Very Nearly Normal

by Hannah Sunderland

  He sent you away for a reason, my dear. He didn’t want you there before; what makes you think he’ll want you there now?

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered, pulling out of the driveway before he could talk any more sense into me.

  I’d never driven this far on my own before and around an hour into the journey I began to wish that I had someone to talk to. There was no one for me to bounce my anxiety off, to talk me down from the state of panic I was slowly rising to. The Bowie playlist had finished once and was on its second loop by the time I neared the Morgans’ and when I recognised the churchyard where Megan Morgan lay, I began to feel sick.

  Two more minutes of driving and the gates came into view. I could easily have pulled over and spewed all over the side of the road, but I held it in and took a breath. This was Theo I was talking about, the man who had struggled to win me over, who had fought to make me open up and let him in. Why would he have done that just to toss me aside?

  I looked at the gates at the end of the Morgans’ driveway and saw that they were opening and the nose of a pearlescent purple Volvo began poking through.

  Whose car was that?

  I drove closer as the car pulled out and headed in my direction. The driver slid on a pair of shades, even though the day was not particularly bright, and flicked her black curls from her face. I felt the nausea return when I recognised her.

  Jenny.

  The car zoomed past as I turned into the driveway, too late to make it through the already closing gates. I thought that Tessa vehemently hated Jenny and Theo had told me himself that he had felt nothing but betrayal at her hands. But maybe something had changed. Maybe he’d seen his life flash before him when he’d passed out and he’d known that something was lacking and whatever that something had been, it hadn’t been me.

  I rolled down my window and pressed the small silver buzzer.

  Nothing.

  I buzzed again.

  The same.

  There must have been someone inside, otherwise how would Jenny have got in?

  I buzzed three times in quick succession and spoke into the speaker.

  ‘I know that you’re in there. I’m not going away until I see one of you, so someone is going to have to talk to me.’

  I buzzed three more times and waited for a response.

  Nothing.

  I felt dangerously close to crying. Why were they ignoring me? What had I done to deserve this shunning?

  I gripped the steering wheel with my one good hand and shook it, something very much like a growl rolling from between my gritted teeth. I leaned forward and laid my head on the wheel, my breaths sounding like whines as I tried to calm myself. I tried to remind myself how to breathe. In, out. In, out.

  I thrust myself back into the seat and looked ahead, only now noticing that someone was standing on the other side of the wrought-iron gate. My heart somersaulted as I scrambled from the car, leaving the engine running in the driveway as I went to face him.

  ‘What are you doing here, Effie?’ Rhys asked.

  I lifted my hands to my head and shrugged, at a loss for words.

  ‘It’s not a good idea, you being here.’ He didn’t look at me as he spoke.

  ‘No one would talk to me,’ I said, fully aware of how desperate I looked. ‘You promised me you’d let me know how he was. He could be dead for all I know.’

  Rhys squeezed the bridge of his nose and sighed. ‘I know, I’m sorry we ignored you. That wasn’t fair. He’s not dead but he is still ill.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ I moved closer, my right hand closing around the cold metal that lay between us.

  ‘No one knows yet, but they are trying to find out.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I see him, please?’

  ‘He said he doesn’t want to see you.’ Rhys still wouldn’t look at me.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said as a tear rolled down into the crease of my nose. ‘Why would he change so suddenly?’

  He stepped forward, his eyes finally rising to meet mine. ‘He doesn’t want to see anyone.’

  ‘You let Jenny in,’ I said accusingly. ‘I never did anything to hurt Theo, not like she did, but you let her in. Tessa hates her, so does Theo.’

  Rhys nodded. ‘She only wanted to help, Effie.’

  ‘I could have helped. Me!’ I shouted, my voice echoing around us. I raised my hands to my head and wondered if this was all some deeply psychological dream that I couldn’t wake from. ‘Please, just let me speak to him. I need to hear it from him.’

  ‘Effie!’ He sighed in exasperation and his voice took on an authoritative tone. ‘Effie, go home and I’ll get Theo to call you in the next couple of days.’

  ‘You can’t just send me away. I drove all the way here,’ I begged. I didn’t care how I looked; I needed to see him. ‘Please, Rhys. You can’t cut me off like this.’

  ‘I promise you that he’ll get in contact soon.’

  ‘You’ve broken promises to me before, Rhys,’ I said as more tears fell.

  ‘I’m sorry, Effie. I really am.’ He turned and began walking away.

  ‘Rhys, no. Please.’ I reached my outstretched arm through the gate, as if it could somehow reach him and pull him back. The bushes were almost bare, stripped of their summertime beauty by the ravages of autumn, and I could just about make out a silhouette in the upstairs window. It was male, of that I was certain, and who else could those shoulders belong to but Theo? I called his name, my voice so loud in the morning quiet that it seemed to echo through all of Wales. ‘Theo, talk to me!’ The figure took a step back, reached up an arm and pulled the curtains shut.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I didn’t bother calling Arthur and telling him that I wouldn’t be coming in to accept my promotion. I just drove all the way home with grey, mascara-tinged tear tracks drying onto my cheeks, the radio silent. How could he have just turned away from me like that? How could he have invited Jenny back to take my place? Had their meeting at the service station reopened old affections? Had Jenny suddenly realised what she’d thrown away with Theo and gone running back to him and had he then forgotten the pain she’d caused him and welcomed her back into the arms that had been holding me only days earlier?

