CHAPTER 12

Part of the promise is agreeing to see a counsellor. Counsellor doesn't sound as bad as psychologist. Not as crazy.

Her office is in a big old house, behind Mario's Hair and a beautician (we fix your head, inside and out). I pretend I'm here for my usual trim of split ends and fringe, but I've never felt this sick waiting for Mario. It's almost a relief when a woman appears and asks me to follow her down the hall.

She's about thirty, with a lively face that stills to concentrate as if what you're saying is the most important thing she's ever heard. Her name's Laura and she says that it's my time, to talk about whatever I like, and that nothing I say will leave the room. What if I said I wanted to kill myself? Would she just keep quiet and let me?

I don't know what I'm supposed to say.

So she asks me about the accident; how it happened, what it was like being in hospital. I can tell her all that; I describe the pain and the bitch battles with the nurses and the old lady dying. I tell her that one of my best friends couldn't deal with it, and how she dumped me.

'That's a pretty terrible story,' Laura says. 'Some people might even want to cry about it.'

Maybe they would. Some people aren't me.

I go on with my story—part of the promise was that I'd co-operate, not just turn up—the doctors' visits; the tests. I tell her that I've been told I can't do just about everything in the world that's important to me.

But I don't tell her how I feel about it. I tell it as if it's somebody else's story—just the facts—no emotion. I can't take the risk. Can't tell her how scared, how terrified I am that if somebody gets right into my head, pokes around and tears it apart, it might never come back together again.

She's quiet for several minutes when I finish.

'You didn't want to come here today, did you?' she says at last.

Not much point in lying.

'You've been through hell, and it's not over yet. You've had extraordinary adjustments to make, not just in your life now, but in how you see the future—I suspect you can't picture it at all at the moment . . . am I right?'

If I could see a future I wouldn't be here!

'You'd be crazy if you weren't sad about all this.'

I'll risk one question: 'So if I'm not crazy—why do I sometimes say that I died in the accident?'

'What do you think?'

'Because the old me is dead?'

'The old you is dead,' she repeats. 'That's a very powerful statement, and might well be the reason you feel that you died. But your problem now—your task—is to find the new you, and we've got three options on how you'd like to work at that: we can set up regular appointments for you to come and see me; if you don't think you can work with me, I can refer you to someone else; or I can simply give you the names of a few books and a couple of suggestions and leave it at that. If you don't feel comfortable about starting therapy there's no point forcing it on you—it has to be your decision.'

If I talked to any psychologist it'd be her . . . . but, 'It seems so weird—coming in to spill your guts once a week!'

She laughs. 'When you put it like that . . . What's weirder is that when you're ready, it works. So any time you feel really desperate, or you'd just like to talk, I'll be here. Please call me.'

She means it. It's me I'm not so sure of.

'One more thing,' she adds, as I'm getting ready to go. 'There are two ways of crossing a chasm: you can walk a tightrope without looking down—you tried that, and it didn't work. It never really does. The other way is to work your way down and up the other side—but you've got to get to the bottom first.'

Is there anywhere further down to go?

'But you're going to make it,' she adds. 'It mightn't be exactly the way you planned, but you'll make it.'

'An un-birthday present,' Luke announces, and pulls a walking stick from behind his back.

I'm nearly over my fantasy of my stick being neon—but this one really is. It's been painted white and then completely covered with red and black designs that look like Chinese characters.

'They are'—and he starts pointing them out—'yin-yang, Tai Chi, peace, strength, love. They're the only ones I know—I had to repeat them a few times.'

'Does it glow in the dark too?'

'Of course. But the siren's optional.'

'And you painted it for me?'

'I just thought—hey, if you're going to use something all the time it should express your personality. If you've got it, flaunt it.'

'I don't think anyone ever said that about walking sticks!' But I look at it again, each character so finely drawn, the total geometric effect of the red/black alternation. I stroke it gently, turning it over and over in my hands—it must have taken hours. 'It's fantastic—thanks.' The memory of the last time I thanked him hangs in the air between us; I look away, forcing myself to stay in my chair, and tell him Laura's theory about the chasm. 'I can't believe I have to feel even worse before I can get better!'—trying to make it sound like a joke; hearing the panic in my voice—she's got to be wrong, because it's impossible to feel worse than I do now.

'Maybe she just meant that you have to let yourself open up and be honest about how you're really feeling,' says Luke, and his face is so sad and tender that something twists inside me as if I'd kissed him again after all.

The rest of the family have all gone to see Laura now, one after the other. 'Nothing to be ashamed of,' Dad says, 'something like this has to affect all of us.'

Bronny comes home from school hyper with news; I haven't seen her this excited since Dad gave her the stethoscope. Vinita's cousin Rajiv has come to stay; Vinita has to move in with her little sister Charleeni, so that Rajiv can have her bedroom, but Vinita doesn't mind because he's so cool.

'He's from Bondi! That's a really big city and Vinita said he couldn't sleep at first because it was so quiet here.'

'Bombay?' Dad suggests, but it's Bronwyn's story—she gives him a scathing look and goes on with a list of the presents he's brought from the exotic bazaars of Bondi: a real sari for Vinita—and her mum's going to teach her how to wear it, and she might let Bronwyn have a go, but not to bring it home.

