Текст книги "Lost Girls"
Автор книги: Celina Grace
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Chapter Twenty Eight
Jessica hadn’t arrived yet. This time I kept my eyes open and I saw her come in through the doorway. I’d already bought her a drink. As she walked towards me, I thought she looked more there than she had before, her colours brighter, her outline more defined. I considered this for a moment and then shoved the thought away.
“Hey, Maudie,” she said, sitting down. “Thanks for the drink. And for meeting me.”
“No problem,” I said, as if it hadn’t been a matter for agonised decision. I had wondered how she was going to play it, our meeting after her horrible revelations of the last. I’d seen people confess something and then act as if the recipient of their confession had done something wrong. I’d done it myself. I remember the first time I told Margaret about what had happened to Jessica, and my part in it, and how I’d felt afterwards – angry at Margaret; ashamed, embarrassed. I wondered how I’d react when I next saw Becca. She’d phoned a couple of times but I couldn’t face speaking to her.
Jessica didn’t seem to be feeling that. Perhaps she’d told her awful story so many times it had ceased to hurt so much. Perhaps she didn’t feel ashamed – and really, why should she be ashamed? She’d come through the other side, she had got through it, she’d reinvented herself as a new person. I remembered that she had been through therapy, was, for all I knew, still in therapy. It made me feel another pull towards her – it was something else that we shared. Suddenly, I wanted to tell her about my own breakdown, to show her that there were bad things in my life too, that she wasn’t alone.
“You said you’d been in therapy,” I said, rather hesitatingly. Jessica nodded. I took a deep breath. “I have too.”
“You have?”
“I’m still going – I mean, I have a therapist – Margaret – she’s great. I go at least once or twice a month. It’s mostly – no, it’s all because of what happened. With you.”
She looked sober. “With me?”
Despite my good intentions, I was struggling. I didn’t want to say what I was going to say. It brought back all the bad memories, the same feelings surfacing; guilt, shame, misery, despair. “I felt so guilty. If I’d only gone with you – or I’d stopped you going – or told Angus what we were going to do – or anything – then it wouldn’t have happened.”
“You don’t know that,” said Jessica. “We both could have–”
“Could have what?”
“Well, that’s just it,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.”
“But it wasn’t good.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
We both lapsed into silence. I wondered what she was thinking.
“Anyway,” she said, after a moment. “You were telling me about your therapist.”
"Margaret," I said. "Yes."
"Is that her name? Is she good?"
"Yes."
"And you go – because of what happened in Cornwall?"
I hesitated for a second. “It's also because of what happened to me when I was twenty-six." I started with the simplest explanation. "I went through a bad time."
"A bad time?"
I stared down at the table. "That's putting it mildly. I went – I had – I had an episode." It was still so hard to say the words. I tried again. "I mean, I was ill, became ill. Mentally ill, I mean."
"Oh," said Jessica. "That's not good."
I tried to smile. "No, it wasn't."
"What happened? Did you – what happened?"
I drained my glass. "I need another one of these."
Jessica went and got us both a drink. While she was at the bar, I thought back to that time; the dark figures, the jumble of images in my head. The mess that was left over; the fragments of myself that had to be stitched back together again.
"I saw things," I said, when she was sat back down again. "I saw figures. They were people at first and then as I got worse they started changing. They were dark figures, like they were wearing black cloaks."
"That sounds awful”, said Jessica. “Where did you see them?"
"Everywhere. In the street. In the doorway to my bedroom. I had a – I have a thing about doorways too, I can't bear them to be half open, they have to be open or shut, not half way...." I trailed off. It sounded so stupid said aloud.
"Did you hear voices too?" she asked.
I grimaced. "Not really. Sort of. It was more sort of thoughts, bad thoughts." I was silent for a moment. "I mean, it’s still to do with Cornwall and the stones and everything but... it sort of... coalesced. It all began to – weigh on me."
"It sounds awful."
"It was. I – I was struggling – I kept seeing these figures and I thought... I had these irrational thoughts, horrible thoughts that everyone, well, hated me. Was after me.”
I stopped, unable to continue for a moment. Jessica’s eyes were wide.
“Everyone hated you?”
I heaved a sigh. “Well, no they didn’t. I mean, the figures weren't real, they were just things my brain was making up out of – of memories and shadows and things. Obviously. But – oh, it was so silly but so real to me then – I got badly paranoid, I thought people were keeping things from me and then I thought they were out to – to harm me. My mental state was – bad, it was really bad.”
