“Look what Mummy bought for you, Roly Poly. It’s your own personal jail,” she said sarcastically to Alexander as she clicked the walls in place.
I corrected her as I sat myself down on the sofa. “It’s not a jail, Luce.”
“It is. Look at the bloody thing, it has bars. I feel terrible putting him in this.”
“It’s for his own safety. As long as you put some toys in there with him, he’ll have a ball. Plus, you can now go to the toilet without taking him with you. I’m thinking that action in itself is far more detrimental to him than the kiddy pen.”
“Well, yeah, probably I guess.”
I laughed at her confusion. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“What?”
“Do you know if Gareth is still seeing Samantha?”
“I think so. I don’t exactly ask him about his love life. Why?”
“Because I think Samantha has a right to know about Gareth’s condition. It has been bugging me for a long time.”
“She may already know.”
“See, that’s the thing. I honestly don’t think she does. If she did, I’m guessing she would re-evaluate her relationship status with him.”
Lucy shrugged her shoulders.
“Look, I’m not calling her shallow or anything. I’m just thinking that she is young and naive and not the type that could handle a condition such as Gareth’s. I am hoping to be wrong, you know.”
“So what are you planning on doing about it? Clearly you plan on doing something.”
I sighed, thinking about the precarious situation. “I don’t know. A part of me is saying: ‘Yes, tell her, she has a right to know’. But there is also a part of me that is saying: ‘Stay out of it, it’s none of your business. Your interference could undo Gareth’s progression of late’. And believe me, Luce, the last thing I want to do is contribute to Gareth reverting back to a dark place.”
“Alexis, normally I would say stay out of all things that involve Gareth. But I know Samantha is your friend, and I also know that you are stubborn like the best of them. What I will say is tread carefully. Say only what you need to and nothing else.”
“Will you help me?”
She sighed. “I hate getting involved where Gareth is concerned. I’ve been on the firing end of his alter Scott, and let me tell you...it was terrifying.”
“What happened?”
“Well, Gareth has an alter Scott. I know you are aware of him, Bryce mentioned he has made himself known to you a couple of times.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve met Scott. I met him in the office and at the Tel V Awards.”
I hadn’t mentioned to anyone about my third encounter with Scott which was after the board meeting a few months back.
Lucy continued. “Well, it was shortly after I’d gone off the rails and Bryce had—for the umpteenth time—come to my rescue. He’d let me stay here while I was detoxing, and I’d been such an ungrateful, selfish bitch to him in front of Gareth. Jessica said that my harsh outburst and unappreciativeness would have been the trigger to Scott’s appearance. At that stage, we’d known that he’d developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but he had not yet showed any signs of the DID.”
Lucy had started gently combing her hair nervously and if I weren’t mistaken I would’ve said that she appeared quite agitated.
“I had been sitting on the sofa watching TV. Gareth was at the dining table reading the paper, I think. Bryce had told me that he was going to get my Uncle Charles to have some of my assets frozen, because I had been squandering my inheritance on drugs. As he left the room to go into his office, I screamed at him calling him a ‘fucking controlling prick.’ Shortly after his door closed, I felt a terrible pain on my head and soon realised Gareth was pulling me by the hair from behind the sofa.
“He had lost it, completely lost it. I remember him saying in a cold, hated voice as he yanked me up and over the back of the sofa to the ground, ‘You ungrateful, self-centered, fucking brat. He deserves so much better than the filth of a sister that you are.’
“It was just so unlike Gareth and he sounded like a completely different person. At first I yelled at him to let me go, asking him what the fuck he thought he was doing. But it was his eyes that told me something was not right, that, and his tone of voice was all wrong. I screamed for Bryce at that point, because I was terrified and I felt at any moment he would rip my hair from my head.”
I had placed my hands over my mouth, listening to the extent that Scott had gone to over his obsession for Bryce. “Lucy, that sounds absolutely dreadful.”