Can't Anyone Help Me? (21 page)

I imagined a dreamless sleep and then nothing. That was what filled my thoughts constantly over those weeks.

But in the times when the fog lifted and glimpses of something intangible, maybe a shaft of light, indicated that I might have a future, I resisted its demands. There was inside me a tiny kernel of hope that once I reached the magic age of sixteen I could walk into adulthood and escape everything oppressive in my world: my uncle’s presence and my parents’ disapproval.

So when that small spark of optimism came, I knew I wanted to see adulthood and explore what those years might bring. I might learn to drive a car, listen to music in a disco, have a circle of friends, and one day even find someone to love – someone who in turn would love me. I decided that I was going to fight the fog and not let it take away a future that just might be good.

Coupled with those flashes of optimism, there was a fear: fear of what I might do before I found it was too late to turn the clock back. It was this that made me admit to my mother I was ill.

I was not prepared to tell her the full extent of the illness that caused those dark thoughts and the hopeless despair that stalked me. I informed her that I thought there was something wrong with me, that I was vomiting again as I had done as a child. I omitted to tell her that my own fingers were the cause of it. But I wanted a reason to visit the doctor and I wanted to go alone.

‘Can you make me an appointment?’ I asked. ‘I can take myself there,’ I added, trying to give the impression that I was being considerate. My mother gave me a searching look, then said she would make the phone call.

I wanted to talk to someone whose opinion of me was not coloured by what my parents had told them. To the best of my knowledge, the doctor had only seen me for childhood ailments. Of course, then I didn’t know about medical records and that every appointment made with the psychologists had been recorded and sent to the GP I was so desperate to see.

Neither did I know that my parents had already been talking to him about me. I had no idea that they had already made enquiries about me going into residential care; my father was still opposing it, but with less vigour each time I showed another sign of being out of control.

An appointment was made for the following day.

As soon as the surgery opened, I was there. I sat in the waiting room flicking through ancient magazines, anxious to get it over with. ‘He has a patient with him,’ the receptionist told me, when I asked how long he was going to be. ‘He’ll see you next.’

My mother, not a patient, had been with him. Through the window of the waiting room I saw her, head down, leaving by the back door. She must have thought I wouldn’t notice her as she scuttled out, but I did.

I was full of rage. I believed she would have poisoned him against me, that it would now be pointless to ask him for help. But I decided to try anyway.

‘I’m depressed,’ I told him, once I was seated in his room. ‘I have bad dreams,’ I added. ‘Things frighten me,’ I said, averting my eyes. There, I thought. That was more than I had ever admitted before – so where was the prescription pad for him to write on? There must be something he could give me that would make me feel better.

Instead of the concern I had been hoping for, he looked at me impassively, then talked about teenage hormones. He asked if my periods were regular and, of course, when the last one had been.

Just checking, I thought, to make sure I’m not pregnant. He took my pulse, said everything appeared to be in order and told me how lucky I was, good parents, nice home, et cetera. When he had finished talking about my burgeoning hormones, he scribbled on the pad, which had been hiding in a drawer, and handed me a prescription for a tonic.

‘That should sort you out,’ he said gruffly, and then I was out of his surgery with nothing accomplished.

Could no one hear me? Could no one see I needed help? But, of course, no one could.

That night was the first time my angry, terrified five-year-old self appeared. She stepped out of my body, ready to scream and shout at the world that had betrayed her.

My parents had witnessed, when I was younger, the toddler me, the one who had talked in a baby language and rocked herself against a wall, but then the word ‘regression’ had been bandied about. This time there was no mistaking it. They realized that something was seriously wrong.

I had completely disappeared when my younger self put in her appearance. Gone to a place where my thoughts, my hearing and all sense of who I was vanished. And the little girl who sat in her room likewise had no recollection of me. At first she was quiet, a good child who brought her teddy bears down from the shelves, where for several years they had lain neglected, and placed them in a corner. She sat down with them, picked up the one that had been her favourite, Paddington, and cuddled him.

It was when my mother called me to come down for my meal that I was found. Annoyed at what she thought was bad behaviour, she had climbed the stairs, marched to my room and, without knocking, unceremoniously flung open the door. There she was faced with a small child in her thirteen-year-old daughter’s body. At first the child refused to speak, just sat holding Paddington, and looked at the woman with something akin to bewilderment. Realizing that the mother’s initial anger was turning to worry, she tried to utter a few words. Her speech was different. Her voice was higher and her vocabulary smaller. For a few moments, my mother thought I was playing some sort of malicious game.

I can imagine her impatience, how she tried to snatch Paddington from my arms, how she shouted, forgetting that five-year-olds are more easily frightened than older children. But she had not accepted that that was who she was dealing with.

That realization came when the child in front of her opened her mouth and bawled, face red with approaching temper. My mother took a step back, still unsure of what was happening. Then the child ran across the room screaming and, as she had done at five, threw herself against the wall, filling the room with ear-piercing, anguished cries.

I was not witness to that or to my mother wrestling me to the floor and yelling for my father. Neither was I there when the doctor arrived and slid a needle into my arm.

I have no memory of the ambulance arriving or of the journey to the hospital.

I only know that when I woke there was no sign of my five-year-old self. I didn’t know she had ever been there. All I knew when I opened my eyes was that a woman’s face I did not recognize was hovering just above my head.

She told me I was in hospital, that I had been brought in the night before. She explained that I had not woken up when they had put me to bed, and that I had slept through the night. On and on she went in her calm, reassuring voice, which, within just a few seconds, had begun to grate on my nerves.

