formality: inability in the discharge of duty.
Jenny said, 'Of course. Are we going to do the regression now?'
As Dr Allen talked her down she sank with little resistance into a state of near-unconscious torpor, neither sleeping nor waking. His voice grew steadily more distant as Jenny descended deeper into the caverns of her subconscious. She found herself in a warm, dark space and followed a pinprick of light that slowly widened into a street scene. Neat rows of pre-war semi-detached houses in a seaside town.
'Tell me where you are, Jenny.' Dr Allen's voice came to her as if from the far distance.
'In the street where we lived when I was a child, in Weston. I can see the houses, the sun shining on them. One of them is painted white with a green roof. I can smell a bonfire, leaves burning.'
'Good. And how are you feeling?'
Jenny tried to isolate the sensation she was experiencing. 'Odd.'
'In what way?'
'I'm not sure.'
'Do you know how old are you?'
'Small. I'm wearing the buckled shoes, the blue ones that Nan bought me.'
'What's happening?'
Jenny drifted for a moment. 'They sent me out. There are men in the house . . . their car's parked outside.'
'Who are these men?'
'I don't know.'
'Did you see them?'
Jenny flinched, balling up her fingers into fists.
'What? What is it?'
'The shouting again. It's my mother. I can't bear it.'
'Stay with it, Jenny, stay there. What's she shouting?'
Her chin lolled from one side of her chest to the other, her face creasing with pain.
'Tell me, Jenny. Tell me what's she saying.'
'"Don't take him! Don't take him!" There are people coming out of their doors. The woman from next door, she's pulling me to her, not letting me see.'
'See what?'
'It's my fault. It is. It's my fault.'
'What's your fault, Jenny?'
'What they're doing to Dad, what's happening to him. The policemen are taking him away.'
Steve turned off the main road and threaded through single- track lanes. Overgrown hedgerows brushed the sides of the car. The dipping sun danced off the wings of a million insects. Jenny closed her eyes and felt the warm evening air playing over her face, neither of them saying a word. He pulled up at the entrance to a forestry track and led her along a winding path through thickets of birch and hazel, emerging into a meadow that wrapped around an oxbow bend in the River Usk. They waded through the long grass and sat at the edge of the water, where fat turquoise dragonflies, more brilliant than peacocks, came to sip in the shallows.
In no hurry, he waited for her to speak first, happy to smoke a cigarette and gaze at the two swans on the opposite bank elegantly preening themselves after a lazy afternoon swim.
When the heaviness of the hospital began to lift, Jenny found her voice and told him what had happened in Dr Allen's consulting room. She had regressed before, retrieved many snatches of buried memory, but nothing had been as vivid as today. There was sharp detail: the gaudy orange flowers on the neighbour's dress, the click of the detectives' shoes on the pavement, the raw fear in her mother's voice.
Steve said, 'And that was it, just that scene?'
'It's like that. It's as if I can only bear to take so much at once.' Jenny wiped her eyes, the tears stinging her cheeks. 'Maybe I'm making it up, putting together pieces that don't belong together.'
'What did the doctor say?'
'He seemed pleased. I'm seeing him again next week.'
Steve tossed aside the blade of grass he'd been picking at and tenderly touched her face. 'This is good, Jenny. You've started to open the door. You're going to get free of all this.'
She looked at him dubiously. 'I don't know why you're still here. Your last crazy girlfriend cost you ten years.'
He let his hand drop down to hold hers and kissed both her eyelids in turn. 'You know why.'
'You're betting a lot on me. I hope you know what you're doing.'
'What do you mean?'
'You don't believe I did it, do you?'
'You were just a witness to something upsetting, that's all. A very long time ago.' He drew her closer. 'Don't let it poison your whole life, Jenny. Try thinking about where you are now.'
He kissed her lightly, and with no demand, in a way that took her back to more innocent times. She wished she could stay there for ever.
Chapter 9
Monday morning greeted her with the small mountain of death reports that a weekend in high summer inevitably