‘I’m sorry, Jenny, but I can’t increase your prescription. You’ve already taken all the tablets meant to last you till the end of the month. That tells me the Tramadol has become the problem, and that can become more serious than even the neck pain.’
Small and neat like a sparrow, Dr Chakrabarti was looking at her with that compassionate expression that meant sweet FA in the face of the agony that gripped Jenny. How would the doctor like to live with the sensation of an iron spike being driven into the base of her skull?
She tapped out her pleas. I can’t live like this. I’m in constant pain. I can barely write. I can’t hold my violin.
‘You’re a professional musician, aren’t you? Yes, I can see that that must be a problem. I can sign you off sick while we try to manage your pain issues. And we might need to think about other delivery mechanisms.’
Jenny wanted to lunge across the corner of consulting desk and scratch Dr Chakrabarti’s soft brown eyes right out. Christ, I didn’t know I was like this, she thought in despair.
Please. I’m at my wits end. I just need the pills.
‘I can’t in good conscience deal them out like sweeties. These are powerful medications.’
Exactly: that was why she wanted them. PLEASE!
The doctor resettled the stethoscope around her neck, untangling it from her reading glasses that hung by a beaded chain. ‘Jenny, I’m not cutting you off as I might in other circumstances.’
Jenny breathed through her nose. Keep calm. Other circumstances?
Dr Chakrabarti looked uncomfortable. ‘Where a patient appears to have become addicted to their opioid tablets. I’m just saying that you need to adopt other strategies to manage your pain so that the drugs can do their job. If you misuse them, there is a danger your addiction will spiral out of control.’
Inside Jenny was screaming. For the doctor she acted rational.
What strategies?
The doctor gave a relieved smile, like a sheepdog herding a recalcitrant ewe into the right pen after a long struggle up and down dale. ‘Ideally, we get you on a lower dose – or wean you off entirely. There’s a pain management clinic at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. I’ll see if I can get you an urgent appointment.’
How urgent is urgent?
‘Hopefully in a couple of months or less.’
I have to carry on working. She wanted to add angry emojis to the message, expletives and exclamation marks. Her fingers were clenched, struggling with the impulse.
‘You have to manage your dosage more carefully. Rest. Reduce the amount of time you spend doing activities that hurt your neck.’
Which part of ‘professional musician’ had the doctor not understood? This was useless. Jenny got up to go.
Dr Chakrabarti turned back to her screen and tapped a couple more keys. The printer began to whirr, giving Jenny hope. ‘Look, Jenny, here’s a repeat prescription. I’ve given you just enough for seven days. You’ll have to come by once a week to pick up a new one so I can see how you are handling the tablets. Opioid addiction is not to be waved off as a minor problem. Research it if you don’t believe me. The statistics in America are terrifying. More people die from it than gun violence. It’s getting a grip here too. Believe me, you won’t want to go down that slippery slope.’
Jenny took the printout and left. All she could think as she went to the pharmacy in the surgery was about taking those pills immediately.
Floating home on a Tramadol, life didn’t seem so grim. She’d obeyed Dr Chakrabarti and resisted downing two or three just to kill the pain that she’d suffered from for the past three weeks. She worried that her body was growing resistant to the drug but this tablet was working just fine, reassuring her.
I can do this. I can handle this. The pill gave her a little pulse of pleasure. She plucked a rose from an overhanging bush. As it sprang back, it showered her with petals from blooms that were going over. The scent took her back to childhood, to making rose perfume outside her family’s apartment block with Angela, the girl from the flat upstairs, which meant sitting on the little communal lawn cross-legged and bruising rose petals into a tub of water.
Her mind drifted, not so much like a petal but more like a dandelion seed. It bumped over the roofs, the tree tops and up into the cloudy blue sky. A Bulgarian harpist had told her the night before that there was a whole valley in her country devoted to growing a particular rose that produced the world’s best essential oil. Japanese tourists came thousands of miles to see the fields when they were at their height – an inland sweet-smelling scarlet sea. She would sit and play to them surrounded by blooms. That sounded almost like a Haiku. You couldn’t pick them by machine as that spoiled the petals. You had still to do it by hand.
Jenny imagined herself there, going down the rows, plucking red, pink, and white petals, surrounded by the perfume of roses.
