The Story of You (38 page)

I could hear the phone ringing even as I got to the bottom of the stairwell that leads up to my flat and ran up them as fast as I could, given the size of me, trampling all over Eva’s bags, which had been reduced finally from mounds and mounds to a far more manageable pile with Joe’s sweet talking over the last few weeks. I was desperate to get to the phone because I knew it could be Grace, or at least work calling to say they’d found Grace. But it was neither of them. It was Joe. It had gone to answerphone by the time I got in the door and he was leaving a message. He sounded odd.

‘Hi, Robbie, it’s me, it’s Joseph, the father of your child in case you’d forgotten.’ It wasn’t odd he sounded, it was drunk.

‘I know who it is,’ he said darkly. ‘I’ve worked it out. And I’m gonna fucking kill him. I am going over there right now, and I am gonna fucking finish him off …’

I picked up. This couldn’t be any worse. ‘Joe, listen to me.’

‘It’s Butler, isn’t it? It’s Butler who did this to you?’

I tried to stay calm but inside I was screaming. ‘Joe, first of all you are really drunk …’

‘I know it is, Robyn, so you might as well just admit it.’

I was concentrating on a little patch of wall that was no longer damp, that had been painted over, expertly, by Joe, weeks ago, when none of this was out in the open, when all that was still buried, my secret.

‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘And I’m going to kill him. No,
no
!’ He was talking at high volume, and melodramatically, as drunk people do. ‘I am going to go round there and I am going to tie him up and torment him like he tormented you and then, when I’m finished with that, I am going to tie up his wife and see how it feels for him to watch someone hurt the person he loves.’

Joe couldn’t tie up a fly, I knew that. I knew this was ridiculous, that it was the booze talking, but I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t go round there at least. Passionate, impulsive Joe. Joe who would get an idea in his head and run with it. Who would chase after a gang of teenagers if they dissed his little brother. Especially with several beers inside him.

‘Joe, you cannot go round there, do you hear me?’

‘I have to, Robbie. Sorry, but I have to.’

‘JOSEPH!’ I shouted, more panicky this time. ‘If you go round there, you will only make it worse for me. You will only drive me further away. What I need is to put it behind me, to forget it ever happened.’

‘But I
can’t
forget it ever happened!’ he cried. ‘I can’t, Robbie, it’s killing me.’

My mobile went off in my bag. I reached down and took it out. It was Grace. Oh God, what would I do now? I had to take this call, it could be my one chance to keep her from getting herself in serious trouble and ending up in hospital and ruining everything we’d worked at; but, if I let Joe go now, God knows what he’d do. I stood, paralysed. I wanted so badly to go to Joe, I couldn’t bear for him to be upset, but he was miles away, in Kilterdale. Now it was my turn to trust him.

‘Look, Joe,’ I said, ‘Please, can you do something for me? Stay where you are, or go to the beach or stand in the middle of a field and scream and shout if you want, just don’t go to Butler’s, okay? I’m begging you. Do you promise me?’

There was just the awful sound of him crying on the other end of the line. Then, he hung up. I stood, holding the receiver, worried sick about him, but also thinking,
Please, Joe, please don’t go round to Butler’s
. This could be the worst, the very worst thing he could do.

I let my mobile ring another four times before I clicked ‘Accept’.

‘Hello? Grace?’

‘I’m here, darlin’.’

She sounded remarkably sharp of mind, and yet gravelly, like she’d smoked her way through the world’s reserves of cigarettes. ‘I found it,’ she said.

‘Found what, Grace?’ I walked out of my flat and stood on the landing, my mind was racing, going over the possibilities. Larry’s grave? Her childhood home?

‘Cecily’s house,’ she said, and my stomach lurched. Grace is under strict orders that if she goes anywhere near Cecily’s house (her mother’s house), then she could be sectioned, and this would mean hospital. Definitely. ‘I’ve come to collect her and take her home.’

I took a deep breath: ‘Okay, Grace …’ I had to play this right, I had to play it calmly. We’d come so far, we couldn’t screw it up now. ‘You need to listen to me.’

‘The voices are telling me, Robyn.’

‘Telling you what?’

