Finding Audrey (3 page)

She’s not talking to me. She’s talking to the Imaginary
Daily Mail
Judge who constantly watches her life and gives it marks out of ten.

‘I don’t think Rummikub is a very good game for two,’ I say. ‘I mean, it would take ages to get rid of all your tiles.’

I can see Mum’s thoughts snagging on this. I’m sure she has the same image I do: Frank and Linus sitting grimly across from each other at the Rummikub table, hating it and deciding that all board games are rubbish and total pants.

‘You’re right,’ she says at last. ‘Maybe I’ll go and play with them. Make it more fun.’

She doesn’t ask me if I want to play too, for which I’m grateful.

‘Well, have a good time,’ I say, and take out the Oreo packet. I scoot through the kitchen, into the den, and it’s only as I’m zapping on the telly that I hear Mum’s voice resounding through the house from the playroom.

‘I DIDN’T MEAN ONLINE RUMMIKUB!’

Our house is like a weather system. It ebbs and flows, flares up and subsides. It has times of radiant blue bliss, days of grey dismalness and thunderstorms that flare up out of nowhere. Right now the storm’s coming my way. Thunder-lightning-thunder-lightning, Frank-Mum-Frank-Mum.

‘What
difference
does it make?’

‘It makes every difference! I told you not to go on those computers any more!’

‘Mum, it’s the same bloody game!’

‘It’s not! I want you off that screen! I want you playing a game with your friend! IN REAL LIFE!’

‘It’s no fun with two players. We might as well play, I don’t know, bloody Snap.’

‘I know!’ Mum is almost shrieking. ‘That’s why I was coming to play with you!’

‘Well, I didn’t bloody KNOW THAT, DID I?’

‘Stop swearing! If you swear at me, young man . . .’

Young man.

I hear Frank make his Angry Frank noise. It’s a kind of rhinoceros bellow slash scream of frustration.

‘Bloody is not swearing,’ he says, breathing hard as though to rein in his impatience.

‘It is!’

‘It’s in the Harry Potter films, OK?
Harry Potter
. How can it be swearing?’

‘What?’ Mum sounds wrong-footed.

‘Harry Potter. I rest my case.’

‘Don’t you walk away from me, young man!’

Young man.
That makes three. Poor Dad. He will so get an earful when he arrives home—

‘Hi.’ Linus’s voice takes me by surprise, and I jump round in shock. Like, I literally jump. I have pretty sharpened reflexes.
Over-sensitive
. Like the rest of me.

He’s at the doorway.
Atticus Finch
shoots through my brain. A lanky, brown-haired teenager with wide cheekbones and floppy hair and one of those smiles like an orange segment. Not that his teeth are orange. But his mouth makes that segment shape when he smiles. Which he’s doing now. None of Frank’s other friends ever smile.

He comes into the den and instinctively my fists clench in fear. He must have wandered off while Mum and Frank were fighting. But no one comes in this room. This is my space. Didn’t Frank tell him?

Didn’t Frank
say
?

My chest is starting to rise in panic. Tears have already started to my eyes. My throat feels frozen. I need to escape. I need – I can’t—

No one comes in here.
No one is allowed to come in here
.

I can hear Dr Sarah’s voice in my head. Random snippets from our sessions.

Breathe in for four counts, out for seven.

Your body believes the threat is real, Audrey. But the threat isn’t real.

‘Hi,’ he tries again. ‘I’m Linus. You’re Audrey, right?’

The threat isn’t real
. I try to press the words into my mind, but they’re drowned out by the panic. It’s engulfing. It’s like a nuclear cloud.

‘Do you always wear those?’ He nods at my dark glasses.

My chest is pumping with terror. Somehow I manage to edge past him.

‘Sorry,’ I gasp, and tear through the kitchen like a hunted fox. Up the stairs. Into my bedroom. Into the furthest corner. Crouched down behind the curtain. My breath is coming like a piston engine and tears are coursing down my face. I need a Clonazepam, but right now I can’t even leave the curtain to get it. I’m clinging to the fabric like it’s the only thing that will save me.