Inland scarlet sea
Sweet-smelling and hidden thorns
I pick them by hand.
She counted the syllables against her thigh. Now she was brushing her fingers over the velvety flowers, like Maximus in Gladiator, touching the corn that represented home. Strains of Hans Zimmer’s Rhapsody wound through her mind. She imagined who might be standing in the lit doorway as she walked through the field to her house.
She loved Tramadol.
What nonsense was she spouting? This was the drug speaking. Her thoughts dropped back to Earth. Was she addicted? What could she do if she was? The pills were her lifeline.
Unexpectedly, homesickness and hopelessness overwhelmed her. She sent a text to her mother, interrupting Nikki’s stream of consciousness on the WhatsApp chat. Mum was wittering on today about politics, not an arena Jenny wanted to enter into. Too depressing. The lunatics had taken over the asylum on the world stage.
Her mum’s response was instantaneous. How are you darling?
Should she tell the truth? They’d last got together in August for a holiday in Portugal during the orchestra’s annual break. It was now late September. Her summer had been a slow torture. She’d survived her concert programme on pure grit. Everyone remarked on the strain that showed on her face and how much weight she had lost. Maybe it was due to her silence, but people felt they could state the bleeding obvious to her. In Portugal, Mum had fed her little custard tarts – a local delicacy – with the devotion of a penguin who walked a hundred miles to the edge of the ice sheet to come back with a fish supper. At work, new friend Matt, the guy she’d sat with at Harry’s party, had tried to get her to eat, badgering her after every rehearsal to go with him to the nearest café. These hadn’t felt like invitations to a date but genuine concern. Harry had shot her worried looks from the brass section but, as they weren’t talking (hah!) after his birthday party, he hadn’t said anything directly to her. She wondered if he was the one behind Matt’s Mother Hen act. The two, friends old and new, seemed bent on conspiring to interfere in her life. She didn’t want either of them to see what was really going on inside.
You need looking after, said her subconscious Harry. You’re a mess, Jen. You need to hook up with a nice caring guy like Matt and stop spending time with the ex-con.
Shut up, Harry. You always were a snob.
Perhaps she should be grateful rather than resent the fact that people cared? Look at Bridget. She cooked extra at most meals and put it in the fridge with a label suggesting Jenny do her a favour and finish it for her. Not wanting to upset her, Jenny gave most of these dishes to Jonah who had a robust appetite. He always said he was missing out on a few meals from when he was little so was making up for it now. He never put on weight.
Jonah was a godsend, Jenny admitted to herself. He was the only one who didn’t nag at her or tell her to take better care of herself. His help was more practical: gentle back rubs and cuddles when she got overwhelmed. They’d fallen into a comfortable ‘friends with benefits’ pattern over the summer that had become her one haven. He was the only one with whom she could relax.
Mum was waiting for a response. At least, with messaging, pauses to think up plausible lies were less apparent than in direct speech.
Fine. Looking forward to the autumn programme. Couple of short tours next season – Germany, Russia.
Exciting. How’s your neck?
Still there. Nothing to report. Certainly not that the doctor feared she was becoming addicted to her medication.
Good. You’d let me know, wouldn’t you?
No. Of course.
Any concerts you think I’d like to attend?
Great: her mother had moved off the subject of her health. They could message about music until the cows came home without Jenny feeling suffocated. A little image of dusky nights and cows plodding up a country lane, bells rolling, rambled through her brain. How do you feel about Berlioz?
The house was chilly when Jenny came in. She’d noticed that it seemed to have its own internal weather, not respecting what was going on outside; was it the ghost from the well keeping it at his own temperature maybe? In the world of Blackheath, it was a muggy day, hot when the sun escaped from brief cloud veilings. It sprawled in the sky and panted down at the dry common like a Golden Retriever overcome by heat. A young family played rounders in the distance, cries of children sounding like starlings. In Gallant House, however, autumn had already set in. No Indian summer allowed beyond the doorstep. An arrangement of chrysanthemums occupied the telephone table, outrageous gold and red globe heads shouting into the gloom. Nature saved up its most flamboyant flower for the last months of the year.
She let the door bang – a habit acquired from Jonah.
‘Is that you, Jenny?’ called Jonah from the snug.
