Catch Me When I Fall (23 page)

Every day was tantalizingly short because, whatever happened in the future, this intensity and energy would fade. It would have to fade so that we would be able to become normal people again, normal lovers, or partners or, perhaps, just friends, or maybe strangers once more.
But now there was Holly to worry about again. Sitting at breakfast in Todd's flat -he had prepared fruit and coffee and some special kind of muedi -I said that Id be late seeing him in the evening because I'd have to stop in and see Holly. He just nodded.
"This is all going to take up a lot of time,' I said.
"Of course.'
"I'd understand if you resented it.'
'I don't resent it.'
'I know that when you met Holly it wasn't a complete success . . .
'You mean I wasn't a complete success?
'It wasn't your fault. To put it mildly.'
'For someone who's meant to be her best friend, don't you think you're a bit scared of her?'
I needed a moment to think about that one. 'Holly's always been high maintenance,' I said. "Emotionally, I mean. She's been worth it, though. She's driven me mad, she's embarrassed me
like you couldn't imagine...'
"Oh, but I can,' said Todd.
'But I wouldn't have done half the things I've done without her. That's what she does. She spurs you into things that seem insane and then you think, Well, why not? Lately it went wrong and it was just the insane bit. That's not the real her you've seen.
"You don't need to convince me.'
I put my hand across and stroked his silky brown hair. 'I do,' I said. "You more than anyone. As well as destroying herself,

Holly put a lot of effort into driving me away as well. Maybe that was another way of harming herself, by getting rid of the people who love her.'
I stood up, pulled Todd to his feet and folded my arms round
the soft wool of his suit. 'I want you to do me a favour," I said. 'Of course."
'Most people would say, "What?" first.'
'Not me, not for you."
'Oh.' I blinked at him and almost couldn't think what I had been going to say. 'I want you to like Holly now, for my sake.
Later, maybe, you'll like her anyway.'
Ill try.'
'And I'll come round later this evening.'
'That's part of the deal.'

I sat by Holly's bedside for almost an hour without speaking. Her eyes would flicker open for a few seconds and then she would sleep again. I was almost asleep myself, so that when she spoke I started. I couldn't make out what she said at first. It was
just a mumble.
'What?'
"I'm Scared.'
'What of? Or do you mean just scared?' 'Of going back." 'What do you mean?'
'Leaving here. Going back to the world. I'm safe here.'
"Stuart's out on bail now. Charlie told me. But I don't think he'll be after you again.'
'I'm not worried about him. I even keep thinking I shouldn't press charges..."
"You should. You must. He could have killed you.' 'He was just the one who got to me first, wasn't he?" "What do you mean?'

'Well, if it hadn't been him, and if it hadn't been me doing it to myself, it could have been Rees. When I was dying I thought
someone was there.'
'There?'
"So many people wanting to kill me. I suppose I was imagining
some kind of vengeful witness. You know.' 'Is it Rees you're scared of?' 'Yeah. Well, him and...' 'Go on.'
"Promise you won't tell Charlie.' 'So many secrets," I said. 'Give me water first.'
So I fetched a plastic cup of water and she drank it, flinching with each sip.
'I got involved in a poker game," she said. 'That night when I
came round to yours at dawn and we quarrelled."
'I remember."
'Anyway, the thing is, I lost some money to a man called Vic Norris.' She frowned at me. 'Quite a lot of money, actually.'
'How much?" I was expecting her to say a hundred pounds or something: that seemed like a lot to me. The most I've ever gambled was a fiver on the Grand National and that was only once.
'It's going up all the time,' she whispered. 'All the time I don't
pay it goes up some more."
'Just pay.'
'This skinhead comes round,' she said.
'Tell me how much you owe.'
"Meg,' called a voice, 'how're you doing?'
'Eleven thousand," she hissed at me, and she looked unimaginably distressed. I felt stunned and at the same moment I saw Charlie, walking across the ward weighed down with books and magazines and fruit for Holly. She squeezed my hand frantically.

