by Tammy Cohen
I have an idea to go to the Mindfulness Area and curl up in the egg chair and be alone, but when I pass the door of the art room and glimpse Laura sitting on her own in her office at the far end, I change my mind.
‘Cup of tea?’ she asks. Clearly, my state of mind is written on my face.
‘As long as it’s not herbal. Or good for me in any way. And contains shedloads of caffeine.’
‘I think we can manage that.’
Without even thinking about it, I settle into the comfortable armchair and wrap myself in the tartan throw. It’s second nature now to sit here like this. It’s the one place in the clinic where I don’t feel like I’m being assessed.
‘Tough day?’
Laura leans forward and puts a hand on my knee, looking up into my face with eyes so full of warmth I almost cannot bear it.
‘No such thing as a tough day in The Meadows,’ I joke. ‘Every day’s a holiday.’
‘You know, you don’t have to entertain all the time, Hannah.’ Her hand still on my knee, brown eyes close to mine. ‘You’re allowed to be dull from time to time. Most of us are.’ She sits back and a smile twitches her lips.
‘I just …’ I tail off. I just what? ‘I just feel like my brain isn’t making connections any more. Things happen and I jump to the wrong conclusion or else no conclusion at all. I’m so tired of feeling like this. I’m half drugged with the sleeping pills, yet I don’t sleep. I can’t shake this awful dread that something terrible is about to happen.’
I catch up with my own words and let out a half-groan.
‘What I mean is, something even more terrible than ending up in the nuthouse and having my closest friend here die on me.’
Laura keeps her clear gaze fixed on me.
‘Will you let me try to help?’
She means the hypnosis, I’m guessing. I’ve always been resistant, but I’ve reached the stage where I’ll try anything.
The strange thing is, I don’t notice her doing it. We’ve talked before about places that mean things to us, and I told her about the walk I used to do with our dog Madge. So now she invites me to remember how Hampstead Heath looks in autumn with the leaves carpeting the ground, and how Madge loved to rustle through them, and the view of the London skyline from the outside pagoda near Kenwood House, and what it’s like to come over the hill and see the ponds shimmering in the distance. As far as I can see, we’re just sitting having a normal conversation, except I’m kind of zoning in and out of it in a very pleasant way and, all of a sudden, I notice that the lead weights that were attached to everything I say and do seem to have lifted. I’m in the room, but also outside of it looking down on myself and seeing how small I am in the scheme of the world, how little my problems really matter.
‘Hannah?’
‘Yes?’
I force myself to focus on Laura’s face.
‘It’s just that I have a tutorial in a minute. Odelle wanted a little one-to-one time.’
I glance through the open doorway at the old-fashioned clock on the art-room wall and am taken aback to find I’ve been here for nearly half an hour.
‘Thank you,’ I say, standing up. Dazed.
I don’t know whether it’s just the power of suggestion but I do feel noticeably lighter.
‘Just don’t operate any heavy machinery for a while,’ she says, smiling.
I find myself smiling back, though I can’t help wondering just where the last thirty minutes have gone.
Odelle is waiting at one of the tables in the art room. Her eyes follow me across the room as if they would burn a hole clear through my skin, but her scrutiny doesn’t bother me. I feel a sense, not of euphoria, that would be too strong, but certainly of peace. My new-found wellbeing stays with me as I walk out of the art room and up the stairs to my room, where I find someone has slipped my post – two letters – under the door.
One has been sent on from work; I recognize Becs’ writing. My publishing office continue to send me catalogues and acquisitions bulletins. The second letter has a typed address and a central London postmark.
I tear the envelope open with the nail of my thumb and unfold the single sheet of paper inside.
The room spins.
34
Corinne
The coffee shop, down a side street near Charing Cross station, was dark and crowded and Corinne regretted picking it when she saw how Steffie’s mother, Patricia Garitson, clutched the collar of her elegant, powder-blue wool coat tightly around her neck.
