The Story of You (34 page)

I laughed. ‘Shit.’

‘Robyn?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’ve not been scaring yourself on the Internet again, have you? You’re being calm, trying to stay positive. Are you staying late at work again tonight?’

It was so sweet he cared but, also, I felt this bristle of annoyance:
Who was he? My dad?
My dad hassled me less than Joe. In fact, we’d had all of about three conversations on the phone since I’d told him the news I was pregnant again, and there’d been Denise in the background feeding him questions: ‘Ask her if they’re being understanding at work, Bruce. Ask her if she’s told them what happened to her; she shouldn’t be working, anyway, not at six months gone.’

It had endeared Denise to me. (Even if she had mad, 1980s ideas about maternity leave and confinement.) It was nice that she cared, I just wished Dad could have asked those questions himself.

Joe, however, was overdoing it.

‘For God’s sake, Joe.’ I’d never snapped at him like this before and he was taken aback, silent. ‘You’re not my dad. You’re my boyfriend.’

Joe wasn’t the only person I was getting tetchy with. I felt irritated and angry. I felt my life was spinning out of control and the more I felt I was losing control, the more I was frantically trying to claw it back. Grace needed me, Levi and Yolanda; all my clients needed me. I couldn’t go mad.

I was especially worried about Grace: her behaviour was becoming more erratic, her flat more untidy (if that were humanly possible). Sometimes she wouldn’t turn up when we’d arranged to meet, which was most unlike her, and, if I wasn’t there to watch her swallow her medication, I couldn’t be sure she was taking it. I was beginning to see that Jeremy had a point about her having a very ‘definite cycle’ (not that I would ever give him the satisfaction of telling him that). And this cycle, I had identified, was down to anniversaries. Anniversaries were Grace’s trigger: June – the last time she was hospitalized – being the month her abusive stepfather died, the event that triggered her original breakdown, and September – just weeks off – was the month that Cecily went to live with her grandma and Grace ceased to be a mother at all.

The problem was, it was a vicious circle – she loathed hospital: hospital made her worse, but the nearing of an anniversary made her worse, too; so life became chaotic, she stopped taking her medication, then became more unwell and likely to be sectioned. Things had reached a whole new level of chaos in her flat: mouldy food, smoking paraphernalia everywhere. I’d found a packet of ham dated May, lodged behind the radiator. And so I was checking on her more. I wanted to help Grace. Most of all, I wanted to keep her out of hospital. However, I was also becoming aware that helping her didn’t seem to be helping me. Maybe we had more in common than I wanted to admit?

The most frustrating thing was that, actually, as far as making bridges with Cecily was concerned, we were making progress. Rather than constantly telling Cecily how awful she was, Grace had started to ask Cec questions about her life now, the things she was interested in. I’d been delighted when I’d gone to meet her at Peckham Library and she was on the phone. She’d put her hand up to me: ‘Just give me a minute, darlin’. Cec and me are having a chat.’ That moment was a proud moment. I was proud of her, proud of us for getting to that point. It may have sounded like a small thing, but to Grace, this was huge progress.

But still I could tell she was becoming ill. You had to listen carefully, because things were just muttered or insinuated; but there were constant clues left, like spots of blood leading to the scene of the crime, to the full darkness at work in Grace’s mind.
Yeah well, is it any surprise, after what he did to me, that I ended up in the nuthouse
? She’d tag snippets from her past on the end of a conversation about something entirely different: a benefits form we were filling in, a risk assessment. Sometimes she was less obtuse, and the voices and her battles with them would be made perfectly public, say when we were sitting in a café, or on a bus, and she would just talk to them out loud: ‘If you hadn’t have dropped dead, I woulda murdered you myself, I would, with my bare hands!’ People would turn around and stare. Grace was
that
mad woman on the bus that everyone avoids but I felt she was counting on me not to let her end up in hospital. ‘They’re not gonna put me in there, are they?’ she’d say. ‘You won’t let them lock me up, will you darlin’?’

‘Not if I can help it, Grace,’ I’d say. And I meant it.

On the Tuesday of the week after Joe had dropped the bombshell about Butler, I went to see Grace for our normal weekly session. There was no answer, however, and so I called through the letterbox:

‘Grace, it’s just Robyn.’ I always said ‘just Robyn’, I don’t know why. To distinguish me from any other foreign body she feared it might be, I suppose.

