In the kitchen, I put the kettle on. There was a note on the worktop.
Cathy, it read.
Sorry to have been a complete lout and a bore. I was drunk and stupidly thought I’d drive home. I must have tripped on a tree root, and passed out, which was lucky, really. I could have killed myself driving in that state. Forgive me. I have a horrible feeling I made a complete idiot of myself last night. You were so lovely to me that I even thought there might be a point to life again. Will you let me make amends by having dinner with me and the girls in Fowey tonight? Don’t really feel up to cooking (not that I ever could) but thought we could have a bite at the Old Quay House?
No, I thought. Definitely not. Not until Chris came back anyway.
I busied myself with a bit of house maintenance. I put some bedding in the wash, did some ironing. I was pretty fed up at not having the confidence to drive, to go somewhere totally disassociated with my dark thoughts about Eloise, but being fed up wasn’t enough to get me behind the wheel.
I phoned Chris but he was busy with a patient, so I left a message saying I desperately needed to talk to him. Two minutes later the phone rang. It was Ted.
‘Hi, Cathy. You OK?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ I tried to keep my voice neutral. ‘How are you?’
‘Well, I’d really like to talk to you. You’re the first person I’ve wanted to – well – let off steam to since it all happened. There’s so much you and Chris don’t know.’
‘I think it might be best if we waited for him to come back to talk about all that,’ I said primly.
‘Why? Cathy, look, I know I behaved badly last night. I’m really sorry and embarrassed because you and Chris have always been such good friends. But the thing is, I’m not myself at the moment, and I have to talk to someone. There’s so much I don’t understand. I mean, did Eloise ever tell you about Arthur?’
‘Arthur? Who’s Arthur? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Well, no, perhaps you wouldn’t. Juliana does, though. She certainly knows the lot.’
I was beginning to feel faint and sick. I really didn’t like Ted’s tone. And I hated the way he seemed to be drawing me into a conspiracy against Eloise.
Was I being hopelessly romantic about her? Had I put her on a pedestal because of her beauty, her ancient and aristocratic family associations? And then I realised my reluctance to engage in a conversation with Ted was a kind of fear of finding out more about Eloise than I wanted to know.
I told him I was feeling ill. Which was quite true because at that moment I really wanted to throw up. But, always sensitive to my body, I knew that my sickness had nothing to do with a normal visceral reaction, and everything to do with what was going on in my head.
‘I can’t see you tonight, Ted. I feel like shit and I’ve got loads of work to do. So, not tonight, but of course I want to meet up soon. And who is Arthur?’
Ted chuckled, but it was a dark and nasty sound.
‘Arthur? Well, he’s just a spanner in the works. That’s what Arthur is. Not that I had the slightest idea about his existence until a few weeks ago. But, God, talk about betrayal. It’s about as bad as it gets.’
I realised then that he was possibly still a bit drunk from the night before. He sounded slurred and stressed. But also incredibly vindictive and angry.
I told him I’d call him back later. I really needed to talk to Chris.
Late that afternoon Chris called. I told him about Ted’s strange mood and how disturbing I found it. ‘He made me feel … quite frightened really.’
‘You’re imagining things, Cath. Ted’s bound to be under a lot of stress at the moment. That’s probably what you picked up on.’
‘No, Chris, I’m not imagining anything. He made me feel really uncomfortable. I think he … well, he tried to make a pass at me.’
There was a long pause. Then Chris spoke in the stony voice I’d come to dread, the one he used when he thought I wasn’t doing enough to stop my darker thoughts and emotions taking me over.
‘Right, that’s it. You’re coming home.’
I bristled. ‘No, I’m not. Stop ordering me about.’
He sighed. ‘Cathy, look. You’ve been very ill. So seriously depressed that at times I thought – well, you know what I thought. I wasn’t sure that you were going to get better. But you have. You’ve been doing so well, and now here I am stuck in London and you’re having some kind of meltdown on your own in Cornwall. This is not good. You must know that.’
