Into the Darkest Corner

  ‘He’s been held up,’ I said, by way of explanation. ‘Sorry. Hopefully he’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Held up?’ she echoed. ‘Is he off stealing the crown jewels or something?’

  I laughed. ‘Probably.’

  I went into the living room and said hello to everyone. Claire and Lennon were on the sofa, Lennon looking vaguely uncomfortable about the fact that Claire was lying across his lap, her legs on the arm of the sofa; he sat there rigid while she laughed raucously about something Louise had said.

  ‘Catherine! About time,’ Louise said, getting up in one lithe, unfolding movement from the floor where she’d been sitting. She kissed my cheek. ‘Claire’s pissed already.’

  ‘Claire, you’re such a lightweight.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ she said, tears still on her cheeks from laughing so hard. ‘Seriously, Lou, don’t do that to me, I nearly had a Tena moment.’

  Still sitting stiffly under Claire’s posterior, Lennon’s eyes widened.

  ‘Where is he, then?’ Charlie said. Charlie was Lou’s temporary cuddle, a bit too cerebral for her, we all thought, all long hair and consciousness and roll-ups.

  ‘He’s been held up,’ I repeated. ‘He said not to wait.’

  ‘Would we have waited?’ Charlie said, ‘I doubt it, to be honest.’

  You’re such a cock, I thought, but I said nothing.

  Max, Maggie’s husband, was in the kitchen arguing with her in a not very subtle way about how much coriander had been added to whatever it was simmering away on the Aga hotplate.

  I gave them both a kiss hello and they happily carried on bickering as though I wasn’t there.

  Stevie appeared from the bathroom. ‘Where’s the new guy, then?’ he asked, kissing me on both cheeks.

  ‘Oh, God, you guys, honestly. You’re not going to grill him when he gets here, are you?’

  ‘Depends how tasty he is,’ Sylvia said, handing me a glass of wine the size of a fruit bowl. In deference to Maggie’s taste for monochrome, she was wearing a zebra-print skirt; below that, fuchsia fishnet stockings that only someone with Sylvia’s legs could possibly get away with. The black and white theme began and ended with the skirt, though, because her top was various shades of purple and pink. She looked, as always, stunning.

  Stevie was one of Sylvia’s several fuckbuddies – my particular favourite, and I was pleased he was here. He was married, but he happily shagged anyone who caught his attention, as did his wife, Elaine. Sylvia got a good seeing-to once every couple of months, and in between seeings-to they sometimes had fun out in town with their clothes on, too. Elaine had been out with us on the odd occasion. She was a good laugh. Sylvia once told me she’d woken up after a particularly heavy night in town in the middle of Stevie and Elaine’s kingsize bed, cuddling up to both of them.

  The doorbell went and everyone looked at me expectantly. I gave them all a look which said please behave, but when I opened the front door it was Sam and Sean.

  ‘Oh, is he not here?’ Sam said, when she made her way into the living room.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I said, ‘seriously, will you lot all just calm down about it?’

  I regretted it the moment I’d said it. Why was I being so uptight? These were my best friends, at least the girls were, people I’d spent practically my whole life with. We’d all been pissing about with relationships for years, far too long; if any of them had turned up at Maggie’s with anyone remotely serious I probably would have been just as curious as they all were.

  ‘Sylvia,’ Sam said, ‘is that thing made out of a real zebra?’

  ‘Of course not, darling, I got it in Harrogate.’

  ‘But it’s furry.’

  Maggie did her best to delay dinner, but after half an hour Max started grumbling so we all sat down, everybody talking at once, passing bread and wine and spoons and bowls of vegetables. I sat in a miserable silence next to the one empty seat, scooping food onto my plate and wishing I were somewhere else.

  Wednesday 12 December 2007

  I saw Stuart in the High Street, struggling with some carrier bags weighing him down on one side, his jacket sleeve on the other side empty. He had his back to me, heading in the direction of Talbot Street, making slow progress.

