A Place to Lie

by Rebecca Griffiths

  ‘Aw, come on. She’s only a kid.’ Dean skimmed his lips over her neck.

  ‘Yeah, but a kid who’s desperate to be a woman, and dangerous because of it.’

  Too busy to answer: Dean’s hand, a mind of its own, was under her crop-top, caressing her breasts, making Amy arch under him. His love for this girl had pulled his heart as wide as a sail. She didn’t know it, but for the first time since his mother died, Dean was happy; happy to let the soft, warm breeze of Amy Mortmain blow him along. And on this sea of bliss, riding the waves that made his insides soar whenever they touched, he couldn’t help but extend his joy to others: to his stepmother, to the Boar’s regulars, to the orphan-eyed and awkward Caroline Jameson – by paying her attention and flattering her in a way he would never ordinarily have done.

  ‘Don’t worry about her,’ Dean breathed through his kisses. ‘She can’t trouble us.’

  ‘Who’s that girl?’ Caroline asked Liz as she shook out sawdust for the chickens. All glossy and confident, with curves like the women in films – Caroline hated her on sight.

  Liz stood up to brush her jeans, pressed a hand to her perspiring forehead. ‘That’s Amy. She’s the vicar’s daughter.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ Caroline knew all she needed to know about the vicar. ‘I don’t like him much,’ she said, and shook his image away. ‘He stares at me and Joanna all funny.’

  Liz laughed. ‘You’re a one, you are.’

  ‘Am I?’ Caroline fiddled with the straps on her dungarees. ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘You aren’t afraid to say it how it is,’ Liz answered, ripping open a sack of poultry feed. ‘And that’s refreshing, especially round here.’ She passed Caroline a heaped scoop of grain. ‘Scatter that – they’ll soon come running.’

  And sure enough, from beneath the shady fringes of rhododendrons and wooden henhouses came every variant of fowl. Jerky in feathery jackets, they clucked and hooted into the filmy heat and damp sawdust smell.

  ‘Isn’t Jo with you?’ Ellie, appearing from nowhere, scattered her mother’s plumy friends.

  ‘She’s having a piano lesson,’ Caroline answered.

  ‘Oh.’ Ellie looked at her feet that were waiting for the brand-new roller stakes she’d been promised for her birthday. ‘I’ll see her later, then.’ And spinning round, she skipped away.

  Liz decoded the disappointment on Caroline’s face. ‘It’s only because they’re closer in age. She’s shy with you, that’s all – what with you being so grown up. Here, you can help me carry the eggs if you like. Look—’ Liz held out her hands. ‘We’ve got all these.’

  Caroline smiled into the compensation Liz forced through her eyes. Silvery and alert, she compared this woman to her sluggish, pale-faced mother, and wished she could swap her city life for one here at the pub. A momentary lapse in concentration and she dropped an egg on her foot. The sickening crack and slide of yellow yolk over her toes, and she began crying out of all proportion.

  ‘Aw, now. Now .’ Liz looped an arm around her. ‘You don’t need to get so upset over a little thing like that, I’m not angry with you. What a funny little thing you are.’ Liz ruffled Caroline’s hair. ‘Come on, let’s get a drink, eh? The sun’s getting to you.’

  Present Day

  Ignoring the check-in screen at the Psychiatric Unit at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, Joanna gives her name and reason for her visit to a woman at the desk and is told to sit. The waiting room is a rustling calm, punctured by coughs and whispers, but it isn’t long before she is led along a corridor and ushered into Nurse Practitioner Sue Fisher’s consulting room. Wire-thin, bespectacled, with a wisp of platinum hair, she unravels her legs as she swivels in her chair, but doesn’t get up.

  ‘Mrs Peters? Please, sit. Sit .’ A bony hand waves at the chair beside her. ‘Thank you, Helen,’ she speaks to the closing door, to the flurry of l’air du temps left behind, before wordlessly returning to her computer screen.

  The room is beige: the carpet, furniture, wall coverings, Venetian blinds; everything chosen for their neutrality, for their inability to offend. It even smells of nothing now the perfume has dispersed, and the light too, leaking in from outside, knows to behave itself. Unbuttoning her coat, Joanna doesn’t remove it as she assesses the array of posters offering the stressed and over-anxious helplines and group therapy sessions, the boxes of syringes, hypodermics and dressings adorning windowsills and shelves. The modesty screen with its taupe examination couch. The only thing of colour is the pink handwash balanced aboard the basin.

