When you were talking to Ophelia it was impossible not to feel outnumbered. This wasn’t because she was in any way domineering or had a ‘larger-than-life’ personality (far from it!) but rather owing to the inescapable impression that there was always another version of her somewhere in the room with you. She was a quiet and reserved young woman — even beautiful in a Pre-Raphaelite way — yet, like the proverbial ‘still waters’, you immediately suspected that much about her ‘ran deep’.
At this point I should say that Ophelia was not my ‘type’ (should such a thing exist!) and that my relationship with her was entirely professional. And before you jump to further erroneous conclusions, I should emphasise that I was the professional and she the client. Not that she necessarily saw it that way. Indeed I may be over-emphasising my own role in the relationship we had — if you can call it a relationship, that is. Perhaps it’s simplest if you don’t.
Yes, I’m a professional — even if naysayers might consider me more of a ‘quack’! — and yes, I had been asked to talk to Ophelia (by one of her friends, mind you) as a kind of favour, to see if I could divine what was at the heart of her malaise. They were convinced she was suffering, and when I asked them to define how that ‘suffering’ was manifesting itself, they suggested she was visibly losing weight, was listless, distant. These were, of course, inadequate symptoms in themselves, but certainly a good deal better than their initial offering which was that she ‘did not seem herself’. It is a private theory of mine that few of us can ever seem ourselves if we’ve no true idea of what that ‘self’ actually comprises.
But I digress.
Our first meeting was in a small but fashionable coffee shop just off the High Street. As was my wont, I arrived early; Ophelia arrived with Katie right on time. As I watched them ordering at the counter, I allowed myself to harvest an initial impression of her — while simultaneously wondering whether their punctuality was down to her or Katie.
Ophelia was tall for a woman and undoubtedly slim. She had long hair, slightly wavy and on the auburn side of brown. The features on her face were distinctive — that is to say that they were well-defined: slightly prominent if narrow lips, subtly rouged; an aquiline nose which some might have regarded as too long; eyes relatively deep set, her lower eyelid set marginally too low which meant occasionally you saw a little more of the whites of her eyes than might be regarded as classically beautiful. She was striking, certainly. I could see why Pre-Raphaelite parallels arose — and presumably not merely in my own assessment.
Katie guided her to where I was sitting (a small table in a corner away from the counter) and introduced us. We spent a short while chatting before Katie excused herself on the pretence of errands, promising she would return in about half an hour. It would, she suggested, give us time for another coffee.
“So, I’m intrigued. Why did you agree to meet me?” Half-an-hour not being a terribly long time, I felt I needed to cut to the chase. I usually spent at least twice as long with a new client — getting to know them a little and so forth — before posing any of the more difficult question.
“Why?” In watching her weigh up her answer I had my first inkling as to the ‘other’ instance of Ophelia being present. Although she was doing nothing more than deciding what to say, it was impossible to avoid the sensation that she was consulting something to make sure she got it right. “Katie said you were a friend, a nice man.”
“I’m sure Katie knows lots of nice people,” I smiled, trying to keep the tone light, “but why me? And why now?”
Another short pause. Doing so was, I discovered, her default when engaged in dialogue. I confess during those initial exchanges it was somewhat frustrating, but I soon got used to it. “She said you might be able to help.”
“That’s good of her.” I inserted my own pause. “You know what I do? I mean, you know what I do for a living?”
At this she merely nodded.
“So, do you need help?”
That silent consultation again. “They seem to think I do.”
“They?”
“Katie. My friends.”
“And why might they think that?”
Ophelia lifted her coffee and took a sip. It was another of her mannerisms, to engage in insignificant action to give her the time needed to execute her internal dialogue.
“They think I’m too skinny. Or too quiet. They worry that I don’t behave with others in the same way that they do. Perhaps that’s the reason.”
I noted her used of the word ‘behave’.
“And what do you think?”
At this she laughed. It was a restrained laugh, almost private, secretive, and yet it transformed — just for an instant — how she looked. It was as if, for that fraction of a second, she became a whole person, freed from — or entirely combined with — the spectre she seemed compelled to continually consult.
