by Gwyneth Rees
The next day Dad still looked exhausted. He didn’t even suggest that I go to school. It was Friday and next week was half-term. I reckon he didn’t think another day off would do much harm and it didn’t seem to enter his head that I wouldn’t want to go back after half-term either. He phoned our deputy head and had a long chat with him. Apparently the school was going to keep Mum’s job open for her until she was well enough to come back. An announcement to the effect that Mum was unwell was going to be made in assembly and the teachers had been instructed to be extra supportive of me when I went back to school after half-term. Dad seemed to think that I was going to be satisfied with that.
Well, he was wrong. I told him there was no way I was going back to that school after everything that had happened with Mum. Besides, I reckoned I’d sort of grown out of school over the last few weeks and I told him that. I mean, I didn’t see why I should have to do all the stupid work the teachers set when I knew now that there was more important stuff going on in the outside world. Dad said I was being silly. He said that everyone had to go to school in order to prepare themselves for the outside world, and how did I think all the doctors and nurses who were looking after Mum had got to be doctors and nurses if it wasn’t through going to school?
‘Anyway,’ he added firmly. ‘You’re only twelve. You have to go back. It’s the law.’
‘Well, I want to change schools then.’ I was lifting one of Mum’s ornaments off the mantelpiece and fiddling with it as I spoke.
‘Daniel –’
‘You should have let me go to a different school in the first place. I told you it would all work out badly.’ I put down the ornament with a bit of a bang. I really didn’t see what right he had to be telling me what to do.
‘Daniel, none of us could have predicted that this would happen.’
‘I don’t see why not. She’s been ill before, hasn’t she?’ I picked up a glass candlestick and started to roll it about in my hand.
‘Daniel, put that down.’ He waited for me to obey him before adding carefully, ‘If I’d thought this would happen I’d never have gone to New Zealand. But it’s been years since your mother had a full-blown manic episode and I just thought –’
‘A manic episode?’ It was the first time I’d heard him call it that.
Dad nodded. ‘That’s what’s wrong with Mum. It’s what was wrong with her when she was pregnant with Martha, too. Mania is the opposite of depression. You get high in your mood instead of low, only it doesn’t always feel good because you can’t sleep and everything speeds up inside your head. Sometimes you start losing touch with reality, so you think you’re more important than you really are, which was what happened with Mum.’
‘So the way Mum acted at school – thinking she was queen of the school and everything – it’s because of this … this …?’
‘Mania. That’s right. She’s got an illness which means her mood isn’t as stable as other people’s. It’s called bipolar disorder. Bipolar, see?’
I stared at him blankly. I didn’t see. I’d waited years for him to talk to me properly about Mum’s illness and now I felt like he was talking in a different language.
‘Bipolar because there are two opposite poles: depression and mania,’ Dad explained. ‘Think of it as like the North Pole and the South Pole – you’re either feeling on top of the world or at the bottom of it.’
I frowned at him. I still didn’t understand as well as I wanted to. ‘I thought you could tell really easily if someone was mentally ill,’ I said. ‘But with Mum, I didn’t know. I mean, she was acting weird but I didn’t think she was … you know … mad.’
‘Not all mental illness is the same, Daniel, but the people you probably think of as “mad” … the ones who behave strangely and believe things that aren’t true … they’re the ones with the more serious illnesses.’
‘Like Mum,’ I said gloomily.
‘Like Mum,’ Dad agreed. ‘But don’t blame yourself for not recognising it sooner. It’s not always easy to pinpoint when it starts. Getting sick can be a gradual process.’
‘Dad, why are you only telling me this now?’ I asked him. ‘I mean, I know you always said it wasn’t any of my business until I was grown-up but –’
‘I didn’t say that, Daniel. Come on.’
‘Well, you could have told me more about Mum’s illness,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Then I might have understood what was happening.’
Dad looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe you’re right. It’s just … well … I’ve always believed that children should be protected from certain things for as long as possible.’
I didn’t reply. I didn’t think children could always be protected. Not from all the things Dad wanted to protect Martha and me from, at any rate. Like the fact that Martha and I might not really be brother and sister.
And that was when I decided to go and fetch that photograph of Martha to show him.
‘Where did you get this?’ Dad asked as I handed it to him.
‘Sophie gave it to Martha. But look, Dad. In this photo Mum’s baby has dark hair. So how can it be Martha? Look. Kate’s baby is the blonde one.’
I don’t know how I expected Dad to react but I definitely thought it would be bad. I was surprised when he responded by smiling wistfully at the photograph.
‘I often forget Martha was born with dark hair,’ he murmured. ‘It fell out after the first month or two and when it grew back in again it was fair. It happens quite a lot – a newborn baby’s hair falling out and growing back a different colour. Do you remember Martha having dark hair when she was born?’
I shook my head, lost for words. I couldn’t remember an awful lot about when Martha was a tiny baby. Most of my memories start after Mum came back to live with us again. And I’d never heard that before, about a baby’s hair falling out.
‘Wait a minute …’ He was frowning at me in concern. ‘Daniel, you weren’t really questioning that Martha is your sister, were you?’
