Silvia exhaled a long breath as she pulled out of the Wilson Building parking lot. It had been a long day, on top of four other long days and she looked forward to the weekend. Her purse sat on the passenger seat and she fumbled through it for a much-needed cigarette. Lighting up, she let the window down a couple of inches and relaxed into the drive. She lived a good hour from the office and the journey home often felt like the only real time she had to think.
The cool wind purred in through the open window and she sucked hard on her cigarette, smoking it down to the butt before she’d even begun to enjoy it. She reached automatically for another and putting it between her lips, lit it singlehandedly. The roads were largely empty, partly due to the late hour. The car drove powerfully, and comfortably too. Lately, it seemed like a friend, a confidante almost.
She pulled to a stop at a light and tapped ash out of the window. Across the wide road she could see a string of bars and restaurants, people laughing, careless, happy. It felt so far away, like a dream, almost a movie.
A vehicle pulled up in the lane beside her at the red light, music and smoke coming out of the windows. She couldn’t help glancing at the driver. He looked too tall for even his truck. One tattooed, muscular arm rested where the window disappeared into the car door. He caught her looking and winked. She gave him a tight smile and turned her attention back to the road, already blushing. God. You’re a psychiatrist, she reminded herself. A highly regarded professional. Someone else, someone young, uninhibited and beautiful would probably give that guy a good time before the night was through.
Silvia flipped down the sun visor and looked at her wide green eyes in the mirror. There were little lines at the corners. Fuck. She snapped the visor back up in disgust and tapped her manicured nails on the steering wheel, impatient for the light to change. She could feel the tattooed guy in the next car still looking at her. It would be easy, right? Turn, smile at him, drive somewhere, or maybe not drive. Maybe just pull up to the side of the road, get out of the goddamn Range Rover and climb into his dirty truck and let him fuck her whichever nasty way he liked.
She almost seriously considered it. But then, common sense prevailed. No condoms. She almost laughed. Condoms hadn’t bothered her for years, but that dated back to when she’d used the pill. A long time ago now. University. Private clients. More than one sometimes.
Silvia sucked in a long, wistful breath. Youth is wasted on the young. Not that she qualified as old. Not yet. Not even thirty-five. Inside, she still felt young, and some days thought she might still be playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes. Pretending to be something different. Saying the right things. Believing something else. How much had she really changed?
The red light faded, the green appeared. She shifted the car into gear, raised the clutch and felt that familiar, gentle purr as it came to life. Jesus. Everything felt sexual to her these days, and Ronan hadn’t helped. Could he be the worst? When he’d talk about his meaningless sexual connections, she felt almost like a voyeur. It turned her on, and she knew it turned him on to make her uncomfortable.
They turned each other on. Surely, it couldn’t be a useful form of therapy. But she could hardly tell him to stop talking. Her job as a goddamn psychiatrist made her duty bound to listen to perverts like Ronan. Perverts. Silvia smirked. Like she could talk. The sessions had stirred up tensions inside her that she’d thought were long gone. In her locked desk drawer back in her office, she’d had to dig out her emergency change of panties, so rattled she’d been by Ronan’s story of the receptionist he’d fucked en route to the locked offices of a corrupt FTSE 100 CFO.
“I mean, she was practically asking for it,” he’d said in that easy, almost dreamlike tone. “As if she knew the score. Sometimes I wonder why these girls aren’t better utilised. I mean, a receptionist. She saw through me better than any of the suits. But then, maybe it was a purely sexual understanding. Just fucking.” His eyes closed momentarily and he shook his head. “Meaningless but satisfying. You know?”
Silvia had blinked, temporarily caught off guard. Ronan smiled, like he knew the exact effect of his words. Maybe he did know. After all, his job entailed finding out the things people wanted to keep hidden. Perhaps he knew about her past, she thought and as indifferent as she tried to be about it, she couldn’t help cringing at the idea.
Ten years ago. She’d had less sex in those ten years than she’d had in a week back in the university days. Over and over. Reckless and hedonistic. Funnily enough, she didn’t regret it very much. She looked back at those days with a half-smile, almost jealous of her younger self. Some days, she’d even drive someplace, somewhere far away, to some bar or club where the rich and kinky congregated.
But things had changed. The men didn’t dazzle her in the way they had when she’d been younger. After all, now she knew them too well. She read them too easily. And yet, the hunger didn’t wane. She’d find herself home again, watching some awful porn scene and unable to stop the raw pleasure it provided. The word hypocrite came to mind. A psychiatrist. Working for the secret service. Watching porn.
Sex addiction didn’t qualify as a regular form of addiction like alcoholism or drug use. You couldn’t clear desire out of your body like a chemical. And even if you thought you had, it always managed to prove you wrong. Weeks, months, even years down the line it would re-emerge. Hey. Remember me? You thought you’d gotten rid of me. Well, you failed. I’m here to fucking stay. Repression seemed to be the only real way to stay out of trouble but who in their right mind thought that had ever worked?
