Free Visions by Kay Brooks

thing, while we were discussing it. It was the way your dad looked at me then that panicked us all. She referred us to a therapist. I was reluctant, but your dad talked me into it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to get better, but mental illness carries a stigma, which as an adult you’ll be aware of.”
                  “Did it help?” I asked, fascinated and shaken in equal measure. Why had she never told me any of this?
                  “You wouldn’t speak to him. He tried all sorts of things! He asked us to stay, then to leave the room, then one parent to stay and one to leave, but you wouldn’t talk about it no matter what he did. My belief was that you couldn’t talk about something you didn’t understand.”
                  “What happened then?” I almost felt like I was asking about someone else.
                  “Do you remember Sammy?” I shook my head. “Sammy was your hamster. He was your first pet. One night, after we’d put you to bed, you got up and came downstairs to tell us that Sammy was going to say goodbye. At first, I was worried that he’d already died, so we took you back upstairs to check. He was running on his wheel. Your dad tried to reassure you that it must have just been a dream, but you weren’t having any of it! You kept saying that it was just his time and there was nothing we could do about it. I half wondered whether you were sleep-walking. In the morning, he was dead.”
                  “I knew you were going to say that. It fits in with everything else. Sorry for interrupting, go on.”
                  “No, it’s fine. Stop me whenever you like. Understand that you have to accept that it could have been coincidence. Your dad said that it was bound to happen any day. Sammy was old and hadn’t been quite as active as he usually was. But, like I said to him, how did a four-year-old know anything about getting old or death? Your dad and I got into an argument about it. He blamed it all on children having to go through a morbid phase as part of their development. He said children have to be fascinated with death in order to accept it, you know how he was.” She stopped and looked at me. “Ok, you maybe don’t remember, but your dad was hot on theories. He loved Freud and anything like that!”
                  “Did it stop after that?” I asked, my mind still on my dad.
                  “No. If anything, it got worse. Especially when you started at infant school. You started to daydream in class and the teacher called us in to discuss it. We took you back to the doctor’s and were referred to a different therapist who, after reading your medical notes, put it down to stress. They don’t like to medicate at that age though so he tried to talk to you about making friends. He basically tried to bring you out of your shell, but you weren’t having any of it. In fact, it got worse. This is the part that I didn’t ever want to have to tell you.”
                  “Is it about my dad?” I asked, feeling sick.
                  “Do you remember?” she asked, looking puzzled.
                  “No, but I can guess where this is going.” I waited for her to continue. She looked like she was going to cry.
                  “When your dad was late home from work, you would behave really strangely. Rather than watching telly or playing, you would watch me and follow me around the house like a lost sheep. It went on for weeks. Then one day, he was really late home and you broke down into tears. You were only five. We sat on the sofa cuddling and you told me that you’d seen your dad die in a car crash. His car was hit by a huge lorry and then he was gone straight away.” She paused and took a deep breath, tears escaping from her eyes. “Those were your words. Then you said that what you’d seen was in all of your dreams