The Truth

by Naomi Joy

  I expect this sort of thing from Anthony, but not from them. I can’t help but feel the rage bubble, air pockets travelling to my brain as things tick into place.

  ‘This is an ambush,’ I croak.

  Anthony squats, his knees cracking as he bends to my eyeline. ‘This is not an ambush, darling.’

  ‘It’s an intervention,’ Mum interrupts, proud of herself for knowing the official word.

  For the next few minutes I feel nothing, though I shudder as the three of them continue to talk, their conversation flowing now their dirty secret is out. They suggest medicines and doctors and treatment plans and tests and care packages and part of me thinks my parents want me to die, would revel in the attention of it all over again. WHAT IT’S LIKE TO LOSE TWO CHILDREN: A MOTHER’S HEARTBREAKING STORY. I’ve heard the lurid tales of families sectioning their loved ones, of otherwise mentally able people being sent away by the real psychopaths, hunched together in the waiting room, warty fingers clamped round pens, signing their loved ones up for a lifetime of experimental testing. I imagine the doctor’s notes I’d get, a brutal write up scripted behind the scenes by Anthony: Acutely-paranoid patient with heart condition refuses medication, and food, believing it to be poisoned.

  My heartbeat races and stalls, a sense of panic looming large as I try to focus simply on keeping my breathing even. What do I do now? I take another long sip of my coffee and, mid-gulp, I feel a twang of pain as it drips into my stomach and a thought I don’t immediately want to entertain cracks my head in two.

  ‘I just need a moment, sorry,’ I explain.

  The coffee.

  I stand up, excuse myself to six wild and worried eyes, and pretend to head to the toilet, but I don’t. I wait for a beat then, when they’re not looking, I sneak into the kitchen. I check the coffee granules, run my hands along the countertops, ruffle through letters and then, on the floor, I spot my dad’s work bag. Open. And, on top, a packet of pills: Antriptophene. I pick it up, my grip firm, determined. I recognise these. These are the pills Anthony tried to give me the morning of the excavation and I’d refused to take them. They must be part of the cocktail he’s been plying me with. I pull out the safety leaflet, running my eyes along the boring bits, searching for signs I’ve been taking this medicine against my will.

  Side effects may include: night sweats, hot flushes, lucid dreaming, paranoia, schizophrenia, hallucinations, psychotic episodes, intermittent fevers, feelings of depression or anxiety especially in at-risk individuals, heart arrhythmias, fluctuations in blood pressure, fainting, nausea, skin irritation, headache, diarrhoea, vomiting, and death.

  I read them over again, stunned.

  Even in the face of this overwhelming evidence – that Anthony has not only managed to convince my father to poison me but has potentially enlisted him as a drug mule to source the drug he’s so keen on stuffing into my food – the full scale of my emotion fails to surface. I feel nothing, a hollow shell of myself, detached from the world I live in and the horrible people surrounding me.

  The presence of these pills in my coffee means something else too. Anthony must have worked out that I’m only avoiding his food. He knew by coming here today and poisoning me anew that I’d have my guard down and he’d be successful. I worry, for a moment, that I have failed, that carting me off to a facility is his way of killing me without getting his hands dirty.

  I hurry back to the lounge, trying to figure out what to do, sitting back into the sofa, the wittering of the three musketeers falling silent as I take my place.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Anthony asks, reaching forward and gripping the arm of the sofa in an attempt to root himself to me.

  It won’t take long for the effects of the Antriptophene to kick in. I recognise the early warning signs all too well: the itch of my skin and the bloat of my stomach have already started, next will come the pain that starts small and burning but will crank up until its potent mix renders me sweat ravaged and soaked.

  It’s time to take back control.

  ‘Anthony,’ I say. ‘I’d like to go home.’

  I’m rolling the dice. Maybe it’s not too late.

  Anthony shares a sideways look with my dad.

  ‘Darling,’ he says, in a way that tells me I have misunderstood something. ‘A team will be here soon and they’re going to take you to a safe place tonight. You’ll stay there until you’re better.’ His breath escapes his mouth and curls up into my face, fishy. ‘And when you’re well enough, you can come home.’