  I should have immediately caught up with him, offered to give him a hand with the bags, and enjoyed his company on the last few hundred yards back to the house.

  Of course, I did none of these things. I skulked around in the doorway of the hairdresser’s for a few minutes, then pretended to study the window of the bookshop, keeping my head down until he’d turned the corner and was out of sight.

  It wasn’t just the embarrassment about screaming my head off just because I’d woken up on his sofa. The more I’d thought about it since, the worse it got. He was a doctor, a mental health practitioner at that. He was everyone and everything I’d spent the last three years trying to avoid. He smelled of hospitals, he emanated authority like a scent: people telling you what to do, diagnosing you, feeding you drugs, making decisions for you, steering your life down a path they could control.

  I chanced a glance up to the right, around the various bodies wrapped in warm coats and cars and buses, to see if he was still there.

  ‘Thought it was you. How are you?’

  I spun round to find him at my left shoulder, another bag added to those weighing him down.

  ‘I’m okay, thanks. Gosh, those look heavy.’

  ‘They are, a bit.’

  He must have turned around when I wasn’t looking, gone back into the pharmacy on the corner. I hesitated for a moment, knowing that I couldn’t very well leave him to walk home with those bags and realising that it would mean I couldn’t take my usual route home via the alleyway at the back.

  ‘Are you walking my way?’ he said with a smile.

  I felt unreasonably bad-tempered, mainly at my pathetic attempt to avoid him and the fact that I’d not had the sense to go inside the shop and hide myself away properly. I contemplated saying no, I thought about making some excuse about meeting someone, but sometimes it was just easier to give in.

  ‘Here, let me take those bags for you,’ I said as we started walking.

  ‘It’s alright, really,’ he said.

  ‘Some of them, then.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He handed over two of the lightest ones and we carried on walking.

  ‘How’s the shoulder?’

  ‘Bit better today, I think. It’ll probably hurt more later. I only came out to get some milk.’

  We walked along in silence for a while. I felt jumpy, as if I wanted to break into a run. He kept a respectable distance between us, so much that people walking in the opposite direction kept walking in between us. I wondered if he was having trouble keeping up with me.

  ‘It’s your appointment tomorrow, isn’t it?’ he asked at last.

  I slowed down a little until he drew level. I didn’t want to be talking about medical shit in the High Street. ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘You feeling okay about it?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  We crossed the road and turned into Talbot Street. There were fewer people down here, and the pavement was narrower.

  ‘Sorry I gave you a fright the other day. I should have woken you up, I think.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have fallen asleep in the first place. Don’t worry, it won’t happen again.’

  I felt him give me a look, but I kept my eyes straight ahead.

  ‘I know this must be hard for you,’ he said.

  That did it. I turned to face him, the bags swinging round abruptly and hitting my legs. ‘No, Stuart, you don’t know at all,’ I said. ‘You have no idea. You think you know everything just because you peer into people’s minds every day. Well, you know nothing at all about what’s going on in mine.’

  It might well be true that he was used to outbursts like this, used to people challenging him, but perhaps not on the pavement outside his house. He looked startled, and for a mome
nt he was lost for words, so I seized the chance that gave me.

  ‘I’ll see you soon,’ I said, putting the bags down. He would have to carry them upstairs himself.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘No idea,’ I said, walking away. ‘I just don’t feel like going in yet.’

  I heard the door open and slam shut behind him, and only then did I look over my shoulder. He’d gone inside. I was nearly level with the alleyway, and for a moment I thought about going straight down there and checking the house from the back, but I was too angry. I felt agitated, my nerves twanging like an elastic band that had been stretched too thin.

  Thursday 18 December 2003

  I didn’t even hear the doorbell go, but all of a sudden I noticed Maggie had left the table and then she was back and Lee was with her.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, ‘sorry I’m so late.’

  There was a moment – just a moment – of shocked silence as everyone took him in, his dark grey suit, blond hair, bright blue eyes – his warm smile. And then all the girls started talking at the same time.

