True Affliction - Chapter 1

“For the ones who love too hard.

And for him
the ghost I wrote out of my chest,
the heartbeat I’ll never forget.”

---

The first rule of surviving London was this: don’t let it swallow you whole.

Because it will. Slowly, sweetly, like a promise in the dark.

I stood barefoot on the cold tile floor of my flat, sipping scorched coffee that tasted like burned apologies. Outside the window, a grey ribbon of sky pressed heavy on the glass. Nounou barked at it like she meant to tear it down. Her bark was sharp, indignant, the sound of a creature who refused to be underestimated. My tiny, four-legged queen.

“It’s not personal,” I muttered, setting the mug on the counter and stepping over one of her toys. “London hates everyone equally.”

The flat was still a mess. I hadn’t finished unpacking since the move two weeks ago. My new life had arrived in cardboard boxes and bubble wrap, sterile and full of promise. But the old one still clung, like dust, like breath I hadn’t exhaled yet. I was twenty-six, officially a practicing clinical psychologist with a handful of clients and an expensive degree from Edinburgh to prove I knew what the hell I was doing.

Sort of.

Today, I had a new patient. Ella Hamilton. Private intake. Referred discreetly, and strangely, through her husband. There’d been no consultation, no standard referral letter, no clinical background. Just a call from a PA, a name, and a request for my earliest available slot.

Which raised a question no one asked out loud:

Why me?

Clients like Ella didn’t usually end up with therapists like me. I was too new. Too young. Not the kind of person high-profile families trusted with fragile truths. Ella belonged to the kind of world that paid for polished, published, deeply vetted professionals.

And I was... not that.

I flipped open her file and read the sparse intake note again. Referred by personal physician. Symptoms: anxiety, sleeplessness, episodes of disorientation. No psychiatric history. No trauma listed.

But that didn’t feel right.

Her voice, during our brief call, had trembled at the edges, not the way someone sounded when they were simply tired or anxious. There was a heaviness there. A silence too practiced to be benign.

I jotted a new line beneath the file: Check her eyes.

And then, just below it: Too clean.

Because you can always tell in the eyes. And someone wanted this version of her story told on paper.

Tom texted while I was brushing my teeth.

Tom: Dinner? I’ll cook. Something with actual vegetables. Novel concept.

Me: Nounou demands steak. Medium rare.

Tom: She’s insatiable.

Tom was the kind of man who made life comfortable. He opened jars and remembered which wine I liked. He never raised his voice. We were a year in, and he still brought me coffee in bed after long days with patients.

He was safe.

But sometimes, safe felt like silence. Like a story written in soft pencil, fading before it could be read out loud.

---

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The clinic lived inside a Georgian townhouse tucked behind a quiet street near Hyde Park. Its windows were dressed in white linen and unspoken wealth. Inside, everything was soft neutrals, pale wood, and the faint scent of sandalwood and lavender, like a spell humming low in the walls.

Ella was already waiting when I arrived.

She sat like a still life, untouched by time. Refined, pale, unnervingly poised. She wasn’t beautiful in the usual way. She was beautiful like porcelain is beautiful, cold, perfect, and easily shattered. Her cashmere wrap clung to her shoulders like fog over frost. Her legs crossed neatly, hands resting in her lap, fingers unmoving.

When she looked up, her eyes didn’t quite meet mine. They floated somewhere just to the side, like light on the edge of a mirror.

“Ella?” I asked gently.

She rose with a nod so small I might’ve imagined it. “Yes.”

In the office, she didn’t hesitate. She chose the farthest corner of the couch and perched on its edge like a woman unsure the floor beneath her would hold. Not relaxed, not reclined. Perched.

I settled into my chair, angled just slightly toward her, open but not intrusive. My voice low, soft. The way you speak to a startled animal. Or a ghost.

“This is your space,” I said. “You don’t have to perform anything here. There’s no script. No pressure. We go slow. We go soft.”

Ella didn’t answer right away. She just looked at the room, the bookshelves, the water glass on the side table, the framed print of clouds over the Yorkshire moors. Her gaze lingered on the window for too long, like she was mapping an exit route.

