Don't Stand So Close (23 page)

Blue had perked up at the sight of Max. She was alert and upright in the chair, the blanket had dropped down around her waist. She was staring at Max as though her life depended on it. Her hair was still wet with snow, her hands were grotesque, swollen with white dressings, bloodstains
seeping through the bandages. A smile spread across her face and lit up her eyes as she gazed at him.

Stella knew just how she felt.

After a few moments Blue couldn’t contain herself, she ran straight at Max and buried her head in his chest.

Max was embarrassed. He pulled at her arms, loosening them, trying to extricate himself.

Her 44-year-old husband would never fall for the charms of a disturbed teenager. Even one as seductive as Blue. Surely.

‘How did you get my home address?’ He held her at arm’s length.

‘On the internet,’ Blue said.

‘How did you really get my home address?’

‘I saw it on an envelope in your office.’

Stella could see Blue’s mood sinking in the face of Max’s coldness. Her damaged thumb hovered around her mouth and she slunk back to her chair, sulking.

‘How could you do this to me?’ Stella asked. ‘How could you get involved with her without telling me? She could have brought her father here with her.’ Her voice was tight, strained.

Peter stayed well back, looking between the three of them. His expression was like thunder. Stella despised herself for involving him again. He was still trying to help her and she was still beyond rehabilitation. And this time it could cost him.

‘Stella, this is
not
the time.’ Max used the same tone for her that he used for Blue. Concerned, but condescending. He turned his back on them, as though hoping they might have vanished by the time he turned round again. He ran his hand over his hair. He lifted his bag up on to Stella’s desk and began to search inside it.

‘She needs to be treated in hospital. And we need to leave soon,’ Max said. ‘They’re expecting more snow and soon I won’t be able to get out of here. The driveway and the hill will be impossible.’

‘I was hoping you might be able to talk to her,’ Stella said. ‘You’re her therapist – the person she’s most likely to respond to. I need to know if her father is behind this visit in any way.’

He shook his head, still not looking directly at her. ‘Nothing she says is reliable. The critical thing is that they get her medication stabilized. She needs admission to a psychiatric unit.’

‘I want my jacket,’ Blue said. She had regained her colour.

‘Are you cold?’ Stella asked. ‘You can have one of my jumpers.’

‘I just want my own jacket.’

Stella found it for her on the floor behind the chair. Blue squeezed her bound hands through the sleeves. She walked over to Max and stood right in front of him. Expecting something.

‘I’m going to take you to a hospital,’ Max said.

Blue turned her small face up towards his.

Stella felt sad for her. Blue should be enjoying her beauty, in love with a boy her own age; happy. Not inside Hilltop, tormented.

‘I want you to tell them what happened,’ Blue said. ‘Tell them that we were together – loads of times, in your office. That you couldn’t keep your hands off me.’

She smiled up at him, a pale, crazed angel.

‘Come on,’ Max said. ‘Sit down.’ He spoke gently as he pulled her hands firmly away from his jacket and guided her back to the chair. ‘The drive across to the hospital could take
up to an hour. I’m going to give you an injection before we go. It will relax you and also help with the pain in your hands.’

‘I don’t want an injection,’ Blue said. Her thumb was in her mouth and her eyes were glossy with tears. But she stayed still, waiting, as Max prepared two syringes and balanced them in a kidney-shaped cardboard dish, on the arm of her chair.

‘Is this really necessary?’ Stella said. ‘She’s already medicated to the eyeballs and I gave her a sleeping pill last night – is it safe to give her more drugs?’

‘Look at the state of her,’ Max said. ‘While you two have been in charge, she’s smashed a glass window and shredded her hands. Do you really expect me to take the risk that she might hurt herself again? The drive to A and E is hardly going to be a picnic in this weather as it is.’

He had a point, Stella had to admit. It seemed typical of Max, somehow, to come in at the end stages, to take charge and to make everyone else feel incompetent. She trusted him to do the right thing, but he could be so self-assured that he verged on domineering. Clearly he did not welcome any interference.

