Part Thirty-Six
John spent most of Tuesday thinking about Karen when he wasn't in court, causing Coope to ask him more than once whether he was all right. He gave her any amount of evasive answers, but always his thoughts returned to the night before, when he'd uncovered those terrible scars, that showed just how much emotional pain she was really in. He couldn't believe she'd done that to herself, actually taken some razor-sharp edge to her beautiful skin, and carved patterns into her flesh like some macabre type of art. But when the time eventually came for him to drive to the clinic for his next appointment with Helen, John almost thought that this time, it might actually do him good. He needed to talk about Karen, because he needed a sounding board to try to organise his own feelings on what she had done.
"You look very on edge this week," Helen said as she closed the door of the consulting room behind them. "I am," He replied dismally, sinking gratefully into a chair. "Is this because of what we talked about last time, or something else?" "I need to talk about something that almost certainly isn't on your agenda," He told her, wondering how she would feel to digressing this once. "I don't really have a strict agenda as such, Judge," She told him, sitting down in a chair opposite. "I just go with the responses you give me, or more likely the lack of them. What's happened?" "I suspect this is going to be as much of a shock to you as it was to me, in fact I probably oughtn't to be telling you at all. I went to see Karen last night, because I hadn't seen her for a while, and I naturally wanted to see how she was doing." "You hadn't seen her since you slept with her at the conference, had you?" Helen astonished him by saying. "How do you know I did?" John asked with a slight laugh. "I'm not stupid, Judge," Helen told him firmly. "I've got eyes, and so has Nikki." "All right, no, I hadn't seen her since the conference. I think we managed to clear the air about that, which was definitely something we needed to do. Helen, I, erm, I discovered that she's started harming herself." "Oh, no!" Helen exclaimed, sounding genuinely distressed. "How long has she been doing it?" "Since Henry's funeral. At least that's what she told me. I think she's been cutting her arm on a regular basis ever since." "What was your initial thought, when you saw what she'd done?" Helen asked him, realising that he might be tempted to use this to draw her attention away from him and onto someone else. "Horror, disbelief, anger, you name it," John told her ruefully. "I didn't want to believe what I was seeing. Karen is a very attractive woman, and it hurts me terribly that she could do something so horrific to herself." "Judge, can I make a tentative suggestion?" "This must be bad if you're asking my permission," John replied dryly. "You decided to start coming to see me, exactly one week after we came back from that conference. You have also so far avoided telling me precisely why you made that decision. Am I so far off the mark, as to be wrong, if I suggest that whatever happened between you and Karen, was what prompted you to seek therapy again?" John regarded her thoughtfully. He ought to have known that she would work this out eventually, but that didn't mean he wanted to reveal all to her by any means.
"You are half right," He admitted eventually. "Though not entirely. Sleeping with Karen, brought quite another problem into being, and it was that which prompted me to come and see you." "Stop talking in riddles, Judge," Helen admonished him gently. "Start by telling me what was so catastrophic about sleeping with Karen." John looked extremely uncomfortable. If there was one thing he really didn't want to do, that was to tell Helen either what had happened with Karen, or what that had caused to happen with him. "It won't be anything I haven't heard before, you know," Helen told him with a slight smile, seeing that this was something he wasn't remotely eager to discuss. "This isn't something I want to tell you," John said evasively, wanting to buy himself as much time as possible. "I can see that," Helen replied encouragingly. "Tell me why you don't want to talk about it." "I am, somewhat ashamed of it," He said regretfully, refusing to meet her eyes. "That's often part of what therapy is all about," She told him matter-of-factly. "Coming to terms with things that you wish you hadn't done. So, try thinking of yourself as being at confession for once." Helen didn't know where this simile had come from, but she knew it to be the correct one in this man's case. "That last night at the conference, I pursued Karen out onto the balcony, because I could see she was clearly looking for some company. I don't think I'd ever forgotten what it had been like to sleep with Karen that first time, almost two years before." "Yeah, she did tell me about that at the time," Helen put in. "Women really do talk about everything under the sun, don't they," John replied resignedly. "Pretty much, yeah," Helen agreed with a smile. "She, erm, she wanted me to be rough with her," John said quietly, his skin crawling with the fact that he'd actually agreed to it and gone through with it. "She said that she didn't want to have any time to think, because if she did, she knew she wouldn't enjoy it. I, very stupidly, thought I knew precisely what that entailed, but I didn't. I had absolutely no idea just how much I would come to loathe myself for doing it. I've never felt anything quite so incredible, but when I saw what I'd done to her, it terrified me." John had got into his stride by this time, and he seemed wholly unable to stop, as though this confession had been burning to escape from him for quite some time. "She was covered in bruises, bruises that I swear I hadn't meant to give her. Never, in the last forty years of sleeping with women have I ever been remotely violent towards anyone. I felt..." He stopped, not entirely sure how to explain it. "I felt very similar to Fenner." Helen's eyes widened at this, and she stared at him in utter disbelief. "Don't forget, I know only too well what Fenner was like," Helen told him firmly. "So I doubt very much that you would ever do what he did to anyone. I can't say that with absolute certainty, because I don't know you in that way." "Karen told me that I shouldn't feel like that," He said a little sheepishly. "But I couldn't help it." "And she knows more about Fenner's behaviour than the rest of us," Helen said sympathetically. "So if she doesn't think you raped her, you can rest assured that you didn't. That's what terrified you, wasn't it, Judge." Her use of the title Judge, combined with the possibility of such a crime, hit him in quick succession. When he seemed unable to answer, she said, "What made you feel that that's what you'd done to her?" "I... I couldn't have stopped, even if she'd begged me to stop. It was as though my body had completely taken over." "So, it was the loss of that iron hard control you're so fond of that frightened you." "Yes, something like that," He replied. "I couldn't understand why I'd both loathed and enjoyed it. Karen tried to convince me that it wasn't wrong to have enjoyed it, but part of me still couldn't accept what I'd allowed my body to do."