And then, finally: “It’s quiet in here.”

“That’s the idea,” I said.

Another beat passed.

“I haven’t really slept in days,” she said. Her voice was soft, but not fragile. More… worn. Like a sound that had passed through too many locked doors before it made it out.

I nodded. “That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”

“Do you remember when it started?”

A breath. “Not exactly. It was gradual. Weeks. Then months. Now I’m lucky if I get an hour at a time. I sleep in flashes. Minutes. Then I’m awake again. My body’s still, but my mind… just keeps running.”

“Running where?”

She paused.

“I don’t know. Sometimes it’s dreaming. Sometimes it’s not.”

“What are the dreams like?”

She looked away, at the water glass now. Then at her lap. Her fingers tightened, just slightly.

“They whisper,” she said.

My pen stilled.

I kept my tone calm, easy. “What do they whisper?”

“It changes,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a voice I think I knew as a child. A lullaby voice. Other times it’s someone I’ve never met. But I always know them. Somehow.”

Her voice dropped even lower. Almost a whisper herself.

“They always say the same thing. Remember.”

Our eyes met. And this time, she held my gaze.

“But I don’t know what I’m supposed to remember.”

A chill passed through me, thin and exact. Not fear. Recognition. As if some old thread, long buried, had twitched beneath my skin.

“Do you feel different when you wake up?”

“Yes.” She swallowed. “It’s like… like the dreams are showing me things from the past. But also things that haven’t happened yet. I know it sounds mad.”

“It doesn’t,” I said, gently. “Dreams can do both. The unconscious doesn’t care about linear time.”

She gave a small, humorless smile. “That’s comforting. Sort of.”

We sat in silence for a few moments. The kind of silence that stretches and breathes, rather than tightens.

“Tell me about your days,” I said. “What grounds you? What makes you feel most like yourself?”

“I don’t know,” she said, almost immediately. “I used to paint. I haven’t picked up a brush in over a year.”

“Why?”

She hesitated. “Things got… complicated.”

I let the pause open.

“Your intake was quite minimal,” I said. “No mention of any previous diagnoses. Nothing about family. Is there someone supporting you through this?”

She blinked, slow. Then smiled again, but this time it didn’t reach anything inside her.

“My husband,” she said. “He’s… he thinks talking might help.”

“You mentioned him on the call. Just briefly.”

Another pause. Her posture stiffened, almost imperceptibly.

“He made the appointment?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know you’re here today?”

Her smile faltered. “Of course.”

But something behind it wavered.

“Would you like to tell me more about him?”

Ella’s fingers curled inward, tightening over her wrist. Her nails grazed the soft skin there.

“He’s very… accomplished,” she said. “Respected. Everyone loves him.”

I nodded, not filling the silence. She shifted in her seat.

“But that’s not the same as being known,” I offered.

Her throat moved as she swallowed.

“We’ve been together for a long time,” she said. “He wants what’s best.”

“And what do you want?”

Ella looked up at me sharply, like I’d pulled her out of something.

“I want to sleep,” she said. “I want my dreams to stop whispering.”

I nodded slowly. “And if they don’t?”

She didn’t answer.

Her gaze dropped to the rug beneath her feet. She stared at it as if it might vanish too, or open up and take her with it.

“Sometimes,” she said, after a long time, “I feel like someone always knows where I am. Even when I haven’t told them.”

My breath caught.

“Someone?”

Her lips pressed into a fine line. “It doesn’t matter.”

But it did. And I wrote it down.

By the end of the session, her breathing had slowed. Her shoulders had lowered. But I could still feel the tremor coiled inside her, like a wire pulled tight beneath silk.

She thanked me before she left.

I watched the door close behind her. The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It hummed.

Dreams that whisper. Memories of lives not yet lived. And somewhere, out in the unseen, someone watching her like a story they already knew the ending to.

I had already crossed a line. Slipped into her story. Into whatever storm was quietly building on the horizon.

And somewhere in that gathering dark, eyes were waiting.

Not above. Below.

As if the earth itself had opened its mouth to listen.