by Luca Veste
‘And how did that make you feel, Matthew?’
It took everything within me not to roll my eyes into the back of my head and around again. The idea that any of this would make the slightest bit of difference to my life was beyond any logic I could recognise.
What life there was.
Yet, I knew I couldn’t go on without something.
‘It’s Matt,’ I said, hoping the nice woman sitting across from me wouldn’t be able to tell that I didn’t want to be there. I don’t think I did that very well, given the way she peered at me through thick glasses and wrote on the pad sitting on her lap. ‘I don’t know how it made me feel.’
I needed to do this, I kept reminding myself. I wasn’t going to get any better if I kept ignoring the problem.
Ah, the problem. Except you can’t blurt that out in this room, can you?
It was the only way. The only thing I could think of that I hadn’t tried yet.
Everything else had failed.
I needed to be at home. In my own environment. Where it was safe. I could feel the walls moving towards me when I wasn’t looking. The air becoming denser and harder to breathe. Until I focused on the counsellor and managed to swallow those thoughts away.
‘Why have you come here today, Matt, if not to talk about how you’re feeling?’
I sat forwards in the chair and crossed my arms. Studied the counsellor I had chosen from the list of fifty-odd I had found on Google. Fifty quid a session, just to be asked questions I already knew the answer to.
Overworked, overstressed. Constantly thinking. Lost in my own thoughts too often. Playing catch-up on every conversation.
Living in the past.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, looking across the room and trying to make sense of the painting on the wall. A smattering of colours on canvas, all bleeding into one giant smudge. The entire room wasn’t what I’d expected really. No couch, for one. I’d imagined a psychiatrist’s office from a bad sitcom. A long sofa, ready for me to lie down upon and bare my secrets. An older guy with a beard, itching to ask about my sex life so he could point to a moment in my childhood that would explain everything. Instead, it could have been any small office, for any kind of use. I was pretty sure an accountant would choose the same soft furnishings. ‘Tell me what problem you’re having that you came for help with.’
I knew then that I wouldn’t last. That the money I’d spent on this first hour would be the first and last amount that would leave my account. This wouldn’t work for me.
Nothing would.
‘What brought you here today?’
‘My car,’ I replied, with a smirk. The woman’s face didn’t change, as if she’d heard the sarcastic remark a hundred times before. ‘Sorry.’
‘Go on,’ she said, her face still unmoving.
‘I’ve tried everything else,’ I said, leaning back in the leather chair that probably cost more than the entire contents of my house. ‘I just can’t sleep. My brain won’t switch off.’
‘Well, let’s talk about what thoughts are running through your mind.’
I stared at the woman. She cocked her head to one side and blinked slowly. I imagined it was a look that was supposed to express genuine interest and concern. Only she had quite obviously practised it too often and it came off as patronising instead.
‘All sorts of things,’ I said, knowing she would see through the lie in an instant. I glanced at the clock and worked out how long I had left. I shifted in the seat and heard the leather underneath my body moan in response. ‘I couldn’t tell you all of them.’
‘You can be safe in this room, Matt. I’m not here to judge or make you feel anything other than comfortable enough to share.’
Maybe if I told her I was a murderer, she would change her mind. Maybe if I told her that what really kept me awake at night was seeing that man’s face in the darkness. Just before the dirt, the soil, the mud, was poured over his face.
I could try to pretend it was an accident. Self-defence. Whatever. It wouldn’t matter. She would still know I was a murderer.
That I was no better than the man I’d helped to kill.
‘I don’t know what it is,’ I said, watching as she made a note to herself again. ‘I just can’t switch off.’
‘Do you live alone?’
‘Yes. I was living with someone for a while, but we broke up almost a year ago.’
‘A long-term relationship?’
I thought about Alexandra and felt the familiar churning in my stomach. ‘Not really. I’ve known her since we were teenagers and went out with each other for a while. Split up when we went to university, but we got back together a few years ago. Took us a while to work out we wanted to be with each other. Took us a very short time to work out it wasn’t going to last.’
‘Was it a mutual decision to break up?’
I thought about the days following that night at the music festival. The long silences, only broken by arguments and crying. Of her walking out of the door, not even looking at me as she left. ‘It was,’ I said, wondering if I had tried harder, maybe she would have stayed. ‘Of a fashion, I suppose.’
‘Do you think of her when your mind is running away with itself?’
‘Of course,’ I said with a sigh. This was getting me nowhere. ‘I think of all kinds of things. I think of things that happened twenty years ago too. I think about work stuff, whether I’ve remembered to lock the back door, whether I paid the gas and leccy bills that month. All of it. My parents, the rest of my family. A TV show I watched that day. I think about it all.’
That was true. I tried to think about anything but the one thing that my mind wouldn’t let me forget. That it kept returning to, as if it were on repeat.
The dead man’s face.
I stayed silent for a few seconds, considering my words as I always found myself doing now. There was a right answer and a wrong answer to everything. I knew that much. ‘I haven’t been feeling right for some time now. I struggle to concentrate, keep focus, that sort of thing.’