There was no answer so I knocked again more loudly. Silence, for a few moments. Then she shouted, ‘I’m well!’

This wasn’t a good sign. This meant she really wasn’t well. I opened the letterbox and could just make out her shins, the hair on them visible in the shaft of sunlight. She was barefoot. I could hear rustling and she was padding about the kitchen, clearly no intention of answering the door. After a few minutes of talking to her through the letterbox, trying and failing to get her to open the door, I popped a note through, asking her to call me. She did, a day or so later, and we arranged to meet at the Subway sandwich shop in Peckham, so I relaxed a little. I assumed she was just embarrassed about the state of her flat.

She was agitated when we met, giving microscopic detail of her past life, in an almost manic way: as if literally turning over the earth with a hoe, wanting to examine everything it brought to the surface. We went halves on a ‘New York Deli’ sub. Grace also ordered a side-plate of jalapeño peppers, which she was munching through like they were peanuts.

‘He said we would meet again in the afterlife,’ she said, suddenly.

‘Who?’

‘Him – Larry.’ I knew exactly who she meant, although it was the first time she’d used his name. ‘He told me just before he died, that we would meet again in the afterlife, where he would have me again but this time for Eternity.’

I felt the prying eyes of the woman next to us – mental patients were well known around these parts and Grace was no exception – but didn’t give her the satisfaction of turning to look.

‘Grace, you know that’s absolutely not true, don’t you?’ I said. ‘Larry is dead and can’t harm you any more.’

‘Larry used to tell me he would snap my neck with one hand if I ever told anyone,’ she said, ignoring me, tipping her head back and throwing another handful of jalapeños down her neck, like a fire-eater. ‘But I will snap his.’ Her eyes were beginning to stream with the heat, but she didn’t so much as blink. ‘Even if I have to do it in the afterlife, I will snap his.’

I knew she was getting worse and I was right to be worried. The following day, I found her standing in the centre of her lounge, among piles of old photographs – some in albums, most just loose, but all of them of her and Cecily, as if the only way to anchor herself was to literally place herself in the past, with her daughter, when she was well.

I stood on the threshold of the lounge and surveyed the scene. ‘Oh, Grace,’ I said. She looked bewildered, as small and vulnerable as a child herself, like she’d literally woken up and found that this had happened to her. She looked up at me. The next thing she said really broke my heart. ‘I want her,’ she said. ‘I really, really want her.’

I went over then, stepped over the pictures – I didn’t give a damn about boundaries – and I gave her a hug. ‘And you will have her again,’ I said. ‘You will have her in your life again. But you must be patient, you are doing so well. Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s get all this cleared up.’

In clinical, later that day (clinical meetings being where we talk about the patients we are most worried about), I brought up Grace and how I planned to take her out to do some photography. I thought it would calm her down to be absorbed in something she enjoyed, something that was hers. It would take her out of her own head, which was, of course, the last place she wanted to be.

Jeremy called me back afterwards. He was sitting on his desk, tapping a biro, this off-putting intense look in his eyes.

‘Is everything all right, Kingy?’ he asked. (Jeremy once said to me: ‘I really should have been a psychologist, Robyn. I could analyse anyone.’ I thought then, as I thought now, that these were dangerous times indeed.)

‘Yes, why?’

‘Just, you seem a little on edge lately. I’m worried about you.’

Oh, God, maybe I really was going mad. Even those that worked with the mad could see I was going mad …

‘You seem to be very preoccupied with Grace,’ he said.

I blinked. Perhaps I was, but I was still doing all my visits with my other clients. I wasn’t neglecting anyone.

‘I was just telling you what my worries are with Grace,’ I said. ‘So you know where I am with her.’

Jeremy nodded, slowly. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘And where are you with
you,
Robyn?’

I froze. ‘Fine.’ What did he mean? There’d only ever been the patient and myself present whenever I’d had a panic attack and, so far, I felt sure I’d managed to keep them secret, hadn’t I?

‘Because we’ve been a bit worried about you in the office lately, to be honest. Is everything okay with you and the baby and with Jack …?’

‘Joe.’

‘Sorry, Joe.’