  When I got home there was no one in and I wasted no time in running to my bed, throwing myself onto it and screaming into my pillow.

  I couldn’t comprehend it.

  What had I done? Was it when I’d told him that I loved him? Had that been too much?

  Had his affections for me been sated when we’d slept together and now that he’d got what he wanted I was nothing but a used-up husk to throw aside? Maybe it was all about the chase with Theo.

  I cried into my pillow until it got dark, falling asleep somewhere between angry and despondent.

  ‘Effie, hon?’ I woke to the sound of my mother’s voice. My eyes peeled back to see her hovering over me with a brown block clutched in her hands. ‘A package came for you. The postmark says Wales.’

  I sat up and snatched the package from her hands. It was thick and heavy; it felt like a book.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said sharply. ‘Please leave.’

  Joy turned up her nose and marched from the room with a haughty gait.

  I tore the brown paper away with my nails and a heavy book dropped into my lap. I turned it over and recognised it as the 100 Films to See Before You Die book from Theo’s room. I pushed it aside and found a letter below it.

  I ripped the envelope so impatiently that I almost tore the letter in half, unfolding it and reading it with manic eyes.

  Effie,

  I’m sorry I ruined the gig for you. I guess I could have waited until they’d finished playing your favourite song before I passed out. Thanks for coming with me in the ambulance, by the way. I know that you waited for a long time.

  We never did find your favourite film so I thought I’d send you a book of all the best ones and you could work
your way through. Maybe you’ll find it that way.

  I know you must be confused by me asking you to leave, but I heard what you said to me in the cubicle just before my family came in and I realised that I’d let you believe that what we had was a lot more than it actually was. It’s not fair for me to continue seeing you, now that I know this.

  I wrote you this letter because I wanted to tell you to finish that list. We made a good dent in it, didn’t we? But there are still more to check off and you can do that without my help. You never really needed me anyway. You could have done this all by yourself. You just needed a push in the right direction.

  We had a lot of fun and I’ll never forget it, but the list is almost done and that’s all we really set out to do, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll give you a call sometime and see how that novel is coming along, but in the meantime try and be happy, Effie.

  Theo

  I lowered the letter to my lap and frowned at my feet. Had I read that correctly?

  I raised it once again and reread his words, scrawled in his atrocious handwriting.

  I found the words exactly as I had before.

  I heard the sound of a dying animal, the sound of pained whining, and then I realised that the sounds were coming from me.

  The ink slowly blurred behind the tears that collected in my eyes, so thick that I could do nothing but let them fall.

  I heard thudding footsteps approaching and a moment later Joy pushed her way into the room. ‘Effie! What is it?’ When I responded in only whimpers and whines, she pushed further. ‘Effie, tell me what’s happened. Is it Theo?’ The sound of his name caused a wave of furious devastation to flood my chest.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ I shouted, grabbing the giant film book and throwing it across the room. It hit the wall beside the door with a resounding thud and toppled to the floor. She sighed heavily and left the room without a word, but not without sending a scowl my way first. It was a scowl that may well have made me cry in fear, had I not already been crying. I felt the structure of me break down inside myself, the walls crumbling, the foundations sinking, everything returning to the chaos of how it had been before he came along and built me up.

  I cast the letter aside, letting it sweep to the floor like a discarded feather, the paper weighing so little when the words felt like anvils.

  I lay on my side, curling myself into the small, insignificant creature that I was and I closed my eyes, thinking that that might make the tears stop, but it didn’t.

  An hour or so later, after I’d resoaked my pillow in salty tears, I decided that I couldn’t stay in that dusty room filled with too much stuff. I made the decision to go up to the treehouse, the place that reminded me of him.

  I don’t know why but the thought of sitting there on the floor where we had spent so many hours kept the pain keen. It felt just like when you have a toothache and the only thing that makes it even slightly better is prodding the gum and awakening the pain.

  I went to the old shed, the one painted the shade of mint green that made my eyes pulse with a migraine aura, and went inside. I pulled out two large sheets of cardboard that my dad used to box up the things he sold online and I carried them with difficulty up to the treehouse. I threw them on the floor before going back down, taking the staple gun from the bottom drawer of the kitchen cabinet, the sleeping bag from just inside the attic door, a torch, my chipped favourite mug and a bottle of bourbon from my dad’s stash.

  I retrieved Theo’s letter and the book from my bed and took them with me before climbing back up the ladder and making myself a misery nest. I stapled the cardboard over the open gaps, leaving only a sliver open as a door, and rolled out the sleeping bag, crawled inside and poured half a mug of bourbon. I watched the letter as if it would at some point start moving, scrawled with Theo’s words and sitting in the corner where I’d thrown it. I was almost frightened to touch it, as if touching it made it real.

  I lifted the mug to my lips and took a swig, gulping it and feeling the burn in my throat. I lay back and stared at the ceiling, the light of day peeping in through the cracks.

