‘One of these women was called Helena, and she, like many others, did all she could to prevent her own descent into madness. With the help of her brother, a goatherd named Melam, she secured a prison for herself beneath their home. They built a concrete tomb, not unlike a mausoleum, and every night Melam would lock her inside. The strength of a hundred men would not have been enough to move the walls of the fortress, and, though Helena fought to break free, she was never successful. During the day Melam would let her out, and she would run the household while he did his daily work. In this way, they continued in some semblance of a normal life, though they never stopped looking for a cure for Helena’s condition.
‘Several priests passed through the village, offering their opinions on the condition that afflicted the women. One claimed that it was the god Dionysus who was to blame: he had infected the women, forcing them to exhibit their most reckless tendencies. But, no matter how many explanations the priests offered, they could not provide a cure, and one by one they left, and life went on.
‘Melam spent his days on the hillside, tending his herd, and gradually he began to notice that they, too, exhibited certain signs of the madness that was afflicting the female population. In fact, all the animals that roamed on the hillside – the goats, the squirrels, the foxes and the badgers – seemed to suffer from similar symptoms. They would run around, wild and untamed, sometimes foaming at the mouth, sometimes howling uncontrollably. They were never actually violent, but they seemed unable to control their physical impulses. The only animals that seemed completely unaffected were the deer.
‘Melam spent several weeks examining the behaviour of all of the animals. He watched where they went, what they came into contact with, and, most carefully, what they ate. After a month of careful observation he concluded that the only difference between the deer and the rest of the animals was their fondness for eating a certain flower.
‘The idea of plants as natural medicines had of course been around since time immemorial, but Melam could not recall any particular usage ever having been made of this plant. Quietly – not wanting to build false hope within the community – he gathered some of the flowers and took them home with him at the end of his working day. While Helena was locked up in her tomb, screaming and desperately trying to escape, he worked through the night to reduce the plants into a concoction that might be drinkable.
‘In the morning Melam served the medicine to Helena with her breakfast, claiming that it was a plant derivative, just discovered, which would be good for her digestion. Because she loved her brother dearly, Helena did not question him; Melam did not tell her the truth, lest the potion didn’t work. And so both of them went about their day as normal, and when Melam returned home in the evening he locked her up as he always did.
‘He waited outside the door for several hours, but the usual rantings and ravings that could be clearly heard even through the layers of concrete failed to materialise. Melam didn’t dare open the door until morning, just in case the potion had in some way rendered Helena silent while failing to cure her madness. But when he opened the door in the morning he found her quite well rested, and thoroughly surprised.
‘He told her what he had done, and gave her the same potion again that morning; and the next night he decided to risk leaving her free of her prison. Again, she slept soundly; not a touch of madness could be detected in her sleeping countenance. And so, the next day, he brewed up as much of the potion as he could, and he took it into the village.
‘The villagers could scarcely believe their ears when he told them what he had discovered, and, certainly, few of them were willing to leave their wives and daughters unchained the first night. But within a week they were declaring Melam an earthly god, and demanding that the flower be named after he who had discovered it.
‘Melam, though, being the humble person that he was, did not feel worthy of having any article of nature named after him, and so, he suggested a different name. It is from him that we get the name of this flower that for so long was thought to be a cure for madness: from hellos, or “fawn”, and bora, “food of beasts”.’
then
Connie arrived home from school first. She’d got off the bus without waiting for Lily for the third time that week, walking away fast so she couldn’t catch her up. She tried to convince herself it was an attempt to get Lily to break free, start making friends with other people. What was it they called it – ‘tough love’? It didn’t automatically equate to being a bad sister.
Lily hadn’t yet complained. And it wasn’t as though she was completely incapable of talking, these days. If she had a complaint, she could raise it like anyone else.
The house was quiet. Her father would be out at work, she knew. Her mother was out in the garden: Connie could see her from the kitchen window, crouched in the flowerbeds, her headscarf blowing in the wind. It was almost dark, but Connie knew that was unlikely to stop her; she rarely came inside before it was pitch-black these days, and when she did she went straight to her room and didn’t come downstairs all evening.
Connie knew that it was unnatural for a mother to spend so much time avoiding her family, but she found that it wasn’t something she could bring herself to care about. Tried to explain it away, as though maybe if she started caring then she would care too much and she wouldn’t be able to stop.
Not just: she didn’t care. Was incapable of caring. Had lost that part of her brain, somewhere.
Behind the sofa, never to be seen again.
She made herself a sandwich and ate it at the kitchen table. The kitchen was dim in the fading light; it had been grey all day, never properly brightening, in that way that felt close and uncomfortable, as if the edges of the world had shifted that few million miles closer. As if all that existed was what could be seen out of the window. And even that was dampened, shrouded in mist.
