by Lily Bailey
Dad arrives that evening; he got the first flight from London. He strides onto the ward purposefully with a big bottle of Lucozade.
Then he crumples onto the end of my bed. He sits and asks, “Why, why, why?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” I say.
He tries to persuade me to eat the fizzy snakes and jelly sweets he bought at the airport.
I don’t want them, but when he’s gone, I eat them all.
I am ravenous.
Mum arrives the next day. She has flown in from Thailand, where she was doing a four-week yoga course that I didn’t think about when I took the pills. She is tanned, but there’s no glow. Her eyes are full of tears. She tells me she is so glad I am not dead. So, so glad.
They take me for lunch at the hospital café. This is the first time in forever I’ve seen my parents at peace. There is a weird sense of camaraderie. They say things that make me laugh; they tell me they still love me.
I’m trying to focus, which is difficult because for the last twenty-four hours I’ve been storing the lists in my head instead of writing them down.
They tell me it’s time to go home. I thought I’d been sectioned, but they have persuaded the hospital that better treatment is available in the UK. While I was sleeping, Dad went to the police station and sorted out the mess, so I won’t have to attend a court date. He also spoke to the college, and apparently I’m not going to be in any trouble. Mum is going to help me get my things. I am so very lucky that I have parents who love me as much as mine.
Back on the ward, the dribbling woman comes over to my bed, speaking quickly, her face nearly touching mine.
“If you’re going home, luvvie, can you do me a favor? I have family and I’m not allowed out. But I’m sure they’re going to visit me here this Christmas. Can you get them gifts? Anything you like; chocolate, perfume—the expensive stuff.” She presses forty euros into my palm. “Please? It would mean the world to me.”
I’m not sure what to do. Maybe this family isn’t coming, and the presents will sit by her bed, making her feel worse. Maybe she really needs these forty euros; maybe this is not the right thing to spend them on. I look at Mum. She is nodding obligingly. I’m too tired to make decisions.
Half an hour later, Mum and I are back with perfume and chocolates and ten euros change. I give the woman a box of chocolates I bought for her myself, because although I really hope her family does exist, they might not, and I want her to have a present. She starts crying and telling me I am beautiful, and that she hasn’t had a Christmas present in years. She is holding my hands in hers and asking why God has blessed her by allowing me into her life.
Then I tell her gently that I have to go. She nods.
“I understand, dearie,” she says. “This place isn’t for everyone.”
Mum and I get a taxi back to the dorm and start chucking things into bags at full speed, like looters: books, T-shirts, stationery, shoes, linen, towels, dresses, shampoo, posters. I take the unopened letter to Dr. Finch out of the top drawer and place it carefully in my handbag. We haul everything into the hallway and lock the door.
Deirdre, Molly, and other girls from my corridor are hanging around outside, unsure of the appropriate etiquette to use.
“Apparently you had appendicitis,” says Molly. She looks hurt at being out of the loop. I know she knows. I piece things together. Deirdre and Nessa are the ones who know. Everyone else just know knows.
· 21 ·
Harley Street
I’ve been home for a week, festering, writing endless lists. A notepad has become the new storage form. It has pros and cons, but I can’t risk losing my lists again by putting them on a new phone. Mum and Dad say it is important that Ella is not told the full extent of what happened. She was at boarding school when I got back, so she doesn’t know the circumstances of my arrival home. Mum lets her believe I’m just here for Christmas. She peeks into my room every couple of days, lingering uncertainly by the door and tugging her sweater sleeves down over her thumbs, asking if I want to “do something.”
“No, no,” I say.
Yesterday she crawled into bed with me, nuzzling up to my side like she used to when we were small. Her skin touched mine; my flesh sizzled. I saw my hands at her breast, though I knew they were clamped by my sides.
“No, no!” I said.
“I don’t get it,” she replied, lower lip wobbling. “I was so excited about you coming back, but you don’t want to see me. I feel like I’ve lost you.”