‘Thank you for turning up. I was half expecting you not to,’ said Corinne, setting her tray down on the table and pushing Patricia’s green tea towards her. ‘I got you something to eat.’
They both gazed at the slab of chocolate cake as if it were an art installation.
‘I want to help if I can. I feel responsible.’
‘Don’t be silly. Your daughter’s a grown woman, as are mine. We’re not responsible for the choices they make.’
‘Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking I could have done more to protect Steffie – and, though I hate to say it, to protect other people from her.’
Fear snaked through Corinne’s veins as she remembered Jacob Garitson saying, ‘She hurts people.’ Just what was Steffie capable of?
‘The thing is, weird things have been going on at the clinic where Hannah … where my daughter is staying.’
‘Where she’s being treated, you mean. When you say “staying”, it makes it sound like she’s having a few nights in a nice hotel.’ Patricia threw back her head and laughed. That flash of gold in the back of her mouth.
Corinne was thrown.
‘Right. Anyway, Hannah says things have been planted in her room specifically to remind her of what happened.’
‘You mean the imaginary baby?’
Patricia Garitson was only stating fact, but still it felt like a sharp, painful jab, and Corinne decided not to mention the colouring book, or the tiny knitted hat left on her own doorstep. All evidence, she increasingly suspected, of a systematic campaign of harassment.
‘I just want to know what we might be dealing with here. I know your husband was, understandably, not keen to discuss your daughter’s past with a stranger.’
Patricia made a pah sound and gave a tiny flick of her wrist, as if shaking off a speck of dust.
‘No use talking to him about Steffie. He thinks the sun shines out of her behind.’
Corinne swallowed. She sounded so bitter.
‘I just need to know if Hannah is in any kind of danger.’
It sounded so melodramatic but, to Corinne’s dismay, Patricia didn’t try to brush it off. Instead, she picked up a mini-fork and began absently jabbing at the chocolate cake that sat on the table between them, its icing sweating under the café lights.
‘Can I speak frankly?’
Corinne nodded.
‘As a mother yourself, you must know that sometimes our children can be … disappointing.’
‘But not dangerous?’
Jab, jab, jab.
‘You know I am a caterer?’
Corinne blinked, caught out by this sudden conversational switch.
‘Well, this one time, Stephanie was angry with me over something. Probably because I’d given her a curfew. She’d have been around fourteen, I suppose. Anyway, I was catering a small birthday dinner for a neighbour: six individual apple pies. The fancy kind, with leaf shapes on the top, each traced with a delicate pattern of veins. Only, one of them had a special ingredient.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘The needle I’d been using to decorate the leaves.’
Corinne put her hand to her mouth. ‘You can’t mean she did it on purpose?’
Patricia licked her finger and dabbed it on the table, where a crumb of cake had fallen.
‘She denied it, obviously. But she wanted to get back at me. Any way she could.’
‘So you’re saying we should be worried?’
Patricia Garitson held her fi
nger to her mouth and flicked out her tongue to lick the crumb off. ‘Put it this way, when they were children, Jacob used to drag his chest of drawers against his bedroom door before he went to sleep.’
Corinne thought of the girl in the photo, her eyes an angry slash of red, and closed her own as a shiver of fear passed through her.
How can I keep Hannah safe?
When she opened them again, Patricia Garitson was leaning forward watching her face intently, as if anxious not to miss a thing.
Corinne was still feeling jittery about her meeting with Patricia Garitson hours later when she returned home from work. At least, that’s what she told herself was behind her heightened anxiety. Certainly it had nothing to do with the fact that she’d spent the last hour of the day in conversation with her mature student, Paddy, about his dissertation.
Normally, she wouldn’t have expected to see him again for a week or two, and she had been cross with herself for the treacherous flare of pleasure when she’d read his email requesting a quick chat. He was nine years younger than her. She’d looked up his details on the social sciences departmental system. Corinne had known more than one male colleague who’d fallen for a young undergraduate while in the grip of midlife madness. And even though Paddy was no callow nineteen-year-old school leaver, she refused to turn into the same tired cliché.
