“Okay, I’m just going to put your conditioner on?”
What am I supposed to say in response? I give an awkward half-nod and mumble something under my breath. The kindly hands disappear for a moment and I hear faint plasticy sounds as she dispenses the conditioner. “Okay, Mrs Harper? If you’re ready?”
The conditioner is cold, much colder than the shampoo, and it feels as if there’s a lot of it. Perhaps this is because of the new colour. Perhaps they’ll try and sell me some of it when I leave. Perhaps I’ll buy some. It feels strange against my scalp, though, strange and heavy, and the scent is like barren soil turned over in a bleak garden in November. Is this what’s supposed to be happening? Maybe I should say something. The water is turning cold, too, and the chill makes me shiver. I try to sit up but I’m weighed down by whatever she’s put in my hair, as if it’s full of concrete, and the basin must be filling too because I can feel water lapping against my ears. Is my hair caught in the drain? I try to sit up but then Gemma’s hands are back on my scalp, and for a moment I feel relieved.
Then she grabs hold of my head and pushes, one single hard firm push, and the basin falls away beneath me and I’m suddenly drowning in cold water, held under by Gemma’s strong slim hands. My eyes fly open in the panic but the water’s too dirty for me to see through, it’s brown and murky and I can already taste it in my mouth and my nose, it’s thick with mud, the heavy brown mud that she put on my hair to weigh me down, and when I try to move my arms so I can push Gemma off and break through to the surface, I find I can’t move them because they’ve already been caught and held by the sucking mud. She’s pushing me down and down into it and it’s got me, I’m going to drown in mud and water and there’s nothing I can do. I’m dying. Right here in the hairdressers, I’m dying, coolly put to death by a young girl called Gemma with grey hair and a pretty face.
Maybe this is the right thing? Maybe if I’ll die I’ll see Joel again?
No. This can’t be how it ends, I won’t have it. I can’t give up yet. I have to keep looking for him. I have to fight. I have to find out what all this means. I only have to last until Christmas Eve.
My lungs burning, my chest spasming, I make an almighty effort. I force my right arm free of the mud and push up through the thick water, trying to find something I can pull against to prise myself out. My body’s fighting me, trying to make me take the breath of water that will kill me. My fingers find what feels like a handful of grass. I seize it and pull, one single strong pull, and I hear someone screaming but it doesn’t matter because I’m pulling myself out, the water’s growing clearer and I can see the light above me and as my lips break through the surface I take a single blessed gasping breath and flail my arms and another breath and I try to tread water and pray the water’s deep enough that my feet won’t touch the bottom so the mud won’t grab me and pull me back down again.
But there is no water. There is no mud. There’s only the bright lights and stylish silver decorations and clean fruity scents of the salon, and a ring of frightened faces and a terrible hushed silence that’s almost loud enough to drown out the oblivious chatter of the radio (“Our phone-in subject today: does Christmas start too early these days? Give us a call with your thoughts…”) and, just behind me, the whooping sobs of a young girl terrified beyond all reason.
“Mrs Harper? Mrs Harper?” It’s the salon owner, patting gently at my shoulder. “Mrs Harper? Can you hear me?”
“She tried to drown me,” I croak. “That girl. She put mud on my hair and she tried to—”
“I never! I never!” Gemma rushes forward from behind the basin, holding out her hands beseechingly. Her face is white and panicky. “I was just conditioning her hair and she suddenly started screaming and flailing about, I never tried to drown her!” A fellow customer tuts sympathetically and holds out her arms, and Gemma buries her face against the older woman’s shoulder.
“Mrs Harper, I think you might have had something medical happen.” The salon owner is speaking very slowly and clearly. “I want you to sit very quietly for me while I call an ambulance, all right? We need to let someone take a look at you. Can you do that for me?”
“I haven’t had a stroke. I’m fine, I can talk fine, see? It was that girl, she tried to—”
“But I never touched her! I swear!” Gemma’s frightened face, red now with crying, appears for a moment, then vanishes again. There’s a small patch of crimson blooming on her scalp.
