He looked at me but didn’t say anything. I think he must have known from my tone that this conversation wasn’t going to get any gentler.
‘The night I walked out . . .’ I began. ‘I don’t know what Dr Barbara has told you – not much, I’d imagine.’
Beck laughed, humourlessly. ‘Patient confidentiality again. She said you were safe and hadn’t come to any serious harm – anything else would have to come from you, when you were ready.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know that can’t have been very reassuring.’
‘No. It wasn’t.’
‘I booked myself into the Dorchester. Did she tell you that much?’
‘Yes – or she said that’s where she picked you up. But that was all.’
‘Okay.’
For the next five minutes, Beck didn’t say anything. He just sat very still while I gave him a complete account of what had happened that night. He stopped making eye contact when I got to the man in the bar – the man whose name I couldn’t even remember – but I don’t think that made it any easier to go on. The only small consolation I could find was that he must have been prepared for a worse ending than the one I gave him.
‘We went back to my room,’ I said. ‘We kissed, he touched my breasts – but that was as far as it went. I stopped things before they got any further. Actually, I started screaming the place down. Some of the night staff came in. That was when I called Dr Barbara.’
The silence when I’d finished speaking seemed to hang in the air like a storm cloud.
‘That’s everything?’ Beck asked.
‘Yes.’ The only detail I’d left out was that he’d hit me, but I didn’t think it was fair to bring this up. I didn’t deserve to look like a victim in any of this.
Beck looked at me again, his face more or less blank. ‘I don’t know what I can say.’
‘You can say whatever you feel like saying. Shout if you want. You have every right to.’
‘Do I?’ He let the question hang for a few seconds. ‘You see, that’s the problem, isn’t it? I honestly don’t know how much of that was you and how much was . . . I don’t know – illness, mania, something separate.’
‘Neither do I,’ I said.
‘Can you even tell me what was going through your head at the time? Can you give me any idea?’
‘My head was all over the place. I was really out of control – drunk, confused, hyperactive, but . . . God, this just sounds like I’m making excuses, and I don’t know that I can. The truth is, there was a part of me that knew exactly what I was doing. But I still couldn’t stop it, or I didn’t want to stop it. I don’t know which. It was completely irrational and self-destructive. I suppose the closest I can come to explaining is to say that I didn’t really care what happened. I didn’t have the capacity to care. Except this isn’t the full story either, because obviously there was a part of me that did care too.’
I fell silent. As messy as this explanation was, it was the only honest answer I could give, and I think Beck understood this – although I could see that he was still at a loss as to how to respond. So I thought I’d make it easy for him.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I need some time alone to get my head straight. And so do you. When I get out of here – whenever that is – I think it would be better if we spent some time apart.’
He left soon after that, and I immediately went outside for a smoke. Melody was already there, as predicted. She smiled as I walked over, and I smiled back.
‘How’d it go?’ she asked.
‘As well as could be expected.’
‘That bad?’ The way she delivered this line made me certain that she must have heard it on TV or in a film. But I still found it oddly endearing. The truth is, I was glad she was there to talk to.
‘I think it might be over,’ I told her.
‘Shit.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘My boyfriend dumped me, too,’ Melody told me, to convey solidarity, I think. ‘That’s when I started cutting again. We’d been together ages. Seven, no, eight months.’
‘Beck didn’t dump me,’ I corrected. ‘We’ve agreed to spend some time apart. It was a mutual decision.’
‘Mine was by text,’ Melody said. ‘Turned out to be fucking awful timing too. It was only like a week before . . . Well, before I came here.’
