‘So, how are you doing?’ the woman says more seriously now, looking at Kate intently. As she does, Kate realises that although the woman glanced in at Rosie to begin with, for the rest of the time her eyes have been on her. Kate. For the first time since arriving in the shop, she feels seen. As though she’s been a ghost but has finally found someone who can see the woman who used to exist and maybe still does.
‘It’s hard,’ she says carefully. ‘It’s been really hard.’
A lump expands in her throat as she finally says aloud the words she has been wanting to say to her husband and family ever since Rosie’s birth. She has tried several times, buoying herself up to start the conversation but always losing confidence at the last minute, reminded of all the messages from all those well-meaning people telling her how happy she mustbe. Of her sister’s words when Kate told her she was pregnant, reminding her of how lucky she is.
The woman nods in understanding. ‘And I bet that’s an understatement, right?’
Kate blinks rapidly.
‘I didn’t think it would be like this,’ she says after a moment’s pause. She knows that the obvious question is,what did she think it would be like? Was she naïve to expect motherhood to be any less overwhelming? But then she thinks back to the stacks of books she read and the swathe of working mothers she followed on Instagram when she found out she was pregnant. Journalists like her who made the juggle of work and family life look chaotic but ultimately rewarding. Over recent months, she’s found herself going back to their accounts, obsessively trying to find something of her own experience in the photos, but seeing nothing she can relate to in the tired but smiling faces and tastefully decorated nurseries. She has tried to recall conversations with her own mum and sister too, but they had both talked so glowingly about motherhood. Yes, they warned her, she would be tired. But she would be so happy too.
‘I remember that feeling,’ replies the woman in the supermarket, nodding knowingly. ‘I felt like I had been sold a lie, to begin with. But I promise you, it gets so much better. I know that might not help right now, but it gets so, so much better. Anyway, sorry, I didn’t mean to ambush you, especially when you’ve got enough on your plate. I’ll leave you to it.’ The woman steps away, but then pauses, reaching out a hand and resting it for a second on Kate’s arm. ‘Don’t forget to lookafter yourself. It can feel hard, selfish even. But you deserve to do things that are for you, not just for her.’ She smiles again and then turns away before Kate has time to say anything in reply. She is left standing alone with her baby in the aisle of the supermarket, holding onto the stranger’s words like a lifeline that is keeping her afloat.
It’s only when she arrives home later that she realises she forgot to buy any bread.
CHAPTER 15
As Phoebe’s motorbike pulls up on the gravel turning circle outside the large Georgian house, she double-checks she has the right address.1 Magnolia Street. An elegant number 1 is carved into the stone façade, where wisteria climbs its way around the enormous sash windows. She parks alongside a gleaming white Land Rover, taking in the imposing building in front of her.
When it comes to her patients, there are certain types she has become familiar with over the years. There are the patients whose lives started badly and never really got any better, drifting from care to temporary housing and in and out of hospital and local police stations. There are many who have been dealing with mental ill health since they were teenagers, people who Phoebe has got to know over the years as they bounce back and forth between independence and hospitalisation.
But then there are also the new patients who join hercaseload having had no known mental health problems until the day they turned up in A & E, having tried to kill themselves with their dead husband’s razor.
Mrs Ramsgate is one of those patients. Phoebe pulls out her laptop to quickly check her notes, before slipping it back in her bag and heading towards the front door. As she draws closer, she spots a few signs of disrepair that no one would notice if they were just driving along the street, glancing for a moment at the impressive building. The paintwork on the window frames is peeling and there is a row of withered houseplants visible inside. Phoebe has never been one for houseplants herself. It’s enough trying to keep herself and her patients alive.
She knocks on the large brass knocker and steps back slightly to wait.
The door is pulled rapidly open by an incredibly slim woman around Phoebe’s age, dressed in tight jeans, a crisp white shirt and a navy gilet. Diamonds sparkle at her ears, her golden blonde hair pulled back from her face with a velvet headband. Her eyebrows rise for a second as she takes Phoebe in, before her expression settles into a tight-lipped frown.
‘You must be the gardener, we’ve been waiting for you. I hope you don’t think I’ll be paying you for the full three hours.’
Phoebe smiles politely. It’s not the first time something like this has happened. ‘I’m afraid you wouldn’t want me anywhere near your garden. I’m much better at looking after humans than plants. I’m Phoebe, a mental health nurse here to see Mrs Ramsgate.’
‘Oh.’ The woman’s nose wrinkles as if Phoebe is emitting an unpleasant odour. To be fair, she didn’t have time to go backhome and shower after her morning swim, so there is a chance she does have a slight waft of river to her. But she’d brushed her hair and checked her make-up, reapplying her bright red lipstick to make sure she looked put together and neat and not as though she’d spent the morning on a riverbank.
But Phoebe doesn’t think that’s the problem.
‘You don’t look like a nurse.’ The woman casts her eyes up and down, taking in Phoebe’s motorcycle boots, jeans, leather jacket and the helmet under her arm, her bag in the other. Just wait till the jacket comes off and she sees the tattoos.
‘Here’s my identification,’ Phoebe says, tugging a lanyard with her photo and details out from inside her jacket to show it to the woman, who barely glances down. ‘Or I could demonstrate if you’d like? I’m extremely quick at finding veins for blood tests if you’d like to give me your arm?’
The woman’s eyebrows raise again and Phoebe immediately regrets the joke. Sometimes they can be a way of breaking the ice, but this woman appears to be carved out of an iceberg.
‘Why aren’t you wearing scrubs?’ she asks, her nose wrinkling again.
‘We tend not to wear them in my line of work. We find it can help the people we work with if we don’t look too formal. Some of our patients are a little wary of health professionals. Can I come in? Is Mrs Ramsgate inside?’
‘Of course, sorry,’ says the woman, composing herself and holding the door open.
Phoebe follows her through into a large tiled foyer, a sweeping staircase leading upstairs. All the furniture looks antique and there are framed portraits on the walls, but the surfacesare dusty, a stack of mail teetering on a table in the middle of the room. Phoebe catches a glimpse through to what looks like a very masculine study, noting the empty chair and the jacket that still hangs there.
There’s an old-fashioned telephone seat next to the door and Phoebe perches there to take off her clunky boots. She puts down her helmet and takes off her leather jacket too, hanging it neatly on the back of the chair.
‘Oh, you don’t have to do that,’ the woman says, glancing down at Phoebe’s socked feet. She went for rainbow stripes today. ‘It’s not exactly tidy in here …’ Embarrassment tinges her voice.
‘That’s OK. It’s still your home. Or your … mother’s, maybe?’
‘Yes, sorry. I’m Arabella.’ She reaches a hand up to smooth an invisible stray hair. ‘Mum’s upstairs. I’ve been staying ever since …’ Her voice catches, cracking slightly. Her welcome might have been less than warm, but Phoebe immediately feels sorry for her. Her face might be smoothed with what looks like incredibly expensive foundation, but Phoebe can still see the dark shadows beneath her eyes. And a glance at her hands shows that her manicured fingernails are bitten, the skin around her cuticles red and sore. She’s learnt over the years to look closely for certain signs, not just in her patients, but in their loved ones too. If they’re lucky enough to have loved ones to support them.
