Too Close

by Natalie Daniels

  ‘Hello,’ Dr Rhys Evans said as I came in, her eyes upping and downing me, her lips pursed, her rigor mortis grin matching my own. I detected a glint of glee at the sight of my appearance; you see, she saw me as part of the cool club and it’s always pleasurable, isn’t it, Dr R, to see the mighty fallen?

  ‘Good to see you,’ she said, swivelling in her chair, crossing one expensively booted leg over the other. ‘Hey, are you going to the quiz tonight?’

  I’d been dreading the school quiz night. We’d had a table booked before any of this started; the usual gang, our two families – even Leah was coming. (Everyone was always congratulating Leah and Ness on having developed a perfectly amicable relationship.) The quiz was an annual highlight for the kids and was impossible to get out of. I owed them a semblance of normality.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I just wanted her to up my antidepressants and to get the hell out of there.

  ‘How’s Ness?’ she asked chirpily.

  I smiled and nodded gamely but couldn’t speak.

  ‘I saw her the other day. Blimey! She’s too bloody beautiful, that woman! She was put on this earth to make the rest of us feel like crap!’

  I grinned some more. Give me the fucking prescription.

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Same really …’

  I would have to be upfront. She was not the sort of person who was sensitive to atmospheres or subtext. ‘I’m wondering about the Lofepramine …’

  ‘Right,’ she said, eyes feasting on my stomach. She looked pained. ‘My gosh, you’re always so slim,’ she said. ‘How the hell do you do it? Skinny cow!’

  I was temporarily stumped. Oh, you know, the Cuckold Diet, works a treat. I couldn’t speak for fear of crying.

  ‘Anyway, how’s it going, any side effects?’

  ‘I’m pretty anxious,’ I said. ‘I’m not sleeping.’

  ‘Oh?’ I didn’t like her tone. ‘Anything in particular keeping you awake?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m just stressed.’

  She stared at me for a bit. ‘What about your periods? How are they?’

  ‘No, it’s not that …’

  ‘Peri-menopausal hormones can make us a bit doolally.’

  I cannot live with this pain inside me. You have to help me. ‘It’s more anxiety,’ I said. ‘I’m having these panic attacks …’

  ‘I tell you, HRT is the way forward.’

  ‘My therapist said I should see you about my prescription …’

  That was a lie, of course. I don’t have a therapist. I’m not against therapy but I’ve always assumed I’d never find one I respected. If I’m going to look for advice, I want it from someone I can truly look up to, preferably someone perfect, like a guru or a saint. At least someone who lives an exemplary life themselves, not someone like you with your Si Hubby problems and your calorie bars in your bag. No offence.

  ‘Anxiety and insomnia …’ she said, sucking on her pen in a strangely suggestive fashion. I got the uncomfortable feeling she was trying to impress me.

  ‘She thinks you should up the dosage,’ I lied. She didn’t like being told that, I could see. She raised one of her ventriloquist-dummy eyebrows and tapped something into the computer.

  Then she turned to me, all swivel and secrets. ‘I might have just the thing …’

  She knew she had me hooked now and there was nothing Dr Rhys Evans liked more in the world than having people hooked; it happened so little outside her surgery. ‘Look,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘Not to name names, but all the celebrities we get in here are on these little beauties. Between you and me, I gave Leah some and she said they were just amazing.’

  I want them.

  With hindsight, she was unbelievable, that woman; she had both name-dropped and broken the ethical code in one sentence. ‘What are they?’ I asked, too desperately, like a drowning woman grabbing on to a twig.

  ‘They chill you out, like Valium or Zanax. They’re the same family, benzodiazepines. Take as and when needed, if you know what I mean. I’m only allowed to give you fourteen at a time.’

  We both listened as the printer wheezed my hopes asthmatically into life.

  ‘Just promise you won’t sue me in ten years’ time!’ she laughed, which you must admit is quite an odd thing for a doctor to say.

  I snatched the prescription out of her fingers.

