Can't Let Go (12 page)

Maybe you've had one of those mornings when
you wake up and, no matter how early you
went to bed, no matter how long you've been
there, you feel as if you've been dragged kicking and
screaming from the depths of sleep. Daylight is simply too
bright for your eyes to bear. So you sit on your bed or at
the kitchen table and eventually – with some combination
of rubbing the sleep from your eyes, splashing your face
with water and drinking some strong coffee – you begin
to feel like a human being. Now imagine that you're
sitting there feeling like shit, blinking in the brightness,
and you realise that nothing you can do – rubbing your
eyes, splashing water, drinking coffee – will make any
difference at all. And in fact the way you feel now, as your
skin starts pricking and dots start dancing in front of your
eyes, and you feel as if your eyelids have been forced open
by someone with gluey fingers – that is the best that
you're going to feel all day.

I'd told Zoey that a migraine was like a hangover, but
the truth is that while they both start out feeling similar,
hangovers get better while migraines get worse. With a
hangover, there are things you can do, or take: a banana,
some aspirin, a can of ice-cold sugary full-fat Coke, a pint
or two of sparkling water, a fry-up. With a migraine,
there are drugs that you can take, but they don't often
work; and also taking drugs involves putting things into
your stomach, and sometimes that's something that's
impossible to face. It can make things much, much worse.

Before I'd ever had a migraine I'd dismissed them as
glorified headaches, in the same way that someone who's
never had a proper bout of flu assumes that it's synonymous
with a bad cold. Sure, a migraine's main course is a
headache – a hard, heavy, metal headache with sharp
edges, like a tarnished anvil being forced into your skull
and sitting, weighty and immovable, on top of one eye
socket. But that's just the main dish of a seven- or eight course
menu that starts with lethargy and nausea, moves
through disorientation and dizziness, visual disturbances
and aphasia, sometimes facial paralysis, and ends eventually
on a lingering quiet note of absolute exhaustion.

And since I had feigned migraines to escape family
commitments on a number of occasions, perhaps it served
me right that on the one occasion I really couldn't miss –
the day I was taking my new boyfriend to meet my family
to celebrate my parents' fortieth wedding anniversary – I
had the beginnings of the migraine from hell.

Why had I even invited Danny? I guess it had been a
spur-of-the-moment thing as we walked back home from
the picnic. I needed to do something, to say something, to
bring things close to normal, to show some indication of
whether I wanted to continue with him or not. I felt bad
about being distant from him for much of the picnic. I felt
bad for not being a good enough girlfriend. Danny was
talking about what we could do during the week, and
making plans for the following weekend, and I said,
suddenly, out of nowhere, 'I have this . . . thing. A family
thing. Next weekend. It's my parents' anniversary.
They're having a party, down in Sussex. I have to go to
that.'

Danny looked at me, and I think he was wondering if I
was about to invite him. So I did. He seemed pleased. He
seemed happy. He seemed excited. He squeezed my hand.
'So remind me,' he said, laughing at me. 'Is this a
relationship or not?'

I reckoned I had two or three hours before the full force
of the migraine hit. I reckoned I could manage the drive
down to the coast. I figured I would be able to introduce
Danny to my family and then just sit quietly in a corner
for a few hours until it was time to go home. No one
would expect anything else from me. I could introduce
Danny to my nephew Josh and they could talk about
music. Josh had seen the Arctic Monkeys recently. I was
pretty sure Danny would be interested in hearing about
that. Or maybe he could talk to Jem, and she could explain
what it was she did for a living, and they could discuss
computer games and Japanese comics. My mother and
Sarah would be far too busy preparing food and rushing
around to talk to anyone – they always took on all the
responsibility when there was an event to be catered; they
enjoyed it, they wouldn't want me butting in. My father
would be his usual benign, vague self. He probably
wouldn't even realise who Danny was. It would be all
right, I told myself. It would be fine.