“They’re right, of course. I am a little thin and a little quiet; and I dislike crowds and big social events where you’re supposed to demonstrate how much you’re enjoying yourself.”
It was an answer which destroyed many of the initial thoughts I’d had about her — in terms of diagnosis, you understand.
“So if you know all of that, then presumably you think they’re wrong. Haven’t you told them as much?”
A sip of coffee.
“But people choose not to listen. Don’t you find that? When they expect you to be one thing and you’re something else entirely…” She allowed the sentence to trail away.
“And you’re not prepared to try and be someone else for them, to create a public and a private Ophelia?”
She shook her head — not as if she was disagreeing with me, but almost in pity, as if I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.
She stood. “I’ll get us another coffee.”
“You don’t need to on my account.”
She smiled. “Let’s call it your ‘fee’.”
Which, on reflection, I didn’t really earn. Although I tried to steer the conversation back to talking about her, once she had returned with fresh coffee it was clear she was having none of it. After a few minutes I gave up, and so we meandered through a whole series of inconsequential topics until Katie reappeared. Of course I was able to examine her in this more relaxed context too (if ‘examine’ is an appropriate word to be using) and arrived at a somewhat superficial conclusion that she was a relatively normal young woman: introverted and shy perhaps, but certainly not someone who was ‘a case’. And yet there was something about her — mainly that internal consultation upon which she so frequently embarked — which suggested a secret. Perhaps ‘secret’ isn’t the right word either, but whatever you might be inclined to call it, I found needing to decipher it already beginning to nag at the professional in me.
“How is she?” Katie’s question as soon as Ophelia had excused herself to go to the toilet.
“Interesting. And delightful, of course. But I don’t think there’s anything ‘wrong’ with her — at least not that I could see. We’ve only been talking for thirty or forty minutes of course, so that’s hardly definitive. Although I’m convinced that there’s something unique there, something about her. But to ask if she’s ill in any psychological sense — or medical one, come to that? I’m not yet convinced.”
Katie looked concerned.
“Perhaps you expected some revelation,” I smiled at her, “or some clues at least, but I have nothing to offer I’m afraid.”
“Not yet.”
“‘Not yet’? What do you mean?”
“You’re going to see her again? At least, that’s what I’d assumed — especially if there’s ‘something about her’.”
I saw Ophelia reappearing from across the café.
“We haven’t talked about it,” I said, and then rose to gather my coat from the back of the chair.
“That was fun,” Ophelia said as she joined us. “We should do it again sometime.”
I put on my coat, then gave her my card along with an invitation to call me if and when it suited her. At that point I made my excuses and left, certain that Katie would be asking Ophelia about me as soon as I was out of earshot.
“Ophelia’s not my real name of course.”
At that moment it wouldn’t have mattered where we were — though, for the record, we were sitting in the in-store café in ‘House of Fraser’. The whole building, the premise and offering, was an antiseptic throwback to somewhere in the Seventies or Eighties, a time capsule awaiting an alien landing. And the reason I say it didn’t matter where we were was because her statement would have taken the wind from my sails irrespective of location.
She had rung me, said she was going shopping and was likely to have some free time; that if I wanted to carry on our conversation then ‘House of Fraser’ was where I’d find her. It was the kind of offer made when you already know what the answer was going to be; that was my eventual conclusion. Once settled at our table, we talked about nothing much; I’d asked her what she had been shopping for, and she gave me a glimpse of a floral skirt and a roll-neck sweater — both in an M&S bag. There had been a lull in the conversation; my cue to sip some coffee. And then “Ophelia’s not my real name of course” was delivered as if there could be nothing in the universe more blatantly obvious.
“It isn’t?”
She laughed that all-inclusive laugh of hers.
“Then what is your name? And why did you choose ‘Ophelia’?” Then, as she paused for her customary internal consultation, “By the way, I’m not sure which of those I need you to answer first.”
“It was Hamlet, of course. An odd character in such a bloodthirsty play. Entirely tragic, obviously; but she seemed to be there not for herself or to satisfy her own purpose, but as a vehicle for us to understand Hamlet or her brother. Or her father, Polonius.”
