‘Sounds OK. But I need to get back to work soon. I’m on a dig and I can’t just . . .’
‘If you are in the midst of a breakdown, you can.’
‘Breakdown? Are you sure? Isn’t that a bit dramatic?’ I can hear myself panting.
‘I’m not sure but I believe you are caving in with stress, yes.’
‘What do you mean by a breakdown though, are you sure it’s nothing to do with . . .?’
Dr McKinnie opens her mouth and throws her hands heavenwards. ‘Oh, do I think you are having paranoid delusions, do you mean? Now I get it. Ah, your mother? This is what this is all about. No. I don’t. You are OK.’
I start laughing, then realise I sound mad again and shut up. ‘I’m fine then. I’ll be fine. Just need a couple of nights’ sleep, that’s all. If you think I’m alright.’
The relief that my fear is out in the open, that Dr McKinnie thinks I’m OK, almost brings me to tears. But then she leans over her desk and puts her arm on mine.
‘Josephine, I think you are OK in so far as I don’t think you are having a paranoid schizophrenic episode. But I don’t think you are alright. I think . . . in fact, I’m sure, you need some more help, though. I need to ask, have you had any suicidal thoughts lately?’
I’m absolutely stunned by her question. ‘I’m sorry.’ She’s looking at my open mouth. ‘I really have to ask. To see how I can help.’
I’m moving my head but I can’t tell whether it’s going up and down or from side to side.
‘And your arms, Josephine. I’m more than concerned about these.’ She pulls my forearms to her and places them gently on the table. Under the soft lighting they look alright, but then she brings them up towards her face and I can see them too. Weird little criss-cross marks and smears of dry blood. I must look disbelieving because she looks at me and asks if I know how they got there. My head’s still making odd movements, totally detached from my thoughts. Like my brain function has been severed from the rest of me.
‘OK, Josephine, what I’m suggesting needn’t frighten you. I think we need to find a solution apart from medication. A longer-term solution to help you deal with these . . .’ I know she’s about to say the word ‘demons’ and then I really start to panic, because my mother was so full of them. Real ones. Ones that I’m too petrified to even try to imagine.
She stops herself. ‘These issues,’ she finishes. ‘Look at you. You can’t breathe.’ She hands me another paper bag and orders me to come back in two days. ‘I’m putting an appointment in for you for nine thirty on Tuesday morning. I want you to go home, relax, call me if you need anything and think carefully about Cedars.’ Her tone suggests I needn’t do any thinking, that my stay there is as inevitable as if it were written in the stars. ‘Here,’ she says, realising I’m probably incapable of thinking about anything at the moment. ‘Here’s some more medication to keep you going. I’ve just given you enough to last until Tuesday. Try and sleep.’
When the Valium’s kicked in and I’m in a taxi home, I think about Dr McKinnie and what she’s told me. I think about going back to work in this state and how it’s not an option. Even the thought of boarding a plane back to Amman; trudging up the metal steps onto the aircraft and climbing into the never-ending sky, leaves me winded. So when I get back home, I decide to luxuriate in a bath. It’s something I never do – a waste of time. I run the hot tap, grab a book and a glass of red wine. I slop in some unused bubble bath from Father’s bathroom – something that looks like it’s from a five-star hotel. Then I pack on a sachet of cucumber face mask that I find in the back of my bathroom cabinet, curled and brown round the edges. It smarts my skin but feels good nevertheless.
I walk into my bedroom and light a cigarette, stark naked. I rearrange my pillows and duvet ready to welcome me out of the bath and go and get a piece of toast from the kitchen, smeared in butter and honey.
When I’m ready, I turn off the hot and dip my toe in. It’s boiling, so I let out some water and put in a tiny stream of cold. I start to feel a little better. My thoughts are at least connecting. Whilst I’m waiting, I go into my bedroom and look at the latest news on the BBC website. As I’m reading a short piece about Michael Gove, my email pings. Since I’ve changed my contact details, not many people haven written to me on this address – Freya that one time, Father, when he wants to send me reminders, and the occasional invite to something work-related. Before I can even see who it’s from, I’ve opened it.
