by Lesley Allen
‘Biddy? Is that you? Please let me in. It’s Doctor Graham. I just want to check that you’re all right. Remember, I promised I would call?’ Biddy looked around the empty kitchen. She stopped biting her hand and sucked the blood from the cuts on her right knuckles. Why was Dr Graham calling to see her? He had always come to see her father, but why did he want to see her? Why now? She didn’t remember him making that promise. And she certainly hadn’t asked him. If she needed to see him about her pills, she always made an appointment at the health centre. But she didn’t need any pills. She had enough to do her for a while.
‘Biddy, I can see you. I can see you standing against the wall. Won’t you just open the door, please? Really, I just want to make sure that you’re OK.’
Biddy wasn’t sure what to do. She was relieved that the caller was Dr Graham and not a stranger. And he was a kind man. He was always nice to her and had never made her feel like a weirdo, not even once. And he had been so very, very good to her father. But she really didn’t want to see or speak to anyone.
‘Biddy, please. I’m getting absolutely soaked out here. I promise I won’t stay long. Well, maybe just long enough for a cup of tea and a Kimberley biscuit. I’ve even brought a packet with me, just in case you haven’t managed to get out to the shops this week. See?’
Biddy saw the outline of a plastic Tesco bag being held up against the glass on the back door. The thought of a Kimberley biscuit made her hesitate. She had given her father the last one in the only packet they’d had in the house last Sunday with his afternoon tea, and had intended to get some more when she went to Tesco on Tuesday to do the shopping. But then things had changed, and she never got to Tesco. And the garage at the bottom of the road where she went for basics didn’t sell Kimberley biscuits. That’s why she hadn’t written Kimberley biscuits on the list. She didn’t want to go to Tesco at the moment, so there was no point. But she would love a Kimberley biscuit right now, and a cup of fresh tea. Trouble was, she’d used up the last of the milk with her last cup. She went back to the table, wrote milk down on the list then opened the kitchen door.
‘I don’t have any milk. So if you take milk, you can’t have a cup of tea.’
Dr Graham was prepared.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, squinting in the rain. ‘I brought a pint of milk too, just in case you hadn’t had a chance to get out in this blessed rain,’ he added, pointing at the plastic bag. ‘Semi-skimmed, hope that’s OK?’
Biddy nodded. She opened the door wider, took the bag from him, put it on the table and limped over to the sink to fill the kettle.
As Dr Graham watched Biddy munch her third Kimberley biscuit in swift succession, he wondered if she’d actually eaten a proper square meal since her father had died. Since his collapse last Sunday, actually. He looked at her, worried by what he saw. She was painfully thin and deathly pale, with deep, dark hollows under her eyes. And, disturbingly, she looked even more shambolic than usual. Her wild, curly, copper hair was a mess of tats and frizz. It could do with a good cut, but he doubted that Biddy had ever been to a hairdresser in her life. The long-sleeved top she was wearing was at least two sizes too big and covered in stains. It looked like the type of garment some of his elderly patients in nursing homes wore, women in their eighties with senile dementia. He thought about his own daughter, Jemma, who was almost twenty-one and gorgeous – always turning up at the house with a new hairstyle, courtesy of her madcap hairdresser friend, Lulu, or some new outfit that she’d ‘just picked up’ at Topshop. Jemma and her friends were so vivacious, so full of life, so determined to make the most of their lives; some, like Jemma, studying for degrees, some, like Lulu, already working, others off travelling the world. Biddy was just a few years older, yet she might as well be living in a different century. She had no job and, as far as he could see, no friends or interests, apart from watching daytime TV and soap operas in the evenings. Every time he had called at the house in recent months, she was either watching some drivel on television or attending to her father. At least when her father was alive she’d had something to focus on, someone who needed her attention, a reason to keep going. But now, well, he didn’t know what would become of her. He was aware, of course, that there had been a strange and terrible accident when Biddy was just fifteen. She still took painkillers, but, thankfully, there had never been a recurrence of the apparent psychosis reported at the time of the accident. Seeing her at the funeral, however, and looking at her now, he feared that she could well be heading for some kind of breakdown. He knew from her records that she had self-harmed in the past, and possibly still did, judging by the state of her raw, blood-stained knuckles, so a suicide attempt was something he had to consider. She needed help, but he’d need to be creative as he certainly didn’t want to simply prescribe anti-depressants. And he very much doubted she would attend a regular counselling appointment if he made one.
