Time really goes slowly when you’re doing nothing. After all of the chores for the day have been done, and as per the rules, I’m bathed and in bed by 10 p.m. At least now I’m sleeping again, which is helpful as I’m still expected to be up at seven every morning. Today was Monday, counseling day, and my fifth session with Janet.
My recovery wasn’t going as miraculously as I thought it would. Thank God for the National Health Service, because if I had to pay for these sessions myself I wouldn’t get close to halfway to recovery before bankrupting myself. In our sessions in Janet’s tiny flat in Golders Green, once I’ve endured the journey there, we’ve battled over antidepressants (I am against because I think I’ll turn into a zombie, Janet is for because apparently they’ll calm me down enough for the therapy to take); we’ve touched on my relationships with friends (I am dependent on them to validate my thoughts and actions), the casual sex (I am dependent on it to validate my body and my control), Tom (how dependent I was on him and how much that frightened me, leading to self-sabotage), my dad (I was absolutely not dependent on him, which is why I treat men as throwaway—not sure how keen I am on this Freud-type linking of the father to the sex). We’ve worked out that the reason I don’t like holding hands and hugging is that I’m not comfortable with loving and tender physicality; I’m scared it’ll be taken away from me and leave me feeling abandoned. I did not realize just how much I had going on in this little head of mine. This week, though I thought I had successfully avoided it, we had to talk about my mum.
“So. You grew up with your mother?” Janet asked, putting her notepad and pen down.
“Yes.” I nodded. “We lived with my grandparents until I was six. Then we moved to a little house of our own. Then she met someone, and we moved again.”
“And by someone, you mean a partner?”
“Roy. Yeah, Roy,” I said, and took a sip of water to coat my sandpaper throat.
“And this Roy. Did you get on, you and him?” Janet shifted in her chair.
“No,” I said swiftly.
“Go on?” Janet asked me, her brow dipping slightly.
“When he wasn’t screaming at me, he ignored me,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t know, maybe this isn’t important. His house, it was clean, there was a garden, he was a good cook—”
“Well, you being either screamed at or ignored when you were growing up is hugely important to your development, so try not to minimize that,” Janet said. “Can I ask, Queenie, what was his relationship with your mother like?”
“Why?” I asked. I could feel panic rising as always.
“Well, any trauma in childhood will present itself in adulthood,” she told me, shifting herself in the chair again.
“But I’m not my mum,” I replied.
“If you had to witness your mother’s pain, that will of course have an effect on you,” Janet explained. “And I’ve allowed you to skirt the issue up until now, but we need to get into it.”
“Is it going to make me feel better, to talk about this?” I asked.
“Not immediately,” Janet replied. “But it needs to come out.”
My head was swimming. I waited for it to be still before I started to speak. “My mum, she’s always been nice,” I began. “. . . she’s mild-mannered, she’s very kind. She’s na?ve. She’s not very sharp, and she’s too trusting.” I listed all of the positive characteristics that I could mine from memories of early childhood. “And when she met Roy, she’d been single since my dad. Not that you could call that a relationship.” I paused and took another sip of water. “We lived together, me and my mum, in a tiny little house in Mitcham. We were obsessed with each other, I remember. I couldn’t go anywhere without her, and she couldn’t go anywhere without me. We had our own world, me and my mum.” I felt my skin prickle. These were memories I hadn’t unearthed for a long time. “Then Roy moved in. He was mean. Really mean.” I dug my nails into my palm involuntarily. “He had this thick Jamaican accent. It was so strong that I couldn’t always understand it, and he used to laugh at me. Call me a bounty—”
“A bounty?” Janet interrupted.
“Like the chocolate bar. White on the inside,” I told her. “Brown on the outside.”
Janet shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry to hear it. Go on.”
“I stopped talking to him, hoping that if I didn’t say anything he’d stop picking on my voice, but he just did other things to upset me. He’d break my things, tell my mum I’d said rude things about him, or stolen from her, he’d make me sleep in the car.” I reeled off some of the things I never thought I’d tell anyone. “Eventually she stopped speaking to me about anything but getting up for school and going to bed. They only spoke to each other,” I croaked. I took another sip of water and carried on. “After a few years, I can’t remember how old I was, he made her sell our little house. He took the money and bought somewhere new. We all moved there—that’s the house with the garden, the one that had to be kept spotless—anyway, we moved there. Sorry—” I paused. “Am I talking too much?” Janet shook her head.
“Okay. Well, he started to cheat on her. She knew it, even I picked up on it. He’d disappear for weekends, and when he came back my mum would never say anything because she didn’t want to rock the boat, and I guess it was more important for her to be in a relationship. One day she did say something, though, and when she came to the flat she had a black eye and a split lip.” I looked down at my palm. My nails had pierced the skin.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Queenie. But what do you mean, she came back to the flat?” Janet frowned, confused.
“For a bit, I was living in a flat,” I told her. No turning back now. “By myself, mainly. She popped back, from time to time. I wasn’t there for long, just a few months. I could take care of myself. It was fine,” I tried to convince her, and myself.
“How old were you?” Janet asked quietly.
“Eleven, I think? I started my period while I was there, so I must have been eleven.”
“They rented a flat for you to live in when you were eleven?”
“No, it was for me and my mum, initially, he wanted us out. But after not very long, it just ended up being for me. She stayed with him.”
“That’s illegal, you do know that? You were a very vulnerable young person, and put it a very dangerous situation.” Janet’s voice hardened.
“I was fine. And it was better than the alternative. I couldn’t live with him anymore. I didn’t fit in with his warped idea of the home he wanted. He hated me. He made her hate me. It was destroying me.”
* * *
I sat on the Tube home picking dried blood from my palms. When I got back to South London and out of the station, my phone pinged with a text from Darcy. We hadn’t spoken for weeks.
Darcy
Hello, just checking in! How’s it all going? How’s the therapy going? xxxxxx
Queenie
Hi, Darcy, nice to hear from you! Yeah, it’s a lot, but think I’m getting some pretty horrific stuff out. I’ve been told to go swimming as a “form of physical release.” I pointed at my hair and my therapist told me to get a cap, if you can believe it. X
I went back to my grandparents’ and was so exhausted that I crawled up the stairs and into bed. I barely slept, Janet’s voice in my head asking if I spoke out when Roy had hurt my mum. “I did,” I replied. “Every time, I said something! When he pulled chunks out of her hair, when he pushed her down the stairs, when he broke her jaw, I said something!”
I woke up and saw my grandmother at the end of the bed. “Me never know you suffer so bad,” she croaked, patting my foot. “Try an’ go sleep.” I slept again eventually, for hours. I would have slept longer if I were allowed to miss meals.
* * *
Darcy
Morning! Sorry I didn’t reply last night. Simon hid my phone because I was being “uncommunicative.” Swimming is a great idea! Maybe Brockwell Lido? It’s a scorcher today.