I Know My Name: A stunning psychological thriller
Page 30
‘Can you make me look like Bo Derek?’ I hear her ask the girls.
They’re nine and thirteen years old. I doubt they’ll have the slightest idea who Bo Derek is, and they’re much too busy with the task to hear her anyway.
It’s thirty-five degrees today so I go back inside the centre to help in the kitchen. It’s almost lunchtime. We feed a hundred people here every day, sometimes more. It’s amazing how much food draws people together. I had the construction team ensure that the extractor fan in the kitchen was big enough to pump the smells of food out as far as possible, and I think it’s actually worked – you can smell it for miles around. And of course, word gets around fast. We’ve had visits from towns thirty miles away, and when people travel that distance, they stay for longer than one meal. And so we have educational classes straight after every meal on equality, the importance of education, running a business, self-defence, and contraception. Some of the girls travelling from other villages have revealed that they are about to enter an arranged marriage and I’ve been able to get them help. Little by little, we are making a difference.
‘How do I look?’ Mamie shouts at me.
‘Just like Bo Derek!’
She pats her head and asks for a mirror. Blessed and Phiona race off to find her one, then return full of giggles. Mamie’s face lights up when she sees the result. I approach and give it a closer inspection. They’ve only done a couple of rows at the side of Mamie’s head but it’s expertly done, their small fingers weaving the fine strands of her hair into delicate braids.
‘I think I like it,’ she tells them, surprised. ‘Aren’t you going to do the rest?’
Later, when her flounce of Aspen Oak-tinted hair has become flaxen chains across her scalp, she joins me in the dining hall and assists with serving food. She’s been doing it now for two weeks, and we have two days left before returning to London. She’s in her element here; I never expected that, either. She takes an interest in the women, despite how far removed their circumstances are from her own, and seems to thrive in an environment where she is needed. I think it also makes her proud to think that she paid for all of this. Every stone, tile, appliance and ounce of grit came from her bank account.
There are risks, of course, in running the centre. Some people say we’re brainwashing the girls, challenging ancient traditions and conjuring evil spirits. We’ve had to install security guards here, but even that poses a danger. The guards may have experience that makes them employable but I have no real way of knowing whether they’ll give in to a bribe, or whether they share the views of our opponents. And working with girls who have experienced unimaginable abuse and violence does take a lot of resilience on my part, a lot of writing in my journal to help me keep track, keep centred. I am aware that I have certain triggers that may cause Sariah, Joe, Hazel and George to take over, or even appear as hallucinations again. The hallucinations are a sign that I’m doing too much and need to rest. I haven’t seen any of them for a long time, though Lochlan always tells me when I’ve switched and he’s encountered one of them. So far, they all like him. Even so, Dr Goff told me it would be a good idea to find an object that makes me feel safe. A totem that I carry at all times, perhaps a pebble, that reassures me and helps me stay in control.
Right now, I’m feeling tired after a late night of working with one of our newest guests. Patricia is eleven and came here severely injured. I’ve had her taken to hospital in the city, but the sight of her injuries and her distress lingers. I keep feeling the shiver that sometimes precedes a switch, a nagging from one of my alters to take over. I excuse myself from the kitchen and head outside to the garden, where the girls grow all the food that’s used in the meals prepared here. There’s a large Tugu tree that gives shade, and I sit there for a while to calm my nerves.
After a moment or so, I hear movement from the shrubs opposite, a swishing and crunching sound. I look up, expecting to see Blessed, or perhaps my grandmother, anxious to find out where I’ve gone. But it’s a man. He’s obscured by branches and sunlight, but I know it’s George. He is lurking in the bushes, slightly stooped over, watching me.
My eyes lowered, I reach for my phone and hit ‘Skype’. A moment later, Lochlan answers.
‘Hi, darling. Is everything OK?’
I’m shaking from head to toe but concentrate on my breathing. ‘Yes. I’m OK. Just … wanted to hear your voice.’
‘Do you want to say hi to Mummy, Cressida? Look.’
Cressida appears on screen, her dark hair in bunches at the side of her head. ‘Hi, Mummy. I did you a painting at nursery.’
‘Did you?’
She holds it up, a little too close to the screen. I still can’t bring myself to look back at the spot where George appeared.
Lochlan’s hand adjusts the position of the picture.
‘Is that me and you at the park?’ I ask Cressie.
‘Yeah. And that’s my pony.’
‘Your pony?’
‘Yeah. The one you and Daddy are going to get me for my birthday.’
I laugh. ‘Are we, now?’
‘He’s going to be called Rainbow Star. Rainbow Star Shelley.’
A scramble of hands, and Lochlan is back on screen. He looks worried.
‘Seriously, El. Are you OK? Do you need me to help with anything?’
‘George,’ I whisper.
‘El, repeat after me: I am safe.’
‘I am safe.’
‘I find my centre.’
‘I find my centre.’
‘I am strong.’
I inhale deeply and breathe out slowly. Lochlan’s worried face moves closer to the screen.
‘I know my name,’ he urges.
I pause. ‘I know my name,’ I repeat.
‘I am Eloïse.’