But the weather was heavier than I'd ever known it,
and my migraine was developing faster. Halfway down
the M23 I realised that my eyes and my brain weren't
communicating any more. I saw a sign that told me there
were roadworks and lane closures, a sign announcing a
speed limit of fifty miles an hour, and I knew theoretically
what the signs meant but I didn't know how to act on
them. I couldn't translate that number on the circular sign
with the red ring around it into the speed that I was
supposed to go. Danny grabbed my arm as I suddenly
steered out of my lane just before it was coned off, and
nearly swerved into the path of another car. I couldn't
keep my distance from the other cars in the contraflow.
My right eye didn't appear to be working and everything
was two-dimensional. Cars kept looming in front of me,
closer than I'd thought, and I kept having to brake
sharply. Danny was getting nervous – tetchy, even. As
soon as I was out of the contraflow I pulled over onto the
hard shoulder and stopped the car. 'You drive,' I said.

'Don't be like that.' He thought I was annoyed by his
nervousness and arm-grabbing.

'I'm not being "like that". I can't drive. I can't see
properly. My head hurts. I'm going to be sick.'

I got out of the car and stepped over the low fence onto
the grass bank at the side of the motorway. I sat down, my
head between my knees. Danny came over, a bottle of
water in his hand, and sat next to me. 'Hangover?' he said,
gently.

'Migraine.'

He handed me the bottle of water and stroked the back
of my neck. I popped an extra-strength ibuprofen from
the pack that I had in my pocket, and I gulped it down. I
passed Danny the car keys. He jingled them in his hand
and then, I guess remembering that I had a headache,
suddenly stopped. 'I'm worried now,' he said.

'What about?'

'About meeting your family. If this is what it does to
you . . .'

I thought he was joking but I wasn't sure. 'You'll be
fine,' I said. 'It'll all be fine.'

But it wasn't. I guess I hadn't listened properly when
my mother had told me about the party. I'd been
imagining a small family affair. I hadn't expected the
whole parish to be there, filling my parents' driveway and
all nearby streets with parked cars. By the time we found
a parking space and got to the house, the anvil had settled
itself over my left eye, and the right side of my face was
starting to go numb. Sarah opened the door to us, glass of
wine in hand, and the first thing she said was, 'My God,
Lizzie, Mum and Dad have hired caterers. They won't let
me in the kitchen.' Then, noticing Danny, she said, 'And
you must be . . . nope, sorry. No idea.'

I guess I must have introduced them to each other. I
know that Sarah led us straight out to the garden. There
on the patio my father was sitting on a garden chair,
surrounded by a whole bunch of what we used to call the
'old dears', the elderly spinsters from church who did the
flowers and fussed around the vicar. I said something, I
know I must have done. Danny shook my father's hand.
One of the old dears said, 'Goodness, it's little Jemima.
Hasn't she grown?' Her voice was so loud it hurt.

And my father said, ' Oh no, this is Lizzie,' and I think
Danny repeated 'Lizzie' under his breath and smiled to
himself.

The garden was full of people that I half-recognised.
Some of them waved or smiled at me. They were all
talking too loudly and I couldn't make out what anyone
was saying. The sun was blindingly white. There were
teenage girls in white shirts and short black skirts handing
out things on trays. My mother did a flustered kiss-and-run
at some point, and then she saw Danny and stopped,
and spoke to him. I found myself sitting on a bench with a
plate of uneaten food on my lap. I closed my eyes behind
my sunglasses and tried to slip away. I'd lost track of
where Danny was. And then he was standing next to me,
and Jem was there. I noticed her white legs in chunky
black rubber sandals that looked like car tyres. I was
trying to introduce them to each other but I couldn't make
the words come out right. Something wasn't working: my
face, my mouth, my brain. There was a connection
missing.
This is what it must feel like to have a stroke,
I
thought. And the next thing I knew, Jem was holding my
hand and leading me back into the house, into the cool
dark lounge, and settling me down in an armchair.

Danny brought me a glass of water, and my mother
came in to check up on me, and I could hear her stage-whispering
to my father, 'She's having one of her heads.'
Sarah put her head round the door and gave me a
sympathetic grimace, and then everyone left me alone.

