Towers of Silence (11 page)

I waited.

“She seemed to be so well. I never imagined ... You never really know anybody do you?” She turned her gaze on the fire. “Just the surface. We barely know ourselves. I do miss her. And those lovely children,” she looked at me, “how are they bearing up?”

“It’s hard.”

She nodded.

“When did you last see Miriam?”

“September the thirtieth. My birthday. She brought me that.” She pointed to a watercolour above the fireplace. It was a Manchester scene, St Ann’s Square looking towards the church. Springtime. Trees in blossom, shoppers, a fire-eater entertaining the crowd. “Someone in her art club did it.” I stood to peer at the signature. Dolly B.

“These are my substitutes,” she waved at the pictures, “for the real world. Of course now with the Internet, I go all over the place, marvellous,” she beamed. Then pulled herself back to my question. “So, Miriam. She came on the thirtieth but I spoke to her after that. She rang me.” Her eyes watered. “I’m sorry,” she said. She pulled a tissue from the box beside her. “I do miss her. It was the day she died.”

I felt a squirt of adrenalin tighten my concentration, speed up my pulse.

“She was in a bad way, panicky, raving. I couldn’t do anything. All I could do was listen. I felt so ... bloody useless,” she said bitterly.

“What time was this?”

“About two o’ clock.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing that made any sense. Something about being put in hospital again, if she told them.”

“Told them what?”

“I don’t know. And she said it was awful and he’d punish her.”

“Who would?”

“God. I thought that’s what she meant. Miriam spoke about God as if he was a real person, like he was in the same room, really there. She’d often talk about Him and mean God.”

“What else?”

“I tried to calm her down. She just kept on, a lot of it was garbled but she kept saying she couldn’t hide from him and she didn’t know what to do.”

God? Or the grey haired man? Could it have been him?

“What did you think she meant when she said she didn’t know what to do?”

“About the state she was in, about getting help. I told her to go to the hospital, that they’d make her feel safe but she wouldn’t listen. But I was only guessing. It was hard to understand her. And I told her to get a taxi and come here. I’d pay the fare.”

“Do you know where she was ringing from?”

“No. I assumed she was at home. Then she rang off. I tried ringing but there was no answer. I even tried to ring Connie but I couldn’t remember which school she taught at. If only she’d have come here, I could have got help and then ...”

“You never told the family about this call?”

“No. I thought about it. When I wrote with my condolences. But I couldn’t see what good it would do, to hear that she’d been so distressed. They knew that anyway, given what happened. Do you think I should have?”

“I don’t know. I’ll be telling them now. It tells us quite a lot more about how she was.”

Connie Johnstone had found it impossible to accept that her mother had become so dramatically unstable that Now I had testimony from one of her oldest and closest friends that she was suffering from delusions by the early afternoon and was incoherent. It was the first evidence I’d found of her changing state of mind. The decline had been rapid. By the end of the afternoon she’d reached the point of no return. I wondered what would trigger that sort of episode. Something external or was it just part of Miriam’s make-up, the black dog of depression poised to rear up with no good reason to devour her?

“If only she’d come here,” Hattie repeated, the firelight flickering in her tear filled eyes.

If only.

Over the years I’ve built up a network of contacts, some friends, some acquaintances, who I can ask for help in the course of my work. People who have their own expertise and don’t mind giving me a little time.

Moira, our GP is one, and also a friend. I hadn’t seen her for some time but that didn’t matter. I rang and asked her who she knew that I could talk to about women and mental health; she referred me to Zoe Roberts and gave me a number.

“She’s involved with MIND, and various community mental health schemes,” Moira said, “but she’s also done a good few years in hospital so she’s a good all-rounder. And she’s still publishing research.”

We left it at that.

Zoe Roberts was happy to talk but not available till later in the day. “Ring me at home,” she suggested.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, it’s fine.”

I rang back as arranged and described to her what I knew of Miriam’s mental health history and explained that the family were resistant to the scenario that she’d gone from being apparently well to suicidal in a matter of hours. Could it happen like that?

