Losing Me (16 page)

“It’s nothing. Your dad’s got himself really wound up about this trip. There’s been so much to organize. You know what he’s like when he’s stressed. He’s been irritable and it’s been getting me down, that’s all.”

“You sure? ’Cos I was wondering if you were upset with Dad for going away. I’d get it if you were. I mean, what, with you losing your job and having these panic attacks—you could probably do with him being around.”

“Are you worrying about my panic attacks?” she asked, remembering Jean’s theory about children burying their fears when parents got sick.

“A bit. I’m not used to you being ill.”

“I’m not ill exactly. I’m just finding life a bit of a struggle right now. And I’ll be absolutely fine without your dad. I don’t want you worrying. You’ve got enough on your plate.”

“Come on, sit down. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“Excuse me? You’re offering to make
me
a cup of tea?”

He grinned. “I might even be persuaded to make you a slice of toast.”

“Good Lord. I’m honored.”

“Yeah, but don’t start getting the wrong idea. This is strictly a one-off gesture.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“And there is a quid pro quo.”

“Of course there is.”

“Do you think you could get my black jeans washed and dried by tonight?”

Chapter 6

A
t the age of fifty-eight, she realized she’d never ride through Paris—or even Hackney—in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair. “The Ballad of Barbara Stirling.” That first week after Frank left, she found herself singing her own modified version of the Marianne Faithfull song a lot—even though the words “fifty-eight” didn’t remotely scan.

Not that she had any particular desire to ride through Hackney in a sports car, since the wind—warm or otherwise—smelled of exhaust fumes and the likelihood was that as soon as she pulled up at a traffic light, some crazy would lob a half-eaten kebab into the car. What she wanted was a future.

But like Lucy Jordan, the lonely housewife in the song, she cleaned the house for hours. Once or twice she even rearranged the flowers. Unlike Lucy Jordan, though, she made no attempt to hurl herself off the roof. Barbara was miserable, but she was nowhere near suicidal.

Instead she tackled all the domestic jobs she hadn’t got round to in years. She washed paintwork, sprayed chemicals on the mold around the bath, cleaned away twenty-odd years of gunk from behind the fridge. A full-time job had left her with neither the energy nor the inclination to do much more than a weekly vacuum and dust. That said, she had always given the kitchen floor and the bathroom a quick going-over every day. Her mother had always drummed it into her that a dirty kitchen floor and skid marks in the loo were the mark of a slattern.

With no job to go to, she could really get stuck in. One day she actually found herself bleaching the inside of the teapot.

Mornings were spent mopping, swabbing and dusting. Afternoons were set aside for more challenging tasks like cleaning the oven or turning out the kitchen cupboards. She was aware that she hadn’t cleaned the cupboards in months—possibly as many as eighteen or twenty-four—but it still came as a shock to find spiders dead in their webs suspended in the corners.

At the start of the week she also wrote a letter to her kids at Jubilee telling them how much she was missing them. Sandra forwarded the twenty-odd replies. Armani’s happened to be the first in the pile. “Dear miss—missing you, miss.” Her letter was full of how when she grew up she wanted to be a Kardashian—or babysit small animals, brackets nonevil. She’d drawn a picture of herself with her new hamster called Mr. H. Nearly all the kids had signed off with a picture, self-portraits mainly. They were garish and ham-fisted and none bore the remotest resemblance to the sender, but each one brought tears to Barbara’s eyes.

There was nothing from Troy. He was clearly still angry with her for abandoning him. Barbara sat down and wrote him his own letter, telling him again how sorry she was to have left the school and all her special children. She explained that she’d been sick, that she really hadn’t wanted to leave and that she thought about him a lot.

When he still didn’t reply, she called Sandra to find out how he was doing. “He’s fine. If you ask me, he’s just cross with you for going and doing his best to make you feel bad.”

“Maybe,” Barbara said. It was typical of Sandra to write kids off as manipulative when they were crying for attention.

“Stop worrying about him. He’s fine. I got a call from Maureen at social services. Tiffany’s doing much better, too. No sign of the boyfriend. Things really seem to have calmed down.”

That, at least, was something.

“And how are you?” Sandra said.

“I keep finding myself singing ‘The Ballad of Lucy Jordan.’”

Sandra laughed. “Don’t we all. But you have to stay positive. This isn’t the end. I just know something will turn up.”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes life has a way of surprising us.”

“Well, in the last few weeks, it’s certainly done that.”

