The Mirror World of Melody Black

by Gavin Extence

  And now I do laugh. ‘Mum, I’m not coming back.’

  After we’ve said goodbye, I switch off my phone and head back into the bedroom.

  ‘So, what next?’ Beck asks.

  ‘Have we got wine?’

  ‘Er, no. Beer in the fridge, but that’s about it.’

  ‘Fine. So we’ll go to the shops. We’ll need two bottles.’

  ‘Two? You know, I still have to work tomorrow.’

  I smile and throw him his trousers. ‘One bottle’s for the neighbours. I think we should go over and introduce ourselves.’

  27

  TWO GIRLS IN THE PARK

  It’s early March, but it already feels like summer. Hot pavement smell, sunglasses everywhere, not a cloud in the sky. The weather forecast said temperatures could tip twenty-one degrees by early afternoon, but that sounded very implausible when I got dressed at eight this morning. Now, the cardigan I was wearing when I left the flat is looped over my shoulder bag, and I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t have brought the sun cream after all.

  When I check my phone, not far from the statue of Achilles, the clock shows it’s just coming up to eleven thirty. I’ve arrived half an hour early, mainly because the alternative was to spend that half-hour fidgeting at home. So now I have plenty of time to spare, and, inevitably, I find myself walking out onto the broad, shady expanse of Park Lane. I don’t really make the decision; my feet make the decision, and before I know it, they’ve taken me all the way to the Dorchester – or to the stretch of pavement opposite the Dorchester, on the other side of the road. Thankfully, they don’t take me any further than that. It’s not that I don’t want to go inside; I do want to – that’s the problem. I have this notion that it would be nice to go in and find out if they ever got my letter. And if they didn’t, it would be nice to explain to someone in there that the night staff are on a list in my purse entitled ‘People who Saved my Life’. As if that’s a perfectly normal list to have.

  Fortunately, I’m getting better at distinguishing the good ideas from the bad ideas. So I don’t cross the road and walk into the foyer and start gushing emotional nonsense that only I can understand. I stay where I am, safely separated from any social awkwardness by eight lanes of traffic.

  Dr Barbara tops the list, of course, and she’s the only person who knows of the list’s existence. I showed it to her a couple of weeks ago, explaining that I’d felt the sudden need to write it on the Tube one morning, and the Metro was the only paper I had available. Which is why it’s incongruously scribbled on the back of an article about a crime-solving parrot.

  I felt pretty certain, when I handed Dr Barbara that sheet of crumpled paper, that she would straight away tell me how silly – how ridiculously melodramatic – I was being. But she didn’t. She just looked at it for a few seconds, her expression neutral, and then passed it back with a shrug.

  ‘I think it was worth saving,’ she told me.

  I nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, I think it was.’

  I assumed we were talking about my life, not the article about the parrot, but who knows. Either way, the list has stayed in my purse ever since, and I haven’t shown it to anyone else. I can’t really imagine a sensible context in which that would happen.

  We’ve arranged to meet at the bandstand, but when I get there, I’m still ten minutes early, so there’s time enough to feel apprehensive. Not that there’s anything in particular I need to worry about, I tell myself. We’ve exchanged a couple of emails now, and she wouldn’t have agreed to see me if she didn’t want to.

  Still, when the clock creeps past midday, I start to worry afresh, and when it gets to ten past, I have myself half convinced that she has changed her mind and isn’t going to show. I do a couple of circuits of the bandstand just in case – because it’s almost feasible that I could miss her if she happened to turn up on the exact opposite side. It’s not as crowded here as in other parts of the park, but it’s busy enough. Lots of couples and families, dog-walkers, kids on scooters.

  And then I see her. She’s about twenty metres away, just coming into the clearing from one of the paths that heads across to the Serpentine, but impossible to miss. She’s wearing the dress, which is every bit as astonishing as I remember. I raise my hand, and, after a few seconds, she sees me and smiles broadly. Then she stops and does a little twirl, and for the briefest moment, I experience a sharp pang of something that feels like loss. But it’s there and gone in an instant, and after that, there’s only a warm rush of relief.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ I say.