I bite my lip. I’m so scared in case the wrong name slips out.
‘I am Eloïse.’
‘El, look at me?’
I open my eyes.
‘I’m here, OK? I’m right here. Look around. Do you see George?’
I can’t look. What if he’s still there? What if he never leaves?
I keep my eyes closed and Lochlan tells me about Max’s sports day this morning and promises to send me the video he took. I focus on Lochlan’s voice, on the details of our life together, our home. I let my fingers find the totem in my pocket, a miniature Rosie train from Thomas the Tank Engine, and remember my mantra.
Light creeps in through the cracks caused by tumbling through the hard spaces of life. But it’s love that lets the light back out of us, moving inward and outward at the same time, dissolving the thresholds between past and present, between each other.
Invisible jaws are letting me slide from their grasp, the boundaries of reality and imagination hardening into their separate states. It is a feeling of coming home, re-entering myself.
At last, I force myself to open my eyes and glance at the spot by the bushes. George is gone.
‘I love you,’ I tell Lochlan. ‘I’ll speak to you later.’
He grins, visibly relieved that I sound more like myself.
‘I love you too.’
Afterword
I have been interested in mental health for a long time. When I was 12 years old, I witnessed my father’s first suicide attempt. A year later – just after my parents’ divorce – we found out that my father had committed suicide. It was 9.32am on Christmas morning, 1991.
Mental illness wasn’t really acknowledged back then. I certainly didn’t receive any counselling after my father’s death, and no one discussed the reasons behind it. ‘Suicide’ was muttered in hushed, shameful tones. Increasingly I turned to writing as a way of working through both his suicide and the violence in our home that had preceded it. My father had been badly beaten on a regular basis as a child. On hindsight, I can see that he had never got over it. He abused me and my mother as he had been abused. The grip of his childhood seemed to grow tighter as he became older, and his compulsion to regain power
by violence seemed overwhelming: a cycle that he couldn’t break. He was only 35 when he died – younger than I am now.
Since then, my experience and research in mental health has taken many forms. As an academic, I lead a British Academy-funded research project at the University of Glasgow which explores the relationship between creative writing and mental health. I have spoken about this relationship at conferences and am developing a book on the subject. Throughout 2008–2010, I was commissioned to write a poem which was installed in a ribbon of steel that runs for half a mile throughout the floorscape of the Roseberry Park Mental Health complex in Middlesbrough. This commission involved holding workshops with the service users and their therapists, as well as extensive research into mental illness, its causes, manifestations, and treatments.
Perhaps the most crucial experience of all – beyond my father’s death – was becoming a mother. The demons of my own childhood rose without warning to the surface.
I distinctly recall one morning, shortly after the birth of my fourth child, that I didn’t recognise myself in the mirror. It was bizarre. I didn’t dare tell anyone about it at the time in case they thought I’d gone mad, or perhaps thought I wasn’t fit to be a mother. I ended up being prescribed antibiotics for an underlying infection, but the experience of disassociation stayed with me, and the first seeds of Eloïse’s story were sown. What if I hadn’t recovered? What if the startling failure to recognise my own face had persisted? What if I didn’t recognise – or remember – my own children?
It is heartening that the stigma surrounding mental illness is starting to break down, but of course there is still work to be done. We don’t know enough about mental illness and motherhood, and I’m concerned about the lack of support systems for new mothers. I’m invested in finding ways for survivors of childhood abuse – physical, sexual and emotional – to cope with parenthood, which is often a time when childhood demons rise to the surface.
Of course, no novel can possibly tackle such large social issues, but perhaps this one can start a useful conversation, or prompt someone in need to reach out for help.
C.J. Cooke
Acknowledgements
To Dr Ian Jones, Dr Helen Liebling, Carolyn Spring, and particularly Dr Tracy Thorne for assisting with queries and research into dissociative identity disorder and puerperal psychosis.
To Stuart Gibbon for assisting with police matters.
To my agent, Alice Lutyens at Curtis Brown Literary Agency, for her keen eye and encouragement.
To Kim Young at HarperCollins (UK) and Wes Miller at Grand Central Publishing (USA) for wonderfully astute and dedicated editorial input.
To Claire Malcolm and all at New Writing North for their support over the last nine years.
To the Society of Authors’ K Blundell Trust Awards for facilitating a research trip to Crete in 2015.
To Nuala Ellwood, Kathryn Maris, Leanne Pearce and C.L. Taylor for friendship and words of encouragement.
To Jared Jess-Cooke, for everything.
About the Author
C.J. Cooke is an acclaimed, award-winning poet, novelist and academic with numerous other publications under the name of Carolyn Jess-Cooke. Born in Belfast, she has a PhD in Literature from Queen’s University, Belfast, and is currently Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow, where she researches creative writing interventions for mental health. I Know My Name is C.J. Cooke’s first psychological drama and was inspired by her creative work in mental health. It is being published in several other languages and a TV adaptation is in development. C.J. Cooke lives by the sea with her family.
Keep in touch with C.J.
http://carolynjesscooke.com/
@carolyn_jess_cooke
@CJ_Cooke_Author
/cjcookeauthor
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