Chapter Twenty-Eight

Stella’s never going to be able to open Marcia’s letter because she’s never going to be able to write anything in the lovely blue silk notebook. She’s never going to sully those lovely clean pages with her grim little story. She might as well open the letter now and find out the worst. Find out it was all a big mistake and Marcia’s sorry, but she actually doesn’t want to know.

What if the whole thing is a figment of Stella’s deranged imagination? Marcia just believing – really, really believing – in the Sisterhood thing, and putting her beliefs in Sisterhood into action. Stella should look at the letter. What’s written in there is more reliable than Stella’s memory, which anyway is full of crap and always has been.

But part of Stella doesn’t want to know the truth, doesn’t anyway trust the truth, or that which masquerades as truth. Memory may be fallible, but so is everything else. Truth is personal to each of us and is not to be equated with facts. There are things that happen inside of us which are real and true, yet cannot be seen and cannot be told and possibly – probably – will not be remembered. This doesn’t mean they’re not true. Of that much, Stella is certain.

What Stella remembers most is the feel of Marcia’s hands, and how she could feel the touch of them before they actually made contact with Stella’s skin. She could feel Marcia’s touch with her eyes closed, her skin felt it before Stella did which, granted, makes no sense at all, but that’s how it was. That was real. There’s no way that kind of skin-knowing isn’t real.

As Stella’s key worker, Marcia was the person who once a week drove Stella through the prison gates and into the outside world. In the unmarked Transit, Marcia drove Stella through the streets of North London to her therapy sessions at the Tavistock Clinic in Belsize Park. Stella was considered to be some kind of special case and had dispensation to go to the Tavistock, where a Dr Porpora was an expert on Matricide. Stella could never tell him very much because she couldn’t remember very much. They’d even tried hypnosis, but that just made her go mute and shake.

Marcia would always wait outside, and she’d be there when Stella came out, waiting, and she’d step forward, no words, just put her arms around Stella and would hold her – just stand there holding her – for as long as it took. No questions, no answers. Marcia just held her, that’s all. Now Stella remembers the feel of Marcia’s large breasts pressing up against her, how she felt the strength of Marcia seeping into her, how she breathed in the essence of the strength of Marcia, deep into her lungs and held it there. In those moments, Stella had felt something pass silently and surely between them: an exchange – yes, it was two-way, Stella was convinced of that – an exchange of something deep and strong and thick and sweet, like the soul of her was being tugged free of its bearings.

All of which now sounds delusional. Things like that don’t happen in real life. But at the time, Stella had believed – and Marcia had believed. Marcia too, hadn’t she? She believed that there was a reciprocal exchange of…what? Stella didn’t know what it was, but maybe, surely… Was it the beginnings of… Was it love she’d felt for Marcia? Marcia had felt for her?

Stella won’t think about the letter, not for a long time. Respect for what she’d promised Marcia must take priority over Stella’s desire for instant gratification, her need for truth – whatever truth was. Marcia’s conditions will be fulfilled before the letter will be opened.

From the start, Marcia had encouraged Stella to write things down. She was always counselling against ‘dwelling’ on things, against gazing at your navel instead of doing something about whatever it was that was getting to you. Marcia was a great one for Action. She said the best and the quickest way to get over stuff was to write it down. Writing was a form of Action of which Marcia thoroughly approved. It helped you see the wood for the trees. It helped you find out what you thought about something, helped you see what was and was not important. And as for memories, you didn’t have to let them imprison you. Put them on the page, Marcia said, write them down, set them free: it’s up to you to put the past behind you.

Stella had tried, but found that writing anything – let alone anything about yourself or your life story – was nowhere near as easy as Marcia seemed to think. No way at all. In fact, it was impossible. It wasn’t that Stella was afraid of the blank page. She wasn’t afraid of it. It wasn’t that she couldn’t think of anything to write. She could think of plenty. It wasn’t that she didn’t have time. She had plenty of time. No, it was something else, something worse, much worse: something deep, incomprehensible and inaccessible, something that wanted to stay hidden away. It caused a horror at the very thought of putting words on paper. Phrases, sentences, whole paragraphs would form themselves inside Stella’s head, they’d repeat themselves over and over with the greatest insistence till Stella thought her brain would explode, but she couldn’t write them down. The antagonism she felt to writing was visceral, it came from the depths not of her mind but of her body, it was a loathing, it was palpable disgust.

So no, Stella was not going to be writing anything down, not just yet, not for Marcia, not for herself, not for anyone.