“No shit.”
“At the worst time, the very worst, I thought – I thought they were going to kill me.”
Jessica looked at me in silence. We drank quickly, filling the gaps in conversation with nervous gulps.
“What did your dad do?” said Jessica, eventually.
“Do?”
“Yes,” she said. “Did he realise? I mean, were you living at home?”
"I wasn’t to start with, when it started happening," I said. “I was working at this really boring office job. I got fired. I mean, I was getting worse by the day. I was – acting irrationally.”
“So, what happened?”
“I did go home. After a while. I was getting too scared of London, all I could think about were these figures, these people, following me. I didn’t know where to go, I didn’t know where was safe.”
“God, Maudie,” said Jessica. “Even hearing that gives me the shivers. You must have been terrified.”
“Angus didn’t deal with it too well,” I said, after a moment. “At least, I don’t think he really realised how ill I was. Or that’s what I thought until I found out about my mother.”
“Your mother? With the crash?”
“Exactly.”
She blew out her cheeks and sat back in her chair.
"Angus – Angus and Aunt Effie – they couldn't deal with it. I know why now, because of my mother and what happened to her. I guess-” I could my voice breaking, “I guess they thought they were doing the right thing. Or maybe they didn't care, maybe they just couldn't deal with another round of doctors and hospitals and general scandal. I guess they thought everyone would say 'oh look, like mother like daughter, they're all mad in that family, what do you expect?' Angus was always one for appearances." I couldn't stop my face twisting at that. "It was always, like, paper over the cracks, hide what really happened, pretend everything is normal-”
I stopped talking. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, feel it thudding through my forehead.
"Maudie?" said Jessica, after a moment.
I still couldn't speak. I had that feeling, yet again, of having my foot on the edge of a precipice. One false move and I'd be over and falling.
"Maudie?"
I picked up my nearly empty glass – what wine was left sloshed about in my shaky grasp. I drained it.
"I think they were in denial," I said. "They probably couldn’t believe they’d have to go through it all again. They should have had me sectioned, they should have at least taken me to the hospital for assessment..."
I stopped talking, unable to go on. Jessica was turning her glass around and around; the glass chimed dully against the wood of the table. I sighed – it was almost all told. Just one more thing to confess to.
“I took an overdose.” I fought to keep my voice even. I could feel my face trying to smile and fought to keep it level.
“Shit, Maudie.” She sat back in her chair, putting a hand up to her face.“So what happened? I mean, obviously you didn’t – die.”
We were both speaking jerkily, the words coming out in blurts.
“Angus found me on the bathroom floor. I guess they decided that was something they couldn't deal with themselves although God knows they probably considered it. I got carted off to A and E.”
"Shit."
"I was in hospital – I mean a mental hospital, not the A and E – for ages. Six months, maybe. I’m over it now. I’m completely better now.” I clenched my teeth. “I’m fine now, but I still go to therapy. It does help. As I’m sure you know.” I sat back in my chair and stretched my shoulders up to my ears, easing the ache in my neck.
There was another silence between us. I had the sudden, horrible thought that perhaps she thought I was competing with her – a competition as to who had the hardest luck story, who deserved more pity. I opened my mouth to say something and shut it again. Instead I said I’d buy us both another drink.
When I came back, she took it from me without a word of thanks. I don’t think she meant to be rude. She had the inward look on her face of someone whose mind was far from the room. She seemed to be mentally bracing herself.
"You were going to ask me something, weren't you?"
She hesitated. "It doesn't matter," she said. "It can wait."
"No, go on. I'm sick of talking about myself, anyway."
She looked me in the eye. "Alright," she said, eventually. I could see her take a deep breath. “Maudie, how are my parents?”
“You don’t know?” I said slowly.
“No,” she said. “I just haven’t felt up to contacting them. It was just that step too far. I needed to see you first to – to kind of break the ice, if that doesn’t sound too stupid.”
“It doesn’t,” I said. My heart was thumping; I felt hot and cold with dread.
“I’m ready now, though,” she said, and I felt something shrivel up inside me. “I’m ready now.”
“Jessica, I’m sorry but I don’t know how to tell you this.” She was looking at me, her face quite unprepared for what I was about to say. I took a quick, shaky breath, and said it. “Jessica, I’m really sorry but your parents are dead.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off her face. She hadn’t registered what I said, or so I thought. She blinked a few time, her eyelids stuttering. “What?”