Who else would it be? He got his answer when she didn’t reply. Dumping her bag in the hall, she went into see him. He was standing by the doorway that led to the balcony. Pendulous grapes hung around him, turning him into some latter-day Bacchus. He even had the joli laid grin of the statues.
‘How did it go with the doctor?’
She gave him a thumbs up. It wasn’t accurate but she didn’t want to talk about it.
He grinned. ‘Watch this.’
He turned and did a kind of limbo dance under the nearest bunch of grapes. His tongue whipped out and he snagged a fruit, clamping on it with his teeth. He chewed and swallowed before springing up. ‘And they even taste good. Try one.’ He picked one of her and beckoned her over. As she approached his smile broadened and he put it between his teeth with his usual ‘I dare you’ twinkle in his grey-blue eyes. Sometimes she didn’t feel like playing along but today, with the buzz of her pill still working, she was feeling mellow enough. She leant forward and took it from his lips. The taste of sun-ripened grape burst on her tongue.
‘Good?’
She nodded.
‘But they don’t taste half as good as you do.’ He pressed himself against her and whisked his hands over his favourite spots for his mouth to cruise. Jenny could feel herself softening and warming, natural pain-relief flooding her. She leant forward, again this time for a kiss.
There was a cough behind them. ‘Oh, excuse me, I see I’m interrupting.’ Bridget made to scuttle away.
Jenny would have leapt apart from Jonah but he held her firmly to his side. They’d kept their relationship away from Bridget but she had to suspect something was going on.
‘It’s OK, Mrs W, we were just playing a team game they taught me at RADA.’ So smooth, Jonah, so smooth. ‘You must’ve played it – the one where you pass something between people, an orange or a balloon. We were trying that with grapes.’
If she bought that as an excuse, then she was an idiot. ‘No, I don’t think I have played that, Jonah. Does that mean the grapes are ripe?’
‘Yes. Want one?’ He reached up and plucked another grape and held it out.
‘Only if I don’t have to join in your game,’ said Bridget, showing she was on to him.
‘No, that’s between consenting adults only.’
She took the grape and tasted it with a serious expression. ‘You’re right: they’re perfect. Rather too many pips though. I wonder if they’ll make decent wine?’
‘You’re asking the wrong person, Mrs W.’ He stepped aside so she could inspect the vine from the doorway. Jenny noticed Bridget didn’t venture outside, not like she and Jonah did on a regular basis.
‘Norman will know.’
‘I haven’t seen so much of our trusty neighbour, Mrs Whittingham. Is he ill?’
‘Norman?’ She picked another grape and rotated it in her fingers, not eating. ‘Oh no. He’s fine. Fully retired now. He’s spending more time with his guest than we expected. They’re getting on like a house on fire.’
Jenny thought that a peculiar expression. The last thing you’d want is a relationship that burned down the building you lived in.
‘Have you met his new friend yet?’ asked Bridget. ‘Lovely young man. Single.’ She gave Jenny a significant look.
Jenny shook her head. Was Bridget trying to set up a date?
‘Me neither. I think Norman’s abandoned us.’ Jonah’s tone was abrasive, rubbing up on Bridget’s loneliness. The Tuesday gatherings had lapsed over the summer without their core members: Jonah too busy filming and Norman too … well no one was sure what he did now with his days. ‘They’ve not come to a Tuesday, have they?’
‘His friend works and doesn’t get back in time, Norman explained. I’ll invite him to supper one evening, revive my Tuesdays, so you can both meet him. It looks like he’s lodging there long-term. I’m so pleased Norman has company.’
‘What’s he like, the friend?’ Jonah squeezed Jenny’s backside out of Bridget’s sight. He’d intimated already that he thought Norman was possibly homosexual. Jenny could tell he was wondering if this was the truth about next door.
‘Very nice. Polite. He’s a medical student, which is why he’s so busy. Norman will be such a help to someone starting out.’ She put her hand to her forehead. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not so good with names these days. I make up mnemonics then forget what I was thinking. Norman tends to just call him “his boy”.’
Jonah squeezed again. Jenny knew without him saying anything that he was thinking ‘toy boy’. ‘Good for Norman.’
Bridget ignored his suggestive tone, her tactic for anything that ruffled her refined world. ‘I’d better get on. I was going to pick some apples. Jenny, I just called in here to say I almost tripped over your bag in the hallway. Please don’t clutter the entrance.’
