by Frances Vick
“You have to be in plain view. By rights you shouldn’t even be in the corner, you should be second on the right or left so we can see you as soon as we come in to make sure you haven’t tried anything, but we haven’t enough space.” She gestured at a large family clustered around an unconscious woman on the bed alongside, and an old woman doubled over on the edge of the bed opposite. “You’ll be away soon if the psychiatrist lets you.”
Lydia closed her swollen eyes and turned her head to the wall. Her throat and stomach were raw and her face throbbed. Why say all of that? Why did everyone have to know what she’d done and how she’d failed? She began to cry again, trying to be as quiet as possible about it, trying not to move. She was still pretending to sleep when the psychiatrist arrived.
“Miss Hunt, I’m Doctor Adler with the mental health team. Before we can let you go home I have to ask you some questions, and you really must be as honest as you can. Your family won’t be given any information that you don’t want to share with them. Wait – you are over 18 aren’t you?”
“I’m 26.”
“Brilliant, brilliant. OK, well this shouldn’t take too long. Is it OK to call you Catherine?”
“I prefer to be called Lydia.”
“Ok, Lydia. Can I begin by asking you why you did this?”
Lydia swallowed painfully and drank some water. “My boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend died.”
“Boyfriend or ex-boyfriend?”
“Uh. It’s a bit complicated. Ex-boyfriend, but we were still quite involved. We were still...” What? Still meant to be together? She was scared to express what she meant in case it came across as pitiful; some sad little obsession of her own. She didn’t want this doctor to jump to the wrong conclusions, she couldn’t trust that he’d have a sensitive and subtle enough mind to appreciate the situation. So she just said, “We were about to get back together.”
Dr Adler nodded and tapped a pencil against the list on his pad. “So he died...”
“Yes.” She felt herself beginning to cry.
“How did he die? Was it recent?”
“I don’t know how he died. They didn’t tell me. I don’t know when it was. But it must have been recently, in the last few days.”
“But you were close?” He frowned.
“Yes! Yes! We were very close. But certain people didn’t want us to be together.”
“Did you take the pills as soon as you heard?”
“No, I took them a few hours later, I think. I don’t remember how long afterwards.”
He made a quick tick on his list. “So in those few hours, were you thinking about harming yourself?
“No. I don’t remember what I was thinking about. I don’t think I was thinking of anything.”
Tick.
“And did you call anyone to tell them what you were intending to do, or had done?”
“No.”
Tick.
“Did you write a note?”
“No.”
Tick.
“Do you live alone, or with friends?”
“I used to. I live alone now.”
“Are you working?”
“I’m a self employed promoter. And events organiser.”
Painfully, Lydia imagined the picture he was sketching of her – the cast off girlfriend, living friendless, alone. Possibly with a cat. A girl past her prime with nothing but a dead ex-boyfriend and a prescription for antidepressants to call her own. Some feeble stirrings of pride made her sit a little more upright against the stiff pillows. “It was a shock. I had a shock. But I honestly didn’t plan this. I mean, if I had I would have taken more pills and locked my door wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t have planned to have my mother find me like that. I would have put some clothes on.”
The psychiatrist looked at her politely, intently, waiting for more. Lydia was unequipped to deal with silence; she couldn’t help seeing it as a blank page to fill with information about herself. Even when it was the worst thing to do in a situation, even when she dimly realised that others might find her irritating or dull, she would plunge on, explaining herself, declaiming. Most people, on meeting her for the first time, assumed that she was on speed.
“I live alone, because I enjoy living alone and because I keep different hours to normal people. I mean my work is different to normal work and I need space to entertain friends in the music industry, and so I can’t very well live in a shitty shared house. I mean the assumption is always that a woman must either live with friends, which is fine when you’re a student, but after that, they have to have a husband or a boyfriend to live with them, to legitimise them. Which is bullshit. Really. So, I make no apologies for that. And this whole thing,” she gestured at the ward, “is really just a mistake. I oughtn’t to be here –”
“But you are here. You took an overdose of antidepressant medication.”
“Yes, but –”
“Are you telling me that it was an accidental overdose? Because I find that very difficult to believe. Do you have a history of self harm?” His pencil hovered over the tick box.
