Over-Anxious Anonymous

By John Eider

A patient arrives as his therapist’s office only to find the previous patient still waiting there; and then the next arrives. Where their therapist has gone, no one knows: all he has left them is a locked door and many questions.

Left stranded without their guide, the three patients must fall on each other to help them through the ups and down of life, their joys and sorrows.
At times they get along, at times they fight, but through it all they find a new resilience. They form their own support group, and without expecting it they even become an inspiration for others.

Over-Anxious Anonymous is what happens when three lonely people find they need other people. It is a story of hope. It is also a story of finding our own strengths when we feel at our most vulnerable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Eider
• Release date: Jun 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463273326

John Eider

Hello, my pen name is John Eider. I am the writer of nine novels, most recently Over-Anxious Anonymous.All are available for free on Smashwords.I work full time and write at evenings and weekends.I'm a mental magpie and change genre a lot, including Detective Fiction, Science Fiction, Adventure and Office Drama. I have nine books on Smashwords:Personal/Office/Political Drama– Over-Anxious Anonymous– Wheels in the Sky– Playing TruantDetective Novels– Late of the Payroll– Not a Very Nice Woman– Death Without PityPsychological Thriller– The Winter SicknessScience Fiction– The Robots– The Night the Lights Went OutI write because I have characters, scenes and stories on my mind, and need a stage for them to play on. I hope you enjoy reading them.

Book preview

Chapter 1 – The Landing

‘Are you here for Lawrence Yale?’ asked the young man, as he arrived on the landing.

‘Yes, I bloody am. Where is he?’ replied the young woman already waiting.

And so began their friendship. It continued,

‘You’ve been waiting here an hour,’ deduced the young man.

‘How do you know?’ questioned the woman. She was sitting on one of the plastic chairs arranged neatly against the walls of the landing.

‘Because, if you’re the session before me; and if your session is as long as mine…’

‘Yes, yes,’ she said, to shut him up. ‘Bloody Einstein.’

‘You say bloody a lot,’ he responded, rather bravely for him.

‘It’s a diversion tactic,’ she answered.

‘How so?’

‘I say it so I don’t say other things, things that might get me into trouble. And it doesn’t work for me to try and say nothing.’ She was speaking a little more calmly now, though no less defensively. ‘Anyway, it’s not quite the hour, it’s a quarter-to.’

‘Yes, it is,’ he answered her, ‘but I always get here early. I sometimes see you leave; before the pause before he lets me in.’

‘Ah yes,’ she recalled, ‘the ten minutes where he writes up the session – don’t you burn to know what he writes about you?’

‘I can’t say I ever think about it.’

‘Really?’

‘No, I’m usually more occupied with what we’ve just discussed.’

‘Which is?’

But he went shy on her.

‘Pull up a chair,’ she offered, to change the subject, ‘you’re making the place untidy.’

He did so, observing, ‘I don’t think that there’s anything untidy about Lawrence.’

‘Do you think he has a cleaner?’ she asked. ‘I can’t believe he does all this himself.’ She gestured across the spotless corridor.

‘I really don’t know,’ he answered.

‘Or a woman then – a man’s never this clean on his own.’

‘I don’t know,’ he repeated. ‘I suppose none of us know. His clients in general, I mean – not you and me specifically.’ He became nervous of his words sounding to presume that he knew anything of her thoughts on the matter. But she didn’t bite as he feared. Instead she answered,

‘But that’s his plan, isn’t it? He told me, We’re friendly, but we’re not friends. We sign a contract to share a safe space. And he’s brilliant, don’t get me wrong. But he’s not really there, is he, not like he would be down the pub, or smooching with…’

‘…with whoever does his cleaning?’

The girl laughed at the ad-lib.

‘Oh, but I don’t see it myself.’ The young man began speaking with some confidence, for social observations were his thing. He elaborated, ‘The kind of woman that a man like Lawrence marries wouldn’t do her own cleaning.’