I took hold of my legs under the table, to stop my hands from shaking. “Jessica, I’m really, really sorry but your parents are dead.”
Her face began a slow, inner crumpling. “Dead?” she said, in a whisper. “How?”
“I’m afraid your dad had a heart attack.” Like Angus, I added mentally. “I’m really sorry. It was very quick–”
“And my mum?” she said, cutting me off.
I closed my eyes briefly and took another deep breath. “She – she committed suicide.”
My voice had trailed away to a whisper. I tried to say something else, but my voice failed completely.
Quaking, I looked at Jessica. She had her eyes shut. She held herself like a cat does, quivering, before it leaps.
Then she moved. Her hand went flying out, into her full wine glass. The glass flew through the air and struck my breastbone, drenching me with wine. I gasped, more in shock than in pain. She rocketed to her feet, leaning over the table towards me.
“You bitch,” she said, her voice vibrating so much I could barely make out the words. “You knew all this time and you never told me? You never told me my parents were dead?”
I stuttered out something meaningless, something useless. Jessica had both hands on the edge of the table, her hair hanging in a lank swathe on either side of her head, her eyes fixed upon mine.
“You were right, Maudie. You were right.”
“What?” I said, gasping.
“You were right. You were right, you were right, you were right–” her voice was going up and up, humming upwards like a warning signal. I was shaking my head without knowing I was doing it. “You were right. You are guilty. You are guilty! It was your fault–”
“But–” I said, uselessly.
She thrust her face forward. “My fucking parents are dead because of you. Because of you, I’ve been fucked over my entire life! And you sit there and tell me you have problems. You fucking bitch. It’s your fault my parents are dead, your fault, your fault, your fault–”
I had a terrifying flashback to her mother in the kitchen of the cottage, eyes squeezed almost shut, flecks of spit landing on my face as she screamed at me. As then, I could only shake my head in terrified denial.
Suddenly she fell silent, silent except for her gasping breaths. Slowly, she backed away from the table, shaking her head. “You’ll pay for this,” she said, her chest heaving. “I’ll make you pay for this if it’s the last thing I do.”
She turned and ran from the room and I heard the door of the pub bang open and then closed. I sat there in my chair, clothes soaked with wine. I looked as if someone had shot me in the chest. I could only sit there, hands plastered across my useless, treacherous mouth, shaking.
Chapter Twenty Nine
The telephone rang at nine thirty the next morning, as I was sat picking miserably at my breakfast. Matt got up to answer it and I held my breath.
“Hello?”
I knew it was her. Under the table, I clenched my fists. “Hello? Who is this?”
Matt banged down the receiver and came back to the table. The phone rang again.
“Oh, leave it,” I said, unable to bear it.
“I will,” he said, reaching for his coffee. “It’s getting rather tiresome. Some idiot obviously thinks it’s funny.”
The phone stopped ringing and the answerphone clicked on. There was nothing on the line, no speaking, just the click and burr of a broken connection.
“This is starting to become a bit more than annoying,” said Matt. “Perhaps you could call the phone company?”
“What?”
“The phone company. Perhaps they can – oh, I don’t know – put a block on the line? Trace the calls? I don’t know what they do but – could you call them?”
I stared down at my empty coffee cup. “Okay.”
“Thanks, darling. It would help,” said Matt. He upended his coffee cup. “Ugh, lukewarm. Anyway, what are you up to today?”
“I’m seeing Margaret at eleven. Then – I don’t know – maybe lunch somewhere. I’m not sure...” My voice trailed off.
“Well, I’ve got a meeting with the high-ups at work,” he said after a moment. “So we could be celebrating later."
I barely heard him. “Sorry, what?” I said, looking up.
Frowning, Matt rested his hands on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “I said, we could be celebrating later. My promotion, I mean. If you want to. Oh, and if I get it.” He laughed. “Mustn’t count my chickens.”
“That’s great,” I said, dredging up a smile. “Good luck. I’m sure you won’t need it.”
I watched him walk out the kitchen and waited until I heard the front door close. Then I slumped forward onto the kitchen table.
I had to brace myself before I left the flat. I pulled gloves on over my shaking hands and thought cravenly about taking a taxi. I took a deep breath and marched outside.
