by C. J. Cooke
‘Rosie the train, Daddy. Thomas is my favourite and Rosie is Mummy’s.’
‘And you think if we bring Rosie to Mummy it’ll make her want to come back with us?’
He nods and wipes his nose. I take his hand and walk into his room, where we carefully pick through a box of toys until he discovers a small purple train with a female face. His face lights up.
‘Found it! Found it, Daddy!’
‘Good boy, Max.’
He beams up at me. ‘Let’s go get Mummy!’
2 April 2015
Two nautical miles from Komméno
The day I left I heard something outside.
A wild thing calling.
A darkness, lulling me. As though the past rose up and gathered me in its claw.
It said, How can someone as damaged as you be a good mother?
I’m not sure whether it was the question or the answer that split me into a thousand pieces.
I left without a key, without a phone, without credit or debit cards. I was half conscious of what I was doing, as though I had stirred in the middle of the night tangled in a dream. I was already an abstraction, no longer a person. Not a wife, not a mother. I didn’t want anything tethering me to the children, anything with my name and face there. It would only tarnish them.
In the drawer of the hall table I found my Swiss passport and the envelope of money my grandfather had given me last time I saw him. Six hundred pounds. For the new baby, he said. I took the money and walked out of the front door, closing it quietly behind me. I didn’t want to wake the babies, Max and Cressida. They were both sleeping and so, so beautiful, like angels. I knew without any doubt whatsoever they would be so much better off without me there.
It was quiet outside. The click of the door sealed off everything that had gone before me – my life with Lochlan. Our children. My fears about being their mother, about damaging such precious, beautiful flowers. They were delicate as petals and I felt incapable of protecting them from what I might be capable of. It was what my mother had told me once.
You’ll turn out exactly like me.
I believed her without question, as a child does. All the badness that had happened to both of us was my fault, my fault.
I walked up the street. It was so easy to do.
I felt like the world was stripping away from me. I was coming up to surface. I stopped in the middle of the park, suddenly hot, and pulled my scarf off. Then I took a taxi to the airport and got on a plane to Greece. I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I had been so many times that I could head there without thinking. I wanted to be where it all began. I wanted to be where Lochlan and I had started our marriage. I wanted to rewind time.
How could I have told him about the things that terrified me? I had tried to talk to him during the times that I felt strong. He was distracted, and I felt there was a wilderness in me that he could never understand or relate to. He would hate me for it. He wouldn’t love me.
When I boarded the plane, I sat down next to an older man who asked me where I was going. I told him, but I could no longer tell him why. Lochlan’s name rolled around my mind, shattering to a meaningless cluster of vowels.
By the time we landed I couldn’t recall where I had come from. I hired a boat to sail to the island. I knew I would be safe there, that I would feel whole. I had felt whole there, once. I had felt like the best version of myself.
But there was a storm. Monstrous waves dived into the boat. I lost my coat, my rings and earrings. Somehow, I made it to the farmhouse where I met the others.
Except, I didn’t. There was only me.
Sariah and Hazel half-dragged, half-carried me to the boat while Joe marched George along, rifle at his back. We clambered down the steep cliff to the beach, holding on to patches of dune grass when our footholds crumbled. The sea birds went berserk, wheeling around us and shrieking in case we wrecked their nests.
Below, the sea was already crashing in against the rocks, pawing the boat with white claws.
Keep your sails high, Sariah called from the shoreline, and I did. Hazel, Joe and George lifted their arms and waved as I turned to raise the sails.
When I glanced back, all of them had gone.
Komméno is a shadow beyond the waves that crash against the sides of the boat. The wind lurches the boat to and fro, and I shift quickly from one side to the other, using my weight and the stars above to keep on course. It would have been so much easier if Sariah was with me.