  She shrugs, still smiling. ‘I think I’m a bit overdressed for a Sunday lunchtime. I got some right looks on the Tube.’

  ‘It’s perfect,’ I tell her. ‘You know, I’d pretty much assumed it would end up in a charity bin. Dr Hadley didn’t seem too keen to pass it on. She thought it might upset you.’

  ‘She gave it to me the week before I got out. By then, I was quite a lot better, obviously. Not totally better, but . . .’ She shrugs again, and for a few moments we’re silent, neither of us sure how to proceed. Then we hug. I don’t think that either of us instigates it; it just happens, and after a few seconds, I’m glad of my sunglasses because I can feel my eyes beginning to prickle.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ I say.

  Melody doesn’t reply. Instead she takes her cigarettes from her bag and passes me one. ‘You haven’t quit, have you?’

  I laugh. ‘No, I’m giving myself three more years. I read somewhere that as long as you stop by the time you’re thirty the long-term effects are tiny. So that’s my goal.’

  Melody nods. ‘Yeah, that sounds sensible.’ She takes a deep drag and blows the smoke out through her nose. ‘They had me on patches for weeks. It was a bloody nightmare.’ She holds up her left palm so that I can see her scar, which is more or less a mirror of my own. ‘Haven’t hurt myself for ages, though. Not even a tiny cut.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I tell her. ‘That’s really good.’

  ‘How about you? How are you doing?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Still finding my feet, but generally better.’

  ‘You said you’re back with the boyfriend – the one who dumped you?’

  ‘He didn’t dump me, not exactly. But yes, we’re back together. Three months and counting.’

  ‘How’s that going?’

  I think about telling her the same thing I told Dr Barbara: that it feels much more stable this time round. But that would require further explanation. Because for most people, stable isn’t a word that conjures up a wealth of positive connotations. It’s an in-between sort of word, the word they use in hospitals when progress is uncertain – could be better, could be worse – and the value I’d be placing on the word would be something quite different. So in the end, I opt for a much simpler response.

  ‘We’re happy,’ I tell her.

  Melody smiles again, and for a few moments we just smoke in silence. Then she starts tapping a foot. ‘So, what now? You want to go get a drink or something?’

  The bar at the corner of the Serpentine is packed – of course it is, on a day like this – so after a while, we decide to go for a walk instead. It feels nicer, anyway, to be out and moving in all that wide green space. We walk the full length of the lake, and then, without discussing it, round the shore and start walking back. Walking with Melody – having somewhere to walk to – is a novel experience, but other than that, everything feels comfortingly familiar.

  We talk almost non-stop, mainly about St Charles. At some point, I tell her that I still dream about it every other night: the long blank corridors, the smoking area, the security fences. In turn, she tells me that there are mornings when she wakes up and thinks she’s still there, expecting one of the nurses to come bustling in at any minute.

  ‘But that’s only when I’m half asleep,’ she explains. ‘Most of the time, St Charles feels like a different world – like Jocelyn’s mirror world. It starts to feel like that the second you’re out.’
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br />   I smile at this; because here, in the bright spring sunshine, Jocelyn’s Mirror World sounds like an attraction you’d find at a seaside funfair, and just as innocuous.

  ‘I think I saw one of Jocelyn’s portals this morning,’ I tell Melody, gesturing vaguely in the direction I guess Park Lane to be.

  ‘Cool.’ She sounds impressed. ‘What did it look like?’

  ‘Well, actually I didn’t see it, as such. It was more that I could feel it, hovering there in front of me. I find that happens sometimes. There are these little moments when I can see into the gap that separates this world from Mirror World. Do you understand what I mean?’

  Melody considers this for a while, before saying, ‘Yeah, I think I do. Like, there are lots of times when I sort of imagine doing things that would probably lead back there. So, for instance, if I was to take off my dress right now and get into the lake, that’s all it would take: I’d be back in St Charles by teatime. Is that what you mean?’