Still, she hadn’t been able to completely stifle the way her stomach jumped when he’d walked into her office. Or the spark that flew between them as they talked, so that it was less a conversation than a game, with ideas the ball they batted between them. She’d thought she had successfully shelved her worries during their chat, had even congratulated herself on her professionalism, but when Paddy had finally got up to leave, nearly half an hour after she’d normally have left to come home, he’d hesitated in the doorway.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking this, Corinne. I mean, I hardly know you, so it might sound presumptuous, but are you OK? You just seem – I don’t know how to put this – but you seem like you’re carrying quite a weight around with you.’
At first, she’d been affronted. ‘I’m perfectly fine, thank you,’ she’d said.
She’d regretted her snippiness as soon as the words were out, but it was too late.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep the mark. Please excuse me.’
After he’d gone she felt bereft but, then again, she argued with herself, what could she have told him? That her daughter, Hannah, was in a psychiatric clinic and it seemed possible that her son-in-law’s ex-lover could be stalking them both with mocking gifts of cuddly toys and baby hats? It sounded preposterous. Yet just for a moment, she indulged herself in the fantasy of unburdening herself to Paddy. Feeling those big arms around her, not having to be the strong one for once.
She allowed herself a moment of self-pity while she poured herself a glass of red wine, trying to remember when she’d opened the bottle and wincing at the first vinegary swallow until her palate got used to it. It had probably been sitting there slightly too long, but it was a decent bottle and she didn’t have another.
Corinne couldn’t remember when she’d last felt this tired. Tired to the very marrow of her bones. The files from Westbridge House she’d borrowed from Geraldine Buckley a week ago were still strewn over the table in front of her, and her eyes passed over the pictures of the three girls Dr Roberts had treated – and failed.
She wondered if he ever lost sleep over them, these young women who’d been entitled to be listened to without being judged, to be supported rather than disbelieved. She knew Roberts had been heavily influenced by Dunmore, and had not been found guilty of any wrongdoing, but surely he must feel some measure of remorse?
The last photograph was that of Catherine Pryor and Corinne felt another brief flicker of recognition. She studied the face, those grey eyes gazing out from cushions of puppy fat, the wide, strong nose. But nothing seemed familiar.
Taking another gulp of wine, she sat back, surveying the photograph from a distance.
Suddenly, her hand flew to her mouth.
‘Oh my God,’ she said out loud. And then, softly, leaning in again to take a closer look. ‘Oh my God.’
35
Hannah
The paper lies on the table between us. I try not to look at it.
‘And you have no idea who sent this?’
When Dr Roberts frowns, I realize how rarely he does it. He is all about show, it strikes me now. All teeth and good hair. He doesn’t like to appear troubled or irritated and, when he does, he looks instantly five years older.
‘I could take a guess,’ I say, leaning away from the table so I don’t have to see it. It’s a photocopy of a scan photo. I think it’s a generic one taken from the internet, although, of course, last night I’d convinced myself it was Emily. I can still taste the bile in my mouth.
‘But why would this woman be doing this?’ Roberts asks. ‘What does she want from you?’
‘Revenge? After Danny chose me over her, she had a miscarriage. At least no one can accuse me of making it all up now.’
I don’t know what I’m looking for. An apology, maybe. Roberts fixes me with those cold blue eyes, saying nothing, until I say it for him.
‘You are kidding me, aren’t you? You really think I could have sent that to myself?’
Roberts holds up one of his perfectly manicured hands in an infuriating placatory gesture.
‘I’m not saying for one minute that you did anything, Hannah. However, I should point out that it isn’t unheard of for a patient to go to sometimes quite extreme lengths to establish evidence that corroborates her own version of reality. Tell me, Hannah, how secure do you feel now in your relationship with Danny?’