I hear a noise in the distance, the low drone of a speedboat. With great effort I climb up the mast and look out to the north, and I spot it: a light in the distance. I fumble for the binoculars in the stowage compartment and adjust the lens. I see a speedboat bumping over the waves. A white-haired man at the wheel. There are others with him. A man with a child in his arms, a little boy. Another older, taller man. They are pointing and shouting, and I go to shout back. But then a wave crashes into the side of the boat, knocking the binoculars from my hands. The boat flips over to one side, the masts toppling into the ocean.
Time seems to slow down as I hit the water and slip below. A roar of bubbles against my cheeks, then nothing. I open my eyes. Blue light, stillness.
I am sinking.
My son, being born.
Such relief when he slid out of me, when they placed him in my arms, slippery as an eel. The cord, still attached. I had never imagined it as such as thick, blue rope, tying us together. I almost didn’t want them to cut it. I didn’t want us to be separated.
I held him to me, looking down into his little face, smeared with blood and so squished up from all that time in the birth canal. His beautiful arms, tight fists bunched against his chest. A miracle that he was mine.
It is tempting to stay under. I feel no pain or panic here, and it is lovely to be suspended in the coolness. I feel more sure of who I am, sure that the others never really existed. They were me. I was the strong one. I was the one capable of surviving.
My body jerks for air but I don’t make any move to the surface. Above me, the light shifts. Shadows lean down to me. A distortion of vowels.
Eloïse! Mummy!
I drift upward.
A hand reaches down and grabs my hair, then the shoulder of my T-shirt, and I feel a great surge tugging me upwards, plunging me into cold air with a gasp. And even as they haul me awkwardly into the speedboat and many hands are placed upon me, I’m returning to another surface, the cells and atoms in my body repurposing the new element of myself.
I spot my grandfather, ashen-faced and shocked, and Lochlan kneeling over me. ‘I can’t believe it! It’s you!’ he is saying. He has hauled me out of the water with what looks like a ball of red wool but is a long red rope, clipped on to the top of my life vest. He crushes himself against me and I find my arms – my arms – wrapping around his shoulders, every inch of my skin revived by recognition of his touch.
Max rushes at us, arms outstretched from a red life jacket.
‘Mummy! You’re all wet! Look, I brought you Rosie, Mummy. Don’t you like Rosie? I thought you did so I brought her. I told you Mummy would be here, Daddy. I told you! Are you coming home now? Cressida misses you, Mummy. You smell funny. Is it really you, Mummy?’
I reach down to cup his face and, at last, find my voice.
‘Yes, Maxie. It’s me.’
The Light that Moves Inward and Outward
3 April 2015
Potter’s Lane, Twickenham
I’m awake. I’m asleep. I’m not sure which. Somewhere in between. The haze turns into lace. A net curtain puffed out by wind. Slowly the space around me shifts into familiarity: the curtain is my curtain, swaying at the window of my bedroom.
The bed is full of arms and legs, the duvet crumpled over faces and fingers. Beside me the baby is laid on her back, arms raised at right angles by her head. Her small lips are pursed like a pink rose. Her eyelids flutter as she dreams. Such beautiful long eyelashes. On the other side of her I see the back of a head. Loc
hlan. My husband. The mountain of his shoulder, the faint rasp of his snoring. Someone else at my feet. I sit up slowly and look down. A head of blond curls and a blanket clasped tightly. Max.
A rustle of blankets as Lochlan stirs. He turns and looks at me. His black hair crumpled, his face unshaven. Dark circles under his eyes. He’s lost weight, looks years older. He reaches out to touch me and for some reason I flinch. He withdraws his hand.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘OK,’ I say, but my voice sounds thin and he doesn’t seem convinced. He rubs his face and yawns. The screen of his phone is visible on the nightstand. It reads 05.53.
‘Can I get you anything?’ he asks. ‘Are you hungry? Thirsty?’
I climb out of bed and make for the landing. Lochlan sits upright and calls after me in a worried voice, but I tell him to go back to sleep. More and more my memory returns; it’s akin to the sensation of blood returning to the veins after your hand or leg has fallen asleep. A great overwhelming rush of familiarity. Our bedroom. My closet, with all my clothes. My husband. Our children.
