In The Garden Of Stones (2 page)

“
Seizure? I don’t remember –”

“
It will all come back to you when you are rested. You’ve
had a rough time and you’re going to feel pretty washed out, so you
need to take it easy. The doctor will talk to you again when you
are feeling better. Now, are you comfy?”

“
Yes, thank you.”

“
Then sleep.” Anika reaches over the head of the bed and
turns out the lamp.

Safely
swaddled in her cool cotton cocoon, Grace lets her leaden eyelids
fall closed. Her ears, however, continue working.

They are
attuned now to Anika’s slight Eastern European accent, and pick it
up even when it is reduced to a hushed private murmur as she
confers with her colleagues. There is the scrape of a chair on the
tiles as she takes a seat at the desk, and there she will sit while
she writes in Grace’s notes. She won’t move from it, she has her
instructions. Her patient must be kept in sight at all times, not
left alone for a minute, because a minute is all it can
take.

That’s
what they do with people like Grace. They call it 'suicide
watch'.

Chapter 2

The door
swings open and a man bustles out. Jeans, sweatshirt, Converse
trainers. A pair of rimless spectacles are pushed up into a shock
of sun bleached hair, and he has a fashionable goatee that really
doesn’t suit him. A thirty something professional sliding towards
middle age, desperately trying to cling onto the last vestiges of
fashionable youth.

“
Hi, Grace. I’m Doctor Pettit, Malcolm, you can call me Mal
if you like. I don’t stand on ceremony with titles and
formality.”

English
accent, educated, every T sounded, clipped sharp. He holds open his
arm, inviting her into the room. “Come into my parlour
–”

Said the spider to the fly.

When she is safely inside, he pushes the door closed with
his heel and it slides into the frame with a solid
thunk
.

Grace
gives the room a cursory going over – walls painted institution
green, threadbare carpet, desk and chair that look like they’ve
been rescued from a skip.

On one
wall are a couple of framed certificates, on another a painting
that looks like it might be of a cow … or a giraffe, she can’t
really tell. A set of wooden shelves overflow with books and
magazines, and at the window a pair of mismatched armchairs keep
company with a chrome and glass coffee table. All in all the whole
room looks pretty shabby, as if it has been furnished down to a
budget rather than up to a standard.

“
Take a seat, make yourself at home,” says Pettit, guiding
her to the chairs.

Grace
pauses, weighing up which one looks the cleanest – no telling what
other people have been doing in them - selects the green one and
sits, clutching a faded tapestry cat scatter cushion to her stomach
like a protective shield.

A
triangular plastic sandwich holder, empty, a can of diet Coke and a
half eaten bag of cheese and onion crisps lie on the coffee table.
Mal snatches them up and drops them into the waste bin.

“
Sorry about that. Late lunch. You comfortable?”

“
Yes, thanks.”

“
Warm enough? Too warm perhaps? Don’t you find hospitals to
be overly hot and stuffy? I know I do. I can open the window if you
like.”

“
No, I’m fine.”

“
So how are you feeling?” he says, dropping into the chair
opposite hers. “Been quite an adventure for you.”

Shrug.
“Fine … considering.”

“
Good.”

They
fall into the kind of silence that often occurs between strangers
on a train, neither knowing what to say for the best, so choosing
to say nothing.

Grace
keeps her eyes on the motes of dust dancing in a beam of late
afternoon sunshine leaking between the slats of the partly closed
blinds, each passing minute making her feel more uncomfortable,
more awkward in her chair, especially with him sitting opposite
with that expectant look on his face as if he’s waiting for her to
start the conversation because he doesn’t want to be seen to be
leading her.

She’s
not ready to talk just yet. What she really wants to do is
rearrange his books. They are all over the place, higgledy piggledy
on the shelves – big ones next to small ones, thin ones next to
thick ones. He hasn’t even alphabetised the authors for goodness
sake! Surely he must have noticed. How can he bear such disorder?
Unless he put them like that on purpose - to test her.

Devious
bastard.

Well more fool you. I’m not playing your power
game.

She sits
tight in the chair with her legs tucked under her, trying not to
look at the books, getting pins and needles in her toes. Having her
knees bent so tightly is cutting off the circulation to her
feet.

They
tingle and burn but she can’t, won’t, get up and walk around to
relieve the discomfort, because she knows the moment she does
she’ll be pulled toward the bookcase. And when she’s sorted it,
she’ll have to adjust that picture. It’s ever so slightly out of
alignment. Just a touch should put it right.

Now her
toes have gone numb.

Don’t move, because the second you do, he’s won.

She
won’t let him win.

How many
minutes have passed now? Five? Ten? It feels like half a day and he
still hasn’t moved, hasn’t spoken. What is he doing now?

I bet he’s watching me. No. Don’t look at him. Keep your eyes
on the dancing dust. No eye contact.

She
takes the briefest glance from the corner of her eye. He’s just
sitting there, waiting. He’s not looking at her though, he’s
watching that fat pigeon waddling up and down the window ledge
outside. But she’s not fooled. She knows what he’s
thinking.

He’s making his judgements of me, weighing me up, wondering
which pigeonhole to try and stuff me into and how he’s going to get
me in there.

He’s either working out which drugs to give me, to make me so
docile and compliant I’ll do anything he says, or he’s going to
suggest I need a course of electroconvulsive therapy - wants to
wire up my brain to the National Grid and spark it up like
Frankenstein’s monster.

Newsflash, Doc, been there done that, got the T-shirt. Save
the leccy for brewing your tea, because it doesn’t work. It will
only disrupt my synapses temporarily. They will find their way back
to how 'they' want to work, not to how you think they
should.

