CAROL MARINELLI - Putting Alice Back Together

A woman, presumably Lisa, opened the door and gave me a patronising smile as she took my forms, then invited me to follow her.

On sight I didn’t like her.

I certainly couldn’t imagine myself relating to her, or her to me. She was a big woman, about sixty, with massive, pendulous breasts. Worse, she wore a really low-cut olive top, so you could see her crêpe chest and cleavage. Add to that a flowing A-line, snot-green skirt, green sandals. And she had accessorised with—in case we hadn’t noticed her colour choice for today—a huge jade necklace.

There were four seats for me to choose from. No doubt the one I chose would mean something, and I hesitated for a moment, before settling for the one in the middle.

‘Excuse all the furniture…’ She gave a pussycat smile. ‘I had a family in before you.’

Lucky them, then.

I put down my bag, checked my keys were there, zipped it up and sat back. There was a bowl of sweets on her desk, cola bottles, snakes, wine gums, all my favourites really, and I stared at them instead of her.

‘So…’ Lisa finally broke the silence. ‘What brought you here today?’

I so did not need this. Last night had been a one-off drunken mistake, I’d by now decided, and I’d learnt my lesson—I was never mixing alcohol with Valium again.

‘Okay,’ she said to the ensuing silence. ‘Why don’t you tell me about Alice?’ I could feel a really inappropriate smile start to wobble on my lips. I couldn’t believe I was sitting in a psychologist’s office being asked to discuss me in the third person. ‘Alice is English?’

‘She is,’ my twitching lips answered.

Well, we skirted around for a bit, I told her I had to leave promptly, that my flatmate was going to the UK and I had to take her to the airport.

‘Nicole’s English as well?’ Lisa checked.

‘She’s been here five years,’ I said. ‘She’d never leave.’

Lisa wrote a little note but I couldn’t make out what it was.

‘You’ll miss her?’

‘I guess,’ I admitted. Though lately we hadn’t been getting on too well. Not that I’d tell Lisa that, so instead I mentioned that Nicole’s cousin Hugh, a doctor, was arriving in a couple of days and staying till he found somewhere near the hospital to live.

‘You don’t look too pleased.’

‘I like my own company.’ I shrugged. ‘I was looking forward to a few weeks to myself.’

Actually, that had nothing to do with it.

Normally I’d be thrilled to have the good doctor to myself, but I’d found out from Nic that he was a redhead—need I say more?

I know that sounds anti-redhead, but I’m allowed to be, because I am one.

Think Ronald McDonald meets Shirley Temple.

I had the kind of hair that stopped old ladies in the street, made them pat it as they chattered away to my mother.

‘Beautiful hair. Of course, she’ll hate it later.’

I hated it already. By the time I was six it regularly reduced me to tears. Hour after hour was spent in front of my mother’s dressing-table mirror trying to brush out the curls. Night after uncomfortable night was spent sleeping with pins speared into my scalp in the hope of producing a straight fringe by morning. And as for the colour! I’d barely hit puberty before I bought my first hair dye and even now a very significant portion of my monthly pay cheque is spent on foils, serum, ceramic straighteners, regular blow-dries and, if I ever save up enough, I’m getting that Brazilian keratin treatment.

Though I digress, there is a point—my hair is now strawberry blonde and straight. For the first time in my life I’m actually pleased with my hair and I do not need a reminder of the au naturel version of myself walking around the flat.

Not that Lisa needed to hear that.

Honestly, it was the most boring, pointless hour of my life.

Yes, I suppose sometimes I did get a bit homesick.

Yes, I’d been here for nearly ten years now since my sister Bonny had got married and emigrated.

‘But you only initially came to Melbourne for a year?’

‘That’s right.’ I nodded. ‘I just loved it, though. I got a good job…’

‘Doing what?’

‘Working on the classifieds section at the newspaper. Well, it was a good job at the time.’

‘And you’re still there?’ She peered at the form I had filled in.

I felt myself pink up just a little bit. ‘I’m a team manager now and I do web updates.’ I gave a little shrug. ‘It’s not my ideal job, of course…’

‘What is your ideal job?’

‘I don’t know…’ another shrug ‘… something in music, I suppose. My exam results weren’t great. That was one of the reasons I came in the first place—to have a break and work out what I was going to do.’

We chatted some more, or rather she dragged information out of me. ‘And are the rest of your family here?’

‘Just Bonny. My mum and Eleanor, she’s the oldest, live back in the UK.’

‘And your father?’

I felt my face redden. I mean, I hadn’t meant to leave him out. ‘He’s in the UK too.’ I waited for her to scribble something down, but she didn’t. ‘They’re divorced. I speak to him and everything… it’s no big deal.’

‘When did they divorce?’

‘When I was fifteen.’

Well, it would seem that I had my Valium. She pounced on the fact my parents were divorced. Really, she worried away at it for the rest of the hour. How did I feel when they broke up, had there been rows? I couldn’t convince her that it hadn’t been that bad. I mean, you hear all these terrible tales, but the truth is, Mum let herself go after I came along, Dad met Lucy and left. We still saw him. Every Friday night we stayed over while Mum did a night shift, and then on Saturday lunchtime he took us to the pub for lunch, just as he had done when they were still married. Mum had been upset, of course—depressed, in hindsight—but it really wasn’t that much of a big deal at the time. I told Lisa that as she started jotting down a little family tree and making copious notes.

‘Look, I’m not here about that.’ And I supposed, if I wanted the prescription, I was going to have to tell her. ‘I had an anxiety attack.’ My cheeks were flaming as I cringed at the memory of Olivia’s leaving do last week. Everyone gathering around, offering me water, paramedics, being strapped to a stretcher and taken down in the lifts and out onto the street. ‘Really, I’m not even sure that it was an anxiety attack—the doctors at the hospital thought it might be an allergic reaction.’ She frowned. ‘I had a similar thing when I was seven and I ate hazelnuts.’ But still she just sat there. ‘The medicine they gave me at the hospital really helped, though.’

‘The Valium?’

‘Yes.’ I gave a little swallow. ‘I’m worried it might happen again, but if I had some Valium, just till I get the allergy tests done…’

‘You could just avoid hazelnuts!’ I swear her eyes crinkled. Honestly, I felt as if she was laughing at me, which she couldn’t be, of course.

But then she did.

She laughed.

I couldn’t believe it. She didn’t sit there and roar, but she gave a little laugh that made her shoulders go up. The type you do when you say something amusing, only this wasn’t funny.

I’d get her struck off.

If she didn’t give me my script.

‘Okay.’ She glanced at her watch and managed to contain herself enough for another little scribble on her pad. ‘If you can make an appointment again for about two weeks’ time. Now, don’t be surprised if you feel a bit unsettled over the next couple of days—we’ve touched on some sensitive areas.’

Which was news to me.