Lydia gave him the look she’d learned from her mother – a sudden straightening of the back; pursed lips and sucked in cheeks; widened eyes, astonished with just a hint of hurt. “I don’t know what you mean.”
The psychiatrist sighed. “You have six fresh horizontal cuts on your left forearm that look like they’ve been done with a razor blade. There’s a couple of burns on your right wrist and a series of half-healed smaller cuts on your thighs. I’ll bet there’s more, but they’re the ones the emergency staff noted. Judging by what they got out of your stomach, you haven’t eaten for a while either.”
Lydia lost the look and sagged.
“Look, I’m not here to catch you out, I’m here to assess risk. I need you to be honest enough with me so I can get you the help you need and let you go. Because I don’t want to see you back here anytime soon.” He drew something on his pad – a frowny face, it looked like. “Would it help if I asked questions? OK? We’ve established that you have a history of self harm –” he raised his hand over Lydia’s feeble objection, “What I’d like to know now is if you’ve ever tried anything like this before?”
Lydia shook her head.
“And you say this was unpremeditated? OK, and it was because your boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, I should say, died. Had you been seeing him long?”
Lydia found the question difficult to take in. Had she been seeing him long? Had or have? The past was still so present for her. If Carl was dead then that left her stranded. She swallowed dryly. How long? Five years since they met; three since they broke up; eighteen months since they slept together; a year since that terrible time she saw him with the girl; the same since they last spoke. But times, dates, meant nothing, it was all arbitrary, because they were timelessly connected in a way that no-one could possibly understand. She thought of the time they’d cut their arms and mingled the blood in a giggling ceremony that became solemn – years ago now. They’d vowed that no matter what happened – whoever they were with in the future, wherever they were in the world – if either one got a phone call from the other, they’d drop everything and meet. They had swapped rings too. She had worn hers on her ring finger until he told her not to, while he kept his on a string around his neck, close to his heart. Nothing could keep them apart. He’d said that, she was certain. Or if not those exact words, then others that were equally precious. “We’d been seeing each other on and off for about five years,” she said finally.
“Was it a supportive relationship? Was it something that you relied on?”
Was it a supportive relationship? No, probably not, viewed from the outside. Was it something she relied on? Oh Christ, more than anything! Years ago she had shifted all her ideas about her future, her sense of identity, onto Project Carl. It became her role to overcome his past, whip up his confidence, promote his ambitions, shape his future. Everything, everything was rooted in him, and since he stopped speaking to her, she’d learned to
survive on miniscule nourishment. Someone mentioning him, reading old letters, looking at photos, could buoy her up for days. Who was there in the world who could fathom what this meant for her? Peter. Peter would. But he hated her now too, she felt it.
“Had you had contact with your ex-boyfriend immediately prior to his death?” the psychiatrist prompted.
“Yes,” she lied.
3
A few weeks ago she had run into Peter at a record fair. Chinaski had just come back from Reading, and she’d heard that there was a chance of them touring with Nirvana. She longed to pump Peter for information, but he probably wouldn’t be able to tell her anything, and anyway, he could be so negative about things. And Carl really valued enthusiasm. Lydia wondered how long Peter could stay in the band, after all the tension in the studio she’d heard about and after what she’d seen even earlier, on tour. Peter could be so amenable one minute, and then so mulish the next...so difficult to work with, and just at the time when the band really needed to focus their energy and get behind Carl.
When she saw him coming her way she smiled, but he mustn’t have seen her, because he carried on past her stall, myopically studying the sleeve notes on an album. She called out to him. He could barely look her in the face. Probably he still had a bit of a crush on her; he had a few years ago. Carl used to tease him about it, and Peter had been distant with her ever since. She sparkled at him to help him get the courage to speak.
“So what’s this then?” he indicated her stall. “You selling your stuff?”
“Yes. It’s all going! I’ll replace most of them with CDs though.”
“You can’t get much on CD. Some of this stuff is irreplaceable I bet.” He drew out a few albums – Slint, Bitch Magnet; things she’d bought but hadn’t really listened to. “You won’t be able to get this stuff again. Did you keep them on tape at least?”