“You thought you were like her?”
She mulled the question over and then answered a different one. “I felt sorry for her.”
“Or is that how you see yourself?”
She let that one go.
I knew what she meant about Hamlet’s Ophelia of course, and could only wonder whether she had taken more than the character’s name on-board.
“But you didn’t change your name, officially I mean?”
“That would have been silly!” She smiled. “When I meet new people I simply say ‘I like to be called Ophelia’ — as if it was my middle name, you know? The way some people do if they don’t like their first name. And no-one’s ever questioned me about it, not really.”
“So what’s the name you don’t like?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”
“The one you prefer not to use then.”
This time her pause felt a shade too long. When she said “Belinda” I was immediately doubtful as to its veracity.
My confusion being only too evident, she laughed again. “Don’t you believe me?”
“Should I?”
“Maybe. Or maybe not.” She played with the spoon in her saucer. “Or maybe I should bring in my birth certificate next time we meet.”
“And what will that say?”
“You’ll have to wait and see.”
It was a game of course, but a game that took me by surprise. Yes, she was still essentially cautious, shy, introverted, but she was clearly making an effort — and not for my sake but her own. I noted the slight flush in her cheeks, the length of time it took for the smile to fade from her lips. She was enjoying herself.
“So what should I call you, Ophelia or Belinda? Or something else?”
“Perhaps that depends.”
“On what?”
“How you see me; whether I feel like a Belinda or an Ophelia to you. Or a Sharon or Anne or Catherine or Trixie.”
The last suggestion, with its potentially dubious undertones, was interesting, laden with portent.
“But I might choose something you don’t like. Agnes perhaps, or Enid.”
“I had a great aunt called Enid.”
“Enid it is then.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” The smile was gone.
She glanced at her watch.
“Do you go shopping?”
“Me? Yes, sometimes.”
“And when you do go shopping, do you occasionally stop for coffee and perhaps a chat with friends?”
“When the opportunity arises.”
“Then,” she said, standing, “perhaps you should make the opportunity arise on Thursday.”
Three days later it was Katie rather than Ophelia who appeared in Waterstones’ café. My assumption of coincidence was immediately rebuffed when Katie made straight for where I was sitting.
“I’ve a message from Ophelia,” she said by way of introduction. “I’m afraid she can’t make it. Something’s come up.”
“Oh.” I glanced at my phone which I’d placed on the table in front of me. “Why couldn’t she tell me herself?”
“She said she’ll be in touch. That’s all the message I have I’m afraid.”
Thrown, my full cup caught my eye. “Coffee?”
“Sorry; can’t stop.” And then, with a wave, Katie was gone.
Ten minutes later I was just about to leave when my phone pinged. A text:
SORRY TO LET YOU DOWN. SAME TIME & PLACE TOMORROW? 🙏
The emoji was intriguing. I’d not seen it often, but assumed it was shorthand for ‘I hope’ — even if it looked like someone praying. I called up my calendar.
“You seem very flexible time-wise.”
Twenty-four hours further on and I was sitting in the same seat. This time Ophelia was across from me. She had been early, and I had arrived to find her already there. The fact that she’d chosen the identical table threw me a little.
“I’m self-employed so my schedule is — as you suggest — ‘flexible’. I had to move something around, but it was no big deal.”
I watched as she weighed my statement. “You don’t have a proper job then?”
“‘Proper job’?”
“You know, nine-to-five. NHS presumably.”
“Ah, the NHS.” Although this wasn’t about me, I needed to answer her question. “Yes, I worked there for a while, in the early days. But we weren’t quite cut-out for each other.”
“Oh?”
“I found I liked my freedom too much.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but it seemed to do the trick; Ophelia nodded. “And what about you? You seem to be free to go shopping whenever you like, so not tied down to set hours either. And based on the evidence, you also don’t have a liquidity problem.”
