by Denise Mina
Although the group was composed predominantly of women, the men always spoke first. The usual form was that Hugh would speak next, calming everyone down with his soft voice and sad demeanour, talk about aspects of his own struggle that reflected the previous speakers’, but Hugh wasn’t there tonight. The silence lasted longer than was comfortable and they began to look around at each other expectantly. No one wanted to come in before Hugh had set the atmosphere right.
‘Anyone else?’ asked Sheila, and sat back.
The meeting room was on the second storey of a small outhouse, abutting a large red sandstone chapel in Partick. The outbuildings had developed chaotically, and twenty feet across the lane a newer hall had been built. It was used on Thursdays for Irish dancing classes and they could hear a skirl of tinny music through the open fire exit. All of a sudden, a hundred tiny feet simultaneously stamped about the distant pine floor.
‘Surely someone else wants to speak tonight?’ said Sheila. Maureen found herself coming in. ‘I’ll speak, Sheila,’ she said, and Sheila sat back gratefully, giving her the floor.
Maureen hadn’t thought about what she was going to say and it all fell out in a jumble. ‘I’ve been trying to enjoy the weather today,’ she said, following Hugh’s style of sharing and starting with something positive, in the present. ‘I’ve been working really hard at enjoying everything I can. Feeling good, happy, spending time in the house and at my work and not being sad or frightened.’
She had wanted to say that she was happy and coping, that she was getting on with her life, but knew she sounded miserable and confused, as if she was lying to herself. ‘I’m getting the money together for my debts because I don’t want to leave debts . . .’ She hadn’t meant to say that. She sounded as if she was going to die. ‘Not that I’m leaving.’ Trying to lighten up, she let out a hollow, lonely laugh that smarted off the damp walls. She looked around but no one was looking back at her: they were nodding at their laps, picking their nails, everyone frowning heavily except Alex, who was watching her with his arms crossed, sucking his cheeks in, looking amused.
‘I dreamed about my dad last night. It was the same dream and I was sweating.’ She wasn’t thinking about suicide, she should make that clear. She looked up. ‘I’m not going to kill myself,’ she said. Sheila looked worried. Alex sniggered because someone else was making a tit of themselves. Maureen gave up the attempt at sounding cheerful and her chin sank to her chest. ‘I think bad things are about to happen,’ she said, and her hot eyes dripped tears, her face slackened. ‘Now my dad’s back in Glasgow, I can’t think about anything else. Nothing else seems real or . . .’ She sat forward, letting her tears fall on to the soiled carpet. The group had heard it all before but she couldn’t stop saying the same things. ‘When my sisters brought him back from London I couldn’t believe it. They paid for him to come here even though they knew, even though I’d told them what he did.’ Her chin crumpled and she couldn’t speak. She breathed in, fighting the pressure from her heavy heart to sob. ‘They don’t believe me. I can cope with that. But Una, she’s having a baby soon, next few days. She’s chucked her husband out. She’ll give the baby to Michael, to prove that she believes him, to prove I’m wrong. I’m the only one who can do anything about it. No one else is going to do anything. I feel as if I’m dying.’
She covered her face, feeling like a histrionic arsehole, wishing she could control herself, but her nose was dripping on to her lip and she couldn’t catch her breath. She didn’t want to cry, especially not in front of Alex, and in the effort to suppress it she let go a high-pitched, piggy squeal. Across the lane the tap-dancing children clattered their way to an untidy climax. The group was waiting for Maureen to wrap up but she couldn’t speak. She put a hand to her head and dug her nails into her scalp, dragging them back on her head, and the clear, searing pain drew the breath back into her body. She sat up and managed a wobbly smile. ‘So, I’m trying to enjoy these last few days. Trying to savour things. Enjoy things.’ She licked a hot tear from her lip. ‘Any advice would be welcome.’
