I hate my life. I hate my life. I hate my life.
The same words covered the page. I flicked through the whole book. Everywhere, the same sentence, filling the pages. This must have taken weeks and weeks. Months.
I hate my life. I hate my life. I hate my life.
I looked through other papers on her desk, the ream of foolscap, all covered with that phrase. The same, page after page after page. Months of work, the careful writing of this horrible sentence. She hadn’t been revising, she had been filling notebooks with this one thought.
I hate my life, I hate my life.
On the shelf above her desk were other A4 pads, I flicked through them, all of them, the same.
I hate my life. I hate my life. I hate my life.
My darling girl. My beautiful girl. The person I loved more than anything, my absolute pride and joy, the girl who had everything, was good at everything, the person who had the world at her feet, laid out like the finest carpet, hated her life, and had become stuck on this one thought and couldn’t move forwards. She must have been so terrified. Why hadn’t I realised? Why hadn’t I checked, helped her, asked more about how she was getting on… there were so many signs. So many obvious signs and I just assumed – hoped – that it would be okay.
I stood there, for a few moments, not quite knowing what to do. I thought back to Celia’s party, and then when she called me at the cake sale. And the fact that she hadn’t gone to see any of her friends for months, or been out of the house.
But all the time, I had thought she was getting closer and closer to the end, when in fact she was getting further away. Because the one thing I wanted for her was for her to love her life. That’s all I had ever wanted and if she didn’t, then I had failed.
‘Mum. What are you doing?’ Rosie was sitting up, furious.
‘Rosie… why didn’t you say?’
She stood up and angrily grabbed her notebook from my hands. ‘Why are you going through my things? I can’t believe you’d do such a thing!’
‘Rosie, wait…’
‘Everything’s fine, Mum. Don’t look at me like that.’
‘You can’t keep saying everything’s fine when obviously it isn’t. You should have told me. I could have helped. I could have helped you.’
‘And done what exactly?’ Rosie started to cry, great rackety sobs, the kind I hadn’t seen her take since she was tiny. They were filled with hopelessness and devastation, as if her life had come to an end.
‘Rosie… Rosie…’ She stood trembling and shaking in my arms, her head pressed onto my shoulder.
‘Mum…’ was all she managed. ‘What am I going to do?’
I pulled her onto the bed and we sat side by side, both her trembling hands in mine, and we waited until her breathing slowed down.
‘Right, Rosie, whatever you are thinking now, that none of this can be fixed, it can. It’s a case of how you recover. Setbacks are just that. Until your comeback. You get up again, you move on and you learn. Do you understand?’
She nodded, her lip wobbling.
‘Because it doesn’t matter. Exams don’t actually matter. Going to college doesn’t matter. None of those things will make you happy. Not really. Well, they will but true happiness is something that comes from in here.’ And I pressed my hand to her heart. ‘Get that right, and the rest is easy.’
She nodded again.
‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’
‘I was doing all right… I thought. All last year, I kept up with everything. All the work, the study events. I did well in my mock exams… remember?’
‘You did brilliantly.’
‘I thought I was going to be okay even though there was this feeling starting to spread inside me. It was like it had taken root and every day I could feel it getting bigger. Not hugely but there was a feeling every morning, when I opened my eyes.’
‘What was it?’
‘Like a ball or a knot or stuff, right in the middle of me. And I couldn’t concentrate. Or eat. It was like it was this alien inside me…’ She gave a wonky smile. ‘That sounds weird.’
I shook my head. ‘No it doesn’t. Nothing you say ever sounds weird. Go on.’
‘Well, I first felt this thing, this alien, last summer. All I could think about was September when this year would start. The last year. The most important year. No one has been able to talk to me about anything but the exams for ages now. It was all, when are you doing the Leaving, what subjects are you doing? What college? I felt like screaming and all the time I had to be nice and polite and tell them over and over again. Everyone asks you, Mum. Not just family members but people in the shop, the guys down in the sailing club. Even the postman asked me!’
‘And then…’
‘Well, I didn’t do any work all summer. I kept convincing myself that I would start in September and that I would be brilliant, keep to study timetables and go for walks and just be… you know… methodical. Cool. But… I don’t know. I just didn’t. And then Jake finished with me…’
‘It’s not easy, is it? A relationship ending like that.’
She shook her head. ‘No. No, it’s not. And, it didn’t help my alien. It just kind of doubled in size overnight. Sometimes I would feel as though it was going to take over my whole body. I felt so scared. I mean, we haven’t had to be in school since January. All the study events were optional, if you were able to do it at home, then they didn’t bother you. And I just let it all get on top of me.’
‘Don’t they have counselling services? Someone you can talk to?’
‘Yeah, they are always saying, if you need help, you can go and talk to Miss Byrne.’
‘Oh, sweetheart, why didn’t you?’
‘I felt ashamed,’ she said. ‘Embarrassed. Like I was a failure. Which I am.’
‘You’re not. You’re absolutely not. Doing well in exams does not signify success in life, just in exams. It’s how you deal with things when they go wrong. What you learn, how you bounce back, what you take with you to the next experience. Do you see? But why didn’t you talk to me? I could have helped…’
‘I kept thinking, if I could just get working, I’d be all right. I kept thinking, I would start tomorrow. It wasn’t too late. And then it was Christmas…’
‘Christmas!’
‘Yeah…’ She hung her head. ‘It goes back as far as then. But I thought, I’d just take that time off and then start in January. It wasn’t too late. But I just couldn’t do it.’
‘And the hating your life… when did you start doing that?’
‘Once I wrote it, and then wrote it again, I swear it helped… just naming what I felt was good for me.’
I put my arm around her and squeezed her. ‘Couldn’t you have talked to your friends if you couldn’t talk to me?’ I said gently.
‘It was easier not to see them. I couldn’t do with all their exam talk and college talk. So I said that you had said I couldn’t go out or contact them…’
‘Really?’ I said.
‘It was just easier that way.’
‘Okay, let’s not worry about any of that now. You’ve got your first exam in a week.’
‘Oh mum,’ she wailed. ‘I can’t do them.’
‘Really? You could try and just see how you get on?’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t make me. Please don’t make me.’
‘First thing’s first, I’ll call the school and chat to them. Miss Byrne for one, okay?’
‘I can’t do them,’ she said. ‘I’m going to fail everything.’ And she began to cry again. ‘And I’m never going to go to Trinity. Or do a stupid internship. Dad’s going to be so mad.’
‘No, he’s not… he’ll be fine about it.’ I hoped he would, anyway.