‘Polly, can you tell me when you’ve felt most happy?’ my counsellor, Stephanie, asks towards the end of our session. I’ve been seeing her for over six months now. She’s sitting opposite me, dead straight hair framing her pale freckled face, pen poised in her slender hand.
‘Happy?’ I say, as if it’s an alien emotion.
‘It could be anything. Being happy doesn’t have to be the result of a momentous occasion.’
I take a sip of water. ‘I loved Dad taking Hugo and me out on the lake when we were little.’ Hugo is my younger brother. ‘We’d go out every Sunday. I liked the routine,’ I reflect. ‘School was OK too, when I wasn’t getting into trouble.’
Stephanie waits for more, her neutral expression giving nothing away. She’s always digging around in the vain hope that something will emerge from somewhere deep inside me.
‘That’s a hard question,’ I mutter. Happiness, a sense of calm, it’s always been over there, never with me. In the past I’ve always searched for excitement; thrived on thrill-seeking.
‘Take your time,’ Stephanie says, the clock behind her desk ticking.
Many people might say that their happiest moment was when they gave birth to a healthy son or daughter, or when they fell in love. I have a one-year-old son, Louis, but I’m not with Louis’s father, Matthew, anymore. I think about the first time I met Matt. Did he make me happy? Looking back, no. But he made my pulse race, especially in the early months of our relationship. I can still feel his penetrating gaze from the other side of the bar that very first night we laid eyes on one another. He had the gift of making me feel like I was the only person in the room. I see us dancing, our hot bodies pressed against one another. Then I picture us sitting side by side in the taxi later on that evening, heading back to my flat, Matt’s hand creeping up my skirt, that flirtatious look in his eye. I shiver when I see that smile, that smile that wanted to own me. I was flattered at first, intoxicated by his attention: how could any woman not be? I shift in my seat, wanting to blot him out of my mind. I wish I could stop looking over my shoulder; that his face would stop haunting me.
Go back to the question, Polly. When have I felt most happy? ‘Having Louis,’ I pretend, when I can’t think of anything else. Truthfully the birth of my son and the first year were far from how I’d imagined. I wonder if that’s the same for other mothers. I don’t regret him for a single second, but what would Stephanie think of me if I told her I’d almost walked away from him? Left him defenceless in the park? I close my eyes, not wanting to cry.
‘Polly?’ Stephanie says, ‘Don’t worry, we …’
I raise a hand to stop her, seeing myself as an eight-year-old back at my childhood home in Norfolk, in the kitchen, wearing a rosebud apron and matching chef’s hat. I see myself mixing sultanas into a creamy cookie dough with a wooden spoon. When Mum’s not looking I dip my finger into the bowl. It tastes of sweet buttery heaven. I can’t resist plunging my finger in again. ‘Polly, there won’t be any left,’ Mum ticks me off, before creeping up behind me and dipping her finger into the mixture too, laughing with me. Mum rarely laughed so when she did it felt like a prize. I loved cooking with her because it was just the two of us, no Hugo stealing the limelight, no Dad, only Mum and me. Next I see us dropping small spoonfuls of batter onto baking sheets. Mum sets the oven timer, but I can’t stop peeping through the glass door to see the biscuits rising, the edges turning a delicious golden brown.
‘Cooking,’ I mutter, still dressed in my rosebud apron, my mother by my side.
‘Cooking? You mean your job?’
Since breaking up with Matt, I now work in a café baking cakes and serving soup to the locals in Belsize Park.
I shake my head. ‘With my mother, when I was little.’ I particularly remember the weeks leading up to Christmas, making mince pies while listening to carols on the radio. I hear Mum singing along to ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ as she greased the baking tray. I inhale the comforting smell of cloves, grated nutmeg and cinnamon. I see myself carefully cutting the pastry with my silver star-shaped cutter to give the mince pies little hats. Little hats. That’s what Mum and I called them.
‘I wish my entire childhood had been spent in the kitchen cooking,’ I say to Stephanie. ‘Mum didn’t worry or frown; I stopped being naughty for a while. I think it’s why I enjoy my job so much now, it reminds me of those times.’ I take another sip of water. ‘I loved the build-up to Christmas, wrapping presents and decorating the tree with Hugo. It was all so perfect until the family actually arrived.’
Stephanie looks at me as if she can almost relate to that: the build-up to the party is often better than the party itself.
‘I remember one year … it was the year when I began to realise things at home weren’t quite as they seemed. In fact, things were a mess, our family was one big lie.’ I stop, glance at the time. My hour is up.
‘Tell me more, Polly. We’ve still got a little time left,’ she says, ignoring the sound of the ticking clock.