There was something missing in this account, I knew, but it wasn’t the first time Melody had been vague about the circumstances that led to her being admitted here. It always struck me because it was pretty much the only area in which Melody was vague. With everything else, she was insanely forthcoming. I knew about the thirty-two paracetamol, of course – almost the first thing she told me – and I knew she’d been cutting from the age of fourteen and on medication by the time she was sixteen; we’d exchanged extensive notes on the various antidepressants we’d both tried. But there was still this conspicuous gap when it came to the days just before her suicide attempt. The only other topic on which I could remember her ever being cagey was her personal therapy, which was fair enough, really. When I asked her, one time, what she talked about in her sessions with Dr Hadley, she gave me the exact same answer I’d given her: ‘Daddy issues mostly.’
The ex-boyfriend, I thought, was another piece of the puzzle, but there had to be more, obviously. Still, I assumed that if she ever wanted to tell me the rest, she would do it in her own time. I wasn’t going to press the issue, and she was quick to shift the conversation back to my problems.
‘You live together, right? You and the boyfriend?’
I nodded.
‘So what’s going to happen next?’ she asked. ‘You know, once you’re out of here. You gonna move out?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. For a while at least. In all honesty, I haven’t really thought that part through. But my options are pretty limited; I can’t afford much. I’ve got this massive credit card debt to pay, and I’m still going to be contributing my half of the rent on the flat. For the next couple of months, anyway.’
Melody shrugged. ‘Stay at mine if you want. I’ll ask my mum, next time she’s in.’
This offer was so unexpected and unthinkingly generous – albeit on her mother’s behalf – that I was at a loss for words for several seconds. Then I reacted as anyone would. ‘Oh, no, I really couldn’t impose like that. I mean, thank you – really, thank you – but—’
‘You can pay if it makes you feel better,’ Melody interrupted. ‘I give Mum sixty quid a week for rent and bills. You can afford that, right? Just sell a few of them magazine articles and you’re sorted. You got any more up your sleeve?’
I smiled. ‘Perhaps. I’d promised to write this piece for the Observer; God knows what’s going to happen with that. But, anyway, I still think it might be a bit unfair on your mother, having a complete stranger in the house.’
‘Oh, she wouldn’t mind. She’s good like that. I mean it’s not a palace, obviously – it’s a council flat in Acton – so you might have to kip on the sofa. Or you can have my room, if I’m not out by then, except . . . well, I think I might be.’ Melody smiled, a little shyly. ‘Lisa’s been talking about me becoming an outpatient. I’d just have to come back here a couple of times a week for therapy.’
I have to admit I was surprised by this, though I’m not sure why. A number of other patients had been released since I’d arrived on Amazon; it wasn’t as if the hospital was meant to provide long-term accommodation. I suppose it was just that I took Melody’s continual presence here for granted. I saw her so many times a day she was like part of the décor.
‘That’s great,’ I said, after a small hesitation. ‘You must be pleased.’
‘Yeah, I guess. Pleased, scared – you know what it’s like.’
I nodded. Because I did know, and I realized then how rare that probably was. It was strange: Melody and I had so little in common in so many ways – it was inconceivable that we would have become friends outside this place – and yet I felt we understood ea
ch other on a much deeper level. With Melody, I didn’t have to explain or justify concepts that others would have found irrational, just as she didn’t have to explain to me why she liked to cut herself.
That was the reason, I think, why the idea of staying with Melody once we were out of here no longer seemed so outlandish; or not for the next few hours.
That afternoon, I had an extra session booked with Dr Hadley. We’d agreed it would be sensible, in case I needed to talk after Beck’s visit. However, it also meant that Dr Hadley had been forced to rearrange her schedule and slot me into the gap between two other appointments – an hour that would usually have been free office time. Consequently, she had had a very busy day, and was uncharacteristically flustered before our session.
She was coming out of her office as I was about to knock on the door, her cheeks flushed and her lips pursed. ‘Oh, Abby.’ She gave a small, tired smile. ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten. Can you just give me a couple of minutes? You can wait inside if you like.’
I went in.
