‘Course I have,’ I croaked. ‘I’ve the flu.’
She located a thermometer and gave it several of those violent flicks that people always do before they take someone’s temperature. An energetic throw, as if they’re about to fling the glass stick across the room, but change their mind at the last minute. But despite her adherence to protocol, my temperature was normal.
‘Though it’s hard to be sure,’ she added, casting a jaundiced eye at the thermometer. ‘Thirty years we’ve had it and that yoke has never worked.’
I went to bed at nine-thirty and didn’t come round until two the following afternoon. I was lying in exactly the same position I’d been in before I went to sleep, as though I hadn’t moved once in any of that time. Instead of feeling better I actually felt worse: lethargic and hopeless. And I continued to feel wretched.
I’d never believed it was possible to become sick from sadness. I’d thought that was a nonsense concept confined to melodramatic Victorian novels. But sometime over the course of the following week I understood that there was nothing wrong with me – nothing physical, in any case. My temperature was normal, and how come no one else had caught my flu? Whatever was wrong with me, it was emotional. Mourning sickness. My body was fighting my separation from Garv as though it was a hostile organism.
I couldn’t stop sleeping. Deep, druggy sleeps from which I never fully woke up. Once conscious, I could barely manage the smallest things. I knew I was supposed to be getting on with stuff. Getting another job. Tidying up the loose ends of my old life. Sorting out my new one. But I felt as though I was walking underwater. Moving too slowly through an unwieldy world.
When I got beneath the shower, the water felt like a hail of sharp gravel being hurled at my tender skin. The house was too noisy – every time a door slammed my heart pumped too hard. When Dad dropped a saucepan with a clatter on the floor, I got such a fright my eyes filled with tears. I carried a permanent oppression, as though a dirty grey sky had been nailed in place two inches above my head.
I continued to perform poorly in the opinion polls. Mum was still vacillating between sharper-than-a-serpent’s-tooth-it-is-to-have-a-thankless-child chilliness and would-you-not-cop-on-and-go-home-to-your-husband cajolery. I wasn’t getting the same degree of grief from Dad, but then again I’ve always been his pet. What with once having played in team sports and going to the snooker championship with him, he’s nearly managed to convince himself that I’m his son.
Outside of my immediate family, I spoke to no one. People were keen to speak to me, however. Nothing like a disaster to get those phone lines a-hopping. Close friends like Donna and Sinead rang, but I mumbled, ‘Tell her I’ll call her back,’ and never managed it. Coffin-chasers like Elaine also called. (Mum thought she sounded like ‘a lovely girl’.) Claire rang from London and begged me to go and stay with her. Rachel rang from New York and we had much the same conversation. But there wasn’t a hope of me visiting either of them – walking from the telly to the kettle was about the only journey I could manage.
I didn’t call Garv – and to the great disappointment and confusion of my parents, he didn’t call me either. In a way it was a relief, but a relief that somehow managed to be an unpleasant one.
Anna was also in the house a lot – she was devastated about Shane. We hung out furtively, because when Mum saw us together her mouth would squinch like a cat’s bottom and she’d enquire, ‘Is it a rest home for fallen women I’m running here?’ As best we could, we talked about our respective break-ups. What had happened for her was that Shane had set up a computer business making on-line music, and out of nowhere he became a bread-head. ‘He got his hair cut. At a hairdresser’s. He bought styling wax, then I knew it was all over. I suppose,’ Anna sighed, ‘he wants to grow up and I don’t. So what about you and Garv?’
‘Oh, you know…’ I couldn’t tell her about Truffle Woman. Whatever energy would have been required to pull those words out of my gut and into the open just wasn’t there. ‘Mostly I feel nothing,’ I managed. ‘It’s a horrible sort of nothing, but… you know… that can’t be right. Shouldn’t I be roaring crying?’
Shouldn’t I be breaking into Truffle Woman’s house and planting grass in her carpets and prawns in her curtain rails? Shouldn’t I be making plans to cut the arms and legs off all Garv’s clothes?
‘I haven’t even rung Garv to say I miss him.’ Even though a spasm of longing for him jack-knifed me roughly once every waking hour. ‘My life is ruined and all I feel is nothing.’ My future was a roped-off area – I managed occasional fleeting glimpses of the sadness, but they didn’t stay. It was as if a door into a noisy room opened and immediately slammed shut again.
‘You’re depressed,’ Anna said. ‘You’re very depressed. Is it any surprise, after all you’ve been through?’
But that didn’t sit comfortably. ‘I’m not a depressive.’ (I know because I did a quiz in Cosmopolitan.)
‘You are now. And Garv probably is too.’
She’d said something interesting, maybe even important, but I couldn’t hold the thought. I was too weary.
Unlike me, Anna couldn’t sleep. At least, not in her own bed, so she wandered the house at night, moving from bed to bed. She often got in beside me, but was usually gone when I woke, leaving the faint residue of a wraith-like creature who sighed a lot and smelt of Bacardi Breezers. It was like being haunted by a benign ghost.
Occasionally she was still there when I woke. One morning I came to to find one of her feet resting on my ear and the other in my mouth; for reasons best known to herself, Anna had decided to get into bed upside-down.
Another night I emerged from sleep feeling absurdly happy: warm, safe, cherished. Then, going into hollow freefall, I realized what it was – Anna was snuggling into me, nuzzling and mewing, ‘Oh Shane.’ Deep in sleep, her arm tight around me, I’d thought she was Garv.
Sometimes Anna and I could provide comfort for each other. She developed a theory that our lives were so awful because our guardian angels had gone on sabbaticals, and that currently we were being minded by temps who took no pride in their work.
‘They do the bare minimum. We won’t get our hands caught in a mincing machine, but that’s all they’ll do for us.’