‘I’m not having a meltdown. I’m just … well … concerned about Ted.’
‘It’s not that I’m worried about. Look, I know the signs. The way you’ve started anguishing about Eloise. The way you can’t let it go. I know when these things get a grip on you. You’re getting obsessed with your dark thoughts again. It’s the start of a downward spiral.’
‘What are you talking about? I’m not obsessed. I’m not having dark thoughts,’ I protested, although of course I knew I was. ‘I’m just telling you what Ted was like with me last night. Are you suggesting I imagined it?’
‘Cathy, you need to come home. You need to be with your family. You really shouldn’t be alone. And I can’t come down because I have patients all day for the next few days. But if you won’t get the train, I’ll drive down overnight and pick you up. You leave me no choice.’
‘Jesus, Chris! Who do you think you are?’
‘Your husband. Who loves you. Cathy, this situation is intolerable. And if you are determined to be so completely stubborn that you won’t do what is obviously right for your mental health, then I have no choice but to act and get you home.’
‘Oh, I see. And when I get back, are you going to have me sectioned?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! Will you get the train or do I have to come down and get you?’
‘Do you know what, Chris? You can get lost. I’m going nowhere. You can go wherever the hell you want.’
I banged the phone down. There was no mobile signal in Talland Bay, so it was still possible to be melodramatic on the landline. I was furious, though. And also despairing. If you’ve had a breakdown, as I’d had, does that give everyone carte blanche to question your sanity ever after? I knew what I had heard in Ted’s voice, his angry attitude to Eloise. I wasn’t imagining it. How dare Chris decide I was being delusional? Did this mean that every time I told him something he didn’t want to hear he would assume I was mad again? How could any wife live with that?
Two summers ago, Evie had been ill. It had started with headaches so severe they made her weep. And then she started vomiting. We were staying in Cornwall, and the doctor referred her to Derriford Hospital. The consultant could find nothing wrong and Chris said it was probably just a stomach bug, but as the days went by and Eve’s pale face stared reproachfully at me as she lay on the sofa, clearly in dreadful pain, I became convinced she was suffering from something much more terrifying. I decided she had brain cancer. And I insisted on a scan.
Chris felt I was over-reacting, but persuaded the consultant to indulge me. Evie had the brain scan. There was, said the doctor, absolutely nothing wrong with her. He showed us the X-ray. It meant little to me but Chris smiled with relief when he saw it. As he and the consultant looked at it, they laughed and joshed each other and I regarded them with disbelief. What were they laughing at? Our daughter had a brain tumour, and Chris was chuckling about the X-ray?
On the drive back to the cottage, I sat stunned, sick with horror. When we got back poor Evie, clutching her painful tummy, went to bed with a hot water bottle. Downstairs, I confronted Chris.
‘I want to get Evie back to London straight away. I want a second opinion, another scan.’
Chris looked at me, concerned at my shaking voice. ‘There’s no need, Cathy. I saw the scan. She’s absolutely fine, honey. It’s just a tummy bug, and now she’s taking antibiotics it’ll clear up in no time.’
I started to tremble. ‘Chris, she’s got can
cer. I know she has. I just know it.’
He sat down beside me on the sofa, and took my hand. ‘Darling, I’m a doctor and I can assure you she hasn’t.’ He stroked my hair. ‘I think I know what this is about. It’s Eloise, isn’t it?’
I rounded on him. ‘Eloise is dying,’ I hissed. ‘If it can happen to her out of the blue, it can happen to anyone. I won’t let it happen to Evie.’
Chris looked nonplussed. ‘But, darling, nothing’s going to happen to Evie. I promise you.’
‘Yes, well, that’s what everyone always says, isn’t it? Look at the way everyone told Eloise she was going to be fine.’ I started crying hysterically. ‘She’s dying, Chris. My Evie’s dying!’
And that was how it started. The dreams began that night.
I remember the first one. In it, Evie was a little girl, around three years old. She looked sweet, happy, singing to her dolls. But as I watched she started shrinking, dwindling. I snatched her up and she became a newborn baby in my arms. And then, she was gone.
