Quite suddenly, I am absolutely certain that it doesn’t matter; that it’s all right. I smile, and even allow a small laugh to escape my lips. It really is all right. I am content, almost happy. A sense of profound and absolute calm is spreading through me, like soaking my aching body in a warm, scented bath. And from nowhere, long-buried memories start to take shape in my mind – my mum, stroking my hair when I was a little girl to help me sleep; reading me a story when I was in bed with tonsillitis; cuddling me after I fell off my tricycle. I’m surprised by these memories, but I feel as if I’m being soothed and comforted from all sides, almost as if my mum is here, looking after me again. It’s time. I lower myself onto the ledge below, easily now, and as I look down, I no longer feel any fear. Still smiling, I close my eyes and tip my head back, then I spread my arms like a bird, and with the soft breeze of my babies’ breath on my skin, I let myself go.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Postpartum psychosis (or puerperal psychosis) is a serious mental illness that affects thousands of women in the UK each year, occurring in slightly more than one in every thousand deliveries. It’s much less common than postnatal depression, which affects ten to fifteen women in every hundred. The symptoms, which come on suddenly in the first few days or weeks following childbirth, are varied, and can include high or low mood, confusion, hallucinations and delusions. Symptoms may come and go and can change rapidly. The woman herself may not display any outward signs that anything is wrong, but postpartum psychosis is a psychiatric emergency and it’s important to get medical help as soon as possible. Once recognised, the condition is relatively easy to treat.
In the novel, Leah sometimes realises that the strange thoughts she has and the things she thinks are happening would seem ‘mad’ to other people, so she deliberately keeps them to herself for fear that Harriet will be taken away from her. This is not uncommon in real life cases. But it’s important to stress that the other actions Leah takes as a result of her psychosis are entirely fictional, and although some real cases have had tragic consequences, these are relatively rare.
Postpartum psychosis can affect any woman after any of her pregnancies (although there are a number of risk factors – a previous diagnosis of bipolar disorder, for example, or having a mother or sister who suffered postpartum psychosis). If you think you or someone you know might have this condition, it’s important to get help as quickly as possible.
If you’d like more information, including symptoms and risk factors, contact APP (Action on Postpartum Psychosis). Their website is www.app-network.org
Finally, I’d like to reiterate that the scenario I created for Leah – a scenario which, after a great deal of consideration and deliberation I decided was the right one for my fictional character, given the circumstances she finds herself in – is an extremely unlikely one for a real person suffering postpartum psychosis.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply grateful to both my editor Jo Dickinson, and my agent Kate Shaw for their insightful editorial suggestions on the various drafts of this book, as well as their continued support and encouragement. Thanks also to my ex-editor Clare Hey, who was there at the start but moved on to ever greater things before The Flight of Cornelia Blackwood was finished. Her enthusiasm at that early stage helped me make it through the later drafts. A big thank you also to my copy editor, Jenny Page, and to the wonderful team at Simon & Schuster, for everything from the cover design to the layout to the marketing of the finished book – writing the story seems a small part in comparison!
I am indebted to consultant perinatal psychiatrist Dr Nusrat Mir, for giving up his precious time to talk to me about postpartum psychosis and the feasibility of Leah’s story as I imagined it. Any remaining errors are entirely my own.
Thanks also to Cherished Gowns UK for answering my questions about the period immediately after stillbirth. Cherished Gowns provides bereavement packs containing gowns (or wraps for the tiniest babies) made from donated wedding dresses to fit babies who are stillborn from twelve weeks onwards. I feel privileged to have been able to donate my own wedding dress, which was turned into ten beautiful gowns by one of their wonderful volunteer seamstresses.
Grateful thanks to the Francis Reckitt Trust for providing financial support for two writing retreats, enabling me to work on this novel undisturbed by domestic responsibilities and distractions.