  I smile again. ‘Yes, that’s pretty much it.’

  ‘Is it nuts to even have thoughts like that?’

  ‘No. I think it’s only nuts if you act on them.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Melody shrugs. ‘So you think normal people have those thoughts, too? Or is it just us – you know, people who’ve been over to the other side?’

  I can’t answer this, obviously, not without doing some sort of survey. My hunch is that it’s a matter of degree – that everyone gets these weird, intrusive thoughts sometimes, but few have to keep a permanent vigil against them.

  ‘Please don’t jump into the lake,’ I tell her, and a moment later I feel her slip her hand into mine; this, I think, is her way of telling me she won’t.

  And we walk on like that, hand in hand, and Melody continues to turn heads every now and then. But aside from the fact that one of us is wearing a cobalt-blue cocktail dress, I don’t imagine we look very different to anyone else walking along the lakeside on this sunny afternoon. Just two more girls in the park, pretty unremarkable. Which, I decide, is not such a bad thing to be.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ‘You have a choice about what you put into the public domain.’ That’s what Dr Barbara tells Abby quite early on in this novel, and usually I’d agree with her, or at least share her implicit concerns. I’m basically quite a private person. I’m not on Facebook or Twitter, and, as a rule, I find writing as someone else more fun, more comfortable, and often much easier than writing as myself. But I’m also aware that there are certain subjects in fiction that are almost guaranteed to provoke curiosity regarding the relationship between an author’s work and an author’s life. Mental illness, I suspect, is one such subject. Put more simply, I can’t imagine publishing this book without being asked at some point – more likely many points – to talk about my own experience of mental illness.

  So I’ve decided to talk about it here, as briefly as I can without leaving out any of the relevant details.

  Back in January 2009, I went nuts. Not Abby nuts – I wasn’t on a psychiatric ward and I didn’t want to kill myself – but her story certainly has its roots in my own. If you were to reduce our experiences to a list of symptoms (depression, insomnia, hypomania), then the two of us have a lot in common. And, like Abby, I can mark the precise moment when it started; or, to be more accurate, I can tell you the short-term trigger.

  It was New Year’s Eve 2008. I stayed up for the best part of three days. I took half a dozen ecstasy pills, and God knows how much speed. Unsurprisingly, this was followed by a pretty awful comedown, and by 5 January I was feeling extremely depressed. It wasn’t the first time; I’d been depressed off and on since my late teens, and I think the weeks leading up to New Year hadn’t been great either. But what was different this time was that it led, very swiftly, to a long period of hypomania. I went to sleep sad and anxious, and I woke up feeling good almost beyond description. At the same time, my thoughts were moving so fast I could barely keep up with them. It was as if my brain had gone into overdrive and was processing ten times more information, but with no conscious effort on my part.

  For the next week, I didn’t sleep for more than three or four hours a night, because suddenly that was all the sleep I needed. I kept waking up at two or three in the morning with a head bursting with ideas and so much energy I didn’t know what to do with it. Then, at some point, I decided I was going to walk around the coast of Great Britain. Here’s a letter I wrote about it on 13 January:

  Dear Sir or Madam,

  This may be a strange request, but here goes.

  For some time now my girlfriend and I have been planning to walk around the coast. Unfortunately, we are quite broke – a situation that I’d imagine is not uncommon in those who entertain dreams of walking around the coast. Consequently, we’re looking for corporate sponsorship.

  The coast of Great Britain is approximately 5,000 miles long. Based on the assumption that we can walk 25 miles per day every day, I should think the entire walk will take 200 days, or just under 7 months. Where there is no direct coastal path or beach, we will keep as close to the coast as physically possible.

  As to how much this will cost, that’s harder to estimate. Obviously, we’ll be camping a lot of the time, but wherever possible we will stay in B&Bs or hostels. Added to this, there is of course the cost of basic equipment and food supplies for 7 months. I might be underestimating, but I think we can probably do it for around £12–15K – and of course, costs could be significantly lower if we find that people are willing to help out with free meals, beds etc. en route. Any money we secure over and above our basic costs will go to charity.

