Girl in the Dark (3 page)

I am on a train just outside Waterloo Station. It is packed with commuters—I am lucky to have got a window seat. I look out over the ridges and furrows of
railway tracks, bunching into a thick brown swathe as they approach the terminus. Through the gaps between office buildings, I glimpse the silver skeleton of the London Eye.

I am dreaming my journey to work. When the train pulls into platform 2, I am swept out of the carriage and over the concourse by a surge of dark suits. Everyone seems purposeful and determined, carrying briefcases and bags, and walking in the same direction. I am borne down the steps into York Road, under the railway, and up on to Hungerford Bridge.

The panorama of London opens out around me—the Southbank Centre behind and to my right, the Houses of Parliament upstream on the opposite bank, Embankment Gardens, Charing Cross Station, the Savoy Hotel. The huge grey Thames, plunging through the centre of the city, creates a glorious canyon of light, distance and rushing air, an antidote to boxy offices and car-packed streets.

In my dream the sky above me is full of bustling white clouds, and the river beneath me seethes with porpoises and whales, rolling and basking, and suddenly surfacing, so that water pours down their smooth grey sides.

I speed over the bridge, full of confidence and hope. I know I’ve been away from work, but I’m sure I’m better now. I enter my office through huge gold-coloured doors which swing open at my approach. But my colleagues appear to be the same. “Glad to see you back,” they say. “There’s a lot on at the moment. The Minister needs a briefing paper by ten o’clock. We’ve set you up
in a desk in the corner, so you can keep the overhead lights switched off.”

“That’s sensible,” I think. I go to my desk, settle into my chair and turn on my machine.

But I can’t make it work. Things come up on the screen that I didn’t type in at the keyboard. Files and applications open and close randomly. The mouse is recalcitrant under my hand, while the cursor zips round the screen. Thousands of emails pour down upon me.

I wake up in a panic. “I must get that computer sorted out,” I think. “But at least I got to work. That was pretty good.” Then I open my eyes into darkness, and realise that I have gone nowhere, and remember that I am not even in London any more.

And I think back to the life I had before, a life of very ordinary components, with the usual balance of frustration and contentment, the standard complement of light and shade. And I remember the beginnings of the darkness, and where it planted its first roots, smack into the centre of that life.

I am at my computer, typing hard. Around me banks of desks stretch out, studded with hunched bodies. The ends of rows are marked with lurid rose-pink filing cabinets, a strange attempt by management to make the new high-density seating arrangement seem vibrant and fun.

Fingers tap on keyboards, mouths mutter into
phones, printers burp and heave. The low ceiling presses down on us, pocked with fluorescent squares. People cross the space from time to time, to discuss things discreetly with colleagues. An intriguing lone declaration breaks periodically from the well-modulated hum:

“Tell Press Office that’s all we can say.”

Or “Hey, where’s Chris this afternoon?”

Or “Bloody HR are driving me mad.”

It is the headquarters of the Department of Work and Pensions, a week before the general election in 2005.

Everyone expects Labour to win, though with a reduced majority. Tony Blair will take the opportunity to reshuffle his team, and we will get yet another Minister for Pensions, who will have to be got up to speed. I am writing a paper for this unknown politician, currently on the campaign trail in Glasgow, or Bolton, or Northampton, festooned with balloons and red rosettes, and answering awkward questions about the war in Iraq.

Lucid paragraphs flow on to my screen. I know what the Minister needs to know, and how to explain the complicated bits so that even an idiot will understand. Facts and arguments are easily accessible, neatly marshalled inside my head.

And inside another part of my head: chaos, panic and terror.

On and on. Round and round. Thoughts writhing beneath my calm, professional exterior like a basement of black snakes.
I cannot lose my job. I don’t know how much longer I can go on like this. I have to keep going. How can I keep going? I cannot lose my job.

I love my job—it is at times bizarre, frustrating and
surreal, but always interesting: the curious compound language of cricketing metaphor and management jargon, the strange parliamentary procedures, the politicians’ egos, the old, old certainties of power.

