The Blame Game by Sandie Jones
For Oscar
Watching you grow into a wonderful young man is my greatest pleasure
Follow your dreams and I’ll be right by your side
PROLOGUE
She wants to be everything to everyone, but making yourself indispensable is dangerous.
It means you’re party to secrets that others don’t want you to know. It means you’ll go to any length to keep your own close to your chest. It means that everyone around you becomes collateral damage.
But she’ll not bring me down. I’ll get to her, before she gets to me.
Her need to be essential is about to make her an accessory.
PART ONE
1
I’m sure, as soon as I see the door ajar, that something has happened. I never leave my garden office unlocked overnight, not because there’s anything in there worth stealing, but there’s been a spate of petty shed burglaries around here recently and I don’t need my clients’ files strewn across the manicured lawns of Tattenhall in the hapless pursuit of a mower or power tool.
Though you’d have to be pretty stupid if you honestly thought that the sprawling estate was tended to by a hand-held trimmer kept in my pimped-up shed. The fifty acres of rolling land that surround our cottage are maintained and nurtured by a team of three full-time greenkeepers, who you’re more likely to see astride a sit-on John Deere than hovering a Flymo.
I remember Leon showing me the barn where all the machinery is kept, when we first moved here after he’d become the estate’s manager. My eyes had stood out on stalks, as I’d always been a tomboy growing up and one of the best days I remember having as a child was being taken to Diggerland, where I was allowed to operate a JCB. I’d patiently waited in line for over an hour, just so I could pick up dirt from one pile with the giant bucket and move it onto another. My dad was infuriated that a theme park would charge for such an inane activity, but I’d been delighted.
Pushing the memory to the back of my mind, before it turns sour, I tentatively pull the door open and peer inside the converted outbuilding I’ve grown to love. I expect to see my desk upturned and its drawers thrown across the room in frustration, as the lowlife realized that there wasn’t as much as a skateboard on which he could make his getaway. But my workstation is still upright; the framed certificates proving my right to practice as a psychologist still hang, dead straight, on the wall, and the vase of flowers that I’d been sent by a grateful client still blossom, their optimism jarring against the unnerving sensation that is coiling around my stomach.
My eyes travel to the salmon-colored couch, where many a life story has been shared, but its cushions remain perfectly plumped and the magazines on the coffee table are fanned out just as I had left them after my last appointment on Friday.
Nothing looks to have been disturbed and I allow a little frisson of relief to ease its way across my shoulders, loosening the knot that has so quickly tightened there. Maybe I had carelessly left the door unlocked and the breeze had just taken it off the latch, leaving it swaying in the brisk morning air.
I admonish myself, promising that I will pay more attention in future. There might not be anything in here to entice an opportunist looking for an easy grab and sell, but there is still incredibly sensitive information held within the drawers of the cabinets that, in the wrong hands, could have far more damaging consequences.
I take a sip of my coffee and turn the electric heater on, just to take the edge off. It’s forecast to be a warm day, but the overnight coolness has made its presence felt. Not helped by leaving the door open, I say scathingly to myself.
I shiver involuntarily as I open my diary, though I can’t tell whether it’s because of the very real chill in the air or seeing who my first appointment is.
Jacob.
My chest tightens and I ask myself for the hundredth time whether I’ve done the right thing by him. I know I certainly haven’t done right by Leon, but then I wonder if that’s not his own fault.
If he hadn’t been so distracted lately, I would have found it easier to tell him. But the job that we thought would give us more time together has actually resulted in exactly the opposite. Because even when he’s home, he’s on constant call, and the summer concert that he’s spent the last four months organizing is fast approaching, leaving him with even less time, and certainly less patience.
I’ve wanted to tell him about Jacob; tried to several times, but he’s never listened long enough for me to get to the important part. But maybe that’s just me choosing to see it that way, because I know how he’s going to react when I do. He’ll no doubt take me to task for caring too much and going beyond the call of duty. But there’s a reason for that.
* * *
I knew as soon as Jacob started coming to see me three months ago that his story was different. Although he, like all of my clients, had reached the point where he felt able to put his pride aside and bravely ask for help, the irony of his situation was that he wasn’t looking to save himself; he wanted to save the woman who had been abusing him for ten years.
“If I don’t get out now, I’m terrified of what I might do,” he’d said when I asked why he’d come to see me, during our first session. “For the first time ever, I was going to retaliate and it scared me because I didn’t know what I might be capable of.”
I’d looked at him, curiously, unable to recall another client who thought they were the one who needed help, instead of the person who’d been making their life hell.
“Can you tell me what happened to make you feel this way?” I’d asked softly.
He’d looked down at his intertwined fingers in his lap. “She stayed out last Saturday,” he’d started. “All night.”
“OK,” I said. “And do you know where she’d been?”
He’d laughed cynically. “Oh, she made sure to tell me all the details.” He shifted on the sofa, pulling a scatter cushion onto his lap, as if it were a metaphorical barrier.
I’d sat back in my chair opposite him, giving him the time and space to decide whether he wanted to elaborate.
“She’d been with another man,” he’d said eventually. “Having the best sex she’s ever had.”
I’d recoiled inwardly, unable to imagine how it must feel to be told something like that by the person you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with.
“She told you that?” I’d asked incredulously, seemingly still capable of being shocked by the sadistic behavior of some people, despite being in the job for over ten years.
He’d nodded. “Yes, just before she straddled me and attempted to force herself on me.”
“And what happened?”
“Absolutely nothing,” he said. “I could still smell him on her, for God’s sake. But regardless, I could no longer convince my body that making love to her was what I wanted to do. It had listened to the call to action for so long, ever ready to perform when she wanted it to, but eventually, my brain just said, ‘Enough, I can’t do this anymore.’”
His lips had closed and he’d grimaced. “She told me I was an embarrassment to mankind, unable to perform the most primitive of functions.”
“How did that make you feel?” I’d asked.
“Less of a man,” he said. “Though I guess she’s ingrained it in me to such an extent that it’s impossible to feel any other way.”
“So your relationship has affected your masculinity?” I’d asked.
“Of course,” he’d said, sighing. “How can it not? The stereotype is that a real man should be in charge, be the breadwinner.”
I couldn’t help but cringe at his misguided definition. “Don’t you think that’s a rather outdated stereotype these days?”
“Is it?” he’d asked, seeming genuinely out of touch. “That gives me some hope then, as I’m not like that.”