Free All in the Mind by Campbell Alastair Page A

conversation down routes she didn’t want to go.
    Last week, Professor Sturrock had said to her that it was possible the nightmares were recurring because, even though women knew that rape existed as a phenomenon, particularly where she came from, there was no part of her basic belief system that could incorporate such a terrible thing even in theory, let alone in practice as a victim. So the rapist’s constant appearance in her dreams was a reminder not just of how awful and traumatic the attack had been, but also that she was a good, decent person with good, decent values. The basic vision she had of herself was as a devoted wife and mother. The rapist must not be allowed to take that from her. He credited her too with being a great survivor, who had come through dreadful experiences in making her way to Britain, and she had to draw on those qualities as a survivor in how she responded to what had happened to her. But he had also said that so long as she allowed her life to be dominated by bad memories, the chances of a good life slimmed down. He had said it kindly, but it felt harsh at the time.
    He had asked her to plot any changes in the rapist’s appearance and behaviour in her dreams. The bus had slowed to a halt and was waiting for traffic lights to turn from red to green. Arta closed her eyes, and tried hard to think. When he raped her in Sunday’s dream, he had a knife and he was wearing the balaclava. When he raped her on Tuesday, he was wearing the balaclava, but he had no knife. She thought it possible that he hadn’t grunted so much either. It also helped that she could see her daughter and husband who, though immobile and seemingly unable to help, had love in their eyes, almost as if they saw only her, not what was happening to her. She opened her eyes and wrote it all down, until the bus braked and she dropped her notebook.
    The taxi had arrived early for Matthew and Celia Noble. It was one of their regular drivers, Alan, who turned up, which meant they couldn’t really talk to each other much about what lay ahead. They just gave him a postcode, which he tapped into his satnav console.
    ‘It’s got the Prince Regent Hospital coming up,’ he said.
    ‘Yes,’ said Celia. ‘We’re going to a shop just round the corner.’ She slid her hand over to touch Matthew, who was staring out of the window, wondering if he would ever have sex with Angela again.
    He looked back on the two affairs as unfortunate accidents really. He had reached a point in his professional life where he was established, knew what he was doing, did it reasonably well and had more or less given up thinking he would ever be anything more than a good, solid, middle-aged, jobbing barrister who could make a tidy living without ever becoming the star QC he had once thought he might be. Their two children had left home, one to university, one to ‘travelling’, and though he missed them, a little, he didn’t get much sense that they missed him or Celia, so he felt freed from many of the emotional stresses they once put upon him.
    He had quite fancied Madeleine, the first of his two adventures, but no more than he did plenty of other women who flitted in and out of his radar. She was nothing special in the physical stakes: a few years younger than his wife, a bit slimmer, but her face was nowhere near as striking, nor her mind as sharp. She didn’t even make him laugh very much.
    There was nothing that he could remotely term magical in the sexual encounters they enjoyed. ‘Enjoyed’ was as high as he would put it. He was only a few weeks into the affair when he wanted out of it. He wondered if he hadn’t deliberately gone for someone not too attractive, so that he wouldn’t be drawn in too deeply, and would be able to end it without too much pain on either side of the ledger. The problem was that, even before he got to that stage, Celia found out, in circumstances that were cruelly unlucky.
    Celia worked three days a week as the