The agents had been getting to her. Guys without real lives but with real urges and dependencies. Doctor-patient confidentiality. It existed. After all, their conversations were personal; were some way of figuring out the importance of what featured in their espionage-riddled minds. Most of them didn’t really need her. They could have talked to a wall. After all, they were smart enough.
But they still came. Therapy didn’t count as compulsory but the oft-mocked HR department highly recommended it. The agents who needed the most help didn’t come. And honestly, Silvia felt relieved. In a way, she feared them. They were so entrenched in their own minds, such lone, introverted souls; after all the calculating and double-crossing, she sometimes wondered whether they even knew themselves.
Don’t get attached. Easier said than done. How can anyone really be emotionless, be detached, cool and unaffected when men are telling you about the people they’ve killed? They all had blood on their hands. After all, there’s something good in everyone and when a life is prematurely taken, you take away that hope for change, for that goodness to grow and blossom into something that could kill everything that came before. Is it true? Or are some people too far gone? Silvia sighed. Questions without answers, from the doctor who should have had all the answers.
Sometimes, she wondered if the agents could see through her. After all, they were shrewd people. The most intelligent in the country, the authorities would have you believe. They noticed things. They noticed everything. And then they would almost audibly deconstruct things in their minds, figuring out what counted as innocent and what could have another meaning.
It must have been exhausting, Silvia often thought when she’d see their eyes periodically sweep the interior of her office. She’d had one man who’d go over to the window every five minutes and peer out. OCD? Or an army-routine mentality? And then she had Ronan. A goddamn enigma. He sat on the couch for a start. Everyone saw the couch as a cliché; a compulsory fake-comfortable piece of furniture in counsellors offices the world over. Most agents would take the chair opposite her or opt for an armchair.
But Ronan would drop onto the couch, smile that easy smile, and look pointedly at the coffee machine in the corner. He’d been in, earlier. Silvia didn’t make the coffee. She buzzed in Evelyn, her secretary, not shifting her attention from Ronan. He always seemed to be up to something and she didn’t quite dare to turn her back on him.
Evelyn had made the steaming coffee while Ronan and Silvia had watched each other; him blatantly and her surreptitiously. He never talked when someone else appeared in the room. And he always used up his full hour. If a disturbance occurred, he added on the lost minutes. A perfectionist? Or did he just enjoy himself? He even took time off from field work to see her. Her. Silvia Hill. The shrink. She never felt like a psychiatrist during his appointments.
Don’t psychoanalyse yourself. It’s work, for fuck’s sake.
Hot coffee. Poor Evelyn couldn’t stand the silence. She chattered away about the weather, so helplessly British and yet, so enviable in her own way. Young and carefree. She had a family. A fiancé, too. Silvia had even been invited to the wedding though she knew she wouldn’t go. Ronan didn’t acknowledge Evelyn’s presence, didn’t look at her, didn’t even thank her for the coffee, or for the shortbread she’d fetched especially from the kitchen on the floor above. Rude bastard. Silvia found herself being over-appreciative as if to make up for it.
“Thanks, Evelyn. That’s wonderful. I can never make it so fast. Thanks for all your help. Don’t you want some? At your desk? No? Okay. Thanks again. Watch the carpet; it’s frayed at the door. Thank you so much.”
Ronan had watched, silently, a ghost of a smirk hiding behind his polite smile. He’d waited for Evelyn to leave before he’d leaned forward and picked up his coffee. He’d inhaled the steam for a second and then sipped.
“Not bad.”
Silvia had tried to smile.
“So. How are you, Ronan?”
Feigned formality. Why pretend to be doctor and patient when they were the only two people in the room?
Silvia tried not to think about him. Work-life balance. Maybe she ought to call her parents. Do something normal. Jesus. She reached forward and jabbed the ‘on’ button of the radio. The xx were playing. She almost turned it off but the song caught her too fast and her hand dropped back onto the gear stick. Music. Manufactured money-making melodies. Musicians were such attention seekers, she thought, but still didn’t turn the radio off and instead found herself turning up the volume.
Ronan Carter. She knew his name, his date of birth, his correspondence address and even a residential one. He had a national insurance number, a telephone number, a passport number but everything bar his name had been changed multiple times in her file alone. Did it matter? People were people, despite all the controls and restrictions and tracking mechanisms. He hadn’t changed from the man who’d maintain eye contact even when talking about the lewdest things. She’d never met anyone like him.
***
The parking lot seemed crowded when Silvia pulled in and her appointed space had been occupied by a flashy red Jaguar. She considered blocking the offender in but instead parked on the street. For a while, she didn’t get out of the car. It felt wonderfully silent. Peaceful. A dog-walker passed by, then a jogger wearing a high-visibility vest. Silvia picked up her bag and work shoes, exited the car and headed towards her apartment building.