As for Mum, she has employed different approaches, and all in such rapid succession it’s like watching a camera whiz through a day in one location in the space of twenty seconds. Blue sky that is obliterated by foamy clouds charging in from the left, pink seeping in from the corners of the frame tells you the sun is setting, a bird soars across like a rocket, nighttime—a spray of stars, dawn, then back to blue . . .
She was patient at first. She asked me if I wanted to talk; she suggested going outside for walks; she tried to understand. But I kept telling her not to come in please and that I wanted to be alone.
When I didn’t change my tune, she became a stroppy teenager. She was textbook. I’d seen this act a thousand times before from girls at Hambledon. “Okay, fine.” She shrugged. “I just don’t think it’s good for you to be in your room all day, but whatever.”
Passive enough on the outside, sure. But fire within.
On Wednesday it rained love. “I love you so much, do you know how much I love you? Do you know that I would do anything in the world to make you better? And do you know how loved you are, by Ella, Dad, and Oliver too?”
But the love didn’t fix me, so now, for the inevitable—
Mum stands at the end of my bed, the mug of tea that served as her excuse for entry slopping over the sides.
“So are you going to come downstairs at any point today?”
“No.”
“Are you going to do anything today?” She takes a step toward me.
“No. Please don’t come any closer.”
“You can’t do this!” She slams the tea down on my desk. “You can’t just . . . disappear! I mean, for god’s sake, it’s ridiculous! Pull yourself together!”
I must not shout.
“It’s making everyone so unhappy. I’m at my wit’s end. Poor Ella doesn’t know what to think. But most of all, it’s destroying you!”
I must not shout I must not shout I must not—
“We all want you to just be okay! Why are you being like this?”
“DO YOU THINK I WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS? Do you think that I wake up in the morning and say, ‘You know what would be really fun, let’s spend hours and hours locked in my head, let’s not leave my room, and hey, while we’re at it, let’s cut out all the people who care, because there really is nothing better, no, I cannot think of anything I would like to do more, than to reject the perfect, happy life I could have, and choose instead to live stuck on repeat in my own private hell’?”
“I just don’t understand . . . why . . .”
“You don’t understand? Well, good, that makes two of us. Why? You want to know why? I want to know why. Genetics? Upbringing? Just bad fucking luck? Guess what. I don’t know, you don’t know. All we get to know is that this is my life, and it’s awful. And now”—I take what feels like my first breath in minutes, an ugly, shuddering gasp—“I would like you to leave.”
It happened.
I got angry. I sentence myself to weeks of remorse.
“Please,” I say. “Just leave. I’m begging you.”
She makes to leave, but stops, hand wavering an inch above the door handle.
“All I want,” she says slowly, “is for you to be open. You never tell me anything. I can’t believe it got to this point and I had no idea how bad it really was. I don’t want you to have to deal with this on your own. I want to help you, but you need to let me in.”
It’s been decided I should be assessed, so o
ne Tuesday I end up in a waiting room on Harley Street. It’s one of those posh waiting rooms that distinguishes itself from a National Health Service waiting room by having in-date magazines spread across the coffee table. And not just any in-date magazines: Vogue and Tatler. I suppose I should be thankful that if I have to go mad, at least I get to do it in a fashionable, aristocratic way.
When I look up from the coffee table, I notice a mahogany cabinet with some expensive-looking old books. Darwin: The Beagle, Encyclopaedia of Tropical Diseases, The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Browning, and The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.
This would be all very cutting-edge if it were 1912, but—I want to scream—“It’s 20-FUCKING-12!” I sit down on the button-back sofa. Why am I allowing myself to get so worked up about some old books? Is irrational anger a symptom of my condition? And while we’re on the subject, what exactly is my condition? I’d quite like for someone to explain. What I experience is so unlike the OCD people have on TV.
Have they got it right?