Josephine. I’ve made up my mind, I’m coming to see you immediately. I have a feeling you are still in London – Dad said he saw you at your mother’s funeral, looking well. So I’m going to come and visit you here, or I’ll find you when you are back in Jordan. I really, really need to speak to you. So please, no more excuses. Freya.
I read it, close it, delete it. Then I climb into my bath, which is still hot. I dunk my head under the water, open-eyed, and globules of the cucumber mask release themselves from my skin, rising up and clouding the surface.
Soapy water slips down my gullet, expanding in my chest. I don’t arise. I cough, bubbles of spit stinging the back of my throat. But even so I can’t come up, I daren’t; there’s nowhere left to hide.
1996
Mrs Cape, who normally deals with the post room, sends me a note the next afternoon, to tell me that the printer’s have rung. ‘All in order, The Lens will be done early!’ it says.
I’m not as pleased as I should be – I’m due to meet Freya in five minutes and I’m still wondering what she wants. I keep thinking that she and Verity are going to pull another nasty trick on me, after what happened with the scholarship. I have drunk two coffees which have nearly sent me over the edge and, by the time it’s quarter to four, I’m walking out of the dining hall, past the teachers and other girls. No one speaks or looks at me. I’m totally isolated but this is fine. Without Freya onside, I don’t really care about anyone else.
The school grounds are still. There’s a strange energy around. The woods are nearly dark. Branches scratch at my arms and knees and as the little clearing opens into view, I see bonfire remains still charred into the ground. There’s a blanket under the big oak, a tradition from the older years. Freya sits beside it, legs under her chin. She’s flicking the flint of her silver Zippo; it is the one I gave her for her sixteenth birthday. It’s engraved: ‘My friend Freya. With love on your sixteenth, J.’ She had taken to using another lighter more recently. A cheap purple one with a smiley face and ‘Welcome to Cyprus’ on it.
‘Josephine,’ she calls.
‘Yes.’ She’s using my full name again. I’m sweating and out of breath.
‘Cigarette?’ She pulls out her silver box.
‘Fine.’ I reach over and do a quick glance over my shoulder. ‘Actually, no. Thanks. No. I won’t. I’m surprised Verity isn’t here?’ I give a little laugh but Freya just turns and looks at me. Her eyes are doing this weird flicky thing, up down, to the side. She’s hunched up, bony limbs folded all precariously, like a game of pick-up sticks.
A bright red woollen scarf is wound round her neck. I recognise it as the one she bought last year, when we went to Brighton for the day. Her hands are twisting around each other and she starts laughing and then sobbing and the sound intertwines, lengthens and turns into a wolfish howl. I don’t know whether I’m expected to laugh or say something so I remain standing, muted. The noise stops and I can feel bits of soil trailing down my jumper and I look down and Freya is chucking little bits of earth and rock at me. I let her. And then the chunks of stone get bigger and one gets me near the eye, and I’m forced to hold a hand up. There’s a high-pitched throb in my cheek. I can feel the pain all the way down to my toes.
‘Freya, stop!’
She’s too weak to get up, just curls herself back into a ball and makes another weird sound. ‘I hate you,’ she says. ‘I really, really hate you.’ She’s now perched on her haunches, scraping holes into the ground with a large stick. She fills it with
leaves, mud, twigs, whatever she can find. A small spider’s web, just to the right of me, stretches and shrinks as a gust of wind hits my face.
‘Aren’t you going to say something? Why don’t you say something? You freak!’ She goes silent, stabbing the earth with her stick. And then, ‘I guess I played my part too.’ She gives a small, sad laugh which ends, if I’m not mistaken, with a hint of triumph.
‘What do you mean?’ I reply, crunching the toe of my navy school loafer down on a leaf.
‘Just . . . never mind.’
I want to run away from all of this, but I wait, sensing she’s going to say more.
‘You just . . . you wouldn’t help me out would you. Just as long as you didn’t have your precious badge taken away. Your success. It’s all about your success, isn’t it? You didn’t care about how I felt, did you? Because you don’t feel anything do you?’
‘Of course I . . .’
‘Of course you didn’t. You just wanted to make sure I didn’t say anything to anyone. God forbid someone saw you as anything but perfect.’
