The Psychiatrist. Closed for Patrick1

[fuckmeat]

Please Note: This SRP will feature strong themes of sexual abuse, rape, psychological abuse and non-consensual BDSM.

http://th03.deviantart.net/fs70/300W/f/2010/077/f/8/f8643043602b388b6d23bd6f4730df27.jpg
Caitlin 'Cat' Grey
Age: 22
5ft tall, green eyes, 32B breasts.
Location: London, UK​

Cat applied another layer of kohl to the lower lids of her eyes. Her look was dark and gothic, with a brash red dye job, reflecting her unhappiness and projecting a tough, streetwise mask to the world that she didn't really possess on the inside. The age spotted mirror she was using reflected a sparsely furnished bedroom, where everything looked forlorn and neglected. The whole apartment had been furnished overnight for her with donated items, charity shop purchases and second hand appliances. At first she had chided herself for her ingratitude but the apartment suited her mood. Cat's social worker had done her best to help make things look nice. She had been advised not to tell her friends where she was just yet. She had settled instead for calling them on her new mobile phone number and meeting them in a pub that was a fair distance away. Cat's stepfather was at home on bail and there was a chance that he could learn of Cat's new address if she started inviting friends over.

Even though she had run from him successfully, Caitlin's stepfather still cast a menacing shadow over her new life. She had already ditched Mark Cooper's last name, reverting back to that of her biological father, Lawrence Grey, but her mother, Louise, remained Mrs Cooper. She had believed Mark's claims that Caitlin was a deluded and vindictive fantasist. He had even accused her of making advances towards him, which he had naturally rebuffed. Cat's mother had somehow acquired the twisted notion that Cat had an obsessive crush and wanted her stepfather for herself. Mark's performance had been so compelling that the police had repeatedly urged Cat to own up if the allegations she had made about him were untrue.

Would that they were.

Louise and Lawrence Grey had split when Caitlin was twelve years old. Her mother managed a clothes shop and her father was an English teacher. Their marriage had been a mostly happy one but Lawrence was a drinker. After giving him numerous chances to quit and encouraging him any way she knew how, Louise decided she had had enough and asked him to move out. Cat's father still hadn't kicked the bottle. No longer head of an English department, he worked sporadically as a supply teacher. Cat saw him every few weeks, always meeting in a pub at his insistence, never for longer than an hour or two. Confiding in her dad about her abuse would only send him spiralling into a bout of self loathing because he hadn't been a better parent to her.

Louise met Mark Cooper when Cat was fourteen. They had dated for a few months and then Mark had moved in. They had married the following summer. Mark was an electrician and he and Louise were happy. Things had been fine until Cat was eighteen. She had been researching for an assignment on the family computer and had stumbled upon some of the stuff Mark had been viewing earlier that day. He was between contracts and at home a lot. Caitlin had expected to find porn of some description and then have the pleasure of telling on him to her mother. What she found was a series of recently viewed videoclips, all depicting the sadistic abuse of children. The girls she saw were maybe 12 or 14 years old, their breasts and hips non-existent. They were abused by much older men in their 30s and 40s, who did not show their faces. Caitlin had turned away from the monitor, only to be confronted by Mark himself, the man she had been calling 'dad' for a few years now. He lunged towards her, grabbing Cat by the throat and squeezing.

"You don't tell anyone. Nobody. Understand? I'll fucking kill you, and I'll kill your mother too. I'll strangle you both just like this till you're dead."

Cat had never seen a man like this. Mark's lips were curled in a feral snarl and there was a gleam in his eye that told Cat he would enjoy killing her. It told her he was serious. In that one moment, her stepfather's familiar, protective strength became a latent threat. And in that one moment, Cat stopped being a daughter to him. He started looking at her very differently, his cold, lascvious gaze stripping her where she stood.

"Get upstairs and put a polo-neck on." He ordered, eyeing the red marks he had caused.

That very day, Mark had announced the computer had short circuited and burnt itself out. He told Louise it was irreparable. He went into the back yard and took a hammer to all its components, insisting it would prevent against identity theft when they threw it away.

That night he had come into Cat's room and straddled her as she slept. She had awoken to find Mark's hand around her throat once more. He had asked her whether she had been excited by the videos, whether she had ever seen a hard cock before. He had made her touch his erection and stroke it, before pushing it into her mouth and ordering her to suck. He pushed it to the back of her mouth and made her cough, then pulled back and grunted as he came, his ejaculate thick and bitter.

