A Voice in the Distance

Harry hugs me in the doorway, a quick, comforting warmth, and I watch him get into his car and accelerate down the quiet street. As his red brake lights disappear round the corner, silence descends and I feel suddenly lonely. I wonder if Kate knows how lucky she is. I go back into the kitchen, turn off the oven, put the food out to cool and make myself a cup of hot chocolate. I have no appetite for a solitary dinner. I sit at the kitchen table, sipping my drink and staring out into the black pane of night. Some old friends from music camp who knew Harry, Flynn and me as kids expressed surprise when they first heard I was going out with Flynn. They had always thought I would end up with Harry. I don't know why it comes back to me now.

  I finish my hot chocolate, wash my cup, cover the fish slowly congealing on the sideboard and put it in the fridge. There is no light under the bedroom door and so I figure Flynn has gone to bed. Although it's barely ten o'clock, I decide to follow suit – I have an early lecture tomorrow and I'm not in the mood to do anything more productive. So I double lock the front door, switch off the lights, brush my teeth and creep into the bedroom. I fumble around in the dark, getting undressed, pulling my nightie over my head. It's only when I'm about to get under the covers that I'm aware that the curtains are still open, the streetlight falling over an empty bed. My slowly adjusting eyes make out a figure sitting against the wall beneath the window. I switch on the bedside lamp.

  'What are you doing?'

  He is plugged into his iPod and can't hear me. His eyes squint against the light.

  'I thought you'd gone to bed,' I say, louder.

  He yanks the earphones out. 'I was just waiting for you and Harry to finish talking about me,' he retorts.

  I stare at him, stung. 'What exactly did you expect?'

  'For my girlfriend and best mate to bitch about me behind my back, obviously.'

  The tension that has been growing inside me all evening rises to my throat. 'You really have a nerve, complaining about me, when you're the one who ruined the whole evening by behaving like a prat! What do you expect? For us to start talking about the weather after you go and storm out of the room like a hormonal teenager?'

  He throws his iPod furiously against the foot of the bed and starts to shout. 'I had every right to be pissed off, seeing how the two of you were ganging up on me! That's what you always do, isn't it? "Oh God, what are we going to do about Flynn? He's so crazy." "What are we going to do about Flynn? He's all depressed again." '

  'What would you rather we do? Ignore you?' I am kneeling up on the pillows, almost shaking with rage. 'God forbid we should be concerned about you! God forbid we should care about you!'

  'I didn't ask for your bloody concern!' Flynn yells. His face is puce, the cords standing out in his neck. I have never seen him so angry. 'A fat lot of good it does me, having you and Harry witter on about how screwed up I am!'

  'We never said you were screwed up! We're just worried about you!'

  'Well, save your stupid worry, I don't need it!' Flynn yells. 'Stop trying to be Florence fucking Nightingale!'

  There is a silence. I feel as if I have been punched in the stomach. The wind is knocked out of me. I am going to start crying. I need to move fast. I stumble from the bed and pull on my jeans and grab a jumper. I pick up my bag in the corridor and shove my feet into a pair of trainers.

  'OK, wait, where are you going?' Flynn is beside me in a flash, his hand on my arm. 'Don't be stupid, Jennah, it's late—'

  I jerk myself free and keep on going. He grabs my arm again as I reach the front door.

  'Get your hands off me!' I yell.

  My voice sounds somewhat hysterical. Flynn backs off, looking alarmed. 'Jennah, come on. Listen—'

  I crash out of the front door and run down the staircase and out into the street. The night air is sharp, stinging my bare arms. I walk quickly away, towards the bright lights of the main road, blinded by tears.

  Harry and Kate are comforting and sympathetic. Of course I can stay the night, of course it will blow over, and of course I did the right thing by walking out. Hunched up in the corner of the sofa, sipping hot coffee, it takes me some time to stop sniffing and shivering. I feel guilty for having intruded on them just as they were about to go to bed but could think of nowhere else to go. Mum is living in Manchester with her partner now – I can't just go running home. I am so, so tired.

