All of Me (8 page)

And with that passing shot she closed the door. The room seemed suddenly darker, and smaller and colder. The tiny frosted glass window peered down eerily now as I took in my surroundings. Apart from the desk and chair there was literally nothing else there. Not even any work. No pen, no paper, nothing. What was the point of having a desk if they didn’t give me anything to do on it?

Suits me,
I thought.
I don’t want to do any work anyway.

So I sat there. At first I thought the teacher would appear any minute so I stayed in the chair. After what seemed like hours I dared to get up. There was nothing to see but at least I got to stretch my legs. I stared at the window. The frosted glass meant I couldn’t even see out. There was literally nothing to do in there. Nothing at all.

I learnt later I’d been subjected to a day in the ‘reflection room’. You were despatched there to sit and mull over your transgressions with no outside distractions. That was fine in principle. In practice, what if you hadn’t committed the crime you were being punished for? What if you had no clue why you were being dragged there? It just meant I spent six hours fuming over the injustice of it all. By the time I emerged I was angrier than when I’d gone in.

That’s the problem with sensory deprivation, I’ve read. It’s meant to promote some meditative behaviour. In small doses I believe this is possible. Anyone exposed to these conditions regularly over a long period of time might suffer different effects. Paranoia, hallucinations, depression and anxiety are natural consequences. By the time I was released I was convinced I was suffering all four.

And of course it happened to me again and again.

And again.

I didn’t know how I’d got that weekend job in Shirley but I do know it didn’t last long. At least it didn’t appear to. After being driven like slaves we were too tired to walk home. Dad had to come and pick us up instead. I hated it but I don’t recall being fired or resigning. In fact, I went to bed one Friday night expecting to turn up at work the following day as normal.

That didn’t happen.

The first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t in the kitchen.
Okay, that’s fine. It can’t be far away.

But where was Clare? For those eight or nine hours each day we barely left each other’s side. We worked together, took our breaks together and left together.

She must be in the loo.

I waited for a few minutes, then decided to look for her. The room I was in was dark and filled with coats on hooks. I didn’t remember coming in but there was my jacket. The door was ajar so I went out.

Straight into a shop.

Panicking, I dived back into the room and slammed the door.

Okay, that’s weird. It’s not the kitchen. It’s not even the restaurant. It’s a department store full of people.

When I heard footsteps approaching I thought I’d die.
If I’m found in here they’ll think I’m shoplifting.
I considered hiding behind the coats but decided against it. If they discovered me there it would look even more suspicious. No, better to front it out. I took a deep breath and felt my heart almost bursting through my top. I wished I was invisible.

The door suddenly flung open and a neatly coiffed woman bowled in.

‘There you are!’ she called cheerily. ‘All ready to get started?’

‘Er, yeah,’ I heard myself say. ‘I’m ready.’

I followed her back out and a girl called Kelly showed me how to fold clothes, tidy shelves and generally make our section of the huge shop look presentable. Of course, you only have to look like you vaguely know what you’re doing and customers are soon queuing up with questions. I did my best but by the tenth one I just felt like screaming, ‘How should I know? I don’t even know which shop I’m in!’

As I said, just another one of my typical scrapes.

CHAPTER FOUR

My pilot light is going out

Judy cringed as she pulled on the skirt. She hated squeezing into these stupid tight clothes. What was the point of PE anyway? It only made her sweat. Sport was for thin girls who looked good in their gear. Not people like her, people with legs as fat as hers, people who just looked so hideous stomping around the ball court. It was embarrassing. It made her want to curl up and die. She wished she had a chocolate bar.

She knew the boys would see her as she made her way out to the court. She knew they’d call her ‘fatty’ like they always did. She knew they’d be making their lists and giving all the girls marks out of ten for this and that. And she knew she’d be getting zero for her figure. A big, fat zero.

For a big fat girl.

It didn’t matter if she scored ten for prettiness or cleverness or funniness. Nothing mattered apart from that zero.

Judy looked around. The last stragglers had gone, dragging themselves out to their weekly humiliation. The changing room was empty. If she didn’t hurry she’d be told off again. But if she did hurry, she’d have to endure the vicious taunts as usual.

Judy picked up her bag and headed to the toilets, went into a cubicle and slid the bolt.

I’m better off here,
she thought.
No one will find me here.

W
hen you do a jigsaw puzzle you start with the corners, then hunt out the edges, then try to pull them into order. Finally you can think about looking for some sense in the middle section. Without knowing it, that’s how my early years felt. And without understanding why, the older I got I was happy if I could just get the borders lined up. Much more than that was a real bonus.

School wasn’t the problem. There you are compartmentalised and everyone knows where they should be and roughly what they should be doing. It was the journeys to and from Tavistock that threw up the problems. I’d suddenly be aware of walking and not remember where I was going. If I had my school uniform on then it was a good guess that it was a school day. If there were others around I could work out whether they were heading for lessons or escaping home.

Once I found myself alone near the gates. I didn’t know how I’d got there or where I’d come from. Nothing unusual about that.

I did the standard checks: I was carrying my school bag and wearing my uniform. It was a weekday.

But the path was deserted. Either everyone was already in and I was running late, or they’d left hours ago and I was still here. Or was I ridiculously early for some reason? I studied the building. There were a few lights on. That didn’t help.

Is it morning or evening?

Should I go in or walk home?

Either could get me in real trouble if it was the wrong choice.

