‘Please, Sonya, can you make the call before Tommy awakes?’
I take the phone from his hand. I look at them both defiantly. I will show you: this is what a responsible mother looks like. I am never, ever, ever going to get drunk around a child again.
8
We drive for almost two hours with not a word passed between us. Classic FM provides the soundtrack: a mournful medley of Saint-Sa?ns and Bach. A pretty obvious underscore, straining and melancholic. A close-up of my father’s face, closed, giving nothing away. We arrive at big, scruffy black gates; a guy in a security hut waves us in. On either side of the driveway are dense, artificial-looking trees, poplars or something – how I hate their formality, their constraint. I think of that game we used to play: Mr Gnarly, Ms Sappy, Mr Knobbly, Ms Dewy, Mrs Weepy, Ms Mossy… The ancient birch in our garden, Mr Silver Fox, was my favourite; his leaves used to quiver with excitement as I’d pour all my secrets into him. I look sidelong at my father, his mouth tight, and find it impossible to see the man who would play such games.
‘Well, here we are.’
The building in front of us is large and grey, institutional. An oversized statue of the Virgin Mary in a grotto looms in the neat, ordered gardens.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me. I didn’t think these places still exist.’
‘This centre has an excellent reputation.’
And Lara wouldn’t have let him spend all that money on a private rehab for me.
‘What on earth do nuns know about the wanton wiles of the flesh?’ I throw at him.
‘Discipline, structure, order…’
He’s not joking. My heart speeds.
‘What was I thinking? Turn around now. Tommy needs to say goodbye to me.’
I see his little face, snot-caked and hot.
Pwomise, Yaya?
‘Lovely hibiscus,’ my father says.
Fuck’s sake. ‘Dad, he’s too little, he won’t understand. I shouldn’t have left without explaining this to him.’
‘Sonya, you’ll only make it worse. He’ll be fine.’
‘When you went silent, after Mum died, I wasn’t “fine”， much as you liked to convince yourself I was.’
‘This isn’t the same, Sonya.’ He sounds so tired. ‘The experts advised this would be the least traumatic way of doing it.’
Of course he consulted the ‘experts’。 I breathe deeply, close my eyes and dive down to the depths. For a moment the sensation cancels out the buzzing noise in my head, my body softens, and I let my mind float. A space opens up: maybe he’s right, maybe it would cause more damage to go back now. Lots of children have to deal with sick parents having prolonged stays in hospitals. At least this one is coming back alive.
‘Sonya, are you with me?’ My father’s voice hooks me back up. ‘Are you with me on this?’
I let myself imagine this is my first day at boarding school, something I wished for as an only child after reading Malory Towers obsessively, with its depictions of midnight feasts and best-friend-ever-after pacts. I feel young and overly stimulated, like I’ve gorged on too many jelly beans at a birthday party where no one spoke to me. I have the shakes, something I’ve become pretty used to in recent months.
‘Cold?’ My father takes off his jacket, awkward in the small space, his elbows hitting off the roof of the car, and wraps it around my shoulders.
He gets out, opens my door, takes the bag out of the boot and leads the way. Where have you been, Dad? I’m being led to the sanatorium, the madhouse where they used to lock up wild women in this country not so long ago – when it was still a land of priests and patriarchy – women with hysteria, with desire, with too much of everything in their veins, women who incited and inflamed. Yup, that’s me! I almost start to skip. Where is my camera?
There’s a desk behind a glass frontage and a man discussing his medication for depression. This sight disrupts the female-only fantasies that were building in intensity, aggravating the winged creatures slumbering under my ribcage. The man seems embarrassed to be so exposed publicly. A woman with a clipboard walks towards us, shaking first my father’s hand, then mine. ‘You must be Sonya? Take a seat in the waiting room and we’ll get the nurse to have a chat when she’s free.’ My father nods at her as if he knows who she is and moves into a room with frayed, shiny corduroy couches and a TV on mute. There’s a big man enveloped in one of the couches, wearing pink pyjamas that are too small for him, his wrists poking through, his old duffel bag at his feet. He smiles, actively beams at us.