“Well, it did in this case, didn’t it?” Zoe pointed out. “Medicine is as much an art as it is a science. Changes in mood, response to drugs, social context, cultural mores; they all impinge on our health and they are all impossible to measure in neat scientific units. How we feel is hard to quantify, it’s subjective, it has to be. We can point to statistics or patterns or probabilities but there are always exceptions, lots of exceptions. What you’ve described isn’t the most common story but nor is it unheard of. And it is definitely possible. Everything’s possible.”

“And can you usually find something to explain why someone becomes suicidal one day when they’ve not been before?”

She laughed. “No, no, no. Health is a process. So is disease or lack of health. It’s a continuum too. Even when we talk with people who are failed suicides they can’t often articulate what precipitated the attempt. I’m sorry, I’m not deliberately being vague but we’re talking about complex human conditions and decisions and chance and everything else you can think of.”

I thanked Zoe, appreciating her honesty but disappointed that I had nothing more clear-cut to take back to Connie. Though Hattie’s information was a plus. Proof positive of Connie’s mounting fears and increasing dislocation.

Friday night was self-defence. I’d promised Ray, and myself, that I would learn to look after my precious body after a particularly nasty attack. Are any attacks not nasty? The course was being taught by an instructor who used to work for the police. She had set up in business to answer the growing demands from people such as healthcare workers, teachers and housing officers who were seeing an increase of violent behaviour among the public they were there to help.

I’d been casting about for something that wouldn’t involve a lifelong dedication to a martial art, and then Stuart told me about the course. He used to own a nightclub in town and one of the bouncers had raved about Ursula’s self-defence classes. It sounded just up my street.

I hated dragging myself out on a cold, dark night to the shabby, church hall in Chorlton where we met but I knew it was important. Once I got there, I worked hard, determined to get my money’s worth and to emerge at the end better equipped to deal with the aggro that occasionally comes my way. It wasn’t all chucking each other around either, the course also looked at diffusing difficult situations, using role-play to practise techniques for minimising the risk of escalation.

We went through the warm-up. The heating was on in the hall and it took the edge off the cold but the place was draughty. It had a highly varnished wooden floor the colour of toffee and thick, navy gloss paint on the tall sash-window frames, the skirting board and the wide, rounded old-fashioned radiators. The ceiling was high and grimy, draped with cobwebs, flaking cream paint peeled off the beams. At one end dull green velvet curtains concealed a small stage, beneath this our mats and equipment belonging to other groups was stored. The place reeked of old varnish and trainers and mildew.

“Right,” Ursula announced as we finished the warm-up, “someone comes at you with a knife ...”

A fist of fear clenched at my bowels. I hate knives. Although I’d been threatened and even attacked with various weapons it was knives that haunted me. I’d had flashbacks for years after an incident with a knife but the episodes had become less and less frequent. Still, I didn’t like to contemplate knives but I ignored the queasy churning in my stomach and paid fulsome attention as Ursula took us through several scenarios and moves to disarm or escape from an attacker.

I was partnered with Brian, a big lad who was working security for the Co-op. We went through the moves, taking turns to defend ourselves. Brian was much stronger which made the exercises reassuringly realistic for me. It always took him a while to relax into the session, I think he felt awkward lunging at a woman. Quite often Ursula told him to stop pussyfooting around. Now and again she took him on herself, tipping him to the floor or rendering him helpless with speed and grace.

I came away from the session feeling grimy but gratified; there were no showers at the church hall. Driving back, I considered the fact that Stuart hadn’t returned my call. I felt the first flickering of dissatisfaction. We were still weighing each other up, surely he realised that I might read all sorts into his failure to get back to me quickly. Or was it intentional? Should I assume his interest was waning? What if he hadn’t got the message?

I resented the way that even the simple business of arranging to meet was taking up my energy and awakening anxieties that I’d rather stayed dormant. I would not sit around waiting for him to call - sod that for a game of soldiers.

I rang as soon as I got in. The answerphone was on at his house so I rang the bar. He was there, a wall of sound in the background.

