‘And that is why we’re not squillionaires,’ I say, as though to a third party.
I’m about to find another clip when Felix comes running into the room.
‘Candy Crush!’ he says in delight as soon as he spies my iPad, and Mum gasps in horror.
‘How does he know about that?’ she demands. ‘Turn it off. I’m not having another addict in the family!’
Oops. It may possibly have been me who introduced Felix to Candy Crush. Not that he has any idea how to play it properly.
I close down the iPad and Felix stares at it, crestfallen. ‘Candy Crush!’ he wails. ‘I want to play Candy Cruuuuush!’
‘It’s broken, Felix.’ I pretend to press the iPad. ‘See? Broken.’
‘Broken,’ affirms Mum.
Felix looks from us to the iPad. You can sense his mind is working as hard as his four-year-old brain cells will let him. ‘We must buy a plug,’ he suggests, with sudden animation, and grabs the iPad. ‘We can buy a plug and fix it.’
‘The plug shop’s closed,’ says Mum, without missing a beat. ‘What a shame. We’ll do it tomorrow. But guess what? We’re going to have toast and Nutella now!’
‘Toast and Nutella!’ Felix’s face bursts into joyous beams. As he throws up his arms, Mum grabs the iPad from him and gives it to me. Five seconds later I’ve hidden it behind a cushion on the bed.
‘Where did the Candy Crush go?’ Felix suddenly notices its disappearance and screws up his face to howl.
‘We’re taking it to the plug shop, remember?’ says Mum at once.
‘Plug shop.’ I nod. ‘But hey, you’re going to have toast and Nutella! How many pieces are you going to have?’
Poor old Felix. He lets Mum lead him out of the room, still looking confused. Totally outmanoeuvred. That’s what happens when you’re four. Bet Mum wishes she could pull that trick on Frank.
So now Mum knows what LOC is. And ‘knowledge is power’, according to Kofi Annan. Although, as Leonardo da Vinci said: ‘Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge,’ which might apply better to our family. (Please don’t think I’m super-well-read or anything. Mum bought me a book of quotations last month and I flick through it when I’m watching telly.)
Anyway, ‘knowledge is power’ isn’t really happening here, because Mum has no power over Frank at all. It’s Saturday evening, and he’s been playing LOC ever since lunch time. He disappeared into the playroom straight after pudding. Then there was a ring at the doorbell and I scuttled out of the way into the den, which is my own private place.
Now it’s nearly six and I’ve crept into the kitchen for some Oreos, to find Mum striding around, all twitchy. She’s exhaling and looking at the clock and exhaling again.
‘They’re all computer addicts!’ she says in a sudden burst. ‘I’ve asked them to turn them off about twenty-five times! Why can’t they do it? It’s a simple switch! On, off.’
‘Maybe they’re on a level—’ I begin.
‘Levels!’ Mum cuts me off savagely. ‘I’m tired of hearing about levels! I’m giving them one more minute. That’s it.’
I take out an Oreo and prise it open. ‘So, who’s with Frank?’
‘A friend from school. I haven’t met him before. Linus, I think he’s called . . .’
Linus. I remember Linus. He was in that school play, To Kill a Mockingbird, and he played Atticus Finch. Frank was Crowd.
Frank goes to Cardinal Nicholls School, which is just up the road from my school, Stokeland Girls’ School, and sometimes the two schools join together for plays and concerts and stuff. Although to be truthful, Stokeland isn’t ‘my school’ any more. I haven’t been to school since February, because some stuff happened there. Not great stuff.
Whatever.
Anyway. Moving on. After that, I got ill. Now I’m going to change schools and go down a year so I won’t fall behind. The new school is called the Heath Academy and they said it would be sensible to start in September, rather than the summer term when it’s mainly exams. So, till then, I’m at home.
I mean, I don’t do nothing. They’ve sent me lots of reading suggestions and maths books and French vocab lists. Everyone’s agreed it’s vital I keep up with my schoolwork and ‘It will make you feel so much better, Audrey!’ (It so doesn’t.) So sometimes I send in a history essay or something and they send it back with some red comments. It’s all a bit random.
Anyway. The point is, Linus was in the play and he was a really good Atticus Finch. He was noble and heroic and everyone believed him. Like, he has to shoot a rabid dog in one scene and the prop gun didn’t work on our night, but no one in the audience laughed or even murmured. That’s how good he was.
He came round to our house once, before a rehearsal. Just for about five minutes, but I still remember it.
Actually, that’s kind of irrelevant.
I’m about to remind Mum that Linus played Atticus Finch when I realize she’s left the kitchen. A moment later I hear her voice:
‘You’ve played enough, young man!’
Young man.
I dart over to the door and look through the crack. As Frank strides into the hall after Mum, his face is quivering with fury.
‘We hadn’t reached the end of the level! You can’t just switch off the game! Do you understand what you did just then, Mum? Do you even know how Land of Conquerors works?’
He sounds properly irate. He’s stopped right underneath where I am, his black hair falling over his pale forehead, his skinny arms flailing and his big bony hands gesticulating furiously. I hope Frank grows into his hands and feet one day. They can’t stay so comically huge, can they? The rest of him has to catch up, surely? He’s fifteen, so he could still grow a foot. Dad’s six foot, but he always says Frank will end up taller than him.
‘It’s fine,’ says a voice I recognize. It’s Linus, but I can’t see him through the crack. ‘I’ll go home. Thanks for having me.’
‘Don’t go home!’ exclaims Mum, in her best charming-to-visitors voice. ‘Please don’t go home, Linus. That’s not what I meant at all.’
‘But if we can’t play games . . .’ Linus sounds flummoxed.
‘Are you saying the only form of socializing you boys understand is playing computer games? Do you know how sad that is?’
‘Well, what do you suggest we do?’ says Frank sulkily.
‘I think you should play badminton. It’s a nice summer’s evening, the garden’s beautiful, and look what I found!’ She holds out the ropy old badminton set to Frank. The net is all twisted and I can see that some animal has nibbled at one of the shuttlecocks.
I want to laugh at Frank’s expression.
‘Mum . . .’ He appears almost speechless with horror. ‘Where did you even find that?’
‘Or croquet!’ adds Mum brightly. ‘That’s a fun game.’
Frank doesn’t even answer. He looks so stricken by the idea of croquet, I actually feel quite sorry for him.
‘Or hide-and-seek?’
I give a snort of laughter and clap my hand over my mouth. I can’t help it. Hide-and-seek.
‘Or Rummikub!’ says Mum, sounding desperate. ‘You always used to love Rummikub.’
‘I like Rummikub,’ volunteers Linus, and I feel a tweak of approval. He could have legitimately laid into Frank at this point; walked straight out of the house and put on Facebook that Frank’s house sucks. But he sounds like he wants to please Mum. He sounds like one of those people who looks around and thinks, Well, why not make life easier for everyone? (I’m getting this from three words, you understand.)
‘You want to play Rummikub?’ Frank sounds incredulous.
‘Why not?’ says Linus easily, and a moment later the two of them head off towards the playroom. (Mum and Dad repainted it and called it the Teenage Study when I turned thirteen, but it’s still the playroom.)
Next moment, Mum is back in the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of wine.
‘There!’ she says. ‘They just need a little g
uidance. A little parental control. I simply opened their minds. They’re not addicted to computers. They just need to be reminded what else is out there.’
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 comput
er 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.