by Matthew Crow
‘I suppose when you look at it that way,’ I tried, so keen to stand up.
‘You work at the chemist, don’t you?’ he asked, scanning the horizon behind me.
‘I doubt I do any more.’
‘How are you for money?’ he asked and I felt my legs begin to twitch with cold and nerves.
‘Fine, in so much as I have none.’
Dan laughed and slid from the seat, crouching down in front of me to meet my eyes direct.
‘Take my number,’ he said, pulling a pen from the back pocket of his jeans. I handed him my phone but he waved it aside and took my wrist in his hand, pushing up my sleeve to the elbow before scratching his digits into the soft underside of my arm. ‘There now,’ he said, ‘if you ever need anything you call me. Any time of the day. Any time of the night.’
I smiled and nodded, pulling my sleeve back down and wrapping the cuff tight in my fist, sealing his details away from sight.
‘Look after yourself, Claudette,’ he said as he went on his way. ‘And if you can’t then I can. Don’t be a stranger.’
When I got home, Dad was trying – and failing – to hide his anxiety.
‘You were a while,’ he said, as he ran a tea towel around the inside of a cup.
For some reason walking back through the door a second time felt different. Not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. But right. Seeing Dad there, in the living room, looking slightly worried, slightly relieved, like he always did and like he always no doubt would, made me feel anchored in a way my first return simply hadn’t. Dad was right where he was supposed to be. And in that moment so was I.
‘What was that for?’ Dad asked with a smile, as I kissed his cheek on my way into the kitchen.
‘Nothing,’ I said, opening the biscuits as I went. ‘I’m just pleased to be home, that’s all.’
3
Troubled Waters
After I’d been in hospital for a few days and the tablets had kicked in, Dr Weston asked me for one happy memory. Nothing grand. Nothing life-changing. Just something that I couldn’t help but remember fondly.
I struggled at first. I ummed and aahed for a while until I settled on the only thing I could bring to mind: the sound of Dad cleaning the flat.
Where we lived everybody listened to the radio. Not Dad. He listened to records. Every Sunday he would play the album Bridge Over Troubled Water on repeat until it was time to serve dinner. I never complained. I liked it. It was different and it was special and it was ours.
His routine was as unchanging as the tracklist. Before long I started associating certain sets of lyrics with certain activities. ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ was the sound of the vacuum cord being rolled up and the Hoover being returned to its mantle in the back cupboard. ‘Cecilia’ was the rubbing of red eyes, as dust was swept from the skirting boards. Dad would yell about ‘words he’d never heard in the Bible’ as he slashed and salted the Sunday roast, before slamming it in the oven.
This was my happy memory; my safe place. These were the sounds and the routines that I’d touch like landmarks in the dark to remind myself of where I was.
Sometimes, when I was well enough, I’d help with the chores, and find myself singing along with Dad at the top of my voice. The music and lyrics were so perfect, so beautiful, that they felt like a gift that had been prepared especially for us. And then, other times, when depression came in its molasses wave, I’d lie in bed and feel the words cut and jeer, as if they’d been written only to highlight my shortcomings to the world at large, like graffiti on a school locker.
… Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where,
Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where…
Even though it wasn’t Sunday I woke to the sound of the Hoover grinding to a halt just as the violins were kicking in and the last verse was warbling to a climax. There was a thud and a thump and a muttered swear word as Dad’s head hit the low beam of the cupboard. Then blissful silence until a faint knock at my door.
‘Good morning, sunshine,’ Dad said as he opened up a narrow crack in the door.
I groaned. I was awake but not quite yet ready to admit as much.
‘Can I make you some breakfast?’ he asked. ‘Full English? Continental?’
‘Not just yet,’ I said, bleary. ‘I’ll be up in a second’
‘And then we’ll go for a walk?’ he tried, leaning further into my room.
