‘What happened?’ This time she did look at Lily, her badly veiled accusations fixed firmly on her sister.
‘I fainted.’
‘But why? What happened to make you want to faint?’
‘I didn’t want to faint,’ Lily said, irritably.
‘Well, no, I didn’t mean that. But what was happening?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Was it because of Mama?’
Lily exhaled through gritted teeth, but said nothing. Richard looked at her, surprised. He didn’t often see her express signs of irritation, even with Connie, who he knew irritated her intensely.
‘It’s a lot to take in – ’
‘We knew she was going to die, Connie. And I hadn’t seen her for years.’
Connie looked as if she’d been slapped. ‘That doesn’t make it any less upsetting.’
‘I think it does.’
‘You’re just trying to block it out. You always do this – refuse to acknowledge when something upsets you. You don’t talk, you don’t let go.’
‘I’m not you.’
‘I’m well aware of that.’
Richard watched as the two sisters faced each other down, silently. Struck by the similarity of their expressions.
‘So if not Mama, then what?’
‘I don’t think anything actually happened, as such,’ Richard said, trying to inject some reason into the proceedings.
‘Well, something must have happened.’
‘People faint all the time. I’m sure it’s nothing serious.’ He squeezed Lily’s hand, encouragingly. Her response was weak, but definitely there.
‘They wouldn’t have her in hospital if it wasn’t serious – ’
‘Connie – ’
‘Don’t treat me as though I’m some idiot who can be placated, Richard, because I’m not. This is my sister and she was unconscious for five minutes and no one knows why. And she won’t bloody tell me what happened beforehand. I’m allowed to ask questions, and I’m allowed to be pissed off.’
‘Connie.’ It was Lily who said her name this time, little more than a whisper. ‘It’s okay. I’m fine. I feel fine.’
‘But you’re in hospital.’
‘Shhh.’ Richard realised that Connie was crying, then, shaking with silent tears. Lily must have felt her trembling. ‘I feel fine.’
Richard looked at the two of them. The swiftness with which their roles could reverse never failed to surprise him. He was sure that half of their communication passed in front of him, completely unnoticed.
He was relieved when a nurse came in, breaking the silence, prompting Connie to wipe away her tears, return to her former self. With their normal roles resumed, he knew where he stood. Could put aside the possibility that he might ever be anything except Lily’s pillar of support, strong, and unshakeable in his priorities.
‘Well, Lily. I think I’m right in saying you have quite a history with this sort of thing?’
The doctor couldn’t have been older than twenty-two, and yet he was talking to her as if she were a child, and a misbehaving one at that. She glared at him. At her side, Richard took her hand and watched the doctor hopefully.
‘You’re very lucky. Nothing to indicate that you’re not perfectly healthy,’ the doctor continued brightly. ‘But with your medical history we’d like to recommend that you take a break for a while.’
‘What do you mean, her history?’ Richard looked from Lily, glowering on the bed, to the doctor who looked down at her carelessly. ‘I know she fainted a bit as a child – ’
‘Perhaps you’d rather discuss this alone?’ the doctor suggested, raising an eyebrow at Lily. She shook her head firmly. ‘Okay, then. Lily has been treated for various anxiety-related disorders since she was a child. Part of that was due to her tendency to collapse under stress. Part of it – ’ he gave her a significant look ‘– related to her refusal to speak. She was diagnosed with something known as conversion disorder.’ He looked at them both, his expression bordering on scornful. ‘In the nineteenth century it would have been known as hysteria.’
Richard ignored the carelessness in his tone. ‘And what does this disorder involve?’
‘The symptoms are wide-ranging and unspecific. It involves the conversion of stresses or traumas into physical symptoms that the body is forced to deal with. These could be seizures, tremors, fainting… loss of speech.’ He looked at Lily once again. ‘All of the symptoms are manifestations of mental disturbance of some kind, and, as such, should not pose any genuine physical threat.’
‘You’re trying to say she’s making it up.’
‘Not at all.’ The tone was as careless as ever. ‘The symptoms are very real. But they are not an indicator of a physical illness, and therefore Lily does not belong in a hospital. She should go to her GP and discuss treatments for anxiety. I would recommend some counselling.’
‘I can go, then?’ Lily’s voice was calm.
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you.’
The doctor left the cubicle, and Lily began to move herself out of bed, shifting her stiff limbs slowly under the sheets. Richard tore his gaze away from the curtain to look at her.
‘How could you not have told me about this?’
She shrugged, stretching her legs off the side of the bed.
‘Lily, I’m serious. You knew there was something wrong and you never said?’
‘You knew there was something wrong.’ She had her back to him as she spoke.
‘Not something like this. Not talking is not the same as – as collapsing, or having seizures, or – ’
‘I’ve never had seizures.’
‘But you could. If you let this go untreated, who knows what things your brain could convince your body it needs to do? How could you not have told me?’
‘I’ve had treatment.’
‘And it’s worked spectacularly well, obviously.’
She stood up, trying to pull her hospital gown around her so that she was fully covered while she looked around for her clothes. She didn’t answer him.
‘Lily, please. This is serious. We need to talk about it.’
