‘Not at all. Not at all,’ said Ed, winking again, eager to show that he understood exactly, as if, thought Bryony, he was one of those men she read about in magazines, the kind who was used to making space for Bryony and Bryony’s friends and their little private confidences. ‘I’ll leave you girls to it, then.’ He snatched up a mug and a biscuit from the tray, tiptoeing dramatically across the room and closing the door softly behind him.
Selena stood perfectly still for a moment in the middle of the rug, waiting until she heard Ed’s footsteps creaking up the stairs.
‘My God,’ she hissed. ‘You do know how to pick ’em, don’t you, Bryony? Or should I say, Bry?’ She pulled a face. ‘He’s quite something.’
She put down her mug and wiped her fingers with distaste as if she were wiping them free of Ed’s handshake.
Bryony sat down heavily on the sofa. She was determined not to rise to Selena’s bait.
‘How’s Letty?’ she said. ‘She must be, what, fourteen now?’
‘Yes,’ said Selena. ‘She’s fine. What can I say? A teenager. A pain in the bum. Stop changing the subject.’
Bryony swallowed. She thought of her sweet-faced niece. The last time she’d seen Letty, she’d had her hair in plaits and one of her front teeth had been missing. The image made her eyes prickle with tears.
‘I miss her,’ she said now, to Selena. ‘I really miss her. Did she get my birthday card? The little present I sent?’
Selena frowned. ‘Yes, yes.’ She waved her hand dismissively. ‘She did. Now tell me about this Ed person.’
Bryony drew herself up straighter in the chair. She could feel her body braced against Selena’s onslaught now. She glanced down at the ring on her left hand. Its tiny diamonds glittered. When she looked up again, Selena was watching her, that horrible half-smile fixed to her face.
‘Not that it’s actually any of your business,’ she said. ‘But he’s been very good to me. Since my . . . you know, my breakdown. He works . . . well, he used to work at St Jude’s, you see. That’s where I met him. He’s a volunteer. Well, he used to be. Before we got together. They have this scheme. He used to come and read to me. Bring me books and . . . Well, we just got talking. He understands, you see.’
‘I bet he does.’ Selena shuddered. ‘And he seems to have done rather well out of it, wouldn’t you say? Tell me, did he even have anywhere to live before he met you?’ She made a mock shudder. ‘Actually, don’t tell me,’ she said. ‘I don’t even want to know.’
She settled herself in the only armchair, plucking a needlepoint cushion from the pile and staring at it quizzically. ‘And is this the sort of thing you do then, these days?’
‘That,’ said Bryony, ‘and lots of other things. I have a nice life. A nice, quiet, peaceful life.’ She forced herself to look into those cold, green eyes again. ‘And I need it to stay that way, Selena.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Selena, smiling. ‘You’ve got the place looking very nice indeed, I must say.’
Bryony watched her eyes moving over the duck-egg blue paintwork and the pale blue velvet sofa, an infuriating smile quivering at the corners of her mouth. How she hated that about Selena. The way in which, with just one look, she could make everything that Bryony loved most seem suddenly silly and frivolous.
‘Of course, I’d like to say,’ Selena continued, brushing biscuit crumbs from her skirt, ‘that I can’t quite believe that you’ve let him move in here. But I can. Because you always were a complete pushover when it comes to men.’ She threw up her hands in mock despair. ‘I mean, why, Bryony? Why would you risk all this? Your house, your security?’ She shook her head. ‘From where I’m sitting . . . I mean, in my precarious situation, it’s difficult to get my head round it. But I’m sorry.’ She rubbed at her forehead with her manicured fingers. ‘I’m not here to interfere. Quite the opposite. I just need one teeny favour . . .’
Bryony’s stomach lurched. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Whatever it is, Selena, I won’t do it.’ She heard her voice rise. She felt it get higher and faster, begin to get away from her, to flap against the walls like a cornered thing. ‘Last time, that was exactly what you said: “Just this one thing, Bryony. Just this one little thing . . .” And look where your one little thing got me. Dad didn’t speak to me for two years straight. So just don’t expect anything else of me. I’ve had it up to here. Don’t you see? I’m finished with all that now.’