Stella felt ashamed at how she had failed the girl – again. She had already let Blue down once before. Her report had gone out without the crucial finding that Simpson was a psycho path. She had not reported Blue’s father to the police and so he had been free to continue to torment his family. Blue deserved to get the help she needed.

Stella would have to wait until Blue was safely in hospital to get any details out of her husband.

‘I don’t like injections,’ Blue whimpered. She squirmed in the chair, tucking herself deep into the corner and pulling her knees up.

Peter was staring at Max with an expression of open dislike. But he too did not interfere between doctor and patient.

Max ignored Blue’s distress. He reached down to push up her sleeve. ‘It won’t hurt too much,’ he said.

Blue twisted, pulling away from him. She swiped at Max’s hand, sending the needles, ampoules and the kidney-shaped dish clattering to the floor.

Stella didn’t see where the piece of broken glass came from. Blue clutched it in her injured hand, holding the tip right up against Max’s throat, over his pulsing Adam’s apple. Blue strained forwards, her teeth bared in an ugly grimace, pushing the small glass shard deeper and harder into his flesh.

Stella could not speak or move, her throat had closed, her muscles had seized up.

Max. She was about to lose him.

Peter was only an arm’s length away, ready to lunge at Blue – but waiting – for what?

‘I love you,’ Blue said. ‘I could kill you.’

She took a deep, shuddering breath as she scraped the shard upwards until it rested against Max’s lips. For once, Max had nothing to say.

Peter spoke: ‘Blue, just put the glass down. Step back. We’ll find a way to help you. I promise.’

Blue kept the glass just where it was. ‘I won’t hurt him if he tells the truth,’ she said.

‘What truth?’ Max spoke softly, through clenched teeth. He looked a smaller man than Stella had remembered, stripped of his authority and his carefully measured distance and his medical bag.

‘That I’m not crazy,’ Blue said. ‘That I’m not a liar. I want
you
to tell them.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Stella glimpsed Peter inching forwards. She stayed very still, dragging her eyes back to Blue’s face. She willed the girl not to lose it completely. It wasn’t too late.

Blue moved the piece of glass down again, to Max’s Adam’s apple. She moved it from side to side, slowly, caressing him. He held his breath, stared at the ceiling.

Lawrence Simpson’s face floated in the air in front of Stella. His dilute-blue eyes, the sadistic smile, his exquisite pleasure in her shame and her powerlessness and her suffering. Like father, like daughter. She threw her full weight at the girl, pushing her away from Max. Blue screamed as she went for Stella’s face. Stella ducked, covering her head with her arms. Blue was panting and sobbing. Stella couldn’t see, couldn’t grab hold of the bandaged hands before the shard of glass slashed at her again.
Please, not my eyes.

But Peter had the girl now, pinned against him, holding her arms at her sides.

And Blue was quickly subdued. She didn’t struggle; the glass simply dropped from her hand to the floor.

‘I think you’d better take that jacket off and give it to me,’ Peter said. He stood behind the weeping girl and kept a firm grip around her as she shrugged the jacket off one side and then the other until it dropped to the floor at her feet. Stella checked the jacket for any more weapons. The zipped compartments were empty, except for a small mobile phone, which she removed and pushed into her back pocket.

They had Blue stretched out on the floor. Stella pinned her legs down and Peter held on to her wrists.

Max was unfazed as he retrieved his paraphernalia from the floor.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked Blue.

Blue nodded. Her cheeks were wet with tears.

‘What is that stuff?’ she asked Max.

‘I should have explained it to you properly before,’ he said. He held up the small glass vial: ‘This one will help you to relax. The other one is a tetanus shot. It’s very important you have that so you don’t get ill from the cuts.’

Stella felt tender towards him, and proud, as he worked to contain the frightened girl.

‘OK,’ Blue nodded. She was trying now, to be good and to be brave. For Max.

Max prepared to inject his trembling patient. He lifted the needle and a few drops of fluid spurted from the tip. He pressed on her arm with the flat of his hand. Cold steel pierced her supple skin. As he pressed down on the plunger, the girl flinched with pain and gave a small cry and then covered her mouth,

Stella felt a rush of nausea as Max withdrew the needle. He wiped away a droplet of blood. He lifted the second syringe.