  If we are successful in securing the necessary funds, we hope to set off on Saturday March 21st (the vernal equinox) in order to maximise the amount of daylight available to us. Upon completing the walk, I plan to write a book (provisionally entitled Walking Round the Coast).

  Just so there are no misapprehensions, I want to make it clear that we are not seasoned walkers (I doubt I’ve ever walked for more than two hours in one go). And neither of us has ever done or attempted anything like this before. But we are very determined. I assure you that should we secure enough funding we will complete the walk.

  I don’t know if you might see this as good PR or free advertising or anything like that. Possibly you think this whole idea is completely insane. However, any help you might be able to provide would be sincerely, sincerely appreciated.

  Yours faithfully,

  Gavin Extence.

  I don’t think this letter requires much in the way of explanation, but there are perhaps a few points worth noting.

  1) The third sentence is an outright lie: my girlfriend and I hadn’t been planning to walk around the coast for some time. I’d sprung the idea on her a few days earlier, but I didn’t want my corporate sponsors to know this.

  2) I couldn’t see any reason why people wouldn’t want to pay me £15,000 to stay in B&Bs for seven months, and even if I couldn’t raise the money before I set out, I didn’t think this would be a problem. I had this overwhelming sense that I could walk into any hotel, B&B or private residence in the country, explain what I was doing, and be certain of a free bed for the night.

  3) I was feeling extremely persuasive at the time. I’d already half persuaded my girlfriend to come with me, although, in hindsight, I’m sure a large part of this was her trying to buy some time to rein me in. (Originally, I told her that I was going to set off in three weeks, rather than two months, and even that was beginning to seem an unnecessary delay.) But beyond this, I think that there must also have been something quite infectious about my mood at the time. I was so effusive, so self-confident all of a sudden. I had myself completely convinced that walking around the coast was the sole purpose of my life at this point. ‘If I don’t walk round the coast,’ I told my girlfriend, ‘I know it’s something I’ll always regret.’

  This was the first of many odd conversations I had with friends and family, although they didn’t seem tha
t odd at the time. I remember, in particular, a talk I had with my mum just after I’d told her what I was planning. She asked me what I was going to do for food; I replied that I was going to eat mainly bananas – because they were cheap, portable, and I’d read an article somewhere that said they were packed full of slow-release energy. I wasn’t joking, and I think if my mum had realized this at the time – I mean, really understood the extent to which I thought ten bananas a day was a sensible diet – she’d have dragged me to the doctor without a moment’s hesitation.

  Instead, most of my family thought I was just being a bit eccentric, and suspected, I’m sure, that this out-of-the-blue coast plan would die a very quick death.

  In actual fact, it died quite a slow death. There was a part of me that knew right from the beginning that my brain was not operating in the way it usually did. I knew I was manic – how could I not? But, like Abby, my big fear at this point was that if I told anyone how I felt, they’d want to make it stop, and I had no intention of letting this happen.

  So I spent a lot of time suppressing the weirder ideas I was getting, and then, very slowly – it took weeks and weeks – my thoughts started to slow down. My mood dipped, dropped, and then plummeted. I became depressed for a couple of months, then got better, then better than better, then much worse again. This went on for the best part of eighteen months, until, in January 2011, I started keeping a mood diary – as I still felt I needed to collect some ‘objective’ proof that something was seriously wrong with me. I rated my mood three times a day – morning, afternoon and evening – giving myself marks out of ten. After a month, my average score was something like 3.1. At this point I went to my GP and was put on Prozac, which I’ve been taking pretty much ever since.

  Abby has a diagnosis of type two bipolar disorder. I don’t have this diagnosis; but I suspect that’s because I’ve never told a doctor what I’ve now set down in these pages. I’ve only ever talked about the depression, because this is what felt awful and debilitating.