‘What’s wrong with me?’ I asked, and before she could answer, I blurted out another question: ‘How did I get here?’ As those words left my mouth, I felt a rising sense of panic. I had no recollection of the events of the previous night – and that scared me. It was much worse than the time Dave had brought me home, for then I had had some blurred images. This time there were none.

‘You came by ambulance last night,’ she said matter-of-factly. But that did not tell me why, and I clutched the bedclothes with hands that suddenly felt damp as my fear rose and I tried to remember. ‘Doctor will explain everything,’ she told me, when she saw the anxious look on my face. I tried to ask more questions, but she just patted my hand, said that the doctor would be along soon and that he would explain everything.

A cup of warm, milky tea was brought to me and I was asked if I was hungry.

‘No,’ I said. My stomach felt as though it had been invaded by a swarm of butterflies beating their wings.

No comment was forthcoming. Instead, after helping me to the toilet, the nurse told me to stay where I was and get some rest. The curtains were drawn round my bed as she left. On the way to and from the toilet I had caught sight of nurses in uniform and people in dressing-gowns, who must have been patients, but in my confused state they had hardly registered. Through the curtains I could see vague shapes of people and hear voices, but something stopped me pulling the curtain aside to see what was behind it.

As the nurse had indicated, a doctor arrived soon afterwards. Not a man with a stethoscope around his neck and a white coat: instead he was dressed in casual clothes, light trousers, an open-neck shirt and a jumper. He was younger than the psychologists I had seen before, fresh-faced with floppy brown hair that he flicked back. Brown eyes met mine as he gave a warm smile that was meant to reassure me.

It didn’t.

He sat on the chair next to my bed and told me I could call him Peter. ‘We don’t stand on formality here,’ he said, and added that he was a psychiatrist. I had already worked that out the moment he had introduced himself. Well, it stood to reason – his casual clothes and the use of his Christian name had given me a pretty strong clue that this was no ordinary ‘doctor’.

‘I know from your parents that I’m not the first one you’ve met,’ he said, ‘so there’s nothing to be scared of, is there?’

I wasn’t too sure of that. His job was to look into people’s heads and I didn’t want mine examined too closely.

I pulled up my bedclothes and looked at him with what I thought was a helpless expression. Whatever had happened the night before, I wanted to get out of this place. The fact that he was a psychiatrist told me what sort of ward I was in and I didn’t want to spend any time with crazy people. I mentally crossed my fingers and hoped he would be a pushover.

He wasn’t.

I asked the questions I had asked the nurse and expected to hear some soothing words that would put my mind at rest. Instead he glanced down at his notes, looked up and gave me another smile, one I didn’t trust.

‘I realise, Jackie,’ he said, ‘that you have a lot of questions for me, but let me ask you a few first. All right?’

No, it wasn’t all right, but he didn’t give me a chance to object.

‘Let’s talk about drugs, Jackie,’ was the first thing he said to me and, caught completely unawares, my mouth dropped open in shock.

I had a sinking feeling then that the conversation he had in mind was not one that I wanted to pursue.

I tried to play for time and turned what I hoped was an innocent face towards him. ‘What do you mean?’

It didn’t work.

‘Drugs, Jackie,’ he repeated. ‘The ones you’ve been taking.’

No point in denying it, I realized, when he told me marijuana had been found in my room.

Oh, wonderful, I thought. My mother must have had a field day going through everything. I had hidden it and the little packet of cigarette papers underneath one of the teddy bears. Of course, I didn’t know then that my five-year-old self had betrayed me by lifting them all down and leaving my dope and papers clearly on display.

‘And your mother found some pills,’ he added.

Bloody hell! I thought. She found those Mandies. Oh, shit!

I tried to bluff my way out of that. ‘They’re just painkillers,’ I said, ‘for period pains.’ Men, I knew, didn’t like to talk about girls’ menstrual cycles and I thought that would shut him up.

Wrong again.

‘Don’t take me for a fool, Jackie. “Mx” stamped on them means Mandrax. I suppose you’ve been mixing them with the dope.’

I looked at his face, which showed neither criticism nor approval. What I saw was an implacable determination to get to the bottom of the facts of my life.

It wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d imagined to pull the wool over his eyes. I knew when I saw the firmness behind his smile that I hadn’t managed, even for a second, to hoodwink him with my expression of innocence mixed with confusion.

‘Well, I did take them for pain,’ I protested, but I knew I was not believed.

More questions followed. They were so fast that I had little time to think how to answer them. Where had I got them from, who had given them to me and how often did I use them?

‘Just some kids I met,’ I said. Answering the second question first and ignoring the other two. No, I didn’t know their names, I told him, and, no, they were not at the same school as me. I had met them at a coffee shop.

‘How did you pay for them?’

Again I tried the innocent look. ‘They gave them to me,’ I said, for I certainly didn’t want to answer any questions about how I had found the money.

‘Come on, Jackie,’ he said. ‘I know a joint might be passed round but the Mandrax your mother found isn’t cheap, so you’ve got to be buying stuff, haven’t you?’

I told him that this was the first time I had paid for anything and that I had used my pocket money and taken some money from my savings. ‘I do get money as birthday and Christmas presents,’ I said, with what I hoped was the right amount of righteous indignation.

Whether he believed me or not, he decided to move on.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘what do you remember about last night?’

I told him I had no idea what had happened that had caused me to be taken to hospital.

He told me a little then. ‘Your mother found you in your room playing with your teddy bears. You were acting as though you were only about five,’ he said, and this time his voice was guarded. I knew there was more that he was not telling me.