26

Helen pulled her car over to the narrow patch of ground alongside the road. She looked ahead for a while, to the few flint-and-cob houses on the lane that climbed the hill. Then, getting out slowly, in labored movements, she walked down to the bridge.

Beyond the span, the course of the river spread out into water meadows and became shallow and fast running; here, by the bridge, it was much deeper. She leaned on the parapet and looked down into the four or five feet of water. It was clear above the chalk and pebbles, and looked cool. She watched the eddies, the ripples, the bright green strands of weed lazily streaming from their roots. Running her hand along the stone, she felt the cracks with the tips of her fingers, passed her flat palm along the lichens, feeling their corrugated edges.

As she stood there, a family came along the river path. She heard their voices first and then saw them between the trees, a couple and three children. All three were at the water’s edge, where the weeds were thickest. They had a dog with them, a Labrador. It quivered on the bank before plunging in after a stick that the biggest boy had thrown. Helen watched the tableau for some time; all five following the swimming dog, waiting for it to return, framed by the trees, the low-cut hedge, the flat fields beyond beginning to turn to hay.

She let them pass her, smiling at them. The sun beat on the back of her neck; she went down onto the path and into the shade.

She was deathly tired; tired from the driving, the miles of road. So tired that she would have willingly laid down right now; she looked at the river and wondered how much of a relief it would be to be swept downstream, gliding like Millais’s Ophelia between the reedy banks and shallows. She wanted, at least, at the very least, to dip her body into the cool and the cold, sink her head under for a second, feel the water in her mouth, on her neck, running over her eyes and through her hair. She was so exhausted. The oblivion would be beautiful, if just for a minute. Or an hour. An hour in the Millais painting.

It was twenty-four hours now since she had gone into the merchant bank at the top of Walbrook. Her heart had been beating so fast from nervousness that she thought she would faint. The last time that she had visited the place had been twelve years ago, when Claire had died. When she and John had transferred the paintings here from their father’s bank, into somewhere more central for them both. She only vaguely remembered the interior, a gilt-and-black mausoleum that had been partially modernized, combining the Corinthian marble with smoked-glass security screens.

She had given her number and references; shown her identification. Nothing in the way that the staff looked at her had prepared her for the truth. They acted as if they didn’t know. And this fact had struck her with venom, with utter cruelty, when she had come back out into the foyer after visiting the vault. They were smiling at her, the wicked smile of the conspirator.

She had broken back out onto Walbrook livid with fury, and randomly turned south. When she had got to Cannon Street station she had found herself walking toward the Embankment, and from then on, she walked for miles. In the sweating heart of the city, all the way along the river, all the way across Bloomsbury, up Kingsway, until she had stopped on the steps of the British Museum, sitting down among the crowds there, feeling beaten by deception, betrayed.

John only had to tell her. That was what she kept thinking. John only had to speak to her. He needn’t even have asked if he had her permission; he simply had to say. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t even bothered to ring or write a letter. That was what devastated her the most, that he didn’t trust her enough to even let her know his decision. He had taken every single painting, every single drawing. He hadn’t even left the miniatures, and she had once told him that, even though she hated all the rest—my God, how she loathed them, the eerie and ugly little fairy world, and all its grotesque detail—she liked the little pictures, the ones on enamel, some of them no bigger than a thumbnail. She liked looking into them. It was amazing how deep they looked, how three-dimensional. You could look into them forever and still see something new.

But he had taken even those, pocketed them like a thief. That was exactly it, she had thought, sitting between the ranks of students and families spilled over each other, buffeted by the noise and the unremitting sunlight. He had stolen from her. He had taken them all away, and hidden them, and never said a word.

She never went back home. She had hired the car and got out of London, and driven down here, to the green south with its endless open downland, its chalk flanks. And it was here, last night, in the dark, that she had stopped the car in a pullout, and almost crawled to the shoulder, and was sick into the grass, pressing her hands to her face, her palms hard into her eye sockets, blinded by white flashes, black broken lines.

The day had broken into this dancing, streaming ribbon. She heard them talking to her, not loud enough to distinguish the words, but just talking. That rambling soliloquy in the background that she had learned to tune out came down, a mothy blanket bubbling with sound.

She never took lithium anymore. Lithium, the great healer. All the medication was pointless. It cracked her teeth, it thinned her hair, it made her put on weight. More to the point, it made her—that, and everything else they prescribed her—truly suicidal.

There had been one time. A time in London, after the accident with the car. She had been going somewhere—some interview for an employment agency. She had been standing on the platform at Chancery Lane. It was supposed to be one of the deepest stations on the Underground, and she remembered almost feeling that, the depth of it, how far down she had come. She could feel the oppressive atmosphere in the air. She had waited for a long time for a train. There had been a delay posted up on the electronic board. And then she had felt the train coming, felt the rush of air along the tunnel, and she had been seized by a sudden thrill of release. She could jump. She could fall onto the line. It wouldn’t take much. Practically no effort at all. And the realization that she could do this, that she had the power to stop the weight, the unbearable weight of dread and nausea, just by taking a step or two forward and falling …

She had glanced up the line. The rails were so uncomplicated. It would be blissful to feel the push of the metal, the almighty crush. Just a second’s impact.

