‘Why would you like me to prescribe you antidepressants?’
‘Because I’m running out of options,’ I admit. ‘I’ve tried so hard, but I can’t bring myself out of this on my own.’
After the year I lost on high-strength antidepressants after Dylan’s death, I prefer to shy away from most medicines – even cold or flu remedies. So these are a last resort. My feelings of inadequacy have left me considering whether Maggie was right when she said I couldn’t handle stress. Perhaps I don’t have the coping mechanisms ordinary people have to deal with the day-to-day acceptance of failure and disappointments. Maybe that’s why I never tried to find Dad; it was the fear of taking a risk and being rejected by him a second time.
‘Have you thought about group counselling as a strategy? The NHS waiting list is lengthy but it’s shorter than for one-to-one and I’m happy to set the wheels in motion.’
‘I’m quite a private person, so I’d rather deal with it myself.’
I can tell that he’s still unsure, but eventually he wavers.
‘I don’t want a high dose,’ I point out as he begins typing up his notes. ‘I was prescribed them as a teenager and the side effects knocked me out for the best part of a year.’
‘When was that?’
‘In the mid-1990s. I don’t want to go through that again.’
Dr Kelly shakes his head. ‘They shouldn’t have those side effects,’ he says. ‘It’s normally drugs like lithium and valproate which do that. And they are only prescribed for conditions like bipolar. Are you absolutely sure they were antidepressants?’
‘Yes. I was taking them for about ten months.’
‘There’s nothing in your records to confirm this.’
I frown. ‘It was Dr King who prescribed them.’
‘Nope, there’s no mention of it at all. From what it says here, you didn’t see a doctor for around three years over that period.’
I sit back in my chair, puzzled. Why has it been omitted from my records?
‘I must have got my timings wrong,’ I say eventually, before Dr Kelly prints out my prescription and hands it to me.
‘I would still like you to consider counselling, though,’ he adds as I rise to my feet. ‘Sometimes it’s good to open up what you’ve got locked up in there.’ He taps his head. I thank him and leave, promising to give it consideration.
Later that night, my medical notes play on my mind. My eyes gravitate towards Mum on the sofa chuckling at a daft TV sketch show, her legs tucked under her bum. I wonder if I should bring the subject up.
For years I’ve believed Dr King made a home visit and, seeing my distress, prescribed me strong medication. But I can’t recall ever witnessing him here in the house or talking to me. Nor do I remember any follow-up house calls. I just accepted Mum’s word for it. As for his warning that if I didn’t take the tablets, the alternative was to commit me to a mental hospital – that also came from her. In fact, all of this came from her. Has she spent the last twenty-one years lying to me?No, I say to myself,there is no reason for her to do that.She must have just misunderstood what tablets he was giving me. I want to believe that, yet the niggle remains.
A Facebook alert gets my attention; a friend request from somebody I don’t recognise. I click the decline button because misery doesn’t always love company. It’s not fair of me to expect anyone else to share the space under my dark cloud.
CHAPTER 42
NINA
TWO YEARS EARLIER
I’m sitting in one of the library meeting rooms flicking through my phone when a second Facebook friend request pops up. This time I don’t ignore it. I push my packed lunch to one side and take a closer look.
It’s the same profile picture as yesterday, and belongs to a Bobby Hopkinson. I check to see if we have any friends in common but we don’t. Why is he so persistent? I assume he’s mixing me up with someone else. However, curiosity gets the better of me so I click the ‘Confirm’ icon; I can always block him later if necessary.
I’m not a regular user of social media. I have taken charge of the library’s Twitter feed and Facebook page but I do the bare minimum. In fact, I only took them on because nobody else could be bothered. As for my own Facebook account, I forget that I have it half the time. I set it up years ago on a whim and don’t look at it from one month to the next. Occasionally I’ll stalk some of the girls I went to school with in the hope that their lives have stalled like mine, but more often than not, their profiles are littered with photos of husbands, children, nice homes and sunny holidays. Then I block them in case they are tempted to make contact with me.
I take a peek at Bobby’s profile. He lives in the neighbouring county of Leicestershire, about forty-five minutes away from here. I check to see if it might be a fake profile but if it is, whoever is behind it has gone to a lot of effort because there are dozens and dozens more photos of him in albums dating as far back as 2011. It doesn’t mean that he hasn’t stolen someone else’s online life, though. The truth is, it could be anyone behind that keyboard. You read about people being catfished all the time. Perhaps he’s really a prisoner with access to a mobile phone, a serial killer or a professional scammer on the other side of the world. My paranoia is working twenty to the dozen today.
‘Hi,’ he says on Messenger.
Imaginative opener, I think.
I pause. Do I really want to engage in conversation with a stranger? I have nothing better to do for the next fifteen minutes until a client arrives, so I reply with a ‘Hello.’
