Sorrow and Bliss(46)

I knew that I wouldn’t. But as it got dark again, I began to feel scared of the flat, its ringing silence, the dead air. Patrick was out of reach on the plane by then. I crawled on my hands and knees to the door and waited outside for a taxi with my back pressed against a brick wall. My brain laughed at me, look at how stupid you are, crawling across the floor, look at you being scared to go outside.

*

The doctor in emergency said, ‘Why have you brought yourself here today?’ He didn’t sit down.

My hair was in my eyes and sticking to my wet face and the stream running from my nose but I didn’t have the energy to lift my arm and push it away. I told him it was because I was so tired. He said I needed to speak up, and asked if I was having thoughts about hurting myself. I said no, I said I just wanted to not exist any more and asked if there was something he could give me that would make me go away, but in a way that wouldn’t hurt anyone or make a mess. Then I stopped talking because he said I seemed more intelligent than that, sounding frustrated.

Although I didn’t look up from the spot of floor I had been staring at since I was put into the room, I sensed him looking at my notes, then heard the door open, suck across the lino and click shut. He was gone for so long that I began to believe the hospital had closed and I was alone, locked in. I scratched my wrists and stared at the floor. He came back, it felt like hours later. Patrick was with him. I didn’t know how he knew where I was, and I was filled with shame because he had to come home for me, his miserable wife slumped in a plastic hospital chair, too stupid even to raise her head.

They talked about me between themselves. I heard the doctor say, ‘Listen, I can find her a bed but it would be an NHS facility and,’ more quietly, ‘you’ll know that public psych wards are not nice places.’ I didn’t interrupt. ‘In my opinion, she’s better off going home.’ He said, ‘I can give her something that will calm her down and we can touch base in the morning.’

Patrick crouched beside my chair, holding the armrest, and moved my hair. He asked me if I felt like I should go in, just for a bit. He said it was up to me. I said no thank you. I had always been too afraid to be among those people in case they didn’t think it was weird I was there. In case the doctors wouldn’t let me go. I wanted Patrick to grab me by the wrists and drag me there so that I did not have to decide. I wanted him not to believe me when I said it was fine.

‘Are you sure?’

I said yes, and pushed my hair off my face properly as I stood up. I said he didn’t have to worry, I just needed some sleep.

The doctor said, ‘There we go, she’s already perking up.’

Patrick drove us back without speaking. His expression was blank. At home, he could not get his key in the lock and, just once, he kicked the base of the door. It was the most violent thing I have ever seen him do.

In the bathroom I took all of what the doctor had given me without reading the dose, took off my clothes and the swimsuit, which had left red lines all over my body, and slept for twenty-three hours. In brief moments of consciousness, I would open my eyes and see Patrick sitting in a chair in the corner of our room. I saw that he had put a plate of toast on the bedside table. Later, that he’d taken it away again. I said sorry, but I’m not sure it was ever out loud.

He was in the living room when I finally woke up and went out to find him. It was dark outside. He said, ‘I was going to get pizza.’

‘Okay.’

I sat down on the sofa. Patrick moved his arm so that I could be against his side, facing into him, with my knees up so that I was a ball. I never wanted to be anywhere except for there. Patrick, working around me, called the delivery place.

I ate. It made me feel better. We watched a movie. I told him I was sorry for what had happened. He said it was fine … everyone has etc.

*

I met Ingrid for lunch in Primrose Hill. It was the first time she had left the baby, even though he was eight months old. I asked her if she missed him. She said she felt like she had just got out of high security prison.

We had manicures, went to a film and talked through it until a man in the next row asked us to please put a sock in it. We walked to the Heath, looked at the Ladies’ Pond, swam in our knickers. We laughed our heads off.

As we walked back through the park, a teenage boy approached us and said, ‘Are you the sisters from that band?’ Ingrid said we were. He said, ‘Go on then, sing us something.’ She told him we were on vocal rest.

I felt intensely good. I didn’t tell Ingrid that a week ago, the same day, I was in hospital because I had forgotten.

Patrick never mentioned it again but a short time later he said maybe we should leave London, in case London was the problem. At the beginning of winter, tenants took over our flat and we moved to the Executive Home.





24

AS WE WERE driving out of London, following our removal truck, Patrick asked me if I would consider making friends in Oxford. Even if I didn’t want to and I was only doing it for him, he didn’t mind. He just didn’t want me to start hating it too soon. He said, at least until we’ve unloaded the car.

I was in the passenger seat looking for pictures of Drunk Kate Moss on my phone to send to Ingrid because at the time we were communicating primarily by that means. She was four weeks pregnant, not intentionally, and she said seeing seeing pap shots of Kate Moss falling out of Annabel’s with her eyes a bit shut was the only way she was getting through the day at this point.