Lily came through the door just as Connie was washing up her plate. Stood at the counter, eyes accusing, but didn’t say anything. Just stood there.
‘What? Speak, if you want something.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what? Why speak?’
Lily shook her head, impatiently. ‘Why leave me?’
‘Because you need to learn. I told you, I can’t baby you forever. You need to make friends.’
Lily considered this. Tilted her head to one side, a demonstration of thought. She had got used to acting things out, so that people waited for her. ‘Friends like yours?’
Connie had no answer to this, and turned to walk away.
‘Were they mean to you?’
Connie stopped in her tracks. Looked down at her little sister, so much younger than her in age, but so much the image of what she herself had once been. ‘Are they mean to you?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
Connie reached out a hand. Found it suspended in midair, didn’t really know what to do with it, and placed it on Lily’s shoulder as gently as she could.
‘They were mean to me. They are mean to me. But you get used to it.’
Lily nodded. She moved away, started making her own sandwich, and Connie understood the conversation to be closed. It was the longest conversation they’d had in three years.
‘Do you ever think about what it would be like to live in a place like this?’
They were doing the rounds of local National Trust properties, at Marcus’s insistence, and Lily had been standing at the first-floor window, nose pressed against the glass. Connie’s voice beside her made her jump, echoing her thoughts exactly, and Lily nodded. The imperfections in the glass added a hazy sheen to the scene in front of her, as if it were swimming in sea mist.
‘You’d be a princess. Or friends with royalty, anyway,’ Connie continued.
Connie was wearing a short skirt and knee-high black boots with high heels, and looked out of place in the stately home with its period furniture and wooden floors. Lily had been envying the boots in the car – she’d not seen them before. Marcus had scowled when C
onnie had left the house wearing them, but he hadn’t said anything.
An elderly couple came to stand next to them, and in wordless agreement Connie and Lily moved on into the next room, which was long and empty, nothing but a hallway full of pictures. A volunteer stood in the corner, a man of about sixty, who looked as though he was about to say something to them and then thought better of it. They came to stand in front of the biggest portrait in the room, of a young girl who looked sad and overdressed.
‘You never see them smiling,’ Connie muttered, almost to herself. And then, ‘She looks a bit like you, actually. Don’t you think?’
Lily shrugged. She didn’t see the resemblance, but she didn’t want to contradict Connie.
‘I heard somewhere that every human is related to every other human. Or almost everyone, anyway. So maybe this girl was our great-great-great-grandmother, or something.’
Lily looked at the girl’s face, which looked the same as all the other faces on the walls: oily Victorian features, marred with old-fashioned seriousness. ‘Maybe,’ she said eventually, her voice a whisper. Connie looked as if she was about to continue talking, and then their parents came into the room, and she fell silent.
Marcus was keeping up a constant stream of conversation while Anna trailed slightly behind him, like a disgruntled child. Neither of them noticed their daughters at the other end of the room, and Marcus’s words carried across the empty space, echoing uncomfortably among the hushed whispers in the rest of the house. ‘Lily’s been doing pretty well at school, but we keep getting letters about Connie – she’s bunking off all the time, never does her homework –’
‘Why are you telling me this as if it’s new to me?’ Anna asked wearily. ‘I’ve read the letters too, you know.’
‘Well, I wasn’t sure. You’ve seemed pretty – distracted, recently.’
‘Distracted, hmm? How tactful of you.’
‘Well, you know, by the garden, and –’
‘Yes, I know what you meant.’ Her voice was harsh. ‘What do you propose to do, then? About Connie?’
‘I don’t know. We could at least try having a word with her. See if there’s any reason she doesn’t want to go to school.’
Lily looked up at Connie. Her mouth was set, and she stared directly at their parents, as if challenging them to notice she was there. They carried on talking, oblivious.
‘She’s always hated secondary school,’ Anna said, her voice dismissive.
‘I think the other kids have been picking on her. Maybe we should talk to the school, get them to intervene –’
‘I don’t think us storming in there telling everyone to be friends with her is going to help matters, do you?’
‘Well, it’s better than doing nothing –’
Marcus stopped talking abruptly. The clicking of Connie’s heels as she stormed out of the room had alerted him to her presence.
‘Oh, brilliant.’ He sighed, and looked over at Lily, still frozen to the spot. ‘Did she hear everything?’
Lily shrugged. She caught her mother’s eye, but Anna looked away immediately.
‘Guess that’s something else I’ll have to apologise for later,’ Anna muttered, to no one in particular.
‘Oh, were you planning on making apologies, then?’
Lily flinched. Her father’s voice was more venomous than she had ever heard it before.
‘Well, you obviously think I need to. What should I apologise for? Attempting to make the best of a bad situation? Trying to be a family even though you’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t want me to be part of it?’
‘I’d love you to be a part of it. Unfortunately, you never seem to be around for me to include you.’