‘Audrey?’ Mum’s at the bedroom door, her voice high with alarm. ‘Sweetheart? What happened?’

‘It’s just . . . you know.’ I swallow. ‘That boy came in and I wasn’t expecting it . . .’

‘It’s fine,’ soothes Mum, coming over and stroking my head. ‘It’s OK. It’s totally understandable. Do you want to take a . . .’

Mum never says the words of medication out loud.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll get it.’

She heads out to the bathroom and I hear the sound of water running. And all I feel is stupid. Stupid.

So now you know.

Well, I suppose you don’t know – you’re guessing. To put you out of your misery, here’s the full diagnosis. Social Anxiety Disorder, General Anxiety Disorder and Depressive Episodes.

Episodes
. Like depression is a sitcom with a fun punchline each time. Or a TV box set loaded with cliffhangers. The only cliffhanger in my life is, ‘Will I ever get rid of this shit?’ and believe me, it gets pretty monotonous.

At my next session with Dr Sarah I tell her about Linus and the whole anxiety-attack thing, and she listens thoughtfully. Dr Sarah does everything thoughtfully. She listens thoughtfully, she writes thoughtfully with beautiful loopy writing, and she even taps at her computer thoughtfully.

Her surname is McVeigh but we call her Dr Sarah because they brainstormed about it in a big meeting and decided first names were approachable but
Dr
gave authority and reassurance, so Dr First Name was the perfect moniker for the children’s unit.

(When she said ‘moniker’ I thought they were all going to be renamed Monica. Seriously, for about ten minutes, till she explained.)

The children’s unit is at a big private hospital called St John’s which Mum and Dad got the insurance for through Dad’s job. (The first question they ask when you arrive is not ‘How do you feel?’ it’s ‘Do you have insurance?’) I lived here for six weeks, after Mum and Dad worked out that there was something really wrong with me. The trouble is, depression doesn’t come with handy symptoms like spots and a temperature, so you don’t realize at first. You keep saying ‘I’m fine’ to people when you’re not fine. You think you
should
be fine. You keep saying to yourself: ‘Why aren’t I fine?’

Anyway. At last Mum and Dad took me to see our GP and I got referred and I came here. I was in a bit of a state. I don’t really remember those first few days very well, to be honest. Now I visit twice a week. I could come more often if I wanted – they keep telling me that. I could make cupcakes. But I’ve made them, like, fifty-five zillion times and it’s always the same recipe.

After I’ve finished telling Dr Sarah about the whole hiding-behind-the-curtain thing, she looks for a while at the tick box questionnaire I filled in when I arrived. All the usual questions.

Do you feel like a failure?
Very much.

Do you ever wish you didn’t exist?
Very much.

Dr Sarah calls this sheet my ‘symptoms’. Sometimes I think,
Shall I just lie and say everything’s rosy?
But the weird thing is, I don’t. I can’t do that to Dr Sarah. We’re in this together.

‘And how do you feel about what happened?’ she says in that kind, unruffled voice she has.

‘I feel stuck.’

The word
stuck
comes out before I’ve even thought it. I didn’t know I felt stuck.

‘Stuck?’

‘I’ve been ill
for ever
.’

‘Not for ever,’ she says in calm tones. ‘I first met you’ – she consults her computer screen – ‘on March the sixth. You’d probably been ill for a while before that without realizing. But the good news is, you’ve come such a long way, Audrey. You’re improving every day.’

‘
Improving?
’ I break off, trying to speak calmly. ‘I’m supposed to be starting a new school in September. I can’t even talk to people. One new person comes to the house and I freak out. How can I go to school? How can I do anything? What if I’m like this for ever?’

A tear is running down my cheek. Where the
hell
did that come from? Dr Sarah hands me a tissue without comment and I scrub at my eyes, lifting up my dark glasses briefly to do so.

‘First of all, you will not be like this for ever,’ says Dr Sarah. ‘Your condition is fully treatable.
Fully treatable
.’

She’s said this to me about a thousand times.

