Unbind (63 page)

I hung up on her and told the cabbie to take me to a different address instead.

My therapist.

“LOOK, Dr. Theo said I could speak with him if I really needed to. I know he probably didn’t mean face to face, or without an appointment, or like this with me in such a state… but I am in such a state for a reason and I need to speak with him.”

“Ma’am, ma’am. Stop. Please. He’s with a patient. I told you. We have to wait. I’ll ask if he has five minutes when he’s freed up, okay?” she said slowly so that I nodded along like a good girl in response.

“Fine.”

I waited and I waited. I looked at that ring and cursed it. Was it a fake? Was I seeing what I wanted to see?

Eventually, a patient left Dr. Theo’s room and the receptionist let me see him for five minutes.

“What’s wrong, Chloe? Why are you so agitated?”

“I, oh, I… I wrote that article, you remember?”

“Yes,” he nodded, his grey eyebrows meeting in the middle with a frown.

“Today everybody found out it was me. And not in a good way.”

“Oh?” He smoothed his frown.

“Yes. One of the shots leaked. My breast was shown. Jennifer Matthews threw me out of the building.”

“Oh?” His tone menacing.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” I quizzed him.

“Jennifer Matthews is a dear friend and that doesn’t sound like her whatsoever. She’s done all sorts of charitable work for mental illness… visits the people in her spare time, you know? As part of her care in the community. You know Claudia, her sister, she suffered mental illness.”

“I thought she had dissociative identity disorder? That’s what I heard.”
Let’s see what he knows…

“Why yes, but she was cured after many years of treatment. Pity she was double-diagnosed and never defeated her addiction.”

“How do you know that?” I quirked a brow.

“The notes I received on her medical history when I was asked to assess Cai, of course. This is confidential usually, how ever rudimentary, but she passed on didn’t she so I suppose it can’t hurt for you to know. You see some issues are hereditary… or inadvertently passed down. Besides… Cai isn’t afflicted by what she had.”

“What does he have?” I glowered.

Dr. Theo looked at me seriously and I realised… patient confidentiality.
Fuck!

Suddenly I didn’t know why I’d even bothered visiting the doctor. Stupid move. I stood and explained, “I’ll see you for our next session. I’m sure it can wait.”

“Take care, Chloe.”

When I got outside, I saw nobody in the hallway. It was late in the day by then and his next patient rushed past me and straight into his surgery.

I passed a room labelled
Archive
and couldn’t stop myself. I made a split-second decision. I’d done this before in my other job, poring over files when a copper or a fellow journo wasn’t looking. This was a new low.

I got to the
M’s
and found Cai’s file. It was thick.

I rummaged through so quick because I knew I didn’t have much time. I saw the same words over and over again.
Sociopathic tendencies. Anger. Womanising. Hatred. Inability to relate. Compulsive liar. Therapy ongoing. Indefinitely.

The files fell out of my hand as I struggled to make sense of this and that’s when I got caught red-handed. I flew out of there, charging past the receptionist and down the stairs, back outside into the cool air. I screamed for a cab and got inside.

On the backseat I was shaking so hard. I asked to be taken to Battery Park, where I should have gone in the first place. I needed some space to think.

I STILL DON’T know how long I wandered by myself before Cai found me. It was dark anyway and he looked terrified to discover me sat on the grass against a tree, huddled, clearly not myself. Why was this happening to me? Who was this man? He said words I didn’t hear. I was numb to the core. How could this be? I just didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.

“I’ve been searching for hours damn it! You frightened me! You didn’t answer your phone. Please. Chloe. I am so sorry. Talk to me. Tell me something. Anything. Speak to me.”

He held me in his arms but I couldn’t say anything. Until I said…

“Agnes.”

“I know. Oh, I know. I heard. I am so sorry, darling. I am so sorry.” He kissed my hair and held me tighter and I burst into tears.

“My ring… she said it was fake! Why did she say that to me?”

“Oh, god!” he cried loudly. “Damn it, because it is. Because it’s fake, alright?”

“Oh, no.” I cried into my hands, moving back away from him. “Lies. Where do they end?”

“I couldn’t afford the one you wanted. I’m so sorry.” He looked ashamed, looking down at the floor.

“I would’ve understood. What I don’t understand is that you lied to me! I don’t need your lies, Cai. I don’t even need a ring. I just want you, not pieces of you, either. All of you.”

He held his forehead. “Oh god, I know. I can’t say enough times how sorry I am.” His face was wracked with pain, fear and hurt. “I’m working on getting you the ring… I was just gonna swap them without you knowing, when I could afford it. I swear. I know that makes no difference but I just wanted to make you happy and I didn’t do this to hurt you.”

“You don’t own
Sub Rosa
… you don’t own anything at all, do you? She bought your apartment and the gallery and the Chelsea pad?”

He dropped to his knees in the middle of grass and held his head. “I own the gallery, okay? I didn’t lie about that. Someone bequeathed it to me. I don’t know who. I had to pay for all those damn renovations and that show nearly fucking bankrupted me. Don’t you think I’d buy you rubies and pearls if I had any damn money?”

I had been the one to pay for Vegas on the credit card… it all made sense. I’d done it without even thinking to ask him for his half.