A plan had loosely started to form in his head, but first he needed to win Biddy’s trust, a task he knew would not be an easy one. Apart from the ‘no milk’ greeting, she hadn’t uttered another word to him since she had reluctantly let him in, just nodding or shaking her head in response to the few polite questions he had asked. Not that this surprised him, as she’d rarely ever spoken to him when he had called to attend to her father. Watching Biddy munch another biscuit, however, the doctor was pleased with himself and saw his action this afternoon as a minor but speedy breakthrough. Every single time he had made a home visit to Mr Weir over the past three years, Biddy had presented him with a cup of tea and a Kimberley biscuit, on her father’s request. The doctor wasn’t really a biscuit person, never ate them at home or at coffee break in the surgery, but, as he prided himself on being an ‘old-fashioned’ GP, tea and biscuits came with the territory. In some houses, it was custard creams, in others chocolate digestives. Now and again there was a freshly baked scone or bun, which he did enjoy. Here, at number 17, Stanley Street, it was always Kimberley biscuits, and right now, they, and the painting in Mr Weir’s bedroom, were his only connection with Biddy, the only tools he could think of using to reach out to her.
‘Biddy?’ he asked, casually.
Biddy looked at him blankly as she chewed her fourth biscuit.
‘You know that lovely painting in your father’s bedroom, the one with the seagull on the beach?’
He saw her swallow her mouthful of biscuit with a gulp and then bite down on her lip. He saw her cheeks burn and her neck flush a mottled red. He watched her eyes dart from him to the floor, to the kitchen table, to the door into the hall, and back to the table again. Her discomfort was obvious, but he carried on, his tone bright and casual.
‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ he continued.
Biddy continued to stare at the table and didn’t answer.
‘The painting. It’s beautiful,’ he smiled. ‘Did your father paint it himself?’
Biddy glanced up at the doctor, chewing her lip, a look of genuine confusion etched on her face.
‘Or,’ said Dr Graham, hoping that his hunch was correct after all. He had never seen her paint nor seen any evidence of an artistic hobby, but he just had a feeling the painting was hers. ‘Did you?’
Biddy bit hard into her bottom lip and clasped her fingers tightly around her cup. Swallowing hard, she nodded her head quickly.
‘You did?’ Dr Graham leant slightly towards her across the table. Biddy instinctively leant back.
‘Oh, Biddy, please don’t be embarrassed. It’s exquisite. Truly beautiful. It’s Cove Bay, isn’t it?’
Biddy nodded again, her expression now one of surprise.
‘Well, I must say, you are an extremely talented young woman, Biddy. Really, I wish I had an ounce of your talent.’ He paused for a second, as though lost in thought.
‘You know the cottage in the background, the one with the blue shutters?’
Biddy nodded.
‘Well, a friend of mine lives there now. Moved in just recently.’
Biddy looked up at Dr Graham, her expression a mixture of shock and awe. ‘Really?’ she gasped.
‘Yep,’ he smiled, taking another biscuit from the now half-empty packet, ‘really.’
28.
Terri Drummond had encountered a number of complicated individuals in her years as a counsellor, and the more complex the character, the more she relished the challenge. In the beginning, her approach to her profession hadn’t always sat well with many of her contemporaries. But her headstrong personality and steadfast belief in her own methods soon began to make an impact. She didn’t go by the book – instead she threw it out of the window and wrote her own. Several, in fact. She was an enigma, but she got results. She knew it, her supporters knew it and, much to her delight, so did most of her adversaries.