She sat back, drawing tremulously on her cigarette, and the group looked away from her. It was like the reaction Colin got every week. There was no solution to the problem, there was nothing to say. They’d pat her shoulder on the way out. A couple of them would hug her awkwardly. Liz the Christian would promise to pray for her, and they’d all go home. Sheila asked for another speaker and Alice came in to talk about her insomnia. She was wearing a long sleeved top despite the hot weather, pulling the cuffs down over her hands as she spoke, and they all guessed that she had been cutting herself again. She didn’t mention it.
Sheila chaired through another three speakers, but Maureen wasn’t listening. She hadn’t meant to say any of that. She finished her fag and stubbed it out in a filthy tin ashtray, swirling the compressed ash from a hundred dead cigarettes, releasing the sick, thick smell of stale smoke. Enjoy the days, she told herself, just enjoy. It didn’t matter that she’d made an arse of herself. She wished Hugh were here, that he could talk to her afterwards and make it all right.
When the meeting was finished they stood downstairs, chatting and smoking and making arrangements for the following week. Sheila threw the cups into the bin, made sure the urn was off and wiped down the worktop and sink.
‘Okay, everybody,’ she said, clapping her hands, ‘let’s go.’
They shuffled out to the lane. In the new hall the dancing class was finishing too. The fire exit had been left open to let the air in. Past the blur of yellow light came the noise of children screaming and chasing each other. Sheila stopped Maureen. ‘Let me give you a lift home,’ she said quietly.
‘Naw,’ said Maureen, still embarrassed, ‘I’m fine, I’ll walk.’
‘I’ll drive you home,’ said Sheila, and turned to lock the door.
The others called goodbye and made their way out to the street, saying final good byes as they reached the pavement before dispersing into the bright evening. Most of the group were friends and phoned one another during the week for support. Maureen had managed to attend for two months without making a single firm friend. She liked it that way, liked keeping it separate from the rest of her life.
‘Look, it’s all right,’ she said, ‘I’d really like to walk.’
‘No,’ said Sheila, holding up her hand to avert further protest, ‘I’ll drive you.’
Maureen actually did want to walk. Her house was two pleasant miles away and she liked walking in the fading light, when she could think and talk to herself without feeling self-conscious. Maybe Sheila needed to talk. Maureen climbed into the estate car and Sheila turned to her. ‘Have you got time for a cup of tea?’ she asked.
Maureen didn’t really want to go with her. Sheila was very nice but she was hard to listen to. She had a tendency to talk like a vague, new-age self-help book that Maureen couldn’t quite understand ‘’Kay.’ She shrugged, hoping it wouldn’t take long.
Sheila started the car and drove up the hill, through the posher areas of Hyndland and over to the high flats at Broomhill.
Michael had disappeared when Maureen was ten. She had no memory of him leaving the family home, just of him being there and then not being there, that before was the darkness and after was the light. He had locked Maureen in the cupboard under the stairs when he left but she didn’t remember that either. Una and Marie did: they were there when their mother, Winnie, crowbarred the door open and pulled Maureen out. They remembered the blood between her legs and her limp, blank compliance as they all gave her a bath to wash it away. Winnie said she’d fallen on her bottom. They knew instinctively not to talk about it or mention it outside the family. Maureen grew up into a strange young woman.
Crippling fears haunted her at school and university. Bizarre stimuli could floor her for days: a figure in a door with the light behind them, the sound of a man breathing through a blocked nose, the smell of gin and orange on so
meone’s breath, certain types of brown shoes or hair cut razor-straight along the neckline. She had bad dreams that stayed with her for days. She often found it hard to eat and swallow. Winnie’s livid alcoholism and the graphic fights with her new husband, George, didn’t exactly create a healing atmosphere in the house.