Want to know why? Because my mind is the wrong shape, that’s
why I see things, feel things, sense things differently to what
your textbooks say is 'normal'.

Normal is … a setting on the tumble dryer. A ship that sailed
long ago without me because I wasn’t even on the dock.

Pumping me full of drugs won’t change the way I work
either.
I’ve
swallowed enough antidepressants to cheer up a whole graveyard full
of emo-Goths, and look where it got me.

You’ll keep on trying this and that and the other, each thing
more desperate than the last, but do you know what happens when you
try to force a square peg into a round hole when it doesn’t want to
go, when you keep on hammering and hammering and hammering until
it’s in there good and fast where you think it belongs, when you
sit back with the metaphorical mallet in hand, admiring the way the
hole is filled and how you did it? Probably not, because you’ll be
so self satisfied with your 'success', you won’t even notice that
you’ve destroyed the peg in the process.

“–
would you like some, Grace?”

His
question shatters the silence like a brick through a glass window,
startling her out of her skin.

“
Wha’? Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

“
I said I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready for my
mid-afternoon caffeine fix. Would you like some coffee? Or
tea?”

“
Erm … coffee, please. If it’s no trouble.”

“
None at all. How do you take it? Black? Milk? Cream?
Sugar?”

“
Cream no sugar, please.”

“
Want something to eat? Sandwich? Biscuit?”

After a
meagre breakfast of soggy cereal, sweaty toast and cold tea, and
lunch consisting of a bowl of tepid soup and roll so stale it could
have been used as a cobble stone, she’s starving, and the mere
thought of coffee and biscuits makes her stomach rumble.

Mal
smiles and points at her, index finger and thumb cocked like a gun.
“I know what you’d like.”

He
scrambles to his feet and pokes his head through the door to have a
word with his secretary in the outer office. When he returns he
flops down into his chair with a sigh, for all the world as if he’s
settling down to watch football on the television. He looks so
relaxed that his ease bleeds into her. Grace feels a smile touching
her lips. She didn’t put it there, he did, and with it comes the
first tickle of trust. She might be ready to talk after
all.

“
Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself, Grace?” he
says. “Nothing much. Only what you’re comfortable with. Name, rank
and serial number. We’ll call it an icebreaker.”

She tips
her head toward the folder lying on the coffee table. “It’s all in
my file.”

“
I haven’t read it.”

“
That’s a bit remiss of you. Forewarned is forearmed, don’t
they say.”

“
I didn’t read your file because they are not
my
notes in there, and
I don’t want my findings tainted by someone else’s preconceptions.
I like to do my learning first hand. I would prefer you to offer me
information willingly and let me make up my own mind, not have it
made up for me.”

“
What you see is what you get,” she says. “Move along.
Nothing to see here.”

His
smile broadens. “I doubt that very much.”

“
Okay, bare facts. Grace Elizabeth Dove, age 34 and three
quarters, single, mentally unbalanced, former interior decorator
with my own –”

A knock
on the door interrupts, and Mal calls over his shoulder. “Come
in!”

The door
opens and his secretary enters, carrying a tray laden with a
cafetiere, two mugs, a jug of cream, a small dish of pale brown
crystals, and a plate with two plain digestive biscuits sitting
alongside a pair of red and gold oblongs. Tunnock’s tasty caramel
wafers. Grace’s favourite. How did he know?

The
woman sets the tray down on the occasional table and depresses the
plunger on the cafetiere.

“
Thank you, Denise.”

When
Denise has gone, Mal plays 'mother', pouring coffee into the mugs
and topping it up with cream from the jug. He digs the spoon into
the dish, drawing out a little pile of sugar, halting before he
tips it into Grace’s mug.

“
Oh, you said no sugar, didn’t you,” he says, diverting it
to his own mug. “Sweet enough, eh?

A second spoonful follows the first and he gives both mugs
a thorough stir with the teaspoon, before
tinging
it on the side, a high pitched
annoying noise that sets Grace’s teeth on edge.

He
offers the unsweetened drink to Grace. “There you go. See how that
suits you.”

She
takes it and risks an experimental sip. It’s hot, aromatic and
quite delicious. No supermarket bargain brand this.

“
It’s really nice. Thank you.”

“
If something’s worth having, have the best you can afford,”
he says. “And good coffee is always worth having, don’t you
think?”

“
Yes. Yes I do.”

He
settles back in his chair. “You were telling me about yourself,” he
says.

She
screws her face up on one side. “Do I have to? Can’t we just let it
drop and you sign my release and I go home and clean Alec’s flat
until I feel better?”

“
Is that what you did before? The first time
you...”

“
Tried to kill myself? Yes.”

“
Did it work?”

She
fingers the fine silver lines crossing her wrist. “In a
way.”

“
Tell me about it.”

She cradles the mug in her hand, letting its warmth flow
into her fingers. “I got myself all stitched up and locked up for a
couple of days,” she says. “The doctor I saw shoved some pills on
me and threatened to have me sectioned if I didn’t pull myself
together. Alec would have none of it. He signed a release
responsibility, took me home and locked me in his flat with him,
and gave me reign to do whatever I needed to burn myself out, fully
prepared to have the place trashed or burned, his windows broken
and himself to be battered to a pulp in the process.
'What the
hell,'
he
said.
'The
place needs redecorating and those curtains are
just
dreadful. Do your
worst.
'
Nothing so dramatic happened, although, to be on the safe side he
did take the precaution of hiding his kitchen knives, forks and
other sharp implements.”