She located her clothes on the chair next to her, and started to pull them on under her gown.
‘Please.’
She looked at him. Looked away. Sat down on the edge of her bed to put her socks on.
‘I want to go home,’ she said, quietly.
He drove her home that night, amid a skyful of celebration. When they passed the fairground, the firework display was at its pinnacle, and they paused for a moment to watch the lights blazing in the sky, to hear the shouts of delight that floated through the air and landed softly on their ears.
Lily was almost asleep by the time they got home, and Richard half-carried her up the stairs to their flat, depositing her in the bed. She fell asleep immediately, without even asking for a story. He watched her for five minutes until her breathing became deep and even, and then he eased her gently out of her trousers, and pulled the duvet up to her shoulders.
The answerphone light was flashing in the living room. He thought of work for the first time since he’d left that afternoon. Realised that he’d probably screwed up. He wandered through to the kitchen, poured himself a whisky, and took a long swig before topping it up and carrying it back through to the living room. Turned on the TV, though he knew he wouldn’t watch it. He flicked to the 24-hour news channel and turned the sound down.
They hadn’t been able to guarantee that it wouldn’t happen again. They’d asked if anything upsetting had occurred recently, and then said a reaction like hers wasn’t surprising, considering the circumstances. Recommended a holiday. He’d almost laughed.
He wondered if he was doing something wrong, letting her be the way she was. Maybe it wasn’t healthy. He took it for granted; tried to make it as easy as possible. Maybe he actually made her worse, letting her spend so much of her life in silence. But then, that was why she loved him.
He assumed.
In one motion he lifted the glass in his hand and flung it against the wall, sending whisky flying up his arm and across the room. Splashing brazenly across the wall. The glass shattered, and fell in a million pieces behind the unit which held the TV.
He breathed deeply, shakily, and waited to see if she’d wake up.
Not a sound.
He pressed ‘play’ on the answerphone, and listened as his boss explained in weary tones why he would never make it as a journalist.
Lily awoke to the sound of breaking glass. Lay in perfect stillness to see what would come afterwards. Nothing but the low rumble of the television and, after a minute, the electronic chatter of the answerphone, indecipherable.
She could remember lying in bed as a child, listening to her parents arguing. Breaking glass had always been followed by slamming doors. And then the agonising wail of her mother’s tears. Anna had never troubled to keep quiet, never worried about who heard what.
Lily lay in the darkness, listening, but no further sound came from the living room. She waited for two hours until she heard Richard move, and then she turned over and pretended to be asleep. He crept into the bedroom, slipped under the covers with a minimum of movement. Didn’t disturb her, except to lean over and lightly kiss her on the forehead.
She fell asleep with the imprint of his lips still burning on her skin.
then
The driveway went on forever. There had been wrought iron gates at the entrance, improbably high, but that had been at least five minutes ago. The comforting crackle of tyres on gravel made Lily feel as if she were coming home. But this place wasn’t home. All she could see were trees, and, far in the distance, a house as big as a palace.
Her parents were talking in the front, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying. The radio was on, playing a song that she knew. She didn’t sing along, but she mouthed the words, echoing the tune in her head. Some of the words were unrecognisable, and she made up her own language to fit in the gaps.
They pulled up next to some stone steps, which led up to a door at least twice the size of their front door at home. There was a brass knocker, a gargoyle with a loop in its mouth that sneered down at them from above. The building was very long, with rows of windows in both directions, neatly lined up with the windows on the floors above. All the windows had bars across them.
‘What do you reckon, Lils?’ Her father turned round from the driver’s seat to face her. She looked up, but didn’t reply.
‘There’s no point, Marcus.’ Her mother’s mouth, twisted with the bitterness of her own bad luck.
‘We wouldn’t be here if there was no point. Come on, Lily. Let’s go and find out if anyone’s home, shall we?’
Her mother didn’t bother waiting for Lily to answer.
‘You go,’ she said. ‘I’ll park the car.’
Her father mumbled something that Lily didn’t hear and climbed out of the car, opening the rear door so that she could follow. Her mother shifted awkwardly into the driver’s seat. She didn’t look at the back seat.
‘Come on,’ her father said, reaching down to take Lily’s hand. She let him, and followed him up the stairs. The car drove off behind her.
‘Do you want to knock on the door?’
Lily looked up at the knocker, with its gargoyle that glinted slightly in the mid-afternoon sun. It looked more menacing than it had done from the car. She shook her head.
‘Okay, then.’
Her father reached up, grasped the loop of brass firmly in his fist, and knocked three times.
The inside of the house was dark, despite all the windows Lily had seen from the outside. The hallways were wide, with black and white checked floors that stretched into infinity. There were a lot of doors, and all of them were closed.
A man – who introduced himself as Dr Hadley, though he didn’t look much like a doctor – had answered the door, and was leading them through the house. There were other people around, and everyone nodded to Dr Hadley as they passed, and smiled at Lily. No one looked at her father. The further they got into the house, the more worried she became that her mother wouldn’t be able to find them once she’d parked the car, but no one mentioned it and she tried not to think about it.