I went to meet him, taking some of the magazines that were slipping out of his grasp. He kissed me on both cheeks. 'It's
lovely of you to be here. Really good of you. How is she?' 'Better, I think. She '
But I was cut short by the arrival of a small group of people. Dr Thorne was accompanied by a nurse and a young man with cropped hair in a white coat. The nurse began checking the tubes as if Holly were a troublesome boiler, and while that was going on I touched Dr Thorne's arm to get his attention. 'I want to
talk to you,' I said, softly so that Holly wouldn't hear.
'What about?" said Dr Thorne.
"Can we go a bit further off? That's better. We met the other day. My name's Meg Summers. I'm a really close friend of Holly.
I'm her work partner as well.' 'Yes, she's mentioned you.' "I'm worried about Holly." 'We all are.'
'No, I mean I'm confused. Look, I don't want to get involved in the details of her case but there's something that doesn't make sense.'
'What do you mean?" asked Dr Thorne.
'Holly tried to kill herself, and you're treating her for serious depression.'
'Specifically for a bipolar affective disorder.' 'Which is an illness in her mind.' 'That's right.'
"The point is, I've just had a long talk with Holly. Is it possible that what might look like depression could actually be a perfectly
rational reaction to extreme stress?"
'How do you mean?'
I took a deep breath and gave Dr Thorne a brief account of the story I'd got from Holly. 'Don't you see?' I said. 'If I were being hassled like that, I could imagine collapsing as well.'

Dr Thorne looked thoughtful. 'Let's get a cup of coffee,' he said.
I thought he might be taking us to his office for some real coffee, but he meant a coffee machine in the corridor outside the ward. It tasted seriously bad.
"When I was first studying biology,' said Dr Thorne, "I used to have trouble with the idea of birds' nests and genetics. Birds" nests are so peculiar, and yet sp similar within species. How could the bird's genes be responsible for a process that involves finding moss or grass or sticks and using mud or spit? But in fact much of the development of the brain depends on outside stimulus. The human brain is programmed to learn language, but the developing child needs to be exposed to language out side itself in order to stimulate the language areas of the brain. The development of language occurs in the brain using bits of language from outside. One way of looking at a bird's nest is to see it as an extension of the bird's brain, which happens to make use of bits and pieces of the outside world rather than electrical impulses.'
'I don't quite see...'
'Holly has talked to me about her fears as well,' continued Dr Thorne.
'What I was asking,' I said, "is whether these disasters in her life are real or whether they are part of her illness."
Dr Thorne smiled as if he had solved a particularly tricky quiz question. 'It would be plausible to say that they are real and they're part of her illness. That's what I meant by mentioning the bird's nest. Holly's mind is in turmoil, which has partly manifested itself in a form of self-harm. What she has done in the past months is to turn her environment into what can also be seen as an extension of her own mind. You could say that she has externalized her self-loathing by creating situations in which other people feel about her the way she feels about herself. She

is a paranoid woman who has manufactured an environment to justify her feelings of paranoia.'
'Are you saying that Holly's fears are all justified.
"I'm a doctor, not a policeman. What I'm clear about is that it isn't just a matter of treating Holly Krauss's mind with chemicals and giving her psychotherapy, although both of those are important as well. She's not a brain in a vat. She lives in a world and one day, I hope, she's going to have to go out and live in that world again.'
'Yeah, but.., but meanwhile there are people out there who want to do her harm."
Dr Thome looked serious. "I don't want to say this is going to be easy. I've had other patients who did terrible things. For them recovery was the hardest part because only then did they fully realize the damage they had done when they were ill. I mean people who recovered through treatment only to learn that in their illness they had injured or even killed their own children. Seeing the world clearly can be a mixed blessing. Suddenly you
face up to things that your mind has been protecting you from." 'I'm sorry,' I said. I'm none the wiser.'
Dr Thorne allowed himself a slight smile. 'But a little better informed,' he said.

29

It was as if, now that Holly was gone, I was turning into her, filling the space she'd left behind. I was working ten hours a day with sandwiches at my desk for lunch, rushing to the hospital to be with Holly, then staying up late with Todd. Though I've always needed at least nine hours' sleep I was suddenly sleeping six or less and not feeling tired at all. I said something like that
to Trish and she laughed.
'What's the matter?'
"No, Meg,' she said, in her emphatic tone that always made me feel a bit frayed at the edges. 'Trust me, you're nothing at all like Holly."
"I know I'm not really, I just meant I was feeling so energetic all of a sudden.'
'When she was feeling energetic, she was like a comet,' said Trish. 'Or a plane that was about to take off. You couldn't ignore her. Even when she was just sitting at her desk and not moving it was as if she was pulsing and the air around her was turbulent. I could feel it as soon as I opened the door. It would take me about half a second to know if the day was going to be dire or wonderful. I didn't like that because I had no control over it. She was the one who was always in control, even though she was
out of control too. You understand what I mean."
'I guess so.'
"You're her opposite, that's probably why you're such close
friends. Chalk and cheese. You're so steady.'
'That makes me sound a bit dreary.'
"No, we like it,' said Trish. 'You make us all feel safe.'

