by Ruth Dugdall
It will all be perfect.
Trish is in the hot seat, and we’ve heard it all before. Her boyfriend beats her, which she doesn’t seem to mind, and screws other women, which she does. A decade ago, when her boyfriend left his wife for her, she thought she’d won, not reckoning that she too would grow old and get replaced. Her latest suspicions involve a neighbour’s eighteen-year-old daughter and ‘business’ trips away, all coinciding with the teenager’s visits to a ‘friend’.
‘Lucky bugger!’ says Roger, giving a real belly laugh. Clive throws him a warning glance and he stops.
This week, Trish’s best friend saw the girl getting out of the lucky bugger’s car. It’s tacky and sad and Trish twists her hanky in her lap, making excuses for him, her face swollen with tears.
The story makes my heart throb like a faded and forgotten bruise, newly knocked.
‘Now, Trish, no tears.’ I hand her a tissue. ‘You’re a strong woman – don’t let this beat you. You have a choice: to be a victim and let life drag you down, or you can make the decision to survive.’
Trish bites her lip, then reaches into her bag for another Chupa Chup. She sucks them almost constantly when she’s not smoking.
‘I just want to know if he loves her. Is he going to leave me or is it just about sex? She’s barely more than a child. Little slut! Why can’t she find a bloke of her own?’
Clive shifts in his seat, begins to speak, but I know what he’ll say. I’ve heard his solutions many times over the years: controlled conversation, couples counselling. Some such crap.
I interrupt him. ‘Here’s what I think, Trish: you don’t need to know any more about it. Tell your friend you don’t want to hear it. Forget what you know. It may be just malicious gossip and if you confront him, you might lose.’
Kirsty looks up, woken by shock. ‘So, she should just let him get away with it?’
I wait for the blood throbbing in my ears to ease off. ‘Recovering from depression is a long road, and digging into suspicions isn’t healthy. It’s best not to feed our insecurities.’
Five pairs of eyes consider me. With situations like this, they respect my advice more than Clive’s because I speak from the heart, rather than a text book.
Our silence is contained by the stacked bookshelves, my words of wisdom insulated by all those pages, secret worlds. Our shared secrets.
Trish stops crying. ‘I don’t think I can do it.’ She bends the stick of the lolly around her ring finger. ‘I can’t let it go.’
‘It’s the only way to keep your man and your sanity.’
When I was eighteen, I dropped out of university. Panic attacks had gripped me, and I was crippled by anxiety. I needed treatment and Mum had just been cured by a healer. She thought he might be able to help me too.
Daniel had just started out then. Because he was kind and gentle, business was thriving. Slowly, he introduced reflexology and then reiki, and I started to improve. No one knew who he was when he saved me. He patiently helped me conquer my demons and we became close. He told me about his girlfriend, a competitive cyclist who had dreams of competing in the Olympics – a beautiful woman who’d been on the cover of Sports Illustrated that year. He wanted to end their relationship, he said, but she was very needy and still recovering from a cancer scare. When he left her for me, I knew I was blessed beyond belief. I could hardly believe he’d chosen me, especially over such a superior woman, but he told me I was special.
Two years ago, I began to slip again. I don’t know what triggered it, but depressives sometimes have episodes that arrive out of a clear blue sky. The symptoms were the same as back when I was eighteen: paranoia, delusions, believing people were against me. Unfortunately, it’s always those closest who bear the brunt of the illness and I began to believe Daniel was lying to me. I scrutinised our bank records and quizzed him on transactions, certain he was being unfaithful. He said it was just work stuff, that the calls he kept disappearing to make were just needy clients, but I didn’t believe him. I was certain my luck had run out and I’d lost his love. This is how my illness presents itself: jealousy, paranoia, self-loathing.
