Page 78 of Days You Were Mine

‘Jake, go to bed. Please promise me you’ll do that. Everything will seem better when you wake up. And as soon as you get home, I’ll look after you. You’re going to be OK.’

‘Am I?’ he says, his last words before the line goes dead.

Sleep is an impossibility; instead, I lie on the sofa waiting for the pitch black of 3.30 in the morning to move towards dawn’s pale-grey sludge. The rattle of taxis, I long to hear that. Stallholders shouting out to one another a couple of streets away. The Bar Italia opening up for morning custom. In Soho’s silence I hear nothing but gloom.

A telegram arrives at nine in the morning and I’m almost too frightened to open it. I sit on the sofa, Jake’s sofa, our sofa, a sofa with so many memories, holding the envelope between hands that shake.

We’ve cut the tour. Arriving home tonight. Eddie.

Half an hour later, telegram still clutched in my hand, I realise with an energy my heavily pregnant self has almost forgotten that I need to get the flat ready for him. Oh, the relief of having a purpose, as I haul my bulk from one room to the next, changing sheets, cleaning the bath, plumping cushions, replacing candles. In the afternoon, I walk to the Iranian shop on Beak Street and buy tins of soup, bread and two bottles of Lucozade, invalidfood. I think of my mother, briefly, as I unload the Heinz tomato soup into the cupboard, sliced Mother’s Pride into the bread bin. As a child, with recurring tonsillitis, all I ever wanted was tomato soup. I remember how my mother sat by my bed, right through the night when the pain was at its worst, and I wonder how we have got to here.

The doorbell rings at six o’clock and I find both Jake and Eddie on the doorstep. Jake looks like a ghost, that’s the first thing. His skin is blue-white and his eyes slither from side to side, unfocused.

‘Jake!’ I say, reaching out to embrace him, but he takes a step back.

Eddie, I realise now, has been supporting him with one arm around his back, and he says, ‘Let’s get him to bed. Then we’ll talk.’

How I have longed to see this man, this thin, gaunt ghost, and now, as he and Eddie climb the stairs ahead of me, one step at a time, I do not know how to feel. They stagger past the sparkling sitting room with its brand-new orange candles just waiting for a match, past the record player withTheDark Side of the Moonready on the turntable. At the bedroom door, Eddie says, ‘Best to stay there, Alice, while I settle him. I’ll only be a minute.’

How can this be happening? How can he have fallen so far in less than twenty-four hours? He sounded desperate last night on the phone, but today he is catatonic.

‘Heavy dose of Valium,’ Eddie says, sitting down next to me and taking my hand. ‘They had to sedate him to get him on the bus. He’s a mess, the worst I’ve ever seen him. Did you know he’d stopped taking his medication?’

There is no tone of accusation in his voice, but that’s what Ihear, and I plant my face into my palms. All I can see is Jake popping out his sachet of pills into the lavatory.

‘Yes, I knew. He hates it so much. I should have made him take it. I didn’t understand.’

‘Alice?’ Eddie’s voice is sharp; he has picked up my remorse. ‘This is no one’s fault except Jake’s, and not even his. He’s a manic depressive and he has to keep taking his medication to avoid extreme episodes, or whatever this is. The doctor in Paris called it psychosis.’

‘What’s going to happen?’

Eddie sighs. He keeps hold of my hand.

‘When’s the baby due?’ he says.

‘Ten days.’

‘His timing’s really off, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t care. I’m just glad he’s home.’

Eddie nods, several times. I can tell he’s trying to choose his words.

‘Alice,’ he begins, and then he stops himself.

‘What is it?’

‘You do understand what this means, don’t you?’

‘He’s depressed. He needs medication. He needs peace and quiet. Of course I understand.’

It seems to me that the look on Eddie’s face is one of unutterable sadness, and this time he takes both of my hands between his.

‘He won’t be allowed to stay here.’

‘But why not? I love him. I’m going to look after him. We’ll be fine.’

Eddie shakes his head. ‘They’ll make him go to hospital. And he won’t want to go. You know as well as I do how he feels about hospital.’

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