by Clare Fisher
When I was done with crying, I saw that things wouldn’t change on their own; you had to change them. You had to rise up out of that lazy part of yourself that did what it had done before just because it was easier, and do the new thing, the strange thing, the thing you were scared of. If I wanted things between me and you to end different, I had to do something different now. So I did: I rang Chantelle.
May not seem like a big deal, ringing someone. But you have to understand, that with a baby in my belly, with a ton of memories in my limbs and that mean old voice telling me not to trust anyone, what was the point, to ring any person, let alone one who for months and months had been angry with you, it was. It was a pretty fucking big deal.
‘What is it?’ she answered after two rings. Peppa Pig in the background.
‘Chantelle, it’s Beth.’
‘I know who it is, my phone tells me, you retard.’
‘I know, I . . . I just wanted to say . . . I’m sorry. Sorry for everything I said at your party.’
She said nothing for a while and then she said, ‘Whatever. Is the baby coming out or something?’
‘No, not yet –’
‘Thank fuck. When I last saw you, I thought, man, that girl is about to burst!’
‘Chantelle.’
‘What?’
‘I’m scared.’ There. I’d done it. I’d put myself out there. I’d always imagined the world would laugh at or spit on this self once it saw it for what it was. But you can’t spit at people over the phone.
‘Oh, honey.’
Don’t ask why someone naming you after a sweet, sticky thing makes you feel better – it just does.
‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ I blurted. ‘Like how am I going to get the baby out? Or what if it decides it can’t be arsed, what then?’
‘Honey –’
‘And what if she does come out? What am I going to do with her? How can I tell her what to do, when, let’s face it, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing myself?’
Chantelle laughed a kind laugh. ‘Honey – put it DOWN. DOWN!’ Screams in the background, followed by a long wail. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s World War Three over here. Maybe I should –’
‘Can you come round?’
‘Aw, yeah sure. But I’ll have to bring the little monsters if you don’t mind.’
‘Course not. And Chantelle?’
‘What now?’
‘Thanks.’
‘Calm yourself, I’m only coming to sit on your sofa – it ain’t like I’m saving your life or nothing.’
Then she hung up and I breathed out two lungs’ worth of relief. Because I’d never dared ask anyone for help before. If only I’d remembered this in the weeks and months to come, things might’ve turned out different for us – and by different I mean better. But maybe that’s how it is. Maybe life is an endless cycle of learning and forgetting and then learning what we’ve forgotten we’ve learned, all over again.
Here are some more of the things I’m only just remembering that I learned that night with Chantelle:
1. Hugs shut out your fears for longer than they last.
2. Squashing on to the sofa with three other humans and laughing at nothing is like stepping on to some kind of hovercraft which glides you up, up and away from your troubles – not for ever, but for a short and wonderful time.
3. Drinking tea and eating Cadbury’s mini-rolls even when you’re not thirsty or hungry will fill you from head to toe.
4. Every time a person who knows as much of the real you as anyone is ever going to know smiles at you, it sends a message to the snarky you’re-less-than-human part of you, and the message is this: ‘Fuck you, I’m GOOD.’
5. Getting kicked off the sofa so two kids can defend the spaceship from the death-resistant space monsters makes you laugh. When you’ve stopped laughing, it makes you worry less about the way things are because you’ve just been reminded that things can also be something else.
‘Give me a call, anytime?’ said Chantelle, when it was time for her to leave.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I will.’ And if only I had. If only.
17. Doing the things that scare you most
Dear Mum
Thanks for your letter. I read it over and over and I do understand. I’m angry and upset and confused but I do understand.
I started reading our case files right before I gave birth. Most people would find them depressing but not me; before then, I had no story to shove between me and that dark little voice that says, ‘You’re evil, this is your fault, everyone hates you, stay away from them.’ Now, I had a history.
I was ready to contact you. Wrote out your number and took it with me whenever I went outside and everything. Then my waters broke as I was waiting for some benefits appointment, I was sitting in my own puddle until the receptionist looked up and rolled her eyes and said, how could you have got this far without noticing? And I cried, not because it hurt, but because I was scared, I didn’t know what was going to happen, and I wished that I had someone to sit through it with me.
I had a friend, Chantelle. We were really, really close, then around the time I got pregnant, we had a fight. I said some bad things. I did ring her and apologize, but not until it was way too late. It was like I was wrapped in some stiff scratchy wool; no way could I make any decisions, no way could anyone get in, not even if they tried. Did that happen to you, did it? Just getting from one breath to the next was hard enough; I couldn’t imagine anything else. Couldn’t imagine After.
I gave birth in a room overlooking the Thames; from the window, I could see Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, everything. They gave me gas, air, I don’t remember what else, but it had a long scientific name and it made me feel even further from what was happening in my body.
My midwife was on another emergency call or something and the baby was taking its time and so they left me alone for hours and hours. I stared at the window and the water and at the Houses of Parliament and at the seagulls and at Big Ben. I imagined I was talking to Big Ben at one point: Will this ever end? I asked him. Will this baby ever get out of my body or what? Tick, tock, he said. Tick, tock. Which I knew meant: of course. But the baby won’t come out on its own. You’ve got to help it along. You’ve got to push.