In her mind, she saw her five-year-old self, gripping the edge of the drawing-room fireplace, stamping her feet, her fists curled in frustration, whilst Selena watched and smiled her irritating smile.
‘So you still have your little problem, then?’ she said now, slowly. ‘I’d hoped things might have changed . . .’
‘My little problem is none of your business. It’s not what you think. There are reasons for it. Actual chemical reasons. I take tablets. They help me to control it. You don’t know everything, you know.’
‘Oh, rubbish.’ Selena put her mug down noisily on the table and Bryony moved quickly to slip a coaster underneath it. ‘What utter bollocks, Bryony. Chemical, for goodness’ sake. I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous in all my life.’
‘It’s not nonsense,’ said Bryony. ‘It’s been a huge help to me. I realise now that it’s all in my head. When I’m stressed or scared, I make things up. Not consciously, of course. But I pay too much attention to certain thoughts. The tablets and . . . and well, therapy, if you must know . . . they’ve stopped all that. I feel so much better.’
Selena frowned. ‘That would explain it then.’
‘What?’
‘Why you’ve ended up with him.’ She jabbed a thumb in the direction of the stairs. ‘You never did have much get-up-and-go, Bryony. But now you’ve got some therapist filling your head with mumbo-jumbo, now that you’re popping pills for God’s sake, any backbone you ever had has probably got up and left for good.’
Bryony realised that she was holding her breath. She breathed out slowly and tried to make her voice as calm and quiet as possible. She could feel the old anger licking up her spine. She mustn’t let it get the better of her. Selena would only laugh harder.
‘No, Selena,’ she said. ‘You can’t just come here like this, you know – just turn up on my doorstep after all this time – and talk to me like that. I’m perfectly happy as I am, thank you very much. I know where I am, what’s real and what isn’t. And I know what I need. I know it much better than you ever could.’
Selena smiled again, indulgently. ‘So are you saying that you don’t still see things that aren’t . . . um, how shall I put it? That aren’t exactly there, in the traditional sense? You know. The angels in the trees, the faces in the teacups?’
Bryony looked down and saw that her hands were trembling very slightly in her lap. She hoped Selena wouldn’t notice. She’d always had that way of reaching right into her head, finding that one place in her thoughts where things were still wobbly and unformed and then pressing hard. She thought of what she’d just seen – the creature in the woods.
‘I’m not saying that I’ve got the hang of it all yet,’ she said. ‘I’m still working on that.’
‘With this therapist?’ That infuriating smile was pulling at the corners of Selena’s mouth. Bryony curled her fist.
‘Yes. With my therapist. Who happens to be very respected in her field, actually. And Ed, of course. He helps me too.’
‘I see,’ said Selena. ‘Well, it sounds as if they’ve got it all worked out for you. All very convenient. So I only have one question for you, Bryony. How do you know that they’re right?’
Bryony looked down again at her hands lying in her lap. Suddenly, they didn’t feel like her hands anymore. She kneaded a fold of her skirt between her fingers. The truth was that she didn’t know. Not for sure, anyway. She still had all kinds of questions. But as soon as she started thinking about them, a familiar wave of blackness swept over her and she felt as if she were
falling down a tunnel inside herself, down and down, her hands and feet scrabbling for a hold.
‘Shut up, Selena,’ she said, quietly. ‘It works. For me. I prefer it this way.’
‘Really?’ Selena raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow. ‘Does it really work for you?’
‘Yes,’ said Bryony, sticking out her chin. ‘It does. It has to.’
For a moment, she saw something pass over Selena’s face. An expression she’d never seen there before. It looked something like sadness.
‘Well, you know what I think,’ said Selena. ‘And you know what Mum would have said, if she was still here.’
Bryony felt the anger force its way up into her throat again, hot and red. Her fingernails cut into her palms.
‘Actually, no. I don’t. I don’t think you have a clue what Mum would have said. And I don’t know how you’ve got the nerve, Selena, to pretend that you understand. And I’ll tell you something else. If Mum was still here, she’d understand exactly that I have to do this my own way. She never liked your stupid little games either.’
‘Is that so?’ Selena’s eyes glinted.