  Kate suggests I have a hot bath, which I do. Thawing gently in the steamy tub, I look up at the cracked ceiling and wonder if this is the beginning of the end. Two and a half years is not so bad, I suppose. My eyes fill again with painful tears. Why was Flynn so nasty? That's what I can't get my head around. To lose his temper during the rehearsal was one thing, to accuse Harry and me of ganging up against him was another. But to tell me to stop playing Florence Nightingale! That could only have served one purpose – to wound. And he has certainly succeeded.

  I get out, dry myself and pull my nightdress back on. In the living room, Harry helps me open up the sofa bed and lends me an alarm clock. I climb under the covers. The phone on the coffee table suddenly springs into life.

  Harry sits down on the armrest and picks up. 'Hello?'

  I stretch out beneath the duvet. I wonder if I dare skip my morning lecture.

  'Calm down, mate, she's here with us,' Harry is saying. He turns to look at me.

  I look up at him and frown, shaking my head vigorously.

  'She doesn't feel like talking to you right now,' Harry says.

  I am watching Harry's face. The sound of rapid speech comes out of the receiver. Harry is struggling to get a word in. 'Yes, yes, I know . . . Yes, she's spending the night . . . No, don't come round now. We're all going to bed. Get some sleep and call back in the morning.'

  More rapid speech.

  'Yes, all right . . . But she doesn't want to talk to you just now . . . I'll tell her you called, OK?'

  Harry looks at me again. Widens his eyes dramatically. 'No, I really don't think that's a good idea . . . No. Listen, mate, I'll get her to call you tomorrow.'

  When Harry finally hangs up, he turns to look at me. 'He sounded upset.'

  A sliver of fear runs through me. 'How upset?'

  A pause. 'You look knackered, Jen,' Harry says suddenly. 'Get some sleep, OK? Things will seem better in the morning.'

  He gets up to go and I pull the duvet around me. 'Harry?'

  'Mm?' He stops in the doorway.

  'Thank you.'

  Chapter Six

  FLYNN

  'At bar one eighteen,' Professor Kaiser says, 'are you playing it accelerando with intention?'

  I am not doing anything with intention. I am just trying to get through this lesson without popping a blood vessel.

  'Keep it a battuta until the E flat,' the professor continues. 'Let the notes maintain their weight until the quaver passage after the F sharp.'

  I don't know what the fuck he is talking about. The only weight I am aware of is inside my head. I didn't sleep last night. I bought a bottle of vodka and a packet of cigarettes and watched in a blurry, drunken haze as a watery dawn rose over the rooftops. Now I am playing in a winter jacket in Kaiser's under-heated study at the end of a wet, rainy day; the professor pacing the room like a caged animal as I attack Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto with barely concealed hatred.

  'Da pum pum pum . . .' Kaiser repeats the fingering of the runaway semi-quavers on the top of the piano. 'Keep – the – tempo,' he chants in time to the imaginary notes.

  I throw myself back into the semi-quavers to drown out the sound of Kaiser's voice.

  But Kaiser just starts to shout. 'Flynn! A battuta! Quavers, not semi-quavers!'

  I close my eyes and try and shut him out. My fingers don't want to stay in time. They want to race ahead in fury, plunging into the dense fog of black notes, pulling the music out by its roots, hurling it up out of the piano and into the air. I dive into the fat staccato chords like a madman with a hammer, pounding the notes out of the grand piano until the floor shakes. I collapse at t
he end of the first movement, my forehead hitting the piano ledge with a thud.

  'Very theatrical, Flynn,' Kaiser says dryly as the final chord hangs in the air. 'But I'm not sure that is exactly what Rachmaninov meant when he wrote decrescendo. We need some element of control or the piece loses its centre. The staccato chords need more space – pum, pum, pum. They are sounding more like quarter notes than two whole notes tied. You need to massage them and then use pedal, get them to ooze . . .'

  I stare at a spot on the wall just above a portrait of Handel and try and remove the thought of oozing chords from my mind.

  'Show me,' Kaiser is saying. 'Milk the chords—'

  'From where?' I snap irritably. My head is killing me.

  'The cadences, of course.' Professor Kaiser looks at me in surprise.

  'OK, OK. From the G sharp?'

  'The B flat.'

  I take a deep breath and dive back in. The sound crashes about the room like a stormy sea. I can't for the life of me remember why I ever agreed to learn this piece. I am sure that music was never meant to sound this harsh, this painful.

