‘And phone your daughter!’
*
After I’d put down the phone, I heard Rosie come downstairs. ‘Morning, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘I’m making pancakes.’
‘Oh God.’ She began to cry. ‘You’re trying to be some mum in an American sitcom.’
‘Oh Rosie…’ I went over and gave her a hug.
‘But no one made you pancakes when you had your… your miscarriage. I’ve been thinking about you.That was horrible. You were so young. I can’t believe you were so young.’
‘It happened. It was really sad. It changed my life, yes. But I’ve no regrets. People have miscarriages and I do think of the baby and wonder about it, but it wasn’t meant to be.Youwere meant to be. And everyone needs someone to make them pancakes.’ I placed one in front of her, not wanting her to realise that I had thoughtabout the baby I lost every single day since. ‘There we go. So tell me, how was your night? Did you sleep?’
If she had, then she was the only one of us who had slept that night. I had lain awake thinking about her, about what had happened and why, how much of it was my fault (pretty much all of it) and where we would go from here.
‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘But I feel abitbetter. Like thealien is shrinking. Just a bit.’
I smiled. ‘Glad to hear it. You know why?’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’ve started talking about it. You’re not alone with what you might think of as your shame. Once you start telling people, the shame – or the alien – is exposed. It has no power.’ I took a deep breath. ‘This is where it ends right now, okay? This is where this stops. We have to work out what kind ofhelp and support you need…’
‘But I don’t want to leave the house. Not ever. It scares me to think about going to the shop. What was I thinking that I would be able to go to college? Or inter-railing. Or anywhere. I am seventeen years old and I just want to stay with my mum. Isn’t that crazy. I’d die if anyone found out. Every time you left the house lately I’d be scared that you wouldn’t comeback, but if I just stayed in my room, doing nothing, it was as though I could control that tiny part of my life.’
‘I always came back though, didn’t I?’
She nodded.
‘And I always will. Sweetheart, you don’t need to leave the house. Not until you’re ready.’
‘Okay.’
‘But we do need to get some help, okay? I’m going to call the school in the morning and tell them what’s been going on and talkabout a few options. I think you need to talk to someone…’
‘It was as though I was the only person in the world,’ she said, tears forming in her eyes. ‘Every time I went out, I could just see faces, you know, people everywhere all doing things, being functional and normal and happy. And there was I, all weird and strange and not normal. I thought something might happen, like another panic attack,or worse, that I might die, you know, from not breathing. Staying inside was safest…’
‘I wished you’d told me.’
‘I couldn’t… I was just trying to manage it. Anyway, I didn’t want to let you down…’ She almost smiled. ‘I made everything worse, didn’t I?’
‘No.’ I took her hand again and I kissed it. ‘No you didn’t.’
‘I just want to be normal, Mum? Everyone else I know is normal, they are allworking so hard. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I do this? Every time I tried, every time I sat down at my desk, I could just feel this horrible feeling inside me, rising up, like some kind of wave that I could actually taste. It was disgusting. And it was like that was who I was, who I am, this horrible disgusting person who can’t be…’ she began to sob once more… ‘who can’t be normal.’
‘Youare normal…’ I was crying too now. ‘You are normal. This is normal. What’s happened is normal. Panicking, feeling scared, things going wrong are normal. What’snotnormal is the way other people present themselves to the world as if there’s nothing wrong. Everyone is scared, everyone makes mistakes and no one is perfect. But life is not crap forever. It’s not ongoingly crap or awful. But withoutcrappiness, you don’t get the happiness.’
‘Oh my God, did you just make that up?’
‘Yes! It just came out. Genius? No?’
‘No.’ But she smiled at me.
*
I had no choice but to leave her when I went to school and that morning, the first face I saw was Christy, sitting in one of those large picnic chairs, a mug of tea in the cup holder, notebook on his lap. When he saw me, he signalled to Leafto give him a hand up and she hoisted him to his feet. ‘Tabitha!’ He hobbled over to me wearing a t-shirt which had a vaguely recognisable face on the front and the wordsLeonard Cohen is how the light gets in.
‘Beautiful day,’ he said, when I’d rolled down my window. ‘The kind of day that makes you feel like you don’t ever want the day to end.’