“Mrs Harper, I need you to just sit calmly, all right? The ambulance will be here soon… No, please, just sit quietly—”
I scrabble wildly round in my seat to look at the basin. It’s shallow and empty. My hair is wet and silky, scented not with mud but with delicate floral conditioner. I swivel back round in my seat. The salon owner is on the phone. The circle of faces watches me, sympathetic but wary. I must look like a madwoman. Perhaps they’re right.
All instinct now, I glance around the salon, little quick glances like jabs of a knife, working out my route. My coat? In the back. Never mind. Have to leave it. My bag? By the chair in front of the mirror. The door? Open. Here I go.
I leap from my chair, grab my handbag and race for the door. There are squeaks and squeals of alarm, but no one tries to stop me. Why would they? They probably all want me gone as much as I do. The cold clamps my wet head like iron and the air burns my lungs, but I don’t have time to worry. There’s someone chasing me after all, which means I have to keep running, keep running, keep running…
“Susannah!” A hand grabs my arm. I shake it off, but it grabs again. “Susannah!” A familiar voice. Melanie. “It’s me! It’s me. It’s me. Stop.”
I want to keep going but there’s no point. I can beat Melanie over short distances because I’m taller, but anything more than a quick dash and she’ll inevitably catch me. She’s always had more stamina than I have. She clutches at my arm with fingers smudged with biscuit-coloured polish.
“Sorry about your manicure.”
“Forget the manicure, I’m worried about you. What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“I heard this awful noise, sort of like someone choking, then everyone started screaming, and when I came out I saw… You grabbed that girl’s hair, Suze, you pulled out a clump by the roots.”
I look down at my hand. My fingers are tangled with strands of grey hair.
“Now listen. They think you’ve had a stroke. Apparently it happens sometimes, something to do with the basin against the back of your neck. You need to calm down and come back with me and wait for the ambulance. Okay?”
I can’t stay here. I can’t wait for the ambulance and the questions and the hours in hospital. They’ll look for a physical cause first, and when they find nothing they’ll conclude there’s something wrong inside my head, and they’ll take me to a secure unit for assessment and observation, and that will be the start of a slow meticulous process that could take weeks or months or maybe only days, but it doesn’t matter because I can’t spend even days locked away from the world. I have to be at home for Christmas. I have to understand what the universe is trying to tell me. And that means I have to get out of here, quickly, before the ambulance comes.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I’m so sorry. Give the kids my love. I’ll call you later, all right?”
And before Melanie can grab me I leap past her, run the twenty feet and dive onto the bus that is about to pull away from its stop.
Life Without Hope:
Keeping the Feasts
If you’ve been bereaved, you’ll already know how painful it is when the milestones of the year roll around. There are the private ones. (This time last year we were on holiday, this was the last birthday although we didn’t know it, a year ago today we first got the diagnosis, this was our last good day, this day the day we lost them, this the funeral.) And there are the public ones, the ones where seemingly everyone else but you is having the perfect time with their perfect unbroken families, hunting Ea
ster Eggs or trick-or-treating or getting ready for Christmas or whatever. It hurts. It all hurts. All of it.
With death we can think, They wouldn’t have wanted us to be miserable. Life has to go on. Even if we feel guilty for eating the chocolate, lighting a pumpkin or putting up the tinsel, we can tell ourselves that this is part of moving on. If we’re being watched, at least means there’s someone still there to watch, which means there is life after we die, and we haven’t really lost our loved ones at all.
But what about when they’re simply missing?
For a long time, I was terrified of celebrating. I was afraid that if Joel came back and saw that I was having fun without him, he would think I didn’t want him any more. So while everyone else’s house was bright and happy with Hallowe’en lights, Christmas lights, Easter daffodils, football flags or anything else – while everyone else went to bonfires and carol concerts and festivals – I didn’t dare do any of it. Just in case he was watching. Just in case.
Then six months after Joel disappeared, my sister’s youngest child was born.
