The Tens, Vanessa Jones [i like reading books .TXT] 📗

dropped her home she pressed the therapist’s card into her hand urgently and simply told her, ‘it’s time.’ Sophie was awash with awkward vulnerability telling Bree about the balcony incident but knew in her heart that Bree was right.

The lemony clean voice of the therapist made her feel terrified and safe at the same time and she wanted to give herself all over to her, tell her everything, spread out her hands and vomit in to them. Carla made you feel like if you could just place it all in her hands, if only for a moment, she would wash your soul sterile by taking your cares and throwing them off a cliff.

Sophie contemplated holding back on her answer. But knew that she’d only be cheating herself. 'Once. When I was five.'

'Oh?'

Sophie’s eyes travelled around the room and then land on Carla. Sophie reasoned that she might as well jump in. 'Well, I don't want us to get derailed by this information because it's not really why I'm here. But when I was five, both my parents were killed in a car accident. I had a few sessions with a child psychologist, of which I cannot remember much about. I remember he had a bright orange fluffy puppet with angry eyebrows that sat lifeless in the corner, though. But that's it. Ruth, my guardian, said I had threatened to run away if she made me go to any more sessions. And since I was a fairly compliant child, she didn't see the need for me to keep going.'

'It sounds like you were great at setting your boundaries from an early age. That is something to be proud of.'

Sophie had never considered that. Instead, admonishing herself for being petulant her whole life.

'Anyway, I hear that you're not here to talk about the death of your parents, which we can always revisit by the way. Now, are you affiliated with any particular belief systems or religion? These are quite fundamental questions when you start therapy. It's just so I can get to know you.'

'No, never been interested or even that exposed to religion, to be honest.' A flicker of what could have been disapproval went through Carla. Sophie knew it was her imagination kicking up again though. She'd been honing in and seeking out any kind of rejection that she could find from Carla, however subconscious. At the first flicker of rejection, Sophie knew she'd have an out and wouldn’t have to return to confront the ugly and terrifying parts of herself.

‘So why are you here, Sophie?’

Sophie presses her lips together to stop from crying. ‘My husband. He’s left. And I… am… distressed.’

Something flashes across Carla’s face that is indistinguishable to Sophie. ‘Were you happy in the marriage?’

‘Yes!’ Sophie declared, defensively.

‘Do you remember first meeting him?’

‘Of course. I took notice of him the very first second I saw him. It was back when I lived at Ruth’s…’

Sophie thought back to when she met Alex. After her parents died, her mother's cousin, Ruth, took her in. Which was more of a formality than an actuality as Ruth had a tendency to live in a world where fairies existed far more than responsibilities did.

Ruth had bright orange hair, dyed from a box which she had stocked up on; three full shelves of it in the cupboard. She demanded Sophie brush on the garish dye so she could continue smoking and watching her awful melodramas on TV. Within a month, an inch of white hair would protrude from her scalp and she'd croak at Sophie that it was time to do her hair again, even if it was late on a school night. Which she didn't mind because she wasn't that interested in school anyway. The other kids called her Ghost Girl, which was predominantly for the way she looked with her translucent hair and skin. But Sophie always felt it because she felt exactly like a ghost: invisible and floating around unnoticed. To others, the innocence that her face portrayed was alarming and almost off-putting. As if it brought into question your own lesser existence. If you could bear long enough to stare at her without questioning yourself, you would probably notice a mild superhuman quality. Sophie’s movements always seemed gently calculated. The fairylike whisper of the way she brushed her palms together, reaching an angelic arm behind her neck to gather a handful of hair to sweep to the opposite shoulder, the constant need for her feet to be near one another and the long lines of her legs that followed. Ladylike, gentile, graceful... words that applied but were also rejected with disdain for they meant something that she felt she was not.

Ruth was partial to expensive pastel coloured kaftans that featured peacocks and sequins and her knobbly fingers were decorated in thick gold rings, even though she barely left the house. She spoke of no lover and no friends so it shocked Sophie to hear that she had absconded with a rich man to Greece, not long after Sophie moved out at age twenty.

‘I’ve called someone. They’re on their way,’ Ruth said as Sophie swiped more copper hair dye on her head.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Someone to install cameras. I’m sick to death of being watched.’

‘Who is watching you?’

‘Out there!’ Ruth pointed to the backyard with her cigarette balancing between her fingers, which were thinner than the cigarette’s body. ‘In the bushes and whatnot. Someone has got their eye on me and I’m sick of it. Sneaking around through the bushes, spying on me. I'm in no mood to have a peeping tom.’

‘I haven’t seen anyone out there.’

‘No, well that’s because you haven’t been paying attention.’

‘Do you think maybe you’re thinking of one of your shows you’ve been watching? Didn’t that happen to one of the characters the other day?’

‘If I say there’s some creeper out there, then there is.’

There was a knock at the door.

‘Anyway, now I can prove it because those guys are here to install