Page 76 of Insidious

***

This session feels different somehow. Like my burden is lighter.

Dr Ward notices as she looks at me over her glasses. She is dressed like I imagine a grandma would be, in pastels, with her salt and pepper hair in a neat bun.

“How was the week?” she asks.

“Better,” I say. “She doesn’t talk much.”

“And when she does?”

“We are both … careful. We talk about Amelie, about work. It’s been this way since we visited my mum. Like we took two steps forward and one step back.”

“That’s progress,” she says. “One step towards healing.”

I nod.

“I am doing what you said,” I add. “Not arguing or defending myself. But we are not talking.”

“You think a good argument will clear the air?”

“Yes, I do. I feel like she is imagining it was worse than it was.”

She watches me carefully.

“And did you say that out loud? Did you try to ask her?”

I wince. “No. Her mum is around, and everything feels … stilted? Is that the word?”

“But she is leaving next week.”

I huff a breath. “Yes. But I feel more and more like … It was just a few messages, you know. It would never have gone any further. I just sit here and take it?”

“For now? Yes.”

I lean back, frustrated.

“That doesn’t feel fair. I want her back. I want us back to the way we were.”

She nods. “It isn’t fair. But you are thinking from your perspective. What Luna is trying to work through … You cannot imagine what it is like. All these changes.”

I don’t like that, but I don’t argue.

She folds her hands loosely in her lap.

“Let’s go back,” she says. “What did Chloe give you that you weren’t getting at home?”

“I told you, it wasn’t like that.”

She waits. And I realise she’s not moving on until I answer.

“Ease,” I admit. “No pressure. No … expectations to be on the ball. No feeling of being a failure all the time.”

“And at home?”

“I was failing,” I say, remembering the sinking feeling I used to get every time I left work. “Everything I did felt wrong.”

She nods slowly, taking notes.