If my statement was verging on the provocative then I meant it to be so. I had not allayed Katie’s fears with regard to Ophelia and so felt some obligation to see if I could distil a little more about her friend. And, if I’m being honest, I was beginning to find Ophelia fascinating.
“‘Evidence’?”
“You’re always nicely dressed, so I guess your clothes aren’t cheap-and-cheerful, from ‘Primark’ and the like.” I glanced down to the side of the table where another carrier bag rested. ‘Zara’ this time. “And when you shop you seem to shop.”
She looked down too. A faint smile — and then her trademark pause.
“Not for me. A birthday present for my sister.”
“Younger or older?”
“Would you have a preference?”
It seemed an odd kind of riposte, layered with challenge. Perhaps that was the first time I began to wonder who was speaking; whether it was indeed Ophelia, or did that inner voice of hers occasionally break cover?
“Not at all. Why should I?”
She ignored my question. “Though I assume in your line of work you get to meet all sorts of people — and not just young women who galavant about under false names. And engage in shopping too!”
She reddened a little at the joke, at her poking fun of me. And I laughed, partly because I was supposed to, but also because she was genuinely interesting. As I watched her take a sip of her coffee I realised that her make-up palette was different to the last time we had met: her lipstick was more pale maroon than pale pink; her eyeshadow verging on brown. And then it struck me how these colours matched with the tones of her skirt, the jumper she was wearing. Hers was a carefully curated appearance. I tried to recall how she looked when we first met, and then in ‘House of Fraser’.
“And work?” I pulled myself back to my previous enquiry.
I waited while she went through that internal process of hers, and as I did so it occurred to me (given her previous confession about her name) that she might be a thoroughly unreliable witness, and that whatever she told me ran the risk of being nothing more than fabrication. This realisation only made her more intriguing, however; she was starting to become a puzzle to be solved, her words requiring to be sifted through to find the truth — because I had already persuaded myself that there was indeed something to be uncovered.
“What do you think I do?” Again she turned my question back on me, just as she had with her name: what had I wanted to call her? It was as if she was trying to define herself through my eyes (and others’ eyes too, presumably). Or at least that was how I read it then.
I feigned calculation. “You might not work at all, of course — hence having the time to go shopping, and the shopping itself. Perhaps your parents are wealthy. That’s one possibility.” I allowed a short gap, to give her a chance to confess. She said nothing. I continued. “Or you could be in business; not a businesswoman per se, but perhaps a PA or EA, something like that. Working for a big company. Well paid.”
“Then how come I’m here?”
“A few days off, perhaps.” I had a sense that I was nowhere near the truth. “Or you work part-time. That’s another possibility. Or you are between jobs for some reason. Or you’re just about to move away, so have given up work.”
I was beginning to flounder and Ophelia knew it.
“That’s funny.”
“What is?”
“I mean, given what you do for a living — looking into people, examining them and so on — that you should find it difficult to pin me down. I doubt you’d have any difficulty with the people on that table over there, or the one near the counter.”
I looked to where she was indicating. At one table a married couple, both retired; it seemed likely that he was once in a practical trade of some sort, and that his wife hadn’t worked since they’d had their children (now long since fled the nest). And the two men in suits, probably estate agents or in the legal game (they had that air about them) though they certainly weren’t at the top of their respective professional tree given the cut of their clothes and the tattoos on the back of the left hand of one of them.
I smiled. “You’re right. But surely that just goes to show how interesting you are.” Having made the statement, I was instantly concerned that it may have sounded too much like flattery.
“You sound like my sister.” The smile faded from her lips and she looked down at the table as if she were consulting some kind of manual there, a playbook that would tell her what she should say next. “It might be easier to say what I’m not.”
“Try that then.”
“I’m not moving away. First fact. My parents aren’t rich or anything like that. Comfortable yes, but not wealthy. I’m living there temporarily if you must know — which might explain how I can afford to shop: no rent!” She punctuated her statement with a short laugh. “And if you must know, occasionally I do a little clothes modelling. Not because I’m beautiful or anything, but because I have the kind of figure that makes clothes look good.” She glanced at the jumper and skirt she was wearing. “These came from a shoot last year. They let me keep things sometimes, which is nice.”