  ‘There.’ Caroline’s mental health nurse, finished with whatever she needed to do, rolls back on her wheels and gives Joanna her full attention.

  ‘Thank you for taking the trouble to see me.’ Joanna unsticks her tongue.

  ‘It’s nay trouble.’ Sue Fisher: full-time member of the Psychiatric Clinical team, with her ‘wee’ and her ‘aye’ and her heathery-Highlands accent. ‘You have my deepest sympathies – it’s a terrible business.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Joanna grips the arms of her chair: about to ride the rollercoaster ride of her sister’s life. ‘Was Carrie under your care for long?’

  ‘A wee while, aye.’

  ‘Did her GP refer her to you?’

  ‘In a roundabout way.’

  ‘Is that because Carrie was having trouble again?’

  Sue Fisher makes a face.

  ‘I was hoping you’d be able to tell me what’s been going on.’ Joanna wants answers – after all, this is why she’s here. ‘Her GP wouldn’t see me, and I understand they can’t divulge details of Carrie’s personal and medical history, but I’d hoped you’d be able to give me something. I’m struggling to come to terms with what’s happened … I’ve got to understand why she was in such a mess.’

  ‘Look.’ Nurse Fisher removes her spectacles, buffs them on the hem of her skirt. ‘I am bound by a certain degree of patient confidentiality, but I’m sure anything I say – off the record, you understand – will stay between me and you?’ She waits for Joanna’s agreement as she repositions her glasses. ‘And, yes, these are such dreadful circumstances.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Joanna brightens. ‘Anything that’ll help me understand what might have been going on in her head.’

  Nurse Fisher takes a breath. ‘Caroline’s GP referred her to a psychiatrist at the hospital after she tried taking her own life again three years ago.’

  ‘What ?’ Joanna shudders into the bombshell. ‘I didn’t know that. I know she tried to when she was twenty-five, but you’re telling me she tried again?’

  Sue Fisher holds her gaze; Joanna having no knowledge of this comes as little surprise. ‘Your sister was quickly diagnosed with clinical depression, and after that was transferred to me to provide her long-term care. She and I’ve been working together to try and help her recover from her illness.’

  Joanna plays with the buckle on her handbag, thinks of her sister’s severe mood swings that worsened into adolescence. Her debilitating sense of hopelessness spanning weeks into months – episodes when she couldn’t be bothered to wash and dress, never mind go out.

  ‘Do you have any idea what caused the two of you to fall out?’ Sue Fisher, startlingly blunt, barges in on Joanna’s contemplations.

  A moment’s hesitation. ‘Carrie told you that? She told you we fell out.’

  ‘She did, aye.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure it was any one thing. Our relationship was more complicated than that … Carrie was more complicated than that. I don’t think I ever properly understood her.’

  ‘So, there was no single thing?’ the nurse pushes.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Joanna thinks about the question. ‘She was always having a go at me for something, but I suppose that row we had at Dora’s funeral was the worst. The way she behaved towards me was pretty shocking.’

  ‘And how did she behave?’ Joanna isn’t going to be let off that easily.

  ‘By shouting at me in front of everybody, ac
cusing me of being jealous that Dora had left everything to her.’

  ‘And were you?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t.’ Joanna, adamant. ‘I had Mike. My career. Carrie was on her own, incapable of holding down a job – I understood Dora’s reasons. She wanted to make sure she’d be all right. I’d have done the same.’

  ‘And how many years is it since you last saw one another?’

  ‘Ten. There were a couple of failed telephone conversations, but nothing recent. Dreadful, isn’t it? D’you think it’s dreadful?’ Joanna, wanting reassurance.

  ‘I know it hurt Caroline that the two of you weren’t in touch. She often talked about you, said she missed having you in her life.’ The nurse is surprisingly candid. ‘But she said she couldn’t forgive you for lying to her.’ A box of tissues is pushed forward on the desk.

  ‘Lying to her ?’ Joanna flings her head around. ‘I never lied to her.’