‘You’ve made marked progress since treatment began,’ she continues. ‘It’s still only May. I have every confidence you will be ready for school in September. But it will require—’

‘I know.’ I hunch my arms round my body. ‘Persistence, practice and patience.’

‘Have you taken off your dark glasses this week?’ asks Dr Sarah.

‘Not much.’

By which I mean
not at all
. She knows this.

‘Have you made eye contact with anybody?’

I don’t answer. I was supposed to be trying. With a family member. Just a few seconds every day.

I didn’t even tell Mum. She would have made it into this huge palaver.

‘Audrey?’

‘No,’ I mutter, my head down.

Eye contact is a big deal. It’s the biggest deal. Just the thought makes me feel sick, right down to my core.

I know in my rational head that eyes are not frightening. They’re tiny little harmless blobs of jelly. They’re, like, a minuscule fraction of our whole body area. We all have them. So why should they bother me? But I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, and if you ask me, most people underestimate eyes. For a start they’re powerful. They have range. You focus on someone thirty metres away, through a whole bunch of people, and they
know
you’re looking at them. What other bit of human anatomy can do that? It’s practically being psychic, is what it is.

But they’re like vortexes too. They’re infinite. You look someone straight in the eye and your whole soul can be sucked out in a nano-second. That’s what it feels like. Other people’s eyes are limitless and that’s what scares me.

There’s quiet in the room for a while. Dr Sarah doesn’t say anything. She’s thinking. I like it when Dr Sarah thinks. If I could curl up in anyone’s brain, I think it would be hers.

‘I’ve had an idea for you.’ She looks up. ‘How do you feel about making a film?’

‘What?’ I look at her blankly. I was not expecting this. I was expecting a sheet with an exercise on it.

‘A documentary film. All you need is a cheap little digital video camera. Perhaps your parents will get you one, or we could find one here to lend you.’

‘And what will I do with it?’

I’m sounding deliberately stupid and uninterested because, inside, I feel flustered. A film. No one ever mentioned making a film before. Is that a thing? Is it the new version of cupcakes?

‘I think this may be a good way for you to transition from where you are now to . . .’ Dr Sarah pauses. ‘To where we want you to be. At first, you can film as the outsider. Fly-on-the-wall. Do you know what that means, “fly-on-the-wall”?’

I nod, trying to hide my rising panic. This is happening too fast.

‘Then, after a while, I’d like you to start interviewing people. Could you make eye contact with someone through a camera, do you think?’

I feel a blinding shaft of terror, which I tell myself to ignore, as my brain will often try to send me messages that are
untrue and I do not have to listen to them
. This is lesson one at St John’s: Your brain is an idiot.

‘I don’t know.’ I swallow, feeling my fists clench up. ‘Maybe.’

‘Great.’ Dr Sarah gives me her angelic smile. ‘I know this feels hard and scary, Audrey. But I think it will be a great project for you.’

‘OK, look, I don’t understand . . .’ I pause, gaining control of myself; trying not to let tears of fright well up. I don’t even know what I’m frightened of. A camera? A new idea? A demand on me which I wasn’t expecting?

‘What don’t you understand?’

‘What do I film?’

‘Anything. Anything you come across. Just point the camera and shoot. Your house. The people in your house. Paint a portrait of your family.’

‘Right.’ I can’t help snorting. ‘I’ll call it
My Serene and Loving Family.
’

‘If you like.’ She laughs. ‘I’ll look forward to seeing it.’

MY SERENE AND LOVING FAMILY – FILM TRANSCRIPT

INTERIOR. 5 ROSEWOOD CLOSE. DAY

The camera pans around a cluttered family kitchen.

AUDREY (VOICE-OVER)

So, welcome to my documentary. This is the kitchen. This is the kitchen table. Frank hasn’t cleared away his breakfast, he’s revolting.

ANGLE ON: a scrubbed pine table bearing a used cereal bowl, a plate covered in crumbs, and a pot of Nutella with a spoon sticking out.

AUDREY (VOICE-OVER)

These are the kitchen cupboards.

ANGLE ON: a range of Shaker kitchen cupboards painted grey. The camera pans slowly across.

AUDREY (V.O.)