It wasn’t a very good session with Margaret. I was nervous and distracted and kept running down into silence. I was worried she would smell the vodka on my breath which made me speak more haltingly than usual. I remembered to ask her for a prescription. As she was a psychiatrist, she was able to write them for me and had always done so, saving me a trip to the doctor’s surgery.

“Just sleeping pills?” she said. “Or do you think you might need the anti-depressants again?”

I wavered. I probably did need them but it seemed like such an admission of failure. “Just the sleeping pills,” I said, managing to sound quite firm.

I closed the front door without thinking of anything much. I tucked my scarf more firmly into my coat.

Then I saw her.  She was waiting for me on the other side of the street. She wore her black coat, of course; it swirled about her in the wind like an ink cloud. Her eyes were fixed on mine. I froze and shut my eyes.

I stood there, blind. The roar of cars passing echoed the thunder of my heartbeat. I opened my eyelids, quaking. Jessica was gone. Saliva rushed into my mouth and I turned aside for a moment, my hand going to my mouth, almost retching.

The worry of what other people would think still won out. I straightened up, putting my hand back in my pocket, trying to seem as if I didn’t care. I put one foot in front of the other, the wavering line of the pavement unrolling before my eyes. I reached the kerb and managed to look one way before stepping out into the road.

A horn blared. My legs went from under me, even as they got me to the opposite pavement. I felt them buckle and then the pavement was rough and cold under my palms. I was knee-down in the street, hair falling forward, the pain in my knees nothing compared to the public humiliation.

“No, I’m fine, thanks – I’m fine–”

I struggled upwards, the kind hands of some passerby shaken off and left behind. I staggered onwards, my knees smarting.

A taxi light glowed ahead of me. I hailed it, and almost fell in through its door. I didn’t dare look round, for fear of seeing her. I shrank back into the back seat of the taxi, shivering. I held onto my elbows with opposite hands, feeling the bones juddering underneath my palms.

When I got home I locked the front door - both locked, deadbolts - to keep out the dead.

I gasped all the way to the bedroom, to the vodka bottle in my underwear drawer. There wasn't as much left as I thought; there wasn't enough to work properly. My knees went again as I made my way to the bathroom. Vodka wasn't enough. I didn't really take pills, not when I didn’t need to, but this was just intolerable... I crawled the last ten yards on my hands and knees, tear drops marking my way, my knees smudging them into the carpet as I finally got there, scrabbling at the bathroom cabinet, fumbling for the pill bottle that had been hidden away, unneeded for so long. Got it, take it, bitter taste in the throat, scramble for the glass, chiming against the tap, water falling coolly over my unsteady fingers. I got the pill down my throat and sat back against the bath, laughing weakly.

After twenty minutes, when the Valium began to percolate through my system, I breathed in and out, in and out, slowing my heart beat, getting myself back under control. Come on, Maudie. I dropped my head back against the side of the bath, closed my eyes, and breathed. I conjured up Margaret in my mind, her colourful blouses, her comforting grey hair. What would she say to me now, if she were here?

Thinking of Margaret calmed me, somewhat. I knew she’d tell me that I wasn’t to be afraid, that there was always a logical explanation. What was the explanation here? I was feeling almost normal again. Even propped up as uncomfortably as I was, I could feel myself falling towards unconsciousness. It was an effort to sit up, to shake off the drowsiness. I got up, carefully, holding on to the side of the bath, wobbled my way down the corridor and fell onto the bed.

I slept for a while, or passed out, or something. The ring of the telephone woke me. I scrabbled my way out of a tangle of bedclothes – the duvet had clamped itself stickily around me – and reached for the phone, on autopilot. I had the receiver to my ear before I remembered why I shouldn’t.

There was the same crackle and hiss of static. My head was clearing of the sleep-fog – I’d almost got myself together enough to put the phone down. Then, sighing from the receiver, came Jessica’s voice, insinuating, mocking; Maudie, Maudie...

I gasped and slammed the phone down. I felt as if the trail of her whisper had seeped into the room; I could almost see it, a thin, dark wisp of smoke curling and writhing around the room. The phone rang again, bringing a thin little shriek of fright to my lips. I grabbed up the receiver. “What do you want?”

Silence again. Then a little, soft laugh. “What do you think?”

Her voice had changed. It was harder, colder, little chips of ice in my ear. For the first time I could hear South London in her voice, a guttural undercurrent.

I took a deep breath. “Jessica, I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you–”

“You bitch, Maudie,” she said, almost conversationally, cutting across me. “Don’t give me that. How could you do that to me? Do you know how long I’ve waited for my parents?”

“I’m sorry,” I said again, nearly crying.

“It’s too late now for sorry.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I could feel myself shrinking, pulling back within myself.

There was a moment’s silence. Then she spoke through what sounded like clenched teeth. “I want you to suffer. I want you to suffer like I’ve suffered.”

“But why?” I was almost incoherent, my voice shaking.

“You know why. You’re guilty. It’s your fault.”

She sounded like a different person. Where was the girl I'd laughed with, hugged, sat and drank with? She sounded as if she were reciting something, a speech she'd learned not particularly well. Perhaps something she'd been telling herself for years.

"You don't mean that," I said eventually.

"Don't tell me what I mean and don't mean," she said. "You don't know me. You don't have any idea what it feels like."

"I don't, but-"

"You met me, again and again, and you never told me. I bet you were laughing at me all that time!"

"No." For a moment I couldn't say anything else.

Jessica pressed on. "It's your fault, Maudie. Your fault this happened. You know it is. You know it is."

“Leave me alone.”  Even to my own ears, I sounded ten years old.

She laughed again, and I felt a clutch inside me, as if a giant, cold hand had grabbed my insides. “I’ll never leave you alone. You think I’m going to leave you, now that I’ve found you? Now that I’ve got you?”

 The phone went down with a sharp crack.

What was wrong with me? Was there something about me – some poisonous, glowing halo – which other people could see, to which I was oblivious? What was it about me that marked me out for things such as this? I put my hands up to my eyes, screwing my face up. I tried to think of Matt, as something to calm me, but somehow that just made things worse. I crawled back to the bedroom and under the bedclothes. Perhaps it would be best if I never got up again. With that dark thought to sustain me, I lay there, hearing Jessica’s parting words ricochet around my head, until all about me was a mass of jeering malevolence.

Matt came back later that evening. As I heard the scrape of his key in the lock of the front door, I wondered vaguely where he’d been. I'd managed to get out of bed and was sat on the sofa, wrapped around with the duvet. The heating was on full blast but I was still cold. I'd drunk two bottles of wine and the empty bottles were still on the coffee table. I didn't care if he saw them. I was beyond caring.