Things had only escalated from there and Mark's proclivities had proven to be as sick and depraved as the videos he had watched. Cat had lived in total, abject terror of him. Unable to focus on her studies, she had done poorly in her A-Level exams. She took a job as a secretary at the local council office and had been there ever since. By this time Mark had utterly demoralised her and Cat hadn't the confidence or nerve to tell her mother, go to the police or leave home. Mark frequently took her card and helped himself to her earnings too, so Cat never had much in the bank to run with.

The final straw for Cat had been one night when her mother had been taken ill. Louise had gone into hospital with abdominal pain and turned out to have acute appendicitis. She was rushed into surgery and Mark and Cat were advised to get some rest and come back in the morning. Mark had driven Cat home and when she had tried to bolt he had been ready for her, twisting her arm up her back and bundling her through the front door before a neighbour spotted them. Incensed that she had let her hatred of him show in public, he had put her through the single worst night of her young life. Cat had gone with him to the hospital in the morning but fled, roaming the corridors idly and eventually locking herself in a toilet cubicle for a couple of hours, just to be sure he had left. She had taken a bus to the police station and absolutely refused to leave it until she was sure she could be placed elsewhere. She wished bitterly that she had had the sense not to shower. Despite a lack of DNA evidence, Mark Cooper was arrested and charged.

So now she was estranged from her mother, living in a tiny flat on a notorious council housing estate. Cat received benefit money from the government to live on. Her social worker, Pamela, had advised Cat to get herself signed off sick with depression for six months.

Her intercom sounded and Cat eyed it warily. It could only be her social worker but even so, whenever it sounded she panicked that Mark's menacing growl would crackle down the line. She had an injunction order against him but she didn't place much hope in it if he learned where she was. Cat lifted the receiver but stayed silent. Pamela, who would hear a loud click downstairs, new the drill.

"Caitlin?" It was a man's voice. She froze. "It's your uncle Pete. Are you there?"

Cat deliberated for a moment. Pete was her mother's brother. He had never been close to Mark and she doubted he would be stupid enough to bring him here. It was worrying though, that he knew where she was.

"I'm here. Please go to Giovanni's cafe across the street. I'll be there in a minute." She replaced the receiver, then went to the window and watched him comply from behind a grimy net curtain.

Pete would not tell her how she knew where she was but he vowed that he wouldn't tell her mother or Mark. Pete owned a few pawn shops and had influence with a number of shady characters. He sipped his mug of strong tea and regarded Cat intently.

"I'll only ever ask you this once... but Louise is my sister and I'd have thought she'd have more sense. Is it true?"

"Every word." Cat replied simply. Pete's jaw tightened and he swallowed hard.

"I'll talk to Louise. I never did like that Mark. I'm going to be making some enquiries of my own. Don't you worry yourself love, I won't cause you any trouble."

He took an envelope from the inside pocket of his leather jacket and pushed it across the table. It contained £1,000 in cash and an embossed business card for a private psychiatrist.

"I won't see you living on fresh air and hope love, alright. Don't put this in your account though, they'll stop your money and don't get silly with it, it's got to last you. You've got a little safe being delivered this afternoon, hide it somewhere and use a bit of imagination. You call me if you need anything. I want you to see this bloke. I saw him for a while when I left the army and he owes me a favour. He's a mate now and he's very good. If you go through the NHS, you'll be on a waiting list for months. He'll tell me if you don't call him. Let me do this for you, ok?"

"Ok. Thanks Pete." Cat fought the urge to cry. It meant so much to be believed by someone who was her own flesh and blood. They hugged and then Pete strode out to his car. Cat stuffed the envelope into her purse and then bolted back to her flat with it.

 

[patrick1]

Daniel Byrom

If only Pete hadn't shown him the woman's picture: the melancholy eyes, the barely contained fury at the world. Daniel would have kept on saying no.

Such a pretty young thing too. 'Bright as a fuckin' button,' his former client insisted, 'I just want to make sure the bastard hasn't fucked with her head.'

Daniel had been caught off guard, that was part of the trouble. The two men had met in a little pub off Newington Green, just as they had several times before. The loyalty and gratitude of some people, once you'd helped them recover from something, could be almost boundless. Of course many just shuffled off back into life and you never heard from them again; some relapsed, and relapsed again, whatever you did; but some, like Pete, came back from the depths and not merely returned to normal life, but resumed life remarkably enriched by the dark days of their suffering.