Her friendship with Charlie Graham spanned over three decades, ever since the days they had worked together in the Royal City Infirmary back in the sixties, she as a nurse and Charlie as a young doctor. An urge to travel spurred by the onset of The Troubles took her to India, then Europe, then America, and when the wanderlust finally wore off, she decided to settle in London. She would nurse if she had to, or wait tables, or pull pints in an Irish bar, but she fancied something different. Something challenging. Something people-focused. A chance encounter with a grief-stricken, suicidal middle-aged man named Derek Davidson, on a park bench on Hampstead Heath, led her to inadvertently save a life, and started a whole new wonderful chapter of her own.
But now, in her late fifties, Terri realised that the chapter had become an incredibly long one, and she was tired. It was time to wind down, start a new chapter, or even, possibly, a brand new book. Her health wasn’t what it used to be; a viral infection had left her with a weakened chest. The pace of London life was getting to her. And she was sad, still grieving the loss of her partner, Harry. Her doctor told her that she needed a change of air. Seeking a second opinion, she called Charlie. ‘Come home, Terri,’ he had said. So she did.
Terri’s intentions had been to read, try out some recipes from her collection of cookery books that she’d rarely had the time to open, or maybe even write a novel, as she’d certainly had plenty of inspiration over the years to draw from. She would take long walks on the beach, meet old friends for lunch, see more of her brother, Patrick, and her nephews and nieces. But retirement didn’t really suit Terri. She had kept herself busy for a while, transporting her old life from a rambling three-storey house in North London, to the small two-bedroom cottage at Cove Bay. But she quickly decided that she didn’t have the patience to sit around and read all day, and realised there was limited satisfaction in cooking exotic meals for one every night of the week. A frustrating dose of writer’s block was stalling her writing project, and there was only so much walking she could do in a day. She developed itchy feet, and twitching fingers. She missed her ‘people’, as she called them. Terri didn’t feel complete unless she had someone else’s life to sort out.
So, when Charlie Graham phoned her one especially dull day a couple of months after her return to Ballybrock, saying he wanted to have a chat about a particularly delicate patient of his whom he didn’t want to refer to the practice counsellor, Terri leapt at the chance to get going again. Of course, she didn’t let on to Charlie just how relieved she was. ‘All right, darling,’ she had told him. ‘Just for you. But just this once, mind. I’m a lady of leisure now, don’t forget. And there had better be a damn good lunch in it for me.’
29.
‘You really will need to tread carefully with this one,’ Charlie Graham said as the waiter cleared their plates. Terri had insisted they didn’t talk business until after the main course, preferring to catch up on Charlie’s family news and local gossip.
‘She’s a young woman called Biddy Weir. I’ve only been her GP for a few years,’ he continued, scanning the dessert menu that was placed in front of him, ‘but I fear she may have slipped through the net, so to speak, both when she was a young child, and then later in her teens, after an accident. To begin with I did wonder if she was on the autistic spectrum, but I’m pretty sure now that’s not the case. She went to Ballybrock Grammar before the accident, so she’s obviously bright. But then again, maybe she suffered some kind of undiagnosed brain injury after the accident.’
‘Sticky toffee for me, please,’ interrupted Terri, giving the waiter her pudding order, with a resolute ‘both’ to the offer of custard or ice cream. ‘And pavlova for my friend here.’
Charlie raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m assuming it’s still your favourite?’ she winked.
Charlie laughed and nodded. ‘Oh, I’ve missed you, Ms Drummond.’
‘Me too, darling,’ smiled Terri. ‘Now, tell me about the accident.’
‘Hmm. A seriously bad fall when she was fifteen. Actually, from what I know, it’s a miracle she survived. The details are hazy, but it happened up on Innis Mountain during a school field trip. Whatever the circumstances, she spent the night alone on the mountain, and was found the next morning, unconscious, with multiple injuries and hypothermia.’
‘Bloody hell,’ gasped Terri, draining her glass, then immediately refilling it. Charlie could tell she was enjoying herself.
‘I know,’ he shook his head. ‘She has never spoken to me about the incident and from her notes it’s unclear if it really was an accident or a deliberate attempt to harm herself. Suicide, even. I did try to broach the subject a few times in the early days, but got nowhere. She just wouldn’t talk about it. Actually, she barely speaks at all. She mostly just nods or shakes her head, and she tries to avoid eye contact. She’s like a frightened bird. There’s definitely something amiss. I just can’t put my finger on it, but she’s certainly not like any other young woman in her twenties or thirties that I know.’
