White Bodies(32)

So, this is the truth. He is dangerous, but I collude in and encourage that danger. He has never harmed me against my will. And in so many ways he is good for me. He helps me go through the countless TV scripts that come my way. Most of the parts are lame, stale old clichés—sexy forensic pathologist, love interest for some ancient actor trying to resurrect his flagging career. I’m practically screaming; I’m desperate for something original. And Felix helps me sift through the dross. He’s a genius with comments in the margins, the general theme being You can do better than this, Tilda. He’s right. I should wait until something outstanding or challenging comes along, something worth investing in. I had hoped to play Rachel in My Cousin Rachel, but Felix thought the script was mediocre.

He’s generous too. Always buying me beautiful clothes and jewelry, and he offered to pay for the therapy that you need. We discussed your pathologically suspicious mind and your obsession with us, and I told him how you used to be with Liam and me. How you used to sit on your bike outside Liam’s house when I was in there, monitoring the bedroom window. Liam called you our little stalker—did you know that? I felt terrible back then because I knew you were unhappy and I couldn’t help. And it’s the same now, as I write this. I see you as pathetic, so lacking in a life of your own that you need to fixate on mine—and I want to help you, Callie. I really do.





16


Her letter leaves me breathless. I pace the flat, weak legs and spinning head, then I go into the kitchen searching for alcohol, wanting to get drunk. I had had no idea of Tilda’s disdain for me, no suspicion that she saw me as a pitiful parasite, dependent on and captivated by her wonderfulness. Nor did I realize that she thinks of me as broken, and feels guilty because she can’t fix me, that she pities me. I find a bottle of red wine at the back of a cupboard and, hand shaking, I unscrew the top, pouring it into a large tumbler, drinking it down, wishing that she were in my room right now, beside me, so that I could argue. I’d tell her she’s wrong, that she has everything back-to-front. I’d say, “You’re the damaged one! Look at yourself: you need the spotlight so much, you’re nothing without the adoration of others. And your behavior with Felix isn’t normal. You’re sick—remember your past!”

I’d remind her of Liam and that day long ago when she went off to the Nelson Mandela estate determined not to be angry about Mary Strickland. She left our house, all attitude, wearing her pink skinny jeans, saying, “It’s bloody nothing, I’m sure of it.They’re just friends,” while I stayed behind in her bedroom, slipping under the purple duvet, feeling like I was under her skin. I was so comfortable that I fell asleep there, and when I woke it was to the phone ringing and Tilda sniveling down the line: “Tell Mum to come and get me, now; I can’t walk.” I waited while Mum took the car the three-minute journey to Liam’s house and, anticipating trouble, I went downstairs to make hot chocolate for the three of us.

When they returned, Mum ushered her straight up the stairs, arm protectively around her shoulders, while Tilda seemed unable to hold herself straight. Once in bed, she curled up, clutching her stomach, black mascara-filled tears sticking to her cheeks. She couldn’t even look at the hot chocolate, and it went cold on the bedside table.

This was the beginning of Tilda’s breakdown. After that day, we became accustomed to hearing raw, hacking coughs emanating from the bathroom, as she made herself vomit after meals, and in the following months, she started cutting her arms—short, untidy slashes made with Mum’s kitchen knives or bathroom razors. At school she was the center of attention, her friends huddling around while she displayed her wounds, and they tried to console her with condemnation of that devious bitch Mary Strickland and the fuckwit Liam Brookes, reminding her of how beautiful she is, and how she’ll soon find another boyfriend. But Tilda remained inconsolable and, in fact, deteriorated further, until her friends become bored by her self-pity and dared to suggest that she was overreacting. Mum said that every teenager goes through it—being rejected—and that you just have to carry on and make the best of things. She even used the phrase “plenty more fish in the sea.” But I found the intensity of Tilda’s feelings understandable. She had loved Liam and thought he would be part of her life forever.

Gradually she became unable to manage the simplest tasks. She lost the ability to write, other than in big, jerky infantile script, and she could no longer do maths; she could barely write out numbers, let alone compute them. Mum, Tilda and I dutifully attended “family counseling” with an expert named Gary Moyse, who wore corduroy and occupied a squashy armchair that smelled of cigarettes. Tilda generally sat silently, and when she did manage to say something, it came out in a fierce whisper: “It’s no good, all this, you can’t cure me.” And Gary Moyse said, “That’s what we call black-and-white thinking, Tilda. Let’s see if we can think of positive aspects. Those things that make us feel warm inside.” “Kittens,” I said, as disgusted with him as Tilda was. Mum was the only one to make a proper effort, talking about the first magnolias of spring, her creative achievements with paint, a holiday we once had in Majorca. But I felt like crying for her, trying so hard to make things better for Tilda when she had her own cancer to think about.

We saw Gary every fortnight, but Tilda refused to get any better. She clung to her grief and desolation, and her self-harming and bulimia became worse. While her school friends were taking their qualifying exams, she became an inpatient at an addiction unit for teenagers at a Victorian hospital in south London, where the doctors medicalized her character, offering us no answers that made sense. There was talk of her codependency, of her addictive personality, of something called a borderline personality disorder; one doctor mentioned the word narcissism. It seemed like every specialist wanted to recruit Tilda for his own diseased community—and I was proud of her when she refused to cooperate. By the age of eighteen she’d been in hospital twice, and she’d acquired a permanent aura of fragility and frailty. But somehow she retained her old charm—that ability to switch in an instant from intensity to a beautiful, vague otherworldliness, and back again. Also, she managed to build herself up from skeletal to merely thin.