Stuart Harrison - Lost Summer

Of course it hadn’t been. When Louise turned around she’d met his gaze with her cool blue eyes. There was a resemblance in her face, though only slight. She’d felt him watching her, she’d claimed later. He had pursued her. Plotting his campaign. Seven months later they’d tied the knot at the register office and spent a week in the Caribbean.

He closed the door quietly and went to the living room where he poured a Scotch and lay down on the couch. He’d spent a lot of nights there lately. Sometimes he had dreams and they were peopled by the faces of lost children. They swam in and out of focus. Now and then he dreamed about one in particular. She had dark hair, almost black, that floated about her head in tendrils. Her features were slightly blurred though he knew who she was. She always appeared with her arm outstretched, a mute gesture of appeal, though in her eyes he glimpsed an accusation. Usually when he had that dream he woke up sweating with the bedclothes tangled in a knot.

Beyond the window the rooftops of Islington were lit with the pale, smoky sunlight of early spring. As Adam turned away he noticed the way Paul Morris was watching him. He suddenly felt like a butterfly pinned beneath the scrutiny of an objective collector.

‘Sorry, where were we?’ Adam asked.

Actually, he quite liked Morris. He didn’t look much like a psychologist in his jeans and open-neck shirt, or at least Adam’s conception of what a psychologist was supposed to look like. His consulting rooms on the third floor of a terraced Georgian house had a pleasantly casual feel. The walls were pale and the windows flooded the rooms with light and air.

‘Last time you were here, we talked about your work,’ Morris said. ‘Do you think what you do has had an effect on your marriage?’

‘Obviously Louise thinks so.’

‘Yes, but what do you think?’

Adam started towards his chair and then changed his mind. He preferred to roam around the room during their sessions, looking at books and the prints on the walls, the view beyond the window. At least that way he felt less as if he was being analysed. Morris couldn’t be much older than himself. A year or two maybe, which made him what, thirty-three or -four? When he’d agreed to relationship counselling he’d expected somebody older.

Adam paused by the bookcase as he considered how to answer Morris’s question. ‘Louise would like me to get a regular job with a magazine or something. She’d like me to leave for work at eight-thirty in the morning and be home by seven and have the weekends off.’

‘Has she actually said that?’

‘Not in so many words perhaps. But she doesn’t need to. Louise thinks I put my work before my marriage.’

‘And you think the way she feels is unjustified?’

‘Yes. No. Not exactly.’ Adam moved away from the bookcase and went back to the window. ‘Look, the thing is I don’t deny that I work long hours, or that I’m away a lot. What I do isn’t like being an accountant. The hours aren’t regular and they wouldn’t be even if I wasn’t freelance. The point is I was doing this before I even met Louise. She knew what she was getting into.’

‘You know, Louise said that’s what you would say.’

‘Well she was right,’ Adam said sharply.

‘I’m not taking sides here,’ Morris said. ‘I’m just trying to give each of you the other’s point of view. Sometimes it’s easier coming from an intermediary.’

‘Okay. I’m sorry. It’s just that Louise and I have been over this a hundred times before.’

‘You said that she wants you to give up what you do. Get a regular job. But that isn’t what she told me. Actually, she said she always knew how important your work is to you. She says she never had a problem with that before you were married.’

‘But now she does.’

‘Only because, and these are her words, since you were married you actually spend more time working than you did before. A lot more. In fact, Louise used the term obsession. She thinks your work has become an obsession.’

‘She doesn’t understand,’ Adam said. ‘She never has. The people I work with have almost lost hope. These are parents whose children are missing. They’re desperate but nobody will listen to them. They know something is wrong. The police tell them their kids are runaways but they know it isn’t true. They feel it inside. Here!’ He thumped his chest for emphasis. ‘Sometimes I’m the only chance they feel they have to get at the truth.’

‘And you believe that Louise doesn’t appreciate any of this?’

‘I don’t think she understands that when I’m working on a story, I can’t just drop it because I have to be home for dinner.’

Morris was reflective for a moment. ‘The other day Louise said something else that I found interesting.’

Adam stared out of the window. ‘What was that?’

‘That she felt after you were married it was almost as if you had changed deliberately. As if you spent more time working in order to shut her out.’

‘That isn’t true. Look, I’m the way I am because . . .’ Adam faltered.

‘Because of what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You were going to say something then.’

‘I was going to say what I do is a part of me. There’s nothing I can do about it.’

‘That’s interesting,’ Morris said. ‘Can you explain what you mean?’

Christ, he had walked right into that, Adam thought. He moved away from the window and eventually took the chair opposite Morris. He had a choice here. He could back off or he could try to answer Morris’s question. He’d never talked about any of it before, not to anyone. But a part of him recognized that he’d been leading up to this for some time. He knew he had to try and explain. Perhaps to himself as much as anyone, and Morris was the first person he’d ever come close to opening up to. He supposed it was because there was an element of the impersonal about a professional relationship. Or maybe it was because then Morris could try to explain it all to Louise. Something he couldn’t do himself. Or wouldn’t. The result was the same.

‘I just meant that isn’t our behaviour, the way we are, supposed to be determined by the things that happen when we’re young?’

‘Much of our personalities is shaped by our early influences, certainly. That and our genes.’

‘Nurture over nature?’

‘Broadly, though most people perceive that to mean that it’s our parents who have the greatest influence over us.’

‘You don’t agree?’ Adam asked, suddenly interested.

Morris shrugged. ‘Not directly. As children once we start school our peers become the dominant influencing factor. The attitudes and behaviour of our friends and how we relate to them shape us. More so than our parents.’

Well, he wouldn’t argue with that, Adam thought. There was a short silence.

‘You were going to say something before. Was it to do with your work? Why you chose your particular field?’

‘Yes. I suppose it was,’ Adam admitted.

Morris laced his fingers and assumed a practised expression that mixed mild interest and nonjudgemental detachment.

Adam remembered the day they had moved; the changing landscape outside the car window. The sky was overcast, a solid grey mass hanging heavy and leadenly ominous just above the level of the rooftops. Beyond the valley loomed the stark hills that marked the northern edge of the Pennines shrouded in cloud. It seemed about a million miles away from Hampstead.

His mother had smiled encouragingly from the front seat. ‘You’re going to love it here, Adam. All this beautiful countryside and fresh air.’

He’d wondered which one of them she was trying to convince. He noticed she and Kyle exchange glances.