Lottie Biggs is Not Mad

by Hayley Long

And then she gave me a really big smile – without any worry in it – and I was so relieved that, for some weird reason, I started to cry all over again. And finally, when my mum had finished asking the million-zillion questions that she wanted to ask, I said thank you to Dr Edwards and I made a promise to myself, right then and there, that I’d never use that stupid word schizo ever again.

  When we got back home my mum surprised me by giving me my computer back. She asked me to help her bring it down from the loft and told me that she thought it might just cheer me up a little if I used it to keep a diary of how I’m feeling.

  I told her that I don’t do diaries. The only people I’ve ever heard of who kept them are Adrian Mole, who was a total geek-freak, and Anne Frank, who hid from the Nazis during World War II. And, quite frankly, Anne’s problems totally kick mine into touch because her problems were hideously real, and mine are all in my head. That thought made me feel really guilty and ashamed all over again and, for the billionth time that day I started to cry. I’m surprised that Cardiff hasn’t been issued with a flood warning.

  My mum said, ‘You don’t have to write a diary, Lottie. For goodness sake, it was just a suggestion. Do whatever you want to do, so long as it cheers you up.’ Then she gave me a kiss and went downstairs.

  And the first thing I did, once my computer was safely reinstalled in my bedroom, was go on the Internet and see what I could find out about mental disturbances. There was a lot of information on there. Pages and pages. I started clicking on different sites and reading some of the stuff I found but most of it was quite boring and heavy and not the kind of stuff I wanted to read. I did learn one interesting thing though. In 1967 an American rock singer called Jimi Hendrix released the album Are You Experienced? and the second track on that album was called ‘Manic Depression’. I remembered that this was one of the things Dr Edwards had mentioned, so I downloaded it on to my MP3 player and I’ve been pretty much solidly listening to it ever since. To be honest, it’s not easy to hear what Jimi is saying because he does tend to howl quite a lot and there are also some seriously loud guitar noises to contend with – and I suppose I don’t really know if Jimi Hendrix’s ‘experience’ is anything like my experience anyway because I might not even have manic depression. But I do know that there is nothing shameful or embarrassing about that record. It is, without doubt, quite simply the COOLEST record I have EVER heard. Jimi’s voice is, quite frankly, absolutely SEXADELIC and he uses it to tell the world about the mess he feels he’s in.

  And I don’t think that even Stevie Smith or William Shakespeare could capture the essence of a mental disturbance of a reasonably significant nature any better themselves.

  resurfaCiNG

  Being a criminal outcast with a mental disturbance can be quite lonely. In the long space between my arrest and 3.45 this afternoon, I can honestly say that I saw pretty much nobody except my mum, my dad and a handful of random medical people. But since 3.45 that situation has changed. I have actually had a fairly hectic afternoon and now I am feeling quite socially exhausted. First of all, Goose came to visit me. It’s not the first time that she’s called for me this week. Today is Thursday and she has rung our bell at roughly twenty to four in the afternoon every day as she passes by on her way home from school. On Monday I made my mum tell her that I was asleep. On Tuesday we were late getting back from the hospital, and Goose had pushed a note through our letter box which read:

  Yesterday when she called, I was lying on my bed listening to Jimi Hendrix. My mum hammered on my bedroom door for ages and I had to turn the volume right up to maximum so that I couldn’t hear her. Neither my mum nor Goose went away though. Outside my window the bell kept ringing as if Goose had got her finger surgically stuck to it, and outside my door my mum kept hammering with increasing violence until I thought she was going to knock the entire wall down. In the end she went downstairs and I lowered the volume of my MP3 player just in time to hear the front door open and my mum invite Goose in for a cup of tea. I crept to the top of the stairs then and curled myself up on the top step so that I could listen. They were talking in the kitchen for ages, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. It was probably about me, of course. Although, to be honest, there are a billion and one more interesting topics in the world to talk about. Even Gina is more interesting than I am.

  When Goose eventually left, I dived back into my room before my mum came upstairs and knocked on my door again. This time I let her come in. She sat on my bed, pulled my earphones out of my ears and said, ‘This is no good, Lottie. You can’t keep yourself hidden away forever. It’s not helping you, and it’s not fair on Goose either. She’s your friend and she’s really worried about you. You’ve got to resurface at some point.’

