Those shoes she’s wearing are cool, thinks Abby, admiring Beth’s purple wedges. It’s the first upbeat thought she’s had all morning.
‘Sangeeta said you were wanting to leave. I gathered you were upset, so I thought it might be a good moment to introduce myself,’ Beth continues, taking a seat. ‘Would you like
to sit down, Abby? I don’t know about you, but I prefer sitting to talk myself.’
‘OK.’ Abby perches on the edge of the sofa.
‘I understand you’ve been feeling very anxious.’
‘Yes.’ Even the word gives Abby the urge to start jiggling her legs again.
‘That’s an awful feeling, I know. I’ve had it too.’
‘You have?’ Abby is taken aback to hear a therapist confess anything personal; all the doctors and specialists she’s encountered over the years – and there have been a
lot, if she goes back to her student days, and includes those who’ve been involved with Callum – have never brought up their own experiences.
‘Oh yes,’ Beth grimaces and shakes her head. ‘It can completely take you over sometimes, can’t it?’
Maybe I can trust this woman, just a little
, thinks Abby. ‘I wish they’d stop following me round,’ she confesses. ‘It’s making my anxiety worse.’
‘Who’s been following you? People outside of here?’
‘God, no!’ Abby laughs. ‘I’m not completely paranoid. In here. You know, the nurses.’
‘You mean Sangeeta?’
‘Yes. And last night too, it was bonkers. Even when I went to bed. They kept coming in, every few minutes, all night. How on earth was I supposed to get to sleep through that?’
‘It’s only because we’ve been trying to take care of you, Abby. We do it with a lot of our patients who, um—’
‘Who what?’
‘Who might be a danger to themselves.’
‘Well, I’m not a danger to myself. Life’s pretty shit, but I’m not going to do anything stupid.’
Beth says nothing for a few moments, then murmurs, ‘OK . . .’ and nods slowly. ‘Would you like to say a bit more about how you’re feeling right now?’
Abby frowns. It’s a long time since anyone has asked so pointedly about her emotions. ‘Stressed.’ She shrugs. Where on earth should she start? ‘It’s been a pretty
crazy time – my husband and I haven’t been getting on.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘We’re separating, so now I’ve got to move. We thought we’d got a buyer for the house, but Glenn kept pushing them for the asking price, so it looks like we’ve lost
them.’ She comes to a halt. Even saying this makes her head spin. She can feel her legs juddering against the edge of the sofa. ‘Oh yes, there’s my son, too. He has
autism.’
‘That sounds like an awful lot to deal with.’
‘Yeah, it is.’
‘Have you had much support through all this?’
‘I have a couple of carers who help with Callum—’
‘He’s your son?’
‘Mm.’
‘I shouldn’t imagine they offer
you
that much opportunity to offload, do they?’
Beth saying this makes Abby appreciate how alone she’s been. ‘No. Not really.’
‘Anyone else? Friends, family?’
‘Er . . .’ Who’s she kidding, thinks Abby. I don’t have any time for my friends. Certainly not lately. She considers her mum and dad. ‘My parents live in the West
Country and I’ve not seen them in a while. But anyway, we don’t really have that sort of relationship. They tend to keep themselves to themselves.’
‘So I imagine your anxiety has been building up a lot, over time.’ Beth rests her elbows on her knees and leans forward.
Abby’s racing thoughts slow a touch, so she’s able to see more clearly. ‘Yes. It’s been much worse since the beginning of the year.’ Maybe I ought to tell her
I’ve felt like this before, she thinks, when I broke up with Jake. She adds, ‘Seems I’m prone to anxiety.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘It got really bad a while back . . .’ Abby struggles to remember the exact timing. ‘Though it was over ten years ago. I split up with my boyfriend just as I was doing my
degree show.’
‘That must have been horrible, both happening at once.’
She recalls Jake. What a dance he led her: on/off, on/off.
‘I was awfully apprehensive doing my final exams, I remember. Got myself so wound up my mind froze for the first half-hour of one paper.’ Beth laughs and shakes her head.
‘That’s what happens when we panic, we can’t think straight.’
Once more Abby is struck by how open Beth seems. The therapist she saw briefly at college in Manchester was distant and robotic, spoke as if he was reading from a textbook. ‘I was on
Prozac for a bit,’ she admits.
‘Did you find that helped?’
‘Oh yes.’ More than the therapy, Abby recalls.
‘Have you had any other anxious periods since then?’
‘Not any really serious bouts, no.’
‘Well, that’s good.’