When the contractions got down to business so did I. And so did the baby. Some nurse held my hand and told me I was doing good, squeeze as hard as you need, she said, and so I did, and everything inside of me, all the small things and the big things, the slimy things and the hard things, all the things outside of me; they were ripping, tearing, popping, twisting, squeezing, pushing, huffing us into some world which would be as strange and new and unknown and terrifying as a blank page – only with blood. Lots and lots of blood.
People go on about how awful birth is and it’s true that it hurt like hell but you know what? It was brilliant. It was bloody brilliant. (Literally and not.) And I would do it again if I could, honest.
It was after that things got. They got. Well, you know.
There’s a lot more I want to tell and ask you but not here. Not on the page. I want to watch how you move your face as we talk. See what you do with your hands. Would you come and visit me? Dates are below. Don’t worry if you can’t but it would be good. It’s hard for me to admit this, but it’s what I need.
Beth x
18. Running as fast as the Thames flows
The bad thing which got me in here, the thing I spend 99% of my energy at any given moment trying to push away, it happened in my flat.
Our flat.
Straight after it happened – at least, I think it was straight after, but who really knows because the thing about such bad things is, they mess time right up – I showered and put on the first pair of cleanish clothes to touch my body since the bum-flashing gown I was wearing as you got born. I stuffed the last of my last loan into my bag. Then I turned my back on the life I’d tried and failed to make for us and then I guess you could say that was when the runn
ing got serious.
I ran north. I ran right across the Elephant and Castle round-about; the air was all horns and other voices, human voices, telling me to watch myself and that I was a crazy bitch. I knocked over a plastic bowl of tomatoes, and when the man behind the stall shouted that I owed him a pound, I ran even faster, because the plastic bowl man, the horn-beepers at the Elephant roundabout, they knew what I’d done. It was written all over my face and my hands and my neck and even my grubby ankles.
I ignored the ache of so recently pushing you into the world. I ignored the voice reminding me that the further I ran from the thing I’d done, the more it would hurt when I stopped. I didn’t believe I would have to stop; my mum had been right; things did match up: if I could just keep running as fast as the water was flowing, as fast as the pigeons and the seagulls and the planes were flying, everything would reset; the next time someone asked me if I was OK, I could honestly reply yes.
The north side of the river was different, at least, that’s what I told myself, what I had to, as I sweated all over and under the Trafalgar Square tourists who had nothing and no one to run from. One or two people stared at me like they knew what I’d done, but mostly they were tilting their iPhones up at lonely old Nelson, and for a few seconds, I watched them, wishing that I, like Nelson, could hide so high above the ground. Then the tourists set off in search of fish and chips and, realizing that Nelson’s column was not the place to escape to, I carried on. How many people I slammed into, I can’t be sure, and just when I was thinking, does this city have an edge and if so how do you get to it, I saw the ugly grey tower of Euston.
An hour later, my train was pulling into Milton Keynes. I didn’t know what Milton Keynes was, only that, according to the moustached guy in the ticket office, it wasn’t London. As soon as I got through the barriers, I relaxed; the old man was right: this was definitely not London. Everything was flat, straight, grey. There were a lot of people in suits, too busy staring at their phones to stare at me. I started running, but who knows where or for how long, for every street looked the same, and so did every house and every gap between every house and every tree and even every gap between every tree, and every roundabout.
Eventually, I reached a shopping centre, which was just a bigger version of every other shopping centre I’d ever been to: same shops, same receipt-scarred tiles between the shops, same signs reminding you these were the Final Days of the sale. I followed this one mum and daughter around Primark; the daughter’s chubby little body was stuffed into a One Direction hoody, they were shopping for her first bra, she was half-embarrassed, half-excited, but her mum was so nice, she suggested this one then that one and oh, what about this one, it’s purple, don’t you love purple? Which would she choose? I was so desperate to find out, to make their life into mine, that the daughter said, ‘Mum, can’t we try a different shop? That woman’s been following us around and she’s scary.’ It wasn’t until the mum grabbed her daughter’s hand, glared at me, and pulled her in the opposite direction, that I clocked she was talking about me.
The only thing I knew was that the only time I felt OK, the only time I could almost believe that the bad things had nothing to do with me, was when I was running. So I went into the Adidas shop. There was a DJ spinning discs between the rucksacks and the sports bras. As I pulled on the brightest, funnest leggings – the Nike ones with stars on – I tried to dance around. Tried to kid myself I was getting ready for some epic night out. That any second now, Chantelle would whip back the cubicle curtain, bright pink Lycra stretched across her boobs, and tell me I looked hot, even if I was a skinny bitch. But I couldn’t. My legs looked sad under my Nike stars. My boobs had disappeared back into my chest. And my face – there was nothing anyone could do about my face: ghost-white cheeks, and a darkness under the eyes and in the eyes and in the corners of the mouth that no one should have to see. But stars were better than no stars and I couldn’t think what else to do, so I bought the leggings anyway.