I was distraught, panicked, frantically rushing around the house looking for her, lifting cushions, opening drawers. My baby had gone, she had left me. And then, on the mantelpiece, I saw a matchbox. I picked it up and slid it open. Inside, tiny as a mouse, lay my child. She looked perfect, as if she was just sleeping, but I knew she was dead.
There were many other dreams after that night, nightmares of Gothic horror, in which I wandered through a green valley, and all around me severed heads rose up out of the ground, watching me gravely, almost pityingly, as their blood dripped onto the grass.
There were dreams where, everywhere I walked, I saw bodies of dead baby animals strewn along my path; calves, kittens, puppies, foals. They made me feel ineffably sad.
And the worst one of all. Eloise sat before me with the matchbox containing my dead daughter in her hands. She smiled at me, but without warmth. She looked gloating, gleeful.
‘You see, Cathy, it’s not just me. I’m not the only one dying before my time. Now you’ll know what it’s like, how I feel about leaving my daughters. Now YOU will know about unbearable grief, not just me.’
She looked so evil, staring at me, her beautiful face twisted with triumph. And then she began to cackle.
Night after night, I woke screaming or sobbing and Chris took me back to London, where I began treatment. For months my nights were filled with horror, my days drowned in a lethargic stupor. I was almost catatonic with fear and loss. I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression.
And Evie? It turned out she had a grumbling appendix. A few days after we got back to London, she was rushed to hospital for an emergency operation. At the time, I knew nothing about it. Chris was too frightened to tell me that our daughter had, in fact, been in danger, albeit for a condition much less terrifying than brain cancer.
And yet, afterwards, even when Eve had recovered and was manifestly well and cheerful, I still felt dread in my heart. I still dreamed she was dead in a tiny matchbox. I still dreamed Eloise was gloating over my grief.
Eventually, with medication and therapy, I got better. By winter I had returned to sanity, accepting that Evie was well, and that I had had a breakdown precipitated by my fear for Eloise. I had been living in terror and denial about my friend’s impending, inevitable death, and when my daughter became ill, my anxious mind flipped into a kind of madness.
I was better, but I knew, from the way he watched me, looked at me, that forever after Chris would watch me for signs of instability. And although I prided myself on my recovery, my rationality, of course I also knew I was perpetually on the edge of an abyss. If you’ve been there, you don’t ever forget it. You can’t possibly ignore it. Once you’ve glimpsed the profound horror of the chasm which opens up beneath your feet, once you’ve felt the inexorable pull which draws you to the edge, once you’ve understood that down there lies not just madness but the total destruction of your life, your happiness, all hope of love and comfort … then, and only then, can you understand the unspeakable magnitude of what lies beneath. And how utterly vile it is, how barren of everything but death. And even when you’re feeling better, when pills and therapy have restored you to a fragile normality, you always know there are demons out there, life-sucking, soul-sucking vampires.
Never far away. And always ready to pounce.
It was ironic that I was married to a psychiatrist. Someone who knew me so well but couldn’t treat me. I had to see one of his colleagues because of medical etiquette, which I found terribly embarrassing. Hey, I imagined him saying at dinner parties when he’d had a bit too much to drink, did you know that Chris’s wife is nuts?
Chris told me I was wrong when I wept my fears to him. The man who was treating me was, he said, scrupulously observant of the rules of confidentiality. Chris would trust him with his life – or at least, I responded with bleak humour, with his wife.
Chris didn’t like it when I was flippant. But then, I would tell myself, he was desperate to help me, wasn’t he? And, like any man trying to cope with a suicidally depressed wife, he was desperate anyway. Because during my breakdown, I had left him in no doubt that if anything happened to Evie, I would kill myself.
The phone rang again. Convinced it was Chris, I let the answerphone take it. But the voice which came from the machine was soft, mellifluous and quite definitely female.
Juliana. I suddenly saw an answer to my problems and flew to the phone.
