Pulse(101)

It had made them laugh but, even so, there remained a vacant blankness in their eyes as if the mental image of their dead mother, her head blown clean away, was still large in their imagination.

As it was in mine.

Only time would be the healer.

Much to Grant’s irritation, the police had also taken away his prized five iron. It was his favourite club, and mine too now – I would never again complain when he spent his Saturday mornings at the local golf course.

My eating had improved, not yet back to what others might refer to as ‘normal’, but definitely improved. And that too, I was sure, was down to the events of that traumatic night.

To have had my mortality so manifestly paraded in front of my eyes, only to have the gift of life miraculously restored, provided me with a totally new perspective on relative values. I had finally reached a place of serenity and peace when I was more comfortable in my own body – a place where I no longer always needed to be the thinnest person around.

And the fact that Grant had risked his own life to save mine gave me a trust in him that had been absent previously: a trust in his love, a trust in his faithfulness, and a trust in his intentions.

I no longer lied to him, and I stopped breaking my promises.

Instead, I started believing that Grant really did want me to get well and I became determined not to disappoint him. I’d even put on seven pounds without yearning to lose it all again, and sex between us was back on the agenda, albeit occasional and tentative.

I had cut down on my medications but there was still quite a long way to go in that regard.

Perhaps you never really recover from depression or an eating disorder, you only learn to live with them, keeping them under wraps like badly behaved dogs, hoping that they won’t escape and bite you, your friends or your family.

Except that the dogs are within you and can’t simply be muzzled or sent off to a rehoming centre. The trick is controlling them rather than letting them control you.

I came out of the courtroom after another particularly gruelling session of cross-examination to find Detective Constable Filippos waiting in the lobby.

‘How do you think it’s going?’ I asked him.

‘Very well,’ he said, smiling. ‘The defence counsel made a huge error there in attacking your credibility over your depression. I was watching the jury. They were obviously sympathetic and believed your every word. Harris is going down, no doubt about it.’

I admired the policeman’s confidence, and shared it – even I couldn’t see how Big Biceps was going to beat this rap.

Mike Sheraton came out of the court and, for a second, we stood facing one other, only a couple of feet apart. The last time I’d been this close to him, he’d been holding my legs down on a bed while Fred ‘Crusher’ Harris and Rupert Forrester forced cocaine into my mouth.

He said nothing, just nodded at me once and turned away.

I stood silently staring at his back as he walked towards the exit, without so much as the slightest tingle appearing in my fingers.

‘Dr Rankin,’ said DC Filippos with concern, ‘are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said.

I really was.