“Oh,” she was breezy, “everything’s going to be on CD soon, and I can wait.” Peter muttered something that she didn’t catch. There was an awkward pause. “How are things? Carl?”
Peter looked at the ground. “It’s fine. He’s fine.”
“Really?” The great thing about Peter was that he was a terrible liar – very easy to catch out. You could break him with persistence. “Is he really fine? Because I heard...” she trailed off, waited for him to take the bait.
“He’s been a bit moody. Down. I think he’s tired more than anything.”
“I suppose you’ve had a lot to organise...” Peter was trying hard not to respond, she could see him struggling. “I mean I imagine you have a tour to set up? And the album must be mixed by now, no?”
Peter shuddered; inexplicably she’d lost him.
“Well, we’re always busy, you know.” An embarrassed pause. “I’ve got to go now, actually, rehearsal.”
And as he turned to go Lydia said, too loud, “We’ll have a drink sometime. Is your number the same?” and she thought he nodded as he walked away, but couldn’t be sure.
That evening, Lydia sat alone at home with a beer, when Chinaski’s video for “Shattered”, the one that was making them massive, came on the TV. She quickly stuck a video in and pressed record, hands shaking. It was the first time she’d seen it.
A simple idea on paper, it had been tricky to shoot. Filmed in a warehouse set up to look like a club, it was an ambitious idea, involving professional trampoliners, crash mats, wires and stunt men in dreadlocked wigs. Two extras were injured, and one was sick on the fake PA system. There was a thin gauze partition between the stage and the pit to allow for a decent matt shot; twice an overenthusiastic fan got too close, and tore it. From the opening bars the audience started jumping to the music and their jumps became increasingly, improbably, high. Small groups leaped, and on their descent, other, larger groups jumped even higher, until the whole crowd was jumping, higher and higher, their descent animated by slow-motion shows of rage, ecstasy or possibly vertigo. In the meantime the band stayed static, locked in by gravity, until, by the chorus, the sheer weight of the audience’s enthusiasm, their gravitational pull, forced the band to jump in turn. The stage showed little swells, as if it had turned to half set gelatin, as Carl, John, and Peter, complete with drum kit, also bounced, rose in the air in response to the crowd. By the second chorus they were leaping so high that they had formed ladders of limbs, on one another’s shoulders, leaning perilously forward towards the stage. The band, too, were drawn to the crowd surging upwards and forwards. By the end of the chorus it seemed as if they would meet, touch, but then, at the last second, both audience and band were propelled apart by some unseen and malicious force. The ladder of fans broke and kids fell on their friends, boots in faces, hands outstretched. The band were slammed against the back of the stage in slow motion, drumsticks flying, hair in their faces, legs extended. And this happened again and again, faster and faster, until the end of the song; the audience struggling to get to the band, and the band being sucked in towards them, before being spat out against their own huge name on the backdrop.
* * *
Peter had found miming difficult, as had John, but Carl had had no trouble at all. He’d gone through take after take, being pulled backwards on wires that eventually left welts under his arms and around his midriff, with no complaints.
Carl had told Lydia about it. Well, not really. Not only Lydia. It was more like he was telling a crowd of people in The Bristolian and she was there at the back. They’d said hi to each other, though, she was sure of that. It was the last time she’d seen him.
Lydia watched the video again and again while she finished her can and opened a new one. She watched Carl being pulled back and forth, thinking about what it meant, what the message for her might be, and at midnight she began calling him, dozens of times. Perhaps he didn’t live there anymore. Still, you’d think someone would answer if only to tell her that he’d moved out, or was away. She’d heard that now there was a way of finding out who had called you, you just had to call another number or something. Perhaps he’d already done that, realised it was Lydia calling and was stubbornly not answering. Or perhaps he didn’t even know that she was calling, perhaps he was being kept from her by some jealous girl who was monitoring the phone. She tried to leave a few minutes between calls to catch the girl out, but soon couldn’t resist heaping them one after the other – as soon as one rang out to a dead tone, she’d call again. Getting more aggrieved, getting more angry, lighting a new cigarette off the butt of the last one. And then, success! The receiver was picked up. It clanked and rattled, and she heard a TV, faint in another room, and laughter. Maybe from the TV? Maybe not.
