“How long do you think it will take? To get better?”
He shrugged. “That’s very difficult to judge. Everyone is different. But you should be able to see some positive effects within a few sessions. You have to be prepared to put in some work with it—it’s like a lot of things in life: the more you put in, the more you get out.”
When I finally got back out into the street, it was dark. The rain had stopped at last. The traffic outside was at a standstill, probably some accident on the North Circular jamming everything up. The buses were relatively free as far as the bus lanes went, but they weren’t going to go anywhere fast.
I felt as if I’d turned some sort of corner, as though there was absolutely no turning back. It had been this that had frightened me the most, after the hospital; after being so out of control, so completely in the hands of strangers I neither liked nor trusted, having to follow their timetable and their instructions, being told when to eat and when to sleep and when to go to the bathroom.
Once I’d gotten out of the hospital the second time, I knew I’d die before going back there. I moved from Lancaster, with a bright vapid smile and empty promises of engaging with the local mental health services as soon as I could. I moved away from the doctors and the nurses and social services and the terrifying system that made no sense to me. It had served its purpose. It had hauled me to my feet and pointed out rather bluntly that, actually, I hadn’t died at all, I was still very much here and I’d better pull myself together and get on with it. Not for the first time, I thought that it would have been kinder if I had died, rather than going through the process of recovering. But moving away made me realize that, if anyone was going to be in control of my life, it had to be me. There was no alternative. I took control, I controlled every moment of my day, timing things to the second, counting my steps, planning my cups of tea; it gave me purpose, gave me a reason to put one foot in front of the other every single day no matter how shitty, no matter how grim, no matter how lonely.
I don’t want to give that up. It makes me feel safe, if only for a while.
Tuesday 16 March 2004
My cell phone ringing made me jump. I’d been sitting waiting for something to happen, waiting for him to come back, waiting for him to call, hoping for it and dreading it at the same time. But the name on the display wasn’t Lee; it was Sylv Mob.
“Sylvia?” I said, trying to sound as cheerful as I possibly could. “How the devil are you?”
“I’m fine, honey. How are you doing?”
“I’m okay. How’s London?”
“How are you really?”
I couldn’t reply for a moment, holding the phone tightly, looking at a spot on the wall, trying to concentrate really, really hard on not breaking down. “I’m okay,” I said again.
“Louise says you’re acting a bit weird. She’s worried about you.”
“Weird? I’m not acting weird at all. What’s that supposed to mean?”
Her voice was curiously calm and, for Sylvia, soothing. “Doesn’t mean anything, she’s just worried about you. She said you had marks on your arms. She said you went out with them last month and then went home again after half an hour. And Claire said she had Lee crying on her shoulder the other day—you’d had a fight or something.”
When I didn’t answer, she said, “Hello? Catherine?”
“I’m still here.”
“Do you want me to come home, darling? I could make it at the weekend, maybe, for a day?”
“No, no. Honestly. I’m fine. It’s just—things aren’t going so well with Lee.”
“What’s been going on?”
“He’s—he . . . Sylv, he just scares me sometimes. He pushes me around a bit. I don’t like it.”
There was a long, long pause. I’d done it. I’d admitted that my perfect relationship with my perfect man wasn’t as perfect as they all thought it was. And now everything was going to be all right, because Sylvia knew, Sylvia would have exactly the right words to say to make it better, my best friend in the whole world. I waited for her to say something sympathetic, I waited for her to tell me to dump him, get out of