I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t. Slowly it was all starting to sink into place. Martha had had dark hair at the beginning and then she had become blonde. It was as simple as that. There was nothing to worry about. I felt light-headed with relief, as if I’d just been told I was free to go instead of getting sent to the electric chair or something.
‘But can’t Mum remember that’s what happened?’ I asked Dad later as we sat talking together. ‘That Martha’s dark hair fell out and grew in blonde, I mean.’
Dad sighed. ‘When she’s sick her mind plays tricks on her. Her brain … well … misbehaves if you like. It comes up with lots of confusing messages … bizarre thoughts …’ He paused. ‘My guess is that since meeting Kate her mind has been struggling to make sense of some real feelings of loss she has about Martha.’
‘Feelings of loss? I don’t get it, Dad.’
Dad was looking at me right in the eyes now, as if he was trying to read how well I was understanding what he was trying so hard to explain. ‘Your mother hardly saw Martha during the first few months of her life. I brought photos but …’ He frowned. ‘Small babies change very rapidly … In a way I think she always had a sense that the little dark-haired newborn – the one who was with her day and night for the first week in the hospital … I think she feels as if that baby was taken away from her and never given back.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘She didn’t see Martha again for a long time and when she did … well, she said it was like being handed a completely different baby.’
‘Mum said you wouldn’t let her keep Martha in the hospital,’ I said. I honestly wasn’t trying to accuse him, I just desperately wanted to know the whole story.
He nodded. ‘She’s right. I got spooked and I panicked. You see there was another patient on the same ward – a psychotic lady who was hearing voices telling her to … well, it doesn’t matter what they were telling her. Anyway, she took some of the babies from their cots one night. The staff sorted it out so quickly that the babies weren’t really ever in danger,
but I still felt too anxious to let Martha stay. I insisted on taking her home with me, even though your mother’s psychiatrist didn’t want me to. I thought it would only be a week or two until your mother was well enough to come home, in any case. But instead she became very depressed.’ He looked at me. ‘It took the doctors a long time to make her better from that. That’s why she was in hospital for so long. She was so ill she wasn’t behaving anything like the mother you knew. She had a terribly bleak view of life and she truly believed we’d be better off without her. I was scared of what she might say to you if I took you to see her. You were only five and I didn’t want to scare you. I didn’t want you coming into contact with some of the other really sick patients either for the same reason.’
I stared at him. I had never heard this part of the story before. Now I knew why I hadn’t got to see Mum for all that time when I was little.
As it was half-term Susie had taken the week off work, so I spent quite a bit of time at her place while Dad went to visit Mum. Martha either came with me or went round to Sally’s house. Abby took me down to the park a few times to play football with her and her friends and I met Rachel’s brother, Michael. We hit it off really well and he invited me back to his place to watch a match he’d recorded the week before. Michael said that Abby and Rachel were pretty good football players considering they were girls, and that got Abby all fired up saying that girls were just as good at football as boys. Thankfully they didn’t try to get me to take sides.
Nobody suggested that Martha and I visit Mum and I just assumed it was going to be the same as it had been when I was little. Mum would be too ill for us to visit her for most of the time she was in hospital and we wouldn’t see her again until she was nearly ready to come home. I tried not to think how long it might be before that happened.
On Sunday afternoon I was watching my favourite TV show. The cool young detective had been benched by his boss for not following orders (which is kind of like being grounded I guess). They cut to the hospital, where the coffee-shop bomber was. The man’s sister was there with the doctor, who was explaining that the treatment they were giving him wasn’t working and that there was one more medication left to try but it was risky. One of the possible side effects was that it killed off your blood cells.
‘And what if we try it and it doesn’t help?’ the man’s sister asked. They did a close-up shot of her looking all trembly.
‘Then you may have to accept that he won’t ever fully recover. If that happens, he’s going to need to live somewhere where he can be properly cared for and prevented from harming anyone else,’ the doctor replied.
I switched the TV off. I knew it was only a made-up story and not real, but it was freaking me out all the same. What if Mum had to have some extra strong medication that killed off her blood cells? Or what if she never fully recovered and had to go away somewhere to be looked after? What if I never saw Mum as I’d always known her ever again?
I felt my throat closing up and my eyes starting to prick, and for the first time since Mum had gone into hospital I started to cry – and I mean properly cry. I was on my own, so there was nobody to see me and I ended up bawling my eyes out like a baby.
Dad wouldn’t drop the subject of school, and that evening he said I had to start back the next morning now that half-term had ended. If Martha was able to go to school, Dad said, then I should be able to go too.
‘It’s not the same for Martha,’ I protested. ‘She’s not going to the same school as Mum, is she? She won’t have Calum coming up to her asking what it’s like having a mum in the loony bin.’
Dad sighed. ‘Daniel, you know as well as I do that there’s a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding about people who are mentally ill. But you need to hold on to the knowledge that Mum’s illness is just that – an illness that she can’t help. It’s an illness that changes her behaviour, and that’s what you have to say to anyone at school who asks.’
‘I told you before! I’m not going to school!’
‘Daniel, you’ve got to go back to school some time and the longer you leave it the more difficult it’s going to get.’