Bryony breathed hard. She suppressed the urge to punch the sofa in frustration.
There were footsteps on the stairs and Ed’s head appeared around the door.
‘Can I get you girls anything?’ he said. ‘How are we getting on?’
Bryony felt his eyes searching her face. She stared at a patch on the wall just above his shoulder.
‘Selena was just leaving,’ she said.
Selena sprung to her feet, slipping her arms into the soft, wide sleeves of her coat. ‘Thank you for the tea, Bry.’ She lingered over the abbreviation, her mouth twitching again, then flashed a final smile at Ed. ‘And it’s so very nice to have met you. No, don’t worry. I can see myself out.’
*
Ella and Grace were word-hunting. It was one of Ella’s favourite games. The rules were very simple. You selected a book from one of the shelves, opened it, letting the pages fall wherever they would, and then you picked the first word that you happened to notice. You weren’t allowed to choose. You just had to go with the word that your eye chanced on first.
Of course, Grace couldn’t read yet. She was just learning to make out and sound the shapes of letters. But this only added to her excitement. She loved to race up and down the shelves, taking out books, letting the pages flutter in her hands until they settled, then pointing to a word that Ella would help her to sound: pumpkin, race, eventually.
They collected all the words on the blackboard table in the Children’s Corner. Ella wrote them out in coloured chalks. So far, today they had:
yellow
elephant
chocolate
nervous
already
bathrobe
plump
twentieth
lunch
reported
shy
portable
150 g
Anna
bonfire
Sometimes, Ella would rearrange the words to make a kind of poem, or – and this was usually Grace’s favourite – they would use all the words to make up a story.
Occasionally, customers liked to join in, calling out a word from a book or suggesting a twist in the plot.
Billy had once suggested that Ella should advertise word-hunting evenings. ‘People love that stuff,’ he said.
Ella frowned. ‘I like that it’s just for us – for Grace and me,’ she said. ‘Do you remember, Billy, when we used to come back here after school? And I used to get so embarrassed because you were always asking Mamma to tell you stories. And then you’d mess about and act them out and try to make me laugh?’
Billy grinned. ‘I had to try to impress you somehow,’ he said.
Now Grace did the same. In fact, some of the contents of the dressing-up box in the Children’s Corner contained remnants of those earlier times that Mamma had left behind in her move – a hat with a veil, a tasselled shawl, a jewelled Venetian mask, a length of velvet ribbon.
‘P,’ Grace shouted now from the Cookery section. ‘I’ve found a P, Mamma. What does this word say?’
Ella leaned over her shoulder. Grace held a book of southern Indian recipes, her finger stabbing at the page. ‘Pineapple,’ said Ella, smiling as Grace began to chant the word. ‘Look. There’s a picture of it here. You tried some once. You didn’t like it.’
‘Pine-apple,’ Grace said. ‘Papple, pineapple.’
The Story of the Yellow Elephant
‘Once upon a time there was . . .’
‘A yellow elephant.’
‘And he liked to eat chocolate.’
‘It was his favourite food. But one day his Mummy said, “No, you can’t eat chocolate for your breakfast,” and so the yellow elephant felt really, really sad . . .’
‘And a little bit nervous.’
‘What does nervous mean?’
‘A bit worried . . . But it was all right because he had already hidden a piece of chocolate secretly in the pocket of his bathrobe.’
‘Naughty elephant!’
‘Yes, very naughty. And so, when his Mummy wasn’t looking –’
‘He ATE IT ALL UP!!!!’
‘Yes, how did you guess? And this made him very plump.’
‘Plump? What’s plump?
‘Hm. A little bit round and squishy?’
‘Like a little bit fat?’
‘Sort of.’
‘OK.’
‘And his Mummy said: “That is the twentieth time I’ve told you not to eat chocolate for breakfast.”’
‘“And you are very naughty and you forgot to clean your teeth too.”’
‘Yes.’
‘And so . . . um, what’s the next word?’
‘Lunch.’
‘So you can’t have any lunch because you are too fat. I mean, plump, Mr Yellow Elephant.’
‘Gosh, is that a bit mean? He’s going to be very hungry.’