In the corner there’s a piano, in case some poor soul becomes so overwhelmed with the melancholic beauty of the situation that they feel the need to transmit their soul into sound. I’m tempted to go over and start hammering away the theme to Jaws.
The receptionist’s smile is too big for her face. She says in a syrupy voice that it can’t be very nice for us, sitting in silence: Wouldn’t we like some music? My mother says yes, please. So the girl bends over, giving us a generous view of her pert pencil-skirted bottom, and turns on the radio. Smiling like she’s done us a big favor, she sashays out of the room, clipboard under arm, off to rescue anyone else who needs saving from silence. But she hasn’t done us a favor, because it is Classic FM, and they are playing fucking Vivaldi.
Up four flights of stairs, I’m introduced to Dr. Dax, who extends a hand I cannot bear to touch. Her office looks like it’s been ripped out of the pages of an interiors magazine. Mum and I sit in the velvet armchairs opposite her, and she spreads my notes across the glass coffee table, clicking her tongue. The room is tidy to the point of being a showroom. “Lily,” Dr. Dax says solemnly. “We are here to discuss the fact that you are very sick. How do you feel?”
Nothing.
“You need to answer me. It’s important I know how you are feeling, so we can decide on a treatment plan.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m not trying to be difficult. I just . . . I just feel nothing.”
“I understand you used to be under the care of a Dr. Finch. Your mother has said you don’t wish to be seen by her anymore. We think it would be best if you were transferred to my care. Shall I keep her aware of your progress?”
“No,” I whisper. “Please don’t contact her.”
“As you wish,” says Dr. Dax.
Looking at her mantelpiece, I realize the surfaces are not totally clear. Directly under a large Georgian mirror is a miniature bronze statue of a ballerina.
Dr. Dax says the clinic doesn’t offer inpatient stays. “So I am going to admit you to Chesbury Hospital in London. I’ll visit you there a few times a week.”
I’m supposed to be going to Chesbury tomorrow. I don’t want to go. I don’t like Dr. Dax. I know Dr. Finch is the only one who can help me; Dr. Dax won’t understand and might make things worse. I have to find Dr. Finch. But how?
The problem can’t be focused on right now, as I’ve spent several hours today in Mum’s company and am consumed by a flood of routines. I look at the time. It’s almost 9:00 p.m., and I’m being admitted tomorrow at 10:00 a.m.
Thirteen hours to change things.
I find the bottle of vodka that I’ve hidden under the heaps of mismatching pants and bras in my underwear drawer, unscrew the cap, and chug for a few seconds.
It lights a fire in my belly that courses through my blood and into my fingertips, which grip my pen and scribble down the routines more efficiently.
When I’m finished, I lie back on my bed and take a long glug. I lie still for a minute, feeling my thoughts eddying and crystallizing into a plan.
I will find Dr. Finch and say sorry and ask her to help me. I don’t know where she lives, but I know where she works. I will wait on the doorstep at Fieldness until she sees me.
I finish the vodka and hide the bottle in the drawer. Downstairs in the kitchen, Mum is cooking supper for her, Oliver, and me.
I can’t go out the front door, because I’m not supposed to go anywhere by myself.
“I’m going outside for a cigarette,” I say.
“Okay, darling,” says Mum, stirring a pot of ratatouille and looking anxiously over her shoulder at me.
I head out into the back garden, shutting the back door. I don’t have long. I disappear down the back passage and bolt over the gate, jumping down tipsily.
And I’m off: running like my life depends on it. There is a dull throbbing pain in my ankle where I hurt it on landing, but for now the vodka is working.
I need to get to the station, but if I take the main road Mum and Oliver might find me, so I’ll have to navigate the backstreets.
It’s colder than I thought. My scraggy white cardigan isn’t doing much.
I run in what I think is the direction of the station, until I realize I’m in an unrecognized cul-de-sac.
This is ridiculous. How can I be lost so close to home? I try to retrace my steps, but I can’t work out where I came from. The road is spinning. The sky feels slanted.