  Sylvia jumped up from her position at the head of the table and threw her arms around his neck while everyone else stood and waited to either kiss him on the cheek or shake him by the hand. I was last, of course, but then I was kind of trapped around the other side of the table. When he got a chance to sit down, he gave me a kiss and a wink, and a whispered ‘sorry’.

  I felt as if I was on fire. I’d not seen him for nearly a week, during which time I’d imagined him dead in a ditch on more than one occasion. I’d felt lonely and alone. I’d felt as if I was being followed, being watched. But now, suddenly, everything was fine: my beautiful, sexy boyfriend was back and I’d almost forgotten just how lovely he was.

  Everyone had relaxed, Louise was happily telling everyone about the time Claire laughed so much she wet herself in the Queen’s Head and had to dry her knickers off under the hand dryer, Stevie was talking to Lee about the car he’d just bought and I was glowing. The way he looked – so beautiful and cool, serene; the way he’d smiled at them all and apologised for being late; the fact that he’d somehow found the time to buy Sylvia a bottle of Cristal and Maggie a bunch of long-stemmed white roses; but above all the way all the girls had looked at him dumbstruck, with a kind of awe – and here he was, sitting next to me, giving Stevie his undivided attention, his right hand under the table, on my thigh.

  I heard my mobile buzzing in my bag and I fished around in there for it, thinking it was probably a delayed text from Lee to say he was on his way.

  Bizarrely, it was from Sylv.

  Are his eyes really that colour or are they lenses?

  One-handed, I thumbed a reply:

  Lol, they’re real

  I looked at her at the other end of the table, chatting away happily to Max, who at last was starting to calm down and lose some of the purple in his face that always seemed to develop at any sort of stress.

  Claire was starting to look very pink around the cheeks. ‘Are you going to pause for a bit, Claire?’ Sam said, giving her a look. ‘We don’t want a repeat performance of the other night in the Cheshire, do we?’

  ‘Don’t be mean.’ Claire pouted. ‘Anyway, that reminds me, you haven’t told them all about what happened with Jack in the Cheshire, have you?’

  ‘Oh, God, that was funny.’

  ‘Tell them,’ Claire insisted, and then, not pausing for breath, ‘Jack was in the Cheshire and he’d got to the point where he was completely off his face, and he knew he was going to chuck up everywhere – ’

  ‘As you do,’ said Lennon.

  ‘ – And he went running into the gents,’ continued Sam, since Claire was having trouble controlling herself, ‘and he was in such a hurry he just rammed open one of the toilet doors… and some poor bloke was sitting in there having a crap and got the fright of his life when Jack slammed the door open on him. But the problem was Jack couldn’t hold it in any longer – ’

  ‘ – Or maybe he was just too pissed to realise the toilet wasn’t actually empty,’ added Claire, tears running down her cheeks.

  ‘So he ended up vomming into this poor bloke’s lap…’

  ‘Oh, God, that’s not even the funniest bit…’

  ‘And as soon as he could pause for breath he managed to think, hang on, I’ve just puked all over a stranger, if I were him I’d be a bit pissed off, and he started to consider that maybe attack was the best form of defence, so he punched him in the face and ran back out of the toilet.’

  Everyone was laughing now, except Charlie.

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Claire, ‘I’m going for a wee. Back in a minute.’

  ‘So you mean,’ said Charlie seriously, ‘he puked all over some stranger’s legs and then punched him in the face? For no reason?’

  ‘Summat like that, yeah,’ said Sam, wiping her eyes.

  ‘Would someone pass me the gravy?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Charlie, you’re such a spoon,’ Louise said.

  ‘I’m sure I recognise your face, Lee,’ Stevie was saying. ‘Have we met through work or something?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve been working on the door at the River,’ Lee said. ‘Maybe it was there.’

  ‘Could’ve been. Have you been to see the new competition yet? It’s pretty impressive in there. The Red Divine, I mean – we went there on Friday.’

  ‘No. I’m not much of a clubber, to be honest – too many nights spent seeing the aftermath of it all.’