Dr Hadley was a compulsively tidy woman. I’d never seen her office looking anything but immaculate, and even now, it wouldn’t have been called messy by any normal standards. There was just a handful of signs that today had been exceptionally fraught: a pen on the floor, an unwashed coffee cup, a pink Post-it stuck to the side of her computer screen. But as I sat down in my usual chair, I found these details made me smile a little. Being in an NHS hospital, Dr Hadley’s office was inevitably rather plain and institutional, lacking the more personal touches I was used to from my therapy with Dr Barbara. But in addition, I’d often thought that this environment reflected something of her personality. She’d always projected a kind of austere professionalism that was difficult to warm to. So witnessing even this limited disorder felt quite refreshing; it was nice to see her human side.
I reached down to pick up the fallen pen and then placed it back in Dr Hadley’s pen pot, and as I did, I glimpsed what was written on the pink Post-it note:
Call CRT re: Melody Black.
It seemed completely innocuous at first – and in every normal sense it was. It wasn’t personal or sensitive information. CRT, I knew, was the Community Rehabilitation Team, and from this I guessed it must be something to do with what Melody had told me that morning, about her possibly becoming an outpatient. But it wasn’t this content that caused me to smile again. It was Melody’s name.
Odd as it may sound, I hadn’t known Melody’s surname up to this point. Mrs Chang aside, I don’t think there was another service user whose surname I did know. We only ever used first names, as did the staff when they addressed us. So this was the first time I knew Melody as ‘Melody Black’, and straight away it was a name I loved. It was so gloomy and lyrical it could have been a line from a Sylvia Plath poem.
There was something more than this, though – some other connection that I couldn’t yet put my finger on. I thought, at first, that it was just a strange feeling of aptness, as if the two words now resonating in my consciousness were someone’s taut synopsis of all the beauty and darkness of the past seven weeks.
It must have taken mere moments for the full revelation to hit me – and this really was how it felt. It was the Dorchester all over again; I’d been slapped full force across the cheek.
Of course, later I’d spend hours trying to convince myself that I might be wrong, that I was suffering from some kind of massive delusion. But the truth is I knew. In that precise instant, all the pieces of the puzzle – the conversations with Melody about her dad, the peculiar gaps in her backstory, even the fact that she looked weirdly familiar – fell into place. And this left no room for doubt.
Simon’s surname had been Black.
Melody was Simon’s daughter.
21
A HUGE FUCKED-UP COINCIDENCE
I ran.
I didn’t make any conscious decision, didn’t think about how it would look or where I was going. The problem, of course, was that I was on a locked ward; there was nowhere I could go. But I only realized this when I was out of Dr Hadley’s office and halfway down the corridor, and at that point, biology took over. I darted past a bemused-looking nurse and into the nearest bathroom, where I vomited in the sink.
I wish I could say it was cathartic, but it wasn’t. I kept retching long after there was nothing left to come up, and I was still bent over the sink when Dr Hadley started talking to me through the door, which I’d only managed to half close.
‘Abby? I’m coming in. Is that okay?’
It wasn’t okay, but I couldn’t speak to tell her this; when I tried, I felt my stomach starting to heave again.
I’ve wondered, since, what would have happened if I’d been able to talk to Dr Hadley there and then. I’ve had plenty of time to wonder that, but the truth is I don’t think I would have told her even if I’d been capable of doing so. My immediate impulse was to bury what I’d just found out, to shut it away somewhere dark and remote. As it was, I didn’t exactly choose to do this, or not straight away; it just became the default option.
Dr Hadley thought I was having a panic attack – which, I suppose, was true – and assumed this must be something to do with Beck’s visit that morning, which, of course, it wasn’t. But it was so much easier to go along with this version of events. I didn’t even have to lie, as such; I just had to stay silent and allow Dr Hadley to draw her own conclusions.
