Lock Me In. Kate Simants

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СКАЧАТЬ How?’

      ‘Cheese grater. Like I did in Operation Desert Knickers.’

      A single sniff of a laugh, and she glanced at him. The shape of her eyes so almost-Caucasian, hardly a sniff of Korean about her. Like even his genes were being diluted, rinsed out of her life.

      But her sideways smile was all his. She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll boil you alive and peel your skin off and sell it to the shoe shop so they can make shoes out of you.’

      The realization that she’d planned that, rehearsed it, glowed like a coal in his belly.

      ‘Nice.’ He gave her a serious look and slow-nodded. ‘What’s the score? Seventeen-twelve?’

      ‘You wish,’ she said, appeased now. ‘Nineteen-twelve.’ She cheerfully swung her bag at him, obliviously but narrowly missing his bollocks.

      Bear started to skip but stopped when she got to the gate. She was scanning the yard for those boys.

      Mae crouched. ‘If there’s anything you need me to deal with—’

      She shot him a serious look. ‘No. There’s nothing. There isn’t.’

      ‘Because if—’

      ‘Please, Dad.’

      Mae shrugged, straightened up, committing those two lads to memory: bags, hair, sneery little faces. The last of the latecomers ran past them, ushered in by her classroom assistant (Mr Walls, 29, newly qualified last year, single, previously a gardener, caution for shoplifting aged 13). Mae bent to fix the mismatch of toggles on her coat, and she let him.

      ‘Thanks for hanging out with me, Bear.’ He squeezed her shoulders. ‘See you next week.’

      She ducked him and was gone, off down the path, trying to press into a group of girls he half-recognized. Flicking a hand up briefly as a backwards goodbye. He flexed his fingers a few times in his pockets and headed back to the car.

      It didn’t get to him. Saying goodbye and not even getting a hug: it was no big deal. He dealt with assaults and suicides and RTAs, no problem, all the time. Cat C murders, child abuse, DV, the lot. All the fucking time. So, his little girl forgot to give him a hug before a whole nine days away from him, even though five minutes ago she was three years old, falling asleep in his arms as he read The Gruffalo for the eighteenth time? Christ! Take more than that to make him cry.

      From the driver’s seat he watched Bear disappear into the building.

      Music. He reached round to dig a CD out from the pocket behind his seat, and his fingers closed on a disk in a square plastic wallet. She must have left it there by mistake. He brought it out: Lady Gaga for Bear! on the disk in sharpie, and then under the hole,

      (not really, it’s Daddy’s very best CLEAN hip-hop mixtape).

      And it was clean, too: he’d checked and double-checked each track, and there wasn’t a single swear. It had taken some doing.

      He tucked it into the glovebox, then tried again and found Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle under a fine layer of fried potato crumbs. It was scratched to shit but last time had played fine up to ‘Who Am I (What’s My Name)?’, which would be long enough to get him to the nick. His speakers were almost as creaky as his brakes, but they were loud, and loud meant a clear head.

      Ignition, arm round the headrest to reverse. And off.

      All business.

       3.

Charles Cox Psychotherapy Ltd.
Clinical audio recording transcript
Patient name:	Eleanor Power
Session date:	14 August 2006

       CC: OK, I think that’s recording … Good. Right, before we begin can we just confirm this because we’ve got a slightly unusual situation here. You have asked for your friend Jodie – our mutual friend, should I say – to be here during this first session?

       EP: Yes. Please. If that’s all right.

       CC: Certainly, whatever makes you feel comfortable. OK. So, what I’d like to do to begin with is to have a chat about the dissociation, and the range of what you’re experiencing on a daily basis.

       EP: OK.

       CC: And from there we can move on to having a think about where you’d like me to get you to. Does that sound OK?

       EP: Yeah. Yes. That’s fine.

       CC: So. A normal day then. How does that start?

       EP: OK well, it depends on whether I’ve had a fugue or not.

       CC: Tell me about that.

       EP: So, um, Siggy sometimes—

       CC: Siggy is your alter.

       EP: Yeah, sorry yeah my alter, she sometimes kind of takes over. I wake up at night sometimes but I’m not like, actually awake, it’s not me, it’s her. She talks to my mum sometimes, otherwise she’ll just try to go outside, that kind of thing. Sometimes we’ll only know Siggy was up because things will be moved, or lights will be on. Stuff like that. But I always know anyway because I feel her there.

       CC: Physically?

       EP: Not exactly. I mean, I always feel sick afterwards, sort of achy.

       CC: OK, so let’s say you’ve woken up, got up. What happens next?

       EP: Well, she’s always there. Just … like I can sort of sense her, whatever’s going on. It’s like she thinks things that I can hear—

       CC: Does she speak? Does she have a voice?

       EP: Well … no. Not really. But it’s like she’ll get scared or angry or whatever and I know it’s not me feeling those things. Does that make any sense?

       CC: Yes, it does. It sounds like what you experience is what I call co-conscious dissociation, which is when a person can feel that they have more than one identity at the same time.

       EP: Right. Yes, that’s what it’s like. But the times she gets me up and does stuff with me at night, and … I just have completely no memory of that at all.

       CC: OK. I’m getting from the way you’re speaking now that it’s quite distressing.

       EP: I just … I don’t know.

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