  ‘Good on you,’ Max boomed from the opposite side of the table. ‘That’s what I keep trying to tell this lot: they’re better off growing up and spending their money on sensible things, or better still investing it somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, you old grouch,’ Maggie said playfully. ‘Just ignore grandad, girls. He’s forgotten how to have fun.’

  ‘I have perfectly excellent fun, thank you very much.’

  ‘…With the crossword and Radio Three, of course you do.’

  We ate and we talked, and every so often Lee’s hand would drop under the table and find my thigh, and just rest there, warm and heavy, not requiring a response.

  When I’d finished eating I took hold of his hand under the table and gave it a squeeze. He looked at me questioningly. His eyes really were so beautiful, so open. Everyone else was busy talking and not paying any attention to us.

  I whispered in his ear, ‘Were you in the house today?’

  He looked mystified. ‘I was working. Why?’

  ‘Someone changed the knives and forks over.’

  He gave me a look that said, why on earth would anyone do that? But at the same time he had a twinkle in his eye.

  ‘Did you do it for a laugh?’

  ‘I just wanted you to know I was looking out for you.’

  I felt my cheeks flush. I don’t know why I suddenly felt so uncomfortable, but I did.

  ‘You could have left me a note,’ I said.

  ‘Too obvious,’ he said, with a wink and a smile.

  I drank the last of my wine and thought about it for a moment, laughing at something Sylvia had said.

  Lee’s thumb was stroking the back of my hand, gently, making me shiver.

  ‘Lee,’ I said, quietly.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Don’t do it again. Please.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Don’t move my stuff around. Please. Okay?’

  His face clouded a little, but he nodded. A few moments later he let go of my hand when Maggie collected our plates. He didn’t take hold of it again after that.

  Thursday 13 December 2007

  The surgery was busier than it had been a few nights ago, more people waiting, more noise. I sat in the corner, knees clamped together, trying to remember why I was doing this to myself. Directly across from me, a man kept coughing without putting his hand over his mouth. A baby wearing a grubby sleepsuit was throwing blocks from the toybox at his brother, while their mother ignored them both and talked to the woma
n next to her about fibroids, and The X Factor. More than once I thought about getting up and walking out. After all, I wasn’t exactly ill – there were many people in here clearly in a far worse state than me. Surely I was wasting their time?

  ‘Cathy Bailey?’ The voice came from a side corridor and I looked up to see a man peering around the corner.

  I leapt up as if I’d been stung.

  I hurried down the corridor with Dr Malhotra, into a room that had that unfortunate smell of disinfectant, alcohol-based hand sanitiser.

  ‘You’re a friend of Stuart’s?’ was the first thing he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, wondering how he knew that.

  ‘He’s a good bloke.’

  Sanjeev Malhotra was slight, smartly dressed in dark trousers, pink shirt and tie, a neatly trimmed black beard and funky-looking glasses. ‘What can I do for you?’ he said.

  I told him about the checking, and the panic attacks. I told him about them getting worse. He asked me if I ever thought about hurting myself. I told him I didn’t. He asked me if something had happened to trigger these attacks and I told him about Robin. Then of course I had to tell him about everything else, as well. I kept that part brief. I told him I was trying hard to put all that behind me.

  He clicked on the computer a few times. Just as Stuart said, he told me he’d refer me to the Community Mental Health Team for an assessment. He said it would probably be a few weeks before I’d get seen.

  That seemed to be it.

  ‘I hear Stuart’s out of action at the moment,’ he said, at the end.

  ‘He dislocated his shoulder.’

  ‘Shame. Still, at least it means we’ve got a chance of winning on Sunday.’

  I caught the bus back to Talbot Street. I felt strange, as though I’d dreamed the whole thing, and a little queasy. Already all I could think about was getting home so I could start the checking. I had a feeling it was going to be difficult to get it right.

  Monday 22 December 2003

  The last Monday before Christmas, late-night shopping, the final push towards the great two-day festive shut-down.