Jessica wasn’t there. I let my breath out in a shuddering sigh. The relief almost made me nauseous. I walked quickly to Margaret’s house, swinging my arms. I tried not to think of Jessica’s last words to me but they kept repeating themselves in my head. I couldn’t get that look of hatred – and it had been hatred – out of my mind’s eye.
It wasn’t a very good session with Margaret. I was nervous and distracted and kept running down into silence. I was worried she would smell the vodka on my breath which made me speak more haltingly than usual. I remembered to ask her for a prescription. As she was a psychiatrist, she was able to write them for me and had always done so, saving me a trip to the doctor’s surgery.
“Just sleeping pills?” she said. “Or do you think you might need the anti-depressants again?”
I wavered. I probably did need them but it seemed like such an admission of failure. “Just the sleeping pills,” I said, managing to sound quite firm.
I closed the front door without thinking of anything much. I tucked my scarf more firmly into my coat.
Then I saw her. She was waiting for me on the other side of the street. She wore her black coat, of course; it swirled about her in the wind like an ink cloud. Her eyes were fixed on mine. I froze and shut my eyes.
I stood there, blind. The roar of cars passing echoed the thunder of my heartbeat. I opened my eyelids, quaking. Jessica was gone. Saliva rushed into my mouth and I turned aside for a moment, my hand going to my mouth, almost retching.
The worry of what other people would think still won out. I straightened up, putting my hand back in my pocket, trying to seem as if I didn’t care. I put one foot in front of the other, the wavering line of the pavement unrolling before my eyes. I reached the kerb and managed to look one way before stepping out into the road.
A horn blared. My legs went from under me, even as they got me to the opposite pavement. I felt them buckle and then the pavement was rough and cold under my palms. I was knee-down in the street, hair falling forward, the pain in my knees nothing compared to the public humiliation.
“No, I’m fine, thanks – I’m fine–”
I struggled upwards, the kind hands of some passerby shaken off and left behind. I staggered onwards, my knees smarting.
A taxi light glowed ahead of me. I hailed it, and almost fell in through its door. I didn’t dare look round, for fear of seeing her. I shrank back into the back seat of the taxi, shivering. I held onto my elbows with opposite hands, feeling the bones juddering underneath my palms.
When I got home I locked the front door – both locked, deadbolts – to keep out the dead.
I gasped all the way to the bedroom, to the vodka bottle in my underwear drawer. There wasn't as much left as I thought; there wasn't enough to work properly. My knees went again as I made my way to the bathroom. Vodka wasn't enough. I didn't really take pills, not when I didn’t need to, but this was just intolerable... I crawled the last ten yards on my hands and knees, tear drops marking my way, my knees smudging them into the carpet as I finally got there, scrabbling at the bathroom cabinet, fumbling for the pill bottle that had been hidden away, unneeded for so long. Got it, take it, bitter taste in the throat, scramble for the glass, chiming against the tap, water falling coolly over my unsteady fingers. I got the pill down my throat and sat back against the bath, laughing weakly.
After twenty minutes, when the Valium began to percolate through my system, I breathed in and out, in and out, slowing my heart beat, getting myself back under control. Come on, Maudie. I dropped my head back against the side of the bath, closed my eyes, and breathed. I conjured up Margaret in my mind, her colourful blouses, her comforting grey hair. What would she say to me now, if she were here?
Thinking of Margaret calmed me, somewhat. I knew she’d tell me that I wasn’t to be afraid, that there was always a logical explanation. What was the explanation here? I was feeling almost normal again. Even propped up as uncomfortably as I was, I could feel myself falling towards unconsciousness. It was an effort to sit up, to shake off the drowsiness. I got up, carefully, holding on to the side of the bath, wobbled my way down the corridor and fell onto the bed.
I slept for a while, or passed out, or something. The ring of the telephone woke me. I scrabbled my way out of a tangle of bedclothes – the duvet had clamped itself stickily around me – and reached for the phone, on autopilot. I had the receiver to my ear before I remembered why I shouldn’t.
There was the same crackle and hiss of static. My head was clearing of the sleep-fog – I’d almost got myself together enough to put the phone down. Then, sighing from the receiver, came Jessica’s voice, insinuating, mocking; Maudie, Maudie...
I gasped and slammed the phone down. I felt as if the trail of her whisper had seeped into the room; I could almost see it, a thin, dark wisp of smoke curling and writhing around the room. The phone rang again, bringing a thin little shriek of fright to my lips. I grabbed up the receiver. “What do you want?”