As Maureen approached the end of her degree things began to get worse. The panic attacks grew more frequent, sometimes blurring together at their ragged edges into hour-long frenzies. She began to barricade her bedroom door at night and sleep in the corner, watching the bed. She read obsessively, tracing the same lines and paragraphs over and over. She had to have a book with her at all times. If she found herself with nothing to read she’d grab a menu, read a leaflet or a bus timetable. She knew she was going down. The prospect of a bleak future wasn’t a shocking disappointment. Coming from a war-torn family she had never had very high expectations – none of the O’Donnells did. Secretly and individually they all dreamed of peace and quiet. Maureen told no one what was happening. She got the first job she saw advertised, in a theatre ticket office, and bought the poky flat in Garnethill.
A year and a half after graduating she disappeared. The ticket-office manager phoned Winnie and told her that Maureen had been missing for three days. It was Liam who found her, hiding in the hall cupboard in Garnethill. It was Liam who wrapped her up in a blanket and took her to hospital, carrying her to his car, whispering that she was fine, still safe, be brave. Her forehead was damp with his tears, she remembered.
When she came to it was summer, and she spent it with Pauline Doyle in the grounds of the Northern Psychiatric Hospital. They sat in the gardens and smoked fags, did pottery classes and gossiped about the other patients and the staff. The family came to see her, Una and her husband, Alistair, standing stiff at the end of her bed. Her eldest sister, Marie, was too busy to visit but sent a message from London that Maureen remembered as a wish that she wasn’t sick. Winnie came, drunk and drunker, attracting pitying glances from the other patients and falling out with the doctors. Liam and Leslie came to see her and be with her, reminding her of who she had been and what she might be again. She couldn’t start to make sense of it until Alistair came on his own and told the doctors what Una had told him about Michael and the bleeding.
Winnie never forgave Alistair for telling. She used to phone him when she was drunk and tell him what a shit he was. She behaved as if all the O’Donnells’ troubles were caused by his loose mouth. Years later, when Una discovered Alistair was having an affair with the upstairs neighbour, Winnie took it as confirmation of everything she had ever believed about him.
What Alistair had told the doctor made sense of everything. Maureen began to piece together the dreams and flashbacks, reassembling the story, remembering and making sense of her life. Michael had left because of the blood. She remembered him seeing it, the shock on his face and the sudden anger. He must have had a ragged nail and cut her inside. She dreamed about the blood and pain, always a sharp, ripping pain in the dreams. Dr Paton suggested a joint session with Winnie to clear up the dates and details of what had happened. During the session it became clear that Winnie didn’t believe Michael had abused anyone. She started crying and ran away to the toilet with her handbag, coming back drunk and argumentative. Michael had loved Winnie. He didn’t want Maureen, he wanted Winnie, he loved her. She seemed to think they’d been having an affair.
Maureen got better regardless. She remembered the rest of the summer as afternoons in the hospital gardens with Pauline Doyle, the anorexic from her ceramics class. Liam and Leslie visited every day and she counted herself lucky to have such good friends.
When she left hospital Dr Paton had referred her to a psychiatrist with cold killer eyes. She stopped going to see him and applied to the Rainbow Clinic’s outreach scheme for victims of sexual abuse instead. She only saw Angus Farrell twice but he was wonderful. Helpful and kind, he concentrated on helping her get on with her life and taught her usable techniques for dealing with intrusive thoughts.
She thought about it afterwards, wondering why he was so good for her, why she would see a future after just two sessions with him. Angus was a pragmatist. Instead of empathizing or getting her to talk about it, he asked what the worst effects were and suggested solutions to panic attacks and nightmares, changing the way she perceived flashback stimuli. By the time he referred her to Louisa at the Albert Hospital she had already started her hopeless affair with Douglas, his colleague at the Rainbow.
Maureen didn’t want to go back to the Northern hospital after she got out. Slowly, she stopped phoning Pauline. She had nothing to say to her and wanted to distance herself. Six months later Pauline killed herself in a wood near her parents’ house: she had told the hospital staff that her father and one of her brothers had been anally raping her since she was young but couldn’t bring herself to tell her mother – she thought it would break her heart. Her housing application had fallen through and she had been released back to the parental home. She was found in the wood, dead two days from an overdose, with dried spunk on her back.