I am.
Drunk.
I see two figures coming toward me. One, a man, is tall and lanky. The other is an outrageously fat woman.
“You look lost,” says the man, a black hoodie obscuring most of his face, though I see he has gold teeth, twinkling between syllables. “Do you want to come home with us for a bit?”
Sirens wail in the distance. Are they coming for me?
I need to find Dr. Finch. I need to . . . hide.
Is it better to go home with strangers but complete my mission, or fail here and now?
Just fifteen minutes. Till the sirens are gone.
“O . . . KAY . . .”
The man says his name is Jay, his wife is Sharise.
They take me back to their block of flats. I realize it’s the council estate that’s a fifteen-minute drive from our house. I must have walked farther than I thought.
On the seventh floor, Jay pushes open a door with a nail where a number should be. I tumble into a smoke-filled sitting room, full of people crammed onto a sofa or lying on the floor.
“Come, come,” says Sharise. “Excuse these fuckers! And you pissed as anything. You need some water.”
Jay grabs my arm and leads me through another door to a room with a double bed. Sharise comes in a second later, handing me a glass. The floor is a sea of empty fag packets, nail varnish pots, half-finished blister packs of pills, and dirty underwear.
Jay puts a CD on the player plugged in under the bed. I figured he’d go for heavy rap, but instead, the pained tinny notes of Avril Lavigne fill the room.
Hey, hey, you, you, I don’t like your girlfriend!
No way, no way, I think you need a new one!
Sharise and Jay crash on the bed. I don’t want to be in bed with them, so I squat on the floor. Jay lights up a joint, and I accept it for a few drags because I think it might make me less anxious. But the room swims even more, and I instantly regret it, because I know it will interfere with my mission. Sharise is making out with Jay. She pulls off her hair, which turns out to be a wig. The surprise of her bald scalp, littered with dark scabs, makes me gasp out loud.
I need to leave. But suddenly I am so sleepy I can’t move. Did they put something in my water? Oh no, I’m accusing them of a crime even though it’s probably the weed and my fault for saying yes. I am so judgmental, I am so quick to blame others for my own mistakes. What category should that go in? What category . . . should that . . .
I raise myself gently from the floor and
peek over the edge of the bed. How long have I been out of it? Sharise and Jay are asleep, lying in bed, holding one another. I need to get out of here. The alarm clock on the floor reads 00:05.
I’ve missed the last train to Fenhurst. Idiot. My best bet will be waiting near the station until the train runs again.
I stand up quietly and creep out of the room. The sitting room has emptied. Where did everyone go? I’ve opened the front door when I feel a hand on my shoulder, and Jay’s breath on my neck.
“Didn’t enjoy your stay?”
My blood turns to ice. Sharise lumbers in behind him.
“Girl! You rude. We look after you, and you try to leave without saying good-bye. Why you do that? I don’t like people who behave that way, do you, Jay?”
“No,” says Jay coldly, spinning me round and holding the neck of my T-shirt, pulling my face up to his. “Are you scared? Do you think I’m going to hurt you? Do you think that’s how I roll? Well, guess what. It’s your lucky day. You’re free to leave. You never hear of the kindness of strangers?”
“The lift’s at the end,” shouts Sharise. I call it and turn around as the doors are closing. Sharise and Jay are still standing by their front door, staring at me.
The look in their eyes makes my skin crawl, and I will never forget it.
I walk along the middle of a deserted street.
I start to recognize things. I think I know where I’m going. Yes! Back on track!
But suddenly there’s a police van behind me. I pick up the pace and start to run. Two policemen jump out and follow me on foot. Before they catch up, I know I can hide behind someone’s dustbins, even though the dirt might kill me. But when I turn onto the new street, other police are ahead of me, and that’s when I know it’s a trap: I’ve been ambushed. They tell me my family has registered me as a missing person at risk to herself.
They have been searching for me all night.