  ‘When you were little?’ the nurse probes.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean?’ Joanna takes a tissue, blows her nose.

  ‘When Caroline was thirteen. She seemed to think you lied about a boy she was in love with – that you apparently led her to believe he was interested in her.’

  Joanna waits a minute, mind whirling. ‘Dean ? You’re not telling me she was still going on about him?’

  ‘You remember it, then?’

  ‘Yeah. Vaguely. But we were only kids. I only said it to stop her moping around after him, I didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘Ah, but Caroline obviously didn’t see it as harmless.’ The nurse checks the notes on her screen, relays them to Joanna. ‘She said you underestimated her feelings for him … that the consequences of your lie were far-reaching.’

  ‘Far-reaching ? My lie? How? I don’t understand.’ Joanna is confused.

  ‘I can appreciate all this sounds strange to you, but I’m merely passing on what your sister believed.’ Sue Fisher pushes her spectacles up her nose. ‘And according to her, you duping her into thinking this boy loved her when he plainly didn’t, well, it drove her to do something terrible – something she was ultimately never able to forgive herself for. Or that’s what she said … what she believed.’

  ‘Duping her … driving her to do something terrible … this is insane, I was only nine. I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’ Joanna clutched her face in her hands. ‘I’m sorry, but come on, surely this is stretching it a bit … isn’t it? We were kids, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I understand that, but it shows us how something unintentional and innocuous can sometimes, with certain people, be misconstrued. And particularly so with a lot of the people I deal with on a day-to-day basis.’ The nurse speaks slowly. ‘We can’t underestimate the intensity of feelings in certain adolescents – they can last a lifetime.’

  ‘Obviously.’ Curt, Joanna tries to process the revelation that this had been her sister’s underlying problem with her all along. ‘Honestly, though, talk about getting things out of proportion.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ the nurse says. ‘But, you see –’ she readjusts herself – ‘your sister really was very ill. Clinical depression is a terribly destructive condition, as I’m sure you know. And one your sister suffered with for far too long … You’ve a history of depression in the family, I believe?’ The nurse listens as Joanna fills her in on her mother’s mental fragility that, although dying of natural causes two years ago, meant she was never free of the blackness, as she termed it.

  ‘Carrie was frightened she’d be dogged by it all her life, too,’ Joanna concludes.

  ‘Well, let me assure you, she was doing really well. It took us a while to establish the right balance of drugs, but the change in her was magical.’ A smile. ‘I really think the future was finally a country she wanted to dwell in. That’s why this is all so sad.’ The smile vanishes. ‘I know you weren’t in touch, but d’you have any idea what happened? Why she should suddenly stop coming to see me, stop collecting her prescription?’

  ‘No. That’s why I’m here, I was hoping you’d be able to tell me. It does seem as if she was able to talk to you. And I thank you for that.’

  ‘I liked Caroline.’ The nurse fiddles with the rubber tubing of a blood pressure testing kit. ‘She was an interesting woman. I also knew she was on her own, that she had no family support.’

  Joanna squirms under Sue Fisher’s gaze. ‘I know, who else did she have?’ She raises her hands, the whites of her palms flagging her surrender. ‘I should have tried harder … If I’d known she was still fretting about Dean Fry, that she blamed me for it all … ’ She tips back her head to stave off tears.

  ‘She was terribly fragile, and it’s often those closest who bear the brunt of things. Far easier for me, I wasn’t emotionally involved.’ A warmer smile melts into the watery sunshine sliding between the slats of the blind.

  ‘It’s kind of you to say.’ Joanna’s face collapses, preparing to cry. ‘She was difficult, flaring up at the slightest thing, taking offence when none was meant … accusing me of thinking things I wasn’t.’

  ‘All usual symptoms of people suffering from your sister’s condition, I’m afraid,’ the nurse says matter-of-factly.

  ‘But now it’s all too late, I can’t put it right.’ Joanna takes another tissue, dabs her eyes. ‘I feel awful about it.’

  ‘You can only do so much, and I’m sure you had your own life to get on with. Caroline told me you’re a concert pianist. She was very proud of that.’

  Echoes of what her sister’s neighbour shared the previous evening, the contents of Caroline’s scrapbook, brings more tears. ‘But she couldn’t forgive me for something I did when I was nine?’

