But then, Marc allows me time in my own head.
Well, he doesn’t allow it.
Actually, what he does is deliver a long monologue about what he says has happened to me. What I am going through.
I zone out.
Think instead about Mum.
Mum, who was never diagnosed with postpartum psychosis in a time before mental health diagnoses were given much attention. And then, when Loll was first pregnant, we talked about what had happened to her when I was born and showed her the list of symptoms. Loll suspected, from the parts she knew and remembered from being a ten-year-old, that that’s what Mum had experienced. And she needed to know herself, so that if she did have a genetic risk factor, she could be monitored through her own pregnancies.
Mum’s eyes had filled: ‘Yes,’ she had said, ‘that. That’s what it was.’ They might never have named it but she knew.
Mum, who I resented for so long for not being like the ‘other’ mums. There was a distance between us, my whole life. Steffie’s mum Sheila was more like a mum to me. My sister Loll of course was a mum to me.
But then, when I needed help, Aurelia came through. And I let go of the resentment. Grabbed hold of my mum.
She didn’t know how I’d felt with Marc, like a lot of people don’t know how we feel when it’s unpleasant; it’s only the good feelings we make public.
But when I left hospital, she was on the phone constantly. Got on a plane to help as soon as she could. We chatted for hours, about our whole lives. About my husband. She was my bolthole.
Back in the now, Marc goes on. On. On.
‘You’ve got to admit it makes sense, Romilly.’ He sighs. ‘Mums don’t leave their children.’
And all the while I sit with my head in my hands, bum numb now on this rock, discomfort in every part of my body especially my chest, which is so swollen and ready to explode.
I told you, I think, I didn’t leave her. I never left her.
But there is no point, is there?
I reach a hand out and grasp at the lavender next to us.
Fleur, Fleur.
Perhaps her name could grow on me.
And all of this ticks around my head as Marc talks.
‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Romilly,’ he says, his voice drifting in and out of my head like an ear worm, an awful song I’ve been trapped with after hearing it on the radio.
I’ve got the gist now; don’t need my mind to hang around for the rest. I can move on instead to thoughts of how I can go home, how we can make this work.
To thoughts of us: our family and our future.
I picture Fleur’s dark hair, each strand so fine it almost doesn’t exist. Somehow I knew that’s what she would look like. I know how fast they evolve into other people – my nieces have shown me that – and I try to still time, squeeze my eyes closed. We’ve missed too much, Fleur. I can never get that back. But I promise that one day I will explain to you why. And one day I will explain to you, because it will be our story, the story of the two of us.
Oh. You thought by our family I meant Marc too?
Ha.
No.
Absolutely fucking not.