A blacksmith was hard at work inside my head. I curled
into a foetal position and put my fingers to my temples, to
the pulse points on my head. I was trying to make sense of
the throbbing pain, trying to work out the rhythm. When
I was a kid I read an article in the
Readers' Digest
about a
man who survived three days and three nights on a
freezing prairie by giving in to the cold, not fighting it,
allowing the shivering and shaking to become part of him.

When I had a migraine I always tried to do the same thing
with the pain, drifting into it, embracing it, trying to
become one with it; trying to discover how it worked,
when each wave would come next. Counting, counting,
always counting.

Eventually I felt well enough to open my eyes. From
where I was sitting I could see out through the conservatory
and into the garden. Through half-opened eyes
and through two sets of windows, I watched knots of
people milling around the garden. Through two sheets of
glass I watched my family being normal, doing what
normal people do. I saw Sarah's well-mannered daughter
Katie circulating, talking politely to older people who she
couldn't possibly have known. I saw Danny talking to my
nephew Josh, who was all gangly and intense with his
body language. I watched Sarah and my mother admiring
the garden. That was my job, normally: to walk around
the garden with my mother, exchanging Latin names of
plants in lieu of having actual conversations about how we
really felt about things. And then Danny was talking to
Jem, and Sarah joined them, and the three of them stood
there laughing together, and from time to time Danny cast
curious glances in my direction.

I knew what they were talking about. Jem and Sarah
were telling him stories from my childhood. The time I
was four and I decided to dance in the park, performing to
all the old ladies in their deckchairs. The infamous school
concert, when I'd been sent to stand in a corner because
I'd punched a boy for singing my solo line by mistake.
The nativity play, when I played the angel Gabriel and ad
libbed for five minutes when one of the shepherds got
stage fright. They were no doubt telling him the same old
stories that got told year after year; the stories about
Lizzie Stephens, the show-off, the performer, the
attention-grabber. No wonder Danny looked puzzled.

Later the thunder finally came, the thunderstorm that
had been threatening all day and that had no doubt
contributed to my migraine. The thunder boomed and the
lightning crackled and sparked. The rain fell from the sky
in sheets and bounced off the patio. The girls in the white
shirts and the short black skirts ran around covering up
food and bringing trays through into the house. The
guests started to leave, and my migraine started to lift, and
my family gathered in the lounge. My father hugged me
and told me that they'd missed me. Sarah patted my hand
and came and sat next to me. My mother fussed around in
the kitchen, with the catering girls and the ruined leftover
food. Danny and Jem had both taken photos on their
digital cameras, and the cameras were passed around so
that everyone could admire the pictures. It was all so
utterly, heartbreakingly normal that I wanted to cry. I
wished I could belong properly to my own family. Danny
was already more a part of it than I was.

'Lizzie. Lizzie Stephens. You know, I like that name.'
Danny was driving me home in his cautious way,
sticking exactly to the speed limit, keeping his distance
from the car ahead. I was feeling a little better. I was in the
lingering exhaustion stage, the washed-out, wrung-out
but pain-free bit that follows a migraine. I was annoyed
with myself for being ill, for somehow copping out of a
potentially tense family occasion; but also for leaving
Danny out there, talking to anyone he wanted to, asking
questions about me and no doubt finding out stuff. I
wasn't in the mood for talking. But Danny was, albeit in a
soft, slightly patronising voice that I found particularly
annoying.

'I really like your family. They're good fun. It must be
great to have siblings. I wish I did. I thought Jem was
great. You never told me that one of your sisters lives in
London. Anyway, we got on really well. We were saying
that we should all meet up some time.'

I made some sort of non-committal noise. Danny
didn't get the hint. He just kept on talking. 'So, I guess
Lizzie is what your family calls you. Do I get to call you
that? Do we know each other well enough yet? Do I pass
the Lizzie test?'

'Danny, shut up.' I couldn't stand it any longer.

He opened his mouth and then closed it again. He
looked at me. He looked hurt.