by Nathan Filer
RELAPSE INDICATORS
1. Voice: No.
2. Atoms: No.
3. Not engaging with support team: Oops.
Two out of three ain’t bad.
It was Jacob Greening’s idea that we should leave home after Year 11, and rent a place together. Our own flat, he said. It’ll be wicked. I thought so too. It was so easy to imagine the two of us together, forever.
Am I rushing?
The first thing we had to do was get jobs, which wasn’t difficult because we didn’t mind what we did. He found his at a 24-Hour Kebab House. Then I had my interview for care assistant work at a home for the elderly. The manager asked if I had any experience of care work, and I said that I did because I helped to look after a disabled person, so I knew about bedsores and Sudocrem and hoists and mouth care and bed baths and commodes and catheters and slide sheets and Fortisips and that kind of thing, and that I enjoyed it.
The manager smiled, and asked if I was happy to work night shifts.
Yes.
It’s enough to drive you crazy, Mum said. It’s like talking to a brick wall, she said. She went on and on about A Levels, about college. About how well I did in my GCSEs even though I didn’t try, even though I refused to quit smoking that BLOODY STUFF.
She talked about my potential.
I’ve never understood what is so special about achieving potential. In the care home I got to learn about the different residents. I knew more about them than they did. Each resident had a folder that was kept in a locked drawer beside their bed. In the front, stuck with Sellotape to the inside cover was a short note, written by the resident. Except it wasn’t really written by them because half of them were too demented to know what a pen was. It was just made to look as if they had written it, to make it more personal.
It might say,
HELLO, my name is Sylvia Stevens. I prefer to be called Mrs Stevens please. I used to work as a secretary and I am very proud of my five beautiful grandchildren. I need to have my food cut up for me but I prefer to eat it by myself so please be patient if this takes me a while. At night-time I like to listen to Radio 4. This helps me sleep.
Or it might say,
HELLO, my name is Terry Archibald. You can call me Terry. I was a merchant seaman and historian. I even wrote a history book which you can find in the manager’s office. Please be careful with it because there are not many copies left. I get confused sometimes, and can hit out if I feel threatened so please keep talking to me to keep me calm when you are doing my personal care. My wife visits on Wednesdays and Sundays.
Or it might say,
HELLO, my name is William Roberts. Most people call me Bill. I have committed several horrendous sex crimes against young girls, including both of my daughters, for which I have never been brought to justice. Please liquidize my food and feed it to me. I am allowed a small beaker of Stout near bedtime.
Or,
HELLO, my name is your potential. But you can call me impossible. I am the missed opportunities. I am the expectations you will never fulfil. I am always taunting you, regardless of how hard you try, regardless of how much you hope. Please put talcum powder on my arse when you wash me, and take note of how our shit smells exactly the same.
Ignore me. I’m just pissed off today. Who does Denise Lovell think she is, coming to my home, trying to catch me out? Why can’t they just leave me alone?
Ignore me.
YOU’RE AN ASSET TO THE TEAM, the manager would say.
I was always first to volunteer covering shifts when staff went off sick. And I’d never complain when he put my name down for extra night duty. I don’t know how we coped without you, he would say.
I’d get an hour’s break at three o’clock in the morning, to have some sleep before getting breakfast ready for the residents. I didn’t go to sleep. I used to get on my bike and ride through the silent streets to the park, to our bench beside the tree. Sometimes Jacob would be there first, waiting for me, or sometimes I would get there first and watch him come speeding through the top entrance, across the path and onto the grass, cycling so fast that his bike juddered and rattled, until he was right beside the bench where he’d slam on his brake and kick the back wheel out in a skid, churning up the damp earth.
He would bring us cheeseburgers and chips from the Kebab House, and we would spend our break together, looking at the night, eating junk, talking about our plan to rent a flat as soon as we had enough cash saved up. This flat, our flat, our life. It was all so easy.
BUT WE CAN HELP, Mum offered, hovering nervously in the driveway.
She hadn’t slept all night. I had heard her rummaging in the attic for old sets of crockery and cutlery and the kettle and toaster that they’d been bought as wedding presents, kept in dusty boxes. She was sort of whimpering as she did it. Eventually I’d heard my dad say, ‘That’s enough, love. Come to bed. It’s really late.’
Now we were surrounded by the first chapter of my life, neatly packed away.
‘Your dad will be home in a couple of hours,’ she said. ‘We can take a few car loads. Please, let us help.’
‘I’m okay. We’ve got it sorted.’
Jacob had made friends with this guy from the Kebab House. Hamed, I think his name was. He was the owner’s son or something. He was a couple of years older than us and drove his own van, which had lowered suspension and stick-on blacked-out windows, and half the space in the back was taken up with a sound system that made the whole ground vibrate as he pulled up beside us.
He threw a cigarette butt into the gutter and reached to shake Mum’s hand through the open window. ‘So your big boy is flying the nest, is it?’
Mum glared at him.