The train rushed past her. The noise of it charged through her. She had stood and waited, and then stepped inside the carriage with everyone else.

But it had been so tempting. So tempting. Flooded with desire to cut herself free, she had sat quietly in the seat and fixed her eyes on the floor.

She had never told John, or anyone she knew. After the experience of being fired for not disclosing bipolar, she never mentioned it again in any conversation, let alone a job application. She let people think that she was moody, if that’s what they wanted. She let them think that she was difficult. It worked in business; her staff retreated from her. No doubt they talked behind her back, but she didn’t care about that. At least it made them do what she wanted. They were wary of her. Careful not to offend her. Careful not to light the fuse. She saw it in their faces.

By the time she met Nathan, she no longer cared. She had accepted that she was shut up in her own world, where she made the rules. And in her manic phases, she had been to bed with whomever she wanted; men she had only known for a few hours, even a few minutes. It was in a manic phase that she had started the relationship with Nathan, in a flurry of desire and possession that she could barely now remember.

Since the termination, she knew that she had gone down like a stone, farther down than ever before. Some days she didn’t get up at all. She had wanted it to be so different with Nathan. She had wanted to be a different person. She had firmly believed—my God, she had believed it, trusted it with her whole being—that she had turned a corner; that she had control of it. Because she loved him. She allowed herself the picture of the family, the house, the future; the picture of herself at the center of an ordered life. She would be a picture of calm. She would change. Nathan had been her last chance to change.

It had been now or never. She was in her late thirties; time was running out. Her options were shrinking. She had wanted to give up what she had been before, the way that her life had habitually run. She had wanted the whole idyllic scene, the children, the home, the neatly made beds, the cupboards full of linen, the fresh flowers in the hall, the whole picture she had painted in her head. She had wanted that world, her imagined world, her particular sweet fantasy where she had control of the characters.

She could master the illness; she would conquer it. And for a long time—it seemed like the longest time of her life—she had fought the familiar plucking fingers of the lowering mood, pulling her back to the misery of the drop, the siren call of the abyss, the stroking seduction of the dark.

She sat on the ground by the river now and stared ahead without seeing.

It hadn’t worked. In a down phase like this, the world was a slowly rotating carousel, getting ever slower. She would be the only rider, and everyone else, and everything else, stood outside the ride, just gradually passing slurs of shape.

John was less than a mile away now, she knew.

If she walked straight up the lane past the cottages, she would come to a crossroads. Turning left would take her back into town; going straight on would bring her to the edge of the woods. And there would be a gate in the lane, and the beginning of a long drive. That was the entrance to Bridle Lodge. She knew, because she had driven this way the night before, at midnight, and parked her car in the driveway entrance, and looked for the house between the trees. There had been no lights. She had toyed with the idea of walking up there in the dark, a shadow among shadows. Breaking in perhaps, through a door, a window. Finding what he had hidden from her.

But, in the end, she had decided against it. She would see him in the daylight. She would face him. She would ask him why he had done it. She would get her explanation.

And so she had turned the car around and driven aimlessly, eventually stopping in a picnic area—just a rough wood table and a clearing—in the hills above the Frome valley. She had slept in the car.

“Are you OK, love?”

She jolted at the sound of the voice.

A man was looking down at her. He had his little terrier by the scruff of its neck, so that it wouldn’t run past her.

“Yes,” she said, shading her eyes. “I’m fine.”

“You’re feeling all right?” he persisted. “Anything I can do?”

She got to her feet, brushing herself down. Why was he asking her such a thing? Did she look out of place? She hadn’t considered it. Standing there, the quick-flowing river reflected in the canopy of the trees, the reflections crossing over the man’s face, the little dog dancing in his grip, she swayed momentarily.

He put out his hand as if to steady her.

“Is there anywhere nearby to stay?” she asked.

The man was frowning. She looked back at him, puzzled. Surely that was not an unusual question to ask. They were here in the heart of holiday country. The county was dotted with hotels and guest houses. Was it such a ridiculous question?

The man gestured over his shoulder. “There’s a bed-and-breakfast just up the road,” he said. “House with a yellow sign, on the left. You’ll see as you go up toward Derry.”

“Thanks,” she said. She reached down to pat the little dog, then turned and walked back along the path. Behind her, she knew that the man was watching her every step of the way.

The guest house was just where he had said it would be. They had a room. Helen brought in the only luggage she had—a carrier bag that held a hairbrush and a few toiletries she had bought that morning.

As she mounted the stairs behind the woman who showed her to the bedroom, she felt her feet drag. Fatigue swept over her; her knees buckled at the effort of climbing. Everything went gray: that old familiar gray she recognized, as if all the vibrancy had suddenly washed out of the world.

She found it hard to listen to what was being said to her. She just wanted to lie down. She said something to the woman—she couldn’t remember what—thanked her, probably, said the room was nice—something. It didn’t matter.

When the door was closed, she laid down on the bed, fully clothed.

And she was sound asleep when, half an hour later, the brief rainstorm scattered its heavy drops against the window.