The last few years I’ve been so focused on Callum I’ve thought of little else, thinks Abby. Maybe it’s all been building up.
Beth is silent a while, then looks straight into Abby’s eyes. ‘I want to ask you something, Abby, and I hope you don’t mind my being direct. When I take on someone new here, as
I have with you, I do get some notes beforehand. They’re very minimal – just what we’ve been passed on by the hospital, in your case, as I understand you were admitted at the
weekend. Nonetheless, I read in yours that an empty packet of temazepam was found by your bed. Your husband seems to have been under the impression that you’d taken rather a lot of
pills.’
Through the haze of the last few days, memories begin to resurface. Abby recalls Glenn returning home, late as usual – it must have been, when, Friday night? He’d come into her room
– because Callum was crying or something, hadn’t he said? She’d been really dopey, he’d been alarmed and insisted on taking her to A & E, where they’d given her
something to make her vomit, even though she was half asleep . . .
Abby makes a connection. ‘Is that why I’ve been sent here?’
Beth nods. ‘Part of the reason you were admitted, yes. I think your husband was extremely worried about you. I gather he thought there had been a lot of tablets in the packet.’
‘But I told him at the time, I only wanted to get to sleep.’
‘Didn’t you worry that taking so many might cause you harm?’
‘I didn’t take that many.’
‘So you weren’t intending to take an overdose?’
‘No!’ Did they really think she was trying to kill herself? Worse, did Glenn think so too?
‘Well, luckily temazepam are relatively hard to poison yourself with. I’m not a doctor, but it takes a high dose to do so, from what I understand. Usually they just make you very,
very sleepy.’
‘I wasn’t trying to poison myself.’ Abby is getting wound up again. ‘I’d never leave my son. I wouldn’t take a whole load, however crap I felt. I kept trying
to explain, I only took one or two to help me drift off.’
Once more Beth falls silent.
‘I tried to tell Glenn and the people at A & E, but no one would listen to me . . . Glenn hasn’t listened to me for months.’ She tries to recall further details of that
night, but it’s no good. Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it’s all the stress she’s been under, probably both, but she can’t remember much about arriving at Moreland’s
Place; only that Glenn brought her in the car the next morning, and that a guy in a suit filled in lots of forms.
Beth is still looking at Abby; her expression is perplexed. She’s trying to piece me together, thinks Abby, as if I’m an item of broken crockery. I don’t blame her; I’m
having problems piecing myself together too.
All at once she realizes:
They’ve had me on – what’s it called? – suicide watch
. That’s why I’m being followed around. I have to explain more fully,
clear this up. ‘I think there’s been a misunderstanding . . . I didn’t take all those pills at once. Truly I didn’t.’
Beth eyes her quizzically.
‘OK. I
did
take more than one on occasion, but I’ve only ever had two or three at a time.’
‘I see.’ Beth rubs her forehead, as if it might help her sort out where the truth lies. ‘Do you mind my asking how long you’ve been taking them for? It’s purely
that they can be very addictive.’
‘Oh, a few weeks. But I didn’t take them every night.’
‘Ri–ight.’
‘I told you, I’ve not been sleeping, and if I don’t sleep there’s no way I can cope with all I need to do.’ Abby is frustrated. Why doesn’t Beth believe her?
She can feel anxiety mounting once more.
‘Did your husband know you were using them?’
‘No.’ Abby blushes. They
were
his pills. Then she feels a surge of anger. ‘He’s hardly been around lately to find out.’
Beth nods, slowly. ‘I think I’ve got the picture now. Thanks for sharing so much.’ She nods again, more decisively. ‘I’m sorry there’s been this
confusion.’
‘Yeah, me too . . .’ The apology makes Abby more forgiving. I suppose people were only trying their best. Except Glenn, she thinks. He seems to have shunted me off here, rather than
offering to help. Not that I want his support, but how typical. I wish I’d been less out of it that night. I’d have been more resistant to being admitted.
As Abby wrestles with her thoughts there’s another tap on the door.
‘Yes?’ says Beth.
This time it’s Sangeeta. ‘I got you this,’ she says, and hands Abby a small white pill and a plastic cup of water. ‘Dr Kasdan would prefer you to have one at a time, but
he says we can authorize a further dose for you later today if you still feel bad.’ Sangeeta gives her a half-smile.
The psychiatrist is probably convinced I’ll OD if they give me more, thinks Abby. Still, perhaps Sangeeta’s not so dreadful – she’s only been doing her job, after
all.
A middle-aged woman hurries, panting, into the lounge. Her badge reveals she is staff.
‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ she says, flinging off a long cardigan and straightening her dress. ‘I got held up.’
Was it with Abby? Michael wonders. She seemed in a bad way, and hasn’t returned with the rest of the group after lunch.
The woman checks round. ‘I think this is everyone.’
‘What about Abby?’ asks Lillie.
‘She’s not coming this afternoon,’ says the woman.
‘Is she OK?’
‘You’ll need to ask her, Lillie. So, I’m Beth and I’m going to be running this session. I’ve met most of you before . . . But you must be Michael?’ She smiles
at him. ‘And Karen?’ Karen nods. ‘So . . . these afternoon sessions are when we try to apply the theories we talk about in the mornings to our own lives. They tend to be more
experiential—’ Beth seems to notice Michael’s perplexed expression, ‘ –
practical
, if you like.’
Michael feels about eight years old.
‘I understand from Johnnie that you’ve been discussing how when we’re depressed we tend to follow the same negative cycles of thinking. We go over and over our problems, trying
to solve them. Psychologists call this “ruminating”. Does anyone here spend a lot of time beating themselves up for not dealing with their situation better? I know I do.’
She looks around at them. Michael peers at his shoes.
‘Yeah, me,’ volunteers Colin. ‘I’m worried my girlfriend’s going to leave me ’cos I’m still in here. I’ve spent so much time getting worked up
about it, when I spoke to her on the phone yesterday I must have asked her about three times if she was going to dump me. Talk about paranoid.’
‘I doubt she’s going to dump you, Colin,’ says Beth.
‘Seriously, I reckon she might,’ says Colin, twiddling his ponytail distractedly. ‘I’ve been here a long time. Yesterday she got so pissed off with me she told me to snap
out of it. If only it was that easy.’
Several members of the group nod in understanding.
‘This is exactly what I mean.’ Beth addresses them all. ‘We spend so much time in this self-critical frame of mind that we get used to it.’
There’s a low cough from the sofa opposite. It’s Karen. ‘I’ve been getting annoyed with myself for being so upset recently. Um, my dad died a couple of months ago . .
.’ Michael shifts in his seat, uneasy. Karen looks over at him and grinds to a halt.
‘Do carry on, Karen,’ urges Beth.
Karen blushes. ‘I’ve been feeling guilty about the amount I’ve been crying. I can’t work out why I feel so miserable.’
‘But it’s quite normal to feel upset when your father dies,’ offers Rita. ‘It’s only a measure of how much you loved him.’
‘Thanks. It’s a bit more complicated than that . . .’ and Karen glances at Rita. The older woman seems genuinely concerned. ‘But yes, I suppose you’re
right.’
‘Those are good examples, Colin and Karen,’ says Beth. ‘The trouble with trying to get rid of our sadness or anxiety by churning over our worries is it can be like trying to
dig ourselves out of quicksand – the more we struggle, the deeper we sink. Is that what you’ve been finding, Karen?’
‘I guess so,’ she says. ‘Since Dad died, I have been getting really frustrated with myself and I seem to have felt worse, not better, as time goes on.’
‘So are you saying it’s good to feel sad or not?’ Troy asks Beth.
‘I’m not suggesting there’s anything wrong with being
sad
. I appreciate this all sounds a bit convoluted, so let me describe it another way. You might
guess—’ Beth laughs and pats her thighs, ‘ – that I’m not the sporty type. Personally, I prefer chocolate to the gym.’
I can tell, thinks Michael.
‘Still, it can be helpful to see the mind as like a muscle. You know how, if you’re an athlete, you can train hard to be fit for certain tasks? Well, the mind is the same – I
call it “Roger Federer’s Right Arm Syndrome”. A few years ago, when I was watching him play tennis – because whilst I’m not exactly athletic, I’ve always enjoyed
watching tennis, for . . . um, obvious reasons—’ she laughs again, ‘ – I noticed his right arm was much bigger than his left. “Doh,” my husband said – he
was quite scathing, “that’s because he’s right-handed.” In other words, he’s played so much with his right hand—’
‘Oo-er, missus,’ quips Colin.
Beth grins. She’s better at handling ribbing than Johnnie, observes Michael.
‘Perhaps I could have picked a better phrase. Anyway, his arms no longer match; they’re out of balance, if you like. Not, of course, that I am criticizing Federer’s physique,
but I hope you get my point. Our moods are like this too – if we train our brains to operate negatively, they get used to doing it, so they get overdeveloped in that way of thinking.’
She stands back. ‘Make sense?’