Michael had been missing for fifteen years when Marie’s diligent work paid off and she found him. She had been looking since Maureen was admitted to hospital. They found him living in a council flat in south London, with nothing but a bed and lager cans for furniture. Una paid for him to come home. When Maureen looked out of the window of her flat at the city she knew that he was out there somewhere. On bad days she knew that he was everywhere, watching.
The Broomhill flats were among the most coveted council flats in Glasgow. Built on a sharp escarpment high above the river Clyde, the tower promised a view over the sprawling Govan shipyards. They were well tended and near to the trendy West End. Picking her way among the modest cars, Sheila backed deftly into a tiny space. ‘This is us,’ she said.
Maureen looked up at the grey front of the tower block. Warm yellow lights shone from the box homes, competing with the fading evening. The only clue that the flats were council-owned was the peeling paint on the concrete exterior and big blue by-law notices everywhere prohibiting ball games, parking, loitering and rubbish. ‘This is lovely,’ she said, noticing that there were no people hanging around outside.
‘They don’t allow kids,’ said Sheila, opening her door.
‘Plus, most of us have had to work full-time for years to get moved in here so everyone’s very precious about it. You need about eighty points.’
The lobby was quiet and the lift came immediately. ‘What do you have to do to get eighty points?’ Maureen asked.
Sheila stepped into the lift and pressed the button for the eleventh floor. ‘Be homeless for a decade,’ she said, as the lift took off. ‘Have at least one breakdown, be a victim of crime and cry in the housing office every day for six months.’ Maureen puffed out her cheeks. ‘Harsh,’ she said. ‘Hardest work I’ve ever done,’ said Sheila.
The doors opened and they stepped out, following the broad corridor along to Sheila’s door.
‘I don’t bring many people here,’ said Sheila, wiggling the key into the lock. ‘It’s my sanctuary.’
The hall was painted pale grey and led into a white, rectangular living room with low beige corduroy chairs and a glass coffee table with a pile of green pebbles on it. Maureen glanced out of the window and was disappointed to see that the flat looked over the roofs of red stone tenements.
‘No,’ said Sheila, as she dropped her keys into a brass dish on a hall table. ‘It doesn’t look out over the river.’ ‘Aw, well, it’s still lovely.’
Sheila smiled. ‘It is, isn’t it?’ She hesitated and blushed a little. ‘I don’t think about it much. I suppose I should.’
‘If you don’t bring many people up here why did you invite me?’
‘Let’s have a cup of tea.’
In the narrow galley kitchen the kettle hissed to a boil. Sheila took a packet of biscuits from a cupboard an
d put some on a plate. Maureen was surprised that someone with such a bad eating disorder would have biscuits in her house. When she tasted one, it was soggy and old. There was no food in the kitchen, Maureen realized, no bread left out, no wrappings sitting on the side. When Sheila opened the fridge to get the skimmed milk Maureen saw that the shelves were empty apart from three large bowls of jelly with spoonfuls missing. ‘I take it black, thanks,’ said Maureen. ‘Sheila, is there something you want to talk about?’
Sheila picked up the kettle. ‘I heard you tonight,’ she said. ‘Don’t doit.’
Maureen cast her mind back over what she had said. ‘Don’t do what?’ she said.
‘We’ve all thought about it, you’re not special.’She poured the hot water into the cups, squeezed out the teabags and put them into the bin carefully. ‘Come next door.’
They sat next to each other on the low chairs, their knees converging, and looked out of the window at the powder blue sky. Maureen didn’t want to ask her what she meant. Sheila sipped her tea. ‘I think if abusers are absent it’s easy to see things in black and white. They’re not there to cloud the issues,’ she said. Maureen looked a bit confused. ‘Abusers come to personalize the damage they’ve done. You think that if you kill him, you’ll undo the damage he’s done, but you won’t.’