Eventually, when my stomach had stopped churning, we went out into the corridor, where she asked me if I wanted to come back to her office to talk things over. I shook my head, and I must have still looked a real mess, because she didn’t press the matter, however much she thought it might help me. Instead, she fetched a glass of water for me to drink, then told me I needed to get some rest; if I wanted, she could have one of the nurses bring me a sedative to help me sleep. At that moment, there was no kinder offer I could imagine.
When I awoke it was still light. A glance at the wall clock told me that it was late afternoon and I’d slept for only a few hours, but this had nevertheless made an appreciable difference to my state of mind. Yes, I still had a cold, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, but this was overlaid with a shallower, synthetic calm which I attributed mostly to the diazepam. For now, at least, my head had stopped spinning, and I had enough focus to think through what had happened earlier, slowly and almost rationally.
At first it seemed the most appalling coincidence – that Melody and I should both wind up here, in the same hospital ward at the exact same time. But the more I thought about it, the less coincidental it felt. A coincidence implied blind chance, something entirely random, and, in a sense, there was nothing random about our being here. You could explain it in terms as mundane as NHS catchment areas. We lived in the same corner of west London, and if you happened to go nuts in this part of the city, St Charles was likely where you ended up.
More than anything, I think my initial disbelief was born from a mixture of self-pity and willing self-delusion. Because, straight away, I wanted to deny what I’d discovered, or at least to persuade myself that I could be wrong. And while this was difficult, it was not impossible. After all, what did I really know? They shared a surname – one of the more common surnames in the English language; maybe not top fifty, but certainly top one hundred. Of course, the thing that kept gnawing at me was the way in which Melody had alluded to her dad’s death. In hindsight, I suspected that her phrasing could have implied an event more recent than I’d at first assumed. But since I couldn’t remember her exact words, it was impossible to be sure; and this, really, was the point. As long as there was a wisp of doubt hanging over my conclusions, it gave me a reason not to act on them. I told myself I had to be certain before I could make any sensible decisions.
As far as I could see, there were only two paths to getting the information I needed: I could ask Dr Hadley, or I could ask Melody herself. The former, I quickly dismissed. Dr Hadley wouldn’t discuss another patient with me, not
unless I came out and told her everything, which of course would defeat the purpose. With Melody, there was a chance I could ask the relevant questions without her realizing that anything untoward lay behind them. But the idea of manipulating her like that caused another wave of nausea to surge in my stomach. And anyway, there was a part of me that understood how disingenuous this whole thought process was. It was just a way of avoiding the much bigger issue: if my suspicions were correct, what exactly should I do about it?
My gut told me that I’d have to say something to Melody. I couldn’t go on acting as if nothing had happened; I’d never wanted to deceive her. Yet there was a problem here, too: I genuinely wasn’t sure, in this instance, that being honest could be equated with being kind. Telling the truth might help me – it would be a way of assuaging my guilt – but I couldn’t see how it would help Melody. If there were self-serving aspects to this reasoning, I can honestly say that they were secondary at this point. My main concern was that I didn’t want to cause any further harm.
On the face of it, there seemed no obvious route to Melody finding out about my article. It probably goes without saying, but she was not the sort of girl who read the Observer. The chances of her ever reading the Observer were essentially zero – and I assumed this probability could be extended through the vast majority of her friends and acquaintances. It felt horribly snobbish when I voiced these thoughts to myself, but I knew they were true nonetheless. I also knew that while my article had been referenced elsewhere – on Twitter and in forums – any subsidiary interest would have long since vanished. Now that I was no longer manic, I could see my story for what it was. It was the kind of feature that made a big splash in a small pond, but left no significant ripples in its wake. If I didn’t confess to Melody, logic told me she would never find out.
So why did I still have this intense sensation of foreboding? Guilt, again, I thought. Whatever the facts of the situation, guilt would not permit me to shake the dread of discovery, and after running in circles for another half-hour, I finally understood that I was going to get nowhere on my own. What I really needed was a second opinion; my own perspective was far too clouded.
The Mirror World of Melody Black Page 18
