by Fiona Neill
‘I think it’s la vie, like la vie en rose.’
‘La petite vie, la petite vie,’ I gabble. He tries to kiss me just before I say it for the third time. I push him away. ‘La petite vie.’ I sound almost euphoric. Because three is a good and safe number. But I can’t tell him that.
‘What the fuck?’
He looks hurt and I feel bad but I’m confident I can turn this around. I’m good at thinking on my feet.
‘I’m experimenting with one of Dad’s theories,’ I say. ‘He reckons if you say things out loud three times then you remember them better. The more things you are doing when you try to recall something, the greater your chance of success. Or something like that.’
I’ve done it. Mum, Max and Kit will be fine. This time. Now I simply need to divert the conversation so that Kit doesn’t mention any trigger words again. I congratulate myself for getting over this. No pats on the back because this might trigger a whole new round of tapping. But the relief is tinged with a sense of shame. I want to return to being obsessed with him, not my obsessions. Because that’s a game I can never win.
I look at the clock and mutter something about being late for work. Weekends are always my busiest time because the children I tutor aren’t at school.
‘Will you keep a vague eye on Mum when I’m gone?’
He lies back on the mattress, puts his arms behind his head and groans in an indulgent way. I want to tell him that he has a beautiful torso but it sounds too cheesy. So I silently appreciate the curve of his chest, the shadowy outline of the muscles along his arms and the perfect line of his clavicle. It’s still a couple of hours until I need to be in Chelsea to tutor the Russian boy I took on a couple of months ago. But tempting as it is to get back into bed with Kit, after a blue-knuckle ride like this I need some time on my own.
‘I feel bad spying on your mum,’ he says. ‘She might think I’m coming on to her if I keep checking up.’
‘Don’t worry, Mum doesn’t do relationships any more,’ I say, getting out of bed and throwing on yesterday’s clothes. ‘You’re helping me help her. Look at it like that.’
‘Just to be clear, Daisy. I’m not going to update you every hour this time. If you don’t hear from me presume everything is fine,’ says Kit.
It’s a reasonable request but he doesn’t understand that if he doesn’t message me the thoughts will come back again. I wonder if he could put out the fire in my head if I told him everything?
‘Sure,’ I say, leaning down to kiss him. I pick up the eczema cream that I use to rub on the points where the skin gets red raw from the tapping and put it on the bedside table, making sure there is a perfect triangle between the lamp, eczema cream and Kit’s phone. Isosceles. Not equilateral. He pushes his phone beside the cream and I move it back into position. There’s a stalemate as we both hold it. Kit looks at me intently. I feel his eyes boring into my soul.
‘What does the number three mean to you, Daisy?’ he suddenly asks. My body tenses. He releases the phone, turns on to his side, head leaning on one elbow. ‘Have you always done that or have I only just noticed?’ There’s no recrimination in his tone. Just curiosity.
‘What do you mean?’ I avoid looking at him.
‘I only see it because I spend so much time looking for patterns in numbers,’ he says. ‘I don’t mind if you don’t want to talk about it. But if you like I could check the door is locked at night so you don’t have to get out of bed in the cold three times to do it yourself.’
He obviously hasn’t noticed that I’ve started checking the knife drawer.
I’m not sure how to respond so instead I find myself asking him if he wants to come to Dad’s wedding with me. I could use a human shield when I meet Lisa’s children again. Especially Ava, because I haven’t spoken to her since The Incident all those years ago.
‘I’d really, really, really like to,’ he says.
I give him a long look. He is definitely teasing me. Maybe if I tell him he won’t leave me. The same song comes on again and he quickly switches it off, complaining that Spotify needs to develop a new algorithm to make its shuffle function feel more random.
