The Love of My Life(66)

He’s right, tho – I probably shouldn’t be going to see E. Thing is, I like her. Kind of reminds me of me, at her age.

Anyway. Must get stuff together and go visit her.

November 2nd, 2000

Oh God. Oh God, oh God.

Last 24 hours playing over and over in my head.

The most horrifying of all horrifying things.

Yesterday I went to visit Emily at the MBU and found her trying to smother Charlie.

Was frazzled when I arrived which probably hasn’t helped with the stress – J and I had had a fight before I left: he actually asked me if I was trying to change Emily’s mind about the adoption. (What kind of monster does he think I am?)

I was walking down the corridor towards Emily’s room and thought I heard laughter and a game of peekaboo. But it must have been someone else, because when I walked through her door, she was trying to suffocate Charlie with a pillow.

I screamed, managed to stop her. Alarms going off, chaos, they took me away but I could hear her crying and begging them to give Charlie back as I left the ward.

I honestly thought she was getting better – a lot better – but she must have relapsed. I know she loves him. She wouldn’t dream of hurting him in her right mind.

Would do anything to get that image of the pillow out of my mind. I just can’t stand it.

J was right. I should never have visited her.





Chapter Forty-Two


EMILY


I knew nothing until the moment Janice Rothschild was in the room, screaming ‘STOP! Emily! Stop!’

I froze. People ran in.

Janice said something to a nurse, who tried to take Charlie away, so I held on. Janice was taken out of the room. She was crying. One of her hands was over her mouth, as if she’d just been sick, or witnessed something too terrible to comprehend. Seconds later, Shazia arrived.

I didn’t know what was happening, only that it was bad. They’d reduced my antipsychotic drugs two days ago. Had I done something crazy? I tried to rewind the last hour but nothing was there, just a red sea of panic. A guitar riff played over and over in my ears, as if to stop me remembering.

‘Help me,’ I said. ‘Shazia, what are they doing?’

Shazia, who seemed shaken for the first time since I’d arrived here, crouched down next to my bed, where I was sitting, holding onto Charlie.

‘We have to talk to you,’ she said. ‘Away from Charlie. Can you give him to me, Emily?’

I started crying. ‘Why? What have I done? Why can’t he stay? Why can’t I hold him?’

Shazia put both hands on my knees. ‘Will you trust me?’ she asked. ‘Will you trust me to take him away so I can talk to you for a few minutes, and then bring him back to you?’

I sobbed as I put my tiny boy into her arms. I knew without having to ask that I had no choice in the matter.

‘What happened?’ Shazia said, when she came back without him. ‘What were you doing, Emily? What do you remember?’

I told her I didn’t know. I told her this again and again, my voice upwelling with panic. What did everyone think I’d done? Why had Janice screamed at me?

‘What’s wrong with Charlie?’ I asked. ‘Is he sick?’

She told me they’d checked him over and he seemed fine. By then I was sobbing again. Whatever it was I’d done, it was serious.

After a while Shazia took my hand and let me into room where we found the psychiatrist who came every morning. There was an unknown man, too, who said he was a social worker. He had huge liquid eyes, and I could see in them that I’d done something wrong, no matter how much he did that one-sided smile people did when they felt bad for you but couldn’t afford to be warm.

Shazia sat me down and told me Janice had found me trying to smother Charlie.

There was an opaque silence. I stared at them, they stared back. And I started to say ‘No,’ when I saw it: Charlie, on my bed, a rectangle of pale blue over his face. My heart stopped as I framed and reframed the image, but there was no editing it. The hands holding the blue rectangle were mine.

The three people in the room watched me. There was a clock with a battery running low, the second hand kicking uselessly between 3 and 4.

I ran through the image once again. Charlie’s face, smiling, then disappearing from view as I lowered a blue rectangle over his face. A cushion? A folded jumper?

I let out a strange sound. It was my pillow.

‘Janice is – she could be right,’ I whispered, incredulous. My life creased beneath my feet. ‘I think – Oh God, no.’

‘Oh God no, what?’ Shazia prompted.

I closed my eyes. ‘I think she’s right.’

‘Are you sure?’ Shazia asked. I opened my eyes. ‘I mean—’

The social worker shot her a look, and she stopped. ‘Just tell us what happened, as and when you remember the details,’ she said, gently.

I thought about it again, about that pillow. Was my intention to smother him? Really? That little boy, who was already the love of my life?

There was a sharp movement in my abdomen, a fire-like pain. That was exactly what my intention had been. The pillow down on his face, so he’d be safe, away from me and this cruel world.

I screamed at them for reducing my medication. I told you I wasn’t ready. I told you!