‘It’s a beauty,’ Mr Butler says. ‘Original and technically very solid. I knew it was top marks as soon as I saw it and the examiner agreed. You were inspired!’
I stare at the painting. I love the way it pulls you towards this couple in red, the way the waiting room swirls around them like a dream. It feels like something only I could have drawn.
I look back at Mr Butler. ‘It’s one of the best paintings I’ve seen this year,’ he tells me. ‘You should be very proud of everything you’ve achieved.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. And I am. I am proud.
My phone buzzes. It’s a message from Josh, asking me if I want to meet for a celebratory coffee. I smile. I’m so glad we’re still friends.
Later, after coffee with Josh and lots of chats with Raheela and Fi, me, Mum and Dad celebrate everything with a Chinese takeaway. Then we sing nursery rhymes to Raj and once he’s asleep we all take a nap in the living room ourselves. It’s dark again when I wake up. Mum and Dad are still draped across the sofa, fast asleep. Dad’s snoring; Mum has a half-eaten spring roll in her lap and mugs of cold tea sit on the coffee table. Raj likes to wake at night, which has been tiring them out. I sleep through anything these days.
I move the spring roll off Mum’s lap and sit watching them for a moment. Dad went to play tennis with his friend this afternoon, and is still in shorts and trainers. Mum’s been going to a mother-and-baby group, so she makes an effort to get dressed every day. She’s lost some weight and she smiles a lot. Things are returning to normal. Well, our version of normal.
The house is quiet. Still. I tiptoe down the hallway and slip into Raj’s room.
The bright white room looks magical in the soft glow of the lamp. It smells of paint. All new, all fresh. There’s a small white shelf with some children’s books on it. A blue-and-white mobile hangs above the crib with stars and a moon dangling from it.
I crouch down next to the crib and peer through the bars. My heart skips a beat.
Raj is so tiny. His head the size of an apple. Hands curled into fists no bigger than Maltesers. He’s beautiful.
‘I’m your sister,’ I whisper. ‘And you’re my brother.’ My eyes fill. ‘I’m going to look after you.’
He stirs, yawns. His tiny hands uncurl, spreading out like beautiful starfish, and then curl up again. He whimpers and my throat aches.
‘Shh,’ I say. ‘Don’t cry.’ I slip my arm through the bars of the crib and rest my hand on his stomach, the way I’ve seen Mum do. I gently rub my palm against his tummy.
His breathing steadies. The ache in my throat eases. I rest my forehead against the bars. I can’t stop staring at him.
I wonder what he’ll be like. Will he be quiet or loud? Serious? Adventurous? Will he like art? What will we do together? Where will we go? What will we see?
I stand up and wander around the room. The carpet is soft beneath my bare feet as I stroke my hand over the new furniture. The white curved chest of drawers. The bookshelf. The single white wardrobe.
Akash is gone. All of his stuff is gone.
But he’s still here. I can feel him.
I look out of the window and touch my fingertips against the cool pane of glass. I listen to the noise of the traffic. I watch a couple walking hand in hand down the road. Street lights shine against the darkness. Raj’s gentle snuffling fills the room.
Life goes on. You try to stop it but it has to. Even when you have a huge, gaping hole in your heart, it must. In the end, all you can do is give in to its flow, however scared you are, however lost. Let it take you forward, back, then forward again – to where you need to be, where you need to go.
For the first time I can remember, I feel whole, like I’ve managed to glue the million pieces of myself back together. And I feel free. Really free. For so long, I’ve been looking for something or someone to help me breathe – but now, now I can breathe alone.
I tie my hair back off my face and take a long, deep breath.
You have a picture of how your life will be when you’re older. A dream, I guess you could call it. Lots of dreams – some big, some small. All important. Those dreams, the belief that you will live them, propel you forward from day to day, week to week, month to month – and sometimes from minute to minute. When part of that picture shatters, slips through your fingers like ice-cold water, you can lose yourself within that loss. All your plans sink away.
But whether your dream is intact, or broken, you have to be brave. You have to take leaps of faith from day to day. You might worry about things but that’s OK. You just have to be strong and let people and dreams find you again.
You have to piece yourself back together.
I grip the windowsill and press my forehead against the glass. I peer up at the dark sky.
The stars are twinkling, like tiny seeds of hope, and the moon has appeared. It’s full and bursting with brightness.
Like my beating heart.
Dear Reader,
I wrote The Million Pieces of Neena Gill after someone very close to me suffered a psychotic breakdown. I was there. I looked after them. I cared for them afterwards. We were a team: there was the illness and then there was us, and we weren’t going to let it win. It was scary, and it was hard, but we survived. And we eventually came out the other end stronger.
But one of the things I found hardest was watching the recovery afterwards. The lack of understanding from people who had no experience of mental illness, but did have plenty of opinions on it, most of them very negative. Battling that stigma day after day was unbelievably tough – as if fighting the illness itself wasn’t hard enough.
I knew that stigma.
I had experienced it myself.
Although this book is fictional, there is a large part of me in Neena. I suffered from a long period of extreme anxiety many years ago. I’ve been to the dark place. I understand the darkness. The feeling that it’s swallowing you up and that you’re losing yourself to the illness. I didn’t really talk to anyone about it because I wasn’t sure they would understand. And with that secrecy came shame.
What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be ‘normal’?
I felt completely alone.
But I’m here to tell you that there is no ‘normal’. And there is nothing ‘wrong’ with someone who is suffering: mental illness can happen to anyone. Neena is just an ordinary teenager going through a difficult time in her life. She is anxious, like so many of us. But she’s also so much more than that. She is brave and kind, creative and intelligent, and she has courage and strength that she didn’t know she had. This illness is not her whole story: it does not define her.
So if you take anything away from this novel, let it be this: it’s not abnormal to struggle sometimes; you are not alone; you are stronger than even you know.
When Neena finally accepts her illness and loss, she says this:
Sometimes you need to remind yourself who you are, don’t you?
If you are suffering, or even if you’re not, take time to remind yourself of who you are. It’s so easy to lose yourself in this busy, noisy world. Find yourself, and your dreams, and keep them close. If you know someone who is struggling, please tell them: You are more than this thing that you are going through. And if you are struggling, then dig deep within yourself and start fighting.