I have to be clear on this: Daniel never gave me any reason to doubt him. The doubts were all seeded in my head. Seeing I was ill, he tried to heal me, but this time it wasn’t enough. I was admitted to the Bartlet. I really wasn’t well and needed to be somewhere safe. I wasn’t home, so Mum suggested we send Victoria to my old boarding school, up in Norfolk. It was supposed to be a temporary measure, with Mum paying for the school to help us out. But then Victoria settled so well, and everyone said it would be cruel to remove her. Mum said what a wonderful gift it was, a private education, and who doesn’t want the best for their child? No one cared what I thought, or considered what it does to a child to be sent away from home at such a young age. No one ever listened to me.
‘Cassandra?’
I’ve drifted off, back into the past, but Holly returns me to myself.
‘I’m listening.’
In ten minutes, the library opens to the public and already a few regulars are milling around outside in the drizzly rain, peering in through the glass door. Clive notices too.
‘We need to draw today’s meeting to a close. Thank you, Trish, for sharing with us.’ A half-hearted round of applause, a ritual of appreciation. ‘I’d like to set some homework for next week. Could you each be mindful when a situation affects you? Maybe something frightening, or angry, or something that challenges you.’
‘Easy,’ drawls Kirsty. ‘Try a baby who won’t sleep, little sod. If I’m here next week, it means I didn’t kill him.’
Clive gives a game chuckle. ‘Well, yes, that would be one example. I’m under pressure from Ellen to book a winter cruise, just over Christmas when I get most busy.’ He pauses, and we all acknowledge what he means: the festivities are a bad time for the depressed. Most suicides happen in December. ‘Plus,’ he says, trying to sound more cheerful, ‘I hate boats. Please come prepared to share with the group next Friday.’
‘Not Friday,’ I remind him. ‘I won’t be here.’
‘Ah, yes, Victoria is home for half-term, isn’t she? What day are you back at work?’
‘She returns to Oakfield on Sunday, but Daniel always drives her. So what about then?’
‘Sunday it is, same time. Okay, everyone?’
Roger is pulling on his jacket, Alex has gone to unlock the door. One regular has his nose almost touching the glass, clutching books, desperate to be let in out of the cold. The last Friday in October and already it’s winter.
Kirsty helps put the chairs back into the reference section, but Trish remains seated. I take the lolly stick from her lap and pick the wrapper up off the floor.
Clive stands. ‘I’ll be off then.’ He secures his bag, looks again at the clock. ‘I appreciated your input today, Cass. As always.’
By mid-afternoon, when I finally leave work, I’m exhausted and I still need to go shopping. I decide to splash out and go to Waitrose. I pass the rows of chickens, their plucked corpses wrapped tight in cellophane, and wonder if any were raised on Innocence Farm.
At Oakfield, fizzy drinks are forbidden, breakfast is nutritious, the food is dull but wholesome. We both approve of this, of course; Daniel spends his life lecturing people on the benefits of porridge and pulses. But I weaken and buy a large pink cake, intended for a birthday. Victoria’s homecoming is something to celebrate.
I arrive home around three thirty and Daniel’s car is in the drive. He must have finished early. I’m excited about tomorrow, about seeing Victoria, and that makes tonight special. I have ingredients for a delicious tea – a roasted vegetable and garlic timbale with quinoa. I’ll ask Daniel to open one of his excellent bottles of red wine, mostly gifts from grateful clients. I’ll listen attentively when he tells me the wine’s merits, I’ll have a bath with that expensive plant oil he bought me, I’ll wear that linen dress he likes.
I’m still smiling, the key still in the door,
when I hear a woman laughing, upstairs in our home. I freeze, listen.
‘Oh, Daniel!’
I’m imagining things. I do that sometimes. Clive says it’s my brain’s default valve in times of stress. I climb the stairs slowly, uncertainly, and it takes a lifetime, but I have to find out: either I’m having another episode or Daniel is fucking another woman.
I’m at the top of the stairs when I hear her voice again.
‘Oh, Daniel, please – just do it!’
He says something, I imagine him directing her to a new position, a new pleasure.
I’m frozen to the spot, poised ready to fight or flee. Heart speeding, muscles tight, ears pricked. I can’t see the bedroom, but in a flash my brain pictures a shapely calf wrapped over Daniel’s thigh, painted fingernails digging in his buttocks to take him deeper.