Where are my friends? Where’s Clare? Where’s Irene?

I must have stood there for a quarter of an hour, anguishing over which way to head. Then I noticed something familiar.

Cooking! One of the nearby houses had the oven on.

That was all the information I needed. It was dinner time.

I have to get home.

Getting home after an episode like that would usually follow the same pattern.

Mum: ‘Where have you been?’

Me: ‘I don’t know.’

Mum: ‘Fine. Be like that. Dinner’s ready.’

She never probed any further. I suppose she thought I was keeping secrets. What would I have said? ‘I sometimes appear in places or with people I don’t know.’ I wasn’t even sure that was what was happening. How could I put it into words?

In itself, the fact that Mum, or Nan for that matter, never questioned my behaviour reassured me that everything was normal. If people act weird around you, then you ask them if they’re all right. That’s the natural response, isn’t it? That’s how I am with my daughter. Get everything out in the open. If no one questions you for acting oddly, you infer from that that they know what you’re going through. That it’s how they live as well, even if you can’t necessarily see evidence of it. And so you just carry on as normal. Carry on in the only way you know how.

Mum had her own problems, of course. The whole family did. I was only a child but I could see that things with Dad were at best tolerable and at worst downright unpleasant. At the same time as never telling us anything, neither made any attempt to hide anything either. I just wasn’t considered important enough to be informed. If they wanted to fight, they did it right in front of me. I heard all sorts of accusations flung in Dad’s direction. Then he’d take off as usual. It didn’t matter if I was in front of them or safely upstairs. Even from the sanctity of my room I’d feel the shudder of the front door slamming.

I don’t remember discussing anything with Nan. Maybe she didn’t know what was going on either. In the evenings we would sit together and she would stroke my hair. But we never spoke. Not really. We all just concentrated on our own lives.

I noticed Lorraine start to pop round more and more often. She’d begun to moan about her husband, which was a shame. They’d only been married five minutes but I suppose they’d been together since they were young. You’re not the same person at nineteen that you were at fourteen. Hearing her suspicions of his behaviour made me sick. It was Mum and Dad all over again.

Speaking of Dad, he wasn’t quite himself. Every time I saw him, which wasn’t that often, he seemed to be complaining about a bad back. I don’t remember him being particularly active but suddenly he was coming straight in from work and collapsing onto the sofa. Even that seemed to cause discomfort after a while. One day I came downstairs and he’d moved onto the floor. It wasn’t the biggest front room in the world and he took up most of the space. I didn’t know anything about bad backs but I thought he should see a doctor.

‘It’s just a bad back,’ he insisted. ‘A bit of rest and I’ll be right as rain.’

Day after day, week after week, this went on. Whenever I was in the house he’d be stretched out on the floor, writhing around.

‘I’ll be all right when I get comfortable.’

He didn’t look all right, though. And he didn’t sound it.

Then things started getting weird.

I got home one day as Nan was cooking dinner. Dad was already on the floor in the front room. He hadn’t been to work for weeks. I stuck my head around the door to say hello but all he could say was, ‘Shut the door, for God’s sake! I can’t stand the smell.’

What smell? The only aroma in the house was food – onions and mince at a guess. But I didn’t question. I pulled the door closed and went upstairs.

Dad didn’t join us to eat.

‘He’s not up to it,’ Mum said.

I could work out that for myself. The sounds through the thin partition wall were awful. One moment Dad was shouting at himself because he couldn’t get comfortable. Then he was swearing at the foul smells seeping into the lounge. Poor Nan, having to listen to her food compared to everything from rotting veg to blocked drains to dog mess.

‘Well, I like the smell, Nan,’ I said, although I didn’t seem to eat anything as usual before finding myself in bed.

The next night was the same. By the end of the week Dad was shouting from the moment I got up until the time I went to bed. Always about the food. Always about the vile stench. If anyone dared open the front room door while there was any vegetable preparation going on, you soon closed it again. Any conversation at breakfast was drowned out by his ranting. Same with dinner. At the weekend it was easier to just stay out for most of the day.

But still he just said it was a bad back.

‘Leave me alone. I know my body. I just need a rest!’

Eventually he gave in and a doctor was allowed in to see him. Dad told him the same story. It was just his back. He just needed some peace and quiet – ‘although chance would be a fine thing in this house.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ the doctor said.

I don’t know what went on in that room but after ten minutes the doctor was on the phone ordering an ambulance.

‘What’s the problem?’ Mum asked him.

‘Your husband’s got extremely low blood pressure. He needs hospital treatment. Urgently.’

I don’t remember Dad being carried into the ambulance or whether Mum went with him. But I do recall sitting down for mealtimes was enjoyable again without the soundtrack of his abuse.

Mum went to the hospital at some point and Dad revealed he had a stomach ulcer. That was why his back was hurting. It also explained why eating was a complete no-no, and how even the smell of food set him off.

‘They’re going to operate and then I’ll be fine.’

Mum was quite matter-of-fact when she relayed the details to us that night. I don’t remember visiting Dad. Weirdly, a school friend was admitted to the same hospital for appendicitis and I did go to take her a bunch of grapes. Half the class was there whenever I went. I recall seeing her and later standing outside Dad’s ward. But I don’t remember going in. Just standing there, wondering where I was, then going home again.

Mum went in after the operation. Dad was asleep in his bed so she went to speak to the consultant.