  ‘As and when needed’ turned out to be that evening, when the prospect of the quiz with its conspiratorial huddles, imparting of whispered secrets, the whole charade that it would entail, became too much. I popped my first pill just before I left the house. I locked the door and Annie ran off to catch up with Polly. Josh sweetly pretended he wanted to talk to me for a while but was quickening his pace and soon all eight of us were walking together, just as we had every year for the last six. Everything was exactly how it always was, except that I was dying inside. Josh and Evie were holding hands, Josh trying to include me in their conversation. I’d noticed how he’d sensed my vulnerability recently, how he’d changed his behaviour towards me; he was kind and gentle around me. He’d even been tidying his room regularly. I loved him so fiercely right then.

  Annie and Polly had run ahead to draw chalk circles around dog craps. I came across the first: Truly delitefull, Annie had scrawled. Delishous by the next. She was really mastering sarcasm. Leah was checking her phone, half present as usual, oblivious to the antics of her ex-wife. And then there were the traitors. I watched them: I hated them both. Ness had the grace to look a bit twitchy and couldn’t meet my eye but Karl was laughing, striding ahead, appearing wholly unwrecked by his deeds. Was there no price to be paid for betrayal? I wondered how the hell I would get through the evening without punching them. Only a miracle could save me now.

  Lo and behold, you know what? A miracle did save me, Dr R! I began to feel different almost the moment we got there. It was extraordinary. I could actually feel the tension in my body begin to disperse. It was magical, as if the hand of God had been placed on my shoulder; I could feel His big strong world-crushing fingers gently untangling those knots in my back, digging into my neck, massaging away all that stress. By the time we’d been handed a glass of wine and were chatting at the doors, my body felt warm and malleable. Then when I sat down at our table, I noticed something beautiful happening inside my head: I can only describe it as my brain being placed in a warm bath for a long soak. I sat there grinning. I don’t think I had ever felt this good in my life before: 100 per cent good. So complete! So peaceful! My troubles were risible. Why had I been so worried about everything when this was how life could be? There was nothing to fear, it was so obvious to me now: life was a gift. I waved at Dr Rhys Evans and that lovely idiot of a husband of hers. I waved at everyone. I loved everyone. I loved the school. I loved Karl. I loved Ness. I was love.

  OK, perhaps I got a touch overenthusiastic during the quiz, possibly a little too competitive with the maths teacher’s table – maybe I shouted too loudly, laughed too raucously, and yes, I saw the way the headmaster was looking at me. I definitely shouldn’t have danced like that or fallen over and given myself an egg-head and, all right, crashing out in the kids’ toilet by the bog brush was not the best idea – but, never in my life had I felt such peace and compassion for the human race.

  Yes, Dr R, heaven is a 1 mg pill called Lorazepam.

  *

  The next day my head was not as bad as you might imagine and the egg had subsided considerably, along with my feelings of overpowering love. Ness begged me by text to go for a walk with her and I deigned to agree. I sent a curt reply: 4.30. Outside yours. I didn’t bother with verbs and nouns – she didn’t deserve them. I turned up late, just to demonstrate that I was calling the shots. I didn’t want to go through the gate and knock on the door – things I had done thousands of times before were now impossible, so I loitered in the street, but unfortunately I was spotted by Evie, who came to open the door. I hovered and smiled and made banal comments like Make Josh do some wor
k, will you? Then Ness came out.

  ‘How’s your head? Do you think it’s going to rain?’ she said, like this was just a normal day. I was pleased when the sky spat at her. She looked pretty awful, which was good. She should look awful. It surprised me to see that she was shaking; her hands trembled as she straightened out her jumper (actually my jumper – I’d given it to her), those dark eyes flashing nervously, settling nowhere, and it struck me with some satisfaction that she was scared of me. Her body was shaking beside mine. She should be afraid. She should tremble. She should be ashamed.

  I walked in silence. She could do the talking; I had nothing to say to her. We crossed the main road and headed to the river, neither of us needing to agree on a route; we had walked this walk hundreds of times. ‘Con,’ she said as we came down the steps, ‘I just want you to know that I really thought I knew myself better than this … I’m really shocked.’