It’s getting colder and I want to go back inside.
‘Listen, Freya, what do you want?’
‘I wanted to see you. I wanted to try and sort this out. I can’t carry it here anymore.’ Freya brings her hand to her chest and then lets out a cry. A string of saliva attaches itself to her scarf. She wipes it away with the back of her hand. ‘But now I’ve seen you, I’ve realised I can’t forgive you for burying it all. For trying to shut me up like I was a nothing. I can barely look at you. You’re weird. You’re like a robot. You don’t give a fuck, do you? I mean, it’s weird. It’s not normal. Why are you like this? Don’t you have any feelings at all? Are you actually human? Say what you like about Verity, but at least she reacts to things in a normal way.’
She brings her hand up, pulling her elbow right back. She’s holding a big rock this time. I sidestep and hold my hands up. The mention of Verity slices through me.
‘Alright. Alright. OK stop. OK?’ She places the rock by her foot, her hand still resting on it ready to launch at me again.
‘I’m sorry.’ I give her what I know she wants to hear. ‘You know how I am, Freya. You know how different we are. It’s not that I didn’t, well, you know . . . I just, I was doing things the way I know how to do them. I was trying to deal with it for us both in a practical manner. Move on, so it wouldn’t ruin us. Our lives. Our futures. Our careers. Both you and me, Freya. Not just me. It wasn’t just about my success.’
Freya looks up. ‘Is that true?’ Her voice goes all small and shaky. ‘Tell me it’s true.’
‘It’s true. I promise it’s true.’
‘You didn’t want to hurt me? You were looking out for me too?’ she says. She’s half standing up now, shivering and her fingers are all covered in filth.
‘Yes.’
‘Please tell me again you were. You are my best friend. You are the only one that gets me. You know me. You saw me – what happened to my family when my mother died. Everyone expects me to be this perfect thing, always perfectly turned out, looking good, smiling. You are the only one that knows me underneath.’ She’s properly crying now. The tears are taking up her whole face and she’s making weird, primal sounds.
‘What about Verity?’ I ask. I want to find out if she’s told anyone what happened but keep silent, for fear of that rock.
‘What about her? She saw we weren’t talking after I came back from that weekend. Leapt on me, I guess. Probably to try and get back at you.’
‘You really think?’
Freya nods. Innocent Freya, totally unaware of the malice in my voice.
‘She’s OK, Verity. She’s been looking after me.’
‘Oh?’ I wait for her to tell me what Verity knows but she doesn’t go on. She starts crying again and threading her fingers through her hair, pulling out long, blonde strands and letting them fly away with the wind.
‘Stop,’ I say. ‘Don’t do that.’
She turns back to me, smiling at the concern in my voice. ‘Were you really just looking out for me?’ she says.
‘I guess.’
‘What about that night? What can we do?’ she says.
I crunch up a browning leaf on a nearby branch.
‘I . . . I don’t know. Maybe we should just give up on Oxford altogether. Both of us. Come clean about the entire night? The whole lot?’
Freya doesn’t look at me. Pulls her scarf down from her neck and thinks about what I’ve said. I hope my look of deference is enough, but not too much, that she doesn’t see through my double bluff.
There’s a sound of breaking twigs. I silently curse the noise for breaking Freya’s train of thought. ‘It’s OK. Just a bird.’ I point to a twitching robin red-breast. She looks up, renewed.
‘No. No we can’t. No, no, Josephine. Of course we can’t. You were right. You were right all along about the drugs. All of that. We can’t let it get out. You are right. It will destroy our future. Neither of us will get into Oxford. I would have to explain it all to my dad. He would be heartbroken. Really heartbroken.’
I let the thought silently proliferate, segueing on to her mother.
‘And Mum too, of course. No, Josephine. You must never, ever let this out, OK?’
And then she stumbles towards me and she’s taking my arms and draping them around her shoulders, like an extra scarf, and then she folds her own arms around my waist and squeezes. Squeezes for dear life.
