I look at the clock; it’s eight-thirty. My breakfast tray is on the table, which means he’s already left for work.
I sit up, hoping to see a note propped against my glass of juice but there’s only a bowl of cereal, a small jug of milk and my two little pills. I feel sick with apprehension. No matter how much he tells me that he’ll never leave me, that he’ll stay with me, this new harder edge to his character has thrown me. I understand that it must be frightening for him to have a wife who keeps banging on about being stalked by a murderer but shouldn’t he try to get to the bottom of my fears before dismissing them so abruptly? When I think about it, he’s never Title: The Breakdown ARC, Format: 126x198, v1, Output date:08/11/16
278
b a paris
once sat me down and asked why I think the murderer is after me. If he had, I might have admitted to seeing Jane’s car that night.
Tears of loneliness spill from my eyes and I reach
for the pills and the juice to wash them down with, desperate to numb the pain. But I can’t stop crying, even when sleep begins to take me, because all I feel is terrible despair, and fear at what the future might hold for me. If I have dementia and Matthew leaves me, all I’ll have to look forward to are years in a care home where a few of my friends will visit out of obligation, an obligation that will end the minute I can’t remember who they are. My tears increase and become huge sobs of wretchedness, so that when I’m woken some time later by a terrible groaning noise, with my head feeling as if it’s about to explode, it’s as if my emotional pain has manifested itself in physical pain. I try to open my eyes but find that I can’t. My body feels as if it’s on fire and, when I lift my hand to my head, I find it wet with sweat.
Aware that there’s something terribly wrong, I try to get out of bed but my legs won’t hold me up and I fall to the floor. I can feel sleep pulling me back but some sixth sense tells me that I mustn’t give in to it and I focus instead on trying to move. But it seems impossible and all I can think of, through the fog in my brain, is that I’ve had a stroke of some kind. My survival instinct kicks in and I know my only chance is to get help as quickly as possible, so heaving myself onto all fours, I make it to the top of the stairs and half fall down them to the hall The Breakdown
279
below. The pain makes me almost lose consciousness
but with superhuman effort I use my arms to pull my body along the floor towards the table where the phone sits. I want to call Matthew but I know I have to call the emergency services first so I dial 999 and, when a woman answers, I tell her that I need help. I’m slurring so much I’m terrified she won’t be able to understand what I’m saying. She asks for my name and I tell her it’s Cass, then where I’m calling from. I just about manage to tell her our address when the phone slips from my grasp and clatters to the floor.
*
‘Cass, Cass, can you hear me?’ The voice is so faint that it’s easy to ignore. But it comes back so insistently that I end up opening my eyes.
‘She’s here,’ I hear someone say. ‘She’s waking up.’
‘Cass, my name’s Pat, I want you to stay with me, all right?’ A face comes into focus somewhere above me.
‘We’re going to take you to hospital in a minute but can you just tell me, is this what you took?’ She holds the box of tablets that Dr Deakin prescribed for me and, recognising them, I give a little nod.
I feel hands on me, lifting me, and then cool air on my face for a few brief seconds as I’m carried out to an ambulance.
‘Matthew?’ I ask weakly.
280
b a paris
‘You’ll see him at the hospital,’ a voice tells me. ‘Can you tell me how many you’ve taken, Cass?’
I’m about to ask her what she means when I start
vomiting violently and by the time we arrive at the hospital I’m so weak I can’t even smile at Matthew as he stands looking down at me, his face white with worry.
‘You can see her later,’ a nurse tells him briskly.
‘She’ll be all right, won’t she?’ he asks, distraught, and I feel worse for him than I do for myself.
There’s a blur of tests so it’s only when the doctor starts asking me questions that I realise she thinks I’ve taken an overdose.
I stare at her, appalled. ‘An overdose?’
‘Yes.’
I shake my head. ‘No, I would never do that.’
She gives me the kind of look that tells me she doesn’t believe me and, bewildered, I ask to see Matthew.
‘Thank God you’re all right,’ he says, reaching for my hand. He looks at me in anguish. ‘Was it me, Cass?
Was it what I said? If it is, I’m so sorry. If I thought for a minute that you’d do something like this I’d never have been so harsh.’
‘I didn’t take an overdose,’ I say tearfully. ‘Why does everybody keep saying that I did?’
‘But you told the paramedic you did.’
‘No I didn’t.’ I try to sit up. ‘Why would I say something that isn’t true?’
‘Try to stay calm, Mrs Anderson.’ The doctor looks
severely at me. ‘You’re still very ill. Fortunately we didn’t The Breakdown
281