Split Second (14 page)

She finished the cake and some mince pies, and a Yorkie bar. But it still wasn’t enough. She’d only ever told one person about it: the locum GP who she saw in the middle of A levels when she got an ear infection and needed antibiotics. Emma was exhausted by the endless revision for the exams, and by the other thing. She hadn’t planned to say anything; she’d expected to see Dr Henry, who treated all her family, but he’d been called away due to a bereavement and a young woman was covering his appointments: Dr Sulayman. The doctor was quite pretty but she had funny eyes, like a squint, and one eyelid lower than the other. Like she’d got stuck mid-wink. She spoke quietly, like Emma herself, and after she’d examined Emma’s ear and done the prescription, she turned back to her and asked, ‘And how are things with you generally?’

It was like snapping open a jack-in-the-box. Emma’s mind flooded with her miseries, and to her horror she began to cry, right there in the consulting room. Dr Sulayman was so nice. She gave her tissues and a cup of water and told her to take her time and tell her what was making her so unhappy.

Emma didn’t know how to answer her. ‘Everything’ was too vague. She shook her head.

‘Are there any problems at home?’

‘No,’ said Emma quickly. She couldn’t bear being disloyal. ‘But sometimes I can’t stop eating, even when I’m full.’ There, she had said it, and the doctor would hate her now.
Greedy pig.
Emma chewed her lip.

But Dr Sulayman said it was a very common problem and there were ways to deal with it, like following a healthy eating plan and trying to minimize stress. Counselling could help as well, especially in dealing with any underlying issues.

Emma could hear him jeer, his voice rattling away like a machine gun, ‘Oh, she’s psychotic now, is she? Just our luck, we really picked a winner there, eh? There was none of this in my day, people just got on with it.’

‘How long have you been binge-eating?’ The doctor said it normally, like it was a cold or flu. Something ordinary.

Emma considered. Since Year 10; she’d loved sugary things before that, and pies and chips. ‘A sweet tooth,’ her mum would say. ‘A fat pig, if she doesn’t watch it,’ her dad would add.

‘About three years,’ she said.

‘And would you say it’s getting worse?’

Emma nodded.

‘Do you ever make yourself sick?’

Emma almost denied it, but it was like the doctor already knew. She dipped her head. ‘But just this year.’

‘When you look in the mirror, you think you look overweight?’

‘I am.’

‘You’re doing A levels now?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that must be putting a lot of extra pressure on you. Have you applied to university?’

Emma shook her head.

‘Had enough of school?’

‘Yes.’ And he said she’d never get a place, not with the competition, and university was all well and good but half the graduates couldn’t get jobs, and why waste the time and money, even if you had the brains, which she was seriously lacking.

‘And my dad thinks it’s a bad idea.’ It felt like a rip, a tear in the picture of how things were supposed to be, and Emma wanted to take it back.

‘Why’s that?’

‘I’m not clever enough.’ Her stomach flipped. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you, about the eating?’

‘No, complete confidentiality. And what does your mum think?’

‘Whatever he tells her to.’ Emma’s face was on fire. She shouldn’t be thinking this, talking like this. She felt terrible, but Dr Sulayman was so kind and not shocked or anything.

‘They don’t know about your eating disorder?’

‘No.’

‘You have any brothers or sisters?’

Emma shook her head.

‘Friends you could talk to?’

‘No.’ There were a couple of girls she hung round with at school, mainly because they were the leftovers, like she was, the losers, and you had to sit next to someone at school. None of their conversations ever got too personal.

‘Your parents think university is not for you. What do you think?’

Emma shrugged.

‘Is there something else you’d like to do? Do you have a career in mind?’

Emma shrugged again. She didn’t know what she wanted to do. The trouble was, there was no one thing she was really good at.

‘It sounds like everything’s very uncertain for you at the moment, exams, not sure which direction to go in. But it also sounds like you’ve been unhappy far too long.’

Emma bit the inside of her cheek.

The doctor paused, then brought her hands together in a silent clap, fingers pointing at Emma. She had lovely nails. Emma hid her own.

‘Here’s what I suggest: I will put you on the waiting list for counselling, and before then,’ she swivelled in her chair and opened one of the desk drawers, pulled out a leaflet, ‘here we are.’ She held it out to Emma. ‘You read this.’