  This isn’t phase one, this is the end phase, and I hadn’t seen it coming, not even close. I am disappointed with myself. My parents called ‘out of the blue’ – which they never, ever, do – all three of them acting weird since the moment we arrived. Mum and Dad were in their Sunday best for the intervention team, not for us. And the lunch – a sort of hurried and bizarre attempt at a last supper before they knifed me in the back and left me to rot in a hospital bed.

  I turn to face my parents, my cheeks turning puce at their gross display of guardianship, as they fail to see past the mask that Anthony is hiding behind, smacking into the hurdles most parents would fly over. My so-called protectors, unable to understand this situation for what it really is.

  ‘I hope you’re proud of yourselves,’ I hiss at them.

  My dad’s urgent intake of breath is audible and high pitched, and Anthony retracts his hand from the sofa. The three of them stare at me as though I am a lost cause, a delusional mad-woman incapable of making her own decisions, devoid of the intelligence to work out what is and isn’t good for her.

  It’s not long before the room is thick with people.

  ‘Are you OK?’ they ask, never interested in the real answer. ‘Do you understand what’s happening today?’

  ‘A fucking crime,’ I reply angrily, turning them against me with my snarled lips and off-key responses.

  The heat pricks louder as they fuss, burning up from the soles of my feet to the top of my skull. A woman tries to relax the iron grip I have on my knee but as soon as she removes my hand I place it back where it belongs. Diverting the pain away from the fire in my torso helps – I’d have told her if she’d asked – but everyone thinks they know better than you when you’ve been labelled crazy.

  ‘We’re going to move you soon, Emelia,’ the same woman says, leaning in tight towards me. I detect a strong odour on her breath and pull away.

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  She doesn’t answer and I scan the room for Anthony, for the distinctive line of his moustache and the high pinch of his cheekbones. I see him, my mum’s hand draped across his back, her hair falling in front of her face. They’re standing in a way that suggests she’s giving him a pep talk. You’re doing the right thing, Anthony, we stand by you in this. You are not alone. Side note: Now the kitchen’s finished I’ve been thinking about the new sofas we’d like in our lounge, perhaps a corner unit?

  I feel sick, my stomach rolling in waves, threatening to break and I tear my gaze away – watching them only makes me feel worse. I stare instead at the twitchy space between the intervention woman’s eyebrows, where the lines of her forehead ebb and flow as she speaks.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’

  I try to answer but the medication has got to me and I find my tongue is stapled to the roof of my mouth, my lips glued shut.

  ‘If not, we’ll try and get you up now and have you checked in nice and early tonight.’

  It’s as though everything’s happening in slow motion. I feel an arm under each of my elbows and I am pulled to standing. I wobble, brimming with renewed pain, forced to stand but horribly close to falling. They have a conversation about whether to bring me a wheelchair instead and, whilst they’re distracted, I turn to my dad.

  ‘Please can you bring me some things from home?’

  ‘OK,’ he says, moving closer.

  ‘I need a bag of clothes,’ I whisper, under my breath. ‘Just take anything, and some make-up from my dresser.
I also need my laptop – it’s under the bed, I think.’ I make it sound low-key, so he won’t find it suspicious, but it’s imperative that he brings it without being found out. I can’t be without it and I can’t risk Anthony finding it and having it searched.

  ‘Right-o,’ he replies.

  ‘Can you go now?’ I ask. ‘While the rest of us head to this place. I want them tonight. My keys are in my bag.’

  He nods as the nurses pull on me again, dragging me away.

  ‘It’s so hot,’ I gasp, a red rag to Anthony’s instincts and watch him salmon-leap across the room to press an ice pack wrapped in a classic-car themed tea towel to my forehead.

  ‘There you go,’ he says loudly, making sure everyone will remember what a doting partner he appeared to be the day he got me sectioned.

  I can’t believe he turned out to be a serial killer. He seemed so nice and normal. How many women did they say he killed? More than twenty? Goodness. No, I wouldn’t have guessed that, he just didn’t seem the type.

