Forest of Rope

Chapter 22

Three days earlier...

Doctor Martine’s office defied the stereotype Alexis had internalised from the cheap melodramas she’d watched passively in her lunch break. To her surprise, there wasn’t one comfy sofa or box of tissues to be found in the entire room. There wasn’t even a window.

‘Ah, there you are. Come and take a seat. I hear you’ve got some good news for me.’ Martine looked good enough to eat as always. Her curvaceous and bosomy frame ballooned out from her formal attire like a repository of shapely flesh. Alexis hid her malevolent feelings of distaste with a fake smile as she approached the desk.

‘I have,’ she confirmed in a superficially sweet voice, sinking into a chair.

‘Good,’ Martine matched her artificial tone. ‘Then we should have lots to talk about.’ She said this with a noticeable glance to her clipboard. Alexis eyed it apprehensively, with half a mind to snap it in half.

‘So are the rumours true? Should I be congratulating you and Riley?’

‘You can do what you like. I don’t care.’

‘Then it is true! Did he go down on one knee?’

A sharp flush of colour swept across Alexis’s face.

‘N-not exactly, she stammered, gripping the end of her seat for comfort.

 ‘Well I’m sure you two will be quite happy together. Won’t you?’

Alexis was careful about her reply, suspecting it of being a trick question.

‘Yeah, sure. We’re happy.’

Martine smiled, sensing an incongruity about the statement.

‘You don’t think-’

‘What?’ Alexis challenged.

‘You don’t think it’s a little... Rash?’

‘Rash? What’s rash about it? We’ve been together for six years.’

‘I suppose,’ Martine acknowledged the fact with some reluctance. Alexis glared at her accusingly. She wasn’t buying any of this.

‘You gonna tell anyone about your engagement?’

‘There’s no one to tell.’

‘How about Vincent?’

The colour in her face left as quickly as it had come. Beneath the tatty synthetic apron, her heart was ricocheting off the walls of its scrawny ribcage.

‘He already knows,’ she tried to say casually. ‘He’s cool with it.’

Martine scrutinised her.

‘I’m sure,’ she said sceptically after a pause. ‘Then what’s the plan after you’re released?’

‘We’ll get married as soon as I’m out.’

‘So soon?’

‘Yep, no time like the present.’

‘Where?’

‘Vegas.’

Martine stifled a chuckle, only just managing to restrain herself.

‘And after that, what happens next? Got anything planned?’

‘We’re honeymooning in Tokyo.’

‘Tokyo? Why Tokyo?’

‘City of love?’ Alexis said, shrugging.

‘That’s Paris. Why not go there?’

‘Everyone goes to Paris. We’re not like that.’

‘But why Japan of all places?’

‘Look I want to see Godzilla. That a good enough reason for ya?’

‘Better than the ones you’ve given me before,’ Martine murmured under her breath.

All out of panache, the two simmered in an inarticulate stalemate for a couple of minutes.

‘By the way, how are you going to pay for all this?’

Alexis, who’d been playing with her hair, let out a frustrated sigh. She was growing tired of having to justify herself to this woman.

‘It’s all covered,’ she explained weakly.

‘Really? You haven’t shown up to work for weeks. Riley tells me your rent’s two months behind and let’s not forget the hospital bill!’

Alexis rolled her eyes evasively.

‘You never heard of a Christmas bonus?’

‘I thought you got those by actually going to work.’

‘I do work,’ she corrected her coldly. ‘I’ve just been taking some time off is all. Besides, Riley has money too you know.’

‘So I’ve heard. I think it’s fair to say you’re the breadwinner in the relationship though aren’t you?’

‘I guess that’s one way of saying it.’

‘And since you’ve been “taking time off” I know that you didn’t get your paycheque or your bonus because as we both know you spent Christmas Eve in the emergency room.’

Alexis looked away, feeling scathed by the lecture. Martine had turned into her mother all over again. All she had to do now was reach over across the desk, clasp her manicured hands around her throat and the circle would be complete.

‘Now tell me Alexis. How are you going to pay for all this?’

‘Visen...’ she mumbled incoherently, getting paler by the second.

‘I’m sorry?’

She scowled in reply.

‘Vincent,’ she spoke up in defeat. ‘He left me quite a generous wedding present.’

Martine faltered. A shadow of concern was growing in her eyes.

‘How much?’

Alexis recoiled. A fire of contempt was alive in hers.

‘None of your god damned business.’

‘Okay...’

‘I want to leave,’ Alexis said disowning her seat and getting roughly to her feet. ‘Am I sane yet?’

‘I want to say yes sweetie but it’s not as easy as you think.’

‘But I’ve told you pretty much everything about myself,’ she whined argumentatively. ‘What more do you people want?’

‘Well, maybe there’s one small thing that could help.’

‘What?’ Alexis looked up hopefully.

‘I want to know more about your first suicide attempt.’

‘Why?’

‘I have a feeling it might help explain your relationship with Vincent.’

Alexis hovered uncertainly in the middle of the room.

‘You’re not wrong,’ she admitted after a great deal of thought, sitting herself back down.

‘Aren’t I?’

‘That’s how I met him.’