Eating Disorders – an introduction and guide to treatment.
Emma wanted to give it back, tear it up. This had been a bad idea. She only caught fragments of the rest.

‘Resources listed . . . linked to low self-confidence . . . feel better about ourselves.’

How? Emma thought helplessly. Beginning to wish she hadn’t told Dr Sulayman any of it.

‘Do you see a dentist regularly?’

‘I don’t like the dentist,’ Emma said.

‘One of the side effects of bringing back food . . .’ – and she didn’t mean from the shops – ‘is the acid corroding the enamel. You’ve lovely teeth . . .’

Emma blushed. Lovely teeth!

‘. . . but this could cause irreparable damage both to them and to the lining of the oesophagus as well.’ She said it so gently, not like a lecture. ‘The dentist might be able to help you protect your teeth.’

Emma did that anyway. She always brushed her teeth straight after, and she drank loads of milk and ate cheese. She imagined losing her teeth, being gummy as well as fat. The urge to leave was massive. She stood up.

‘Lots of girls have this problem.’ The doctor got to her feet. She was tiny next to Emma. ‘And people overcome it. Support from family and friends can be a big help.’

Emma shook her head. Forget it, then.

‘Sometimes people need to create a bit of space, some independence, especially if the situation in the family reinforces poor self-esteem.’

‘I need to go,’ Emma said quickly.

Dr Sulayman handed her the prescription and smiled. ‘Take care, Emma, and good luck with your exams.’

Emma hadn’t kept the appointment with the counsellor when it finally came through. But she had eventually read the pamphlet and she had looked up some of the websites it mentioned. She didn’t like it; it made her feel grimy and guilty, and anyway she could manage, she just ate a bit too much sometimes.

She got a C and two Ds in her exams and put her name down for the new Tesco that was opening down the road.

* * *

The depth of winter, Andrew thought. Winter had depth, summer had height. Barely seven and a half hours of daylight at this time of year. Now, close to midday, the sun had reached its zenith, a brassy ball in a cerulean sky. Light glancing off all the shiny surfaces: the metalled road, the cars, the glass in the buildings and stretches of river glimpsed from the bridge.

Andrew turned in at the garden centre. The car park was surprisingly busy. A sign at the entrance offered Christmas Trimmings and Lights at HALF PRICE!!! The thought that people were here stocking up for next December was depressing.

The trees were at the far end of the complex, corralled in pens, some with horticultural fleece round the pots. Stocks were low. Autumn or spring was the time to plant, not midwinter. He scanned the labels. Compared the pictures on them to the spindly plants on offer. There was only one rowan tree.
Red berries and white flowers, ideal small tree, attractive to wildlife
, he read.
Grows to a height of 10 metres.
It would grow, its roots in the soil drawing nourishment from Jason. Macabre. Of course, death was macabre, that was the point, and all the rituals, like scattering ashes in rose gardens or planting bulbs by graves, were variations on the theme: life in death, the circle of creation, the wheel of life. But it should have been his father or his mother he was here choosing a tree for, not his eighteen-year-old son.

Jason. They’d picked the name because they liked the sound of it, though people teased them at the time that it was after the
Neighbours
soap star, Jason Donovan.

Following the first miscarriage, they had learnt to be circumspect in hope. Not to tempt fate. Jason was the fourth pregnancy. Only when Val reached twenty-six weeks did she suggest they get some baby name books. Andrew favoured short, unfussy names: Jack, Tom, Joel; Anna or Rose for a girl. Val wanted something more unusual: Lewis or Jeremy, Suzanne, Bethany. Occasionally she got carried away.

‘You can’t call a child Ferdinand,’ he’d objected, laughing. ‘He’d never live it down.’ He drew the line at Lorelei, too. ‘It needs to be something people can pronounce – and spell. Jason had been the only name they’d agreed on for a boy.

‘Can I help?’ The assistant, a chubby-cheeked girl with blue hair, set down her wheelbarrow.

‘The rowan.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s the only one you’ve got?’

‘Yes. Doesn’t look up to much now, they never do, just sticks really, but it’ll surprise you.’

‘They’re good for birds?’

‘Yes. Or there’s the silver birch, they’re popular, we’ve a few of them, or the aspen, you know, the ones that shiver.’ She fluttered her hands. ‘The leylandii are good too.’ She gestured to a stand of them behind him. ‘A lot of birds nest in them, but they are quick-growing.’