‘Daniel! That’s too much, I really can’t . . .’
It’s the script of a porn film. Then Daniel’s voice booms, as blood pumps in my ears.
‘Please . . .’
He’s giving in to orgasm, as he does with me. I see in my mind’s eye the tangle of limbs. My pounding heart prods me on. Fury rises like a tide in my ears. I push open the bedroom door.
The room is silent, our bed is empty. Confused, shaking, my hands turn clammy as my grip on sanity loosens. It was all in my head. This was how it was two years ago, jealousy playing tricks with my mind. My brain was knitted together with therapy and drugs and time, but now the sutures are coming loose.
Then I hear a breathy voice, coming from the study.
‘Daniel, I’m begging you.’
I imagine animal positions and ecstasy as they fuck on his desk and I double over, hands on my knees, not knowing what to do or which way to turn. I don’t have the strength to go through this. I’d rather kill him.
I remember my advice to Trish. I think of the can of worms I can’t afford to open, the violence I’m capable of if I open that door.
I creep away. While my partner finishes fucking another woman, I flee. Downstairs, in the kitchen, I carefully unpack my Waitrose bag, put the vegetables in the fridge, the cereal in the cupboard and the pink cake in the centre of the table.
I leave by the front door, closing it quietly behind me. I start my car, backing out of the driveway, and do a swift turn, driving down the street away from my house. Just two hundred yards along I bump against the kerb, scaring myself with an emergency stop. I’m shaking, unfit to drive, and still catching my breath when, in the rear-view mirror, I see the front door to my house opening and there she is, the other women. I slide down in my seat, but she isn’t even looking my way. She cuts a smart figure, in a trim business suit, a tall black woman carrying a briefcase. She has Egyptian features, finely cut cheeks and cat eyes – but her expression is stony.
I watch as Daniel follows her to her car, his hands in his pockets, his face impassive. They say goodbye and they don’t kiss, he doesn’t even smile as he waves her off with a single raised hand, dismissive. It was just a business meeting, that’s all. So, that’s how I know my paranoia is back.
I’m ill, and I need to fix myself before it spirals to a darker place, one from which the delusions are so strong I can’t claw out.
I stop speaking and open my eyes. Holly has stilled; she’s watching me. Between us, a moment is exchanged. ‘So now you know,’ I say. ‘I have a mental illness. It’s why no one believes me when I say Mum didn’t shoot herself.’
13
Holly
Cassandra stopped talking and bowed her head. Her face was pale and when she touched her lip, her fingers were shaking. Holly felt her distress, how her world seemed to be collapsing around her.
‘Come on. You need a break.’
Holly took Cassandra’s arm as they walked away from the Garrett Anderson Centre to the main part of the hospital where the café was situated, steeling herself as patients crossed their path. Choosing to help the injured was a conscious way for her to manage her synaesthesia, but it was still tricky being around so much physical pain – pain that she could sense in her own limbs. She’d learned a long time ago that she could only cope with feeling other people’s suffering if she could break it down into its individual components. She could then manage it or stop it entirely, like she had in the Poacher and Partridge at Halloween. This was what had motivated her to train as a paramedic, but she’d discovered that it also made her especially responsive to patients. In the emergency room, she had felt the most visceral, immediate pain and been able to respond using her medical training. It worked the same way with emotions too: she could sense what to ask, intuit what someone really felt. And now her attention was focused on Cassandra, whose story sounded in her brain like Morse code, tapping out a message about mental illness and a loosening grip on reality. Connecting with this form of pain felt like trying to hold water or fog – so much harder to fix than a flesh wound or broken bone. She felt Cassandra’s vulnerability as a sore bruise in the centre of her body, right where the heart sits, and it spun Holly back twenty years, back to Innocence Lane, back to the night everything changed.
‘Why don’t you go and find us a table and I’ll get us some food?’ Holly asked Cassandra, who immediately began looking around for the best place to sit. ‘What would you like?’
