“Alice—” I keep my tone light, but the look I give her is firm.
She ignores me, practically curling her toes with pleasure at my discomfort. “I’m just saying.” A beat. “Would you say Sam’s hair is red, or justauburn?”
“Very funny. I’m engaged, remember?”
She’s laughing, giggling almost.
“You must love your fiancé a lot to want to marry him.”
“Of course.”
“I bet you’ve got a beautiful house. Is he handsome? Oh, of course he is. You’re so pretty.”
“Your dad seems to think I could do with being prettier.”
She licks her finger and turns the page of her magazine.
“You mustn’t mind him. He always gets like this when he’s on the killing floor.”
Something about the way she says those words—“the killing floor”—so light and airy and distracted, it chills me to the bone.
“The what?”
“It’s the part of the factory he works in. He says you need a strong stomach and a steady hand to put a bolt gun to a cow’s head and pull the trigger. You can only work there a little bit at a time. Three days on, four days off. It does something to the brain otherwise. Something bad.”
I study Alice carefully. She’s still flicking through the magazine, touching the pad of her finger to her tongue. Her tone is so strange, almost as if she is on the cusp of laughter.
“The killing floor is where all the messy stuff happens. Blood and guts and stuff. He tells us stories sometimes. They’re horrible, but he thinks they’re funny. One day, one of the other workers put a cow’s tongue in his lunch box and Dad laughed so hard he nearly passed out showing us. Mum says that the job has made him mean. That’s why you shouldn’t mind what he says to you. His jokes and that. He doesn’t know he’s doing it.”
She searches my face with a perceptiveness that is almost uncanny, eyes glittering. I set Sam’s Dictaphone on the mantelpiece, red light glowing, reels inside turning with a slow clicking sound.
“I’m going to be making some notes while we talk, Alice. It’s just to help me remember our conversation.”
“Sam said you were a psychologist.”
“That’s right. Do you know what that means?”
“I’m not stupid, Mina.” She sniffs. “It means you think I’m crazy.”
She’s drawing into herself, pulling her knees toward her. Alice’s voice has taken on a flat, weary affect as she pushes her magazine to one side and I realize she is already tired of having this conversation, of the focus being on her. I don’t blame her. I give her a smile and close my notebook.
“You know, Alice, I happen to think you’re very much sane.”
“So what’s happening to me, then?”
“Well sometimes the answers aren’t always straightforward. It’s why I’m here. To look at your homelife, your health, your friendships—all the things that shape you.”
I smile encouragingly. Her knees are still drawn up to her chin but she’s watching me from under her lashes and I take that as a good sign. She’s interested.
“How have you been sleeping, Alice?”
“Not great. I have bad dreams.”
“Can you tell me about them?”
She shrugs. “It sounds dumb.”
“Thing is, Alice, dreams can sometimes be a tool to unlock a problem. Even the bad ones.”