Silence again. Then a little, soft laugh. “What do you think?”
Her voice had changed. It was harder, colder, little chips of ice in my ear. For the first time I could hear South London in her voice, a guttural undercurrent.
I took a deep breath. “Jessica, I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you–”
“You bitch, Maudie,” she said, almost conversationally, cutting across me. “Don’t give me that. How could you do that to me? Do you know how long I’ve waited for my parents?”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, nearly crying.
“It’s too late now for sorry.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. I could feel myself shrinking, pulling back within myself.
There was a moment’s silence. Then she spoke through what sounded like clenched teeth. “I want you to suffer. I want you to suffer like I’ve suffered.”
“But why?” I was almost incoherent, my voice shaking.
“You know why. You’re guilty. It’s your fault.”
She sounded like a different person. Where was the girl I'd laughed with, hugged, sat and drank with? She sounded as if she were reciting something, a speech she'd learned not particularly well. Perhaps something she'd been telling herself for years.
"You don't mean that," I said eventually.
"Don't tell me what I mean and don't mean," she said. "You don't know me. You don't have any idea what it feels like."
"I don't, but-"
"You met me, again and again, and you never told me. I bet you were laughing at me all that time!"
"No." For a moment I couldn't say anything else.
Jessica pressed on. "It's your fault, Maudie. Your fault this happened. You know it is. You know it is."
“Leave me alone.” Even to my own ears, I sounded ten years old.
She laughed again, and I felt a clutch inside me, as if a giant, cold hand had grabbed my insides. “I’ll never leave you alone. You think I’m going to leave you, now that I’ve found you? Now that I’ve got you?”
The phone went down with a sharp crack.
What was wrong with me? Was there something about me – some poisonous, glowing halo – which other people could see, to which I was oblivious? What was it about me that marked me out for things such as this? I put my hands up to my eyes, screwing my face up. I tried to think of Matt, as something to calm me, but somehow that just made things worse. I crawled back to the bedroom and under the bedclothes. Perhaps it would be best if I never got up again. With that dark thought to sustain me, I lay there, hearing Jessica’s parting words ricochet around my head, until all about me was a mass of jeering malevolence.
Matt came back later that evening. As I heard the scrape of his key in the lock of the front door, I wondered vaguely where he’d been. I'd managed to get out of bed and was sat on the sofa, wrapped around with the duvet. The heating was on full blast but I was still cold. I'd drunk two bottles of wine and the empty bottles were still on the coffee table. I didn't care if he saw them. I was beyond caring.
Matt stood in the doorway, looking at me. I tried to smile but my face didn't seem to be working properly. He stood looking, for at least three minutes, until I began to feel like something under a microscope, not a bug, nothing so substantial.
"Are you ill?" he said eventually.
I turned my head to him in enquiry. I winced as I did it – my neck felt stiff. “Yes,” I said. It was easier than telling the truth.
“You must be,” he said. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
“Forgot what?” I said. My tongue felt too big for my mouth and it was hard to form the words.
He was hanging onto the door frame so hard his knuckles were white. “Our celebration,” he said. “I’ve been calling you and texting you. Why didn’t you pick up? Have you even checked your phone?”
I blinked slowly. “No,” I said.
He breathed in through his nose. Slowly he let go of the doorframe and straightened up. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said. “I didn’t get the job.”
“What?” I said. “You’ve got a job. What job?”
“The promotion, Maudie,” he said, in a thin voice. “The permanent role. They didn’t offer it to me. Cutbacks, they said. No more money for permanent lecturers. That’s what they said.”
I processed this. “Oh dear,” Part of me wanted to get up and go and give him a hug but I couldn’t seem to make myself move.
“Is that all you’ve got to say?” said Matt.
Under the duvet, I dug my fingernails into my leg. I needed the flash of pain to clarify things.
“I’m sorry, Matt,” I said. “What a shame. But it’s not like you need to work, really, do you? Why not give it up for a while? We don’t need the money.” I tried to laugh but my throat was too dry and it came out as a croak. “Be a man of leisure for a change.”
He said nothing for a moment. Then he wheeled about and moved away from the doorway. A second later, I heard the study door slam.
I turned my face back into the sofa, hiding my face from the light. Behind my eyelids, I could see a half-open door, with darkness behind it.