And so, every year or two, Daniel would get a call from the ever-buoyant Pete – who had once wept for what seemed like hours in his arms saying he couldn't go on living - and they'd have a few convivial beers. There was always a deal or a bargain of some kind involved, no questions asked. Nothing naff; Pete was a thoughtful bloke, sergeant not private in his time in Northern Ireland and the Iraq of '91, would have been officer class if he'd been born in the right social class and gone to the right school, not the school of hard knocks that had taught him cunning, thievery and to look after your own. So his former psychiatrist had benefitted to the tune of a bargain dual-fuel Toyota ('You being Green an' all') that still ran wonderfully; two iPhone deals that made Daniel the envy of his teenage nephews; and an amazingly cheap but fully provenanced Hockney print that still hung in his waiting room, the blue of a swimming pool from his LA period.

But never, till now, had Pete passed on a client to him. 'No,' Daniel said over the first glass of Stella.

'It's really not my specialism,' he said over the second glass – this one a pint.

By the third he decided he'd better not drive home. He went to the Gents, after Pete had shown him the woman's picture, to try to get back his resolve. Remember why you had to come back home from New York, he said to the oval mirror.

But that was years ago now.

You know how you still feel sometimes, in the dark of the night. You know why Charlotte left you. You know why you don't see women-clients any more.

The fact was, though, he owed Pete. Daniel knew it was happening from the first, the first little gift that seemed to ask for nothing in return. Some people were like that, and they never called it in. But Daniel had done no more than his job for Pete - a good job, a heartfelt job, but still, just a job - and in return the favours had accumulated. Not that Pete said that out loud. He didn't need to. They both felt it, on the air, today in the pub off Newington Green: this was payback time.

'I can't promise anything, mind' he slurred over the last glass, handing over his card.

Pete was embarrassingly effusive. 'You did miracles for me, mate. Fuckin' miracles. I'm so grateful.'

Maybe she wouldn't call, though. He put the conversation out of his mind. Yes he did. He didn't see her face in the night, her kohl-rimmed eyes weeping, no, nor Charlotte's, nor the Manhattan woman, her mascara running as she crawled across the deep-piled red carpet and he said -

No he didn't see their faces.

And then, a week later, one morning at his little rented Belsize Park consulting room before the receptionist was in, the moment before he played back the answerphone messages from the night before, he somehow knew it would be her. He hit Pause, took a deep breath, and sat down. Then pressed Play again. '...after the tone...'

 

[fuckmeat]

Although she was incredibly grateful to her Uncle Pete, Cat wasn't sure that she was ready to start dissecting the past with a psychiatrist. Mark hadn't been brought to justice yet and without much in the way of hard evidence, there was every possibility that the evil bastard could be acquitted. Cat put the psychiatrist's card in her purse and it sat there for a few days. Then she had her first vivid nightmare, jolting awake in the middle of the night drenched in a cold sweat, too shaken to go back to sleep. She sat up till morning with mugs of coffee and then dozed on the sofa fitfully till lunchtime. After seven consecutive nights of this, Cat admitted defeat. She rang Dr Byrom at 3am after her latest night terror, before she had time to lose her nerve again. Twice during the brief recorded message she almost cancelled the call and for a few moments after it had started recording, she hesitated, flipping on the kettle with her free hand and pacing her tiny kitchen anxiously in a vest and knickers.

"Hello... um... this is Caitlin Grey... my Uncle Pete gave me your card. I'd like to make an appointment to come and see you. I suppose Pete will have told you about me but... I'm not coping well at the moment. I'm having nightmares. I'm scared to sleep. I'm so tired and it's making my depression worse." Her voice quavered momentarily on the verge of tears but Cat regained her composure. "So, anyway, if you could see me fairly soon I'd be very grateful. I'm not working at the moment so any time you have would be fine. Thankyou."

Cat left her number and explained that she would not answer a call from a withheld number. Then she hung up with a big, world weary sigh. Despite her young age, Caitlin's voice was rich and modulated. She was intelligent and well spoken. There was a deep melancholy in every syllable she uttered and her exhaustion was also evident.

 

[patrick1]

There's that intuitive feeling you get sometimes, that something big is going to happen. Even if you're normally a rational being.

Especially if you're normally a rational being.