‘Never around? I’ve been here the whole time.’
‘In the garden. Or walking in the woods. Or hiding upstairs in our bedroom, refusing to talk to anyone.’
Lily realised they’d forgotten she was there again. Or maybe they just didn’t care any more. She clenched her fists and watched the blood drain out of her knuckles, but not the gaps between them. No matter how hard she clenched, she couldn’t make the white patches spread any further. She could feel the half-moon imprints of her fingernails in the soft flesh of her palms.
‘I don’t refuse –’ Anna began, but Marcus cut her off.
‘Don’t try and deny it. You’re never around, you never spend any time with them – or with me, for that matter; no one has any idea what’s going on in your head and no one can get close to you. In what way are you here, really?’
There was a pause, in which Lily stood very still, watching her parents breathe.
‘Fine,’ Anna said eventually. ‘What do you want me to do, then? Should I talk to Connie?’
‘I don’t really see what you could say that would make any difference, given that it’s you she’s angry with.’
‘Has she said as much? She seemed pretty pissed off with both of us just now.’
‘Yes, alright, she’s angry with me too. But that’s different.’
‘Oh, right, I see. Different.’
‘Anna, please.’
‘I’d just like to know how it’s different, that’s all.’
Lily moved closer to the windows, edging forward slowly so as not to draw attention to herself.
‘She thinks you don’t care about her.’
‘I’m her mother. How could I possibly not care?’
‘Well, in case it slipped your notice, Anna, refusing to spend time with the people around you tends to make them think that you don’t care.’
Lily closed her eyes and started counting. If I count to one hundred and they’re still arguing, I’m just going to leave.
‘I’m having a hard time, okay, I don’t know what to do. I know it’s stupid but it’s not fair to punish me when I’m trying my hardest –’
‘What do you mean, punish you? I haven’t punished you at all. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been pretty damn forgiving.’
‘You mean you’ve acted that way so you can take the fucking moral high ground.’
Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.
Lily wondered if she could slip out without them noticing.
‘It’s got nothing to do with any moral high ground! I’m just trying to keep our family together. I’ve got a wife who spends her life hiding in the garden, one daughter who won’t speak to me and another who only speaks to me to tell me to fuck off. Explain to me what I’m supposed to do to make this situation more bearable, please.’
Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine.
‘Maybe, instead of sitting there feeling sorry for yourself, you should take a look at the underlying problems. Maybe there’s a reason why all of this is happening to you. And I don’t just mean that you’re unlucky, or, or, I don’t know –’
‘That my children have got your bad genes?’
‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Marcus, why does everything have to be my fault? It’s not like you’re Mr fucking Perfect, is it?’
The last thing Lily remembered thinking was forty-nine, before she slumped to the floor, the room darkening around her.
An hour later, Lily sat in the waiting room at the emergency doctor’s office, next to her father, who chewed on his knuckles and darted his eyes nervously around the corners of the room. There was only one other person present, an elderly man who looked as if he was struggling to breathe. He closed his eyes every time he inhaled, as if the effort involved in making his chest move consumed all of his available energy, with none to spare for trivia such as sight.
Lily had been unconscious for less than a minute. She’d woken up to find her parents on either side of her, her mother’s fingers clutching desperately at her shoulder. She didn’t remember fainting, but she remembered waking up and feeling trapped, pinned to the floor by her parents’ anxiety.
‘Not long now,’ her father said, his eyes on the clock above the door. She looked at him, then looked away when he didn’t meet her gaze. She wondered h
ow he knew.
She had been here before, once, when she was five or six. It hadn’t changed. It wasn’t like the usual doctor’s office; there were no toys and no windows, and only one receptionist, who looked bored and sullen. She had eyed them without interest as they’d explained why they were there, and waved them towards the hard plastic chairs that lined the room before returning her attention to the radio in the corner.
Eventually a doctor appeared in the doorway and called them through.
His office was almost the same size as the waiting room, and felt much more welcoming, with posters on the walls and the afternoon light streaming through the window. He gestured them into chairs with a smile, and then sat down opposite them, his gaze fixed on Lily. ‘What seems to be the problem?’
Lily stared back him, wide-eyed and solemn.
‘She doesn’t speak much,’ Marcus offered.
‘Okay. We’ll let Dad do the talking, then, shall we?’ The doctor turned his gaze to Marcus.
‘Lily collapsed. I suppose she just fainted, but, well, she’s never done it before and – I – I think it might be stress-related.’
‘Really?’ The doctor had an expression of carefully measured patience on his face. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘There have been some family issues. Lily’s been – well, check her records: she’s had problems with not talking and –’
‘Yes, I can see that from her notes. She’s been at Dr Hadley’s institute?’
‘Yes, just for a while –’
Hush Page 16
