A User's Guide to Make-Believe

by Jane Alexander

  ‘No.’ She said it fast and loud, before she could think of not saying it.

  When Lewis looked up his eyes were black with longing, with the same desire that twisted inside her. ‘As much as we wanted. They’d have to.’

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t even think about it. She said it again: no. Then she set her glass down on the draining board and walked out of the room.

  In the bathroom she ran the taps, and stared in the mirror. She remembered how Jake had watched as she and Lewis left the meeting, the concern that had creased his forehead. Some people sabotaged themselves. And some took others down with them.

  She should leave. Delete Lewis’s details. Block any contact.

  Her reflection clouded, steam rising from the scalding water. Clumsy dog. He knew nothing. Any minute he’d be knocking at the bathroom door, asking was she OK, had he said something wrong. But there was no sound from outside. She turned off the taps, undid the bolt. He knew nothing – but he knew when to back off.

  He was still in the kitchen, sitting where she’d left him, and the first thing he said was sorry.

  She stood in the doorway. ‘I don’t want to speak about that.’

  ‘No. I get it. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll shut up.’ He pulled an imaginary zip across his mouth.

  ‘Because they can claim damages from me, just for talking about it.’

  ‘OK, it’s OK, I won’t—’

  ‘They can prosecute me, they can take me to court, they can—’

  ‘Cassie. Shh. I get it.’ He risked a brief half-smile. Then, serious again: ‘You look like you’re going.’

  ‘Thinking about it.’

  ‘Don’t.’ He tilted her abandoned dinner-plate, with its cold nest of pasta. ‘You’ll miss out on breakfast.’

  Later, in the lounge, she sat on the sofa with his arm around her. Tried not to talk about Make-Believe, and talked about it anyway.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘I actually remember the day I got better at it, the day it went technicolour. At first I thought they must have upgraded it in some way. Because everything was just – it’s not like there was a technical difference, not like a graphics upgrade on your PC, not that kind of thing. If anything it was – brighter, but less clear. More impressionistic, if that makes sense? Confusing, sometimes; more dreamlike. But when I say it felt more real, that’s exactly what I mean: that it felt more. I felt more. Does that make any sense at all?’ There was more to it, of course, more that had kept her coming back, and back again. There was Alan. But she didn’t want to go into any of that. And Lewis seemed to know what she meant, anyway. She could feel his nod, stubble catching at her hair. ‘I guess I’d broken through in some way. You know when people say you’ve got a good imagination like it’s just something you have, like being left-handed or having red hair. But it’s not passive like that – not in Make-Believe. It’s all conscious, isn’t it? I mean, you’re consciously, constantly making decisions. Like, I’m flying: so do I make the air dry or damp, is it still or breezy? Or, I started off on a sunny day but now I want to make it night, and it’s a clear night so moon and lots of stars, but summer so it’s warm on my skin – all of that. Those details, those choices. To Make-Believe really well you have to put in that effort. And if you practise, keep practising, maybe you can do it so easily that it feels like instinct. It feels … frictionless. So that’s what I think must have happened. And it was sort of an emotional difference, as much as anything else. Two hours every evening, it was the bright part of my day, and the rest of the time it was like I was on hold. Like my life was on hold. Because none of the rest of it mattered, in comparison. I even, I stopped seeing friends, so I had time for Make-Believe. But I was still managing it. Was it the same, for you?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ he said.

  ‘It was only when the cut-off stopped working. That’s when it got out of control. And that was a gradual thing. I didn’t notice at first – but then I realised, that session was two hours and twenty minutes; that one was almost three hours … It kept building up. And I know I should have said something, I should have reported it at work, but I was scared they’d reverse it, so I never said a word.’ She pulled away slightly, smiled up at him. ‘Anyway. Sorry, I’m talking so much and I wasn’t going to talk about it.’

  ‘No, I remember you saying.’

  ‘Let’s talk about something else instead. Let’s talk about …’ She couldn’t think.

  ‘Music?’ he offered. ‘I see you’re a Thin Lizzy fan.’

  ‘Mmm, kind of.’ She looked down at her shirt, stretching it straight to see the picture. ‘You approve?’