I walk to work, telling myself I need to clear my head. But the truth is I’m avoiding getting behind the wheel of Mum’s car. I only mention this because one thing I have learnt is the importance of ruthless honesty. So I can admit I don’t want to drive because I might damage Mum’s car, which could cause her to have an accident when she uses it later. And then instead of getting on with my uni coursework, I will spend the evening double-checking on Google for accidents and hospital admissions in the area to make absolutely sure she hasn’t come to any harm. Or calling around police stations. I have done all of these in the past. So even though it takes longer to walk, it will save time in the long run. There is method in my madness. Craziness is very subjective.
As I walk I run through my lesson plan for the Russian boy, eleven-year-old Oleg. Similes, metaphors and proverbs. Comprehension, creative writing and words that impress. He needs to improve his creative writing if he’s got any hope of getting into one of the approved schools on his dad’s very short and very aspirational list. If he succeeds, I get a bonus, which helps concentrate the mind when I sit in their large, lonely dining room with their large, lonely child, wondering what on earth I am doing there when I could be with Kit.
He didn’t want to have extra English lessons with me. This is no great insight on my part. Oleg told me very explicitly at the beginning of our first session together. ‘To lay my cards on the table and clear the air,’ he said, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt and resting his chubby forearms on the dining-room table. ‘My last tutor but one taught me those phrases before he had to clear the decks.’
‘Well, I don’t particularly want to teach you either,’ I told him truthfully, rolling up my own sleeves. ‘I would much rather have a proper job but because I cocked up my exams I’m still at university and have to earn money teaching English to spoilt rich kids like you.’
We both burst out laughing at exactly the same time, which made us crack up even more. A bond was formed. The following week, during school interview practice, I asked Oleg what his hobbies were. He had no idea what I was talking about. I tried to find the word in Russian on Google Translate but it didn’t exist. So I told him that they were things that you did in your free time that gave you pleasure.
‘For example, I like to read and listen to music,’ I explained.
He shook his head sorrowfully and his fat cheeks wobbled endearingly. He said he didn’t like either, and that his favourite pastime was eating. I tried to explain that food was a basic human need rather than a hobby.
‘Just make something up,’ I said finally, in exasperation.
‘I don’t have a good imagination,’ Oleg replied apologetically.
‘Look, what does your dad like to do in his free time?’ I said. ‘Parents and children often end up sharing the same hobbies.’
He thought for a second.
‘Prostitutes,’ he said. I looked at the expression on his big round face and could see only sincerity in his eyes.
‘And your mum?’ I asked, not sure what else to say.
‘Chemistry,’ he said.
‘That’s very interesting, Oleg,’ I said, grateful to have something else to talk about. ‘What kind?’
‘She spends a lot of time investigating which chemicals stop you having feelings,’ he explained. Then he paused. ‘That’s why I don’t want to pass the exam to go to boarding school, Daisy. I need to be at home to keep an eye on her.’
So Oleg and I share something in common.
Things start to go wrong the moment I reach his house. I find my usual route in through the basement is blocked. Apparently ‘some idiot’ has broken the back-door key in the lock so everyone has to come in and out through the front door, a situation that is making Oleg’s dad ‘very anxious’, explains the Filipina housekeeper. It makes me anxious because as far as possible, i
f I’m having the bad thoughts, I like to take the same route in and out of buildings. At home, for example, I always prefer to step into the house on my left foot. In normal times I can cope with changes in routine but this literally puts me off my stride.
The housekeeper tells me that Oleg’s mother has already made her book in carpet cleaners because of the mess. Doesn’t she have anything better to worry about? But I still have enough self-awareness to realize that my worries are even more absurd because they are about things that haven’t even happened. This gives me a chink of hope that I might be regaining perspective. The housekeeper puts forward theories about what might have occurred and says that Oleg’s dad was the first one to find the broken key. Which makes him the most likely culprit, I think to myself. When someone is murdered isn’t the prime suspect the person who last saw the victim?
‘It’s very dangerous, Daisy,’ she says. ‘Anyone could have come in.’