I rolled onto my back and breathed in deeply. I hadn’t the heart to tell Dad that all I really wanted was to spend the day in my own bed, reading passages from books, half-heartedly masturbating and picking at junk food. After six weeks, the luxury of a closable door and no appointments to attend was one I was keen to revel in.
‘Sounds great,’ I found myself saying, despite having had every intention to come up with some unarguable excuse.
‘Then that’s that. Breakfast will be served in the living room, on account of the Frasier repeat that’s about to start. Goodbye.’ He closed the door and shuffled into the kitchen.
I turned on the TV in my room and adjusted the aerial. The static burred angrily as the image formed on screen, and suddenly I found myself staring at the school playing field while a woman’s voice gave it a narrative.
‘Sixteen-year-old Sarah Banks was last seen over six days ago when she failed to return home to the Riverdean Care Home where she has been living for the past three years. Since then search parties have combed the local area but police are said to be no further forward in their investigations…’
The voiceover continued as the camera panned between shots. They showed the beach and the arcade. They showed the road leading to Riverdean, and then zoomed out on a map. There was a red circle outside of school where Sarah should have caught the bus, and an outline around the town showing the boundaries of the search party. Then her school picture appeared. She looked beautiful in a hurried sort of way, like she always did. Her foundation not quite rubbed in, her eyeliner not quite un-smudged. More than anything I was surprised that she’d been in school long enough to queue for the photographer. Sarah’s flexi-time approach to her education was a running joke. She popped in when she felt like it, and other than that she did whatever it was she did all day. For someone so notorious, she could slip through the cracks like nobody else. Only this time her absence was national news.
I heard her voice in my mind, deep and rich. Heard her speaking quietly, the way she did sometimes as she and I sat together on the beach at night. Never intentionally, of course. Because Mr Fitzpatrick wasn’t the only one I’d see on my midnight walks. Sometimes Sarah would be there, too. Sometimes she’d ignore me. Sometimes we’d sit together. Often we would talk.
‘You’re all right, you,’ she said to me on one of the last nights we’d spoken. ‘You’re not like other people.’
‘I wish I was,’ I said, taking a sip form the squat bottle of vodka she’d plucked from her backpack.
‘Why? Everyone else is a mess. You’re just a different type of mess. At least yours has a name. Everyone knows what depression is. They’ve got tablets for it and everything.’
‘It has many names,’ I said, squinting past the sting of the vodka. ‘None of them complimentary.’
‘You see things and you don’t look away.’ She took a bigger swig of vodka than I could ever manage. ‘Most people won’t do that. They look away. Pretend they can’t see what’s happening. Not you though. You stare right at it. It’s like you see more than anyone else and it drives you crazy.’
‘Like, I see you?’
‘Like, you see everything. Maybe that’s it.’ She stood up. ‘Maybe you’re the sane one and it’s the rest of the world that’s mad.’
‘Even if that’s true it leaves me in the same position, doesn’t it?’ I’d said.
Sarah chucked her bottle into the sea and thought about what I’d said.
‘Oh yeah,’ she said, and laughed. But kindly, not with cruelty. ‘I suppose it does. Either
way you’re screwed, eh?’
Dad and I walked down to the beach and across the sand. School still hadn’t broken up. Other than clusters of policemen the beach was largely empty, save for the odd midday dog-walker and lunch-break jogger.
We walked as far as we could before coming to the second pier, by which point I felt that I had more than fulfilled not only my duties as a daughter but also as a functioning human being.
Dad had other ideas.
‘Let’s walk along to the lighthouse,’ he said. Then, sensing my disdain, added, ‘Come on, it’s not much further. Plus if we make it back in one piece I’ll buy us doughnuts on the way home.’
‘I’m tired,’ I said, half-heartedly. I was tired all the time so it was hardly a revelation, but still I thought it might buy me some leeway.
‘I know. But it’s just one foot in front of the other. We’ll be home before you know it.’
‘If we skipped the lighthouse we’d be home twenty minutes sooner,’ I said.