  The nurse pulls another face but declines to answer.

  ‘We used to be close, really close.’ Joanna continues to twiddle the buckle on her bag, guiding the thick leather strap in and out with her long, pianist’s fingers.

  ‘What was your home life like, when you were children?’ Sue Fisher enquires.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘When your sister first came to see me, I suspected she’d suffered severe trauma in childhood – as well as this boy … this … ?’

  ‘Dean.’

  ‘Yes, him. But something else, something worse, perhaps? A trigger for what she went on to be. We never did get to the bottom of it. She’d talk, but only so much.’

  ‘I suppose Carrie’s problems –’ Joanna stares into the crop of glazed family snaps of happy, sun-soaked people on the desk without really seeing them – ‘began when our father died. I suppose she told you all about that, didn’t she?’

  Sue Fisher nods.

  ‘My lasting memory of Carrie,’ Joanna continues, ‘is of her wearing these big, heavy cardigans, even in the summer. She was too shy to take them off. Thought she was ugly, unworthy. It only occurred to me how sad this was when I had children of my own. Two,’ she says quickly, before being asked. ‘I’ve two boys. Eight and twelve.’ She takes another tissue. ‘Carrie was obsessed with mirrors – she could get quite obsessed about things in general, actually; things and people.’ A small laugh she doesn’t mean. ‘It got worse when she hit puberty, fixating on the configuration of her face, her budding body. Told me she was looking for reasons why Mum couldn’t love her.’

  ‘Are you saying your mother blamed Caroline for your father’s death?’ The nurse, reading between the lines.

  ‘It’s what Carrie thought, yes.’

  ‘And you – what did you think?’

  ‘That Mum was mixed-up. She was always tricky like Carrie was tricky, but she became a hundred times worse after Dad died. I suppose, when I think about it, we had a rotten childhood. Granted.’ A thin sigh. ‘Carrie had a worse time of it than me. At least Mum … ’ These thoughts aren’t ones Joanna wants to admit out loud.

  ‘What?’

  Joanna swallows. ‘At least she didn’t hate me. Didn’t resent me being alive in the way she resented Carrie.’

  Nurse Fish
er doesn’t move, her eyes sorrowful behind their glasses. ‘You say your sister was volatile, difficult – was she ever violent?’

  There is a pause. ‘No, I don’t think so. Not with me.’

  ‘But that night in the mini-mart, that was violent, wasn’t it? I heard she was carrying a weapon, that she attacked a man. Why d’you think she felt the need to arm herself like that?’

  ‘Again, I was hoping you’d be able to tell me,’ Joanna answers. ‘Could it have been a side-effect of the drugs she was on?’

  ‘There’s nothing to suggest this. And, of course, by this point, Caroline had been missing her appointments, had stopped taking her medication.’

  The sound of the telephone cuts between them. Sue Fisher flaps an apologetic hand before answering it. ‘Aye … aye. Please do.’ She speaks into the receiver, then hangs up. Refocusing on Joanna, she asks, ‘Did your mother ever hurt Caroline, abuse her?’

  ‘Not physically, no. But mentally, yes, I think she did that.’

  The nurse clears her throat. ‘There’s something else that’s been troubling me,’ she says. ‘Particularly in light of what’s happened—’

  ‘What’s that?’ Joanna reacts to Sue Fisher’s ominous tone.

  ‘The last few times I saw Caroline, she’d become quite agitated – almost, dare I say, frightened.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘I don’t know its significance, but she was complaining about silent calls during the night, asked me to prescribe sleeping tablets, which I did. Reluctantly.’

  ‘Carrie’s neighbour said she’d been troubled by them,’ Joanna tells her. ‘I don’t know the significance either, but somebody rang the flat in the early hours – I stayed over last night.’

  The nurse nods again.

  ‘I admit it could be a bit unnerving, there on your own – I found it unnerving. But it could just be a fluke, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe. But if not, it shows your sister wasn’t imagining it. Do you think you should tell the police?’

  ‘I would if I thought they were interested. As far as they’re concerned … well, they’re not concerned , are they? They think whatever threat Carrie thought she was in was all in her head, particularly as no one was to blame for her death.’