‘Get you, social snob,’ she snapped. ‘What’s wrong with women who do their own cleaning?’

He went rigid; but she laughed, and he learnt that she was joking.

‘Scared of your own shadow, you are, aren’t you?’

He nodded.

‘I guess that’s what you’re here for.’

Suddenly defensive, he asked, ‘And why do you care?’

He saw a moment of compassion in her face, before she bucked away from it. Instead, she offered boldly,

‘I’m interested in people. Aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he answered.

‘I can tell that, with your interest in rich cleaning women.’

He questioned whether this was a dig. But when he looked up, she was smiling, and her warm confidence was quickly bringing him around. Indeed, enough for him to make another observation,

‘Although, I’d have thought that you might have observed something about me.’

‘Like what?’ she asked.

‘That, for me to turn up while you’re still out here means that Lawrence isn’t only late, he’s going to miss your whole session.’

‘Oh, I knew that,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

‘There’s a note under the door.’

He looked, and saw it poking out from there.

‘Read it,’ she offered.

‘I can’t. It’s not for me.’

‘Well, I did. I thought, if I’m going to be left out here waiting, no response even when I knock the door, then I’ve got a right to find out why. I mean, he might have left it there for me to find, as an explanation.’

‘And did he?’

‘No.’

‘Though it was just plausible,’ he conceded, allowing her to continue by asking, ‘So what does it say?’

‘It’s not from him,’ she repeated, ‘it’s from some bird called Laura.’ The young woman recited from memory in a slightly silly voice, ‘Lawrence. I waited till half-past four, but you didn’t come. I’ve knocked but no one answered, and you haven’t responded to the voicemail I left you. Next time, if you have to cancel, please let me know before I catch the bus over. Laura.’

‘So, he’s been gone all afternoon?’

‘And I called his number,’ she added, ‘and banged the door myself. And this Laura’s right – there is no answer.’

‘Half-four,’ he noted. Then added, hopefully tenderly, ‘So, it wasn’t looking good for you at six.’

‘No, it wasn’t.’

‘So, why have you hung around?’

‘Because I didn’t want to leave.’

Chapter 2 – Then, at Ten Past Seven

‘I didn’t want to leave… because I was scared of what I’d do if I left here.’

Her confession scared the young man, because he wasn’t up to it. He was reminded that Lawrence was offering a healthcare service, and that she and he were customers. Though now he was in danger of having to become her proxy counsellor.

She must have noticed his discomfort, and changed the subject,

‘Well, if we’re going to sit here, then we may as well introduce ourselves.’

‘Christopher Minim,’ he declared. ‘They call me… well, well my friends call me Chris.’

‘God,’ she said with something like admiration, ‘you can start, and lose, and gain your confidence again all in one sentence.’

He smiled at someone caring to notice, and replied,

‘Maybe you should be a counsellor yourself…’ – but then he feared she’d think he’d been sarcastic, when he only meant to praise her perception. Though she answered,

‘And I’d be bloody good at it too.’

‘Another bloody,’ he observed in turn.

‘If that shocks you, then you don’t want to be around me when I’m not on my best behaviour.’

‘Is that a warning or a threat?’

She smiled, ‘You’re so funny when you’re instantaneous.’

Suddenly he felt such warmth. It was as though a fire had lit beneath him, through the simple act of someone being interested.

Though the kindling was quickly blown out by the sound of further feet upon the stairs. The pair sitting down looked up at the clock on the hall wall, which they hadn’t notice creep around a little further while they’d talked. And this was shock enough for the bolder one of them to blast at the newcomer,

‘I thought seven was Lawrence’s last appointment – so who the bloody hell are you?’

Chris both thrilled to the excitement of the girl he had just discovered, and cringed in reflected awkwardness for the man just emerging at the top of the stairs. Yet the man did not respond as Chris would have done. Instead, he seemed barely non-plussed to have been shouted at,

‘I changed shifts,’ he said, ‘for Lawrence.’