  ‘As it happens, no. I hate Thin Lizzy. Take it off?’

  When you enter Make-Believe, there’s a transition between the world you know is real, and the world you Make-Believe. When the information coming from your body – from your flesh and your skin, your eyes and ears, nose and mouth – is muted in your brain, fading, fading to nothing at all. A moment of nothing, in which your neurons release a wash of opioids to counter the emptiness. A moment in which you float, perfected, lifted free of yourself – before the Make-Believe kicks in, and you rebuild the world as you want it to be. An infinite moment, over in seconds: like the threshold between waking and sleeping; like the moment of forgetting when your self dissolves and there’s no such thing as you or him. A moment you could chase for ever, back in the real world.

  It wasn’t anything like that, with Lewis. Perhaps sleeping with him was more like the very first time in Make-Believe, the calibration sequence that matched the individual patterns of your neurological activity with the appropriate sensory experience. A series of instructions for physical actions: raise your right arm, your left, stretch, crouch, turn around, turn around, keep going, lower, no, lower, yes, on top, now – a series of instructions for imaginative tasks: Imagine that you are thirsty. Now, you are drinking a long cool glass of water … Imagine that you are extremely cold. You are freezing. Now, imagine the sensation of warm sun on your skin. Now remember a time when you felt extremely happy. But what if remembering makes me sad? Remember a time. Imagine a time. Imagine that you are happy.

  Afterwards, in her dreams, everything muddles together. The new body memory, close to the surface, of heat and solidity: a man next to her, on her, under and in her. Deeper memory: his eyes, clear, blue. There’s a place at the base of his back, that smooth white dip, where his skin is so thin she can see through to a web of broken veins, a fragile tracery. Elsewhere he is gold, the public parts of his skin, from being outside all the time: pale gold and freckled from the neck up, thighs and forearms down. All of this is clear and perfect in front of her while at the same time he’s behind her, looping her in his arms, pulling her close so she leans, melts backwards into him, into all the ages of him – sixteen – nineteen – twenty-two … There is no need to wake, not ever to wake, from this soft, destroying dream, but she wakes anyway, and finds herself alone.

  No: not alone. Lewis lay next to her. She turned sideways so they were just, just touching, from shoulder down to thigh. Listened to the creak of his breathing, a not-quite snore. Unselfconscious animal. Heard her own blood, the rhythm of herself. Imagined it was his heartbeat, shared through their glancing skin.

  He was not what she’d lost – but he was here, and he was comfort. He was what she could have.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Cassie had tried, often, to pinpoint it: a moment when the present becomes inevitable. The last moment she could have chosen differently, steered herself and Alan both towards an ordinary, perfect future. Her dad’s suggestion of a trip to Australia: Both of you, come and try your luck. Ideas of family reunion, of blood thicker than oceans. Struggling from one temp job to the next, and her dad’s sister pulling in favours to promise a real graduate job in Melbourne. The logic of her leaving before Alan, of saving up once she got there, sending him the money to join her. Calling home, apart for the first time in their adult lives. Telling herself he’d always been
unfiltered, unconventional – that it was only absence making her feel they’d been jolted into separate worlds, talking at angles to each other. No need to speak to Valerie, to raise her concerns, to book a flight on the first plane home.

  If there was a moment, it was irretrievable – but as the bus carried her through the streets where she’d grown up, and on to the neighbouring village where Valerie had lived, she felt herself close alongside it: their past, and their possible future.

  At the church, she was one of the first to arrive. The organ was playing: ‘O Love That Will Not Let Me Go’. She slipped into a pew near the back; from here, she’d be able to see when Alan appeared.

  She kept her breathing slow, inhaling the smell of damp hymn books and dust. Pushed her clammy hands up inside her sleeves as the chill seeped into her. The chapel was filling up well – Valerie had made herself central to the life of the village: singing in the local choir, sitting on the community council – but the front pew stayed empty, until a couple in their sixties walked the length of the aisle. Cassie recognised Alan’s uncle and his wife, taking their place as family. She looked back at the entrance, expecting Alan to follow, and when a young man appeared, burly and fair, for a moment she thought it was him – but no, it was no one she recognised. A nephew, perhaps. And then the door was closed, and the organist fell silent. Cassie waited for the moment when everyone rose to their feet, stood with them, and ‘Excuse me,’ she muttered, ‘So sorry’ as she squeezed her way out from the pew, the minister intoning at her back, ‘… the eternal God is a dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.’ She stepped into the porch, let the door swing shut behind her.

