Waiting for Wednesday

do with that stuff in the newspaper. I thought it would
appear in a psychology journal that no one would read and that would be the end of it. I
don’t know how that happened.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said
Frieda. ‘I’m not bothered with that. Just tell me about your part in
it.’
    ‘I ended up with the therapist who
passed the test. She’s a woman called Geraldine Fliess. Apparently she wrote some
book about how we’re all really psychopaths, or something like that. Anyway, I
went and saw her, gave the spiel about having been cruel to animals and that I had
fantasies of hurting women. Later she got back in touch with me, asking me who my doctor
was and other things like that.’
    ‘What did you tell her?’
    ‘Professor Bradshaw told us that if
anyone took us up on what we had said, if they really picked up on the danger, we should
just refer them to him and he would tell them about the experiment. You know, to avoid
us getting arrested.’
    ‘What would you have been arrested
for?’ Frieda asked.
    ‘All right, all right,’ said
Singh, irritably. ‘She got it right and you didn’t. It’s not the end
of the world. Just let it go.’
    ‘But I’m interested in the story
you all told. How was that done?’
    ‘There was nothing clever about it.
Bradshaw gave us thethings on the psychopath checklist and we just
had to agree on a story, rehearse it and perform it.’
    ‘I don’t care about the
checklist,’ said Frieda. ‘I’m more interested in the other details.
Where did all the bits that had nothing to do with the checklist come from? Things like
that story about cutting hair. What was that about?’
    ‘What does it matter?’
    Frieda thought for a moment and looked
around her. The room wasn’t just cold. There was a smell of damp. There
didn’t seem to be a single object that hadn’t been left there by the
landlord and that was the sort of stuff – abandoned, unloved – you’d pick up in
car-boot sales, house clearances.
    ‘I think it’s difficult to
pretend to be a patient,’ Frieda said. ‘For most people, the difficult bit
is to ask for help in the first place. Once they’re sitting in a room with me,
they’ve already made a painful decision. I think it’s just as difficult to
pretend to ask for help.’
    ‘I don’t know what you’re
talking about.’
    ‘When I came in, you apologized about
the house.’
    ‘I didn’t apologize about it. I
said I was lucky to get it.’
    ‘You said that when you were an
undergraduate everything was arranged for you, but now you were left to fend for
yourself. You told me that you never see your housemates.’
    ‘I meant that as a good
thing.’
    ‘You probably don’t want to hear
this from me …’
    ‘You know, I’ve got a feeling
you’re about to say something about me that isn’t complimentary.’
    ‘Not at all. But I wonder if when you
volunteered for this experiment, the chance to go to a therapist but not
really
go to a therapist, it gave you an opportunity to express something. A kind of sadness, a
feeling of not being cared for.’
    ‘That is absolute crap. That’s
exactly what therapists like you do. You read things into what people say in order to
giveyou power over them. And then if they deny it, it makes them look
weak. What you’re objecting to is the fact that you got involved in an experiment
that showed you up. From what I’ve heard, you and Dr Bradshaw have some kind of
history, and if I’ve played some part in that, then I’m sorry. But
don’t suck me into your mind games.’
    ‘It doesn’t look as if you live
here,’ said Frieda. ‘You haven’t hung up a picture, or put a rug down,
or even left a book lying around. You’re even dressed like you’re
outside.’
    ‘As you can feel for yourself,
it’s cold in here. When the man fixes the boiler, I promise you I’ll take my
jacket off.’
    Frieda took a notebook from her pocket,
scribbled on a page, tore it out and handed it to Singh. ‘If you want to tell me
anything about what you said – I mean anything apart from the stupid Hare checklist –
you can reach me at that number.’
    ‘I don’t know what you want from
me,’ said Singh, angrily, as Frieda left the house.
    Ian Yardley’s flat was in a little
alley just off a street market. It was down from the Thames but far enough away that the
river couldn’t be seen. Frieda pressed a buzzer and heard an unintelligible noise
from a speaker, then a rattling sound. She pulled at the door