•   •   •

At lunchtime she tended to take a stroll to the French coffee shop. She would bag the table in the window and sit with a salami salad baguette and a decaf Americano. Dr. Johal had said that caffeine could aggravate panic attacks. She’d thought about registering with one of the tutoring agencies and taking on a few hours of work, but she decided against it. She couldn’t risk scaring a child by having an attack while she was tutoring.

Sometimes as the afternoon rolled round, she realized she couldn’t face more housework. Then she would go for a swim at the large municipal pool. The place was always full of shouty schoolchildren who left gum on the changing room benches and muddy footprints all over the floor. Half the pool was reserved for the kids. The other half was divided into lanes for people who wanted to swim lengths. Barbara always chose the “Nice ’n’ Easy” lane along with the pregnant women and the whiskery old ladies who for some reason favored billowing shower caps over swimming hats. They chugged up and down, the elderly, the expectant and her—mismatched ducks in a row.

When she swam, she concentrated on her breathing. She listened to the lapping of the water, the bellowing of the school kids’ instructor. For half an hour every day, she stopped thinking—a bit like she did when she worked at the Green Door.

•   •   •

Frank was based in Mexico City. He phoned every couple of nights. They’d tried Skyping, but the picture kept freezing or one or both of them would turn into pixels. He called ostensibly to find out how she was doing, but he was always full of his own troubles. People who’d promised him and his crew access to psychiatric hospitals now wanted paying. He was also worried that somebody in the Mexican Department of Health had got wind of what they were doing. “I hope to God I’m just being paranoid. If I’m not and things really are going tits up, then we’re fucked.”

Barbara said she was sorry he was having problems and she meant it. But she didn’t really care—not the way she had in the past. How many nights had she spent lying awake with him, offering concern and counsel? And how often had he returned the gesture? Now he’d abandoned her when she needed him most. She wasn’t sure if she could forgive him. Did she even love him anymore? She certainly couldn’t locate any tender feelings. Whenever she looked for some, all she could find was anger.

She was still having the occasional panic attack. She’d had one the night after Frank left. She woke up at three a.m., heart pounding and fighting for breath. As per Dr. Google’s advice, she tried to convince herself that she was in no danger and that her fear was irrational. But logical thought had no place in this nightmare. The adrenal glands didn’t speak English. The panic continued.

Feeling desperate but not wanting to go charging into Ben’s room and frighten him, she reached for the scrap of paper on which she’d written the number for one of the twenty-four-hour panic helplines. She picked up the phone and dialed.

On the first ring, a tepid female voice came on the line in the form of a recorded message. “Helloo,” she cooed, not so much a counselor as a new and rather shy neighbor trying to introduce herself over the garden fence. “My name is Paul-een and you are having a panic attack.”

You think?

“You will get better.”

Barbara could hear the trembling in Pauline’s voice. To say she didn’t sound exactly sure would be putting it mildly.

“No, I won’t, you idiot. Can’t you see I’m dying here?”

“What I need you to do is place your hand on your abdomen and breathe with me. Here we go. . . . In one, two, three, four . . . and out two, three, four. Are you starting to feel better?”

“No. I’m hyper-fucking-ventilating and seconds from passing out.”

What happened next startled her, but it stopped her from passing out. For some reason—probably because she’d messed up the setting—the radio alarm went off. Suddenly she was listening to a late-night football phone-in. A player had fouled an opponent in some important playoff a few hours before, and everybody was up in arms that the referee had chosen to ignore it. Barbara couldn’t have been less interested, but she forced herself to listen and concentrate. As she did, her symptoms eased. She realized that her brain couldn’t panic and concentrate on the radio at the same time.

Dr. Johal had warned her that while she was waiting for the medication to start working, the panics would continue. But for how long?

By now she was exhausted. She sank back into the pillows and eventually nodded off. It was past nine when she woke. She was making a cup of tea when Jean called to ask how she was doing. Barbara told her about the latest attack. Jean assured her that the pills would take effect soon, but meanwhile she had to be patient. “Tell you what—my shift finishes at two. I need to go home and get changed. Why don’t we meet for a cuppa around four?”

They decided on Le Salon de Thé in Islington. The chap serving insisted on taking them through the entire tea menu—the Assams, the Darjeelings, the China black teas. Then there were the flavored teas: autumn cranberry, blue ginger, chocolate mint.

When they told him that regular English Breakfast would be fine, he seemed genuinely disappointed. They ordered scones and homemade jam just to cheer him up.