Over pudding, Charlie told Terri everything he knew about Biddy’s solitary existence with her father: the absence of a mother figure, the state of the house in Stanley Street. ‘It’s like an exhibit from the Folk Museum,’ he said, shaking his head. He told her about the references to multiple pin pricks on her skin in the hospital report, and said that whilst he’d never seen any evidence of serious self-harm, he was worried about her now. And he told Terri about the beautiful painting of Cove Cottage that sat on Mr Weir’s dresser and had planted a seed of an idea in his head.
‘Anyway,’ he bent down to take a yellow manila folder out of his briefcase and pushed it towards her, ‘most of the background info you need is in this file. I copied most of her notes.’
Terri raised an eyebrow. ‘You naughty devil! Think what could happen to you if I were to squeal.’
‘I know, I know,’ he grimaced. ‘I can’t bloody well believe I’m doing this. I haven’t done anything remotely like this before. Ever.’
‘So why are you doing it, Charlie? And why now?’
‘Truthfully, Terri, I really don’t know,’ he shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s something to do with Jemma.’
‘Jemma?’
‘Well, Biddy is just a few years older than her, yet she looks and lives like someone twice her age. Christ, three times, even. And I suspect she always has. When I see Jem and her friends, so full of life, so expectant of what the world can offer them, so free, I wonder what went wrong for Biddy. She lives a very lonely life, does Biddy Weir, and I just want, oh I don’t know,’ he shook his head, ‘I want her to live a little, Terri, experience something of life before it really is too late. My worry is that now, without her father, she will have nothing left to live for whatsoever.’ He paused and fiddled with his glass.
‘I have to say, she does sound fascinating,’ said Terri, licking the back of her spoon. ‘It’s like she’s trapped. A caged bird, Charlie, not just a frightened one. And I think it’s time we set her free.’
She raised her glass to Charlie who clinked it with his own.
‘I knew you were just what she needed,’ he smiled. ‘Now then, as I’m the one who has dragged you out of retirement, I want to know what this is going to cost. I k
now it’s highly unorthodox, but I do not want Biddy to be financing this herself. She obviously exists entirely on benefits and I doubt her father left her anything of any significance, apart from the house, so private counselling will be well above her budget. So, I shall be paying your fee, and that is to be our little secret.’
‘Oh, Charlie, darling, I do love little secrets, but I shan’t be looking for a penny.’ Terri held her hand up to silence his objection. ‘Now then, if we are to do this thing, it shall be on my terms, and my terms are one lunch a month with you in this delightful restaurant for the duration of the venture.’
‘Terri, I can’t expect you . . .’
‘There will be no further negotiation, so take it or leave it, Charlie.’
‘You drive a hard bargain,’ smiled Charlie as they clinked glasses. ‘Oh, and one more thing; she’s addicted to Kimberley biscuits.’
30.
As soon as Terri got back to her cottage late that afternoon, she pulled her favourite red velvet armchair up to the fire, stretched out her legs, resting her feet on the matching foot stool, and opened Biddy’s file. A bottle of her favourite Burgundy Pinot Noir sat on the table beside her and Bertie, her big black fluffy cat, snuggled down on her lap. The file made interesting reading, but more because of what it didn’t tell her, than what it did. Unusually, there were virtually no notes prior to the accident. Biddy had had chickenpox when she was four and had been attended to at home by one of the old partners, Dr Tate, who Terri knew had been dead for quite a few years now. Then there was a bout of tonsillitis when Biddy was six. Apart from her BCG injection and the regulation health checks and boosters at school in those days, there was nothing else. No upset tummies, no more sore throats or colds or temperatures, no minor injuries or bumps or bruises, no headaches or growing pains or earaches or nose bleeds. Absolutely none of the common conditions that most children inevitably suffer from at some point in their young lives. And if the reason for Biddy’s accident was, as Terri suspected, in some way psychological, her medical record certainly did not provide so much as a sniff of the catastrophe to come.