Chapter 18: Trauma Psychology

Birmingham and Coventry.
Thursday and Friday, 15 & 16 days after Jennifer reappears

Edgbaston

I am looking at Dr Laura Malvern, the psychologist who I hope, will be able to help my wife change back into the person she used to be.

We have come to Edgbaston, to her 'trauma practice, ' which sounds as if it should be part of some Accident and Emergency Department in a hospital next to a motorway (1) but the practice occupies an Edwardian detached house in a leafy street in Birmingham.

The building has been decorated to make people feel at ease. It's decorated in lemons and pale blues with fawn carpets and it smells of lavender or something like that. We are sitting in an upstairs room. There is a desk in one part of the room but we are in easy chairs near the window. There is Jenny, me, Dr Malvern and a female colleague of hers taking notes. She is and she isn't present. An oddly invisible third party to our conversation.

Malvern has a quiet un-accented voice. She manages to give the impression that she has all the time in the world...

"Let me begin by saying that it is a pleasure to meet you and thank you for contacting me. I had heard about you from Dr Elba and I have been expecting you to call.

"When people have experienced a big trauma in their lives, I think you need to know that getting better takes time. Just as it would if you had broken a leg bone, except that this will take longer to heal so you have to be patient and have to be prepared move at your own pace."

"As far as treatment is concerned, I try to deal with things in threes."

"First, it is very important for you to feel safe and you should start by making yourself safe at home. Be practical. Change the locks on the doors. Fit a burglar alarm. Have locks put on the windows. Don't make your home into a fortress but on the other hand, I do think that you have to feel that you are physically safe when you are there."

"If you venture out to work, you should make sure you are safe at work, too. You may not actually be ready to go to work and I could write to the HR Department of your University to tell them that they really need to give you more time off. Alternatively, if you are really keen to feel back in control of your life and you want to be occupied with something, then the something, whatever it is, should be something you can cope with easily. Library research rather than teaching. Hosting a tutorial, rather than lecturing to hundreds of students, and so on."

"I should also mention that it's a good idea to avoid people who are difficult to deal with, such as a demanding colleague."

"Nowadays, people reach us in all sorts of ways, by phone and email for example, so think about arranging a new email address and get a new phone with a new number. You do not have to cut all your old connections but if you have a new phone and a new email, you can review any messages reaching you along old channels and respond to them when you want and if you want, instead of having to deal with them as soon as they arrive. It's a bit like setting up your own border post. Also, if you think the people you were with might have your contact details, it breaks their hold on you.

"Keep yourself safe physically. Get exercise. Do things you enjoy. Wake up and think what you would like to do and not what other people think you ought to do. In fact, that's such a good idea, I might organize a bit of that for myself!

"The second phase is to work through some of the memories which are hurting you. This is the hard work and can't be done quickly. Mainly, that means not before you are psychologically strong enough. Not before you feel there is enough distance between you and the recent past events. We cannot erase memories. We cannot rub out what has gone by but we can break its hold over us, we can take the sting out of the memories we carry and we can start over, to be the people we actually are once more, not the people others want to make us.

"The last phase is to pick up our lives again and start living. In practice, it is best to do this bit by bit instead of waiting until every single painful memory had been put to rest. So for example, when you are ready, you go to the shops. At first with Joseph then later, on your own. You pick up with friends. Get used to going out to the gym. You go back to work. When you are at work, you resume your duties bit by bit. Thinking about recovering from physical injury: it is a good picture of what is happening. The bone mends. Physiotherapy softens tight tendons and painful muscles. You resume an exercise programme. Eventually, you are back running."

Parental Anxieties

Not long after Joe and Jenny reach the safety of home, Joe's mobile rings. It's Andrew Palmer.

"Joseph? It's Andrew. I was just ringing to see how you and Jenny got on today? I do not have to tell you how worried Inga and I are after what happened the other day?"

"No Andrew, you don't and yes, Jenny saw the psychologist today."

"So how did things go?"

"I think that by and large, things went as well as they could. The Practice is easy to get to. The psychologist — who is called Laura Malvern, by the way — gave us as much time as we, I mean as Jenny, needed. There was no rush and ... well ... I thought ... I thought Laura Malvern was someone who could help. She gave me confidence that she knew what she was doing. She started by explaining how she approached people who have had the sort of experiences that Jenny must have had, told us that recovery would take time, dealt issues like going back to work, offered to speak to the HR Department if Jenny needed her to do that, and rounded off with some very down-to-earth practical things we could do."

"Such as?"

"Such as doing things to feel safe at home. Changing the locks and the phone number for example."

"Ah. Hmmm. That is practical. Look, do you need Inga and me to come over? We haven't wanted you to feel crowded by anxious parents and we thought you needed time on your own together but if you need us now, you know you just have to say?"

"Thanks, Andrew. You know you can come any time you like. I am on compassionate leave from work just now but maybe when I have to go back? For example, I would feel happier if I knew there would be someone round, so Jenny was not all alone..."

"When do they want you back?"

"When I called Chris Parker, three weeks was spoken of. That's up a week on Monday".

"Why don't we come over this weekend, just for the day? We could stay in a hotel locally so we are not on top of you both and then we can ask Jenny if she would like us to be there when you go back. Does that sound all right?"

"Thanks, Andrew. That sounds more than all right. We'll look forward to seeing you both."

Academic Anxieties

The next day, Cathy Corbin makes a call. She knows it's time, high time, this call was made, but she is not sure how she will be received.