Hamed rubbed the back of his neck and squinted at the sky. ‘Good day for it, innit.’
If I think about it now, there was a lot of stuff that Jacob never bothered to pack. Things like his posters, things like his winter clothes.
Mrs Greening had been encouraging from the start. ‘You need your own life Jakey,’ she’d said. ‘I’m so proud of you two boys.’ Her voice was all trembly though, it was obvious she was frightened. Care in the Community had been stepping up their support, but Jacob still did so much.
She had this plastic gripper that she would clip onto pens and pencils to make them fatter and easier for her to hold. It must have taken her ages to make the card. It had this picture of a house, the way a child might draw a house, with smoke coming out of the chimney, fluffy clouds in the sky, the sun coloured in yellow, with this big wonky smile on its face. She was embarrassed by the picture because she knew I was good at art. That’s what she said as she gave it to us. And she said she was sorry it didn’t have an envelope, and that we obviously didn’t have to put it on display.
‘It’s brilliant,’ I said.
I meant it too. It reminded me of something. I couldn’t place it at the time, but it made me feel happy and sad all at once.
At the flat Jacob would stick it onto the fridge with his bottle opener fridge magnet. CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR NEW HOME. But for now it was propped on the dashboard of the van, and he was staring at it and not saying a word. It wasn’t only his mum who was frightened. He was too.
I reckon my mum had to fight the urge to climb into a cardboard box, hoping I’d pack her neatly away at the other end.
‘There’s no shame in coming home if it doesn’t work out.’
She didn’t say that quietly. She made sure it was loud enough for Jacob to hear too, even over the music.
‘It will work out,’ I snapped, glaring at her.
I blew her a Goodbye and Good Fucking Riddance kiss. It was cruel of me, but she couldn’t read the small print. She did that thing where you pretend to catch it and press it against your heart.
These are the moments that make the dot-to-dot pictures of our past; everything else is simply filling in the gaps.
We blasted at the horn, swerving wildly.
The little boy appeared from nowhere, running i
nto the road, cutting through traffic.
He wore a big orange coat, and I didn’t make out his face because his hood was pulled right up. But I think, I think, in that moment, he was me. I had tried to run away, but Mum caught me by the school. She carried me to the doctor’s, and I could hear her heartbeat through my stupid hood.
Looking in the wing mirror, I expected to see her chasing.
Baby, wait. Please.
No.
She hadn’t moved. She stood perfectly still, with my kiss held against her. She would stay that way until my dad arrived home from work, when he would take her inside, and fetch her a tablet.
Goodbye, and
Good Fucking Riddance.
THE FIRST EVENING, neither of us had to work.
We didn’t have proper furniture, so we placed our single mattresses side by side on the bedroom floor, and sat on them. We took the light bulb from the hall because it was the only one the previous tenants had left behind. And I plugged my old desk lamp in the kitchen, so we could see to cook.
We ate oven chips with baked beans and lots of tomato ketchup, and shared a 3-litre bottle of cider.
I’ve made it sound shit. It wasn’t. It was perfect.
The second evening, we both had to work.
So at three o’clock in the morning we rode our bikes to our bench beside the tree and watched night turn to twilight.
Jacob talked about crepuscular animals. It was a new word he’d learnt, and he was showing off. He said that him and me were crepuscular because we mostly lived in dusk and dawn. He gets excited by the unlikeliest things. It can make people feel uncomfortable. Jacob is one of those people who other people share whispered comments about. They say things like, ‘He struggles in his own skin, doesn’t he?’ And the other people shake their heads thoughtfully, and say, ‘There is something, isn’t there?’
‘You’re my best mate, Jacob.’
‘I should fucking hope so.’
I felt his fingers brush against mine. Not quite holding hands, not quite not holding hands. Each of us gripping at the bench slats.
The third evening, I was home by myself.
I had a shower before bed. As I dried, I caught sight of myself in the steamed-up bathroom mirror.
Ha.
You don’t know what I look like.
I only just thought that. I haven’t once said what I look like. I did say that I’m tall and getting fat. I did say that much, but you might not have remembered. Getting fat is a common side effect of my medication.
Denise Lovell gave me a Patient Information Sheet, with them all listed in microscopic letters.
COMMON SIDE EFFECTS, it says:
anxiety;
increased saliva production;
sleepiness;
appetite changes;
blurred vision;
restlessness;
shaking or tremor;
light-headedness;
sweating;
rash;
nausea;
stomach pain or upset;
dizziness;
pain at the injection site;
depression;
fatigue;
headache;
trouble sleeping;
vomiting;
weight gain.
Happy days, eh? You don’t want to know about the less common ones.
Nah, fuck it. Why not:
Severe allergic reactions; infections; abnormal thoughts; abnormal gait; itching; drooling; mask-like facial expression; fever; severe anxiety; sexual dysfunction; convulsions; suicidal thoughts or attempts; breathing difficulties; irregular heartbeat; trouble concentrating, speaking, or swallowing; trouble sitting still; trouble standing or walking; muscle spasms; seizures; nightmares; killing your own brother, again.
