‘Last night I dreamt I found my mother’s body again,’ he started. ‘I pushed open the door and her head was lying at one end of the bed and the rest of her at the other.’
Then the panic alarm sounded – it went off several times a day – and there was the noise of running feet. It was like trying to recuperate in a war zone.
Louisa screwed her eyes shut and tried to tune out. Ordinarily, she would feel the deepest empathy with every patient here. She knew what it felt like to be anxious and depressed. But now she was a patient herself, every day felt like a battle for her own survival. It was horribly like being back at school in Eastbourne, constantly on guard, having to deal with the continual small acts of cruelty, the accusation that she thought herself a cut above everyone else, the daily taunts about her red hair, trying to keep away from the gang of mean girls who liked to knock into her on purpose – and Joshua Duncan, whose eyes seemed to follow her everywhere she went. Her stomach heaved. No, she couldn’t think about Joshua Duncan. Not here.
Each day passed with the same rhythm. Wake-up call, breakfast, meds, queue for a three-minute, lukewarm shower – then recreation, which essentially meant just sitting idly in the day room waiting for the hours to pass. The half-hearted attempts to engage people in activities were futile. There was a ping-pong table but no balls, and the exercise bike in the corner was stuck in the highest gear – even the Scrabble set was missing its Z and K tiles. So most people just sat watching TV game shows at full blast or gambling with cigarettes and M&M’s – or sleeping, which was by far the most popular pastime of all.
Two days a week they had psychotherapy. Then dinner, then visiting hours – if you had anyone who wanted to visit you. Then the staff would disappear for an hour for shift handover. Then came meds again and then bed, the worst time of all, with the long, dark hours of night waiting ahead of you like a baited trap. Then it began all over again the next day.
Louisa stifled a yawn. She was so tired she felt she might start hallucinating. She wasn’t taking the pills she’d been prescribed; it was easy enough to pretend to swallow them and then flush them down the toilet. Once or twice in the middle of the night, she’d debated whether it might not be a bad idea to swallow a couple of the sleeping pills. But wouldn’t that be tantamount to admitting that there was something wrong with her?
‘And you, Louisa, would you like to share?’ Louisa unfolded her legs. ‘What particularly stressful events have you encountered?’ Dawn Davies asked.
‘Being dragged in here against my will was pretty bloody stressful for a start,’ Louisa said.
Kerry sniggered, and the therapist’s lips compressed into a line.
‘Sometimes it can be hard to admit we need help,’ the psychotherapist said. ‘But it’s all part of the journey towards recovery.’
With sudden clarity, Louisa saw what needed to be done. To keep denying she’d been suicidal would get her nowhere. The staff here wielded the power to decide that she was ill, and only they could decide that she was better.
‘My grandmother just died,’ Louisa said. ‘She’s been a mother to me since I was a child. It’s been awful.’ And that was the truth.
‘Good!’ Dawn Davies nodded encouragingly. ‘What exactly is your family background, Louisa?’
‘Um, mother dead, father out of the picture. That’s it, really.’
‘That must be hard.’
Louisa shrugged.
‘Would you like to elaborate?’
‘No, not really.’
‘I understand. Family relationships are at the heart of our pain. It’s really hard to deal with this stuff, but we must. How about your father, then? Would it be easier to start with him? How about you give us some background?’
Louisa sighed, seeing that the therapist wasn’t going to give up. ‘All right. My father’s a forensic pathologist – a very eminent one. Or at least he was. I don’t know any more. He was fourteen years older than my mother. She was a nurse at the hospital where he worked – that’s how they met. He married her because she was young and pretty and quite happy to deal with all the tedious bits of life for him, so he could simply concentrate on being stiff and aloof.
‘Anyway, he agreed to have a baby because she wanted one, and they had me. Then she got cancer, and she wasn’t attractive, or pleasant company or useful to him any more, so he had an affair with his best friend’s ex-wife. Then my mother died. And he was left with me, which hadn’t been in his game plan at all, so he packed me off to boarding school. But I kept running away, and he couldn’t handle me any more, so he married his mistress and sent me away to live with my maternal grandmother.’ She breathed out.
Ms Davies nodded. ‘That was an extremely potted history. You’re clearly deeply angry with your father. And with good reason.’
‘No, not any more. I try not to waste any mental energy on him. He’s certainly never wasted any on me.’
‘All right. Well done, Louisa.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Now, let’s talk a little about meditation and mindfulness.’
Finally, the session was over, and they filed out – all except for Samir, who remained slumped on the sofa. Louisa found that a lump had worked its way to the top of her throat. One she couldn’t seem to force down.
She was angry, she realised. Just as Dawn Davies had suggested. Angry – and surprised. She hadn’t got upset about her childhood for years. Her grandmother had been all the parent she’d needed, and more. But now Granny was dead. And now, after just a few perfunctory words from an overworked psychotherapist at Coldbrook Hall it was all flooding back. She saw that however much she might try to deny it, the past was startlingly close to the surface. Her father had forsaken her and even now, years later, it hurt deeply. And what hurt perhaps even more was that he still held this power over her.
‘Well, that really was most invigorating,’ said Kerry, stretching so hard that her joints cracked. ‘Sounds like your family could give mine a run for their money in the fucked-up-ness stakes. Now, I need a ciggie and a vodka.’
‘A vodka sounds wonderful,’ said Louisa. ‘Or something tropical. A piña colada, perhaps?’
‘You think I’m joking!’ Kerry laughed. ‘It’s smoke break now. Why don’t you come out?’
‘I don’t smoke. I told you.’
‘Yeah, filthy habit. But don’t worry, you don’t actually have to smoke.’ Kerry produced a roll-up cigarette from her pocket and passed it to Louisa. ‘Don’t look like that. Trust me, OK?’
They headed down the hallway. ‘What’s Samir’s diagnosis?’ Louisa asked.
‘Cotard’s Syndrome. It’s really rare, so we’re honoured to have him. He thinks he’s dead, which is why he doesn’t wash or look after himself. They have to feed him by tube. It’s why he harms himself too. He thinks he’s a decaying corpse, you see – a zombie. The police always pick him up in some graveyard or other. It’s the only place he feels at home.’