Slightly surprised to discover that our house has grown a second storey, I climb a flight of wooden stairs. At the top is a room with a half-open door. Sun is streaming in the window, the wallpaper is a riot of extravagant trees and birds; I understand that it's going to be my new room and I want to go in.

Mrs Hervey is on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor in front of the open door with an old-fashioned scrubbing brush, lots of water and suds. 'Soon as it's all cleaned out,' she says cheerily, 'you can go inside.' My hair is too long, too much trouble, too much the old me—and it's coming off today. Mario wants to know how I want it; I tell him to do what he likes. He goes on asking till I glance around the room and choose a poster of a soulful-looking girl with dark hair cut in straggly layers. 'Maybe not quite so wispy,' he says, gazing critically at my head in the mirror. 'Your face is too strong.'

My face is a liar.

'You've got beautiful hair,' he adds, disappointed that I don't care more. 'You could probably sell it to a wig-maker if you wanted.'

'No!' No more bits of me are for sale!

He gathers up a huge swathe of it in one hand, brandishing an old-fashioned cut-throat razor in the other. One slip and I won't have to worry about my promise. 'Ready?' and he slashes—three strokes and a lifetime of hair is gone.

Trimming and shaping takes longer, freeing my ears, shaving up the back of my neck. The hair that's left is a sleeker, darker blonde; the girl that looks back from the mirror looks older—more mature. I like it. In spite of the scars under her eye and mouth, I almost like her. I almost feel good as I pay at reception and start out to meet Mum.

And freeze, face to face with a slight, pale, nervous-looking guy in his early twenties. My stomach cramps as if I've been kicked, sweat suddenly pours down my face and every bit of my body is screaming at me to get away.

'Come on through, Trevor,' Laura calls from down the hall—and as the blind panic pushes me out into the fresh air, I understand.

Mum, reading in the car, leans to push the door open for me, her comment on my hair broken off mid-word as she sees my face. 'You look like you've seen a ghost!'

'Trevor Jones.'

'Oh, Anna.' Her voice breaks as she drops her book to hug me. 'My poor baby. Let's get you home.'

I'm shaking; I think I might be sick. I don't just want to go home, I want to go to bed with a hot water bottle and a cuddle.

'How did you recognise him?' she asks suddenly. 'You didn't regain consciousness till you were in the ambulance.'

Maybe fear has its own memory, stronger than thought. Maybe his face is carved into some hidden pain part of my mind.

'You must have seen him in the car, before it hit,' she suggests, 'and so you remember that even though you've lost the actual impact.'

It's the best explanation either of us can think of.

But I still need to go to bed. Thank God the kids are at school and that it was Mum who took me for my haircut after English; I don't want to be alone and I don't want to be brave.

She sits down on the bed beside me, holding my hand. 'It's a small town—it was bound to happen sooner or later.'

'I know, I've been dreading it—and I know it's best to get it over with,' but I'm crying, crying like a baby, and as I roll onto my front to muffle the tears in my pillow, Mum rubs my back in the same way.

'Come on,' she croons, stroking gently, soothingly; 'come on, you'll be all right.'

And I know I'm here on my bed with my mother comforting me, but now I'm somewhere else as well... 'I'm choking!'

'How do you mean?' Mum asks, gently massaging my left shoulder.

'I'm choking! Like I can't swallow.'

She goes on rubbing quietly. 'Just feel it,' she says. 'It might help.'

'It's the seat belt,' I say, and now I can see the me that isn't in my bedroom, the me that's strapped into the seat and the people running around outside the car, panicky. Hayden is there, and another man, white-faced, the man I've just seen. They're rocking the car, 'with a jemmy,' I tell her, 'trying to get the door off,' and as the pitching gets more violent I grab the side of the bed so I don't roll off it and Mum tells me to stay with it, it'll be okay.

Then the rocking stops, changes to a spiralling inside my head, as if my brain is a two-dimensional disc, a frisbee spinning inside my body. And the body in the car is floppy—

'Floppy?' Mum asks.

'The stuffing's come out.' Now I see the black tube leading from the floppy body up out through the car roof and I'm slipping into it.

'Mum, I don't want to die!' But I go on up the black tube; it's tight, squeezy and I don't belong in it. 'I don't want to be here!' Now the body is gone; dissolved into a formless black mass, and all of me is in the tunnel.

'I'm not supposed to be here,' I repeat.

'Where do you want to be?'

'With the people. Outside the car. With Hayden.' Another fear. My body's losing control; I'm going to wet my pants, oh God, worse, please no. Please not that.

Mum's voice is an anchor, a reminder that the story's already happened and that it had a happy ending. 'What's happening now?'

I can't answer. I'm still in the tube. I'm nearly at the end, I can see the light ahead—brilliant, brighter than sunshine, clear and golden—and my head is ready to pop out of the tunnel and into its glow . . . Suddenly I'm slipping down, like a rush of water released from a dam, a relief that's so sweet it tears at my insides. 'I'm going back into the body . . . I'm there.'

And I know that this is the point where the nightmares begin, the clawing through unconsciousness, fighting the blackness that threatens to swallow me—the blackness that's death. But I don't have to go through that again—I'm back on my own bed with Mum beside me and her arms around me.

I'm shaking, shaking all over, so hard the bed is trembling too, my heels drumming a tune of fear on the bedspread. 'Oh my baby,' Mum says, 'it's okay, you're okay.' She covers me with a blanket, rubs my hands and feet, and cuddles me. She's crying and shaking a little too.