I’m getting ahead of myself.
I wasn’t on the fucking stuff yet. In the bathroom mirror were the blurred edges of a healthy young man with a new job, a new home, and the promise of a whole new life. I should have wiped away the condensation and taken a proper look at him.
I wish I’d done that now.
But I didn’t, so you can’t either.
Matthew Homes
Flat 607
Terrence House
Kingsdown
Bristol
Mon 8th Feb ’10
Dear Matthew,
I’m a bit concerned about you. I was hoping you might have got in touch with the team over the weekend but we didn’t hear anything. And we didn’t see you at the day centre again today.
I know you don’t like us to make a fuss Matt, and I respect that, but we do need to stay in contact. And it’s still very important you have your depot injection. This is what you agreed to in your Community Treatment Order. We can talk about this.
Please give me a call on 07700 900934 or ring the office on 0117 496 0777 as soon as possible. Hope you had a nice weekend, anyway?
Kind Regards,
Denise Lovell
Care Co-ordinator
Brunel CMHT – Bristol
P.S. I’ve filled out my part of the new DLA forms too, so perhaps we can go through those together. I think you might even be entitled to a bit more money!
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK knock knock knock knock. She was there for ten minutes again, propping open the letter box, peering through. Knock knock knock. Hello, Matt. Are you home? Knock KNOCK KNOCK.
I could feel her breath.
She didn’t see me though because I was sitting down here, with my back to the door, keeping a close ear on things. Since you ask Denise Lovell, no I did not have a nice weekend. I’ve been feeling a bit sorry for myself as it happens.
Nanny Noo tells me off for that. She says it doesn’t help to dwell, how it’s important to be grateful for the everyday things, that there’s happiness in a cooked meal or a stroll in the fresh air. I know she’s right too. Except it’s easier to find happiness in a cooked meal when there’s somebody else to pass you the ketchup. For all our plans together Jacob didn’t live with me for very long. Perhaps four or five months.
We never had a Christmas here together, we didn’t reach our eighteenth birthdays. I know it’s stupid to care too much about stuff like that. It’s my own fault anyway.
I should write about why he left.
But there are different versions of truth. If we meet each other in the street, glance away and look back, we might look the same, feel the same, think the same, but the subatomic particles, the smallest parts of us that make every other part, will have rushed away, been replaced at impossible speeds. We will be completely different people. Everything changes all the time.
Truth changes.
Here are three truths.
Knock
KNOCKKNOCK
Truth No. 1
I didn’t have my armchair yet. The main room seemed bigger without it, and he looked small, crouched on the carpet in the dusty light beneath the window. He buried his face in his hands. I couldn’t say how long he’d been there, but I think for a long time.
I’d been sleeping after a night shift and was still holding my expensive pillow. It was a gift from John Lewis that Nanny Noo and Granddad bought me, to help with my bad dreams; the dreams that had started to follow me outside of sleep, so that sometimes I would have to cut a little at my skin with a knife, or burn myself with a lighter, to make sure I was real.
I can’t speak for Jacob, but when I think about things now, there was more to it than his mum; I was becoming a problem.
We didn’t talk straight away. The only noise was the faraway sound of traffic, drifting through the window. You can hear it all the time, but only notice it when there is a silence that needs filling.
I wasn’t sure he’d seen me, until after a while he said, ‘She was slumped forwards in her chair again, with the neck rest too high up.’
‘We can say something.’
‘It’s more than that.’
They sent different people round, that was a problem. Each morning it could b
e a new carer getting her up. Nobody knew Mrs Greening properly, or the way things had to be done.
‘It was her hair,’ he said.
I’ve replayed the conversation in my head so many times. I imagine myself saying different things, then what he would say differently. I move the memory around the flat like it’s a piece of furniture, or a picture in a frame that I can’t decide where to hang.
‘What are those things, like little girls have?’
‘What?’
‘In their hair.’
‘I don’t know. Pigtails, is it?’
‘Yeah, them.’
I used to brush Mrs Greening’s hair, whilst Jacob prepared her tea and got her medicine ready. I’d wash it sometimes too. She had this special sink, like you see in hairdressers but with padded bits that fold over the edges. She didn’t have much feeling in her arms and legs, but her head felt tingly and nice when I rubbed in the shampoo. That’s what she said, anyway. And she said I was better at it than Jacob because he pulled too hard, but I wasn’t to tell him because we were both her angels.
‘What are you smiling for?’
‘I’m not.’
‘It’s not fucking funny, Matt.’
‘I wasn’t smiling about—’
‘I bet you’re exactly the same. In that old people’s home, you probably treat them like fucking children too.’
He didn’t mean that, but it still hurt.
‘No I don’t. You know I wouldn’t—’
‘Well quit fucking smiling then. She was there trying to pull the things out all morning. But the more wound up she is, the worse her hands get. Now these three fingers—’