‘I’m not going,’ I said stubbornly.
‘Look, after a week or two the fuss will blow over. The teachers will help you out and if any of the other children say anything, perhaps you could say Mum hasn’t been well but she’s recovering now. Or that she’s had a very serious illness which made her behave strangely but that she’s getting better. Or you might even simply say that she’s been ill and you’d rather not talk about it …’
I screwed up my face and swore under my breath. Didn’t he get it? I wasn’t going back and he couldn’t make me.
‘Don’t swear at me, Daniel.’
‘I wasn’t swearing at you. I was just swearing.’
He sounded like his patience was wearing thin. ‘Well, you’re going back to school tomorrow whether you want to or not. It’s not up for discussion any more.’
‘Fine,’ I said, like I didn’t really care. I knew what I was going to do tomorrow anyway, and it didn’t involve school.
Dad was waiting for me when I got home on Monday afternoon. ‘Daniel, sit down,’ he said sternly. ‘I want to speak to you.’
I didn’t sit down. I started walking round the room, tidying up. Martha had dumped her PE kit on the floor as soon as she’d got in and her nightie was still lying on the sofa where she’d left it that morning. ‘This place is a tip,’ I complained to Dad. Goodness knows what he’d been doing all day.
‘It can stay a tip for a few minutes longer. Now sit.’ He sounded stern, and normally I would have done what he said, at that point. I’m not sure why I wasn’t obeying him now, except that I was quite curious to see what he would do if I dug in my heels.
‘Daniel!’ He grabbed me by the arm and actually pushed me down on to the sofa. He’d never done that before. ‘Will you please do as you’re told?’
‘I’m not a kid, Dad!’ I glowered up at him.
‘Excuse me, but last time I looked you were still twelve.’
‘So?’
‘So that’s not exactly a senior citizen!’ He was frowning. ‘Daniel, listen to me for a minute, will you? I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you needed me and I’m very proud of you for coping with things as well as you did. But I’m back now and actually you haven’t grown up overnight, even if that’s how it feels to you at the moment.’
I made a big effort to look like I wasn’t listening, even though I was.
‘Now I know you weren’t in school today,’ he went on. ‘Mrs Lyle phoned and told me. So where did you go?’
I shrugged. ‘Just around.’ Abby had lent me the key to her house and I’d spent the day there watching TV, but I wasn’t about to say that and get Abby into trouble.
‘Not a good enough answer I’m afraid, Daniel!’
I looked at him. It was scary how numb I felt inside. ‘I told you I wasn’t going back to that school.’
Dad stared at me for a moment or two. He looked anything but numb. His face was going red. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Daniel. I thought you’d at least want to give it a try, for Mum’s sake.’
‘Mum doesn’t have to go back there either.’
‘What? And lose the position she’s worked for years to achieve? She won’t want that, Daniel. She’ll want to go back to that school and show them what a good job she can do when she’s well again – and I think you should be there to see it. And to support her,’ he added.
‘I thought she was meant to be the one supporting me?’ I said. ‘I thought parents were meant to support their children, not the other way round!’
Instead of coming back with an answer, he stayed silent. Now that was scary.
The next day Dad surprised me by saying he’d given it some thought and decided that maybe where I went to school was something I should be allowed to choose for myself after all. He said if I really wanted to change schools, then he’d arrange that for me, but that he wanted me to
think about it for a bit longer first.
But over the next few days I couldn’t really be bothered thinking about it, because I was thinking all the time about Mum. Dad had said Mum was too ill to have visitors at the moment but that he would take her letters and cards from us if we wanted to write some. Martha drew her lots of pictures and sent her a big get-well card, but I didn’t feel like doing that. I mean, sending a get-well card was the sort of thing you did when someone was an ill version of themselves. With Mum, it was as if all that excess energy I’d watched building up inside her had finally blown the fuse that kept her being herself. So who would I be sending the card to? The person I wanted to send a card to – the person I thought about every night before I went to sleep and every morning as soon as I woke up – wasn’t Mum as she was now.
Then, on Friday evening, Dad surprised me by saying that he’d been thinking about it and maybe it was better if he took Martha and me to visit Mum after all, even though she wasn’t completely back to her usual self.
‘I thought you didn’t think psychiatric hospitals were suitable places for children to visit,’ I said, since I now knew that that was why Dad hadn’t taken me to see Mum all those years ago when I was only five and had been missing her so badly.
‘Well, perhaps I was wrong,’ Dad said. ‘Perhaps if children are kept away they end up imagining something worse than what’s really there.’
I couldn’t believe it. It seemed like Dad was the one whose brain had just received treatment, not Mum.
Martha was excited as Dad drove us up to the hospital on Saturday afternoon. I had hardly been able to eat any lunch and I was starting to feel very nervous. It was nearly three weeks now since we’d seen Mum, and the nearer we got to the place the more uneasy I became. I was tugging at my seat belt to loosen it and unwinding my window and winding it up again and banging my feet against the plastic ledge where Dad keeps the maps and things until Dad got so fed up with telling me to sit still that he gave up. As we turned in through the gates, I suddenly blurted, ‘Dad, I don’t want to go inside.’