Chapter Twenty Eight

Jessica hadn’t arrived yet. This time I kept my eyes open and I saw her come in through the doorway. I’d already bought her a drink. As she walked towards me, I thought she looked more there than she had before, her colours brighter, her outline more defined. I considered this for a moment and then shoved the thought away.

“Hey, Maudie,” she said, sitting down. “Thanks for the drink. And for meeting me.”

“No problem,” I said, as if it hadn’t been a matter for agonised decision. I had wondered how she was going to play it, our meeting after her horrible revelations of the last. I’d seen people confess something and then act as if the recipient of their confession had done something wrong. I’d done it myself. I remember the first time I told Margaret about what had happened to Jessica, and my part in it, and how I’d felt afterwards – angry at Margaret; ashamed, embarrassed. I wondered how I’d react when I next saw Becca. She’d phoned a couple of times but I couldn’t face speaking to her.

Jessica didn’t seem to be feeling that. Perhaps she’d told her awful story so many times it had ceased to hurt so much. Perhaps she didn’t feel ashamed – and really, why should she be ashamed? She’d come through the other side, she had got through it, she’d reinvented herself as a new person. I remembered that she had been through therapy, was, for all I knew, still in therapy. It made me feel another pull towards her – it was something else that we shared. Suddenly, I wanted to tell her about my own breakdown, to show her that there were bad things in my life too, that she wasn’t alone.

“You said you’d been in therapy,” I said, rather hesitatingly. Jessica nodded. I took a deep breath. “I have too.”

“You have?”

“I’m still going  - I mean, I have a therapist – Margaret – she’s great. I go at least once or twice a month. It’s mostly – no, it’s all because of what happened. With you.”

She looked sober. “With me?”

Despite my good intentions, I was struggling. I didn’t want to say what I was going to say. It brought back all the bad memories, the same feelings surfacing; guilt, shame, misery, despair. “I felt so guilty. If I’d only gone with you – or I’d stopped you going – or told Angus what we were going to do – or anything – then it wouldn’t have happened.”

“You don’t know that,” said Jessica. “We both could have–”

“Could have what?”

“Well, that’s just it,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.”

“But it wasn’t good.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

We both lapsed into silence. I wondered what she was thinking.

“Anyway,” she said, after a moment. “You were telling me about your therapist.”

"Margaret," I said. "Yes."

"Is that her name? Is she good?"

"Yes."

"And you go – because of what happened in Cornwall?"

I hesitated for a second. “It's also because of what happened to me when I was twenty-six." I started with the simplest explanation. "I went through a bad time."

"A bad time?"

I stared down at the table. "That's putting it mildly. I went - I had - I had an episode." It was still so hard to say the words. I tried again. "I mean, I was ill, became ill. Mentally ill, I mean."

"Oh," said Jessica. "That's not good."

I tried to smile. "No, it wasn't."

"What happened? Did you - what happened?"

I drained my glass. "I need another one of these."

Jessica went and got us both a drink. While she was at the bar, I thought back to that time; the dark figures, the jumble of images in my head. The mess that was left over; the fragments of myself that had to be stitched back together again.

"I saw things," I said, when she was sat back down again. "I saw figures. They were people at first and then as I got worse they started changing. They were dark figures, like they were wearing black cloaks."

"That sounds awful”, said Jessica. “Where did you see them?"

"Everywhere. In the street. In the doorway to my bedroom. I had a - I have a thing about doorways too, I can't bear them to be half open, they have to be open or shut, not half way...." I trailed off. It sounded so stupid said aloud.

"Did you hear voices too?" she asked.

I grimaced. "Not really. Sort of. It was more sort of thoughts, bad thoughts." I was silent for a moment. "I mean, it’s still to do with Cornwall and the stones and everything but... it sort of... coalesced. It all began to – weigh on me."

"It sounds awful."

"It was. I – I was struggling – I kept seeing these figures and I thought... I had these irrational thoughts, horrible thoughts that everyone, well, hated me. Was after me.”

I stopped, unable to continue for a moment. Jessica’s eyes were wide.

“Everyone hated you?”

I heaved a sigh. “Well, no they didn’t.  I mean, the figures weren't real, they were just things my brain was making up out of - of memories and shadows and things. Obviously. But – oh, it was so silly but so real to me then – I got badly paranoid, I thought people were keeping things from me and then I thought they were out to – to harm me. My mental state was – bad, it was really bad.”

“No shit.”

“At the worst time, the very worst, I thought – I thought they were going to kill me.”

Jessica looked at me in silence. We drank quickly, filling the gaps in conversation with nervous gulps.

“What did your dad do?” said Jessica, eventually.

“Do?”

“Yes,” she said. “Did he realise? I mean, were you living at home?”

"I wasn’t to start with, when it started happening," I said. “I was working at this really boring office job. I got fired. I mean, I was getting worse by the day. I was – acting irrationally.”

“So, what happened?”

“I did go home. After a while. I was getting too scared of London, all I could think about were these figures, these people, following me. I didn’t know where to go, I didn’t know where was safe.”

“God, Maudie,” said Jessica. “Even hearing that gives me the shivers. You must have been terrified.”

“Angus didn’t deal with it too well,” I said, after a moment. “At least, I don’t think he really realised how ill I was. Or that’s what I thought until I found out about my mother.”

“Your mother? With the crash?”

“Exactly.”

She blew out her cheeks and sat back in her chair.

"Angus - Angus and Aunt Effie - they couldn't deal with it. I know why now, because of my mother and what happened to her. I guess-” I could my voice breaking, “I guess they thought they were doing the right thing. Or maybe they didn't care, maybe they just couldn't deal with another round of doctors and hospitals and general scandal. I guess they thought everyone would say 'oh look, like mother like daughter, they're all mad in that family, what do you expect?' Angus was always one for appearances." I couldn't stop my face twisting at that. "It was always, like, paper over the cracks, hide what really happened, pretend everything is normal-”

I stopped talking. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears, feel it thudding through my forehead.

"Maudie?" said Jessica, after a moment.

I still couldn't speak. I had that feeling, yet again, of having my foot on the edge of a precipice. One false move and I'd be over and falling.

"Maudie?"

I picked up my nearly empty glass - what wine was left sloshed about in my shaky grasp. I drained it.

"I think they were in denial," I said. "They probably couldn’t believe they’d have to go through it all again. They should have had me sectioned, they should have at least taken me to the hospital for assessment..."