  I woke hours later to the sound of my mother’s shouts from below. I poked my head out of the door, and looked down to see both of my parents and Elliot staring up at me with concern.

  ‘What?’ I called, my voice still slurred from the whisky I’d drunk too much of.

  ‘What are you doing up there?’ she asked, her hand cupped around her mouth, as if that made any difference to the volume of her voice.

  I took a breath before answering. ‘I believe it’s called having an emotional breakdown.’

  ‘What was in that letter? Come down, I’ll make you some dinner and we can talk it through.’ She beckoned.

  ‘Okay,’ I lied, walking inside and climbing back into the sleeping bag.

  I wasn’t going for the Romeo and Juliet tragedy ending. I’d always thought that those two were complete idiots: meeting, falling in love and getting engaged in the space of ten minutes and then dying because they couldn’t be without each other. Ridiculous. But right now, I understood them better than I ever had before. Of course, Theo would not be dying for me, no, he had to love me for that to work and, as he had made very clear, he did not.

  It wasn’t that I wanted to die or that I couldn’t live without him – I’m sure that it would be more than possible if I tried hard enough. It simply hurt too much and I didn’t want to feel it anymore.

  When the whisky hadn’t numbed me, I’d moved on to the wine, which I’d found in the forgotten rack in the basement, and waited for the anaesthesia of sleep to come.

  There was a knife in the drawer below the kitchen sink, razor sharp and unused from when Joy had gone through a sushi phase, buying all the stuff and then not doing anything with it.

  It wouldn’t take much with that, just one quick flash of courage and it would be over.

  It had all come back at once – the darkness, the loneliness, the pain, the betrayal, the hopelessness – except this time they had heartbreak to keep them company.

  I’d always thought that films overplayed the whole broken heart thing, but now that I was feeling it for real, I knew that the films never did it justice. I had done nothing of importance with the time I’d had. I had done no great things. I had changed no one’s life in any great way.

  If I were to slip away from this mortal coil, then the biggest impact I would make would be on the people who had to clear up the blood afterwards.

  Theo wouldn’t notice, I wasn’t part of his life anymore, and my parents would finally have the house to themselves. Maybe Arthur would notice, maybe Arthur would care. But then I had been nothing but a nuisance to him from the moment I’d met him, and what person wasn’t happier once a nuisance was got rid of?

  I’d tried to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel had been bricked up, plastered over and the inside filled with concrete. There was no light. There was no tunnel.

  I’d gone down to fetch the knife at around 5 a.m. and taken it up into the treehouse. It was as good a place to die as any. It blurred in my hands, my eyes so abused with tears that I could barely see. I picked up the carved wooden handle and watched the blade shine with deadliness in the light of the camping lantern sitting in the corner. Every thought that hurt me fell into my brain. The friends I didn’t have, the passion for writing that I had never, would never satisfy. I thought of the love that Theo had flung back in my face and of the heart that he had crumbled in his fist like a dry digestive biscuit and as those thoughts came, the courage began to swell. I took off my splint, let the blade fall to my palm and dragged it across with little effort to test its sharpness. It cut through me like warm butter.

  I hissed through my teeth and dropped it onto the floor with a clang. Little beads of blood rose to the surface one by one until the whole line was slick with blood that began to pool in my palm.

  For a second, the sharp pain in my hand obliterated the pain that was everywhere else, but all too soon ever
ything fell back into place and ached all the more. I upturned what was left of the wine into my mouth, gulping down the final quarter and letting the bottle roll away.

  I had been foolish, reckless, rash.

  I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t want to feel.

  I wanted things to get better. I wanted to be happy. Was that too much to ask?

  I woke on Tuesday and went down into the house for supplies (a bottle of wine, freshly purchased and still in its canvas shopping bag, and a big bag of cheesy Doritos) and to put my phone on charge, all the time deflecting questions from my mother. I let my battery get to twenty-five per cent and then I headed back to the treehouse before she asked anything else. I saw that I had twelve missed calls from Arthur and several messages from him, asking where I was and if I was dead. I lied and told him that I was ill before turning the phone off.

  For the rest of the day I drank the wine, I ate the tortilla chips and I cried some more. There isn’t much more to tell.

  Just as the sky was turning dark, I found myself down on the ground, vomiting into the flowerbeds and wondering if wine stained your insides if you drank enough of it. I had drunk more than my fair share, so was my stomach a delightful shade of magenta?

  The vomit-speckled leaves of the bay tree gave off a fragrant scent that did little to mask the smell of wine, bile and Nacho Cheese Doritos that sat in a pile in the soil. My stomach convulsed and another stream of burgundy sick splattered to the ground. I wiped my mouth and groaned. Why was wine such a fickle mistress? There for you whenever you needed her, until she decided that enough was enough and hurt you beyond compare.

  It was the next morning by the time I eventually came down from my treehouse of despair, for the simple reason that my mother wouldn’t leave me alone until I did.

  I still hadn’t told her about what had happened in Wales. It was like I feared that talking about it gave it life.

  I was pretty sure she’d already guessed that Theo wouldn’t be coming back around like he had before, bagels in hand, a smile on his lips.