‘There’s that can-do attitude I love,’ Dad said, placing his arm around my shoulder and leading me to the edge of the stone walkway.
We were the only ones at the end of the far pier. We walked around the huge base of the lighthouse, staring out to sea. To our right the first pier was empty, save for a family scattering ashes into the water below. We sat on a bench facing back towards land. In the small bay at the mouth of the estuary a team of policemen were mounting inflatable speedboats. It was where we used to play as children. The beach was for tourists. The estuary was for us locals – murky, and hidden from the main stretch, it was the camouflage we needed for all manner of anti-social behaviour.
Some of the policemen were dressed in uniform. Others in diving gear. Great oxygen tanks were strapped to their backs as they perched awkwardly on the edge of the boats, holding on until it was time to jump.
They pushed out and began slowly moving away from the shore. The boats chugged gently forward. Behind them water sliced like pages of an opening book. They reached the middle of the estuary before the men in wetsuits leant back and disappeared beneath the surface.
‘Have the police been to the house yet?’ I asked as the engines were killed and the water around them returned to the flat glass sheet it had been before they disturbed it.
‘Only on the first day,’ he said, squinting to get a better look. ‘The usual – had I seen anything, noticed anything different in our garden or on my way to work. Nothing worth worrying about. Did you know her well?’ he asked.
I shrugged. I knew Sarah better than most, in some ways. In other ways I didn’t know her at all. She was a mystery long before she disappeared.
‘She was in my class. When she actually turned up,’ I said. ‘But we ran in different circles.’
‘Poor girl,’ Dad said quietly.
‘She had secrets,’ I said. ‘Not that I know what they were. Not really. I suppose she was just never in one place long enough to become a whole.’
‘She was certainly here long enough to become known. Everybody seemed to know her name,’ he said and I shrugged.
‘That’s not the same as knowing a person though, is it?’ I said almost angrily and Dad shook his head in agreement as I went on. ‘People had an idea about Sarah they built around some of the things she did. But they didn’t ever try to get to know her as a person.’ I thought of the hard, kind friend I had made over the weeks before she had disappeared.
‘It’s sad.’ It was clear he was ready for a different subject. ‘Anyway, enough of all that,’ he said, quieter this time. ‘I want to know how you are.’
I breathed in and thought for a moment.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, making to stand up as Dad gently put his hand on my shoulder, guiding me back to my seat.
‘Yes, you do,’ he said, pulling me tighter to him. ‘You know exactly how it feels. And you’re a smart girl. Tell me.’
‘How can I explain something I don’t understand though?’ I asked.
‘You don’t need to be able to understand it. But talk. Just talk, that’s all I ask. Because the only thing that breaks my heart more than hearing how unwell you are is the thought that you’re keeping it locked up inside of you. Keeping it to yourself when I can carry some of it. Not as much as I’d like, but some.’
‘I’m sick of talking,’ I said, ‘it doesn’t help.’
‘It does. You just need the benefit of hindsight to realise that. It’s not talking that causes the most harm. And I don’t mean brushing it off or turning it into a punchline. That’s all well and good just to cope, but it won’t get you better. It’s the hiding that causes the blockage that leads to the rupture.’
‘I know,’ I said, ‘it’s just… I never know exactly what it is you want me to say?’ I said, wiping a tear from my eye and clearing my throat. ‘Depression came along and was awful but I learned how to cope with that, sort of. But the mania – that really frightened me, Dad.’ My throat tightened as my hands began to shake. ‘I was so scared. I felt like I was trapped inside myself. I don’t understand how something that exists inside of me can become bigger than I am? It doesn’t make sense. And it scares me. It scares me now, knowing it. It scares me not understanding. And I just can’t get better because…’ I said before my voice cut out and I took a moment to catch my breath.
‘Because why?’ Dad asked, gripping my hand tightly, urging me to go on.