Next, I went to Toni & Guy. This would be the last of my money, but who cared? It was going to run out anyway. And wasn’t that why people spent their whole lives trying to make more of it – so they could fool themselves they weren’t so bad?
‘Chop it all off,’ I said to the smiley blonde stylist. ‘Make it as different as possible.’
She laughed. ‘You changing your identity or something?’
Laugh back, I told myself. You’re meant to laugh back. But I couldn’t. Instead I just said, ‘No.’
‘OK, so how about . . .’ I heard but I didn’t understand; I just nodded and said that’s great, and later, when she started cutting, asking me questions like, what did I do, had I taken the day off work, was I from round here, I said nothing because I knew that if I opened my mouth no words would come out, only some terrible, animal sound which didn’t belong in any shopping centre.
The haircut cost a whole £60. I only had £40. The receptionist said not to worry: ‘The cash point’s just around the corner. You can nip out. Just give it in one go when you get back.’
Of course, I nipped out, but instead of nipping back, I nipped to the station and then – via the slowest, cheapest train – to Leicester.
As for what happened in Leicester – you already know about that.
After Leicester, I was tired; tired of running; tired of guessing who this person was I was supposed to be. Nothing felt real. Nothing felt right. How going back to London would change any of this, I had no idea, but it was the only answer I could find to the question of what to do next, so I climbed on to the train. As soon as my bum sank into the seat, I fell asleep. I fell into the black hole kind of sleep you can normally only fall into when pissed. When I woke up there was an oldish man waving what looked like a huge calculator in my face and shouting something about a ticket. A ticket? Did I have one?
‘No,’ I said. The part of me I lied with had run out. ‘No, I don’t have a ticket. I’ve never had one.’
‘But you have to,’ he said. ‘You have to get one before you board.’
‘I tried,’ I said. ‘I’ve been asking for one. My whole fucking life I’ve been asking. But they wouldn’t give one to me.’
The inspector raised his eyebrows and I wondered, was I meant to know him? Was he some uncle I didn’t remember?
‘That,’ he said, ‘I find very hard to believe. Leicester is well served for ticket offices.’
‘You don’t get it,’ I said, and at this point, I felt other people looking at me. I peered around the old man and yep, sure enough, the strangers in the next seat were looking up from their phones and their Kindles. ‘None of you do. You never will.’
All eyes shot back to the nearest screen and the old man sighed and said I’d have to pay the penalty fare, which was £90.
‘I don’t have £90.’
The inspector snorted. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course you don’t.’ He ran his eyes over my Lycra-ed legs. ‘You never do, you people. Spending all your dosh on designer sports clothes and what have you. Bet you don’t even do any sports.’
This train terminates at London at approximately 15.53, announced the loudspeaker, but I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe this journey would end any place I’d been before. ‘You don’t know a thing about me.’
‘You’ll end up with the British Transport Police if you carry on like this, young lady.’
Young lady. Just two words, two tiny words, but they were big enough to push me over the edge.
‘Oooh! The British Transport Police! I’m so scared,’ I said, but it didn’t feel like me saying it.
‘This is your final chance. £90 or –’
‘I don’t. Have. Ninety. Quid.’
The inspector’s face was filled with blood and hate. I didn’t want to look at it any more so I closed my eyes and leant back in my chair. I didn’t hear anything else for a while, I thought maybe he was just a bad dream, when the train stopped for a really long time and then there were footsteps and clinking and ‘m
adam’.
‘Fine. I admit it. It was me that –’
‘Madam?’
‘I’m sorry.’ My face was wet. My hands were shaking. When I looked up at the uncle who wasn’t my uncle, and at the police who weren’t police and who hadn’t been there before, and at the advert for a family season ticket behind their shoulders, it seemed like all these people were shaking, too. ‘It was me.’
‘Madam, I think –’
‘There were loads of bills and stuff I forgot to pay. Loads of things I forgot to do. But I don’t care about any of that. I only cared . . .’
Of course, all the British Transport Police cared about was the ticket, so I said it again, again and again I said it until they handed me to the actual police, who rang up Lambeth police, who drove all the way up to get me in what apparently was Bedford.
‘We’ve been looking for you for some time,’ they said.
They were worried, they said, about my mental condition. ‘I’m fine,’ I told them. ‘I’m not my mum. I did a bad thing. But I’m not my mum. I’m not mental.’
‘Miss Mitchell, you can’t have been . . .’
‘I knew what I was doing and I did it anyway. I did it. I did it. It was me.’
‘So why did you run? Why did you keep running?’
What I could never tell them or any other human who wasn’t you, is that I wanted to run until my body broke and the world broke and time broke, in the same way they’d broke in the seventeen hours in which I panted, paced, lay, sat, cried, screamed, stood, swore, grunted and pushed and breathed and pushed and breathed and breathed to get you out of my body and into this world; maybe I could run right back into the beginning, and start again. Start better.