And I love its location—just a little way east of the stone desolation of Whitehall, which we nonetheless visit frequently, to see our ministers, or the suave types at the Treasury, or en route to the Palace of Westminster itself. In my lunch break I can walk easily to Covent Garden, where I mooch zombie-like among the clothes shops, filling my eyes with colour and pattern to blot out the strains of the day. At a tiny takeaway run by two Italians, I find my favourite office lunch—a baked potato with tuna and black olive pâté, in generous, gleaming scoops. Even closer is Embankment Gardens, a slender tongue of city nature, where, under pressure to unknot some problem by some ridiculous deadline, I wander among the bright flowerbeds and the big mature trees, and gain new insight and perspective.

My parents, both professional musicians, were precariously self-employed, and my childhood was punctuated by periodic crises when my father would announce dramatically that the orchestra (he was a cellist with the London Philharmonic) was about to go under, and we were all going to end up in the workhouse. It never quite happened—the orchestra teetered on from one savage grant reduction to the next—but perhaps the whole experience had a psychological effect, predisposing me to join the civil service in search of boring job security and defined benefit pensions.

I have just bought a flat, after years of false starts and
deals falling through (roof repairs, psychopathic neighbours, asbestos, leases that couldn’t be extended—the usual stuff experienced by people trying to buy non-modern one-bedroom flats in unposh parts of south London). Now, at last, all the weird things I’ve accumulated over the years, without having anywhere to put them—a gold sunburst clock, a leopard-print teapot, vintage curtains, an upright piano—are coming out of boxes and cupboards and the spare room at my mother’s, and finding their proper place. All my pent-up interior design projects are bursting forth—I’ve always wanted a yellow-painted kitchen, and a wall full of arty postcards, and a big curly iron bed.

So I cannot lose my job. I cannot lose my job. I cannot lose this flat, this longed-for realisation of my dream.

At first, it happened only occasionally. I had the odd bad day, then things reverted to normal. Gradually, the bad days became more frequent, they oozed into each other, they coalesced. The good days became the exceptions, small islands of diminishing hope.

Now even the islands have gone.

So what is it, this strange, unprecedented thing? Simply this: when I sit in front of a computer screen, the skin on my face burns.

Burns?

Burns like the worst kind of sunburn. Burns like someone is holding a flame-thrower to my head.

To the left of my computer is my desperate short-term solution: a small electric fan, propped on a directory, angled to blow air continuously across my face. As
soon as I shift away from the airstream, the pain comes thumping back.

I’ve been to the doctor’s and explained the problem. The GP, puzzled and concerned, has put me on a waiting list to see a dermatologist. Perhaps, in the interim, I should take sick leave—but I am possessed by a strange delusion of indispensability. I honestly believe that if I were not here, this important paper about pensions would not be written so well; the new Minister, robbed of my lucid expertise, would fail to grasp the issues; decisions would not be taken, implementation dates would slip.

I don’t want to let down my team. And I do not wish even to consider the possibility that the mysterious process afoot in my flesh could ultimately divide me from the job I love—the job which has formed me over the past ten years, which pays for all the structures of my life.

If for one millisecond the veil of the future could be raised, and I could catch one glimpse of the terrifying tunnel ahead, I would be immune to any claims of conscience, any sense of loyalty, any of the contumely heaped upon shirkers. I would run from that office, down John Adam Street, up the steps of Hungerford Bridge, over the river to where the homeless people live, as if a fiend pursued me; I would abandon at one stroke my job, my mortgage and my comfortable life, and I would stay with them, sleeping on cardboard and swaddled in blankets, but still possessed of the freedom of the city, and with the sky above my head.

But I do not know my future, and am sensible only of the pressures of the present. So I stay at my post, typing fiercely, the fan feebly cooling my face.

“Welcome,” says the Chair of the meeting, an avuncular type with large black-framed spectacles and a balding head. He is known for his humane and relaxed approach, which he is going to need, because this is a meeting at which thirty line managers attempt to rank staff in order of performance, for the purposes of end-of-year reports.

