Tony Hill u Carol Jordan 08 - Cross and Burn

what Carol believes too.’
    ‘If Carol didn’t hold you responsible, do you think you would feel this level of guilt? This is not the first time that victims have died in the course of an investigation you’ve been party to. I’ve sat in this room and listened to your grief on that score. But all I have heard from you in terms of responsibility is a wish that you could have done better or done differently. Not this scourging guilt.’
    And this time, Tony had no instant reply. At last, he said, ‘Adler would have had a field day with this, right?’
    ‘How might he have characterised this, do you think? How would you characterise it if a patient presented with this shift in their belief system?’
    ‘I’d think it was hubris. I had a friend once. She knew me when I was a teenager. She was kind to me, but she thought I needed toughening up. She used to say, “You’re like a man with a big nose who thinks everybody’s talking about him. Well, they’re not, and the sooner you thicken that skin of yours, the happier you’ll be.”’
    ‘Was she right, do you think?’
    Tony gave a rueful chuckle. ‘I don’t think I ever learned the lesson. I’ve always thought that was why I had such powerful empathy.’
    Jacob nodded, so slight a movement that Tony wondered whether he’d imagined it. ‘And still you haven’t answered the question. If Carol didn’t hold you responsible, do you think you would feel this level of guilt?’
    ‘Probably not.’ The honesty was hard but there was no point in being here if he didn’t try.
    ‘And if this source of feeling bad about yourself was reduced or removed, do you think the other things that are causing you difficulties would be made easier?’
    ‘That’s one of those questions that provokes only one answer,’ Tony said, an edge of annoyance in his voice.
    ‘And that may well be why you need to ask it.’ Jacob sighed. He closed his notebook and put it on the floor next to him, pen aligned with the end. ‘Tony, I’ve been your supervisor for many years. I like to think I have formed a good idea of how you function. I know you have made an accommodation with aspects of your personality that many people would find problematic. I also know you want to move forward in your practice and in your personal life. For a long time, Carol Jordan has been the centre of your emotional life. At times, she has appeared to be the only component of your emotional life. Would that be a fair assessment?’
    Tony’s shoulders were tightening involuntarily. He had an uneasy sensation in his stomach. Jacob had never spoken to him in these terms. He’d probably never actually said so much in the whole of a session before. ‘I do have other friendships,’ he said, hearing his own defensiveness. And who were those other friends, when the chips were down? Paula? Alvin Ambrose? Cops who had been colleagues and had grown into more than that. But not the kind of friends most people had. Nobody he went to the football with. Nobody he was on a pub quiz team with. Nobody he’d kept up with from his student days. Nobody he went hillwalking with. Not even anybody he regularly gamed with online.
    ‘The only one you’ve been bringing into this room for years is Carol.’
    ‘You think it’s going nowhere, don’t you? You think it’s holding me back? Trapping me in the same place?’
    Jacob breathed heavily and pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up to the bridge of his nose in a rare moment of fidgeting. ‘It’s not what I think that matters. But we both know there is significance in you even asking those questions in those terms.’
    Tony’s expression was bleak, his eyes blank. ‘In so far as I’ve ever loved anyone, I love Carol.’ Even to say it was a wrench, like something twisting in his gut.
    ‘What would happen if you let that feeling go?’
    He shook his head. ‘You don’t just let feelings go.’
    ‘You can allow time to release you from them. Grief and mourning are part of the process, but there is a process. When you clear out the attic, it’s amazing what you make room for.’ Jacob sighed again. ‘It’s not my job as a supervisor or as a therapist to tell you what to do. But I will say this: living with so much pain is neither healthy nor necessary. You need to look at your life and decide what really serves you. And what you should let go.’
    ‘You’ve helped me understand one thing today. If it had been anyone else’s brother, I would feel bad about it.