  'Whoa, whoa!' Professor Kaiser shouts.

  I pretend not to hear him.

  'Clarity! Clarity!' he shouts again.

  I lose my fingering and jolt to a dissonant halt. 'What?' I bark furiously.

  'Even in eruptions of fortissimo, you need to take more time to ensure clarity,' Kaiser says.

  'What are you talking about?' I snap. 'I've got pedal markings till the end of this whole section!'

  'What I mean is—'

  'You want it without the pedal now?' I demand furiously. 'Or you want it with pedal but without sostenuto and clear within the resonance?' I can hear my heart.

  The professor stops his pacing and turns, looking at me thoughtfully. 'I think you are more excited than even the music today, no?' He considers me for a moment.

  I breathe. I realize I have been shouting and I can feel the heat pounding in my cheeks. I gnaw at my thumbnail.

  'Let's stop for today. We can keep the clarity-withinresonance problem for next time,' Professor Kaiser suggests gently. 'You look tired.'

  I busy myself, gathering my music together.

  'I can tell things are difficult at the moment . . .'

  My teeth are clenched together so hard, my jaw aches. Does the whole world know? I mumble something not even I can hear.

  As I pull the strap of my bag across my chest and move towards the door, Professor Kaiser puts a restraining hand on my arm. 'Flynn—'

  'I'm OK!' I jump away violently. 'I'm OK. Really. Thanks for the lesson. I'll see you tomorrow, as usual.' And I turn and hurry from the room, away from the menacing threat of his concern.

  I buy a packet of cigarettes and chain-smoke them on a damp bench in the park, a mini-gale buffeting around me. I've smoked so much in the last twenty-four hours that the taste makes me feel sick, but I feel like doing something self-destructive. It's funny how you can think you've reached rock bottom, then sink a whole lot further. I know I only have myself to blame but that is little consolation. Yesterday evening Harry and Jennah made me so angry, and I hardly know why. Something to do with their friendship, which has always been very close. Something to do with the realization that Jennah has more in common with Harry than with me. Something to do with the fact that I am depressed, and they are not. Something to do with them being the longsuffering friends and I the pain-in-the-neck. Something to do with wishing I was anyone but me.

  I don't know where the stupid Florence Nightingale remark came from. I regretted it as soon as the words were out. I just grabbed at the first nasty taunt I could think of. I wanted to hurt Jennah; to make her see, just for a second, what it felt like to really hurt. How evil that sounds. To want to make someone you love suffer the way you suffer. I am cruel and selfish and envious. I hate myself more than they could ever hate me.

  I am so, so sick of it. This is the overriding feeling. They say depression is an incredible sadness, an unbearable mental pain. No, it doesn't have to be so dramatic. Sometimes it is nothing more than feeling tired. Tired of life. In therapy they tell you to remember that the bad spells pass. That things do get better, that medication does work, that things don't stay the same. I can't see how this is supposed to help. Ultimately everything ends with death. What they should say is: things might get better for a while, but eventually you will go back to being nothing, and all the pain and suffering will have been in vain. I wonder what Dr Stefan would have to say to that. They say that depression makes you see everything in a negative light. I disagree. It makes you see things for what they are. It makes you take off the fucking rose-tinted glasses and look around and see the world as it really is – cruel, harsh and unfair. It makes you see people in their true colours – stupid, shallow and self-absorbed. All that ridiculous optimism, all that carpe diem and life's-what-you-make-ofit. Words, just empty words in an attempt to give meaning to an existence that is both doomed and futile.

  I need to walk. When I start thinking like this, I scare even myself. Because I know I'm right, and because I know there is only one way out. There are people you're supposed to call when you're feeling like this. The Samaritans, my psychiatrist . . . Why? So they can talk you out of it? Talk you out of 'harming' yourself? It's all rubbish. I'm harmed already. I only want to be kind to myself, to put myself out of my misery.

  I walk quickly, even though I have nowhere to go. My warm breath mingles with the cigarette smoke, creating small white clouds against the cold air. It has been raining, and everything is wet and sharp and new. Cars swish by, their lights picking out the puddles on the pavement. A weary chill settles in between my shoulder blades. The hand holding the cigarette is soon numb with cold. Autumn has turned into winter.

