The Silent Widow

Lou Goodman followed.

Three hours later, Nikki Roberts listened intently as Lana Grey sat in her office, leaned back on the couch, and poured her heart out.

And what was pouring out of Lana’s heart was rage. Lava-hot, toxic rage, of a kind that was painful to listen to. But that was Nikki’s job. Reactionless, she let it flow.

‘He put his hands on me. His stinking, disgusting hands.’ The words flew out of Lana’s mouth like bullets. ‘Asked me to suck his dick, like I was a prostitute. Offered to pay me, with all these pathetic, twenty-something little bitches standing there laughing. Like it was the funniest thing for him to humiliate me like that. I wanted to stick my hand down their throats and pull their non-existent hearts out. Have you ever felt like that?’

Lana’s eyes flashed up at Nikki like two flares.

‘Like you could kill someone with your bare hands and enjoy it?’

‘We’re not here to talk about my feelings,’ Nikki responded evenly.

Lana laughed bitterly. ‘So you have. Thought so.’ She paused and stared out of the office window. ‘I guess everybody has at some point. Wanted somebody else to suffer. I mean, really suffer.’

Poor Trey really suffered, Nikki thought. Since Haddon broke the news, she hadn’t been able to go more than a few minutes without an image of Trey’s torn and mangled body leaping, unbidden, into her head. Lisa Flannagan had suffered too, of course. But Lisa didn’t haunt Nikki the way Trey did. Despite her feelings of guilt and sadness over her death, despite everything, Nikki still couldn’t bring herself to like Lisa. Even now, the young model’s entitlement and her casual cruelty towards other women left a sour taste in Nikki’s mouth.

She still hadn’t reported the break-in at her house – if you could call it a break-in. Somehow she suspected that Detective Johnson, for one, wouldn’t dignify it with such a title. ‘An unlocked door and a single missing photograph?’ She could hear his sardonic, mocking voice now. ‘That’s not a crime, Ms Roberts. That’s middle-aged memory loss catching up with you.’

With an effort, Nikki wrenched her attention back to Lana. ‘I’m curious,’ she observed. ‘Why would you choose to focus your anger on these young women around Wilders, and not on the director himself? It seems to me he’s by far the worst offender here. Him and the man who abused you afterwards, at his apartment.’

Lana uncrossed and recrossed her legs in an oddly provocative manner.

‘It’s not abuse if you ask for it, Dr Roberts,’ she said bluntly.

‘Isn’t it?’ asked Nikki.

Lana’s eyes narrowed. Who was this woman to judge her? This beautiful doctor who men still lusted after, and who was only now reaching the peak of her career? What the hell could someone like Dr Roberts possibly know about how it felt to be left on the shelf, discarded by the world, dumped in a box marked ‘Too old. Too ugly. Finished. Worthless.’? She didn’t know shit.

‘I don’t see how,’ she responded coolly. ‘I told him what I wanted him to do to me and he did it. That’s the joy of Tinder. No questions. No strings.’

‘So you wanted him to hurt you? To humiliate you?’ Nikki frowned. Minutes ago, Lana had sat there shaking while she described a sexual encounter of such bestial brutality even Nikki had gasped listening to it. After almost two decades as a therapist, it took a lot to shock her. But the things that Lana Grey had been subjected to – willingly, she now claimed – had done it.

‘Don’t you get it? I wanted to own the humiliation!’ Lana shrieked. ‘I wanted to take it back. To control it. Anton Wilders wants to treat me like a whore? “I’ll see you and I’ll raise you, dude!” It’s called feminism,’ she added defiantly, sitting back with an ‘I rest my case’ flourish.

Letting a guy urinate in your mouth is feminism? thought Nikki. Most of her patients twisted external reality to some degree to fit with their own neuroses, their own skewed self-perception. But Lana took the proverbial cake.

‘Have you heard from Johnny lately?’ Nikki threw out the question casually, as if it weren’t charged with a hundred pounds of Semtex. Johnny was Lana’s abusive ex-partner. He still called her from time to time or ‘dropped by’ her place; this despite the fact he was married now to a much younger, much more successful actress and the father of two small boys.

Lana looked out of the window.

‘No.’

Nikki could see at once she was lying.

‘I told you. I blocked his number,’ Lana explained, unnecessarily. ‘He’s dead to me.’

‘So when did you last see him?’ Nikki pressed.

Failed auditions always brought Lana down, but they were also a part of her life routine, a commonplace disappointment. More often than not, when she went off the rails like she had today, acting out sexually and putting herself in danger, ‘Johnny’ was involved somewhere.

‘No idea. Months ago,’ Lana lied.

‘I want you to try and think again about transference, Lana. That’s your “homework” for this week. Try to notice the way that you take emotions that are about one thing or person – like your anger with Anton Wilders; or your shame about your own behavior – and misdirect those feelings towards others. The young women in that auditorium. Me.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Lana, her voice and body both brittle with repressed pain.

Nikki gave her an Oh, I think you do look.