‘Yes,’ I said, blankly. A hot wave made its way up my legs. ‘Everything’s fine.’

‘Because I’m scared you may be taking on too much with Grace’s case and everything else you’re doing. That you’re –’ he clasped his hands together – ‘not really coping too well at work.’

My cheeks burned hotter. I sat on my hands so that he couldn’t see they were trembling.

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

‘Well, it’s come to my attention that you can’t, or won’t, take the Tube and so have been late for visits.’

This was true, I had, but I’d always made up the time, stayed my full allotted hour with them.

‘I don’t like taking the Tube when I’m pregnant,’ I said. ‘I always make up the time on visits.’

Jeremy nodded then gave a big sigh.

‘You’re not going to like this, Robyn, but I think you’re perhaps dedicating a bit too much time to Grace, at the expense of other patients. And the photography and so on – it’s a good idea, but you know what she was like in hospital with her camera. I’m concerned it actually makes her more agitated. Maybe we need to have a meeting with Dr Manoor, look at her dosage?’

I felt deflated and annoyed. Were drugs always to be the only answer? Just pump ’em up to the eyeballs with antipsychotics, so that they can’t think, they can’t do anything?

Surely, doing things that made her happy would do her good? Things that helped her to feel part of society? If that was crossing ‘personal boundaries’, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to do this job any more. It only made me more determined to do what Grace and I had planned to do when we’d written her care plan – to take her out taking photos. To get Grace behind the camera again. When I came back to the office and told Jeremy how well it had gone, he’d understand. He’d see why I did it.

Dear Lily

Today is the day that I know for sure what I want to do with my life. In all the time I’ve been there (this is my third week of a six-week training placement at Cygnet Hospital), my patient, Claire has never ventured out of bed or spoken. Like most patients, she’s suicidally depressed. She was so bad this week, in fact, she’s been on ‘special observation’, which means she has to be within arm’s length of a member of staff at all times, because when left alone previously, she’s got out of bed only to hurl herself repeatedly at the wall. She hasn’t spoken to anyone for three weeks. But tonight, when I was on watch with her, she spoke. It was only to tell me that she felt so bad she wanted to die, but she reached out nonetheless. She dared to connect with another human being. I can honestly say, that moment was the most fulfilling I’ve ever had in my life. I know now that this is absolutely what I want to do.

Joe had agreed with me some time ago to come on the official photography day with Grace and me in Elephant and Castle. He liked photography but, more importantly, he liked Grace. Neither being a fan of smalltalk, or ceremony, they’d got on famously when they’d met, even if Grace had fired questions at him like she was my mother: ‘So how much d’you get paid, then? Are you in this for the long term, mister? Not let my Robyn down?’

Joe liked to talk, Grace liked to talk. I’d thought it would be fun for Joe to come with us for Grace’s first shoot in fifteen years, but he’d been annoying me this week, if I’m honest. He’d been cloying. He didn’t say, he never said, but I could tell by the daily phone calls and the constant texts –
How you feeling? How’s baby? What are you still doing at work at this time? –
that he was extra concerned about me, since discovering my secret Internet habit. While I was grateful he cared, I also resented, if I’m totally honest, this idea that he couldn’t trust me to look after myself and our baby. So, I wasn’t being a responsible mum and, according to Jeremy, I wasn’t being a responsible CPN either. I felt like I had to prove myself. I was determined to make today a success. I should have known, however, when Joe and I picked up Grace from her flat that morning that things were sliding downhill fast for her. But maybe, because things were sliding quickly for me at that point, I didn’t really notice, or that, in comparison, she didn’t seem that bad. If there’s any job that teaches the term ‘everything is relative’, after all, working in mental health has got to be it.

I’d spoken to Kaye and Leon and Parv about my idea to take Grace out with her camera, and they all thought it was a good one, even if Jeremy didn’t. Sometimes I wondered if Jeremy believed in recovery at all; whether he believed anyone could get better, or it was simply a case of tinkering with their medication from now until death. Sometimes I wondered if he – and not just him but all the bureaucrats in Kingsbridge Mental Heath Trust – was just a bit Münchausen by proxy about it all: he enjoyed his hero role too much to ever want to make the sick people in his care any better. Maybe that was cynical of me, but that’s how it felt sometimes.