  Blog Entry

  11th December, 4.00 p.m.

  I am writing from the antiseptic four walls of my hospital room. I’ve been a patient at the privately owned Elizabeth Anderson Hospital for just under a week and already the regimented daily routine is ingrained in me; breakfast at eight thirty, check-ups from ten, lunch at twelve, visitors from two, dinner at six. Now I know why Anthony was visiting here the morning I tailed him: he was casing this place in preparation for my arrival, probably pre-paying them a tidy sum to keep me in for as long as possible. I put in a request for a change of location – they have another building in south London – hoping to catch Anthony off guard, but it’s been denied. And so my imprisonment goes on.

  I shake my head and free myself from the thought of being trapped here forever. I look out of the window at the grey and grisly sky, then at the TV which plays pictures overhead, on mute, at the sad black-handed clock hanging on the opposite wall, an ever present reminder of how much time I’m wasting stuck here. It ticks two minutes past four as I look up, but it could have been three, or five, or seven: it makes no difference.

  My surroundings are unfamiliar but not unfriendly, the ward is always busy with nurses who walk and talk at supersonic speed. The other patients are mostly elderly, as though they decided en masse to migrate here for the winter – Probably makes sense just to move in, Doris, I’ll be in and out all season otherwise. They move around the ward like giant slugs wearing oxygen masks, lugging IV drips behind them. Dodging in and out of the nonagenarians’ glistening trails are this afternoon’s visitors. You can spot them a mile off: first by their age, second by the worried looks on their faces, third from the ‘I don’t want to be here’ thin-lipped smiles.

  I come face to face with my parents’ version of that very combination now as they open the door to my room: Mum’s in her favourite fleece – a lemon yellow number with a poppy on its breast pocket – and Dad’s clad in a festive jumper that features a Christmas tree strapped atop a car. They come in and Mum raises her hand in a quick wave and points her finger to her phone – glued to her right ear. She hides her worry better than most. Dad remains mute as he greets me with a hug and we both sit in respectful silence as Mum finishes her call, clenching the phone under the right side of her jaw and picking up the dead flowers from the vase next to me, emptying the wilted stems and stuffing it full of a new bunch of cut-price blooms. She nods and agrees into the mouthpiece and affects a cutesy tone peppered with girlish giggles as she speaks. I can tell she’s talking to Anthony. I watch her with straight lips, wondering if I should pull the emergency cord and have them both sent out, then struck off my visitors’ list.

  I have not forgiven them for what they have done to me. I don’t know if I ever will.

  My dad leans in and confirms what I already know. ‘She’s on the phone to Anthony.’ He whispers with accentuated diction as though he thinks I’m hard of hearing as well as hard of reality.

  Mum’s agreements turn excitable.

  ‘That’s a brilliant idea, Anthony’ she says, all aflutter.

  His name sends a crack of electricity down each of my vertebrae and I lose my patience – they’ve come to visit me in hospital, but he is still the focus.

  I cross my arms. ‘Mum, if you’re just going to talk on your phone, can you go outside and do it?’

  She covers the mouthpiece. ‘Just finishing up.’

  I roll my eyes and turn my head away from them both to communicate my dissatisfaction.

  ‘OK, I’ll let you go. OK yes. Bye then. Bye now. Bye then.’

  You hang up, no, you hang up!

  ‘What did he want?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s, umm…’ she mumbles, clearly lying, tucking a clutch of lank hair behind her ear. ‘He said he would come by tomorrow to visit.’

  I shudder at the thought. I’ve been quite adept at dodging Anthony’s visits so far by pretending to be asleep, the past few have consisted of him holding my hand for varying lengths of time as I lie wide awake with my eyes shut.

  She pauses for a moment and my mind clouds over as the true reality of the situation sinks in. She changes the tone of her voice as she picks up on my sadness but interprets it incorrectly.

  ‘Listen, don’t be too hard on him. You can’t expect him to come every day.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  Frissons of tension tremble between us.

  I keep talking. ‘You were wrong to side with him.’ I say it almost to myself, aware my words carry no weight with them anyway. ‘He’s made a mistake putting me in here, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘A man like Anthony doesn’t make mistakes,’ my mum replies frostily.