  And I bet she was. She was such a sensible person, you see, Dr R, she was so straight – she was wearing her blue cagoule, for Christ’s sake. She was Ness – the big sister, the responsible one, the efficient, sensible Mrs Jones, the moralizer, the put-on-another-jumper preacher, the sock-puller-upper. Adultery and betrayal was out of character and I could imagine her surprise at what she was capable of. Her fingers shook as she tried to unzip her pocket to get out a tissue. I would draw the line if she started crying. If anyone was going to cry it should be me. Fortunately she just blew her nose. ‘I let myself get too close to him.’

  ‘You can say that again,’ I said. We were now in the open space of the towpath. It was muddy and I was wearing the wrong shoes. The tide had come and gone, litter clung to branches, the water was indeterminable from the sky – the whole scene was drenched in drabness.

  She touched my arm.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ I said, stopping in my tracks. I know, very melodramatic – but I couldn’t bear her to touch me; she had sacrificed such intimacies with her actions. There had to be some sort of payback, karma, whatever. ‘How long has it been going on?’ I asked, using the present tense despite their promises. But of course they’d got their stories straight: it was only the second time it had happened. Suspiciously unlucky to have been caught on the second time, wouldn’t you say?

  Just then another mother from school, Alison, and her dog passed by and the three of us stopped to chat. Now here’s an interesting and bizarre thing, Dr R: we laughed and chatted as if nothing in the world had happened. We told amusing children/school/doggy stories; I don’t remember precisely which, but there was no mention of the fact that my best friend, the woman at my side, the lesbian, was a husband-fucking harlot. Were Alison to know the truth of the situation – say if in two minutes’ time I were to have stuck a branch deep into Ness’s throat and Alison were to give a police statement – she would never in a million years have believed such a thing possible. Aren’t we strange beings? It was almost as if Ness and I were playing roles in a theatre play and this was an interlude. After Alison left and we carried on walking it would have been the most natural thing in the world for me to take Ness’s arm – I nearly did; I had to stop myself and remember how things were. We waved Alison off and promptly returned to Act Two: wronged wife and remorseful slut.

  ‘Can I please ask you not to tell anyone?’ Ness said.

  I stared at her. ‘No. That’s not up to you,’ I said. Blimey, give her an inch. Besides, did she seriously think I would be broadcasting my own humiliation? I looked her up and down. She looked like shit. If she’d still been my friend I would have been appalled to see her in such a state; as it was, I was just curious. ‘Aren’t you even going to apologize, Ness?’ I said.

  She looked flustered. ‘I thought an apology would sound trite.’

  ‘Well, you might have tried!’

  ‘Of course I’m sorry, Connie.’

  ‘No, you’re right. It does sound trite.’ I was aware that I was being cruel, but again, it felt like I was playing at being cruel, as if the whole situation were constructed – the mud, the miserable day just set-dressing. Another day it might be sunny and we might swap roles. Does that sound mad?

  ‘It’s not going to happen again, I promise,’ she said, touching me one more time and letting go quickly. And suddenly we weren’t play-acting. It was serious. We stood there in the pouring rain and I felt indescribably sad.

  ‘How could you?’ I said, genuinely flummoxed.

  The rain dripped off her nose. ‘I’ve been trying to work it out. I think I’ve been terribly lonely after Leah left and Karl’s just been … there … so easy to talk to … he just, he was so kind … and we crossed a line, I got too close with him.’

  ‘Are you in love with him, Ness?’

  ‘It was a mistake. It’s finished.’

  ‘How am I ever meant to trust you?’ I asked her. ‘You knew everything, all my secrets, and you used them against me …’

  She shook her head. ‘No, that’s not how it was …’

  Well, there’s no arguing with the different stories we tell ourselves, is there, Dr R? I looked over her shoulder at the steady flow of greyness moving away to somewhere else, leaving only more greyness in its place.

  ‘I miss you so much,’ she said. I was pleased by this stage to see the tears. She’d earned them. Besides, this is exactly what you want to hear when you’ve been left out of the club, isn’t it? The club is rubbish without you. We miss you. We made a mistake. We need you. You’re a core member.

  ‘I’m so sorry …’

  ‘You fucking should be.’