  For Alan to miss his mother’s memorial. It must be very bad with him, worse than ever before. There was only one place he could be – and this time, Cassie didn’t hesitate to call. She knew what the receptionist would tell her, even before she asked. Yes, Alan was still with them; visiting hour, yes, that was still the same, from two until three.

  Saying his name, hearing it said in someone else’s voice. What she’d been putting off for days was suddenly urgent. Before she ended the call, she was already calculating: which bus she could catch, how long it would take. Whether she’d make it in time.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Low hills, land seamed into fields: yellow-ochre, acid yellow, soft green splashed with poppy-red. Villages, every high street the same. The single pub, the shop-and-post-office, the small-windowed cottages. Cassie watched through a window sandblasted with grime, not thinking of where she was going. Thinking instead of the first time Alan spoke to her, in the dinner queue at school.

  She asks for chips, and the dinner lady shovels them onto her plate.

  ‘Is that cos you’re vegetarian?’

  He’s in the queue, right behind. But he can’t be talking to her. She ignores him, slides her tray along towards the till.

  ‘Are you? Vegetarian?’

  She glances back – hiding the gesture with a flick of her hair, so that when she sees he’s with someone else she won’t have embarrassed herself by imagining he might ever speak to her. But he’s not with anyone else. It is: it’s her he’s asking.

  She stares, searching for any sign that he might be taking the piss. His eyes are wide, transparent.

  ‘No,’ she says, and turns away. Her skin is thrumming.

  ‘Oh right,’ he says to her back. ‘I just thought you looked quite vegetarian.’

  I just thought you looked quite vegetarian. She tells him: ‘I’m not.’

  ‘So you just – like chips.’

  She almost laughs, because what is she meant to say to that? Yes, she likes chips. She likes them because you can tip them into a cardboard cup, take them outside, eat on your own without needing to sit apart from everyone – and they keep you warm; or you can imagine them keeping you warm.

  Cassie swayed as the driver turned left. She glanced down at her screen, checking how far they’d come. Remembered the first time she’d visited, Meg in the passenger seat for moral support, chatting through her nerves like they were on a day trip; the return journey, the two of them silent, Cassie nudging the radio up, up a bit more. By bus, it was a longer journey, a roundabout route that linked a dozen villages and towns.

  At last, her screen pinged. The arrow flickered, in the centre of a pulsing bullseye. She’d reached her stop.

  It took all of three minutes to walk through the village. The standard pub, shop and bus shelter was all. She kept on into the countryside, checking her map to make sure she was heading in the right direction, stepping every so often into the verge to let the cars shoot past. The road sloped up – farmland on either side, wheat fields patterned in pale strips – and she could see nothing but the brow of the hill, a line against the sky that didn’t seem to be coming any closer. It took twenty minutes to reach the top. Just ahead was a turning – and now she recognised the road. This was the way she’d come before, in the car. She was almost there.

  The second time he speaks to her is a few days later. It’s like he’s done it on purpose, slipped into the queue behind her.

  ‘Same again?’ he asks, as the chips land on her plate.

  ‘Yep,’ she agrees. Same again.

  The dinner lady asks what he’s wanting.

  ‘Chips, please,’ he says – and whatever he’s up to, it’s making her want to smile.

  ‘Is that cos you’re vegetarian?’ she asks.

  ‘I am, actually. Well, actually, I’m kind of just trying it out. There’s not much, you know, if you are vegetarian.’ He looks at the lasagne, the chicken curry, the fishcakes, and his face is mock-sorrowful.

  ‘Salad?’

  ‘Mmm.’ He frowns. ‘Yeah, I suppose.’

  She pays, takes her tray to the drinks stand and tips her chips into a cup. She can feel him follow her. Feel him standing right beside her.

  ‘OK if I sit with you?’

