Normal People(54)

0 I feel the same about myself as ever

1 I have lost confidence in myself

2 I am disappointed in myself

3 I dislike myself



He looks up at the woman behind the glass. It strikes him now for the first time that they’ve placed a glass screen between this woman and the people in the waiting room. Do they imagine that people like Connell pose a risk to the woman behind the glass? Do they imagine that the students who come in here and patiently fill out the questionnaires, who repeat their own names again and again for the woman to type into her computer – do they imagine that these people want to hurt the woman behind the desk? Do they think that because Connell sometimes lies on his own floor for hours, he might one day purchase a semi-automatic machine gun online and commit mass murder in a shopping centre? Nothing could be further from his mind than committing mass murder. He feels guilty after he stammers a word on the phone. Still, he can see the logic: mentally unhealthy people are contaminated in some way and possibly dangerous. If they don’t attack the woman behind the desk due to uncontrollable violent impulses, they might breathe some kind of microbe in her direction, causing her to dwell unhealthily on all the failed relationships in her past. He circles 3 and moves on.

0 I don’t have any thoughts of killing myself

1 I have thoughts of killing myself, but I would not carry them out

2 I would like to kill myself

3 I would kill myself if I had the chance



He glances back over at the woman again. He doesn’t want to confess to her, a total strangParaer, that he would like to kill himself. Last night on the floor he fantasised about lying completely still until he died of dehydration, however long that took. Days maybe, but relaxing days in which he wouldn’t have to do anything or focus very hard. Who would find his body? He didn’t care. The fantasy, purified by weeks of repetition, ends at the moment of death: the calm, silent eyelid that closes over everything for good. He circles statement 1.

After completing the rest of the questions, all of which are intensely personal and the last one is about his sex life, he folds the pages over and hands them back to the receptionist. He doesn’t know what to expect, handing over this extremely sensitive information to a stranger. He swallows and his throat is so tight it hurts. The woman takes the sheets like he’s handing over a delayed college assignment and gives him a bland, cheerful smile. Thanks, she says. You can wait for the counsellor to call you now. He stands there limply. In her hand she holds the most deeply private information he has ever shared with anyone. Seeing her nonchalance, he experiences an impulse to ask for it back, as if he must have misunderstood the nature of this exchange, and maybe he should fill it out differently after all. Instead he says: Okay. He sits down again.

For a while nothing happens. His stomach is making a low whining noise now because he hasn’t eaten breakfast. Lately he’s too tired to cook for himself in the evenings, so he finds himself signing in for dinner on the scholars’ website and eating Commons in the Dining Hall. Before the meal everyone stands for grace, which is recited in Latin. Then the food is served by other students, who are dressed all in black to differentiate them from the otherwise identical students who are being served. The meals are always the same: salty orange soup to start, with a bread roll and a square of butter wrapped in foil. Then a piece of meat in gravy, with silver dishes of potatoes passed around. Then dessert, some kind of wet sugary cake, or the fruit salad which is mostly grapes. These are all served rapidly and whisked away rapidly, while portraits of men from different centuries glare down from the walls in expensive regalia. Eating alone like this, overhearing the conversations of others but unable to join in, Connell feels profoundly and almost unendurably alienated from his own body. After the meal another grace is recited, with the ugly noise of chairs pulled back from tables. By seven he has emerged into the darkness of Front Square, and the lamps have been lit.

A middle-aged woman comes out to the waiting room now, wearing a long grey cardigan, and says: Connell? He tries to contort his face into a smile, and then, giving up, rubs his jaw with his hand instead, nodding. My name is Yvonne, she says. Would you like to come with me? He rises from the couch and follows her into a small office. She closes the door behind them. On one side of the office is a desk with an ancient Microsoft computer humming audibly; on the other side, two low mint-coloured armchairs facing one another. Now then, Connell, she says. You can sit down wherever you like. He sits on the chair facing the window, out of which he can see the back of a concrete building and a rusting drainpipe. She sits down opposite him and picks up a pair of glasses from a chain around her neck. She fixes them on her face and looks down at her clipboard.

Okay, she says. Why don’t we talk about how you’re feeling?

Yeah. Not great.

I’m sorry to hear that. When did you start feeling this way?

Uh, he says. A couple of months ago. January, I suppose.

She clicks a pen and writes something down. January, she says. Okay. Did something happen then, or it just came on out of nowhere?

A few days into the new year, Connell got a text message from Rachel Moran. It was two o’clock in the morning then, and he and Helen were coming back from a night out. Angling his phone away, he opened the text: it was a group message that went out to all their school friends, asking if anyone had seen or been in contact with Rob Hegarty. It said he hadn’t been seen for a few hours. Helen asked him what the text said and for some reason Connell replied: Oh, nothing, just a group message. Happy New Year. The next day Rob’s body was recovered from the River Corrib.