I kicked the grass and almost kicked him. “Listen to me, damn it. I don’t want any of that shit. I thought we got that clear from the start, yeah? What I want is a lover and a man, just a man. Skin and bones and hands and arms to hold me. Not a liar, or a cheat. A womaniser. A scoundrel. A liar… a goddamned liar!” I screamed.

“W-what… what?”

“You. I said, you. A liar. A scoundrel.”

“I’ve been with two women, Chloe. I didn’t even love Jackie. I’m not a womaniser, okay? I swear on my life… I only ever loved you.” His voice was shallow, an echo of his usual self, and he started crying there on the ground, in the middle of that deserted park.

“Listen, I went to the therapist today unannounced because I was out of my bloody mind and I stole a look at your file, okay? It said you’re a sociopath and you don’t know how to relate, you’re always angry and you womanise and all this stuff… all this stuff… what am I to believe? Seriously?”

He punched the air and growled. “Sit down here with me, damn it, woman. Listen.”

“Fuck you.”

“Now,” he gestured, the look in his eye non-negotiable and pointed. “I had sociopathic tendencies, okay? I am not a sociopath. I still visit the shrink every week and I just tell them what they want to hear… that I know I’m a fuck-up. Don’t you think she has her claws in that damn fraud? Huh?”

“So why the fuck did you send me to him?”

“’Cause I knew you’d go snooping that’s why and now you know, okay? Now you know what kind of noose she has round my neck. She has everyone under her spell. They all think she’s Miss Perfect. Well, she isn’t.”

We were both breathing hard, talking fast, dealing with all our emotions.

“He said she overcame the DID but never the addiction.”

“Fucking quacks. She is cleverer than all of them put together.”

I cursed loudly, grunting. “What does she want? What does this all boil down to? Really? Why stop your inheritance? What is this really all about, Cai?”

“She doesn’t want me to be free… to have the money… I don’t know!”

“You never slept with any other women? The time is now… if you want to tell me anything else, the time is now.”

He breathed out a long breath. “I couldn’t get hard half the time, Chlo. I couldn’t do it. I was pictured with all those dames dangling off my arms but I couldn’t… I felt like nothing, in here,” he beat his chest like King Kong, “she made me feel about an inch big. I wanted to but I couldn’t. I really tried to piss her off with all those women but she must have known I couldn’t get it up. Rumour spreads and all… half the reason why people kept saying I was gay.”

Oh my beautiful man
. I shuffled over to him and kissed his cheek. Our arms wrapped around one another, we both started shaking.

“If we don’t deal with this, it’s going to get worse. Her aim at the moment seems to be that we split up. So we’ll do that.”

His head whipped up. “As a cautionary measure?”

“Let her think she’s won, yes,” I explained, “I’ll get a hotel and hole up there. I need a place to lay low and think. We’re not seeing everything here, Cai. If I can just have some time to think! There has to be some way of undoing her. She isn’t innocent after all. There has to be some way to show her for what she really is.”

“I’m so sick of this, I’m so empty. Chloe…” he said shaking his head, “…I want this to be over now.”

“She may be your mother, Cai. She may even be ill. However, there is something that doesn’t work out here and I will discover it. In the meantime, finish your project and I’ll finish mine.”

“Okay,” he nodded reluctantly.

“Until this is over,” I gestured, and stood.

I left him there, in the dark. She wanted us over so we’d play like we were over.

Past

CLAIRE THE HOUSEKEEPER looked forward to payday even though some days, she was tested almost beyond her limits. The job was bearable when Chester Matthews was in charge because he was mostly travelling and only came back for the holidays, or for a medical conference in New York. As young men, he and his younger brother Baldwin Matthews were debauched. Years ago when Baldwin used to visit from London, they’d open
Sub Rosa
up to have sex parties and Claire and Dirk would be sent on holiday for the week.

You have to really think about how that kind of thing might have affected Karen—Claudia and Jennifer’s mother. Struggling with two little girls, knowing her husband was playing away with the consent of his brother Chester, the epitome of bachelorhood. She’d have probably known what was going on while married to the man, even the help knew about these parties and people amongst high society talked even more than them.

Why Baldwin even married Karen was a mystery. Perhaps an unexpected pregnancy, or something? He certainly never seemed the settling-down type, nor a father figure even. He was content with his shenanigans and his liquor.

Chester married Karen later on—an even more bizarre outcome. Didn’t Tudor history teach people anything? Yet when they first visited Connecticut together, they did seem honestly in love. Only a few weeks after the end of their honeymoon, they were found buried in a ditch somewhere in Surrey, England, the brakes on their car having failed.

When Claire and Dirk found out it was Claudia who would naturally inherit everything, they had their reservations for sure. If that were the moment to finally throw in the towel, when wasn’t? Chester used to joke, “God help you if she’s still alive when I kick the bucket. She’s next in line.”

This thought used to horrify Claire and low and behold, what should happen but a few months later, the young woman came dragging her brushes and paints up the drive with her.

What was known about Claudia was that she was a law unto herself. Stories of her protesting around London were often reported in the Press, the only problem that it reflected badly on her sister, the sensible one who was assistant editor at
Elle
. Claudia wasn’t always caught imbibed though, sometimes she was just demonstrating for peace or painting a mural on a church wall. She got into trouble for a lot of things, so it seemed.