  I said, ‘Since when have I been a blinking submarine?’ Before my mum could answer, I added, ‘Have you ever heard of Jimi Hendrix? His music totally rocks.’ And then I put my earphones back in and pressed play. A minute or two later, my mum got up and left.

  But at 3.45 this afternoon I turned off my MP3 player and faced the world again. I resurfaced. I didn’t actually have any choice; Goose made me. I’d been lying on my bed, listening to Jimi, just like I’d been doing ever since Dr Edwards told me about my mental disturbance, when the bell rang again. I knew it would be Goose. I turned the volume up until the insides of my ears began to hurt, and I waited. A minute or two later my mum’s head appeared around my bedroom door. I watched her pointlessly mouth some Hendrix-obliterated words and then I shut my eyes. When I opened them again, she was gone. I breathed a big sigh of relief and was just about to roll over and face my bedroom wall when, out of the very corner of my eye, I saw a sudden movement at my window. I sat up on my bed and stared. A second later, a stone bounced with a sharp crack against the glass. Then came another. And another. I ran over to the window and opened it. Outside, on our front lawn, Goose was scrabbling around on her hands and knees, picking stones out from beneath the rose bushes. I could see the top of her head very clearly and I was quite surprised to notice that she had some dark roots beginning to show through her Melody Forest Fire. Goose is usually very good at keeping her roots under control. I leaned out of the window and said, ‘Stop it, Goose, you’ll get an ASBO for doing that.’ And then I said, ‘Your roots are showing.’

  Goose looked upward. ‘Not as badly as yours are.’ She raised her arm to show me something that she was holding and, weirdly, it was my alarm clock – the one which has been missing from my room for quite some time. ‘I found this in the rose bush,’ she said. ‘Let me in, will you?’

  I rested my elbows on the window ledge and sank my chin into my palms. ‘I’ve been in trouble with the police,’ I said.

  Goose gave a shrug. ‘I know that, Lottie. I was there when they came and arrested you.’

  ‘And I’ve got a mental disturbance,’ I said.

  Goose shrugged again. ‘I know that too. Your mum told me. Can I come in now?’

  I stood there for a second, just looking out of the window and not really thinking about anything, and then I turned away and walked over to the door. At the bottom of the stairs I nearly collided with my mum, who was coming out of the kitchen and into the hall. When she saw me she stopped, looked a bit surprised and then turned round and went right back into the kitchen. I opened the front door and let Goose in.

  Once we were upstairs Goose said, ‘I want you to know that I’ve resigned from Sole Mates. I’ve been feeling really bad, Lottie. Honestly I have.’

  I looked at her surprised. I was actually slightly put out, if I’m honest. I know there aren’t exclusive rights to these things, but if there were, it felt as if losing a Saturday job and feeling bad were pretty much my own personal specialities. I didn’t need Goose to muscle in on the act. I pulled my best miserable face and asked, ‘Why?’

  16

  Goose hugged her knees tightly, looked a bit sad and said, ‘It’s my fault, isn’t it? I started it all when I said it would be OK to rescue those stupid ES
MERELDA shoes. I wasn’t rescuing anything though, was I? I was stealing. Well, I took them back and told Dionne I was resigning. She said she didn’t want me to leave, but I wanted to. To be honest, Lotts, I didn’t want to be stuck there with Emily and Gina and without you anyway. Who would? You’d have to be completely stark raving mad to want to work with those two.’

  As soon as Goose had said this, she went bright red, clapped her hand over her mouth and gave me a muffled apology.

  In spite of myself, I smiled. She was right. You would have to be mad to want to work in a shoe shop with Emily the Shameless Man-Snatcher and Gina who has never known true love. She was wrong about the other thing though. I pulled her hand away from her mouth, locked my fingers with hers and said, ‘S’not your fault, Goose. I had half of Cardiff stashed in my wardrobe. I suppose it wasn’t absolutely my fault either. I’ve been kind of ill. I’m going to be OK though. They’re going to teach me how to stop being mental.’

