‘OK, OK. So what we’re doing now – keeping her safe and putting her back on her meds – that’s what you think is best?’
Jas shrugs.
‘I can’t really advise you. I’m not a doctor. But yeah, I guess that’s what I’d do. Look after her. She’ll calm down. You’ll get your baby. And then – what happens next is up to Ris, isn’t it?’
‘Do you want to see her?’
Jas shakes her head.
‘No. I love Ris. Always will. But she won’t want me to know what’s happened. She’ll be humiliated. When she’s better, I’ll give her a call.’
Kate stands to say goodbye. This time, she hugs Jas, who is awkward in her embrace. Jas reaches into her pocket and begins to fish out a five-pound note, but Kate says, ‘No, I’ll get these. Least I can do.’
She watches Jas leave, a slight yet defiant figure. The sequinned ‘Warrior’ on the back of her jacket twinkles as she walks down the street. She turns left and disappears from view.
27
Marisa’s eyes stutter open.She is lying in an unfamiliar bed, the duvet tucked over her and a heavy quilted blanket at one end is weighing her legs down like sandbags. She had always hated sleeping in beds with the duvets tucked in and made a point, on the rare occasions she stayed in hotels, to kick out the bedlinen before going to sleep, undoing the neat hospital corner edges and allowing the sheets to billow and free themselves. But this doesn’t feel like a hotel. Where is she?
Her head is aching and her throat is dry. The bed faces towards a window. Light is slipping through the crack where the blind has not been completely pulled down. She can hear birdsong and, beyond that, silence. The silence is strange. For the last few weeks, she has woken to a cacophony of traffic and thumping music that has seemed to exist both inside and outside her mind. She couldn’t do anything to rid herself of the noise. She tried stuffing her ears with cotton wool and when that didn’t work, she covered the window with masking tape, but still the noise persisted. She thought the noise was malevolent, part of a concerted conspiracy to force her out of her home. She screamed at it, cried tears of frustration and rage at its pernicious permanence, and eventually she gave in to it and allowed it to wash through her, making her incapable of thought.
This room is different. A shelter. She feels far away from the noise now, cocooned within these white painted walls. She shifts onto her side and notices a bookshelf built into the wall, lined with orange-spined paperbacks. The door has a brass handle and hanging from it is a lilac ribbon attached to a square of embroidered flowers.
Her stomach gurgles.
She closes her eyes. A scrap of the remembered past floats in front of the blackness. It is of a woman lifting a baby out of a cot and the baby is crying and it is all because Marisa has done something wrong.
She drifts back into blackness.
Hours later, or maybe days, a man comes into the room. She wakes to find him holding her wrist, and his touch is known to her even though she does not recognise him.
‘Marisa,’ the man says. ‘How are you feeling?’
She tries to speak, but no sound comes so instead she smiles weakly and concentrates on appearing polite.
‘Better?’
She nods, although she can’t remember why she is here or what she could be ‘better’ from. Has something happened? Has she been bad? Has Daddy sent her to boarding school again because he needs her out of the way? Is this the sanatorium?
‘That’s good,’ says the man on her bed. He is wearing a burgundy-coloured V-neck over a checked shirt, the collar of which is gently frayed. ‘You gave us quite a scare. But there’s nothing to worry about now. You’re safe here with us. You’re perfectly safe.’
He smiles at her, reassuring. He passes her two pills, starkly white against the pink palm of his hand and she takes them and puts them in her mouth obligingly as she wants to be good again and to be allowed home. She wants to show she is worthy of being loved. The man gives her a tumbler of water, the glass engraved with a pattern of diamonds that casts slivers of light across the white walls. She swallows the pills and the water feels cool in her mouth.
‘Thank you,’ she says.
‘You’re welcome.’ He pats her on the shoulder. ‘Now you must rest. It’s the most important thing you can do. There’s no need to worry about anything else. Just rest.’
Her head is heavy against the pillow. She closes her eyes. She sees herself crawling along a long dark grey corridor, the carpet scratching her knees.
She wakes. It is dark outside. The silence is so thick she can almost taste it. No birdsong. She needs the loo. Marisa props herself up gingerly, sliding her legs out from the duvet. There are slippers on the floor. She puts them on her feet, bending down to do so and when she sits up again, there is a rush of blood to her head. She waits for the faintness to pass, and then she stands, as though testing the solidity of the ground beneath her. She opens the bedroom door and is confused when she doesn’t recognise the room on the other side. It seems to be a kitchen and a drawing room in one. She has never seen it before. A panicked, scrabbly feeling starts in her chest. Where is she? What is she doing here? Where are her parents? Why can’t she hear Anna crying?
She reaches one hand out to the wall to steady herself and fumbles her way along the edge of the room. Somehow she finds the toilet and sits there, allowing her bladder to empty. She notices her belly is full and wonders why. She can’t remember the last time she ate.
She flushes, then washes her hands. In the mirror, Marisa is shocked to see an adult face looking back at her. Straggly hair, pale skin and puffy cheeks. She is slightly disgusted by the image.
A woman comes in. She is tall, with pinned-back blonde-grey hair and blue eyes the colour of Arctic skies. She dusts the mantelpiece and the bookshelf and replaces the empty water bottle on the chest of drawers with a new one. She notices the blind is not pulled all the way down, so she walks over and rectifies it with swift, economic movements. She does not realise Marisa, whose eyes seem closed, is actually watching her through a sliver of sightline. The woman stands at the end of the bed, then turns to look at Marisa. The woman shakes her head, then leaves, taking great care to turn the doorknob as quietly as possible.
Who is she, Marisa wonders? Is she the school matron? Is someone coming to take her home soon?
