the garden, the non-judgmental member of our family, who loved us unconditionally and who healed us, just by being between us.
Bru’s death felt catastrophic to me. Inside the house, in the daytime, on my own, his loss tripped me up at the bottom of the stairs where he used to wait for us in the morning and got under my feet in the kitchen when I was cooking; the loneliness got under my skin when I sat in the silence and listened for him barking to be let back in.
In the evenings, there were just the two of us again, our only company the unspoken memory of nights in West London with the front door double-locked and the security lights on in the driveway going on and off for no known reason.
Outside, at night, it was fear which rustled the hedges and slammed the stable door unexpectedly behind me.
‘It’s as if someone has poisoned everything,’ I said. ‘Just to know there are people out there who hate us that much.’
However much they hated us, Mark hated them even more in return. I had never seen hatred in his eyes before that time.
Someone told me once how quickly it becomes difficult to picture the dead. That has not proved to be the case for me: the dead are with me always – but the living? Angie I can see clearly, her absence is so painful that her presence in my mind is almost tangible. With Mark, I struggle to recall his face. There remains an Impressionist’s portrait of him, or maybe a Cubist version, with disconnected parts of him, lying against each other in conflict on the canvas: the hint of his half-Greek missing mother in the sallow complexion, the thick, dark hair, the straight lips where I used to rest my fingers, those eyes, those deep-set, brown eyes. But these things do not make a face, maybe because he has not visited me once since the funeral, maybe because I fear what I may see reflected in those eyes. I cannot hear his voice either and I dare not imagine what he might say if he were to speak. And then there’s Sister Amelia who I can see and not see. Her hologram is always flickering just out of reach; she conjures herself up whether I want to remember her or not.
I pull the blanket up over my head and hide.
Boy stands at the kitchen door and says something about needing to check the monitor. He doesn’t exactly knock, but at least he hesitates – unlike the others. ‘Boyish enthusiasm’ springs to mind, a cliché, but true in his case, I imagine. His eyes smile a lot, even when he is supposed to be looking serious, and he has thin, dislocated limbs a bit like a yearling. He must be over six foot, but even so he can’t quite reach, so he drags a chair across the room to the corner where one of the cameras is mounted, climbs up and removes a wire.
‘I thought you might want to know,’ he begins, ‘that the shrink has called. He was asking if your medication needed to be increased.’
‘The answer is no,’ I tell him, biting my black fingernails.
Still on the chair, he looks down at me, the battery in his hand, his head at a ludicrous angle against the beam, squashing his spiky blond hair. ‘It’s just that if they think you’re not taking it, then they’ll move to a patch or injections. You’re still sectioned, and apparently they can do that whether you want it or not.’ He pauses and turns his attention back to the monitor, as if a little embarrassed. ‘I thought it was your right to know, that’s all.’
He reaches up to reconnect the wire.
‘I’d better get washed and dressed then,’ I say.
He steps down, turns his back to the camera and makes a thumbs up sign. ‘Good idea,’ he mouths and leaves.
It occurs to me that I smell, but there’s no one here to tell me. Anyway, for some reason, this boy soldier seems to have risked something for this unwashed woman and his warning energises me to take control. I wrestle my mind into logic: I do not want to be medicated or hospitalised because I need to be here and I need to be able to think; I need to stay here, because here is the only place I am ever likely to find out what happened; there are things which were never found here which mattered – like the jumper, the rose, the truth.
Only when I have found the truth will my sentence be over.
I must therefore take control.
Having won the debate with myself, I plan an assault, concentrating on Anon, because being devoid of personality he seems the weakest of the three. The guards have requisitioned Mark’s study and he is in there on his own, feet on the table, dealing a hand of Patience and when I stand in the doorway, he swings his boots to the ground, knocking the cards onto the floor. I never did like heavy-set men.
‘Is there a problem?’
Bending down, I pick up the run of spades and lay them out on the table. ‘Eight, nine, ten, Jack, King, Ace. You’re missing the Queen.’
‘I never get it to work out,’ he says, shuffling the cards back into one pack. ‘I usually end up cheating on myself.’
He sounds faintly American, but I am sure it’s just that he thinks the role he has been given is an American soldier sort of part.
‘Sunday today, isn’t it?’ I ask.
‘Sure is.’
‘I’ve been thinking I’d like to go to church.’
Silence. All three of them have been well schooled in being non-committal; maybe that’s module one in the policy, practice and psychology of internment.
‘You know,’ I persist, ‘to take communion. I think that must be one of my human rights, the right to worship, don’t you?’
Anon pulls out a cigarette, seems to remember my house rules and puts it away again. ‘You can ask, I guess. I’ll get a request sheet sent over.’
‘And I’d like to visit the woods. I assume that’s not a problem?’
‘Depends on which wood and what you plan on doing there.’ Anon takes his jacket off the back of the chair.
‘Wellwood,’ I offer helpfully, ‘the wood at the bottom of First Field.’
The blank look doesn’t fool me. They have a map of The Well which Three spread out in front of me on my second day, wanting to ensure that I was clear about where I was and was not allowed to go. They know what has happened where in the history of this land.
Anon looks at his watch, looks at me, looks out of the window.
‘One minute,’ he says and leaves the house via the back door. I can hear him, calling over to Three, saying he needs a word. Three has some authority over the other two, although as yet I don’t quite understand the rankings. Anon calls him Sarge, but whether that’s part of the script he’s written for himself or a real reflection of Three’s status, who knows. She wants to go to that pond, Anon is saying and Three is replying, but they are walking away like a pantomime duo, little and large, and it seems from the words I can catch that they do not agree: arse-licker, grave, fucking, shithole, old, then rather oddly, boo to a goose. That makes me smile.
Later, Boy lollops over to the house with some papers in his hand – marching was never going to be his thing. ‘You’re going to need to fill out these,’ he says, ‘the pond is beyond the current agreed limit.’