  Goose squeezed my fingers. ‘What does it feel like?’

  It was a good question. I had to think for quite a while before I could answer her. Finally I said, ‘I feel like I’ve fallen down a manhole, if you know what I mean.’

  Goose said, ‘Not really.’

  So then I got off my bed, crossed over to my desk and picked up a piece of paper and a pen. On it I drew another one of those Scream pictures, except that this time, I put my own head on it.

  When I’d finished, climbed back on to my bed and showed it to Goose. She puffed out her cheek and looked at it for quite a long time, then said, ‘I think I get it now.’

  We sat in silence for a little while, side by side on my bed, with our backs to my bedroom wall. It didn’t matter that we weren’t saying much; it was quite nice just to have somebody near me who wasn’t mad at me and who didn’t think that I was mad — at least, not in a bad way. Eventually Goose said, ‘Do you think I’ve got a mental disturbance?’

  I laughed then. I actually laughed right out loud, and it was a proper laugh, not a weird laugh. I said, ‘It’s not like a cold, Goose. You can’t catch it from me.’

  Goose went all red again. ‘No, I do know that, thank you, Lottie. It’s just that, well, I have existential days, don’t I? Sometimes I can be well miserable. Maybe I’ve got a problem with my head. How do you know that I haven’t?’

  This was another good question. I shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘Everybody has crap days, Goose. Life isn’t all funny ha ha, is it? It’s just that my crap days have been so crap just recently that it feels like my brain has bust. I think that’s the difference.’

  ‘Yes, but how do I know?’ said Goose. ‘How depressed do you have to be?’

  This time I puffed out my cheeks and had a long think. Eventually I said, ‘Well, have you ever found yourself wishing that you were someone else?’

  Goose’s eyes went really wide and her mouth opened up in a big circle of shock.

  ‘Oh my God, Lottie, all the time!!!

  I’m always wishing I was somebody else. I’d much rather be Cameron Diaz than me. Does that mean I’m ill? Oh . . . My . . . God.’ Goose laid her hands fiat against her cheeks and shook her head with one hundred per cent genuine alarm before adding, ‘Sometimes I wouldn’t mind being a female Marilyn Manson either. I know he’s not conventionally attractive, but he has got beautiful eyelashes.’

  I laughed again. I was turning into a laugh a minute, I really was. ‘No, Goose. You don’t get it. Most people want to be someone famous at some point but, well, do you ever have that feeling that you are so completely rubbish that there are times you’d rather be anyone else.’ I stopped laughing and started feeling sad again. ‘I mean, even Gina, for example.’

  Goose took her hands away from her cheeks and stared at me. When she spoke her voice was nearly a whisper. ‘Gina? God, no!’

  I gave her a sad smile. ‘Well, I suppose that’s the difference between being a bit mental and just being a bit pissed off.’

  Goose nodded and looked at the floor. She was clearly a bit shocked. I picked up my MP3 player, pushed the earphones into her ears and said, ‘Listen to this. It’s totally banging.’ And then I played ‘Manic Depression’ and introduced her to the amazing world of Jimi Hendrix. I needed to lighten the mood.

  what i LearNeD whiLe i was iNsiDe the warDrOBe

  Goose stayed for nearly two hours before heading off home to get her tea. She’d barely been gone twenty minutes when the doorbell rang again. At first I thought that it was just Goosey coming back again to ask if she could burn a CD from my Jimi Hendrix download, but then I heard a voice downstairs and it wasn’t Goose’s voice. It was Dionne’s.

  Dionne.

  My ex-manageress.

  Whose shop I had been BLATANTLY thieving from.

  My face went straight from this

  to this.

  I entered a state of total and utter shock. Not even Cerys, my dead bunny, could have been any more shocked when she looked up that day and saw a greedy great kestrel hanging over her head. And then my mum called up the stairs, ‘Lottie! Can you come down, please? You’ve got another visitor.’

  I really didn’t know what to do so, for a moment, I just stood on my back legs in the middle of my room with my ears all alert and a look of panic all over my furry little face. And then, just as my mum reached the top of the stairs, I legged it across my room and shut myself in my wardrobe.

