Flora was surprised to get Toby on the phone last night. She’d called him to give him an update on the situation of a distressed student who lived at Addison Court, expecting to leave a voicemail because she knew that where Ruth and Toby were staying was off grid, but to her surprise, Toby answered his phone.
What culminated last night had begun months ago when one of Toby’s students, a young woman called Lexi MacKay, suffered a swift and serious decline in her mental health.
Lexi had tried to access the university’s mental health services, but they’d been unhelpful and couldn’t offer her an appointment for weeks, when she needed one urgently. The duty doctor could only offer her twenty minutes and she finished that appointment with a prescription for antidepressants that she didn’t want to take.
She was desperate, her behavior was deteriorating and after she began to write accusatory letters to lecturers, including Toby, he’d asked Flora for help. Lexi, he said, was likely to be expelled from the university if she continued to behave like this without intervention. But she was very talented.
And there was another complication. Toby didn’t want Ruth to know. It was news to Flora, but apparently Ruth’s tendency to be possessive of Toby had escalated since she’d become pregnant. She was liable to be touchy about his female students, anyhow, but after intercepting a letter from Lexi she’d had a fit. Toby didn’t think Ruth would be understanding now if she learned that he wanted to help this young woman. And Lexi badly needed help.
We should never have hidden this from my daughter, Flora thinks. The time to tell her would have been after Lexi’s death, when she and Toby, reeling from their failure to help Lexi, had taken further action.
But Ruth had started drinking by then and was refusing to listen to either of them.
Flora and Toby carried on working together and kept it a secret. They were very concerned that there might be copycat deathsafter Lexi’s suicide. It was a known phenomenon at other institutions and could affect other students, just like Lexi, whose rapid decline had come out of a clear blue sky.
While Toby and Flora worked hard to shift the gears at the university to put some official support measures in place, it was obvious that any response was going to be woefully slow and likely to be underfunded and inadequate. In desperation, they’d organized an unofficial group of volunteers who would aim to respond to students in poor mental health immediately.
Last night, a call came in from Lexi’s best friend, a young woman called Laura, also one of Toby’s students. Flora took it. Stuck at home with Alfie, she organized another volunteer to visit Laura. When she rang Toby to let him know what was going on, intending to leave a voicemail, she was surprised to catch him in person.
“Boring story but I had to stay in Bristol tonight,” he said. “A last-minute thing. I’m traveling up to the barn at the crack of dawn tomorrow.”
He listened as Flora told him about Laura, a shy but sweet student, who had rung feeling desperate, with suicidal thoughts.
“Who’s on the rota for a visit?” he said.
“Becky.”
“She’s pretty inexperienced. I might go with her.”
Flora wasn’t sure. She thought he needed a break. “Go to bed, Toby. And go away on your weekend. Becky and I have it in hand.”
But he insisted, spending most of the night at the Addison Court building with Becky, both of them talking to Laura. It was, apparently, a necessary and successful intervention. They would ensure follow-up.
And now, yet again, Ruth has twisted it into something ugly.
It’s imperative that they’re honest with her from this point onwards, Flora thinks and regrets bitterly that they haven’t been from the start. But now’s the moment to intervene with some muscle.We cannot handle this as a family any longer. We’ve helped our students but failed Ruth. We didn’t recognize the seriousness of what was going on right under our noses and that’s unforgivable.
She tries to soothe the baby, but he’s red-faced and screaming by the time she gets her phone out of her bag.
She dials 999 and over the baby’s cries she lets the police know that her daughter’s out on the roads, driving drunk from her home address to the house of a woman called Edie Porter, and that Flora’s very afraid that Ruth or someone else will come to harm.
I take Toby’s car keys from my pocket and hold them up beside the driver’s side window. He turns toward me slowly. It looks like it’s dawning on him how much trouble he’s in.
I jingle the keys and smile, but he doesn’t reciprocate. I guess he’s finally lost his sense of humor.
He reaches for the door handle.
The moment he steps out, we’re going to take a little walk together, out of sight of Imogen.
But before I understand what’s happened, I’m staggering backwards, bent over. I fall onto my backside and then the pain kicks in across my thighs and my abdomen, my groin. He slammed the car door into me.
I try to stand up, but the pain is white hot. I’m so stupid. He approaches me and I’m afraid because he could kick the life out of me, but he stoops and picks up his car keys from where they fell from my hand. I lunge toward him and clasp his leg right behind the knee and he goes down fast, sprawling, and crawls out of my reach.
He staggers up before I can. As he gets into his car, I’m on my feet, fighting the pain, tears streaming from my eyes. But I’m too slow. He backs down the driveway toward my car, and swerves wildly as he reaches it, clipping the front bumper and Edie’s gatepost.He’s stuck momentarily but accelerates, and after moments of wheel spinning his car gets traction and explodes out onto the lane.
The sound of the impact is shattering.
In the aftermath all I can hear is my own ragged breathing. I look at the house. No sign of Imogen.