She located a thermometer and gave it several of those violent flicks that people always do before they take someone’s temperature. An energetic throw, as if they’re about to fling the glass stick across the room, but change their mind at the last minute. But despite her adherence to protocol, my temperature was normal.
‘Though it’s hard to be sure,’ she added, casting a jaundiced eye at the thermometer. ‘Thirty years we’ve had it and that yoke has never worked.’
I went to bed at nine-thirty and didn’t come round until two the following afternoon. I was lying in exactly the same position I’d been in before I went to sleep, as though I hadn’t moved once in any of that time. Instead of feeling better I actually felt worse: lethargic and hopeless. And I continued to feel wretched.
I’d never believed it was possible to become sick from sadness. I’d thought that was a nonsense concept confined to melodramatic Victorian novels. But sometime over the course of the following week I understood that there was nothing wrong with me – nothing physical, in any case. My temperature was normal, and how come no one else had caught my flu? Whatever was wrong with me, it was emotional. Mourning sickness. My body was fighting my separation from Garv as though it was a hostile organism.
I couldn’t stop sleeping. Deep, druggy sleeps from which I never fully woke up. Once conscious, I could barely manage the smallest things. I knew I was supposed to be getting on with stuff. Getting another job. Tidying up the loose ends of my old life. Sorting out my new one. But I felt as though I was walking underwater. Moving too slowly through an unwieldy world.
When I got beneath the shower, the water felt like a hail of sharp gravel being hurled at my tender skin. The house was too noisy – every time a door slammed my heart pumped too hard. When Dad dropped a saucepan with a clatter on the floor, I got such a fright my eyes filled with tears. I carried a permanent oppression, as though a dirty grey sky had been nailed in place two inches above my head.
I continued to perform poorly in the opinion polls. Mum was still vacillating between sharper-than-a-serpent’s-tooth-it-is-to-have-a-thankless-child chilliness and would-you-not-cop-on-and-go-home-to-your-husband cajolery. I wasn’t getting the same degree of grief from Dad, but then again I’ve always been his pet. What with once having played in team sports and going to the snooker championship with him, he’s nearly managed to convince himself that I’m his son.
Outside of my immediate family, I spoke to no one. People were keen to speak to me, however. Nothing like a disaster to get those phone lines a-hopping. Close friends like Donna and Sinead rang, but I mumbled, ‘Tell her I’ll call her back,’ and never managed it. Coffin-chasers like Elaine also called. (Mum thought she sounded like ‘a lovely girl’.) Claire rang from London and begged me to go and stay with her. Rachel rang from New York and we had much the same conversation. But there wasn’t a hope of me visiting either of them – walking from the telly to the kettle was about the only journey I could manage.
I didn’t call Garv – and to the great disappointment and confusion of my parents, he didn’t call me either. In a way it was a relief, but a relief that somehow managed to be an unpleasant one.
Anna was also in the house a lot – she was devastated about Shane. We hung out furtively, because when Mum saw us together her mouth would squinch like a cat’s bottom and she’d enquire, ‘Is it a rest home for fallen women I’m running here?’ As best we could, we talked about our respective break-ups. What had happened for her was that Shane had set up a computer business making on-line music, and out of nowhere he became a bread-head. ‘He got his hair cut. At a hairdresser’s. He bought styling wax, then I knew it was all over. I suppose,’ Anna sighed, ‘he wants to grow up and I don’t. So what about you and Garv?’
‘Oh, you know…’ I couldn’t tell her about Truffle Woman. Whatever energy would have been required to pull those words out of my gut and into the open just wasn’t there. ‘Mostly I feel nothing,’ I managed. ‘It’s a horrible sort of nothing, but… you know… that can’t be right. Shouldn’t I be roaring crying?’
Shouldn’t I be breaking into Truffle Woman’s house and planting grass in her carpets and prawns in her curtain rails? Shouldn’t I be making plans to cut the arms and legs off all Garv’s clothes?
‘I haven’t even rung Garv to say I miss him.’ Even though a spasm of longing for him jack-knifed me roughly once every waking hour. ‘My life is ruined and all I feel is nothing.’ My future was a roped-off area – I managed occasional fleeting glimpses of the sadness, but they didn’t stay. It was as if a door into a noisy room opened and immediately slammed shut again.
‘You’re depressed,’ Anna said. ‘You’re very depressed. Is it any surprise, after all you’ve been through?’
But that didn’t sit comfortably. ‘I’m not a depressive.’ (I know because I did a quiz in Cosmopolitan.)
‘You are now. And Garv probably is too.’
She’d said something interesting, maybe even important, but I couldn’t hold the thought. I was too weary.
Unlike me, Anna couldn’t sleep. At least, not in her own bed, so she wandered the house at night, moving from bed to bed. She often got in beside me, but was usually gone when I woke, leaving the faint residue of a wraith-like creature who sighed a lot and smelt of Bacardi Breezers. It was like being haunted by a benign ghost.
Occasionally she was still there when I woke. One morning I came to to find one of her feet resting on my ear and the other in my mouth; for reasons best known to herself, Anna had decided to get into bed upside-down.
Another night I emerged from sleep feeling absurdly happy: warm, safe, cherished. Then, going into hollow freefall, I realized what it was – Anna was snuggling into me, nuzzling and mewing, ‘Oh Shane.’ Deep in sleep, her arm tight around me, I’d thought she was Garv.
Sometimes Anna and I could provide comfort for each other. She developed a theory that our lives were so awful because our guardian angels had gone on sabbaticals, and that currently we were being minded by temps who took no pride in their work.
‘They do the bare minimum. We won’t get our hands caught in a mincing machine, but that’s all they’ll do for us.’