"Good Morning. Inward Bound, How can I help?" asks an educated confident, self-assured voice.

"Dr Catherine Corbin from the Department of Psychology, University of Warwick calling to speak to Dr Corinne Aimes."

"Speaking."

"Dr Aimes, have you a few moments? I have to bring you up to date on the Jennifer McEwan project you were involved with some months ago."

"Ah... !" The voice has shifted gear. It is speaking slower and firmer. It is saying 'Why have I not heard from you before?' without even articulating the words. "Yes, I have a few moments for that. Are you the person Professor Dawney told me was to take over the data analysis in the event that Jennifer McEwan was ... unable ... to do so herself? I have to say you have left it rather a long time to contact me, or should I say that to Professor Dawney herself?"

"Dr Aimes, I think you should definitely say that to Professor Dawney herself because I am ringing to give you some news about Jennifer..."

"Oh..."

"Jennifer and I are friends, actually very good friends. I am pleased to say that she was found in Stockholm and arrived home just recently."

Cathy is pleased to see (or rather, to hear) her little bombshell has taken Corinne Aimes completely by surprise because for a satisfyingly long moment there is silence on the line.

"Oh ... I see ... can you tell me anything more?"

"Well, there is probably a lot to tell but Jennifer is not is a position to say much at the moment. From what I have heard from her husband, she swam ashore in Stockholm harbour when he and her parents (they had gone there on holiday) were sitting on the quay watching the sun set."

There is an astonished gasp from Corinne.

"The Swedish police and the UK police are re-investigation her disappearance and are treating it as a case of abduction and people trafficking."

Another silence on the line.

"My assessment — although I am not trained as a psychotherapist — nevertheless, my assessment is that she is suffering from acute post-traumatic stress disorder and there is no doubt at all that she is significantly unwell at the moment."

"I see..."

"The other thing I have to tell you is that there has been a breach in the security of the data Jennifer collected at Inward Bound."

"How?"

"Because a few weeks ago, Professor Dawney showed me a preliminary research report in a Russian journal called Psychological Letters. There was a report about how to investigate the sort of problem Jennifer was working on. No data but a detailed strategy for investigation, written by Mendeleyev, Romanova and Kuznetsova. The work written up is very similar to some work Jenny showed me before she disappeared. I think Jenny is Kuznetsova or was forced to write as Kuznetsova."

"Oh ... Dr Corbin, this is ... well, I don't know what to say. Er..."

"Astonishing?"

"Yes, that will definitely do for a start."

"Look, we are clearly going to have to spend some time with each other but, where to begin?"

"Well, let's be practical. Can I call you Catherine? It seems as if my displeasure at the way Jenny McEwan's research investigation has been handled should not be directed at you."

"I agree, it should be directed upwards, you might say, and it's Cathy, not Catherine."

"Good to speak with you, Cathy. I am Corinne. Well, about Jenny. She was very easy to like and we were all horrified when she vanished. Did you know that her husband came to see us?"

"Joe?"

"Mr McEwan was looking for Jenny, not literally, but trying to find out more about the girl he had lost."

"Yes, that is typical Joe. Very careful and thorough."

"Do we know what Jenny thinks about her ... what shall I call it? ... her 'time away'?"

"I think it's rather too early to ask that sort of question. She is prone to suffer flashbacks and the behaviour she exhibits shows the psychological pressure she must have been placed under. My sense is that she had a very hard time but, if you see her, she is in many ways looking very well. For a start, she has a fantastic physique so on one level, she was extremely well treated. On another level, there is the research work. She seems to have been made to use her mind. It doesn't sound like the sort of thing you would normally expect from a kidnap gang?"

"No, it does not. It would be more understandable if she had been working on something which was very commercially sensitive. Computer software or something."

Or something ... and at Corinne's words a 'something' starts to wriggle in Cathy's mind. As she tries to grasp the idea, it moves deeper into the darkness from where ideas emerge. Cathy tries to go back a few steps to the words which provoked the idea into the light, but with no success. She decides to let it be. Give the self-effacing idea some space and quietness to move into consciousness on another occasion.

"Corinne," Cathy continues, "I really can't explain about your data. The article — it is a translation from the Russian, by the way — just deals with research strategy, but you get the impression that there is data behind it. It does not read like speculation. I remember Joe telling George and I (George is my husband) that the police took Jenny and Joe's computers away for examination and later on, he parcelled up the work Jenny had been doing and sent it to Angela Dawney. To have it sitting there in his home was a constant reminder that Jenny was not there."

"Yes, I can understand. Tell me, was Professor Dawney surprised or disappointed to read the Mendeleyev article?"

"Angry would be the word I would use. Angry and surprised that another research group were working on this idea. Corinne, your work at Inward Bound, is that commercially sensitive?"

"Inward Bound? No, not at all. We advertise ourselves and we do not do anything beyond what you find anywhere in the 'Fetish Kingdom.' Our 'differentiator' is the way we put it together and the 'package' we make out of it. The 'product, ' so to speak, works because of us. We are like actors in a play. The script and the stage set has to be good, but it only comes to life with the right cast. We are the right cast — well, we seem to be."

Cathy has been listening to Corinne with a mounting sense of impatience. She has to make her point before she forgets it once more. "But, Corinne, Jenny's research work was to look at the psychological changes which took place in the people who took your course. Is that the point? Her research into the effectiveness of your questionnaire screening and the changes in the people you trained?"