“All of which certainly helps explain how refined you always seem to look.” This time I was intrigued to see how she’d take the compliment, or whether it even registered. Moreover, now that she’d confessed to her modelling, I couldn’t help but think I’d seen her somewhere before: on tv, on a banner in a store — but decided that was probably just my mind playing tricks. “What else?”
“‘What else’? What do you mean?”
“That hardly feels like a full-time portfolio.”
“Does it have to?”
“Not at all. It’s just that I get the impression there’s something else.”
“Your professional instinct?”
“If you like.”
At that point she looked at me hard. It was a calculating look; not cold exactly, but the kind of stare someone gives you when they are trying to search something out. I was used to it; clients who, on the verge of confession, were weighing up whether they should talk or not. It was all a question of trust.
Yet even if that was the look, I couldn’t help but feel that in Ophelia’s case she might have been trying to decide how much to lie to me. I imagined that internal voice whispering to her, offering counsel; and as I did so, I knew I would always be playing catch-up, no matter what the circumstances. Challenge or not, it was another element that had me hooked.
“I’m studying.”
“Really?”
“Why do you seem so surprised? Because I don’t look like your typical student? No torn jeans and scruffiness.”
“Perhaps — not that I think torn jeans are necessarily de rigueur for students.” I smiled. She waited for the obvious question. “What are you studying?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” That play of a smile on her lips again; she knew she was being deliberately obtuse. I refrained from falling into the trap. “I’m taking a foundation course in Humanities, with the Open University. Part-time and on-line, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“And in a few months I’ll make my choice about what to study next year — or whether to carry on studying at all.”
It seemed everything she said begged a question, and as such I felt as if there was a role reversal in play — and not for the first time.
“What are your choices?”
“Oh, English, or Art History.” She inclined her head, almost as if she was listening for the off-stage prompt. “Perhaps just History on its own. Or even a general Humanities degree. Those sorts of things.”
“And why might you choose not to carry on after having taken the trouble to work through the foundation modules?”
Draining her cup, Ophelia paused to look round the café. It was busy as always and, had you not known her, you might have imagined she was occupied in counting the patrons — but I was convinced she was listening.
“My sister was doing a degree, but she stopped part-way through — not that there’s a precedent there I have to follow, you understand. And she was studying Philosophy.”
“Was that with the Open University too?”
“No, locally. Why do you ask?”
I smiled. “For a short while I was a guest lecturer on the Philosophy course.”
“Really?” She seemed surprised. “But surely that hardly goes with your training.”
“There can be a cross-over if you look for it. An individual’s philosophy with regard to Life (with a capital ‘L’!) can be influenced by their mental state or inclinations.”
“And vice versa?”
Echoes of my lectures came back to me. Only three years earlier, it had — unfortunately — not been an entirely successful engagement; but I knew my theories were sound.
“Yes, undoubtedly. In fact the way one influences the other — and the depth of those influences — may be more significant when considered in that direction: belief in a certain philosophical position can lead you to live your life in a particular way. To some extent, I think that applies to us all.”
Although this diversion had nothing to do with Ophelia, I found myself warming to the subject — so it was not surprising that I felt some disappointment when Ophelia chose not to respond. An awkward silence threatened to engulf us.
“Why did your sister stop studying?”
“Circumstance.”
“And are you concerned that those circumstances — or similar ones — might apply to you?” If she had possessed a certain nervousness in this regard, it had the potential to explain at least part of her distraction: concern about the future — what it looked like or might comprise of — was a common enough malaise. I’d seen it often enough, including in students. Some of the cases were extreme.
She glanced down at the table: her empty cup; mine part-full, its remaining liquid cold; my phone. Then she shook her head. “No.”
That her response — abrupt and definite — was more than merely the answer to my question was immediately evidenced by Ophelia pushing back her chair, standing, then gathering her bags from the floor. I had the strangest notion that I had inadvertently trespassed. Either that or she had somehow gone too far.
“Soon?” she said.
“Of course.”
“I’ll message you.”