The missing words don’t change the story.
Albie never made it home.
All the air is sucked from the room. I hear it go with a loud hiss, carrying something I’d only just found away with it. Hal’s lips are moving, but no sound comes out. Shadows press in on the edges of the world, on the edges of my vision, and everything starts to blur.
It’s over. Everything. It’s over.
“I…I need…I just need…”
My heart thuds against my ribs so hard I’m afraid it’ll shatter them.
“I’ll…I’m going to…” The words stick to the roof of my mouth, to my tongue. They clog up my throat. The air in here is choking me and I have to get out. I have to. If I don’t, I’ll suffocate. “I have to go. Sorry. I have to.”
I do what I do best.
I run away.
I move feet that feel like they belong to someone else; move them towards the door, towards the stairs and down. Down and down and out…the corridors blurring, everything blurring…and then I’m outside on the front drive, the air clean in my lungs…and even then I can’t stop. I keep going, round the hotel and past the terrace, through the gardens and out, down, further and further until I reach the glasshouse. Gravel ricochets off the glass as I pull the door open. The air inside is humid and warm. Soft. Safe.
“Charlie?” My voice is swallowed by the benches full of tiny plants. “Charlie!”
There’s no answer, but a noise from the far end of the space, in a sheltered corner behind tall plant support frames, means someone’s there.
“Charlie? Is that you?”
I thread between the benches full of delicate plants, eyes on the corner, trying not to run.
“Charlie!”
Suddenly he sticks his head out from behind a frame, a piece of string between his teeth and a pair of earphones around his neck. I’m so close that I almost crash into him. He twitches as I swerve, only just missing the tomato plants he’s tying to the supports.
He picks the string out from between his teeth and drapes it over the end of a frame. “Bloody hell, Flora. You nearly gave me a heart attack. What’s the matter?”
My head is pounding, my heart is pounding, my mind and body are screaming at me to run away as fast as I can and to drop to the ground with my arms around my head all at once. The air is too thin and too thick and I can’t get enough of it into my lungs, and I can’t.
“Okay. Okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.” My brother’s hands press on my shoulders, rooting me to the spot. “You’re having a panic attack. Breathe.”
How can something as simple as breathing suddenly be so hard? It’s breathing. But I can’t remember how to do it – at least, not right. The air comes in gasps and hiccups and black spots prickle across my vision.
“Listen to me, Flora. You’re safe. You’ve done this before. You know what it is. Don’t fight it – let it pass.”
But all I want to do is fight. How can I not?
Charlie’s voice is low and soft. “Listen to my voice. Can you hear me? What else can you hear? The birds outside? Hear them?”
Somewhere, very far away, the swifts are screeching mid-flight.
When swifts die, they fall; one moment freewheeling, crashing to earth the next.
High to nothing in a heartbeat.
Do they know they’re falling, or are they just…gone?
I shake my head, hard. Charlie’s grip on my shoulders tightens.
“Stop. Flora. Stop. You can do this. You’re safe. I promise you’re safe. You’re in the glasshouse, with me – can you smell the tomato leaves? And where the soil’s damp from the watering pipe?”
Slowly, slowly, the world comes back into focus. The air becomes itself again, neither thick nor thin but just plain old boring air, and the horror behind my eyes fades into the dark.
I can smell the tomatoes. I can smell the wet earth. I can hear the birds wheeling above, chattering outside. I can feel Charlie’s hands on my shoulders, and slowly, slowly, the pressure inside my skull eases away to nothing.
“See? You’re okay. It was just a panic attack. That’s all.” He bends his knees a little, drops his face level with mine. “Better?”
I nod, because I can’t put the words together. I just had a panic attack.
In front of Hal.
I couldn’t stop it; I didn’t even see it coming. One minute I was fine, the next I thought I was going to die.
I lean into my brother’s shoulder. It feels reassuringly solid and real as another tidal wave of panic crashes over me.
“Can you take me home?”
Albie is dead, but he still follows me into my sleep, along with his letters. His words so full of both love and fear at once. And…what did Dougie call it? “The collywobbles”?
There’s no shame in it, no weakness. The opposite, to tell the truth.
Is that really true? Maybe it was for Albie, after everything he went through. But what about me? What excuse do I have?
I am not Albie Holmwood. He is not Flora Sutherland. His life and mine couldn’t be more different, and even if we had somehow found ourselves in the same time and the same world, we would never have met…But…
My heart hurts for him.
Our last session; me sitting in the plastic chair like always, Sanjay sitting in the cushioned chair next to his desk, his notepad on his lap.
“What if I get bad again? How will I know?”
“You might not.”
“I might not. So I might completely freak out at any point and there’s no warning, no anything?”
“The brain doesn’t work like that, Flora.”
“But you just said…”
“I just said you might not know. A condition like yours can be unpredictable. You might go years without having another manic episode, or another depressive one – you might never have one again. Or it could be a regular repeating cycle. Until we’re further down the line, there’s no way to be sure – and you might not be in a position to recognize it until afterwards. That’s why it’s important you have this.”
He hands me a folder. It contains only one page, printed in clear black ink on soft yellow paper. A checklist, with tick boxes alongside it. My name at the top, followed by a question.
Are you experiencing (or have you recently experienced) any of the following symptoms?
And there they all are, in black-and-white – or black-and-yellow, anyway.
Racing thoughts, heightened senses, seeing things, hearing things, talking too fast, panic attacks, flights of ideas and disorganized thinking.
Tick, tick, ticky ticky tick.
A score of several positive responses, experienced continuously over a period of time, may indicate the onset of a bipolar episode. Please advise your next of kin as discussed in your relapse-prevention plan, and arrange an appointment with your mental health professional as soon as possible.
“So this is it? For ever? I have this…thing, and it could just jump up and bite me whenever it feels like it?” I wave the sheet at him.
Sanjay half-smiles. “That’s a very negative mindset, Flora. We’ve talked about that.”
“Well, this doesn’t look very bloody positive, does it?” I roll my eyes…then, seeing his raised eyebrow, add a muttered, “Sorry.”