  For a moment she doesn’t know what to say. Then: ‘I’m going outside,’ she tells him.

  ‘Aye, I know,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen you before.’

  He does just like her, pours his chips into a cup, spilling them over the edges.

  ‘Is it OK if I come with you?’

  They stare at each other.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘OK.’

  Later, she asks him if this is something he often does – striking up random conversations in the dinner queue.

  ‘Aye,’ he says, ‘sometimes. Maybe. If it’s someone I want to be friends with.’ His eyes are as wide as ever, a darker shade of blue. He says, ‘If it’s someone I fancy.’

  It was discreet, unsigned, the turning for Raphael House. It opened into a gravel drive that crunched under her feet, curving off towards a building arranged as three sides of a rectangle and set in front of a hill, a small patch of woodland. She had been pleased, the first time she came, thinking the wood and the hill might help him feel at home. The hospital, though, was nothing like a home. A low blocky building, smooth and drab in mustard render, with an ugly glass portico jutting over a sliding door.

  She glanced at her screen. Somehow, despite the endless bus journey and the uphill walk, she was ten minutes early. They would let her wait inside, she was sure – but instead she turned, skirted the building, following the path that led around the back of the hospital.

  She wished it could have been harder to find him. Wished it could be impossible. For her, selfishly; but more than anything, she wished it for him. Over a year since she’d seen him last, and it seemed like nothing had changed.

  But it would have to change now, or so she guessed. She couldn’t imagine how Valerie had been covering the fees for so long. Raphael House was a private facility, after all, part of the Chrysalis Healthcare Group. And now Valerie was gone … The house would be sold, perhaps; the money used to make sure Alan could stay a while longer. That was the best worst-case scenario.

  She was near him now, walking down the side of the wing that housed his ward, passing r
ight under the window she thought was his. Here, by the fire exit, there was a paved area with a bench half-hidden by a stand of bamboo. She sat, and her foot knocked against a flowerpot filled with cigarette ends. Not from patients, she guessed, but staff on their breaks.

  It was overdue, this visit. To sit and listen, or try and talk: it shouldn’t be too much to offer. It was how he’d saved her, kind of, by talking. Like how he’d asked straight out that time: ‘Is it right that your mum died?’ That’s how he said it, like it was just another question. Are you vegetarian? Is Cassie short for Cassandra? Do you not have any friends at school? Is it right that your mum died? Like he wasn’t scared of asking, or scared of Cassie, or of Cassie’s dead mum.

  ‘Cos I heard people talking, but – people say lots of stuff, eh, so I wasn’t sure.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Not to me they don’t. They talk about me, not to me.’

  He’s holding her hand – loosely, lightly, not a loaded squeeze to accompany a difficult conversation. He just is. He just does. ‘What happened?’ he says. ‘Was she ill for a long time or – or do you not want to talk about it. Sorry, if you don’t want to.’

  She does, and she doesn’t, and she does. No one else asks. No one asks: What’s it like for you? Not since Meg left for uni. Not her dad, and not any of the teachers. Not the girls who’d been her friends till life got shit and they all freaked out and scurried away. So she’s forgotten how to talk. How to be herself with someone else. How to not be on her own. She keeps waiting for him to see the darkness around her, inside her, and run – fucking run, a million miles. Instead he’s lit something: a match, a candle, an emergency flare. Instead, he’s cracked her open, and let the light creep in.

  This bench: it was where she had come on her final visit, last spring – after the orderlies had arrived to settle him down. This was where she had sat, needing an interlude before she got back in the car, before she had to drive. Here, gazing up at the hill, at birch and willow blurring as she blinked and scrubbed her eyes, while on the other side of the wall she knew Alan was fighting a forced sleep. Fighting, and losing. Where, just for a moment, she’d acknowledged the unthinkable thought: that what he was living was not a life. That she wished she could grieve for the loss of him. Where she’d fumbled in her satchel for a tissue, closed her hand instead round the smooth case of her receiver. A risk, to Make-Believe right there, outside and alone, but the real world was somewhere she hadn’t been able to bear. To escape, just for a short while, to a place that wasn’t cruel; to push him out of her head, that poor copy of him—