‘To go and get her, that she needs her mum.’

‘And where is the house, Grace?’

‘Finchley,’ she said. ‘Finchley, darlin’. It’s very nice around here; at least she’s in a nice area, you know.’

She sounded quite high, but
Finchley?
I thought. This was close. This was good.

‘Okay, I want you to stop there and wait for me. Okay?’ I said, walking back into the flat and straight to Google Maps. ‘I know how powerful and terrifying those voices must be, but you must not listen to them. You must listen to my voice. Mine is the voice that is real and that cares about you. You must wait there and not move, until I get there. Promise me?’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘The voices are strong, though, Robyn. They’re telling me you’re just trying to trick me, to make me take medication.’

I looked down the stairwell, to the evening below. It was so clear, so soft and velvety, it didn’t feel like the sort of night for all this to be happening.

‘You have to trust me, Grace,’ I said. ‘That’s all I ask. We’ve been on a journey together, you and I. Don’t mess it all up now.’

And Joe? I had to trust him. It was
my
turn to trust
him
.

It was late by the time I found the address. Grace’s mother’s road was a horseshoe-shaped cul-de-sac full of Identikit seventies semis; freshly laid tarmac and saplings planted equidistant. It was nothing like I imagined. Nothing like Grace.

Grace was standing in the road in front of her mother’s house, which was white pebbledash with a strange attempt at clapboard on one side, painted red. The dark curtains were closed, thank goodness, so, hopefully, nobody had clocked that Grace was standing outside, although there was a little slither of light coming from one side of them, suggesting that someone was inside, watching television. Grace’s flesh and blood leading another life, a life her mother knew nothing of.

It was almost dark now: the dome of sky above us was blue-black like a beetle, the only light being the moon, streaked with cloud, and the synthetic yellow glow of street lamps, dotted between the saplings. Grace stood under one, like a child on a spotlit stage. She looked lost and alone, and yet on the precipice of something; like she’d come to the edge of one world, and might leap into another. The scene evoked in me something familiar, some event lodged deep in my past – and then I realized, she looked like a woman in an Edward Hopper painting. I’d been to an exhibition once at the Tate Modern, alone, when I was new to London, and drunk on the feeling of freedom and escape.
Automat
, it was called: it showed a woman alone in a café, on a street corner – and I thought, if you could perfectly depict the state of things for Grace right now, tell the story of her life in just one painting, this would be it: there was Grace the child – she’d told me how when she was little and being abused, she’d often spend half the night like this, sitting outside the hotel in the dark; she felt safer there than inside – and also Grace the woman she became, who had suffered a break in her wiring at thirty, who lost the child who was separated from her now by only a green front door. I’d grown to care about Grace a lot and yet I realised now that Joe was right. That she’d exacerbated things for me. That I wasn’t able to separate work and my personal life as much as I thought. That the history we shared was what drew me to her, but what had possibly reminded me of everything, too. Then it struck me: maybe it was Grace who’d caused the panic attacks more than anything, not Joe?

And yet it was too late for all that now. I was in too deep. Perhaps I couldn’t save her, but I could help save her fledgling relationship with her daughter and make sure she didn’t end up in hospital, and that was worth it, wasn’t it? Because at the other side of that front door lay her future. ‘As long as Cec is alive, Grace, there’s always hope,’ I’d said to her in the past few months. But I think I’d only believed it in theory. Now I saw it as a concrete fact.

Grace had her dainty chin tilted up towards that front door, as if listening to the gods. She probably was listening to the gods. I wondered what they were saying to her. Grace and I both heard voices, just mine came from inside and hers from outside of her. Wherever they came from, we both needed to learn to silence them.

I walked over quietly, so as not to startle her. She was still gazing up the driveway, at that green front door. ‘Hello, Grace,’ I said, gently touching her arm. ‘It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?’

Her eyes flickered towards me, so I knew she’d clocked me, but then drifted back to that place I knew she was: a place consumed by a need to see her daughter, to hold her and be close to her. But it couldn’t be now and it couldn’t be in the wrong way. If Grace was to go up to the front door, uninvited, it could ruin things between her and Cecily forever.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her whole body was trembling.