“Sal, hi. I’ve been meaning to ring you.”

So, why didn’t you?

“I’ve got the kids all weekend, I’m here Monday but how about Tuesday?”

“Evening or lunchtime?” I quipped.

There was an awkward pause. I felt my skin crawl. What? Only he could suggest lunch, not me?

“Erm, I don’t think I could do lunch. Jonny’s wife’s being induced on Monday and he’ll be off for the week at least, new staff in.”

“Tuesday night then.”

“What do you fancy?”

Daft question, or it had been till I started feeling wrong footed. “I’ll come to yours, bring a bottle.”

“Just bring yourself. I’ll get the wine.” He could get nice stuff from work.

“Half-eight?”

“Fine, see you then.”

My hand was aching from gripping the receiver and a blush had made my cheeks burn. We’d arranged a date, mission accomplished, so why did I feel so awkward? I was a grown-up now. I could do without the roller-coaster emotions of teenage dating, without all the mind games and the lurches into self-doubt.

I ran myself a bath. I’d see how Tuesday went. But if seeing Stuart was going to mean spending half my life worrying about it, getting cranky because he hadn’t rung me, then I wondered whether it was really worth it. He was a nice man and the sex was great, really great, but I was not hopelessly in love with him. Not in love at all. I liked him; he was attractive, friendly. I liked the attention, I liked the idea of a relationship but I wasn’t so sure about the reality. I wasn’t in too far. Still able to feel the ground beneath my feet and wade out of it if I chose. I sighed, stepped into the bath and slid under the water. Let my worries float away.

I generally avoid working weekends so I can be around with Maddie, but it was easier to snatch an hour on Saturday to call in on the Johnstones and let them know how things were going than it was to arrange something later in the week and use up part of an evening.

The traffic was ridiculous going up Wilmslow Road; everybody off Christmas shopping. I would come back down Kingsway, it might not be so bad. It was the first time I’d been to the house in daylight. It was a cold, foggy day and the air was soaked with exhaust fumes. No Roland, but Martina was there with Connie and Patrick. I accepted a coffee and the four of us sat around the dining table. The curtains were drawn and I realised they had a patio door out into a small yard with blue painted walls and evergreen climbers and bushes in tubs. I pulled out my notes and began a resume of who I had spoken to and what I had found out.

“I’ve not been able to identify the man who called on your mother and I’d suggest leaving that aside for now. As far as I can tell she was out, he then called at the corner shop but no one saw him at the Whitworth centre and he presumably gave up and went home.”

“But you can’t be sure about that?” Connie checked.

“No.”

She looked disgruntled. I could tell she wanted everything to be cut and dried. “Now, I also talked to Hattie Jacobs, an old friend of Miriam’s who lives in Salford.”

Connie nodded.

“And I think what she told me is quite significant. She spoke to Miriam that afternoon.”

Connie drew breath in sharply. I saw Martina’s hands tighten on the table and Patrick leant forward in his chair. “It was about two o’clock. Hattie says that your mother was very distressed.”

Connie blinked and swallowed, her face screwed up as though she’d had a sour drink. Martina glanced away and out of the window.

“Hattie described her as panicking. Your mother was frightened. Kept saying that they’d put her back in hospital. Something awful had happened and she would be punished,” I cast a glance at Martina, was this too much? Patrick caught my meaning, gave a tiny nod. “That He would punish her.”

“Oh,” Connie made a small sound in her throat and moved one hand to her forehead.

“It’s not clear who she was talking about but Hattie thought she might have been referring to God.”

Patrick nodded, a sober expression on his face.

“We don’t know where Miriam was when she made the call. But it does tell us that by that point in the day Miriam was already unwell.”

Connie maintained her position, expression obscured by the arm and hand covering her face. Martina looked my way, being brave. Patrick sighed.

“I know one of the things you found hard to understand was the fact that your mother had seemed so well when you last saw her. So I spoke to someone who specialises in women and mental health and asked her about it. She said it’s not unheard of, such a rapid switch ...”