My thanks to my wonderful friends who listen patiently while I bang on and on about aspects of the plot: Iona Gunning, Sue Hughes, Annie McKie and Ruby Speechley, and particularly to Russell Thomas and Marian ‘Dill’ Dillon who go above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to constructive criticism and plot discussion. A special thank you to Russell Thomas for allowing me to give my fictional village the name he created for his own fictional village.
As always, the biggest thank you is to my husband, Francis, for the love, support and encouragement. This is all for you, really.
Loved The Flight of Cornelia Blackwood?
Read on for an extract from
Susan Elliot Wright’s compelling novel,
What She Lost
Available in print, eBook and eAudio
Eleanor: the present, Scalby,
North Yorkshire coast
Conscious of her hand trembling, Eleanor takes a breath and pushes the door open. She hasn’t needed a hairdresser since she was eighteen years old, and coming here now, more than thirty years later, is something she has both dreamed about and dreaded. She looks around the salon as she hands her coat to the receptionist. Everyone else looks so relaxed, so at ease. The stylist, Gaby, has shortish hair that is three different colours: blonde, a chestnut brown and a bright pink – like a Neapolitan ice cream. She’s very young – they all are – but when Eleanor explains the situation, Gaby listens closely, her expression serious. ‘Okay,’ she nods. ‘Let’s see what we can do, then, shall we?’
Eleanor can feel the stares, people assuming she has cancer, trying not to look. She is used to that, and to the well-meant assurances that it would soon grow back. At perverted satisfaction from saying, No, it won’t, actually, but she’d got over that fairly quickly. It wasn’t quite true, anyway; what the specialist actually said was that it was by no means unheard of – a case of ‘wait and see’. And then he’d laboured the point that hair loss triggered by trauma was relatively rare, which had only made it feel even more personal, more like a punishment.
Gaby catches her eye in the mirror, smiles and mouths, ‘Trust me.’
She smiles back, and then tries to adopt a neutral expression as she puts herself in the hands of this pretty young girl, who is probably used to working with rather more hair than this. After years of battling with wigs that itched and scarves that slipped, she now managed to do a pretty good impression of someone who didn’t mind being bald. Big earrings helped, she found, and holding your nerve and looking people in the eye, even when she could see them studiously trying to avoid letting their gaze drift higher than her eyebrows. When tufts of new downy hair began to appear unexpectedly when she was in her early thirties, she couldn’t stop herself from touching it, stroking it, wondering how soon she’d be able to brush it again. But the regrowth was patchy and short-lived. It had grown again since then, on and off, but it hadn’t ever held for more than a few weeks. Until now.
She can’t bear to look too closely at what is happening to her hair as the stylist snips away, a millimetre here, in the mirror. Her brows are knitted together; the tip of her tongue pokes from between her lips as she concentrates. Given that there is so little to work with, Eleanor had assumed it wouldn’t take long, but Gaby seems to be treating this as a work of art as she gently combs and cuts, combs and cuts.
She glances around the salon. There are a couple of women with heads a mass of foils, looking like truncated Medusas as they flick through magazines and wait for their colour to take. One woman is having her sleek dark bob blow-dried, and there are three others having cuts. Eleanor watches as their shorn hair
falls to the floor, mostly a couple of centimetres here and there, but in one case, three-inch strands of lovely coppery hair lie around the base of the chair. It is no wonder people are looking at her; the hair she’s managed to grow isn’t anywhere near as long as some of the hair that’s drifting carelessly to the floor all around her.
A teenage boy pushes a wide broom behind the cutting chairs. She wouldn’t mind betting that most of these women abuse their hair all the time, drenching it in chemicals or clamping it between heated metal plates and searing it to make it straight. They probably complain about bad hair days. She doesn’t blame them, though; everyone takes their hair for granted.
After half an hour, Gaby’s expression relaxes and she catches her eye in the mirror. ‘Nearly done.’ She makes a few more snips. ‘There.’ She leans down so her face is ‘How’s that for you?’
