As the man in the blue mackintosh comes up the stairs I find myself desperately wishing that Simone were here. She gave me a gift for Elvira when I was feeling downcast – a beautiful silver rattle – and it was so pretty I believed her when she told me the dark times would pass. She’d been a nurse and was always seeking ways to look on the bright side. She’d know what to say to this mackintosh man – all I can think is to run and conceal myself in my bathroom. Even I know that wouldn’t be the right thing to do, although I can’t help feeling the madder I prove myself the better it will be for everyone else.
The man reaches the top of the stairs and holds out his hand. ‘Mrs Hatton, I’m Doctor Williams.’
‘I know who you are,’ I say, recognizing the weaselly, grey-haired man with the watery pale-blue eyes. ‘We’ve met. You’re the madness man.’
‘I am indeed, although we do tend to prefer the term psychiatrist. Shall we?’ And he points at my door, then smiles, arms folded, studying me.
We go in and he settles himself on one of the two chairs beside my coffee table.
The room feels suddenly stuffy and I want to look out of the window, so I walk over there and face away from him, my back stiff.
‘I’m wondering how you are coping with the new medication. Although a little bitter, the Veronal is usually tolerated better than the bromides, and has less of that strong unpleasant taste. You are taking it daily?’
I twist round and nod. Well, everybody lies, don’t they?
‘It makes me feel drowsy,’ I then say, remembering the effect the few times I really had taken it.
‘Anything else?’
I shake my head. He looks at me and I think, I don’t trust you.
‘You have been unlucky,’ he says.
I take an angry step towards him. ‘Unlucky!? Is that what we are calling losing a child, now? “Oh, how unlucky, well never mind, you can always have another, can’t you?”’
‘You did have another.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘Won’t you come and sit down with me? Tell me what the point is?’
I think about it. Strange, isn’t it, how you can usually tell who to trust? This conversation does nothing to make me change my mind.
‘Mrs Hatton?’ He smiles a difficult, uneasy smile as if smiling is a little alien to him.
‘Very well.’ And I come to sit opposite him with my back to the window, all the while scrutinizing his face. Pleasant enough, I suppose, but drearily ordinary. In a studied, delicate manner, he lifts and then settles his spectacles on his nose again. How I long for beauty, I think, but still manage to smile at him.
‘Your husband tells me you haven’t been out.’
I try to contain my response but, in the end, lose the battle and stand up, bristling with irritation. ‘Telling tales again? Well, he’s wrong. I’ve been out to the park. Often, as it happens. I like to watch the nannies pushing their perambulators.’
‘Really?’
I feel his irritation although he doesn’t show it visibly.
‘You think I’m lying?’ I snap, for how can I possibly tell him the truth? How can I say I dare not go out, that even the thought of it makes me shake so much I must sit on the floor and cling to the legs of my chair to make me feel I am still attached to the earth?
He shakes his head. ‘Of course not. Won’t you sit down again?’
He is too careful with me, wary even, and I don’t like the feeling of … of his condescension, that’s it.
‘I’m fine,’ I say and move towards the door, but with my head half turned, watching for his reaction.
He clears his throat and does that ghastly smile of his again.
‘Would you answer my question, please? When have you been out?’
I gawp at my feet and mutter. ‘I’ve been to the park. Nobody saw me go, that’s why they don’t know.’ I realize I sound like a petulant child and try to moderate my tone. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be cross.’
He stares at the floor before glancing up at me again. ‘These voices, what do they say?’
I hesitate in surprise. No one has pressed me on this before, so I sit. Usually they want me to pretend they aren’t real. ‘Oh, you know …’
‘But I don’t, that’s why I asked.’
‘They say different things.’
I don’t want to tell him sometimes they frighten me, or laugh at me, or accuse me of dreadful things. Sometimes they whisper, and I must stand perfectly still because I have to hear them. I absolutely have to. There’s nothing worse than knowing they’re there but being unable to properly hear the venom they spout.
He twists his mouth, and there is a longish silence until he speaks again.
‘I wanted to have a word with you about the Grange. As you may already know, it’s a private institution at Dowdeswell. I –’
So, there it is. What he has really come for. How I need Simone now. When, oh when is she coming?
‘No,’ I burst in. ‘I won’t go.’
‘Nobody is forcing you to go. It’s simply that your husband and I feel you are too much alone up here.’
‘And if I refuse?’