree at least, by my own disgust at Bob’s infidelity. Projection, it’s called. It’s pretty obvious when you see it in others, but in this case I’d been completely blind to it in my own behavior.

So my plan—if I had a clear plan that day, which I’m not sure, in retrospect, I did—was to talk to Arianrhod, get her to go to the police, admit that she’d been lying, and take it from there. Presumably the case against Evan, as it stood, would quickly collapse; Bob would no longer be needed to defend him, at least in the short term; and I could step down as a witness, hopefully with some dignity intact. Of course, the debacle would be a blow to Solveig, and we would be no nearer to finding out exactly what had happened to Elsa. But if there was a case to be made against Evan it would have to be built up again, from scratch. That was the only way forward. Clearly the truth would have to be told, whatever the consequences.

It was a cold late autumn day, the last of the leaves putting on a final show of color as I drove west to Pembrokeshire. They lined the motorway like faded dancing girls at the Folies Bergère, their tattered petticoats of red, yellow, and gold fluttering in the wind. To begin with, I hardly registered their presence, preoccupied as I was with my thoughts. But after a while the sheer beauty of the landscape got to me, and I began to feel fresher, lighter. I could handle this situation, I told myself. Arianrhod was evidently much more vindictive and manipulative than I’d realized; but at the end of the day she was just an unhappily married woman, searching for a way out of the mess she’d made of her life. I, on the other hand, was an experienced psychotherapist, who’d be able to understand her machinations, try to help her let go of them, play it straight for once. It was me who had the upper hand here. Whatever transpired, I’d be one step ahead of her, and I would do well to remember that.

But when I turned off the motorway onto the road that led to Creigfa House, the trees grew denser, clustering around the road, their branches bare against the sky. Drifts of dry leaves fluttered in front of the windscreen, blown this way and that by the movement of the car. As I drove through the whirling flurries, I began to feel less sure of myself.

I reached the house with its great iron gate. Today there was no need to press the buzzer. The gate was open. That struck me as ominous, though I wasn’t sure why. For a moment I wondered whether to turn the car round and head home. I couldn’t help wishing that I’d thought this whole plan through a little more carefully, before steaming down the motorway to confront Arianrhod. I’d been angry, yes; and curious to find out more. But I hadn’t really put my mind to the fact that Arianrhod’s behavior was deeply disturbing: she’d used her vulnerable son to get at her errant husband; tried to use me, as well, forcing Gwydion to tell me a pack of lies about his recurring dream, so that I could appear as an expert witness in court; and generally twisted the facts, so as to make Evan look guilty of a murder she couldn’t be sure he’d committed. What sort of a mother would do that to her child? To her husband, however much she hated him? What kind of woman was Arianrhod?

I started as I heard the cry of a peacock. It was a shrill scream, as if the bird was in pain. But there was also something angry about it, something aggressive, menacing. I realized, when I heard it, that I’d made a mistake coming here. Whatever business I had with Arianrhod could have been conducted with her on the phone, or at my consulting rooms in Cardiff. I shouldn’t have visited her at home. It was inappropriate. Not to say extremely unwise.

I was just about to turn the car round and drive off when I saw a tall, dark figure walking down the gravel path toward me. As it got closer, I realized it was Arianrhod. She was waving at me to bring the car in.

It was too late to change my mind. Besides, as she neared the car I realized that she didn’t look in the slightest bit menacing or sinister. In fact, she was the same as ever, dressed in her dark-blue sweater, her jeans, and her battered brown loafers. Her hair might have been a little wilder than when I’d seen her before, the gray beginning to encroach on the dark a little more. And when she stood by the gate, waving me in, it could have been that her face was a little more lined, more careworn, than when I’d last seen her. But she didn’t look threatening, not in the least. She looked like what I knew her to be: a woman who’d once been beautiful, once been desired, but who, like so many beautiful, desired women, had never quite found her place in life; and who now, in her waning years, had found herself defeated by a series of battles in a long, bitter war of a marriage. Someone to be pitied, perhaps. Or, rather, to feel empathy for. There but for the grace, et cetera, et cetera. But not someone to be afraid of.

I drove through the gate and up the gravel drive to the house, scaring the screaming peacock as I went. It scuttled into a hedge, and when I got out of the car it was nowhere to be seen. Neither were any of its brothers and sisters. Except for Arianrhod, the place seemed to be deserted. There was a rather forlorn air about it that I hadn’t noticed previously: unswept leaves covered the lawn, the paint on the latticed windows was peeling, and brown mold spotted the stone swags festooning the doorway. I remembered that Arianrhod was living here on her own now, Gwydion in the clinic, Evan on his yacht at the marina. It must be lonely for her, I thought. Lonely and depressing, with the family finally gone, split apart, leaving her on her own to defend the mansion and its grounds against the damp, and the cold, and the salt wind blowing in from Creigfa Bay.

Arianrhod ushered me into the house. She was polite, I noticed, but not as friendly as she’d been in the past. I put that down to the fact that she’d evidently been living alone for some time, preoccupied with her own thoughts. You can sometimes tell when a person has spent too long without the company of other human beings: they lose track of the social cues we usually take for granted, chattering too much, or alternatively lapsing into a brooding silence. So it was with Arianrhod. After she’d led me into the kitchen, sat me down, and got me a cup of tea—forgetting to ask whether I’d prefer coffee, or something else—she made no effort to engage in conversation, but instead busied herself with rolling a cigarette.

I looked around the kitchen. It was cluttered with newspapers, half-empty packets of biscuits, and smoking paraphernalia. There were stacks of dirty cups and saucers by the sink, along with DIY equipment—a screwdriver, nails, a can of spray paint. The air was sour with the smell of stale nicotine. Arianrhod had evidently holed herself up in here, drinking tea and eating biscuits and reading the paper and smoking. There didn’t seem to be evidence of anyone else using the place, except the cats, whose feeding bowls were lined up by the back door, emitting a smell of rancid meat. One of the cats was asleep on a chair beside the Aga.

I waited as Arianrhod lit her cigarette, inhaling deeply. She didn’t ask me, as she had done before, whether I minded if she smoked. It was as if she no longer had any use for such social niceties.

I decided to break the silence. “Do you know why I’m here?” I spoke in a quiet, level voice.

She exhaled, waving away the pall of smoke that hung around her. Funny how I’d found it beautiful before, her dark head surrounded by all that curling blue smoke. This time it just seemed depressing, an ageing woman smoking herself to death in her messy kitchen, with only her cats for company.

“No idea.” It wasn’t hostile, the way she said it, but it wasn’t exactly warm, either.

“Have you spoken to Gwydion recently?”

“No. He doesn’t seem keen to talk to me at the moment. Says he has to get ready for the trial. Needs ‘space,’ as he calls it.” She grimaced.

I sympathized with her, to a degree. I’m not keen on the term “space,” either. In fact I’m not keen on any of that smug psychobabble people throw around these days, whether the negative buzzwords, like “co-dependent,” “in denial,” or—even worse—the positive ones, like “empowerment,” “being grounded,” and so on. Whenever someone starts to talk like that, I instinctively mistrust them. But in this instance I could see what Gwydion had been getting at. He did need space, away from his mother, and the more of it, the better.

“Well, then . . .” I hesitated. I wasn’t quite sure how best to put what I had to say. “I went to see him yesterday. He was very distressed.”