"Control means an awful lot to you, doesn't it, Judge." "Control of my feelings, certainly," He agreed with her. "It's a necessary part of my job, to keep any feelings I might have with regards to a case, well and truly under wraps. Emotions do not belong in a court room, at least not on the part of the judge." "Why do you think that is?" "Because if the judge had any feelings either way on a case, he or she would be bound to act accordingly when it came to sentencing," John told her, as if that should have been obvious. "Don't give me some law textbook reason for it," Helen said with a smile. "Tell me what it means to you." "If I allowed myself to become emotionally involved with a case," John said slowly, as though he hadn't previously considered this so thoroughly. "I would probably ask even more questions than I already do, driving every barrister in the vicinity to absolute distraction, which I'm told I often accomplish without even trying. But I know that if I began to care too much about the victims, or the defendants, I wouldn't be able to leave the case behind, when it was time to move onto something else. Some time last year, there was a case involving a prostitute who had witnessed someone being murdered. Jo virtually begged me to allow the witness to give evidence via a video link to preserve her anonymity, but I refused, saying that I wasn't willing to go back on my principle of holding a thoroughly open and honest trial. The night after this witness gave evidence against the three men in the dock, she was killed. I felt almost unbearably guilty. She had died, purely and simply because I had made the wrong decision. Jo was so angry with me, because she'd done everything possible to urge me to allow this witness to remain anonymous. If I had done, if I had listened to Jo and just for once abandoned one of my principles, she wouldn't have been killed." "How did you eventually get past that?" Helen asked gently, seeing that this had greatly affected John when it had happened. "Threw myself into another case, tried desperately to convince myself that even though she was dead, justice still prevailed. But I questioned every decision I made after that for quite some time."
Heartily wishing for a cigarette, Helen finally brought out a theory that had been nagging at her for a while. "What you said, about not getting too emotionally involved with a case, because you won't be able to leave it behind you, that's also how you think about women, isn't it." "Erm, yes, I suppose so," John admitted grudgingly, never having had his attitude to women spelt out quite so starkly. "I can't afford to become attached to any random fling I might pick up, because if I did, I'd never be able to move on and forget them. Jo and George are the only two women I am prepared to be in effect emotionally bound to, yet I can't help occasionally finding the chase and the seduction of a perfect stranger, far too tempting." "What is it about picking up a stranger that makes you unable to stop doing it?" Helen asked. "Women deserve nothing less than to be expertly and sensitively handled," John said almost reverently. "Any woman who catches my attention, is to some extent, asking for the best of anything I can give her. That makes me feel incredibly privileged, that I have the opportunity to make a woman writhe in total ecstasy if at all possible." "You mean it gives your ego an enormous boost to give a woman pleasure," Helen said for him. "Yes," He said with a smile. "It's interesting," Helen said slowly. "Because the way you speak about women, is the way I would also expect you to speak about the attention you give to a case. Both cases and women deserve to be expertly and sensitively handled, and they both deserve the absolute maximum of your attention. Do you have any idea why you think like that about two very different things?" "None whatsoever," John said blandly, not altogether sure whether or not he liked this comparison. "Do something for me," Helen said on a whim. "Think about that for next time." Agreeing that he would, John eventually left, feeling slightly less unhinged than he had on the previous two occasions, though knowing this was because she hadn't actually stumbled on precisely why he had sought therapy from her in the first place. He dreaded the day when she would drag that out of him, because he wasn't stupid enough to think she wouldn't. He couldn't help thinking that Helen Wade was really far too astute for her own good.