‘Because it’s still there. Waiting. It’s going to come back.’
‘But you’re stronger than you think you are, Claudette. You’ve beaten it once. You can do it again.’
‘Yeah but I don’t want to have to be,’ I said through tears, as Dad tightened his arm around my waist. ‘Can you imagine how exhausting it is putting yourself back together knowing full well that you’ll break again? Can you? I mean, really? Because it’s hard, Dad, it’s really, really hard. And sometimes I don’t think I’m strong enough. And sometimes I do. And other times, the hardest times, I’m just so fucking miserable that I wonder why I’m even bothering.’
This time it was Dad’s turn to wipe a tear.
‘You’re bothering because you’re worth it,’ Dad said sternly. ‘You are the strongest, bravest person I know. And the world is lucky to have you in it, no matter how unkind it can sometimes seem. Don’t ever forget that. Life is chaos for us all, Claudette,’ he said, unwrapping himself from me as we stood up to leave. ‘The more you try to make sense of it the deeper you’ll go until it’s drowning you. The trick is to let yourself move with the current. It’ll take you where you need to be eventually.’
‘But what if I don’t always like the direction it’s headed in?’ I asked.
‘Then you’re human.’
‘I object.’
‘Overruled,’ he said quietly, kissing my head.
I put a song on repeat so that within three plays it would become white noise and sat cross-legged on my bed, staring at my open notebook. I could hear Dr Weston’s voice in my mind as he handed it to me.
‘The idea is that we begin not only to understand the limits of our own abilities, but also consider the relation of cause and effect,’ he’d told me, as he tapped his pen on his knee. ‘The effort we put in is often in direct correlation with the outcomes we observe.’
When I’d asked him where the Chaos Theory fit into all of this – that a butterfly could flap its wings in one country and cause a hurricane in another – Dr Weston said that it didn’t. And that this was an example of allowing our mind to become troubled by issues unrelated to the task at hand.
‘Zoom in, Claudette. Focus on the here and now. You’ll be amazed at how much you can achieve if you focus on each small task one at a time.’
‘Look after the pennies and the pounds will see to themselves?’ I offered and Dr Weston had nodded.
‘Quite. What I’ve noticed about you is that you zoom out and out. Forever looking for context and meaning in some grander sense. Each task becomes swamped by such a gargantuan f
rame that it becomes wholly unmanageable. Look closer, Claudette. You’re an exceptionally capable young woman, when you let yourself be.’
I returned to the notebook. On the first page in large letters was a headline:
EVERY DAY I WILL… it said hopefully.
Out of desperation, and having long since learned how to answer the way people like to hear, I had scribbled:
Wake up at the same time.
The small-scale demand had been repeated several times, too, as if it knew I had not been trying.
EVERY DAY I WILL…
Make my bed, I had written beneath it.
Routine. Commitment. Just what they want to hear.
EVERY DAY I WILL…
Leave the house.
EVERY DAY I WILL…
Read one chapter of a book for pleasure, as well as for education.
Beneath this, when my mind had begun to wander, my answers became less helpful and more outright crass.
EVERY DAY I WILL…
Do some kinky hand or mouth stuff with a stranger.
EVERY DAY I WILL…
Mention the negative effects of my chosen birth control measures to my dad.
EVERY DAY I WILL…
Deface some public property with politically charged graffiti.
EVERY DAY I WILL…
Write an anonymous confession letter to the police.
I smiled at my own dumb sense of humour as I tore out the page and scrunched it into a small ball. Humour, no matter how morbid, was a variable that the road to recovery simply could not take. Dr Weston once told me that counselling was no place for jokes.
Section Two of the Goals Book was where the heat was really on.
The same demanding font yelled out in caps lock:
EACH WEEK I SHALL…
Read an entire book, I had written first, cheating slightly by simply cobbling together the outcome of my daily aim’s efforts added together. (Cause and effect, I wrote in the margins, along with a smug smiley face.)