Straight Talking by Jane Green Page A

practically climb in the fridge and eat whatever’s there.
    You think I’m joking? I wish I were. I’ve been known to buy a loaf of bread, and while the first two slices are toasting, six more have disappeared into my mouth faster than you can say pass the butter.
    So there’s food, there’s my unhappy childhood, there’s my unfaithful father, but I thought I was all right. I mean, I know I’m not exactly good at relationships, but after Simon, after it all went horribly wrong, after the bingeing and the quick fucks with faceless strangers, I went.
    I liked Louise immediately. She was recommended by Mel, who obviously is too close to me to treat me, and as soon as I walked into the little room she uses as her therapy center, or whatever the hell you call it, I felt at home.
    But I’ll admit I wasn’t entirely sure about this whole therapy lark at first. Louise looked like a reject from
Woodstock
, the movie. Long brown hair hennaed red, a heavy fringe, caught up in a big soft bun at the nape of her neck. The first time we met she was wearing a long ethnic skirt, the kind that should have had tiny little mirrors sewed into the fabric, except it didn’t, it just swirled softly about her ample thighs. On her feet were Chinese slippers, the shoes that, if my memory serves me correctly, were the height of fashion in 1981.
    “Oh shit,” I remember thinking. “How in the hell is this woman going to understand my middle-class confusion?” But then I looked in her eyes, and they were so warm and understanding, I knew it was going to be fine. And the minute I started talking, she drew me out so cleverly, so carefully, I knew at once that if there was anyone I wanted to pour my troubles out to, it would be Louise.
    There was always the smell of burning aromatic oils, probably lavender, or patchouli, or some such hippy shit to make you feel relaxed, and Louise, even in that first session, forced me to find answers I didn’t think I knew, answers I’d pushed to the back of my subconscious because the truth frightened me. Doesn’t the truth frighten
you
?
    Therapy isn’t like talking to friends. When you talk to friends you censor yourself; you tell the truth, or your version of it, but you embellish, you’re dishonest, but you’ve told your stories so often you’ve come to believe them.
    You can’t do that in therapy. You talk on a completely different level of honesty, and I think Louise saw the side that no one else saw. She saw that I wasn’t hard or tough or sassy. She cut through all that right to the vulnerable, gentle center. And she didn’t care. That was the point. I trusted her immediately, and, I’m being completely honest with you now, I think she’s possibly the first person I’ve ever trusted in my life.
    As usual Louise opens the door and without saying anything gestures me inside to her room. Lining the walls are those Ikea shelves, you know, the wooden ones, bending with the strain of all her psychology books. Freud, Jung, every aspect of psychoanalysis you could dream of.
    Louise sits down as I sit in the big comfy chair opposite her and she starts as she always starts. “How
are
you?”
    “Fine, I’ve been fine. I haven’t even really thought about Guy, I’m not really that upset, which has surprised me, because I came to see you because of men like Guy, men who professed to have fallen in love then disappeared, but maybe things are changing, because even though it’s happened again, I’m OK.”
    “So you’re not seeing him anymore? What happened?”
    Here we go again, dear reader. Cast your mind back to when we first met. Do you remember Andy was coming round to hear about the three-monther? Guy was the three-monther.
    I met Guy in a queue standing outside a club. I never go clubbing anymore, I have neither the time nor the inclination but it was a Sunday night and I didn’t have anything better to do.
    And Jesus, was this party shit. Everyone was about sixteen, and I felt one