‘And why do you think this is?’
There are never any answers. Only questions. ‘I don’t know,’ I replied, unfolding my arms and dropping my hands into my lap. ‘That’s why I’m here. To find out how to change things. How to cope. That kind of thing.’
‘Is there anything in particular you can point to and see as a potential reason for this feeling you’ve been having?’
I had a sudden urge to jump up and shout directly in the counsellor’s face. Scream at her big, blue eyes. Wide open, searching. I imagined the woman thought they were endearing, interested, but I wasn’t buying the act. If I was bored with the conversation, odds were so was she.
I wanted to tell her the truth. That me and my friends had been attacked by a stranger in some woods and we had killed him in self-defence. That when I try to sleep now, all I see is that stranger’s face.
All I feel is the emptiness of the woods. The place where we left the young lad who had been murdered. The victim.
The sight of that empty patch of land where his body should have been.
‘Not really,’ I said finally, tasting the lie as it escaped my mouth. It was bitter and filled with bile. ‘Work is fine. Busy, which is good as a freelancer. I’m paying my bills on time, without issues, which is more than most people can say. I’ve got friends. My previous relationship broke down, but it was amicable.’
Barely. I was also pushing it by pluralising the word ‘friend’.
‘What do you work as?’
‘Website stuff,’ I said, wondering if it was worth going into more detail. I couldn’t see a reason for it. ‘Boring for most, but I enjoy it enough. I get to work from home, which is good.’
‘Is it?’
‘Wouldn’t you rather work in your pyjamas and not have to deal with public transport or traffic?’
She smiled briefly, but didn’t react otherwise. ‘Do you ever feel isolated by that?’
It wasn’t something I�
�d thought of before. I wanted to answer negatively instantly, but I stopped myself. Thought about the fact that I could go days without seeing anyone else. I liked it that way now, but was that really what was behind me not sleeping?
No.
I knew why I couldn’t sleep. Why I couldn’t live with the silence.
‘Maybe,’ I said, and this time the lie didn’t taste so bad. ‘I suppose if you don’t see or speak to people all that much, it can get a little like cabin fever in the house.’
‘Have you always lived around here?’
My forehead creased as I frowned at the question. ‘I’m not sure what you mean . . .’
‘I just mean did you grow up in Liverpool?’
‘Yeah, I understand, but I’m not sure why you’re asking, that’s all. Is my accent not that strong or something?’
‘Just curious, is all,’ the counsellor replied, making a note again. I wanted to see what she’d written.
The question threw me off a little. Confused me. I didn’t like that. It made me worry about what I’d said previously. Whether she had been able to read something into the words I’d said, knew them as lies, and was now trying to trap me.
There was a reason I didn’t speak or see people all that much. I was scared of what I might say to them.
‘And you’ve been suffering with these bouts of insomnia for how long?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, trying to remember a time when I didn’t feel this out of sync with real life. Tired and wide awake simultaneously. ‘Off and on for years, but the past few months have been pretty steady.’
‘Sometimes it’s the smallest moments – the seemingly insignificant occurrences – that turn out to be the ones which cause the biggest issues. If you want to get to the root of your problem, we need to identify those small moments. Build a picture of who you are, what has happened, and help you back to a normal life. Help get you on the path of who you want to be.’
Help me on the path . . . It took everything within me not to laugh at that point. I contained myself, but I wasn’t sure it would have mattered all that much anyway. The counsellor was on a roll, looking down at her notes, not even maintaining eye contact.
‘We have to identify the reasons that are causing the issues you’ve been having.’
‘I’m not sure what issues there could be . . .’
‘Yet, here we are. You came here for help. You recognise there is a problem and you want assistance for it.’
‘I just don’t know what to tell you,’ I replied, and I could hear the harshness of my own tone of voice. ‘If this is about asking me questions I can’t answer, I could have stayed at home and googled this instead. Wouldn’t cost me a fifty quid an hour that way.’
‘You don’t feel like you’re going to get anything productive from talking about what’s happened to lead you to these states of mind? You don’t feel like there’s an underlying issue that could be causing your long bout of being unable to switch off from your own thoughts? Your sense of pressure being on you, when it sounds as if you’re currently in a stable position?’
I held back for a second and composed myself. I didn’t want drugs. I didn’t want to tell her the entire truth. I shouldn’t have been there at all. There was nothing she could do without the full picture. I chose to blur the picture instead, for no palpable reason. ‘I think everyone has some problems. That’s normal though, isn’t it? It’s impossible to live your life without experiencing some issues. I just . . . I don’t know. I just don’t want to feel this way anymore. Maybe I’m just being a snowflake about it all. I don’t think anything like this sort of thing is going to help me suddenly sleep better at night. Maybe I just need some sleeping pills and a hot mug of Ovaltine instead.’
‘I’m hearing hostility to the process, rather than the thought that maybe you have some issues that can be worked through and maybe I can help you with that?’
‘Maybe, I don’t know.’