“I’m so sorry you’re going through all this,” Jean said. “You don’t deserve it.”

“I’m just so scared.”

“Of?”

“The panic attacks, the future . . . Without my job, I feel I’ve lost my sense of self. It feels as if my life is over, that there’s nothing left for me.”

She told Jean how she sometimes got an image in her head of an old hag with a grizzled claw beckoning her over the hill towards lonely cronehood.

Jean laughed. “Oh, behave. These days, sixty is nothing.” She bit into her scone. “Look, I know I keep saying it, but you will get better. Whoever invented SSRIs deserves a bloomin’ Nobel Prize. They do work, but it takes a while.”

“Well, I wish they’d get a bloody move on.”

“Meanwhile,” Jean said, “I’ve got something that’ll cheer you up. I think I may have found you a tutoring gig.”

Jean had a friend who had a friend who was looking for somebody to tutor her ten-year-old son for his private-school entrance exam.

“But what if I have a panic attack while I’m with him? It would freak him out. No, I’ve decided I should wait a bit longer before I think about doing any work.”

“Barbara, you’ve just been telling me that you feel your life is over. This isn’t the time to walk away. Yes, panic attacks are scary, but you can’t live in fear of the fear. Plus they
will
stop. Come on. It’s not like you to walk away from a challenge.” Jean took a piece of paper out of her pocket. “I’ve written down this woman’s contact details.” She slid the paper across the table.

“I know it’s not like me, but for once in my life, I’m really frightened.” Barbara read the name: Sally Fergusson. There was a phone number and an e-mail address.

“I know you are, hon. But think what Pam would say: ‘Face the fear and do it anyway.’”

Barbara snorted.

“But in this case she’d be right. You mustn’t let fear take over.”

Barbara carried on staring at Sally Fergusson’s details. “OK. I’m not happy, but I’ll do it.” Barbara picked up the piece of paper and put it in her bag. “And thank you. You’ve been such a good friend while I’ve been going through all this. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” Jean said, topping up Barbara’s cup. “Just get back out there.”

It was only now that Barbara noticed what Jean was wearing. “By the way, I’m loving that top.”

“I wondered if it was a bit too low-cut. You don’t think it looks tarty?”

Barbara assured her it was perfect and that the raspberry shade complemented her blue eyes.

“And I got this little skirt to go with it,” Jean said, standing up to show off the raspberry-and-navy tweed pencil skirt. “I thought it had a touch of Chanel about it.”

Barbara agreed that it did. “Fabulous.”

“You don’t think the tweed makes me look fat?”

“Oh, for crying out loud. Turn you sideways and you’d disappear.”

“Actually, I think maybe I
have
lost a few pounds.” Jean was glowing. As she sat down, she tucked her hair behind her ear. There was something almost coquettish about the way she did it.

“You’re off to see Jenson, aren’t you?”

“How do you know?”

“The sexy new top? The skirt? The fact that you’ve lost weight.”

“Well, I like to look nice when I go there.”

“Jean—are you falling for this guy?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m not. We have an arrangement. It’s sex. Damn good sex, I admit, but it’s nothing more. He goes back to his life. I go back to mine.”

“And you never fantasize about being a part of his life?”

“Once in a while maybe. A girl is entitled to the occasional soppy dream. But the truth is that where Jenson is concerned, my feet are firmly fixed on the ground.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

•   •   •

That evening Barbara e-mailed Sally Fergusson. She called the following day sounding pathetically grateful that Barbara had got in touch.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Sally said. “We’ve been through quite a few tutors, but Freddie hasn’t responded very well to any of them.”

“And why do you think that is?” Barbara asked, alarm bells positively clanging.

“They didn’t challenge him. It’s the same at school. Without the proper stimulation, he refuses to work. His teacher says he’s lazy. She says he daydreams all the time instead of getting on with his work. But Freddie is really bright. I know that with the right coaching he’ll walk into a decent school.”

Barbara asked if she could meet Freddie. They made a date for after school the following Thursday.

•   •   •

On the morning of her appointment with Freddie—domestic chores abandoned for once—Barbara started on her reading. Despite having a literature degree, there were so many classics she’d never got round to reading. This break from work would be the perfect opportunity for her to catch up. A few days ago she’d printed out
Newsweek
’s list of the hundred best books ever written. She’d ordered
The
Iliad
and
The Odyssey
, which had arrived first thing. By midday she’d given up on both on the grounds that there were too many “rosy-fingered dawns” and “wine-dark seas.”