I’ll be honest, her birth was bittersweet for me. She’s Joel’s cousin and she’ll never meet him, she’ll have no memories of him at all apart from maybe photographs. But when I looked at her face, I knew that I wanted to be more than Sad Auntie Susannah who never comes to birthday parties and won’t take you on the rides at Hull Fair and doesn’t celebrate Christmas.
So now, when it’s time to celebrate, I celebrate with the loved ones I have left, with my sister, my brother-in-law, my nephew and my niece. And while sometimes I have to wipe away the tears, at least I’m there. Part of my family. Still living. Still loving.
Posted on 13th June 2015
Filed to: Coping Strategies
Tags: coping when a loved one is missing, missing people, support for families, Susannah Harper, Joel Harper
Chapter Eleven
Thursday 23rd November 2017
The bus is crowded, but I’m grateful for the body heat. I stumble down the aisle, trying not to mind or feel conspicuous as bags and feet are gathered in and faces stare in avid surprise. There’s one seat left, next to a slim young girl with corn silk hair and heavy nylon lashes, who’s absorbed in her phone. When I sit down, shivering and blue-fingered, my hair drips water onto her jeans. She sighs and turns away, but doesn’t speak. The warmth of her young body is tempting, and I have to resist the urge to lean against her. The characters in the game she’s playing all wear Christmas hats, and bright crumbs of electronic snow fall across the screen. I clench my jaw to stop my teeth chattering. After a few minutes, the window begins to mist up.
What just happened to me? I have no idea. I can’t fight it, I can’t resist it, I can’t think or speak or do anything other than sit in dumb passive silence and endure, until the next thing happens to me and it’s time to endure that too. This must be how animals feel when they’re wrenched from their green field and jammed into a lorry with dozens of their companions, driven sightless and waterless across an unknown distance to a concrete bunker that smells of death. In my handbag, my phone flashes and shudders. Melanie Mobile, it says. Melanie Mobile. Melanie Mobile. Melanie Mobile. I close my eyes and count to twenty, slow and steady. When I open them, I see a smaller message: Melanie Mobile missed call. Just as I begin to feel safe, another summons begins. Melanie Mobile. Melanie Mobile. Melanie Mobile. I stare at the screen in terror.
“You know you can just reject the call, right?” It’s the girl in the seat next to me. She takes my phone from my bag and dabs at the fat red circle labelled Decline. “See? Just keep doing that and they’ll get the message. And you can block the number if you want. And then all that’ll happen when they call is it goes straight to voicemail. You don’t even have to look at the messages or owt, it won’t notify you. Is Melanie your ex or summat?”
I shake my head, not quite daring to meet her gaze. My phone starts ringing again. Once again my rescuer dabs at the screen.
“S’all right, I’ve got a mate who’s a dyke, I don’t mind. Lasses can be horrible sometimes, can’t they? There was this one girl, Shell was only seeing her for three weeks and when they broke up she phoned her and phoned her and phoned her, all day and night, begging her to get back with her. She had to go to the coppers in the end, get her warned off.” She puts a hand on my arm. “Get some help if you need it, yeah? Right, this is my stop.”
She swings her strong young body past mine and strides off down the bus, followed by the approval of the rest of the passengers. We’ll be the salty seasoning for many people’s teatime chat tonight. I was on the bus this morning and there was this poor woman, her hair was all wet like she’d just got out the bath and she hadn’t even got her coat on, blue with cold she was. And her phone was ringing and ringing and ringing, it was her girlfriend apparently – yeah, her girlfriend, not her boyfriend, not that it matters these days – and there was this young lass sat next to her had to show her how to block the calls. Nice young lass, nice to see her looking out for someone like that. Or perhaps Not surprised it all went wrong, it’s not natural, lasses with lasses, is it? Maybe now they’ll both find themselves a decent fella instead. It won’t matter that none of this is true. The brief intersection of my day with theirs will be woven into the narrative of their lives, and I will be forever fixed as the mad gay woman who ran away from a bad relationship and got on the bus with wet hair and no coat on. Melanie Mobile. Melanie Mobile. Melanie Mobile. Five missed calls. Six.