‘Well, maybe only a bit of lunch, then.’
‘OK, so he had just a small amount of lunch. What did he eat?’
‘A banana. Because they’re yellow and they’re good for you.’
‘OK. Good idea. So he ate a banana for his lunch and then, when he’d finished, he went for a walk down the road and he came across an enormous hole. It was so huge and wide and deep that it was even a bit dangerous for a very plump, yellow elephant like himself. He was worried that, if he fell in, he’d never get out again.’
‘HA!’
‘And so he reported it to the police.’
‘And did they put him in prison?’
‘No, he hadn’t done anything wrong, except maybe eating the chocolate when his Mummy said not to.’
‘What did the police do, then?’
‘Um, they went to try to fill up the hole so that no one would fall down it and hurt themselves. But they couldn’t find anything big enough to fill it up.’
‘Not even e-nooooormous rocks? Not even trees?’
‘No. And so what happened next?’
‘Um. They all went home.’
‘OK. They all went home and it started to rain and the hole filled up with rainwater. It was like the biggest, deepest puddle you’ve ever seen.’
‘Were there mermaids in it?’
‘Yes, of course. There were mermaids. Quite a few of them. And one of the mermaids was very shy. She was too shy to come and sit on the pavement at the edge of the puddle with all her friends, but it was very cold in the puddle and so she started to cry.’
‘And the elephant comes and rescues her!’
‘Right. So the elephant, because he had very, very big ears, could hear the mermaid crying, even though he was inside sheltering from the rain, and so he came to help. He saw the poor, cold mermaid and he put down his head and dangled the end of his trunk, which was like a kind of lifebelt, into the water. “Come on, little mermaid. Climb on my trunk,” he said. “But I’m too shy,” said
the mermaid. “I don’t want anyone to see my tail.” So the elephant wrapped his trunk once, twice, three times around the little mermaid. And because mermaids are small and very, um, portable, he lifted her up and put her on his back and she was so light . . . no more than 150 g –’
‘Grams?’
‘Yes, it’s a way of measuring weight.’
‘Oh.’
‘She was so light that the yellow elephant could walk around with her for days and no one could even see she was there. She was called Anna. And they became the best of friends.’
‘Yes. Friends. So what words are left, Mummy?’
‘Bonfire and pineapple.’
‘And everyone had a bonfire party and ate pineapple, which is very good for you – better than chocolate –’
‘Yes.’
‘And they ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.’
7
To influence another’s thoughts: Whilst preparing a meal, simply hold your desired outcome in your mind. Allow your thoughts to mingle with the steam. Have the object of the spell eat the food immediately.
– Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams
All morning, Bryony argued with herself. Or rather, she felt the familiar conversation circling in her head.
‘You know you’re curious, Bryony.’
‘No, I’m not. I’m really not.’
‘You are. You know you are. Selena’s right, you know. It’s time you stopped letting people tell you what to do. Dr Murray, Ed, all of them.’
‘I can’t trust Selena.’
‘Maybe not. But you can trust yourself.’
‘I can’t. I was ill. Very ill. I don’t ever want to feel like that again.’
‘You won’t. You were just exhausted, confused. That’s never going to happen again.’
‘But what if it does?’
Round and round the voices went, closing in on her, getting louder and more urgent until, by lunchtime, there was a tight band of pressure above her eyes and she wanted to scream.
This was exactly what she didn’t want to happen. The only thing that Bryony wanted these days was a bit of peace.
A family history of mental illness, that’s what her official medical notes read. Depression, possibly clinical. But Dr Murray, her therapist, had explained that this kind of thing is more common than most people realise. The pressure that Bryony had been under over the years, the unresolved grief around her mother’s early death, burn-out from work, a bad relationship, all of this had left her utterly exhausted and led to her breakdown. Severe stress could cause the human mind to buckle. Lack of sleep and anxiety could lead to terrifying hallucinations. Seeing things, hearing voices. What she’d needed at the time, Dr Murray said, was not medication but rest, proper rest, a bit of TLC, someone to help her make sense of things, a notebook in which to write down her thoughts, the kindness of friends, good food, long walks in the fresh air, simple pleasures.
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