Eleanor allows herself to look properly. ‘It’s …’ She struggles to find her voice, still stunned by the transformation. ‘It’s amazing.’ She turns her head this way and that. ‘I don’t know quite how you’ve done it, but you’ve actually made it look longer.’
Gaby flushes. ‘You like it?’ She picks up a hand mirror and holds it so Eleanor can see the back.
‘I love it.’ The cut makes her cheekbones stand out and it emphasises the shape of her eyes. She turns and smiles. ‘I can’t thank you enough.’
After she’s paid and collected her coat, she finds Gaby, presses a substantial tip into her hand and thanks her again. ‘Hopefully I’ll be back in a few weeks, but I don’t want to jinx it by making another appointment.’
‘You know where I am,’ Gaby says. ‘Fingers crossed.’
*
Twenty minutes later, Eleanor parks the car opposite the beach and picks up her heavy-duty work gloves and the roll of extra-strong bin liners, then she takes her wellies out of the boot and puts them on. She hurries down the steps, keen to get this done and get back to the community farm. The February wind pinches her cheeks as she gathers armfuls of seaweed and stuffs it into the bags, which she’s doubled up for even more strength. Seaweed is brilliant for enriching the compost, but she wishes it about a third full but still so heavy that she has to lug them to the car one at a time. Her back and arms are aching by the time she’s finished. She slams the boot shut, but instead of getting back in the driver’s seat, she locks the car and heads back down to the beach to look at the sea for a few minutes. She walks across the wet sand to the water’s edge and stands, hands deep in her pockets, looking out towards the horizon as the lacy froth washes over her boots. As usual, she finds herself mesmerised. There is something about the hypnotic movement of the waves that always makes her feel a little gloomy, but still she finds it hard to tear herself away.
It’s starting to rain. As she heads back to the car, the salty wind stings her cheeks and makes her eyes water, but she can feel it moving the hair on her scalp, and it’s a sensation she wants to fully soak up, just in case.
As she drives back to the community farm, she’s aware of looking in the rear-view mirror rather more often than she needs to. Her sudden gloom is lifting again now, and she is actually smiling as she turns onto the track. The helpers have put the new signs up while she’s been out, but instead of being at the bottom near the main road, they’re about half-way up, which is a fat lot of good. The whole point is to try to attract more takers for the various classes they’re running, and anyone who actually drives up the track will know what’s available already. She slows down as the car shudders over the cattle grid, a relic from the days when this was a traditional working probably her own fault for not spelling it out.
As soon as she’s unloaded and emptied the bags of seaweed, she heads for the kitchen.
‘I’m back!’ She takes her jacket off and hangs it on the back of a chair. A fresh, earthy smell fills the room as Jill chops peppers for a vegetable chilli. There are four new volunteer helpers arriving today and six already here. Good home-made food is part of the deal – the helpers provide manual labour, the farm provides food, accommodation and social contact.
‘Wow!’ Jill puts down her knife and wipes her hands on her striped butcher’s apron. ‘It takes years off you.’
‘Great, isn’t it? That hairdresser’s a genius.’ She pauses. ‘I just hope it stays this time.’
‘Fingers crossed.’ Jill takes off her apron to reveal a long, blue-and-orange kaftan-type dress. She always wears this sort of thing for cooking. If she’s working outside, she usually wears a pair of David’s jeans, tied up with a bit of old rope for a belt and one of his oversized shirts. Jill and David tell all the new volunteers about how they met as carefree young hippies in the sixties. ‘And now,’ they add proudly, ‘we’re carefree old hippies in our sixties.’
‘Before I forget.’ Jill hands her a mug of tea. ‘Two things to tell you and a favour to ask. First, your mum phoned.’
Eleanor’s heartbeat quickens and she feels a tickle of shame as she realises she hasn’t spoken to her mother since Christmas Day, almost two months ago.
needs to tell you. Said it was very important.’
‘That’s weird. She hardly ever calls me. I wonder what could be so important?’
‘Only one way to find out. Use the landline.’ Jill passes her the handset. ‘I need to get the cabins ready for the new helpers anyway.’