‘You’re worried about being truthful,’ she said, holding my gaze now. ‘Something is holding you back from being completely open about your thinking. I want to tell you that this is a safe space. You can share what you’re worried about, what thoughts are running through your head, without worrying about my reaction. I’ve heard it all, I promise you.’
I shook my head, wondering if she could really handle what it was that I was living with. There was no chance of me telling her anyway, but for a moment I wanted to unburden it all. Just to see the patronising smile wiped from her face.
I was saved by the vibration of my phone in my pocket, followed by the opening bars of a seventies song my mum used to listen to all the time. The counsellor tensed at the sound, but didn’t say anything as I took it from my pocket and glanced at the screen.
‘I’m sorry, I’ve got to go,’ I said, then stood up and walked out before she had a chance to change my mind.
I would have to find some other way.
1992
I was used to being the smallest kid in the class, but that fact only seemed to be compounded by high school. There, I was the smallest kid in an entire building for the first time since I was four years old, and I couldn’t remember that far back.
Being born in August was the worst.
Going from Year Six in primary school to the first year at high school was almost as bad. In a few weeks, we went from being the ones who ran the place to the bottom of the pile. It was ridiculous.
It didn’t help that none of the friends I had in primary school had come with me. I was on my own from day one and I had to find my place quickly.
Easier said than done.
I went from being popular and never alone, to lining up in the canteen at lunchtime, wondering if I’d be noticed if I was sitting on my own in a corner.
Then, I saw him.
He had the same nervous look in his eyes as me. The same flitting look, the same worries. I’d seen him that morning in my English class, sitting in the opposite corner of the room to me. I could have been looking in a mirror. Only he looked taller and like his uniform wasn’t a hand-me-down.
There were a few kids between us. As they began to mess about and shove each other round a little – dark laughter coming from them – I moved around them and ended up standing next to him. I took a tray and handed one to him.
‘Snooze you lose, right?’ I said, nodding towards the lads who were still shoving each other and paying me no attention. He looked around him as if I was talking to someone else. ‘You know if anything here doesn’t taste like crap?’
He grinned back at me, then shook his head. ‘It’s school dinners – it’s all crap.’
‘Right, course,’ I replied, then remembered his name. ‘Chris, right? I’m Matt.’
Over the next few minutes, we became friends. That easy. His name was Chris and he lived a few streets away from my new house. We’d moved to north Liverpool because my dad got a new job. I had wanted to go to Speke Comp like all my other mates in primary school, but we were living at the other end of the city now, so it didn’t make sense.
The place was nicer than where we used to live, but it wasn’t home yet.
Eleven years old, scared of a new situation, we found each other.
That same day – that same lunch hour, in fact – we found Nicola and Alexandra. They were the only other pair sitting at our table and whispered to each other for five minutes before I turned to Chris. I raised my eyebrows and leaned across the table to him.
‘I think we should whisper as well,’ I said, loud enough for the girls to hear me. ‘It’ll make it look like we’ve got something interesting to say. Like a secret or something.’
Chris grinned back at me and gave an exaggerated nod. ‘Yeah, definitely. Like we’re spies or that.’
Nicola – I didn’t know her name yet, but I would discover it soon – rolled her eyes at us, but Alexandra smiled and gave a small laugh.
‘Me mum says it’s rude to whisper, but I try to do the opposite of what
she says,’ Alexandra said, leaning across and looking at my dinner tray. ‘That looks revolting.’
‘Chicken supreme and rice,’ I replied, picking up my fork and plonking it into the grey and white mess on my plate. ‘Nothing better.’
‘I’d rather eat pig’s arse and cabbage,’ Alexandra said, pushing her half-eaten sandwich away and grimacing.
‘What the hell is that?’ I said, glancing at Chris and noticing for the first time that he didn’t seem to be able to stop himself from staring at Nicola.
‘It’s what me dad says is for tea all the time. No idea what it is, but I know I don’t want to eat it. That,’ she said, pointing at my plate, just as I shovelled a forkful into my mouth, ‘that looks even worse.’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ I said, swallowing the food down and wishing I hadn’t. ‘Although pigs make bacon, so it can’t be all that bad.’
‘What, even arse?’
‘Still the same animal, right?’
‘If you say so.’
I swallowed another mouthful and tried to think of something funny to say. I couldn’t think of a single thing. It didn’t matter though, as Chris came to life. He asked them questions, made them laugh, and managed to keep them at the table even though they’d finished eating. I found my voice eventually.
By the end of the day, Chris and I discovered we were in most of the same classes. We walked home after Maths last lesson, talking about what things we liked, what we didn’t like. He’d got a Mega Drive for his birthday a few months earlier, so I ended up going back to his for an hour. He let me play Sonic the Hedgehog and World Cup Italia ’90.
That was it. We were best friends, just like that.
Over the next few weeks, we’d have lunch with Nicola and Alexandra almost every single day. We’d see them around the school, say hello, but it was me and him mostly. We were inseparable from that first lunchtime. We were pre-teens, playing on his Mega Drive, watching Power Rangers on his Sky TV, and eating as many Fruit Salads and Black Jacks as we could get from Mick the Moby on any given day.
That was the beginning of the group.