Her rational, sane self did not question his innocence. And yet Blue’s words kept playing over and over again in her mind.

His patients trusted him to do no harm. Max could do anything he liked to Blue, she was at his mercy.

He was her husband and she loved him.

When it was over, Stella and Peter let Blue go. She pushed herself up to a cross-legged sitting position and stretched out her arm. She stared at the droplet of blood that formed in the crook of her elbow and at the thick bandages around her hands. She wiggled her ravaged fingers. ‘I want my mum,’ she said.

Stella reached out and rubbed Blue’s shoulder. Blue had no idea what lay ahead. With her history and her behaviour over the past few hours, she would not be going home for a long while. If ever. No professional would release her into the care of her mother after what she had disclosed. Stella felt terribly sad for her. What a life.

‘Good girl,’ Max said. ‘We’ll give the injection a few minutes to work, and then we’ll get going.’

Blue lay down on the floor, holding her arm. She closed her eyes.

‘She looks semi-conscious,’ Peter said. ‘I thought you said it was some kind of muscle relaxant?’

‘She’s fine,’ Max said. He began to issue instructions, barely looking at Blue. ‘Can you get her something dry and warm to wear? And can you do something about taping up that broken window? And see if you can get hold of an emergency window-repair service. We need to secure the house.’

Stella got up to do what Max had asked of her, but she felt uneasy. She had become accustomed to watching over the girl and it didn’t seem right to leave her side.

Max was Blue’s doctor; she was safe with him.

Stella looked from Blue to Max. She could not be swayed by the girl’s bizarre and lurid allegations. She had to trust her husband, and do as he asked of her. He was all she had.

Stella and Peter waited in an awful silence for Max to arrive. Stella was thinking about how she would explain what she had done, and the risk she had taken. The scandal could destroy the clinic. The practice would for ever be seen as the centre where someone was raped, or perhaps worse – where a psychologist slept with a patient. The investigation would no doubt close down the clinic while forensics combed the offices and interviewed the staff.

She had not resisted, she did not have a bruise on her. Lawrence Simpson could say whatever he liked. He could say, truthfully, that she had invited him over to the clinic in the evening, on a weekend. He could say she had wanted to be alone with him, he could point out he was unarmed. He was not an unattractive man and she was young.

She wondered how Max was going to view the situation. One way or another, she had broken boundaries and paid the price.

She shouldn’t blame herself. She had voiced her concerns about Simpson to Max. She hoped he would have faith in her, would be loyal to her, would believe her story.

Peter sat close by, but a space had opened up between
them. She could feel that he wanted to talk to her again, about reporting the crime, and she knew he wanted to rush her off to a police station, but he held back.

Once again she heard the rush of tyres against gravel as Max arrived in his Mercedes. Stella sat on the chesterfield and listened to his key in the lock and the sound of the door opening. She had interrupted his precious weekend, and this would not be a welcome intrusion. She hoped he wasn’t angry. She might have single-handedly brought his practice to its knees.

Max looked confused at the sight of the two of them sitting on the sofa in his reception area in the middle of the night.

‘Peter’s a friend,’ Stella said. ‘And a police officer. That’s why I called him.’

‘What’s happened?’ Max asked. Not angry, but concerned.

Stella was grateful he had come, and relieved. She needed his advice – she needed him to tell her exactly what she should do. If she was lucky, he might be able to help her through this with both her sanity and her career intact.

She looked down at her scrubbed-clean fingernails as she talked. She was careful to speak slowly, she didn’t want to vomit all over the cream medical-centre carpet. She didn’t want to go through the ordeal again, she wanted to retreat down a long dark tunnel, to somewhere distant and peaceful, but she forced herself back.

‘I gave Lawrence Simpson an after-hours appointment. We were alone in the building. He raped me and he also took some photographs of me naked which he has threatened to put up on the internet. Photographs that look as though I was enjoying myself. He has said that if I report what happened, he would deny it was rape, he would say it was
consensual. He knows he’s going to lose his custody battle. I was his parting shot.’

‘Are you injured?’ Max asked.

She nodded. She didn’t want to cry.