'Do I?'
"Yes. Holly's like a state-of-the-art fun-fair. You're like a -like a...' She searched for the right metaphor and I waited. 'A
house,' she said at last.
"Is that good?'
'Yes,' she said firmly.
Then she put her small, capable hands on my shoulders and kissed me on both cheeks. I think she was as surprised as I was.

All through that day, rushed and busy as I was, I kept thinking about Trish's words and about Holly; more specifically, about Holly's enemies. What she had said to me, so urgently, and what Dr Thorne had said. Shortly she would be coming out of hospital. I didn't want her to come out into a hostile world. I wasn't sure about Dr Thorne and his birds' nests, but I knew enough to understand that because Holly loathed herself at times, she had created a world in which lots of people wished her ill. I'd seen her do it often enough. She'd tried hard to make everyone give up on her. Even I had come close to doing that and I was her best friend. I knew I would never be able to understand what Holly had been going through, but I had a glimmer of the hell she'd been in.
Trish said I made people feel safe. It wasn't much. I think I would rather have been compared to a fun-fair than to a house: to be exciting, sexy, glamorous, dangerous, wilful, vulnerable, lovable, maddening and bold like Holly. But it was what I was. And Holly trusted me. It was to me she had written her goodbye note, me she had tried to call when she was dying. I wanted, no, I needed, to try to make the world a bit safer for my friend to return to. When I thought of her fragile form in the hospital bed, when I remembered the way she had held on to my arm the day before and gazed at me pleadingly, it felt like my duty. Onerous, unavoidable.

Todd dropped me off at the hospital and said he would meet me there half an hour later. Charlie had just gone but Marcia Krauss was there, and she was arranging a large bunch of flowers in a jug. She was still young -about fifty, at a guess -and probably rather attractive, but it was difficult to see beyond her armour of rectitude. When I'd first met her, a couple of years ago, I'd scarcely been able to believe that she was Holly's mother. Later, I'd come to understand that she was like a negative image of Holly: neat, careful, proper, understated, thrifty, virtuous, controlled and deeply anxious. Having Holly for a daughter must have been scary for her.
I kissed her cheek, then Holly's forehead. 'You're looking better.'
"Liar.'
It was true, though. She was haggard and the fading bruise on her cheek gave her face a lopsided greyness, but her eyes weren't
so dull, and she didn't look all washed up and wasted any more. 'Who have you seen today?'
Holly ignored my question. 'We were just talking about Dad,' she said.
'You were talking about him. I wasn't,' said her mother.
'I was asking how he died.'
Holly was certainly feeling better, I thought. Back to being awkward, at least. I felt like cheering.
'He always had a stressful lifestyle,' said Marcia.
'Mum,' said Holly, 'stop fiddling with the flowers and look at me, please. I tried to kill myself.'
'I know,' muttered her mother, into the roses and lilies. "That's why I'm here.'
'It's just that you haven't mentioned it.'
'I'm here to help you get over all that. And, anyway, Meg's come to visit you now.'

'Meg doesn't mind, do you? Dad was like me, you keep saying
so. I just want to know if he killed himself.' 'Holly, this isn't the time.' 'When is the time, then?' 'Not now.'
'He did, didn't he? He was manic-depressive and he killed himself.'
'You can't just put it like that.' 'It's in my blood. From him.' "Stop it!'
"Oh, never mind,' Holly said. 'There's nothing you can do about it, anyway.'
She sank against the pillow. Her mother picked up her bag, shuffled the flowers one last, unnecessary time, then kissed her
daughter, a little peck. 'Don't overtire yourself.'
'No," said Holly. 'I won't.'
After her mother had left, she turned to me and said, 'I bet she's driving Charlie insane. She doesn't want to be here, and I don't want her to be. It's just one of those things that mothers are supposed to do so that's how it's going to be.'
I sat on her bed, picked up a grape and popped it into my mouth. 'When are you going home, then?"
'Dr Thorne's being evasive. He keeps asking me questions
and he says there's another avenue he wants to explore." 'How's Charlie?' "Fine, I guess.'
"Can you tell me how to find that gambler man? What did you say he was called? Vic Norris?'
'How did you get from "'How's Charlie?" to that?'
'Tell me.'
'Why? Anyway, I haven't got a clue."
"What about that other guy -Tony? Is that his name?'