I head on to the landing and down the stairs, looking over the photographs framed on the wall. I remember taking these photographs, posing for them. I know it was me who had them framed. And when I reach the hallway, I remember the moment I decided to walk out the front door. Max and Cressida were asleep upstairs. How could I have left them? Anything could have happened. They could have died.
‘Eloïse?’
I can hear Lochlan in the hallway, his feet creating shadows at the slit at the bottom of the door. I’m inside the cupboard under the stairs, behind the coats that smell of old rain. I want to fold away inside myself.
It was different on the plane coming back to London. I held Max so tightly and when he wore himself out from talking and fell asleep on my lap, I brushed the beautiful creamy curls off his forehead and kissed his soft cheeks. It was blissful to hold him again. There was none of the fear that drove me away from him, deep, unremitting love. When the plane landed we got in a taxi and drove back to Potter’s Lane, everything inked out by night.
A light tap at the cupboard door.
‘Eloïse, darling? Are you in there?’
I’m trying hard to control my breathing. I can’t stop myself from taking great gulps of air. My heart is going wild in my chest and the only thing that stops me from feeling like I’m going to die is keeping my eyes shut and my hands in tight fists.
The door opens. I don’t open my eyes but keep focused on my breathing. Steady, steady … I feel him moving on all fours, the coats batting the top of my head. After a few moments he settles beside me in an identical position, his knees drawn up to his chest. He doesn’t say anything. I don’t want him to say anything. I want the terror to leave me. Sometimes it lets go. I need the images in my head to stop. If I close my eyes, they might stop.
After an hour, I am able to crawl out of the cupboard. Lochlan follows me. Gold light rivers along the floor of our hallway. Sunrise. We live in a beautiful house. I can hear small, rapid footsteps upstairs, the sound of Max’s voice calling for me anxiously. Lochlan faces me. He looks at me with tenderness. He hasn’t looked at me like this for a long time. It’s as though his eyes tell me so much more than words ever could.
He moves slowly, putting his arms around me and pulling me towards him. After a second or so, I realise he is crying.
3 May 2015
Women’s Residential Unit, Maudsley Hospital, London
The room comes slowly into focus. There’s a woman with a kind face and glasses sitting opposite, a door with three glass panels far behind her. A coffee table with a vase of fat yellow tulips like hands cupped in prayer.
‘Oh, hello, Eloïse,’ she says. ‘Are you back again?’
‘Have I been somewhere?’
‘You were Joe a moment ago, I think. Joe was telling us all about how he looks after you. How he knows the best way to heal you physically.’ She smiles. ‘How are you feeling right now?’
‘A little woozy,’ I say, licking my lips. They’re terribly dry, and I feel dizzy.
‘Joe was telling me how he helped revive you after your journey to the island. He seems very resourceful.’
‘He is.’
‘And Hazel. I think I met Hazel yesterday. She’s great fun.’
‘Is she?’
‘Yes. A little quirky, too. She seems quite young.’ A long pause. ‘George, though. Do you think he doesn’t like the others talking about him?’
Slowly, I nod.
‘Why do you think that is?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘One of the things I’d like to do is invite each of your personality states to introduce themselves, and hopefully we’ll be able to get them to communicate with each other, too.’
‘I think George is protective of Max.’
‘He is?’
‘Yes. I think he doesn’t want me to talk about it for Max’s sake.’
‘He doesn’t want you to talk about what happened to you as a child?’
‘Yes. I think … if I don’t talk about it, it hasn’t happened. I can pretend it never happened. No one else knew.’
‘OK. So George wants to protect Max from knowing that?’
‘From the reality of it. I feel like it was my fault. Part of me feels very strongly that I was to blame.’
‘You think the abuse was your fault.’
‘I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s how I feel. Maybe if I’d told someone, or been a better, more obedient child …’
‘Eloïse?’
‘Yes?’
