Page 17 of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

I’ve visited Freddie for the last six days in a row, and I’m utterly exhausted, as if I’ve been running marathons in my sleep. I dully acknowledge that this cannot go on. It’s not just the physical toll; there is a steep mental price to pay too. My waking hours have become my waiting hours, filled with impatience and anticipation, edged with sickly fear that it may not happen next time, that I might never again experience the rush. It’s impossible to explain how it feels to be there. There was a painting in the National Gallery when Elle and I visited a couple of years ago, an Australian landscape by an artist whose name I can’t quite bring to mind. It isn’t one of the most well-known pieces nor the most spectacular, but there was something about the clarity of colour and the intense quality of the light that held my attention more than any other. My sleeping world is there amongst the brush strokes and pigments of that painting; alive and bold and spellbinding. Addictive.

I hold my head in my hands, bereft because the incident with the pills just now has forced me to acknowledge the truth that’s been lurking just beneath the surface for the last couple of days: I’m putting myself in real danger here.

Every day since Freddie died has been a fresh mountain to climb, and even though I’ve never been a sporty kind of girl, I’ve somehow found the strength to put on my walking boots each morning and begin that lonely climb again. For the last few days I haven’t bothered to lace up my boots, because it hasn’t seemed to matter so much if I cut the soles of my feet to ribbons. I haven’t watched my step or thought beyond the next bend in the track, because all roads lead to the safety of Freddie waiting at the crest for me.

But like all things, there is an inevitable trade-off. A bargain must be struck and the realization that the price might be my sanity is seeping into my bones like cold bath water.

I’m starting to resent being awake, and to resent everyone in my waking life too. I snapped Mum’s head off on the phone a couple of days ago and Elle said I looked like crap when she called around yesterday morning. I bailed on going to Mum’s for breakfast with her; I was borderline rude because all I could think about was the pink pill waiting for me on the kitchen worktop. She left after a few awkward minutes, her shoulders slumped and deflated, and I watched her go, feeling like a cow but unwilling to call her back because the siren call of the pill was too loud, too persuasive to ignore. And that’s the real problem: I see the road ahead and it’s littered with their trampled feelings as I turn more and more away from them in favour of the other place, in favour of Freddie.

I set the bottle of pills down on the kitchen floor beside me, and after staring at it for a few jagged, indecisive seconds I stretch out and move it beyond an arm’s length away.

Can I bear to take one every other day? Every three days, maybe? Once a week? I frown, remembering that I took two on Saturday, bingeing on Freddie like a greedy child. And that’s what worries me most. That I won’t have the strength to resist falling so deeply into my other life that I become more there than here, too immersed to make my way safely home again.

Tuesday 29 May

‘I’m thinking of going back to work soon.’

My mother tries unsuccessfully to mask her surprise. We’re in her small and immaculate lounge, barefoot as always in deference to the cream carpet; it’s not just in the hall, she loves a bargain and had it laid throughout the ground floor. Considering this is the lounge, there are quite stringent rules around the kind of lounging that is permitted. Red wine is a complete no-no, as is any kind of non-white food. So white wine is allowed, and mash or rice pudding. I’m not even kidding. Elle and I put away tins of the stuff throughout our teenage years, and despite the fact that the carpet is at least fifteen years old, it looks almost as good as new. The sofa covers the only stain that will never come out: a teenage Elle came home off her face on gin and blackcurrant one Christmas morning after visiting her then boyfriend down the road for less than an hour. Impressive really, until she threw up on Mum’s carpet and passed out cold in her Christmas dinner.

‘Really?’ Mum says. I can see she’s trying to choose what to say next. I imagine her bypassing ‘about bloody time’ and pausing to consider ‘thank God for that’, before finally settling on what actually comes out of her mouth: ‘Are you sure you’re ready, love?’

I shrug and half shake my head, even though I’m trying to nod. ‘I can’t stay at home on my own for much longer without going round the bend, Mum. And I’m sleeping better now with the tablets.’

What I don’t say is that I need to give myself something to do; something tangible to focus on in the real world. My job as events manager at the town hall isn’t rocket science, it’s mainly desk-based, but I work with a good bunch of people and the pay is decent. They’ve been kind and allowed me the time off so far as paid sick leave, but it can’t go on indefinitely.

Mum comes and perches beside me on the sofa, her hand on my knee.

‘You could always come back and stay here for a while. If it’d help?’

I feel my bottom lip begin to tremble, because we both know she’d hate it, but she loves me enough to say it anyway. It’s not the first time she’s offered; she’s said it at least once a week since Freddie died. I’d hate it too. I like to eat stain-inducing curry off a plate balanced on my knees in the living room and falling to pieces when no one’s watching.

‘I know,’ I say, covering her hand with mine and giving it a squeeze. ‘But it’s not the right thing to do, you know that. I have to “pass sentiently through my grief”, and I don’t think that means moving back in with my mother.’

She snorts a little bit; it’s fast becoming a stock piss-take phrase in our family.

‘I’ll pack your lunch for you then. Just for the first day or two.’

I expect she’s still got the clear pink lunchbox she used to send me to school with. ‘Okay,’ I say, ‘that’d help, Mum.’ Though I suspect it’ll help her more than me.

She nods, fast. ‘I’ll get those mint biscuits you used to like, the ones with shiny green wrappers.’

I swallow around the lump in my throat, feeling fifteen again, back to the days when I slept upstairs in a single bed in the room I shared with Elle.

‘First Monday in June, then?’ she prompts, and I think about it, wondering if I can. We’re in the last week of May now; she’s only giving me a few days’ grace to get myself together. I expect she’s keen to catch the wave in case the next one pulls me under and I change my mind, and because I can’t promise that won’t happen, I nod slowly.

‘First Monday in June, then.’

‘Good girl.’ She pats my knee as she stands up. ‘I’ll just nip into the kitchen and add those biscuits to my shopping list.’

I watch her go, wondering if she knows she’s one of the guardians of my sanity. My mum and her lists used to crack Freddie up – he used to add random things to them when she wasn’t looking, hosepipes or doll’s houses or nasal trimmers. The memory makes me smile and then ache, because I’ve reluctantly decided to try to ration my visits to once a weekend. It’s too much of a good thing, as unsustainable as eating tablespoons of sugar. The problem with addiction is that at some point you have to give up whatever it is that’s taken you over, or else give yourself over completely to it. I don’t want either of those things to happen. I want both of my lives, and for that to happen I need a secure footing here in the real world. Time to lace up my walking boots.

Saturday 2 June

I guess it should come as no surprise that I find the cemetery a peaceful place to be; I can almost hear Freddie cracking a horribly lame joke about the residents keeping themselves to themselves. I’ve been sitting here long enough to get a numb bum and as I look at Freddie’s headstone, I notice a white splatter against the grey granite; the pigeons around here clearly have no respect for the dead. Rummaging in my bag for the wipes, I find them missing and sigh, irritated. I can’t leave it like that.

‘Back in a sec,’ I say, picking up the old flowers I’ve removed and my rubbish to ditch in the basket in the car park. ‘The wipes must be in the boot.’

At the car a couple of minutes later, I find I’m right. Locking up, I amble back slowly in the sunshine, taking the long way round because the cemetery is in full bloom and I could use a few minutes to catch my breath. It’s just about the only place I can feel truly still. I value that now more than ever, a chance to step out of my smoke-and-mirrors double existence.

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