Stones. Polly Johnson

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       ‘Why don’t we just get married now?’

       ‘Ha ha.’

      Well, that’s how the conversation goes in my head. Stupid, I know, and sure enough, I wait for half an hour and he doesn’t log on. People never do what they say they will. In the end I shut down and go for dinner – sausages, onion gravy and a chocolate pudding that sticks to my mouth and still tastes afterwards.

      ‘I’m glad you came straight back,’ Mum says. ‘There are some nasty things happening. I don’t think you should wander about alone just now, especially after dark.’

      ‘Why?’ I say. ‘What things?’ But she says nothing, just clears the plates, while Dad finishes the pudding, glancing up after every mouthful to smile at me. I don’t know why it annoys me but it does, so I tell them I’m going upstairs to do my homework. Dad’s face falls. I wish I knew what he wants me to do – smile back? Climb on his lap and ask for a cuddle? Sometimes I wish I could, but tonight’s not one of them. I go up and take out my books, but I can’t face it. Instead I just sit, thinking about ‘nasty things’ as if we haven’t all seen enough of those to last a lifetime. In the end I give up and go to bed, lying awake for what seems like half the night listening to the muffled sounds from downstairs and outside. It’s always like this.

      In the morning, when I turn the computer on for a quick check before I leave, there’s a message for me after all:

      JoeSteen says:

      Hi. It’s midnight – cdnt get on b4. U there?’

      JoeSteen says:

      Guess not. Sorry

      JoeSteen says:

      See you 2morrow?

      It’s nothing much, but it shows he didn’t forget. I feel a surge of energy and when I reach the kitchen, I’m smiling. ‘See you tomorrow?’ he said, and that meant today.

       5.

      Thought Diary: ‘Clinical Psychologists aim to reduce psychological distress and enhance psychological well-being. They deal with mental and physical health problems including anxiety, depression, addiction and relationship problems.’ From the Cardwell Clinic welcome pack. I think that covers everything!

      Thanks to Joe’s message it’s the first weekend for ages I haven’t wanted to be somewhere else, but after breakfast Dad bursts the bubble. It’s my day to see the psychologist and I’ve forgotten.

      ‘It’s on the wall diary,’ Dad says. ‘I couldn’t make it easier for you.’

      He could make it easier by cancelling the whole thing, but I don’t say so. I send Joe a text saying ‘have 2 go out. Maybe later’ then trail upstairs and get the Thought Diary from under my bed – where the most recent things I’ve written look so completely stupid she’s bound to know I haven’t been keeping it properly. I call her the ‘Shrink Woman’ because that sounds less scary; less like I’m actually crazy. She’s meant to help me deal with how I feel about Sam dying, but it’s a waste of time.

      My phone buzzes in my pocket as I go downstairs. It’s Joe. ‘Let go of the past – the fall is not as far as you think.’

      For a moment I wonder how he knows where I’m going, but he can’t of course. He’s just a bit mad, like me.

      ‘Good to see you smiling,’ Dad says as we drive away, so I wipe the smile off in case he thinks I’m happy.

      We never speak on the journey there. Dad listens to the radio and I sit with my head turned to the window with my eyes half-closed, trying to think of nothing while the fields drift by, dotted with horses and isolated buildings. The clinic used to be a house, I think. A big building with carved gables and gardens, but it’s no house now. When you go in and see the smart reception desk and the people sitting around in chairs, you know where you are.

      On my first appointment I didn’t say a word – nothing at all. I just sat there looking at a patch of brown stuff on the carpet and a cat outside the window as it played with a bird. Seeing the struggle and the flapping and the blood made talking seem pointless. Anyway, I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t like those other people crying into their handkerchiefs. I wasn’t crazy.

      ‘No one here is crazy,’ Dad’s always insisted.

      ‘Only you,’ I’d say, ‘paying all this money for nothing. You’re the biggest nut of all.’

      The psychologist is very glamorous, like she should be in a movie or something. Piled up silver hair, huge blue eyes and what they call ‘good bones’, which means she’ll always look wonderful, even when she’s ancient. I suspect she changes clothes between clients like some kind of chameleon woman. Buddhist for the middle-aged trendies, prim for the nervous and clip-on dreads for the alternative types. Whenever I go it’s all African jewellery and joss sticks; I watch the smoke curl like ghostly snakes up the white walls and listen to her questions, which I never answer. They’d only lead to other questions and so we sit there – her in one armchair and me in another with a view of the garden. Poor old Dad, he pays all this money and she just looks at me and waits, and I look at her and make her wait some more. Until today that is, when she picks up the Thought Diary and to distract her I blurt out: ‘I saw a tramp. He talked to me. He was a bit like Sam.’

      She doesn’t move, just lifts an eyebrow. ‘Oh yes?’ she says.

      ‘Yes. He came over and sat down. He could have been anyone – a vampire even, but I didn’t care.’

      ‘That’s an interesting choice. Why a vampire?’

      ‘I dunno; only that he could have been anyone.’

      We look at each other.

      ‘Tell me something about him,’ she says, and I think.

      ‘He had really nice eyes.’

      She smiles. ‘I’m surprised you noticed.’

      Outside, the trees dance in the wind.

      We’ve broken the silence now and she glances at my folder, at a piece of paper where I wrote stuff down before my first appointment.

      ‘And how is the other thing?’ she says. ‘The Pit.’

      I consider The Pit. This is the term I use to describe the way I used to feel all of the time, but less often now.

      It’s like one of those holes you dig on the beach. The ones you spend all day on when you are a kid. In the end it’s home time, and there you are standing at the bottom. It’s probably not very deep to anyone else, but to you it’s almost Australia. The sides are steep and narrow and cold, and right down at the bottom is a pool of smelly water. Here is where you’ve been sitting.

      The frightened feeling comes back again and I clench my fists together, then apart and then together again.

      ‘What?’ she says. ‘What is it?’

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