The meeting is taking place in a subterranean, windowless room, with off-white fibreboard walls, a dirty grey carpet and ferocious fluorescent lights. Grey tables are set out round the edges, in the form of a hollow square. People are tanking up on sour-smelling coffee, and looking round suspiciously at their colleagues. I am, unusually, pleased to be here, because it means several hours away from my computer, during which my face will have some respite. Although someone has deliberately chosen a particularly horrible room, presumably to encourage us to reach consensus, it is not going to happen quickly.

“But does he really go the extra mile? I’ve come across him in meetings, and I have to say he lacks sparkle.”

“And if you compare him with Anthony, who’s really shone this year …”

“Actually, my team have had a lot of problems dealing with Anthony. It seems impossible to get him to co-operate in any way. And he’s always out at lunch.”

“Surely the key deciding factor should be: does he live the Departmental values?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, that’s not going to get us anywhere.”

“Well, what do you suggest?”

It is a hopeless task. The staff under consideration, although all of the same grade, do wildly different jobs in different parts of the department. Some are known to other line managers and some are unknown, while others have been glimpsed across a crowded meeting room or encountered in the pub, and entirely subjective judgements have been formed. Some managers prove to be cunning and devious advocates, others are far too honest, and easily put on the defensive.

Truly, it is the meeting from hell. After three hours I am still trying to follow the discussion and intervene where it would help my staff. But something strange is happening which is claiming more and more of my attention. There are no screens in this fiercely lit, subterranean box, yet my face is on fire, nonetheless. I find myself sitting forward, elbows on the table, hands pressed to my cheeks, trying to give my face protection, or at least the comfort of touch. There are bottles of water dotted around, and I pour myself glass after glass.

Finally the squabbles are over. Compromises have been made, or people have just given up. The air in the room is rank with coffee, sweat and acrimony. “Thank you very much, everybody,” says the Chair, and I rush
for the door. My colleague Tina is beside me, saying, “Blimey, that was grim.” But I am not in a state to reply.

I leave the office and catch the train home. When I get there, I collapse on my bed. My mind is a careful and complete blank—for the time being, I’ve given up trying to seek explanations or make connections. I’m just overwhelmed by the reality of pain.

I don’t have to wait long. Over the next few days, the answer forces its pattern into my consciousness, like the words of a brand: my face now reacts to fluorescent lights as well.

I’m starting to see that I can’t carry on. Two trains of thought have been running on parallel tracks in my mind, speeding towards a single set of points: I am in agony, I must keep going.

There is going to be a smash.

A
T THREE O
’
CLOCK
in the afternoon, I go to see my boss. I tell him that the pain is now unbearable, that I need to go home, take some time off. In any case, I’m due to go on leave next week. My boss is very sympathetic. “Don’t worry, we’ll cope,” he says. “Now you go and get yourself better.” I switch off my computer, sling my bag over my shoulder and walk across the big murmuring room. In the foyer, I pass the security guard and push through the swing doors at the front of the building, coming out on to John Adam Street, voluptuously empty under a brilliant late May sky. I breathe in the intoxicating smell of summer in the city—warm
tarmac and baked refuse, mixed with something floral and vibrant, as if the air itself were blossoming. Just the smell is usually enough to make my spirits lift, my mind tingle with possibilities. Today, I pass through the glory of the afternoon like a walking corpse.

Halfway towards Villiers Street, I glance down at my hand and notice with a start that I am still holding my office mug, and that it is half-full of tea. It is a cheerful green mug with a silly cartoon, a present from my former team when I moved to my current job. I stop and stare dazedly at it, not knowing what to do. Then, down in the gutter, I spy a metal drain. I pour the tea away between its elongated fangs, shaking out the final drips before stowing it in my bag.

The body has an unconscious wisdom that the mind denies. My hand, holding the mug, grasps the truth that I will not be back, but I still cling to hope.