‘It’s time,’ she said. She was muttering something, communicating with the voices inside her head. ‘It’s time, darlin’.’

‘Time for what?’ I said. The most important thing was to remain calm, I told myself. And I did feel calm. Strangely so. ‘What are the voices telling you, Grace?’

A shadow moved from behind the curtains. I knew I had to get her away from here, but not in a way that frightened her, because if she screamed or ran, or made a commotion and they saw her here, she might never be able to see Cecily again. I didn’t have to imagine how it might feel to not be able to see your daughter grow up.

‘They’re telling me to go and get her. That I have to go and get my Cec.’

Inside, the baby shifted. My stomach felt stretched and uncomfortable. I looked up at the sky, as if for strength. I could not screw this up.

‘Grace, come and sit down with me,’ I said. ‘Look, there’s a bench over there – you can have a smoke, we can have a chat?’

I tried to steer her gently with my arm but she pulled away.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to save my baby.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I understand, more than anyone. But you have to listen to me. You have to ignore those voices and listen to mine, because mine’s the one that’s real. Please?’ I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. She turned to me, gnawing at her nail, her thick brows furrowed. I could tell she at least
wanted
to believe me, even if her feet were rooted to the spot.

‘Have you called ’em?’ she said. We both knew she meant the police. ‘No, I haven’t and I’m not going to, as long as you promise to come with me and take your medication, okay?’ I said, holding out my hand to her. ‘Trust me, Grace, I only want the very best for you.’

Slowly, reluctantly, she took my hand and walked over to the bench with me. She huddled over – I thought she was going to sleep – collapsing into herself somehow; then I realized she was just trying to light her fag under her coat, or should I say poncho, because she was wearing one of those plastic ponchos you wear in the rain. I wasn’t sure how flammable it was.

She seemed to relax a little now she had nicotine in her veins, so I leaned forward to talk to her but, as I did, there was a sharp pain across my belly as the baby kneed me in some soft tissue with her pointy little elbow, her bony little foot.

‘Grace, you can move on from the past, you know,’ I said. She was blowing up smoke into the air, towards the moon that was a three-quarter moon, that looked as though it had been slid into the sky, like a record in its sleeve.

‘You can have a relationship with your daughter, feel happiness again. Just imagine what that would feel like, to feel happy?’

Her eyes narrowed as she inhaled, as if she was thinking,
Not in my lifetime, darlin’
.

‘Lots has gone wrong for you in your life but it doesn’t mean it can’t start to go right now,’ I said. ‘Not perfect, but more right. The past doesn’t have to define you, Grace.’

And honestly, it was strange, because just like that, something slid into place in my mind, like finally working out a puzzle, a Rubik’s Cube. The past didn’t have to define me either, not if I didn’t let it. I could choose to remember what I wanted and forget what I didn’t. I remembered what Joe had said outside the Natural History Museum – I hadn’t understood then. But now I did: ‘It just becomes part of you …’

Not like a house you’re carrying on your shoulder, but like something you can slip into your back pocket.

We both sat on the bench, Grace smoking, me leaning back, looking at the man in the moon with his slightly wan expression, his little sad frown, as if he was listening to us, apologizing for something that was about to happen.

I wanted to call the Recovery Centre, to see if I could get a bed for Grace. I’d heard about the centre some weeks back and decided, if ever Grace got to the point where I felt she was becoming unwell enough to be hospitalized, I wanted to get her in there. The Recovery Centre wasn’t a hospital. It was a six-bedroomed house in North London, not even an NHS sign outside to give it away, and it did what it said on the tin. It helped people in the midst of an episode like Grace’s to recover, rather than dose them up to the eyeballs. She’d get therapy and support but, crucially, be free to come and go as she pleased. She wouldn’t be locked up.

I made sure Grace was sitting on a bench not in view of her mother’s house, and left her, promising me she wouldn’t move, as I tried to call the Recovery Centre. But just as I was punching in the numbers, another pain – much bigger, and so sudden this time it took my breath away, ripped through me, bending me double. I stayed there for a few seconds, chest on my knees, my mouth wide open, screaming silently. I didn’t want to stress Grace out. But Grace had a third eye, a sixth sense.