I found Debbie’s personal file. I’m sure it was against policy to look at it but no one else was going to tell me anything. The file was huge and bloated, so wide I could barely fit my hand around it. It was packed with mental health reports detailing the break down of her marriage after she found out that her husband was a paedophile who’d been assaulting a neighbour’s son.
I rang Hackett from outside and told him the whole thing.
“Am I so self obsessed that I can’t see these things? These things right in front of me? How can I trust people? When these are the things that are really happening to them?”
“My dear, there’s really nothing to be shocked about. If you were to look in any one of those files you’d find another tale just as dark as this one. Everyone has a background like this, I dare say you have one yourself.”
“But they never told me anything. She told me everything but this. I know the car her daughter drives but I never knew anything like this.”
“Everyone has a past filled with betrayal and heartache and death. Only some people don’t have anything else. And it’s only the people with nothing else who will really tell you everything, show you everything. These are the only people you can truly know, because they are so truly shallow.”
I didn’t believe him. I stared at the pedestrian bridge in front of me, an old man was walking across it with his dog, a golden retriever. Underneath I could see traffic rushing.
“Will I ever be able to do it?” I asked. “Is it possible for me to become obsessed with someone else? I spend all my time looking at myself, trying to understand how I work, where my headaches come from, I want to know someone else, dark past and everything. I’m tired of myself, I’m so fucking tired of thinking of myself. Will I ever be able to lose myself in someone else? Anything else?”
“Perhaps, but you won’t be able to force it, I’m afraid. The change can’t come from within you, you see? You can think your way into self obsession, but you can’t think your way out again. It’s not possible to think in negatives. Do you see?”
“Yeah.”
“It wouldn’t matter what you did. There’d be no correlation, no correlation at all.”