‘Anything that doesn’t contain pig or poultry, please. Living on a farm can do that to you.’
‘Cheese sandwich it is then. Drink?’
‘Green tea, please.’ She hesitated. ‘No, Daniel’s not here, so what the heck. I’ll have a double espresso.’
The woman in front of her in the queue had her lower leg in a brace, and with every step Holly was forced to concentrate on the menu board above their heads to stop her own leg from adopting the other woman’s pain. The café was masquerading as a Costa, but couldn’t overcome the hospital whiff of bleach and industrial-grade handwash, the odour that pervaded all the corridors and wards. Once she had Cassandra’s sandwich and espresso on the tray, she chose a bottle of water for herself and held it out to the cashier.
‘Could I have a glass for this, please? And a straw.’ She never got over her embarrassment asking for one, but straws placed a welcome barrier between her mouth and the glass, which if touched would leave the gritty taste of sand in her mouth. The woman ignored her, moving quickly away, her heavy eyelids and downturned mouth telling Holly she was too busy to deal with whims.
Holly didn’t ask again. She took her bottle and glass, with its solitary cube rattling around at the base, and placed it on her tray. She joined Cassandra at the table she’d chosen by the window and handed her the plate. ‘You’ll feel better if you eat something.’
It was different between them, now Cassandra had told her about her fragility and history of mental illness. A barrier had been broken.
Cassandra chewed her sandwich, gazing into the middle distance. The café was busy. A too-young couple fussed over a baby who was refusing his bottle of milk. Next to where the trays got stacked, a woman with no hair but startling blue eyes stirred her tea for too long and gazed into space. Over in the corner, an elderly couple, straight-backed and smartly dressed, sliced their steaks neatly, dabbing the corners of their mouths on paper napkins as though enjoying a meal at the finest Michelin-starred restaurant. What a microcosm this place was: birth, illness, death.
On the other side of the window was a double-sized black bin that totally obscured any view, and around it gathered a huddle of hardy smokers, not put off by the drizzle of rain that had just begun. Among them was Hector Hawke, standing slightly apart, but smoking with serious intent. He was gazing up at the Garrett Anderson Centre, home to the intensive care ward, where his wife now lay.
Cassandra saw him too but she continued to eat her sandwich with mechanical, sleepy chews. ‘It’s best to let Dad be when he’s angry.’
‘Who’s he angry with?’
‘The world. Me.’
‘Why with you?’
Cassandra leaned back in her ch
air and rubbed her eyes. She looked exhausted. ‘Because I was there. Because I’m questioning things, and he’s frightened.’
DAY 4
TUESDAY 4 NOVEMBER
14
Cassandra
I sleep, deeply and for too long, on account of the Prozac Clive gave me, and the trazodone I’m secretly taking, waking in a sweaty tangle, strands of hair stuck to my face, my heart quivering. I reach for Daniel, my hand seeks his body, but he’s gone. Instead, laid flat on the pillow, is a piece of paper. It’s my Waitrose receipt from last Friday, and on the back he’s written:
Hospital called to say your mum is stable.
Gone to see a very sick client who can’t be cancelled. Back soon.
The clock beside me says it’s almost ten. I should have been awake hours ago. I stagger downstairs, only in my nightdress, hair unbrushed, but I’m so hungry. I want to call Daniel, to check on when he’ll be back, but I know I shouldn’t interrupt him when he’s with a client. Instead, I take tofu from the fridge and pour coconut oil in a pan: comfort food. Eventually, when I can stand it no longer, I call the Studio.
‘Hello?’
It’s the teenage receptionist, Katie. She’s only just left school, unqualified, and doesn’t even give the name, Samphire Studio, but Daniel believes in giving people a chance. Plus, he likes that he can train her from scratch, to his standard. He just hasn’t achieved this yet.
‘Katie, I’m looking for Daniel. Is he still there?’
‘Oh, Cass, hi! He’s – um – busy.’ Something in the way she’s pausing between words sounds shifty.
‘I need to speak with him, please.’
