‘Yeah,’ said Ariel, ‘it is, isn’t it? Helps me.’
The meeting goes on for another forty minutes and stops when someone comes round with tea and some very nice biscuits with coffee icing that I’d never have looked at before in the supermarket. But now in this cosy, safe, place they are delicious and I eat six of them in a row. I love sitting here in this dull little room with these people I hardly know, but there is a connection between us all. Steve works in a bank and the bank was held up by armed robbers. There was counselling but not enough for him and he still feels scared. He can’t tell anyone, not his wife, his kids, his bosses. ‘Everyone else is fine. Except me.’
He’s afraid he’ll lose his job and he needed something else. He started the website and I can understand its quirkiness the more I listen to him, because he’s pretty quirky.
‘I don’t think anyone else understands it unless you have been through it,’ he says, ‘and we all have different stories. But somehow they brought us together and we try to get better,’ he shrugs. ‘It’s simple. If I’m feeling stressed during the week I hit the chat room and send out a message. Someone always gets back. I’m not alone. There’s loads of us around the country and not everyone can get here, but when you can get here you feel good, a bit more normal.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ laughs Shane, theshaven-headed guy.
We end by holding hands and saying we are here for each other and we are here for ourselves.
‘Do come back,’ says everyone, as Ariel and I walk out the door.
Even though I hadn’t wanted to go, now that I have, I almost don’t want to walk away. I’d had visions of a crowd of people telling me to ‘get over it’ and ‘be strong, you can do it!’ like my old gym teacher yelling at us all to get out onto the basketball court on days when the rain came down like shards of glass.
But this had been nothing like that. We’d all shared stories and nobody had commented that one person’s tale was less important. There was no scale of fear. No points system for our pain. And after comparing what I’d been through with the tragedy of Dad’s stroke, and the ongoing agony of Scarlett desperately trying for a baby, it felt good to talk about what I was going through.
‘Eileen lost her daughter fifteen years ago,’ Ariel says, as we walk down the stairs.
I can’t even comment on what Eileen has gone through – since having children, the concept of losing a child means I cannot even look at news of war on the TV.
Copping out? Definitely. But right now, I can’t. Still, what’s happened to Eileen is hideous and my mind turns to Lexi, Teddy and Liam: what if this happened to them? I feel weak. I don’t think I could continue to exist if they weren’t in the world. But nothingishappening to them – except that Lexi’s birth mother is back in Ireland and really, is that the end of the world ...?
‘And you were mugged too,’ I say to Ariel.
‘Yeah,’ says Ariel, ‘but I have had that other stuff happen to me too, it’s just this group, I sort of like this group best because we talk about all different sorts of stuff. I go to another group too. They all help.’
I want to ask her what other stuff but I’m afraid to in case I hurt her or insult her. Down on the street she looks me in the eye. She really is so young and pretty and I can imagine some mother going out of her mind at Ariel’s insane ugly clothes and the hair that does nothing for her beautiful little pixie face. But it’s clearly a way of hiding herself.
‘I was raped,’ she says, really quietly as we leave, ‘so I go to a rape support group and that’s great, but everything leaves a mark you know, lots of marks.’
‘Raped?’ I repeat.
Ariel shrugs and doesn’t meet my eyes, as if she’s used to this reaction: the reaction of people who suddenly realise they have nothing they can say because how can two terrible things happen to a person, one far moresoul-destroying than anything that’s happened to me.
‘Can I hug you?’ I ask.
Ariel’s face brightens.
‘Yes. It’s men I have a problem with. But I like you, Freda/Freya/telly person.’
There is a points system for pain, I think: Eileen and Ariel win. If they can function in the world and smile, I can too.
Bethe happiness? It’s worth a try, I guess.
16
Many people are in pain – you just can’t see it
Watching my mother laying out the lavender hand cream for my father hits me in a way nothing else does: the hospital bed, the scent of the invalid’s room, all of it.
It’s my day to give her a break and she has a new routine, thanks to a lovely organic cream a friend brought.
‘I know he feels it,’ she says, sitting on the edge of the chair beside his wheelchair and patting his hands as if she cannot bear to leave him. ‘I have this little routine going since I got the cream. It’s far nicer than the oils I used to use. His skin gets so terribly dry,’ she adds. ‘Maybe his system doesn’t operate the same way since the stroke. Or maybe it’s the heat of the house since the dry spell, I don’t know. But at night I rub cream into his legs and massage them a little bit, do some lymphatic massage, helps them not be swollen from being in the wheelchair all the time. But I love to do his hands too, makes them soft, and you know how your father never looked after himself like that.’ She smiles affectionately at him as if he’s listening to every word. ‘So I like to do it for him now, just a lovely treat and touch is so very important, isn’t it?’
The first time she explained the whole leg massage system to me, I had nearly fallen apart. My parents had loved each other so much and my mother still loved Dad. Here she was taking care of him and there was no glint of recognition in his eyes, no awareness that he knew her or any of us, bar the fact that he was generally calm. Although, as the doctor said when he came on his visits, a lot of that could be down to the medications. Nobody knew the answer but my father had no anger or rage or frustration. No obvious emotion at all. Not since the stroke.
‘Will I bring you a cup of tea?’ Mum says as I take her place beside Dad.