She’s not going to go away. I’ll have to talk to her sooner or later, so why not sooner? Outside Hull Royal Infirmary’s tall thin slab of windows, I get off the bus and stand in the slight shelter of the building’s shadow. Melanie Mobile. Melanie Mobile. Here we go.
“Susannah? Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me, it’s my phone.”
“Thank God. I was afraid you might be the police or something, I thought you might have got in an accident.” Her voice breaks and I remember with something like pain that Melanie loves me. “Where are you? What are you doing?”
“I’m just in town.”
“Is anyone with you?”
“No, of course not.”
“I’m coming to get you. All right? And then we’ll go to the hospital to get you checked over. So where are you?”
I could tell her I’m already at the hospital. I could even take her advice, go and join the queue in the Accident and Emergency department.
“I’m nowhere, I’m just in town, walking around, that’s all.”
“With wet hair? And no coat? You’ll freeze.”
I clamp my jaw to stop my teeth chattering.
“I’m fine. Why are you worrying about me? I’m an adult, I can look after myself.”
“Why am I worrying?” Her laugh is slightly frightening. “You had some sort of fit in the hairdressers and attacked the girl washing your hair, and then you got on a random bus and ran away from me! I wanted to go after you but I couldn’t, I had to go back there and pay the bill and apologise, I had to tell them your whole history so they’d let it drop. And now you won’t tell me where you are! Do you even believe I’m trying to help you? Are you even grateful?”
“Grateful?”
“Yes! Grateful! For cleaning up after you! Or do you think just one awful thing happening to you once gets you a free pass to treat everyone else like dirt for the rest of time?”
“How can you say that? One awful thing? Is that what Joel disappearing is to you? Just one awful thing, like a burglary or something? It’s with me every single day, Melanie, every single bloody day I have to get up and face it—”
“I know that. And I am sorry, okay? I’m sorry I got to have my family and keep them, I’m sorry I got two children when you only got one, I’m sorry my husband hasn’t left me, I’m sorry my son hasn’t started bunking off school and messing around with drugs and I’m sorry I’ve turned out luckier than you. But my God, you punish me for that every day, don’t you? And I let you. I
do everything you ask, I take phone calls in the middle of the night, I have you round to ours whenever you want, even if all you want is to sit in a corner and brood while we all try and carry on as if everything’s normal, my God, I even drop everything and cancel a trip out with Grace and her friends to go and see the reindeer, and phone round every bloody hairdresser in the area and get a bloody manicure I can’t afford, just so you can get a haircut you didn’t even stay for. I do all of that because I love you and I want to help you.”
She’s trying and failing not to cry. I wonder where she is. Perhaps a kindly stranger will come to her aid as well. I hope they won’t. She deserves to be alone after what she said to me.
“But I can’t keep doing it if you won’t help yourself. There’s something wrong with you, Susannah, and you need to get help. I’ll come with you and see the doctor, or call me any time and I’ll take you to the hospital, any time at all, okay? Because I love you. I love you more than you’ll ever know. And saying all of this to you is killing me. But don’t call for anything else. I can’t talk to you until you’re willing to look after yourself. I love you, okay? Call me when you’re home.”
And then there’s only three little pips in my ear, and a long slow silence that stretches out like the long shafts of sunlight that stab suddenly through the clouds to light up the brilliant cold.
“Jesus, look at the state of you!” Jackie looks me up and down in horror. “Did you come all the way from home looking like that? What happened?”
“Please can I come in?” I think my knees might give way with the relief that Jackie is here, and appears to hold no grudge.
“Course you can, you daft lass. Why are you all wet?”
“I was at the hairdressers.”
“And they left you like this? I hope you didn’t pay ‘em, the robbing bastards. And look at your hands, you’re blue! Come on in and let’s get you sorted.”
The Winter's Child Page 15
