It had been two weeks since the prison inspection and, like the rest of the prison, Nikki was still slightly on edge. The only release from that state of mind would be when the inspector's report was finally released. Even Grayling's finely attuned ears had been unable to pick up any advance indications as to how the report would be drafted and its conclusions. On the face of it, they had nothing to fear and Karen's upbeat messages to her wing governors were devised so that they should just sit tight on the matter. It was in this vein of cautious optimism that Nikki came home from a normal day's work to find Helen home already. One look at her woebegone face rang instant alarm bells. Nikki's concerns over the outcome of the inspection report were instantly scattered to the four winds.
"Well, I guess I shouldn't need to ask you what sort of day you've had"
Helen was unable to speak and just nodded her head. She stood in the middle of the room like a stone statue. Tension and intense guilt were running all through her body like electricity.
"Tell me about it, darling."
Nikki's soothing voice and her arms wrapped around her, gently coaxed Helen's rigid muscles to take her to the comfort of the sofa. Nikki deliberately held back from talking until Helen was ready, while her slim fingers gently stroked her hair. Helen clung to her for a long time, not wanting to let go.
"All the king's horses and all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty together again."
Nikki was disturbed by the almost child like voice with which Helen finally articulated the words while her face lay on Nikki's shoulder. She waited for a careful instance before replying in careful tones.
"Who is he? I mean Humpty."
"I suppose you've guessed, Nikki." Helen gave in with a long sigh. "John came to my therapy session. I finally got him to talk about his dead mother and I think I pushed him too far…..in fact, so far out that I don't think that he'll ever come back again"
It was Helen's deliberate yet faltering attempt to control her emotions that scared Nikki. She knew Helen well enough to understand how much she had left out.
"Is that what you've been trying to get at"
"John's mother committed suicide when he was little, I think I told you that one….." replied Helen vaguely. Her professional capacity for remembering conversations had gone temporarily awry. After a pause, she carried on with growing intensity of expression in her voice. "……………He's never got over it. He's eaten up with a constant fear of being abandoned, of trusting to and loving someone who will leave him and he has the most incredible tight knit set of defences that I've ever come across. I simply had to get him to face the reality of it to get him to adopt a different way of coping. I fear that I went too far. Certainly when George came to pick him up, that's what she told me……and that I was unprofessional in ever taking him on as a patient in the first place"
Helen's voice stopped as tears edged her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. Nikki continued to comfort her till she had cried it out of her system.
"So that's the other half of what's upset you?" Nikki gently probed.
"Her precise words were 'You've so far said and done quite enough for the time being.' She gave me to understand that she knew John far better than I did and that I had blundered into the situation. That hurt."
"Because you want to do some good in this world as you have always done"
"Exactly. That's all I ever wanted to do, both now, when I was at Larkhall and even before that. It has been my guiding light"
"So the worst that you could be accused of was that you have made a mistake with the best of intentions"
That remark brought Helen up short. It was exactly what George had said in not so many words but put in a much more sympathetic light. It gave her the sense of release and was far more generous than she had been disposed to treat herself.
"How much do you identify with John, Helen? I mean in terms of both of you losing your mothers and the way you both reacted to it"
"Good question, Nikki." Helen responded immediately and firmly. "We both grew up in households where there was little display of love and affection and suffered the loss of a mother except……that my mother died naturally, if such a thing can be called natural whereas John's mother committed suicide from completely out of the blue. In my case, I had nothing to blame myself for, only that I had lost a feeling of being loved and secure. I really have problems in imagining John's situation from the inside"
"……and judging by what you've been saying, so does John. That's the difference"
The tension in Helen's body was easing and waves of tiredness were sweeping over her. She realized that she felt done in by her day at work and just wanted to lie on the sofa with Nikki close to her. That intense feeling of strangulating guilt had started to release its grip on her.
"You lie there and I'll fetch you a cup of tea," offered Nikki with the archetypal English solution, while Helen draped herself full length sideways on the sofa. The position felt very therapeutic. Even practicing psychologists needed these occasional chill out devices.
Nikki threw her briefcase into the corner of the room. Her day-to-day cares could take a back seat. She hung her coat on a coat hook, which she had totally forgotten about in the crisis, only now becoming aware that it was constricting her. She went into the kitchen and busily prepared a cup of tea for two. By the time she had returned, Helen was half asleep. Her fingers fumbled for the cup and saucer, and sipped at the comforting liquid. Much though she might have gently mocked the idea of the 'nice hot cup of tea', she had to admit it worked in some mysterious way.
"There's one thing I'm not quite clear about. Did George know that John was seeing you professionally"
"When I come to think of it, she didn't"
"You know that George and John are pretty close. It must have been hard for her to suddenly take in the fact that he was seeing a psychologist. You must admit, those kind of matters are conversation killers in polite society"
A small smile formed on Helen's lips at Nikki's touch of humour while the sense of George's perspective became more apparent.
"I expect that George was reacting out of a sense of fear for John and was just being protective of him"
Helen nodded her head. It made sense.
"So what's the answer, Nikki? Where do I go from now"
"It's hard for me to say, Helen." Nikki ventured cautiously. She had had a lifetime in dealing with other people's problems, but she knew that she was a willing amateur in comparison with Helen's professional experience. "I think that you've given him more than enough to think about, to come to terms with before he can piece his life back together again. The next time you see him will depend on how you find where his head is at."
Helen lay back on the sofa. Her normal instinct was to mull over her game plan ready for the next appointment and write it up. Tonight, she wanted nothing more than to put up her feet, take it easy and recover from today's sense of defeat.