Dr Hadley showed them into a room that was full of books. There was a desk in the corner, with several chairs around it, and he and Lily’s father sat on opposite sides of the desk. Lily went to look at the books. She was good at reading, but she didn’t recognise many of the words in the titles. Some of the books were so old that the titles had faded, and she couldn’t make out the letters.
‘Eighteen months, you say?’ Dr Hadley’s voice, though quiet, carried across the room. Lily turned around, and saw that he was bent over his desk, writing. Her father had his back to her, but she could see him leaning forward, looking at what Dr Hadley was doing.
‘About that, yes. Maybe a bit more.’
‘Has she said anything at all since…?’ His voice lowered still further, and Lily couldn’t make out what he’d said. She turned back to the books. A lot of the titles had the word ‘child’ in them. So he was a doctor for children. For her. She wandered away from the desk, until their voices were just a murmur in the background.
At the far end of the room there was a window, without bars on. It was too high for her to see through when she was standing on the floor, but there was a low pipe running round the skirting board that she could balance on. Clinging on to the windowsill with her fingertips, she could just about see out. She’d been expecting to see the front of the house, but instead she found herself looking out on to a courtyard. It was covered with grass, and flowers, and there were people outside. Two children, not much older than her, cartwheeled up and down the grass while a woman in a nurse’s uniform watched from a distance.
Lily stayed there for a while, until she felt her feet getting hot through the thin rubber soles of her shoes. She realised the pipe must be like the radiators at home. She jumped down, and rejoined her father and Dr Hadley. The doctor was talking on a telephone now, while her father stared off into the distance.
‘We’ve been talking about you,’ Marcus said, lifting her on to his knee. ‘Dr Hadley thinks it might be a good idea for you to stay here for a while. Just a week or two. So that he can keep an eye on you and help you get better. Would that be okay?’
Lily thought about it for a minute. She didn’t like the house much, or Dr Hadley. But she wouldn’t mind more time to look at the books, and the courtyard looked nice. She nodded.
‘Good girl. He’s just speaking to someone on the phone, and they’re going to find you a bedroom to sleep in. It’ll be like a holiday. Or going to boarding school.’
Lily had always been fascinated by the idea of going to boarding school.
‘I’m sure your mama will be here in a minute. Then we’ll say goodbye, and go away, because we can’t sleep here. But we’ll come back tomorrow.’
Lily knew she should feel afraid, being left here by herself. That was why her father was explaining everything. She didn’t feel much of anything.
Dr Hadley put down the phone, and looked up at them with a smile that didn’t quite look right. ‘We’ve found a room. Did your dad tell you, Lily? You’re going to be living with us for a little while.’
She looked up at him. His hair was going grey, like her father’s, and his glasses were too big for his face. They poked out over the edges, making him look like an owl.
She nodded, once.
Anna didn’t come inside, but crouched down on the front steps to give Lily a hug. ‘Goodbye, my darling. We’ll come back tomorrow. Make sure you be good and do everything the doctors tell you, won’t you?’
Lily tried to nod, but her mother was holding her too tightly and she couldn’t move.
‘Don’t worry if you hear any funny sounds. You’re quite safe here.’
Anna pulled back
, keeping her hands on Lily’s shoulders. Lily noticed she was crying.
‘Goodbye, darling,’ she said again, looking Lily directly in the eye. She paused for a moment, perfectly still. Waiting. And then:
‘Oh, fucking forget it, then.’
now
‘In the beginning was the word.’ Richard was whispering, not sure if she was awake, not wanting to disturb her if she wasn’t. ‘And the word was…’
There was a pause, long enough for him to think that she was indeed asleep. He almost rolled over and left her to it. And then:
‘Lumbered.’ She was smiling, her eyes still closed. It was one of their favourites.
‘Okay. Well, once upon a time, in old England, there lived a girl called Sarah. She was a servant girl, and had been all her life, working with her mother and her grandmother and her two sisters, for a family called Stephenson. They weren’t a bad family to work for, despite the fact that they were very rich and very posh; they owned a house in London and another in the country, and acres of forest land, but they were always kind and never treated their servants as slaves. Sarah, as the oldest of her sisters, was in charge of looking after the two daughters of the family, Amelia and Amanda.
‘Amelia and Amanda were only a year apart in age, and virtually inseparable. They were both very lively, and kept Sarah busy all day, so that by the time she went to bed she was usually exhausted, and fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
‘Because they were very rich, Amelia and Amanda were constantly being given new toys to play with; and, because they got bored easily, they tired of their new toys very quickly. Their parents were kind enough to pass on these disregarded playthings to Sarah’s sisters, who were similar in age, but it wasn’t long before they outgrew them, and it fell upon Sarah to find somewhere to store them.
‘Luckily, there was a room in the house known as the lumber room. It was the home for all the furniture that had been broken or discarded throughout the years, and, because the Stephensons were a very old and very rich family, the room was very large. It was one of Sarah’s favourite places to go, because there was so much history there. Her favourite piece of furniture was a beautiful old four-poster bed. One of the posts was broken, but it made no difference to Sarah; when the house was quiet and she had no work to do, her favourite pastime was to lie on the bed and imagine she was a princess.
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