The Things You Didn't See(29)

Then I hear a breathy voice, coming from the study.

‘Daniel, I’m begging you.’

I imagine animal positions and ecstasy as they fuck on his desk and I double over, hands on my knees, not knowing what to do or which way to turn. I don’t have the strength to go through this. I’d rather kill him.

I remember my advice to Trish. I think of the can of worms I can’t afford to open, the violence I’m capable of if I open that door.

I creep away. While my partner finishes fucking another woman, I flee. Downstairs, in the kitchen, I carefully unpack my Waitrose bag, put the vegetables in the fridge, the cereal in the cupboard and the pink cake in the centre of the table.

I leave by the front door, closing it quietly behind me. I start my car, backing out of the driveway, and do a swift turn, driving down the street away from my house. Just two hundred yards along I bump against the kerb, scaring myself with an emergency stop. I’m shaking, unfit to drive, and still catching my breath when, in the rear-view mirror, I see the front door to my house opening and there she is, the other women. I slide down in my seat, but she isn’t even looking my way. She cuts a smart figure, in a trim business suit, a tall black woman carrying a briefcase. She has Egyptian features, finely cut cheeks and cat eyes – but her expression is stony.

I watch as Daniel follows her to her car, his hands in his pockets, his face impassive. They say goodbye and they don’t kiss, he doesn’t even smile as he waves her off with a single raised hand, dismissive. It was just a business meeting, that’s all. So, that’s how I know my paranoia is back.

I’m ill, and I need to fix myself before it spirals to a darker place, one from which the delusions are so strong I can’t claw out.

I stop speaking and open my eyes. Holly has stilled; she’s watching me. Between us, a moment is exchanged. ‘So now you know,’ I say. ‘I have a mental illness. It’s why no one believes me when I say Mum didn’t shoot herself.’





13

Holly

Cassandra stopped talking and bowed her head. Her face was pale and when she touched her lip, her fingers were shaking. Holly felt her distress, how her world seemed to be collapsing around her.

‘Come on. You need a break.’

Holly took Cassandra’s arm as they walked away from the Garrett Anderson Centre to the main part of the hospital where the café was situated, steeling herself as patients crossed their path. Choosing to help the injured was a conscious way for her to manage her synaesthesia, but it was still tricky being around so much physical pain – pain that she could sense in her own limbs. She’d learned a long time ago that she could only cope with feeling other people’s suffering if she could break it down into its individual components. She could then manage it or stop it entirely, like she had in the Poacher and Partridge at Halloween. This was what had motivated her to train as a paramedic, but she’d discovered that it also made her especially responsive to patients. In the emergency room, she had felt the most visceral, immediate pain and been able to respond using her medical training. It worked the same way with emotions too: she could sense what to ask, intuit what someone really felt. And now her attention was focused on Cassandra, whose story sounded in her brain like Morse code, tapping out a message about mental illness and a loosening grip on reality. Connecting with this form of pain felt like trying to hold water or fog – so much harder to fix than a flesh wound or broken bone. She felt Cassandra’s vulnerability as a sore bruise in the centre of her body, right where the heart sits, and it spun Holly back twenty years, back to Innocence Lane, back to the night everything changed.

‘Why don’t you go and find us a table and I’ll get us some food?’ Holly asked Cassandra, who immediately began looking around for the best place to sit. ‘What would you like?’

‘Anything that doesn’t contain pig or poultry, please. Living on a farm can do that to you.’

‘Cheese sandwich it is then. Drink?’

‘Green tea, please.’ She hesitated. ‘No, Daniel’s not here, so what the heck. I’ll have a double espresso.’

The woman in front of her in the queue had her lower leg in a brace, and with every step Holly was forced to concentrate on the menu board above their heads to stop her own leg from adopting the other woman’s pain. The café was masquerading as a Costa, but couldn’t overcome the hospital whiff of bleach and industrial-grade handwash, the odour that pervaded all the corridors and wards. Once she had Cassandra’s sandwich and espresso on the tray, she chose a bottle of water for herself and held it out to the cashier.

‘Could I have a glass for this, please? And a straw.’ She never got over her embarrassment asking for one, but straws placed a welcome barrier between her mouth and the glass, which if touched would leave the gritty taste of sand in her mouth. The woman ignored her, moving quickly away, her heavy eyelids and downturned mouth telling Holly she was too busy to deal with whims.

Holly didn’t ask again. She took her bottle and glass, with its solitary cube rattling around at the base, and placed it on her tray. She joined Cassandra at the table she’d chosen by the window and handed her the plate. ‘You’ll feel better if you eat something.’

It was different between them, now Cassandra had told her about her fragility and history of mental illness. A barrier had been broken.