‘You went away for a few minutes. I think we had Sariah with us before.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Your demeanour changes when Sariah visits. Your voice changes, too. Sariah told us that it’s not your fault at all. She told us some of the things that happened to you when you were very young. She really wants to heal you, Eloïse. She wants you to know that you are a wonderful mother.’
There’s a hot ball in my throat.
‘I love my children.’
‘And they love you …’
‘I remember the day before I went to Komméno, I looked at Max when he was sleeping and he was so beautiful, so utterly perfect. And it struck me that I was probably his age when the abuse started. I would be lying in my own bed, the way Max does, when—’
I can’t say the words. I can’t describe what happened to me.
‘It’s OK,’ Tara says. She raises her arms and folds them across herself, a hand on the opposite shoulder, and I do the same. It helps me feel safe, and after a few minutes I continue speaking with my eyes closed.
‘I think it overwhelmed me to think that I was a child like Max is, so completely innocent and vulnerable.’
‘You were not to blame. None of it was your fault.’
The ball in my throat grows tighter, hotter. I squeeze my eyes shut.
‘But how can I be a good mother to them? How can I possibly not damage them somehow? I mean, I left them. I walked out of the house, leaving them on their own. What if something had happened?’
‘Eloïse, you experienced what is known as a fugue state, or dissociative fugue, which causes the usually integrated functions of consciousness and sentience to break down. I believe this was a result of the trauma you have been repressing for so long. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘You were no more responsible for this result than you would be if you had fallen down the stairs and been knocked unconscious.’
She speaks slowly and is careful with each word, as though each syllable is a sharp object.
‘OK.’
‘Remember what we talked about yesterday,’ she says. ‘Trauma leaves a residual footprint in the body, specifically in the nervous system. You were so young that you had no way of processing the things that were happening to you. You dissociated from it, as though it was happening to someone other than you. You probably experienced hallucinations, and
shorter episodes of amnesia throughout your life. As though the clock leapt forward.’
‘I remember one time I found over a hundred emails at work that I’d responded to but had absolutely no memory of writing any of them.’
‘Emails for your charity?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s likely that the role of one of your alters was to perform the duties expected of you as chief executive of the charity. I think you had guided meditation yesterday, where you saw yourself performing certain roles. Do you remember which of your alters went to work at the charity?’
A long pause.
‘Sariah.’
‘What you have to remember is, Sariah is part of you. You have that strength and that kindness. We will work to integrate her again with your identity.’
‘She kept telling me that she was looking after me. On the island.’
‘Do you believe that?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s your mind’s way of protecting you. Of enabling you to survive.’
‘But what if it happens again? What if I run away and leave them again? How could I live with myself?’
She smiles, which is strange to me.
‘This is why I’m here,’ she says. ‘We’re going to work this through. It’s going to take time. But we’ll get there. First, we need to get George to talk to the others. Shall we ask him again?’
25 June 2015
Potter’s Lane, Twickenham
Lochlan: ‘What story do you want tonight, Max?’
He looks at his bookcase, the one I’ve drilled to the wall, which allows all the books to face outward.
‘I want The Gruffalo, please.’
‘All right. In you get.’
He wriggles under his duvet. I’ve got Cressida on my knee and she’s desperately trying to reach for something on the ground. I spot a teddy halfway under the bed and pick it up to give to her. She immediately chews on its ear.
‘Read it, Daddy! Read it!’ Max says, and so I read the story of the Gruffalo for the hundredth time. I’ve noticed that Max tends to match his stories to particular readers. When Gerda puts him to bed he makes her read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Magnus occasionally puts him to bed, and his book seems to be We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. They’ve rented a house a few blocks away to be close to us, though not too close. Eloïse’s book of choice is Guess How Much I Love You. I think it’s to do with our accents. Max loves it when I emphasise my Weegie accent for the Gruffalo beast, rolling my ‘r’s. He laughs and tries to copy me. The Grrrruffalo!