‘What do you remember next?’
‘He punched me. Three times.’
It comes back to me in a flash. A repressed memory buried for almost two decades. A blow to the stomach and two to the side of the head. I didn’t burst my eardrum falling against a coffee table like I was told. Mum’s boyfriend did it. And now I remember her pulling him off me before he began kicking her in the face and stomach.
‘There was lots of screaming and the police came,’ I tell Dahl. ‘We never saw him again after that.’
‘You’re smiling,’ says Dahl. ‘Can I ask why?’
‘Because then it was me and her again. For a while. But then she got sad again, she started sleeping more and Maud came back. I don’t think Mum liked it being only me and her.’
‘Can I ask you more about her friend?’
I listen to myself as I describe Maud – her willowy body, angular features, pale face and unreadable eyes. She was like a dark cloud that descended upon us and remained for weeks.
‘Damon, I wonder if Maud was a real person.’
‘What? Of course she is.’
‘Did your mum ever use the word “depression”?’
‘No, she’d tell me Maud was on her way.’
‘How did they come to meet?’
‘She said she’d known her ever since she was a child, but that sometimes having her around felt like going for a walk with a huge bag of bricks strapped to her back. And more bricks keep being added the further she travels. Until finally, her knees buckle under the weight.’
‘Do you know the word “maudlin”?’ Dahl continues. ‘It’s a word that’s fallen somewhat out of favour nowadays that was once used for people displaying the symptoms of depression. I wonder if your mum humanised her condition by naming it rather than admitting to what she was suffering? And that, to understand it, you created a physical manifestation – a woman – out of something you couldn’t see?’
‘No,’ I protest. ‘Maud visited us lots of times.’
‘It’s understandable if you did make her up,’ says Dahl. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’
I press pause on the Dictaphone. And as I think about her now, I’m beginning to wonder if he is right. Perhaps Maud was an invented caricature and not flesh and blood. Forever dressed in dark clothing, lacking in warmth, having little interest in me, coming into our lives uninvited, always outstaying her welcome. Like a Disney villain. Perhaps my hallucinations have been a part of my life for much longer than I realise.
What I hear in the recordings that follow sets my mind spinning with further insights into my childhood that perhaps – more than perhaps – explain my adult behaviours. Like constantly living with a fear of rejection. I’m supposed to be embarking on the greatest journey of my life with parenthood, but instead I’ve been doing my utmost to push Melissa into cutting all ties with me. I’mforcing her to reject me for a reason I can control instead of one I can’t, like when we split up.
I’ve been acting similarly with friends. I haven’t responded to their messages in weeks. Even before all this, I’d go through phases of keeping them at arm’s length because I fear if they really get to know me, they’ll recognise how much of a sad mess I am. Reject them before they reject me. I’m literally dizzied by the continuing cascade of revelations. Rejection: my terror of it is why I haven’t shown any career ambition, in case I’m told I’m not capable. And I’m always the one to check out of a relationship early. None of the girls I’ve dated since Melissa have worked out because I immediately fall to developing exit strategies. There’s always this lingering thought in the back of my head that if I wasn’t enough for my parents or my wife, I won’t be enough for anyone else. Why should I be?
I press play again, but Dahl gets little else from me in these sessions. Until day twelve, when he drops his biggest bomb so far.
‘Damon,’ he begins. ‘Can we talk for a moment about what happened to your brother?’
Chapter 56
Damon
Brother?I don’t have a brother. I’m an only child, I always have been. And for a split second, I wonder if I have got this all wrong, and this isn’t me on these recordings but another troubled kid, and the tapes have been mislabelled. I squeeze one of the cassettes in the palm of my hand to make sure they’re real and this isn’t another hallucination.
Then it hits me like a punch: it’s the young boy I see with Mum, perched on her hip, clutching a blue chequered blanket. I blink hard and I see them together now, in the corner of Helena’s lounge. I crane my neck towards them as they edge closer. In this dusky room, I can just about make out a name embroidered on the blanket. It reads ‘Bobby’. And I realise the faded tattoo on Dad’s knuckles wasn’t referring to my mum, Bobbi, but to a brother I didn’t know existed. Both his sons emblazoned on his hands for all to see. For a moment I forget that if I can see the boy now, he must be dead.
‘Do you remember much about him?’ Dahl continues.
‘He died when I was little,’ twelve-year-old me replies.
‘Did your mum talk about him?’
‘Not really.’