Thank God for the basement. It was Daniel's gift to himself when the advance came through for the little textbook he'd written about PTSD for the Ministry. 'I've always had this fantasy,' he'd explained to the builder, about why he wanted the basement of his small terraced house soundproofed. 'To be a rockstar.'

And indeed, that night, after he'd phoned back Caitlin Grey, and made an appointment with her, he squatted down there – no furniture but the sound system - and played his Stratocaster louder than loud. He felt the vibratiuons through the soft carpet. The reverb throbbed in the bare white walls. The sound pounded out through the big speakers. He played, and played, and when he sang, he sang only the one word: 'SHAME....SHAME...SHAME...SHAME...'

After a while he tired of the noise though, and anyhow his fingertips, out of practice, were hurting. So he took from his pocket the little digital recorder he'd bought when a client had become paranoid and dangerous, and had recorded their phone calls – only to play to the client when he was himself again, to show him what he was like. Today he'd used it to record Caitlin Grey's answerphone message. He plugged it into his hi-fi, and listened again to her rich, melancholy voice:

Hello... um... this is Caitlin Grey... my Uncle Pete gave me your card. I'd like to make an appointment to come and see you. I suppose Pete will have told you about me but... I'm not coping well at the moment. I'm having nightmares. I'm scared to sleep. I'm so tired and it's making my depression worse. So, anyway, if you could see me fairly soon I'd be very grateful. I'm not working at the moment so any time you have would be fine. Thankyou. My number's...

It was on the third playback, at the word nightmares, that he even noticed how excited he was. Sexually excited.

I must not see this woman. I must not sit in this basement and think about this woman who will trust me to be professional.

Too late? Well, the appointment was made. He flicked the recorder to Track 2, to the conversation he'd recorded this afternoon, after Gunnar the receptionist had gone home:

'Daniel Byrom.'

I know...I was waiting. When can I...?

Pause.

'Are you still there?'

Yes. Sorry. When can I see you?

'The day after tomorrow is Saturday. My receptionist doesn't come in. I thought you'd prefer if -'

What time?

'To suit you. Ten o'clock all...?'

I'll be there.

The brrrr of the phone. He rewound and re-played. Rewound and re-played.

He picked up his guitar and began to hammer out chords and yelled a wordless song. Words began to form though. SOMETHING BIG...IS GOING TO HAPPEN...

Down here, whatever sound you made, from music to the most piercing scream, no-one would hear you.

Daniel closed his eyes, imagining. Imagining.

 

[fuckmeat]

After years of living on a knife-edge with her volatile and abusive stepfather. After the courage and upheaval it took to report him for his crimes. After the lengths she had gone to to ensure her new home was a secure haven that Mark Cooper would not find. After all that, you would have thought that Cat would have suspected something. But she didn't, she was emotionally exhausted and she wanted someone she could trust and confide in. She didn't ask herself why he wanted to see her on a Saturday, when his receptionist was not in. Now she wasn't working, days were blending together and the fact that her appointment was at the weekend didn't strike her as odd or significant.

The night before her appointment with Byrom Cat tried to prepare herself. She invested in some Nytol and a quarter bottle of vodka. She went to bed early, half drunk and hoping that she wouldn't dream.

She hoped vainly.

Caitlin was kneeling on her bed in her new apartment. She looked down and saw that she was wearing a tiny red and black tartan skirt that Mark had bought her, knee high black socks and a fitted white shirt with no bra. Her hair was dark brown once more and in bunches.

Mark strode into her bedroom wearing nothing but a pair of jeans, his leather belt clenched in one fist. He was 6ft tall to her 5ft, a broad shouldered man in his early 40s with brown hair and eyes.

"I told you." He snarled. "I told you what would happen."

Mark lunged at her. He ripped her shirt open and shoved the skirt up, under which was nothing but her bare pussy. He slapped her legs with the belt until they parted for him, then leaned on her throat while he freed himself and pushed into her. His breath was hot and hard as he leaned down to her ear, slamming into her violently and squeezing the life out of her poor throat.

"I will be the last thing you ever fucking see, bitch. I told you what would happen if you grassed on me. You mother is already dead. I killed her exactly like this, while I told her I'd been fucking you for years."

Cat's vision began to cloud and her chest felt like it would burst. She bucked and convulsed pointlessly, adding to Mark's sick pleasure. He flexed his fist and she felt her windpipe collapse.

"Goodbye Caitlin, I'll see your filthy little arse in hell."