“Is Carl there?” Lydia’s voice was hoarse from shouting and cigarettes. She heard the TV sound, a door closing. Someone was there, not talking, but there was another rattle and a creak – someone walking away? And then the receiver was placed on something. She heard a record needle hitting vinyl with a jump, and at the end, the needle stayed circling, a pointless whump, whump, whump. A few hours later when she picked up the phone to call Mother, the sound was still going. No-one had replaced the receiver at the other end, and Lydia’s line was blocked. She listened to the womb-like sound of the record needle going nowhere, until she slept.
She had thought about hurting herself then, after the record incident, but she wasn’t going to admit that to the psychiatrist now or she’d never get out of this hospital. But she had thought of it. Kept it in the back of her mind, as a possible escape route. As the record went round and round she allowed herself to consider the idea that Carl was cruel. Not misled, not duped or unaware, but actively malicious. Why had they even picked up the phone? Why put on a record and why that record in particular? Only Carl knew what the song meant. It was a message, and the message said Fuck You, because that record was the only one that Lydia hadn’t been involved in in some way; their latest album, their first for DCG. When Chinaski had been signed to Deep Focus Carl had run everything past her – lyrics (which she’d advise on and rewrite if
necessary), song structure, the minutiae of what had happened in rehearsal time. She’d been in the studio for the first album and the second single; she’d booked them on support slots and briefly been on their first European tour. She’d styled them. What had happened, that she’d been abandoned?
For a while now, she’d noticed people she’d known for years distancing themselves from her. Her status was eroding. She wasn’t invited to as many parties, wasn’t tapped for as many favours. Since moving into her flat more than a year ago she’d barely had any visitors – Carl once, her parents, few others. The sofa bed she’d bought to put up visiting bands and entourage spillovers had never been used and the stereo system Carl had advised her to get was more often than not turned off. The volume never really got over 4 even when it was on. She’d thought when she moved in that she’d have to charm the neighbours so they’d let her get away with parties, but as it turned out she needn’t have bothered. All those gig posters she’d carefully pried off walls in dank European clubs, lovingly ironed and had framed, what had been the point if there was no-one to see them? It was as if a meeting had been convened, and it had been decided that she was not to be included, wasn’t even to be noticed much anymore. As much as she had struggled with this idea, it had never crossed her mind that Carl might have something to do with it. Until tonight.
* * *
A year ago, the time of that terrible party, that was another time she’d thought of hurting herself. She had actually hurt herself by burning her wrist on the grill. There was still an ugly scar there. She usually hid it with bangles.
DCG had thrown a signing party for Chinaski. There was to be a free bar, and an open invitation to all people employed or associated with Deep Focus. Wearing an uncomfortable black dress that she remembered fitting her better, army boots and her newly un-dreadlocked hair in what she hoped were cute pigtails, she arrived too early to be unobtrusive. In the past, no matter how early she was or how late everyone else was, she would always look and generally feel happy on her own for a while. Plus there would always be someone she was acquainted with or not, to talk to. But that ability had deserted her lately, and she wasn’t on her own turf. Friends from Deep Focus hadn’t arrived yet, and Lydia felt the drinks she’d had at home turn on her. There wasn’t anywhere to sit down. She didn’t know where the toilets were so she couldn’t hide in there until the room filled up, and she was too visible and exposed to just leave. She thought Peter had noticed her but he was at the bar talking to someone with his back to the room. There were some people taking pictures of a flurry of wise-eyed girls wearing clothes that were the fashion industry’s idea of alternative. Still, thought Lydia, they look nice. And they fit. She tugged her dress down at the armpits and pulled up her tights so they’d flatten her stomach a bit more, took a deep breath and strode over to Peter, who was talking to – whatshisname? Chris Harris. The one who wrote the overwrought reviews and had been hanging around the band so much during the first tour. The one, she’d joked to Carl, who must be in love with him or something. Peter looked friendly enough, gave her a kiss, and a glass of actual champagne. Chris Harris lit her cigarette with a courtliness that made her relax a little.