  It was quite nice inside there. It was all dark and snug and smelt ever so slightly of fust. Normally I would not expect to enjoy the smell of fust, but it’s quite nice so long as it’s strictly your own fust. I suppose I felt pretty much how a rabbit must feel when it’s all safe and sound inside its burrow. If I could have done, I probably would have stayed there inside my wardrobe forever.

  But then my mum knocked on my bedroom door and said, ‘Lottie!’

  Inside my wardrobe I curled up into a tight ball and stopped breathing. I heard my bedroom door open and the sound of my mum’s footsteps as she came into my room. There was a bit of a pause and then she said, ‘Lottie?’

  I still didn’t move and I still didn’t breathe.

  From the other side of my wardrobe door, I heard a bit of shuffling as my mum moved around my room and then she screamed, ‘THE WINDOW! OH MY GOD! LOTTIE!’ and there was the sound of her blatantly legging it across my bedroom.

  And then I remembered that my window was still wide open from when I’d been talking down to Goose in the front garden, and I don’t mind telling you that it made me feel truly totally terrible because I realized that, for one horrible second, my mum actually must have thought I’d thrown myself out of it.

  I stopped holding my breath and coughed. The noises outside stopped. Then, in the most normal voice that I could manage, I said, ‘It’s OK, mum. I’m in the wardrobe.’

  There was another pause and then my mum said, ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not coming out until you make Dionne go away,’ I said.

  My mum opened my wardrobe door. With daylight back and my mum’s face frowning down at me, I no longer felt like a bunny safe in a burrow. I just felt stupid.

  ‘Lottie, Dionne wants to talk to you, and I think you should listen to what she has to say. And NO, I am not going to send her away,’ said my mum.

  ‘Well, I’m staying here then,’ I said, and pulled the door closed again.

  Outside my mum made a hissy cross sound. It was the first hissy cross sound I’d heard her make in ages. I was quite hurt by it, to be honest. But maybe a bit relieved too.

  ‘Fine!’ she said. ‘I’ll send Dionne up here then and she can talk to you while you’re in the wardrobe.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’

  ‘Wouldn’t I? Watch me.’

  And then I heard my mum walk out to the landing and call down in a loud voice, ‘Would you like to come up, Dionne? My fifteen-year-old daughter is inside her wardrobe.’

  And to my total and utter SHAME and HORROR, Dionne came up the stairs and into my BEDROOM.
I was STUPENDOUSLY furious with my mum, but I was also still inside my wardrobe so there wasn’t really very much I could do about it.

  I opened the door a micro-fraction and peeked through the gap. Dionne was standing in the middle of my room. Her hair was Melody Platinum Sun-Kissed. It always is. Unlike me and Goose, Dionne doesn’t have the sort of dynamic personality which can carry off frequent changes of hair colour. She’s a nice person though. I watched her as she stood there staring in the direction of me and the wardrobe. She’d brought her hands up to her mouth and pressed them fiat together and, for a split second, I thought she was praying. But then I saw that she was nervously chewing the tops of her fingernails. My guess is that she’d never spoken to a mad person in a wardrobe before. After a minute or two, she got down and knelt on the floor. Inside my wardrobe I muttered, ‘Make yourself at home, why don’t you?’ and then I braced myself for a full-on lecture session about the badness of being a thief.

  Dionne cleared her throat. ‘Lottie, I wanted to come and see you. I’ve been quite worried about you, to be honest. Gina told me what happened and, um, it’s obviously not good, but it seems very out of character. And then yesterday Goose told me that you’ve not been too well. And, er, I want you to know that I think that probably explains quite a lot.’ Through the gap in my door I saw Dionne pause just long enough to bite the thumbnail on her left hand. ‘I want you to know that I’m not angry with you.’

  I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything.

  Dionne cleared her throat again. ‘Lottie, I do understand that things aren’t always as clear-cut as they seem. Um, the thing is, I knew this girl once — you remind me of her quite a lot, actually – and she had lots of friends and was doing so well at school and everything and then, in her teens, she just went completely off the rails for apparently no reason.’