She lurched awake, yelling and flailing, arching up towards the ceiling until she realised that she was awake and alone. Cat fell back against her pillows, a cold sweat slick against her pale skin, her breathing laboured and her face flushed.

After calming down somewhat, Cat went and searched her tiny flat, then double-checked the locks on her door. She fetched a fresh glass of water and tried to get back to sleep.

By the time she reached Dr Byrom's office, she was exhausted. Thick kohl didn't completely disguise the puffy shadows under her eyes. Cat was losing weight and her denim skirt hung from her thin frame. She wore a knitted black jumper that hugged her upper body nicely, black tights and heavy leather gothic style boots with a stacked sole that made her a little taller. She hugged a battered black leather jacket against her to keep out the chilly wind and pressed the intercom to be let up to her new psychiatrist's office. Soon she was outside his door and Cat knocked on it without hesitating, not wanting to give herself time to lose her nerve.

 

[patrick1]

Daniel showered twice that morning. Symbolism comes easy to a psychiatrist. I cannot wash away the filth from me. And so forth.

But actually, he'd woken early from dreams he couldn't remember but which had seemed somehow restorative. And after the first shower he felt the opposite of guilt-plagued. He hardly ever checked his reflection but this morning, on the landing, in the full-length mirror where Charlotte used to check how she looked before work or working her wiles, naked, he looked at himself. And felt – OK. Not displeased. Quite good. Middle-aged, yes, carrying a few more pounds than in his twenties. Grey streaking the dark brown of his just-over-the-ears hair. But the twice a week at the gym and the morning run most days showed in his tall strong physique: he mocked himself, checking his muscles like Popeye, and smiled.

His face liked to smile, it was shaped for it. Which helped in love (the falling part anyway) and in his vocation, people liked him to smile, his green eyes sparkled – there, like that – and he looked like he meant it.

And yet, this morning, what he meant to himself was: I've been so good so long, almost my whole fucking life except for maybe that once, maybe those two times – so long ago – and now I feel ready. Ready to break some fucking rules. So if this one isn't the one, hey, so be it, if she doesn't want what I have to offer, then I'll help her as best I can and then go looking.

Yes I will.

And he washed himself again, to stop himself wanting to cum only it made the desire worse but he didn't let himself because he wanted to be in a state of anticipation, this morning, ready in an hour and some for her knock at the door of the Belsize Park house, ready to greet her with a smile and seem half-distracted by some other matter he'd just been attending to, hair a little tousled, informal in pale green trousers and blue cardigan and open-necked blue shirt, ready to say...

+

'Caitlin?'

She mumbled something which might be an alternative name or just a greeting, so he said, 'Call me Daniel. This way.'

She hesitated at the threshold. What a slight little thing she was, a foot smaller than him, all leather and denim, thin and dark-eyed and vulnerable, why, he could scoop her up in his arms and -

She went in. 'An old dear lives upstairs, there's a colleague across the hall, this is me,' said his neutral I-could-have-been-born-anywhere voice. The place had a graceful anonymity that people had remarked on before. It reassured them for some reason.

There was a scent to her as he followed: not too sweet. He could reach out and stroke her dark brown hair if he wanted. 'Have a seat at the desk for a minute, I'll take down some details.'

He never normally sat here, at the desk in the vestibule, where Gunnar usually presided. There was a form to fill out, he glanced at her – how anxious she was, her answers monosyllabic: how dangerous he was feeling, his heart thudding - and he smiled as he wrote down the details. 'And is that what people call you, Caitlin?'

'Cat. People call me Cat.'

It was her first effort at a smile. 'Mind if I do?' he asked.

'Go ahead.'

'Well, that's all the paperwork, Cat. We'll talk through here.'

The consulting room was warm. The pictures were deliberately bland, abstracts of colour. The bookcases contained only scholarly works, and reports, and the textbooks of a psychiatrist's working life. The carpet was deep blue. The blinds were drawn from the street. She sat perched on the edge of the couch, and Daniel sat in the rocking chair opposite. On the glass table between them was a small blue vase containing a single red rose. He'd bought one at Camden Market on his way this morning, the table was usually bare.

Time for his opening monologue. He felt himself, even more than usual with a client, at the outset of a drama. Generally he knew his role: to be the detective-hero, the calm amid the storm, the gentle comforter.

Perhaps, despite the thudding in his chest, perhaps he could still be that to Caitlin. Cat.