She lived on the fourth floor and as she approached the building, she frowned. A light seemed to be on in her apartment. She could see the yellow glow. The living space. The blinds weren’t closed. Had she left a light on? Or had a burglar with no sense of timing decided to target her?
You left the light on, she told herself as she stepped into the elevator. It’s winter. Mornings are dark. You put the light on when you were making breakfast and you forgot to turn it off. Even as she said the words to herself, she knew they didn’t make sense. Silvia Hill did not forget to turn off lights. Ever.
But she had to tell herself she had, because why else would she be walking so confidently out of the elevator? If a burglar or robber or murderer had decided to visit her, she should be calling the police. But she didn’t. She didn’t know why not. For a few seconds, she had visions of the newspaper headlines. Doctor killed in own home. Single White Female: Murdered.
“For fuck’s sake,” she said aloud and the sound of her own voice steadied her a little. She put her key in the lock and turned it. The door opened unceremoniously and she walked in. The hall appeared dark but light from the next open door beamed in. She closed the front door and walked into the living area. She stopped short. Ronan stood there. Ronan Carter. At ten o’clock. In her goddamn apartment.
“Nice shoes,” he said, eying her Nikes. “Can’t drive in heels?”
His elbow rested on the mantelpiece. For a few seconds, Silvia didn’t – couldn’t – speak. She set down her things, doing her best to maintain a poker face while her mind raced. It’s okay. You can deal with him. You’re a fucking therapist. You’re his therapist. Just – stay fucking calm. Fuck!
She tried not to notice how attractive he looked.
“Ronan, what are you doing here?”
He smiled. “I’m not entirely sure.”
“Is everything okay?”
He looked at her hard.
“Nothing’s ever okay. You know that.”
Silvia felt out of place in her own apartment. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone and his jacket lay on the arm of the sofa. An empty water glass sat on the coffee table. At least he’d used a coaster.
“Is the Jaguar yours?” she asked.
He frowned. “The what?”
“The car. In my spot.”
“No. I got a cab. Why?”
“I – I don’t know,” Silvia shook her head. “Look, what do you want? What are you here for, Ronan?”
He blew out a breath.
“Company. Someone real.”
She didn’t want to believe him. “But me? Why?”
“It’s new,” he shrugged his broad shoulders. “You’re new.”
“Not really,” Silvia frowned. After all, she’d known him for two years.
“I mean different,” he clarified. “From everything else. You’re – real, maybe. Not a mirror, not smoke, not pretending. I was okay before you came along and replaced the old doctor. He was grey. He was easy. But you make me – impatient. I think a lot about the one hour a week we get to talk. I don’t know, Silver. Maybe it was better before you came along. Just existing.”
“It’s Silvia,” she managed to say. “And you should call me Doctor Hill.”
He smiled, a genuine, contagious smile.
“Y’see? How can I not – how can I not live when you talk to me like that?”
Silvia swallowed hard, fighting for a rational argument.
“I think you’re reading too much into moments,” she finally said.
“Moments?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Yes. Sometimes we focus on something small, inconsequential, like the way a musician sings a particular word. It doesn’t mean very much to anything at all but we obsess over it. And that’s okay. But not for a long period of time.”
Even as she said the words, they seemed to apply so perfectly to his arched eyebrow. That one, tiny movement did crazy things to her. She needed him to leave.
“You’re not a word in a song,” Ronan said resolutely.
Silvia almost rolled her eyes.
She said, “So what am I? A human. You’ve met thousands.”
He watched her walk across the room. She picked up a glass water bottle from the sideboard and drank a good half of it, leaning against the wall.
“And I’ve read them all,” Ronan said. “You know, Silver, I wouldn’t be here if this was something small. We’re smart people. Maybe I’m doing myself a disservice. This isn’t good, is it? Coming to your apartment? It makes me look – weak, maybe. Needy.”
His self-assessment made her soften a little.
“I’ve never thought of you as weak,” she said mildly.
He laughed.
“Because I’m a machine. I’ve been this way since I got out of school. Civil service job. I just – at first it seemed wonderful.” He shook his head, half-smiling. “Unconventional. I felt like I was special. And then like some kind of esteemed vigilante. Like a comic book adventure.”
“What’s changed?” Silvia asked.
“My age,” he replied, though it didn’t seem like he believed it. “Or maybe I just need more from life.”
“What do you need, Ronan?”
He smiled when she said his name.
“I need – to be honest. With someone. I don’t know how much longer I want to hide behind the scenes of life. I want to be a part of it.”
“You can be,” Silvia said encouragingly. “There’s no reason why you can’t date. You know the protocol, you know how much you can say.”
“But what if I want to say more?” His eyes met hers. “What if I want to be brutally honest?”
“You’ve managed to hold it in for almost twenty years. I don’t see the problem.”
He frowned. “Yes, you do. Me and you, we’re the same.