I have been here enough times to realize her worries have more to do with Oleg’s dad’s anger issues than anything to do with security.
‘He never goes in the basement,’ the housekeeper explains, as she leads me up the stairs. ‘What would he want with washing machines?’
‘Maybe he was doing some money laundering,’ I joke.
She looks puzzled. It’s lost on her.
I find Oleg sitting at the head of the long mahogany dining table. He looks up at me as I come in. His eyes have a mournful bloodhound quality and as I get closer I see they are bloodshot from crying.
‘What’s up, Oleg?’ I ask.
‘I didn’t get in,’ he says, utterly despondent.
‘It’s just one school,’ I say, putting an arm around him.
‘It was the maths, not the English,’ he says. ‘So you’re off the hook.’
‘Good idiom,’ I observe.
I notice a mark on the side of his face and don’t ask how he got it because I might not like the answer. He tells me that he will be sent to boarding school and his mother won’t be able to cope without him. He leans towards me.
‘I ran away,’ he tells me conspiratorially. ‘I was going to keep going until I collapsed because if there is something medically wrong I will have to stay at home, but I bumped into this man who was carrying a bag of watermelons and fell over just round the corner. I can’t even run away properly.’ He starts to cry again. ‘I really hurt my head. My coat got torn. A watermelon went into the road and was crushed by a car and the man hit me.’
‘He hit you?’
‘He slapped my face and then he started crying. I told him it was okay and he cried even more. Then he gave me a piece of fruit.’ He pulls something that looks like a prickly pear from his pencil case.
‘A complete stranger hit you?’ I question him. But I don’t press him for more details because I’m so relieved it wasn’t his father. ‘That’s such bad luck. But you should remember all the details and use them in your creative writing.’
This seems to make him feel a bit better. He pleads with me to read to him for an hour instead of doing any work. Oleg is too lazy to pick up a book himself but he loves being read to. I started a George Orwell novel a couple of months ago because it’s a good one for him to talk about in school interviews. But now I curse myself because the title of the book contains my worst number and is one of its multiples.
‘I can’t read it, Oleg,’ I tell him simply. ‘I want to but I can’t.’
Oleg stares at me through his red-rimmed eyes. ‘Why?’ he asks.
‘It will make me feel so worried I won’t be able to concentrate,’ I explain.
‘Then I will read it to you,’ he says, reaching out to hold my hand.
This is a good compromise because it means I can run through my rituals while Oleg does the work. We move to a sofa at the other end of the room and Oleg snuggles in to my side.
‘Thoughtcrime is a dreadful thing, old man … It’s insidious. It can get hold of you without your even knowing it,’ he starts.
My body goes into immediate high alert. Why on earth did I choose a novel about people reading your mind? I wish I could tell Kit because the irony would make him laugh. But of course when I picked this book I was in a better space. Which underlines the fact I am no longer well, which reinforces my anxiety.
I line up my pen, notebook and phone on the coffee table, fiddling around until I am sure the angles are correct. I start my rituals and finish at the part where Winston Smith faces up to his worst fears in Room 101. Which reminds me of my worst fears about Mum so I have to start the rituals all over again. And we might have gone on like this for the whole hour and a half if Oleg’s father hadn’t come into the room as his son reached the final chapter.
‘What’s going on here?’ he asks.
Oleg and I both jump, which makes it seem as though we have been caught doing something wrong.
‘I’m reading a book to Daisy,’ Oleg nervously explains. He sits stiffly against the back of the sofa. ‘It’s good for my vocabulary and comprehension skills. And diction.’
Nice one, Oleg.
‘I’m not paying you ninety pounds for ninety minutes for my son to read you stories,’ says Oleg’s dad to me.
All I can think about is that 90 is a multiple of 3, which is a good and safe number. And it’s only when I notice Oleg is crying again that I realize I have been fired. The only upside is that the basement door has been repaired and I can leave by my usual route.