An hour and a half later, having called a taxi, I was sitting in Juliana’s house, a cup of tea in one hand and a beautifully ironed handkerchief in the other, unable to stop crying. I could hear myself sobbing loudly and I was mortified by my self-absorption. Juliana had just lost a beloved daughter, her only child – all that had happened to me was that I had had a row with my husband.
Typically, Juliana, who had asked me to spend the night, was completely sympathetic and warm about my ridiculous emotional crisis. I told her something about my breakdown – all she’d known was that we had stopped coming down to Cornwall for a time and because Chris hadn’t wanted to worry Eloise with the truth, he’d said it was because Tom was studying hard for his A-levels and that I was busy with writing commissions. Concerned with her own deadly illness, Eloise had accepted the excuses. I didn’t tell Juliana to curry sympathy, but to explain how rocky my judgement was at present.
‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Of course you’re upset about everything. But I had no idea that you had been going through such a terrible time.’
‘We tried to hide it from you, Juliana. God knows you had enough on your plate with Eloise.’
‘Yes. That’s true. I appreciate your kindness. But still, you’ve had a horrible time. I wish I’d known.’
‘Do you know what, Juliana? I just wish I could go to sleep. Sometimes I think I could sleep for ever.’
‘Eloise used to say exactly the same thing.’
‘She was depressed?’
Of course she was. She was dying. How stupid of me.
‘I’m so sorry, Juliana. She was so ill.’
‘Well, there was that, of course. But she didn’t mean that. She meant that her life, quite apart from the cancer, wasn’t worth living.’
‘But she was desperate to live,’ I protested. ‘She fought death with everything she had!’
‘Oh, yes. But that was because of her children. She knew how much they needed her.’
‘So what do you mean? Surely her life meant everything to her with her babies?’
‘Yes. But there were other things.’
‘Ted? Is that what you’re talking about?’
She looked down. She was sad, tired. ‘Darling, I really can’t talk about this tonight. But I am so utterly delighted that you are going to stay with me. I think we both need company and we have a lot to talk about. Let’s start tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m going to ask Annie to put you to bed.’
If that had come from Chris, I would have told him that nobody puts me to bed. But Juliana’s suggestion fe
lt as if it came from a mother. My mother, Not that mine was the most loving and kind maternal figure, never had been, and God, how we all long for that care, that absolute conviction that we are loved, wrapped round with affection. That we are still small, still passively able to accept the physical absorption into the soft loveliness of our mothers’ bodies.
Annie, who was was over eighty and who had been Juliana’s loyal lady’s maid from their teenage years, tucked me into bed with a hot water bottle and a cup of hot chocolate. She had already unpacked my suitcase and hung up my clothes, few though they were. I felt like a fugitive from a Jane Austen novel. I was tired, upset and totally appreciative of the soft linen sheets and warm quilt on my new bed. I felt cared for, cocooned. I fell asleep, feeling, for the first time in years, that I was being mothered. It was utter bliss.
I dreamed again that night, but this time, Eloise’s spirit came gently. As I slept, I felt she wound her essence around me. She was glad, clearly, that I was with Juliana. She was pleased that I was on her own familiar ground. She was sweet, in my dreams. Full of comfort.
‘Cathy, you’re with my mother now. That’s good. I can really talk to you here. Please stay at the farmhouse and I can tell you about my children. There’s so much I need to say to you. But I’m weak, trying to get the strength. It comes sometimes, then evaporates and I am nothing. Nothing. Just vapour on the breeze. Can you imagine how that feels? To be nothing, to be so powerless when so much is at stake?’
No. I could not even begin to imagine that desperation, and I had known huge despair when I was ill, had been so frightened for Evie, believing her to be in terrible danger. Was that what Eloise was trying to tell me about her little girls? That she was terrified they were facing great danger?
No, it was a dream, only a dream, I struggled to tell myself. Eloise is dead, quiet in her grave. I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m just prone to horrible nightmares.
Chapter Seven
Eloise Page 4