Bryant stepped forward, took her elbow and eased her down to a seating position.
‘But why…I mean…who…?’ she asked, shaking her head in disbelief.
A minute in and this woman had already demonstrated more emotion than his mother.
‘Just take a minute,’ Kim said. She caught Bryant’s eye and nodded towards a bottle of water on the desk. He grabbed it and handed it to the counsellor before taking a seat.
She took a swig. ‘Thank you.’
‘Did you know Jamie well?’ Kim asked to ease her into the questioning gently.
She nodded after taking another swig. ‘I met Jamie when he was twelve years old. Initially I was seeing all three of them, as his parents didn’t want me to talk to him alone.’
‘Why not if they brought him to you for help?’
Megan took a breath. ‘It was a certain kind of help they were seeking.’
‘Go on,’ Kim urged.
‘They wanted me to help him but only in their way. There was a script they wanted me to follow.’
‘Which was?’
Megan hesitated as her face hardened. ‘They wanted me to convince him he wasn’t gay.’
Kim took a moment to digest this. Maybe the woman had got it wrong.
‘Are you sure they didn’t just want you to help him explore—’
‘No, officer. I was instructed to remove the very notion from his head,’ she spat. ‘It was made very clear to me what they expected me to do.’
‘How were you supposed to do it?’
Megan shrugged. ‘They seemed to think that prayer and denial were the only tools needed.’
‘And did you try?’
Megan fixed her with a hard gaze. ‘That’s not what I do, and I’ll try not to be offended that you actually asked me that question.’
Kim shrugged. She wasn’t too bothered. She only wanted to know about Jamie.
‘To be clear, I explained to Mr and Mrs Mills that my job is to help people come to terms with their sexuality, to understand it, to ensure they don’t see it as a defect in their genetic make-up. To build them up, to embrace who they are. My work is about acceptance and exploration, about confidence to be who they are, so no I did not try and convince him he wasn’t gay.’
Kim appreciated the woman’s passion for her work but it was a question she’d had to ask. ‘So what happened?’
‘I managed to get a couple of one-on-one sessions with Jamie. He was conflicted. He was starting to feel attraction to other boys. When he told his parents, they called him every foul name they could come up with. They told him that such thoughts were not only ungodly but perverted, and they likened him to a paedophile.’
‘What?’ Kim exploded.
‘I know it’s hard to believe, but I feel they honestly thought it was some kind of disease for which they just needed to find the right treatment.’
Kim was struggling to believe that such people and attitudes still existed, but then she pictured Jamie’s parents and it wasn’t such a stretch. ‘You say you only saw him a couple of times, seven years ago?’
She shook her head. ‘He came back about a year ago.’ She smiled. ‘He knocked on my door, told me he’d got no money and asked if he could come in for a chat.’
‘And you let him even though he couldn’t afford you?’
‘Of course,’ Megan said, like it was a no-brainer. ‘And do you always start off with such a jaded opinion of people?’