Jenny nodded and signed ‘sorry’.
Bridget left them.
‘Well,’ said Jonah.
‘She knows?’ signed Jenny.
‘Must do. I don’t suppose she cares – unless she’s jealous.’ He grinned wickedly. ‘She doesn’t know that we’ve done it in almost every room in the house, except hers. We’ll have to find a time when she’s in the garden.’
Jenny could feel herself blushing. It had been Jonah’s idea to shock the living daylights out of the waltzing ghosts by a sexual marathon around the house and grounds that summer.
Not living daylights, she corrected, deathly daylights.
Her own favourite was their encounter in the drawing room at midnight under the disapproving gaze of Admiral Jack’s wife. The secrecy and fear of being discovered just made it more fun. Jonah was a risk-taker and she found she was too.
She looked up at him hopefully.
He laughed. ‘Sorry, babe, no time now. I’m expected at the studios at four. And aren’t you going to Kris and Louis’ wedding planning meeting?’
She nodded. She had a day off and was catching up on her chores.
‘Say I said “hi” and if either of them needs a best man: I’ll be there.’
‘Louis chose me as his,’ she signed.
‘Really?’
Jenny grinned and decided to write the rest down. Because I can’t make a rude speech about him.
‘Clever! So Kris will have to dig up a Trappist monk to get even?’
What Louis doesn’t know is that I’ve arranged for a slideshow that speaks for itself. His sisters were very helpful.
‘I bet they were.’ He checked his phone. ‘Gotta go.’
When Jonah left, his energy drained from the room and the cold seeped back. Better move that bag, thought Jenny. She picked it up from below the coat pegs, feeling the familiar twinge in her neck. No more pills allowed today. Irritation scratched inside her. You’d have to be crawling along the edge of the corridor to trip over it. Bridget probably just didn’t like the clutter. She should’ve said that rather than make Jenny sound like she was creating hazards on purpose.
Going up to her bedroom, Jenny dumped the bag on the bed. An overblown chrysanthemum lay on the pillow, many of the petals already turning brown. Not again. She’d asked both Bridget and Jonah months ago if they were leaving these little tokens for her and both vehemently denied it, though Jonah said he’d wished he’d thought of it to freak her out. He’d suggested the next stage should be a dead bird or frog as if the house had a ghost cat leaving offerings for her owners. He referred to the mysterious flower-giver from then on as Spooky Moggy. That helped exorcise her fear.
Jenny picked up the chrysanthemum and threw it in the bin. That would annoy Bridget but right now she couldn’t be bothered to take it down to the compost heap. Petals remained on the pillow so she brushed those into her hand and dumped those too.
It had to be one of them, didn’t it? Flirt with the idea of a ghost though she did, she couldn’t quite see it carrying whole flowers to her pillow. It could still be Jonah in a clever double-bluff. He might be waiting for the moment for her to run to him one night again and then laugh himself silly at her expense for being so gullible in believing the house was haunted. That would turn the sequence of flower gifts into a joke. She hoped it was that.
If it were Bridget, though, then Jenny had to attribute that to senile moments or, more worryingly, malice. There were a few sharp edges still in her relationship with her landlady. Bridget wanted to mother her and Jenny had told her that she had a perfectly good one of her own. That hadn’t gone down well. Finding Bridget in her room one day, standing at the window with her bucket of cleaning materials, had been a shock. She’d asked to do her own tidying but Bridget had insisted that, as Jenny had the en suite, she let Bridget continue to keep an eye on things. Jenny wasn’t sure what Bridget thought she’d do in there – guesses ranged from leaving the bath running till it overflowed, to snorting cocaine off the vanity unit? – but there were some things on which the landlady would not give way. This was one. They did agree that Bridget would not come in without invitation while Jenny was in the house and she had also agreed to have a lock fitted, a little bolt on the inside so Jenny could feel safe at night from intrusion.
There was a snake even in Eden, Jenny reminded herself. Everything had a price.
She propped herself up against the bedhead and pulled her laptop out of her bag. Dr Chakrabarti had suggested she do some research so she would. Typing in Opioid crisis she was rewarded with a blizzard of hits.
I’m not like these people, she thought, after having read a few case studies. I’m taking the pills for my pain, not for the buzz. I’m not a drug addict any more than a person taking heart medicine or Lithium tablets.
I’m not.