'Cat. In a moment I just want you to talk, and if I may, I'll record you. I like to record my clients, so I can mull over later what they've said. For a long time I won't interrupt, or ask you anything. Even if you're silent for a while, I'll give you half an hour to do whatever you want: move around, lie back, look through my books, whatever you want.

What I'd like you to tell me is, what is the problem that has brought you to me, and how you would like to feel different.

Please, nothing is forbidden within these walls. Weep, shout, swear, keep mum, but do your best to tell me. Tell me why you're here. And how you would like to feel different.'

And Daniel leant not forwards but back, in his rocking chair, reaching to the recorder to his right, on the other low glass table. Then he pursed his thin lips in a slight smile, and looked, looked at her face, only her face, waiting, waiting for her to begin.

 

[fuckmeat]

Cat took a deep breath, wondering what her uncle had already told him. She deliberately looked away from Byrom in order to gather her thoughts. His posture was relaxed but his gaze too avid and she disliked the scrutiny. By way of displacement, Cat rose and paced the room slowly. She picked up the rose and toyed with it as she walked, the thorns on the stem occasionally pricking her fingers and focusing her mind.

Cat's recollection of things was somewhat chronological, though she flitted about a little. She talked about Mark and how things had been before the incident at the computer. She talked a little about her biological father but it was clear he wasn't a major part of her life and hadn't been for years. Cat recounted the moment when Mark had turned on her and she briefly described what he had done to her that night, her expression twisting with loathing and revulsion as she recalled being forced to suck him and then swallow his cum.

"The next time after that was at the weekend." She remembered. "I was supposed to tidy my room and do some revision for my exams but I just wanted to be out of the house. I threw my stuff into the wardrobe so the room looked tidy enough and then went out anyway. Mark was straight on the phone to me, telling me that mum wanted me to get my ass home. I went back but she wasn't there... she was out shopping."

Cat faltered, steeling herself for recounting another sordid encounter with her stepfather. She swallowed hard, her hands gripping the rose stem tightly, unaware that the thorns were now making her bleed. Her eyes were suddenly moist but she did not cry.

"Mark said I was a delinquent brat and that I was going to fail all my exams. He said I needed teaching a lesson, so I would respect him more. He pushed me onto the floor and... he took his belt off. He stood over me and hit me with it, telling me to bare my ass so he could do it properly. I gave in and took my jeans off but he ripped my knickers off too. He made me get onto my hands and knees and he belted my ass. He started asking me if I had ever been fucked. I tried to get away but he was hitting me too hard. He put me on my back and choked me to keep me quiet, then he... raped me anally. He did that while I was still a virgin."

Her face was white now, Cat looked positively queasy. "It hurt so much. I'll never forget the pain.

She let out a deep breath now that the story was finished and only then did she notice her hands. Byrom tried to fuss over her but Cat disliked being touched at the best of times and so she evaded him, grabbing some tissue from a box on his desk.

Cat went on to tell him about her failed A Levels and how Mark had helped himself to her wages. She told him about trying to get Mark caught by her mother because she didn't dare tell her mum what was happening. She told him about finally reporting Mark and getting away from the house.

"I know there's still a court case pending and I don't have closure yet, but I feel like who I am and everything I do is tainted by what happened to me. I don't feel like I'll ever have a relationship or kids. I don't feel able to cope with going back to education but I have no prospects without it. I just feel... numb... most of the time and I worry that that's a bad thing. I'm terrified Mark will find out where I live now. And like I said on the phone, I can't sleep, I have really awful nightmares, I have no appetite, no motivation at all really. Even if he goes to jail, what will my life become? What will I do with myself? Not even my own mother believes me so how will a jury?"

A few tears fell then but Cat quickly dashed then away. She plopped down into one of the chairs and continued to dab at her hands with tissue.

"I don't know how I would like to feel different. I don't know if it's even possible for me to."

[Btw, it's only a little thing and I hope you don't think I'm nitpicking. It's my fault for not being clearer anyway. Caitlin had naturally dark hair when she lived at home. She dyed it bright red after she left. In flashbacks therefore, and nightmares, she has dark hair. Also, in case I fail to convey it she prefers Cat to Caitlin because Mark never used the abbreviation.]

 

[patrick1]

Different. I will help you feel different. Yes I will.’

He clasps his hands together. It won’t matter if she says no. So you might as well...