‘Thanks.’ She starts to key in the number, then pauses. ‘You said there were two things?’
‘Oh, yes. And a favour. Favour first – can you take my yoga class for me tomorrow? I’ve pulled something in my back sorting out those bloody cloches.’
‘All right, if your group don’t mind.’ She’s taken the yoga classes before, but she isn’t as good at it as Jill, who at sixty-eight is more than eighteen years her senior, but is tall and slender and can do things with her body that would defeat most women half her age.
‘Of course they won’t; they love you.’
‘And the other thing you had to tell me?’
‘Ooh, yes. Postcard from Dylan.’
There is a tiny skip in her stomach.
‘It’s on the corkboard. He’ll be here sometime in May or June, he says, and he’ll probably stay until late autumn, if we can use him, which, of course …’
‘We most definitely can.’ She smiles as she reads his postcard, which has a picture of Tower Bridge on the front; he’s in London again. Dylan never uses the telephone; doesn’t even own a mobile, never mind a tablet or even a laptop. He has no need of such things, he says. She feels lighter as she goes back to keying in her mum’s number.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Mum. Jill said you phoned. Is everything all right?’
‘Who do you wish to speak to?’ her mother says in her most formal telephone voice.
‘Mum, it’s me. Eleanor.’
Silence. It must be one of her bad days. ‘Mum, are you there? It’s Eleanor. You rang earlier; you said you had something to tell me.’
‘Eleanor? Oh, hello. Nice to hear from you. How are you keeping?’
‘I’m fine, Mum. You called me, this morning. Do you remember?’
‘Did I? No, I don’t think so. I seldom use the telephone these days. I can never remember the numbers. They’ve all changed.’
‘You don’t need to. I put them in your phone last time I was down, remember? You just need to look at the list on the front and you’ll see which number you have to press for which person.’
‘Last time? When was that? I don’t remember.’
For a moment, she thinks her mother is being sarcastic; after all, although she tries to phone every couple of months, she hasn’t actually seen her mum for over two years. Probably more like three, now she thinks about it. ‘It’s been a while, I know. But when I came, I put the important numbers in for you, and if you look on the you see it?’
Silence.
‘Mum? Peggy’s mobile should be first, then—’
‘I don’t need Peggy’s number.’ She sounds irr
itated. ‘She’s only upstairs, and we’ve got an extension.’
‘I know, I meant her mobile. In case she’s out and you need to talk to her. It should be my mobile next, then I think it’s the landline for here, but if you—’
‘I’d better go,’ her mother says. ‘Peggy will be down for coffee presently. I’ll tell her you called. Bye, darling.’ And she’s gone.
Eleanor sighs. She ought to go down again soon. Her mum and Peggy have been friends since they were teenagers, but it isn’t fair to rely so heavily on Peggy; after all, she’s only two or three years younger than Marjorie, although Marjorie often seems much older. It was Peggy who’d rung to tell her about the diagnosis, more than three years ago now. ‘Your mum didn’t want to worry you,’ she’d said. ‘But I told her not to be so bloody stupid. She’s struggling to take it all in, but I said I’d let you know.’
She’d called her mother the next day and asked exactly what the doctor had said.
‘Well, they’re almost certain that’s what it is. There’s no blood test or anything, but they did some memory tests … like being at school. They had me counting backwards in nines, or was it sevens? I had to draw something – a clock, I think. And lots of silly questions – what She sighed heavily. ‘They think I’ve had it for a while. I’m always forgetting things when I go shopping, or leaving my keys in the front door. But I forget people’s names now, too. And things that have happened.’ She paused. ‘Even big things.’ For a moment, Eleanor had wondered if she might finally mention the ‘big things’ that had defined their lives, coloured their relationship. But then she sounded brisk again. ‘Anyway, it’s not too bad at the moment, but it’ll get worse. I’ll just have to learn to live with it.’
The Flight of Cornelia Blackwood Page 27