I stare at him while my drug-fuddled brain scrabbles to catch up with his sudden change of direction.
‘Hold on. You think I’m making this up to win back my husband and turn him against his ex-tart?’
‘And are you?’
‘I don’t need to win back my husband, Dr Roberts. He made a choice, and he chose me. And, actually, more to the point, I chose him. I chose to allow him a second chance, and he was bloody grateful.’
‘It’s only that he seems to be uncomfortable with the idea of you being here. I don’t mean The Meadows specifically, but any place like this one. Would you say that was accurate?’
‘Of course he’s uncomfortable with it. Who wouldn’t be? How’s your wife, Danny? Oh, she’s in the nuthouse, thanks for asking.’
‘It seems clear, Hannah, that your pseudocyesis was triggered by the situation at home. You were struggling to conceive and then your husband got another woman pregnant. Until you’re prepared to address the underlying issues at the heart of your relationship, we’re not going to be able to fully understand what happened to you and prevent it happening again.’
I’m angry now. I don’t want to be told that we have ‘issues’ in our relationship. I don’t want to be reminded that the marriage I believed inviolable turned out to be made of paper.
‘Was there an autopsy?’ I ask.
The question takes us both by surprise.
‘What do you mean?’
‘For Charlie? Surely there must have been some sort of inquest.’
Roberts sniffs. ‘There was a post-mortem. And there is to be an inquest, although the date has not yet been set. However, judging by the results of the post-mortem, there will be no surprises. Charlie killed herself, Hannah. And I think we now need to start looking at why you’re having so much difficulty coming to terms with that fact.
‘I wonder if, perhaps, you identified so strongly with Charlie, to the extent that you now see her fate inextricably bound up with your own. When you arrived here, you were a mother-to-be who’d just had her baby snatched away from her. All those nurturing hormones were still racing around your system.
‘It wouldn’t be unreasonable to try to replicate the familial hierarchy you’d been expecting. That trinity with you at the ape
x and on the two other points the needs of a new baby and the maternal wisdom of your own mother.’
I shake my head, but he continues as if he hasn’t seen, warming to his theory.
‘Just think about it for a minute. Stella is the one you’ve given your nurturing to, and Charlie was your mother figure. You were very much emotionally invested in Charlie. Little wonder you can’t accept what she did.’
‘And Sofia? Was I emotionally invested in her as well? I know Sofia didn’t kill herself. She wouldn’t have done that to her children. I never saw anyone with so much courage and determination to stick it out.’
‘That’s just it, Hannah. For people like Charlie and Sofia, every day requires courage and determination. It’s like running a marathon that never ends. Depression is a relentless enemy. Sometimes you just don’t have the energy to fight it any more.’
‘Sofia wasn’t depressed.’
‘You’re right. Sofia had other issues, which I can’t go into with you for confidentiality reasons. But still, it wasn’t easy for her. Life with long-term mental-health issues is an endurance test. Not everyone makes it.’
Later, I’m furious with myself for letting Roberts off the hook. Every time I try to challenge him he slips through my fingers. I fold up the scan photo and stuff it into the front pocket of my jeans.
Mum and Danny are supposed to be visiting, but when I get to the day room only Mum is there, sitting on the chair nearest the door. She sees my expression.
‘Sorry, darling, Danny couldn’t make it. Don’t look like that, because it’s actually a good thing. There’s something I really need to talk to you about.’
Disappointment makes me sullen. ‘So? Talk then.’
Mum looks around the day room. Joni is at the oval table, filling out some of the interminable paperwork all the nurses complain about. Judith and Frannie are on the sofa, reading magazines. I once asked Frannie what she wants to do when she gets out of here. She looked at me, startled, like I’d asked her to strip naked and run around the room. ‘I don’t know,’ she said eventually. ‘Be quiet somewhere?’
