The End is Where We Begin by Maria Goodin (open ebook .txt) 📕

“Doctor Thomas Pickering.”

“Who would have thought it, eh?” he quips.

“I would have,” I tell him, earnestly. “I always knew you’d achieve great things. The smartest boy in school.”

“Ah, yes!” he shouts, punching the air. “Finally he admits it! I win! I win!”

“Apart from me, of course,” I add.

“Aghh, whatever,” he groans, taking a sip of his tea.

“So, what made you swap from hearts to heads, anyway?” I ask. “Were you drawn to psychiatry by your incredible capacity for empathy? Your naturally sensitive and diplomatic nature?”

He laughs, almost spitting out his mouthful of tea.

“You still know me so well,” he grins.

“Clearly not.”

“Well,” he shrugs, “when you grow up in a nuthouse…”

“Are you allowed to talk about mental illness like that?”

“Only outside of the hospital.”

We look at each other, both taking in the changed features of the person opposite. We’re both so much taller, broader, with stubbled faces, man-sized hands, the early appearance of faint lines at the corners of our eyes. Where did the time go?

“It’s been too long,” he says, and I nod, wondering how we ever lost touch.

But then I remember how raw it all was, how messed up and miserable we were. Tom and I were always two of a kind, each of us serving as a mirror to the other one’s anger and bitterness.

“So you said on the phone you’d been in contact with Libby?”

“Yeah. Well, I basically hunted her down in the same way I hunted you down.”

He raises an eyebrow at me like I might have lost my mind.

I stare into my coffee, suddenly embarrassed.

“You think I need a shrink, Doctor Pickering?” I joke.

He leans forwards, folding his arms on the table.

“I’m not sure yet. Why don’t you tell me what all this is about and I’ll let you know.”

I lean back in my chair, wishing I’d brought sunglasses, less to protect my eyes than to hide the windows to my soul.

“I guess I feel the need to revisit the past and gain closure. Say sorry to certain people, make amends with others.”

Tom looks worried.

“Are you sick?”

I chuckle quietly.

“That’s what Libby thought too. Although, I dunno, maybe I am, in a way. I feel a weight, I suppose you could say. Like I’m carrying a burden I want to be rid of. I know certain friends and family think I’m closed off, that the way I go about things can be a bit… unhealthy. I don’t know. I just got to the point where I had to take action.”

“And how did you know you were at that point?” asks Tom.

I shrug. “I guess I just felt like things had reached tipping point.”

“What constitutes tipping point?”

“I suppose I felt like I wasn’t coping that brilliantly with things. And that the ways I was behaving weren’t making me happy in the long run.”

Tom nods, thoughtfully.

“So, in what ways has this burden, this weight or whatever, been affecting your life?” he asks.

I smile at him. “Blimey, you really are a psychiatrist, aren’t you? I thought maybe you’d just made yourself a certificate in Word and printed it off.”

“You’re avoiding the question,” he smiles, wagging a finger at me.

I tip my head back and laugh, but I feel a surge of anxiety. He knows what he’s doing and he’s not letting me off the hook easily.

“I think I close myself off to relationships,” I admit, thinking about all the accusations Michael and Laura have thrown at me over the years, all the things I’ve denied but I now know to be true. “I think I sabotage my chances of happiness, I think I spend far too long agonising about the past, I think I won’t allow myself to move on from mistakes I made a long time ago—”

“You won’t allow yourself? Like you’re punishing yourself?”

I shift uncomfortably in my seat, the sun suddenly feeling too hot against my neck. I don’t like this. I want fun Tom back.

“Why would you need to punish yourself?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I didn’t say that, you did.”

“Because that’s what it sounds like to me.”

I stare at the table.

“What did you do that was so wrong?” he asks.

“Look, I didn’t invite you here for a therapy session,” I tell him bluntly, feeling my heart rate accelerate. “I asked you here—”

“Did you ever talk to anybody about what happened that night?”

“Did you?”

“No. I threw myself into my studies so fucking hard and for so fucking long that when I finally came up for air it felt like something that happened to somebody else. But that’s me. And we’re not talking about me.”

I have no idea why my hands suddenly feel shaky. I clench them tightly in my lap.

“I felt at the time,” says Tom, leaning in, “that you somehow felt responsible for what happened that evening.”

I fold my arms across my chest and look away from him, but all I see surrounding me is Libby’s mural: the canal and all its seasonal charms. Where’s the darkness, the people telling me to run like I was their only hope, the point on the towpath where I made the wrong choice? Where’s the boy with the blood on his hands, the smashed light, the girl with a bleeding face?

I close my eyes for the briefest moment, my head starting to swim.

“Look, I don’t know what other stresses and strains you might have had in your life since I last saw you,” says Tom, “but you do at least know that nothing that evening was your fault, don’t you?”

I clench my jaw, pain shooting through my back teeth. I have an overwhelming urge to flee, but my bones feel locked in place.

“I thought…” I say falteringly, “…I mean, I had a feeling you blamed me—”

“Me?” he asks, incredulous. “Why would you think that?”

“Because you were so angry afterwards, and because you kept your distance—”

“We were both angry. And I kept my distance because…” he shakes his head, sadly, “because I just wanted to forget it ever happened.”

“I had a baby, for God’s sake.”

“I