As I soak up her warmth, I remember The Lens. And I realise I must leave, that minute, and get to the printer’s and tell them to stop. Because at this point, I know she’ll never tell anyone. But if the ‘Guess Who?’ section is published and she sees what I’ve done, my little warning, it’ll all be over. It will have the opposite effect. She’s too damaged, too unstable. It will shake her loose entirely and then she’ll have nothing to lose. In revenge she’ll probably tell everyone what happened. I’ve completely underestimated everything.
‘Fine. Well let’s forget all about it?’ I say, trying to keep the panic from my voice.
‘Is that it then? Are you going?’ She lets go of me and drops her arms to her side.
‘Yes. Well, it’s not it. But I’ve got to go.’
She frowns and my heart breaks.
‘But I promise you, we’ll sort this out.’ I’m edging away from her now. The smashing in my heart is making me veer off course. She drops back down onto the blanket and lies, face down, with her head on her forearm. Her blonde hair glistens in the weak sun.
‘Bye, Freya. I’m sorry, I’m not leaving you. I’ll come and see you later, OK?’
Her head moves up and down slightly and I shout that I love her and then I can’t really hear anything else I’m saying because I’m running faster than I’ve ever run before, all the way to the printer’s. I don’t even bother signing out. No one’s there when I arrive and I can’t wait around any longer, because there’s House Meeting. I scribble a note, asking for Pete to ring me, which takes a few goes as my fingers don’t seem to be able to grip the pen. I slip it through the letterbox and, feeling sick and faint, I make my way back to school.
I take the first half of House Meeting because Mrs Kitts is nowhere to be seen. She flies in the room, apologising to us all. Her hair is crowned with an array of twigs and grass. She sees me pointing at her head, mouthing at her.
‘Goodness. Sorry girls.’ She’s shaking her hair out onto the blue carpet.
‘I totally didn’t realise the time.’ She lets out a bubbly giggle. After a few minutes, she takes control of herself and goes through the list of notices that I’ve already read out. Thankfully, it’s just the younger girls tonight, with the rest of the sixth-formers out at revision.
‘Right. Is that it?’ She claps her hands and laughs.
‘Yes I think so, Mrs Kitts. I’ll take over from here.’ I swipe at the paper she is holding and motion for her to go to her study. She skips her way over to her st
udy door and waves everyone goodbye. As soon as she’s gone, the girls all slump back in their seats and start talking about the next scheduled school dance and the last Friends episode, and I realise that no one thinks anything is out of the ordinary. Thank goodness Mrs Kitts is out of the way. I’ll have to sneak out later and go back to the printer’s, and hope that she won’t have clocked that I wasn’t there for supper. I tell the younger girls that television time is over and they are to all leave for study. I station myself on the sofa outside Mrs Kitts’s study and listen for any sound that means she’s on her way out. After an hour, I run to the sixth-form room, to find someone who’ll sign me in and out for supper. There’s no one in there but, as I’m about to leave, Freya comes in and her eyes are black. Freya hasn’t been in to the sixth-form room since we got back from exeat, so there’s only one reason she’s in here and that’s to find me. There’s a green pallor to her cheeks and she’s sweating. She sits next to me and grabs the toast out of my hands. I can smell booze and the remnants of marijuana smoke. I hand her another slice and she tries to say thank you but can’t.
‘You OK?’ I ask. She stares, searching.
‘Freya. Are you OK?’ And then she lets out a snort and I can see she’s trying not to be sick. It’s too late and she hangs her head over her knees and makes a tiny retching sound. ‘Right. Come here, with me.’ I’m holding her with one hand, reaching for a tea towel with the other, to wipe her down. ‘Come on.’ She doesn’t resist, just flops right into the crook of my elbow. I drag her to the sixth-form bathroom, which is thankfully empty. I strip her, carefully unbuttoning her school shirt and unhooking her bra. I then pull down her skirt and tights; there’s mud all over them, so I sling them in the bath too. ‘Come on, get in . . .’ I have left her small white knickers on. They’ve got a tiny white bow on the front. ‘Freya. Come on. Help me out here.’ She’s now struggling to even sit up and she throws up again into the water. I let the bath out and shower away the chunks of carrot and what looks like lumps of bread. I refill the bath and she’s better now, sits up and looks at me.
The Exclusives Page 16