‘And do you always get here fifty minutes early?’ asked Cara. (The clock had barely moved around past Chris’s starting time.)

‘It’s bitter outside. He lets me sleep on the chairs.’

‘Well, I’m afraid we’re occupying two of them already,’ she went on, ‘so count yourself lucky that you’re not left standing.’

The man pulled the third away from the wall roughly, though with no violent intent, and sat down a little way away. He said,

‘Well, you’re a hell of a girl, aren’t you. I bet you chew your fella’s ear right off.’

‘I haven’t got a fella,’ she snapped.

‘No surprise there.’

She went to introduce Christopher, but got not no further than, ‘This is…’ before the man burst out,

‘Minnie!’

‘Oh God.’ She stifled a laugh, turning to Chris, ‘is that what they call you?’

‘Minnie Minim,’ announced the newcomer, ‘as I live and breathe.’

‘How’d you know him?’ she asked the laughing man.

‘He went to school with my eldest cousin. Four years above me.’

‘Wait.’ She turned to Chris, ‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty-eight.’

‘God, I’d have put you ten years younger!’

‘Well, I’m barely out of cotton wool, am I?’ There was hardly any point in him not speaking honestly now.

Meanwhile, the newcomer pulled his backpack up over his shoulder until it sat against his neck, then shuffled in the chair until he had an angle at which he could rest. He closed his eyes and went to sleep.

‘He’s not here, you know.’

He opened his eyes again and looked up at the woman speaking. He processed this new information for himself a moment, then declared,

‘Nah, he’s just with another patient.’

Chris couldn’t help but laugh, daring to reply,

‘We’re the other patients.’

‘So, where is he?’

‘We don’t know…’ he said.

‘…And there’s some girl called Laura,’ added the young woman, ‘who came earlier and had to go home too.’

‘A girl called Laura?’

‘Laura.’

‘He didn’t show for her either?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

The fact of the girl called Laura seemed to sway the argument for the newcomer, and he sat up then, looking to the locked door also.

‘So, you guys are waiting for him too, yeah?’

A silence developed when there was no answer.

The woman looked at the sign at waist-height beside the door, and read aloud,

‘Lawrence Yale, BACP Counsellor and Therapist. Don’t you ever notice, if you moved the space he’d be The rapist?’

This brought no response from either man.

‘So,’ she changed the topic, ‘is that it for night-time callers?’

‘There was never anyone after me,’ said the latecomer. ‘Lawrence’d always joke about going home to his supper after nine. I can’t miss my meal, he’d say. How could I look after you if I didn’t look after myself?’

‘He’s hardly looking after us tonight though, is he,’ she added.

‘It’s a bit early for that,’ said Chris. ‘He’s never let us down before.’

‘No, he hasn’t,’ she conceded.

‘You’re just peeved after waiting here and Lawrence not turning up,’ said the other man.

‘Peeved?’ she answered. ‘Honestly, who uses that word anymore?’

Which closed off the passage of conversation.

‘Well, that looks like that,’ said the fellow with the shoulder bag. He rearranged it and his crumpled jacket, standing to leave.

‘Should we leave a note?’ asked Chris.

‘I don’t think so,’ said the woman. ‘He’ll know he wasn’t here. And there’s nothing we can add to what that other girl wrote him.’

‘So, we should be off then?’ asked Chris.

‘No, don’t go,’ she said like a little girl. ‘We’re all here now, and…’

‘…all geared up for a session?’ added the standing man, now stretching as if for a run.

‘Easy, tiger,’ she couldn’t resist replying. Then added, ‘But yeah, we don’t want to just go home.’

Chris looked about himself, ‘Well, we can’t hang around here.’

She concluded, ‘Well, if I’m not seeing Lawrence, then I want a drink.’

Chapter 3 – The Rose and Crown