After this I go into a café and do the online Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Test to monitor my symptoms. It’s the first time I have done this in years. But I realize I need to get a hold of this relapse before it takes control of me. At least, that was Max’s advice. After the dinner with Dad and Lisa he suggested I go back to see Geeta, but that seems too much like early surrender. I am convinced this is a temporary problem that will be resolved when Lisa is out of the way.
My hands are trembling as I answer the first of the ten multiple-choice questions. How much of your time is occupied by obsessive thoughts? 1–3 hours, up from last week but way down on my personal worst of eight hours a day. This makes question six easy because my need for symmetry means I have to spend exactly the same amount of time on the compulsions. The people who devised the test clearly hadn’t thought through that one. The fourth question makes me pause for thought. How much effort do you make to resist the obsessive thoughts? Should I count the sub-rituals, the short cuts I try to avoid the big ones? At the end I add up my score: 24 out of 40, nudging the higher edge of moderate symptoms. Both numbers are a multiple of the number I don’t like, which means I need to go through all the counting and tapping three times. So it takes me a while to get home. But at least I won’t have to repeat them again when I’m with Kit. I love the fact that his name has three letters.
I am just enjoying this thought when Dad calls. I don’t pick up. He calls again. I don’t pick up. But the third time I have to. Because three is a good and safe number.
‘Hey, Daisy,’ he says, doing his best to sound casual.
I tell him that I’m on my way to teach and don’t have much time for small talk. Then I feel bad when I hear the hurt in his voice as he tries to kick-start a conversation with questions about what books I’m reading for my course, whether I would like some money to buy an outfit for his wedding and how many students I have on my books.
‘The sea is very warm for the time of year,’ he says in desperation when I fail to respond. It’s not that I want to make it difficult for him. My attention has been totally diverted to a headline in the Evening Standard: a patient with Ebola has been transferred to a London hospital where Mum sometimes has a clinic. So all my worries about her being in danger suddenly seem completely legitimate. I pick up my pace because I need to get home to research exactly how the virus is spread.
‘I wanted to check you were okay, Daisy, about me getting married again,’ I hear Dad say.
Heavy conversation alert. I want to get him off my back so that I can
attend to more pressing issues.
‘We … I … understand it’s difficult for you and Max. I tried to find the right way to tell you but perhaps I should have waited until we were alone.’
He’s obviously rehearsed this conversation and I try to behave like a proper audience but I can’t stop thinking about how I’m going to persuade Mum to cancel her trip to Atlanta because I’m pretty sure it’s an airborne virus.
‘Lisa and I have been together for seven years so it can’t come as a total surprise.’
Eight years, actually. I don’t get into that because I’ve just remembered that the Centers for Disease Control website will have all the latest news I need about Ebola, and if I can get Dad off the phone I can check out the stats right away.
‘It’s fine, Dad,’ I say.
‘Really?’
‘I don’t care.’ And I don’t. Marriage isn’t worth the piece of paper it’s written on.
‘And how is Mum? I went to see her at work to tell her in person,’ he explains, as though this was an act of great courage.
‘She hasn’t said anything.’
He hesitates for a moment in that way he does when he wants to ask a loaded question in a casual way. ‘Do you think she has any plans to get in touch with Lisa?’ he asks. ‘If she does, perhaps you could give me the heads-up.’
And then I realize he must know about the letter too.
6
Max
It’s Monday afternoon, which means it’s Anatomy. Carlo uses the electric saw to cut around Jean’s skull. Our technician has helpfully plotted the route with a circle of red string. Everyone falls silent as the bone squeals with resistance when the blade makes contact. Carlo doesn’t flinch and makes steady progress. He likes an audience. Even though his hands are encased in tight blue surgical gloves they never shake. Unlike mine. He has enviably steady, sensitive fingers. I made the mistake of telling him this earlier this year and he claims it has become his most productive chat-up line.