  My mobile erupts into a series of clamorous vibrations. I pull it hurriedly out of my jacket pocket in the vain hope that it will be Jennah's name on the caller ID. It's Rami. I flick the phone open without thinking. 'What?'

  'Hello. Nice to hear from you too.'

  'I'm busy.'

  'Doing what?'

  'Practising.'

  'You're outside – I can hear the wind.'

  'I'm on my way home to practise.'

  'Well, you can talk to me till you get there, can't you?'

  'I don't need you calling me every fucking day to check up on me!'

  A weary pause. 'That's a bit of an exaggeration. What's going on, Flynn?'

  'Nothing!'

  'Is the dose too high?'

  'How the hell should I know?'

  'There's always a massive come-down after a manic episode, you know that,' Rami reminds me, his voice heavy with infuriating moderation. 'And your body's having to adjust to the increased dose in medication, so you're getting a double whammy of depression right now. It'll pass, Flynn.'

  'Who the hell said I was depressed?'

  There is silence at the other end of the line and I picture Rami biting his lip, trying to resist saying something funny but sarky that will cause me to hang up on him.

  After Rami finishes quizzing me about my mood, side-effects, psych appointments and all the fucking rest, I leave the park and find myself heading towards Harry's. My pride tells me I should go home and wait it out, but a strange mix of self-destruction and despair keeps me going. I have sunk so low now, it almost entertains me to try to sink further. I pass a homeless guy in a damp sleeping bag and realize with a jolt that there is precious little standing between him and me. A girlfriend who doesn't return, a couple of months' missed rent, clothes that haven't been changed for a few weeks. An emptied-out bank account, the last of the student loan spent on fags and booze, parents who don't know what to do any more . . .

  I press the buzzer to Harry's flat and rest my forehead against the wet intercom. Harry's voice crackles out. 'Yep?'

  'Let me in. It's Flynn.'

  Brief hesitation. 'Uh – just hold on a sec.'

  'For fuck sake!' I kick the door. 'Just let me in, will you?'


  'OK, OK.' The buzzer sounds and I shove open the door and go up the stairs.

  Harry is standing in the doorway. 'She's not here, you know.'

  I glare at him. 'I don't believe you.'

  He sighs wearily and holds open the door. 'You can come and search the flat if you want to. I think she's still at uni. Doesn't she have lectures till five on a Thursday?'

  I stop and think. 'Oh yeah. Shit.'

  'You may as well come in,' Harry says. 'Coffee?'

  'OK.' We go into the kitchen. Harry puts the kettle on.

  I run my hands through my hair and look around to see if any of Jennah's things are still here. 'So, is she planning on sleeping here again tonight?'

  'I've no idea,' Harry says.

  'What, she didn't tell you anything? She didn't tell you if she was coming back here or not?'

  Harry sits down at the table. 'I didn't see her this morning, Flynn. I had a lesson at ten and by the time I got home, she'd left.' He looks at me. 'Sit down, man, you look rough. Do you want something to eat?'

  'No. She must have given you some idea—'

  'Look, I really don't know,' Harry says, getting up to pour the coffee. 'Have you tried her mobile?'

  'Obviously! It's been off all day!'

  'Well then, she's still in lectures,' Harry says. 'Or . . .' He hesitates.

  'What?' I challenge him.

  'Or she doesn't want to speak to you.' He glances at me nervously. 'Probably she's still in lectures.'

  'Why wouldn't she want to speak to me?' I demand.

  'I dunno, Flynn. She seemed pretty upset last night.'

  'We had a fight,' I say. 'That's what couples do. Shit happens! She needs to learn to deal with it.'

  'Right.' Harry sets down a mug of coffee in front of me, infuriatingly calm. 'One bit of advice though – don't say that to her.'

  I take an angry gulp of coffee, scalding my tongue. 'Did she sleep here last night?'

  'You know she did—'

  'What did she say?'

  'Nothing. Just that you'd had a row.'

  'Why did she have to spend the night here? Why couldn't she spend the night at home? Why did she have to come running to you and Kate, for Christ's sake? How are we supposed to resolve our differences if she won't even talk about them?'