  Dad pats my arm, squeezes Mum’s shoulder, linking us together with his woolly jumper. ‘Listen, you two, let’s not fight. Ems, all you should be concentrating on is getting better. I know it won’t be long before the happy, healthy girl we all know and love is back.’

  How wrong you are.

  My heart pumps cold blood round my body as I think about what to do next.

  ‘You know,’ Mum says. ‘Anthony’s buying us a new car for Christmas this year.’

  My stomach turns anew.

  ‘It’s brilliant, Ems. A hot hatch I probably shouldn’t be driving at my age, but who cares! The lad in the dealership was dumbstruck when we went to sign the papers.’

  I look away slowly, my sarcastic expression letting them know how disappointed I am that they have been so easily bought and, with nothing else to say, we sit in silence, the colours from the television screen lighting up our faces.

  We hear the rap on the window at the same time and our heads snap towards the sound in unison. A doctor mouths through the pane. ‘Is now a good time?’

  ‘Sure,’ I mouth back, waving her in.

  ‘You must be Mr and Mrs Thompson,’ she says as she strides into the room, hand outstretched.

  ‘It’s a pleasure,’ they reply, standing up, suddenly jittery.

  ‘I’ll cut right to the chase,’ the doctor says. ‘Emelia, your results came back today.’

  I sit up a little taller.

  ‘You’re running higher than average levels on a couple of tumour markers which warrant further investigation. They’re probably nothing to worry about but we’ll run more tests to confirm.’

  I hadn’t been expecting that. My blood pumps harder.

  ‘What’s a tumour marker?’

  She shifts her weight and holds her clipboard to her chest. ‘They’re preliminary signs for various cancers but, like I said, I wouldn’t worry too much. We’ll test again and keep an eye on how they develop.’ She takes a breath. ‘And…’

  My feet turn cold at the foot of the bed.

  ‘We ran a number of exploratory blood tests for you. You’re also slightly anaemic, deficient in a number of key vitamins and minerals, and we found higher than average heavy metals in your blood: arsenic, mercury, lead, cadmium. Do you eat a lot of rice? Fish? Live in an old house tha
t might have been treated with lead-based paint?’

  I struggle to answer and gravitate towards her first question, trying to take things a step at a time. ‘Not really, no.’

  Whatever Anthony’s been giving me is contaminated with heavy metals. I think about lead poisoning, about ancient mariners who went crazy, then bled from the inside out thanks to their contaminated cargo.

  ‘We’ll keep monitoring you, then we’ll take another blood test to see where your levels are at in a few days’ time. If it’s something to do with your environment then they should return to normal whilst you’re here.’

  ‘And my mental health assessment?’ I ask.

  ‘I have the report here but the psychiatrist didn’t make any specific recommendations except to re-test you when the heavy metals have cleared from your system. They could have been contributing to you not acting or feeling quite like yourself.’

  I shoot a look at my parents. White. Two blind mice who’d been trying to play with a cat. They’d been expecting the doctor to tell me I was crazy, to talk to me like I was an idiot, to confirm the delusion and paranoia that Anthony has been waxing lyrical about. Mum’s words ring in my ears. A man like Anthony doesn’t make mistakes.

  No, he doesn’t. Which is exactly why I’m lying here with a barrage of physical ailments he was the sole architect in creating.

  Blog Entry

  12th December, 3.10 p.m.

  I hear a knock at the glass-windowed door. It’s Mishti, armed with a bouquet. She’s wearing a cream jumper which I notice features a few bright spots of pollen. Her face is agitated, distracted, staring at me through the smeary glass partition, marked with handprints and faceprints from where children have shoved their noses up against it to get a good look at me. After a gentle knock, she slides inside and takes a seat, her dark hair billowing behind her before falling in place. She wears a collection of canary-yellow and fuchsia-pink jewels and they sparkle at me from ears, chest, wrists and fingers. I watch her, numb, as a doctor whizzes by, looping a stethoscope round her neck as she rushes off to deal with a nearby crisis.