‘Here. I have a different place. Where you can begin to imagine. Listen. Here are some ways you can be different. First: the rose. Please give me the rose.’

There’s a moment. A long moment.

Then her bleeding hand proffers him the flower.

'There are many ways in which you can become different. You are young, and have talents and intelligence. You do not need to be ruled by the actions of another. Or I might try to direct you differently.'

‘ I have a place – a different place – where you can begin to imagine a different you. We could go there now, if you like. Or you can come and see me another time, soon, and we can talk about it.’

‘In that other place...’

He pauses. The flower. He too has started to play with it. He mustn’t, he mustn’t. He sets it aside.

'There are techniques I use. Involving role play. To explore how to be different. Would you like to travel there now? Or make another appointment?''

 

[fuckmeat]

Cat regarded this man with whom she had been acquainted for less than an hour. He seemed genuine enough but so far, all he had done was listen. Having talked at length with the police, their victim support people, social services and many others, talking about her abuse was no longer cathartic. Now her tale of woe followed her around like a bad smell and every time she had dared to hope that she would never have to relive what had happened to her, somebody new and equally authoritative would walk into her life and demand all the details.

So how would roleplay differ from that? Would it purge the warring emotions within her or just make them even harder to shake off? There was really only one way to find out and Cat felt that at this stage she had little to lose by wasting time on a treatment method that proved ineffective. What she couldn't face was agonising for another week or more and then coming here again to repeat herself and be nodded at sagely.

She let out a long breath, meeting Byrom's gaze unflinchingly for the first time.

"Alright then."

 

[patrick1]

We are all animals.

The phrase kept running through Daniel's head.

But perhaps it was something to do with the rhythm of the cab, for when it stopped he didn't seem to hear it any more.

She'd been non-committal on the short journey across north London, and he'd murmured inconsequentially, entirely honestly, about student days in Crouch End, and Dire Straits in Finsbury Park (the only time she'd glanced across at him), and football at the Arsenal.

'Here we are.' He gave her time to look at the unprepossessing terrace before unlocking the door and inviting her in.

And he began slowly, insisting on mint tea even though she said she didn't want anything, settling her down at his dining table so she could get the feel of his middle-class place and his place in the world (though the pine table, little Monets on the wall and the crockery were all Charlotte's choice actually).

From the hall cupboard he finally brought the one-piece green body-suits. 'Let me explain.' We are all animals. The phrase had come back to a rhythm in the pulse in his neck. 'The play room is downstairs. It's soundproof so you can yell as loud as you like – from when I had delusions of being a rock star.'

'Mark Knopfler,' said Cat drily.

'Right.' How small and fragile she is. 'We each change into a body-suit and nothing else – the idea is to cast off your workaday roles and begin anew. Plus we sometimes do paint-balling.' No smile from her. 'I mean it. Anyway, once we're changed we go in, do a couple of preliminary trust-building exercises to get into the mood, and then I lead you through two or three role-plays where we explore your feelings about yourself – the world – Mark – with the emphasis on difference. How to become different. There's a bathroom for you to change in along the hall, I'll go upstairs and we meet back here: sip a little more tea and I double-check with you you're ok about the whole thing before we start. OK? OK?'

She didn't say anything, but she rummaged in the box, found a Small suit, and without a word went down the hall to the bathroom.

We are all animals.

He went upstairs and changed quickly, listening for sounds from her, hearing nothing. Would she go ahead with it?

His heart was, surprisingly, not pumping. If it happens, it happens.

Such a small, fragile thing.

 

[fuckmeat]

Cat took the suit from him, more than slightly bewildered. She didn't understand why she needed to wear the stupid thing in order to roleplay about Mark. Now that she was here, she wasn't sure if she could handle roleplaying about her abuser and she had no clue what Byrom was going to do with her in his basement.

But she was here now and there seemed to be no going back. Cat couldn't face going back. She was determined to go forwards.

She changed into her suit in the bathroom he indicated to her. Byrom has stipulated that they shouldn't wear anything else and the suit was quite confining. So against her better judgement, Cat added her underclothes to the pile of her things on his bathroom floor. She regarded herself in a mirror, noticing dejectedly how pronounced her weightloss was now. Her hips and breasts were narrow and childlike where not too long ago they had been fuller. She looked more like the frightened teen Mark had first preyed on than she cared to admit. Cat twisted her hair up into a band and then returned to Byrom's lounge, perching on the edge of a chair and feeling perfectly ridiculous.