He didn’t like the shivering idea. And he was pretty sure the leylandii weren’t on the list from the woodland cemetery. He knew they were the ones that grew like weeds and caused more neighbour disputes than anything else. It seemed fitting now that the rowan was one on its own, an only one, just like Jason had been the only one.

‘I’ll take the rowan.’

‘And keep the receipt; any problems and we offer a full refund.’

A preposterous image of digging up the tree from its woodland site and hauling it here for his money back snuck into his head.

He manoeuvred the tree into the car with the top sticking out of the open passenger window.

He still had to call at the funeral home. He should have gone there first. Jason’s clothes were in the back, in a carrier bag. Jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, underwear, his shoes. The shoes they had to bring home from the hospital. Big as coal barges. A fragment of the song came into his head:
Herring boxes, without topses, sandals were for Clementine . . . Thou art lost and gone for ever, dreadful sorry, Clementine.
Singing it with Jason in cod-Yankee accents. Jason picking out the tune in between on a harmonica.

This wasn’t happening. It didn’t make sense. It was as if he was playing a role, grieving father, but he wasn’t really committed to it. It was all pretence. Any moment the curtain would fall or the camera stop rolling and the chimera would disappear. Everything would go back to how it should be.

He had tried to talk to Val about it, the unreality, but she’d reduced it to a formula: denial – it’s a part of the process. Before he had a chance to take it any further, to ask her if she too felt this bizarre disconnect, she was moving on to something else. Her energy, close to mania, exhausted him.

He sat until the light began to fade, his buttocks growing numb in the seat. The sky changed, the ink of night stealing across from the east. East, the Orient, from
orior
, to rise. Many early maps didn’t include the compass points; they had their own orientation based on the purpose of the map, the culture of the particular cartographer, their understanding of space and representation. Only later did the demands of trade and travel force a cohesive format on to mapmakers: the use of scale, the four points of the compass, the lines of latitude.

He and Val were like those early mappers. Each charting their own course, not even agreeing which way was up or down.

He stretched, then turned the engine on, reversed the car and set out for the funeral parlour. Glad to be sheltered in the encroaching dark.

The coffin had arrived. Val had put it in their conservatory. ‘This time of year,’ she said, ‘and they still do same-day delivery.’

We never sleep
, he thought. No two-week Christmas breaks for those in the funeral business. There’d been a strike once, he remembered, of gravediggers, headlines about the dead lying unburied, corpses rotting, families distraught.

‘I’ve told the boys to come round tomorrow teatime.’ Jason’s closest friends, the lads he’d been at the pub with that last night, heartsick and passionate with all the righteous intensity of youth, wanted to be involved in celebrating Jason’s life. Val, with her customary zeal and focus, had been researching options for humanist ceremonies, eco-friendly coffins and woodland burials. She swiftly involved them in the details and asked if they would like to decorate Jason’s cardboard coffin. Now it was here, plain, dun-coloured, grotesque. Andrew went out and got the rowan tree, carried it in and stood it beside the coffin.

The phone rang. He moved to get it, but she said, ‘Don’t answer it. It’s the newspapers. They’ve been ringing every ten minutes. Over and over. I spoke to Martine, she said to ignore them, not to say a word. They’ll give up eventually.’

‘What if Mum or Dad wants us?’ The phone rang on and on.

‘I’ve told them to use our mobiles for now.’

They paused and listened. The phone sang out for another five rings, then stopped. ‘I’ll take it off the hook,’ he said.

‘I’ve tried that – it does that horrible siren noise after a bit.’

He looked at her, then went into the hall. He unplugged the base station and the telephone jack. ‘Sorted,’ he called out. ‘I’ve disconnected it.’

She didn’t answer. His neck prickled. He walked back through to the conservatory. She was sitting down on one of the rattan chairs, head in her hands, her shoulders moving as she wept.

‘Oh, Val.’ Tears started at the back of his eyes. He moved to her, moved to hold her, her crying raw and guttural and accompanied by a rocking motion. He held her and tried to soothe her, whispering in her hair. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, love. Oh, darling, I’m so sorry.’ Knowing that he couldn’t make it right, couldn’t kiss it better. That all he could do was be there and walk beside her. Even if they were making the journey in different ways, disagreeing about the direction, they must walk on because there was no other choice.