  What could I do? What would you do, Dr R? Suppose Si Hubby is shagging someone in the orchestra; would you forgive him? I reckon you would. None of us are perfect, not even you. And I missed her, you see. So much. I was lost without her. Especially during this nightmare, she would have been the person I turned to. Do you think people deserve a second chance, Dr R? I do. We can all fuck up. What are we if we don’t show forgiveness? After all, how do we know that we are no better? How do we ever know that we, given the right conditions, wouldn’t shit on our own doorsteps too? Oh, we hope we are better, we like to think we are better than that, we would take our dumps elsewhere – bury them perhaps, but how do we know? I had to give her a chance. I too would want forgiveness.

  Ness read me well and cautiously reached out her fingers to take mine. I responded in an infinitesimal way and she clutched my fingers and twisted them in her own. Then she shuffled forwards and hung her head. I let her crumple into my chest. I appreciated how she played the part of Humble Wretch so I could play the Great Consoler. I stroked her frizzy hair and told her it was all right, everything was going to be all right.

  Chapter 16

  The Squeak is late on her rounds today. Dr Robinson has already arrived and thus gets to watch the loony taking her pills. She seems slightly embarrassed to watch her own handiwork in play and keeps getting up and down to open the unopenable windows; it’s become a sort of nervous tic. The weather has turned cold again, freezing cold – it is Christmas time after all. The sky is low and white. That glimmer of hope the sun brought with it a few days ago was all a trick. Pan’s a sham. The Squeak and I both watch Dr R struggle with the locks but neither of us says anything. The Squeak hands me my antidepressant; I swallow it. The Squeak hands me my anti-anxiety pill and my mood stabilizer. ‘Yum yum,’ I say, and wink at Dr R who is coming over to sit down again. I swallow them. And lastly I’m handed my anti-psychotic meds. I amusingly cross my eyes at her in an impression of a true psychopath.

  ‘It’s a wonder you don’t rattle,’ says the Squeak, joining in on my larks uninvited.

  ‘Off you go,’ I say to her, and dismiss her with a flick of my hand before turning my full attention to Dr R who, I suddenly see as she bends down to zip her bag shut, is wearing a fluorescent elastic sporty bra beneath the subdued hues of her professional garb. It’s difficult to imagine her running or getting down and dirty in a boot camp on a dingy green in north London amongst the dog mess; she
doesn’t strike me as the sporty type at all. I rather suspect she’s one of those people who wear elasticated clothing around the house, sitting on the sofa eating chocolates feeling sporty, hoping by fabric osmosis to lose the weight.

  We both wait for the Squeak to shuffle out, which she duly does. ‘Thank you, Mrs Ibrahim,’ says Dr R, and the Squeak nods and flashes her shark teeth as she exits.

  ‘Have a lovely day, Mrs Ibrahim,’ I add, and watch her disappear into the merry glow of the sunshine yellow hall. I turn back to Dr R, who has a file on her lap and has now covered her fluorescent strap.

  ‘It says in your notes that you went back to Dr Rhys Evans within the month for some more Lorazepam.’

  ‘I certainly did. And I topped myself up with Valium that I got elsewhere. But you know what? I don’t think I was completely bozoed out until I was in that Milton House drowning in Clonazepam.’

  ‘Where did you get them from? The Valiums?’

  ‘A mother at school.’

  ‘Was she a dealer?’ Dr Robinson said.

  ‘A dealer, yes. Just like you but without the medical degree.’

  I make her smile and I feel good about that.

  ‘Tell me about what happened the day of the Harvest Festival.’

  I sigh. ‘Do you dealers try your wares?’ I ask her. ‘Have you ever popped the odd Valium, Dr Frankenstein? Diazepam? Lorazepam? Peterpam?’

  That faint blush always betrays her. Of course she has.

  ‘Lorazepams are crazy, aren’t they? I mean, I never got that beautiful brain-soaking feeling quite the same way again but I got hysterical and frequently passed out. I remember one night playing Scrabble with the kids –’ I know, I was trying to make up for all the chaos, attempting to emulate a ‘Goodnight, John-Boy’ kind of home (had John-Boy been on Snapchat and Mrs Walton been on crack) ‘– and Annie put the word anii down on the board which she said was the plural of anus and I started laughing. I couldn’t stop and I smashed my head against the mantelpiece and then apparently I just crashed out asleep, snoring on a triple word score …’