He Said/She Said(76)

Staring into my own dark heart like that, is it any wonder I went mad?

At home, Kit was valiantly making spaghetti on our crappy little two-ring cooker, concern peeping out from behind his smile. He’ll never look at me like that again if I tell him about the trial, I realised. I can never make that call. A strange feeling rode in on the wake of that thought; the hairs on my arms standing up in a wave, as though disturbed by a breeze, even though the air was thick with steam.

‘This is good,’ I said over supper. The pasta was slightly overcooked, the way we both liked it.

‘Thanks,’ said Kit distractedly. His eyes didn’t seem able to meet mine, but kept dropping to somewhere near my plate.

‘What?’ I set my fork down.

‘It’s just, could you stop scratching? It’s really annoying.’

I followed his gaze to my forearms and was shocked to see them latticed with red lines. ‘I didn’t even know I was doing it,’ I said, but I was suddenly aware of a low-level tickle on my skin. It felt as if I was walking through a wood in which webs trailed from every branch of every tree.

‘Have we bought a different kind of washing powder or something? Maybe you’re allergic to an ingredient or something.’ He jumped up to check the cupboard under the sink. ‘No, it’s the same one.’

Now it felt as though the branches themselves were scraping at my skin. The scratch marks were rising into welts.

‘What if it’s some kind of delayed smoke inhalation?’ I asked. ‘Or nerve damage?’ I didn’t feel right on the inside either; there was a whirring in my chest, like something was trying to drill its way out.

With his good hand, Kit tilted my chin to look at my neck, then lifted my top to examine my belly and back. ‘It must be a localised reaction to something. It’s only on your arms.’

My skin was on fire all night. When I at last dropped off, I dreamed of my mother covering insect bites with calamine lotion, and woke with tears in my eyes and blood under my fingernails. The alarm clock display jumped from 8.20 to 8.21.

‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’ I said, bursting into the sitting room where Kit was at his laptop, the modem lights glowing beside him.

‘You’re not going to work, I’ve called in sick,’ he said. ‘I’ve got you an emergency appointment at the GPs.’

‘For a bit of itching?’ I felt wired and edgy, like I’d drunk a whole pot of coffee.

He took my face in his hands. ‘Whatever this is, we’ll get through it together, ok?’

‘You do think it’s because of the fire?’ I started to shake.

‘You know I’d look after you whatever, don’t you?’ he said.

I only found out later that Kit had been awake all night looking up neuropathic itching on the internet, and coming up with a shortlist of degenerating conditions. He was as relieved as I was surprised by the GP’s brisk diagnosis.

‘You’re having a panic attack, dear,’ she said. ‘Hardly surprising given what you’ve both been through.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘This is physical.’

‘It’s psychosomatic,’ corrected the doctor. ‘The human mind’s a tricky old sod. I’m going to prescribe a steroid cream to calm your skin and some Diazepam to give you a bit of breathing space, and I’m going to refer you to a counsellor so you can nip this in the bud before it gets out of control. It’s a seven-week wait for counselling on the NHS. Can you pay to fast-track?’

All I could think of was the day’s missed work, and Kit’s hand, healing more slowly than the doctors had predicted.

‘Yes,’ said Kit instantly.

I beat the urge to scratch until we were on the pavement outside, when the itch was almost overpowering. I attacked already broken skin with my fingernails. Kit circled my forearms with his one good hand and held them fast when I tried to pull away. Beth’s voice came to me. You don’t realise how much stronger than us they are.

I couldn’t get away from her. My thoughts folded in on themselves. Just because she’s mad doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.

Would I ever be sure?



The counsellor they sent me to was good at overcoming the physical symptoms of anxiety; mindfulness techniques and exercises that could train my soma to outwit the psyche and get the prickling and shivering under control. But I could never tell her what I alone knew to be the root cause of the problem. The counsellor wasn’t stupid: she knew I was holding back. Sometimes I thought about making up some childhood trauma to explain things away. In my darkest session, I thought about attributing it to grief at the loss of my mother.

Kit got me through it. He had saved my life twice: once in the fire and again, every day, every night, when he would get up with me and play cards and watch back-to-back Seinfeld DVDs in the small hours, brushing my hair, stroking it, plaiting it, while I fought the urge to scratch at my arms. I was so caught up in my own secret, self-imposed hell that it’s only now I appreciate how much he sacrificed to look after me. It was out of the question that I continue to work, and no matter how much teaching work he took on there was no way he could support us both on the bursary for his doctorate. As soon as his consultant gave his scarred hand the all-clear, he took a part-time, temporary job as a technical assistant in a high-street opticians, snapping cheap lenses into spectacle frames where once he had stared through high-grade lenses at stars without name. He never once complained that it was beneath him.