No date has been given for Tommy to come home. How can this be in his best interests? He is becoming increasingly withdrawn and has shown no emotion since his first outburst. He wears his silence like a shield.
It’s my fourth ‘supervised’ visit today. The sky is heavy and low, the light has that milky quality that makes me nauseous. I steady myself outside the building a moment. Fluttering in my chest, my throat.
Inside, the reception is empty and I sit, stand, pace, sit, cross my legs, uncross, cross again, let my hair loose, pull it into a ponytail, open my handbag, slick some gloss on, and then I notice Maureen standing there – how much of that spectacle did she witness? ‘Hello, Sonya. Come with me.’ We walk, out of sync, dead air between us, through the heavily disinfected hallway, painted a brilliant white, smeared with traces of small fingerprints.
‘How are you, Sonya?’ Maureen doesn’t wait for an answer before she plunges on through the list of obligatory questions, then the humiliation of the breathalyser, although she barely looks at the results before saying, ‘We think you’re ready.’
Really… amazing… but what? No… really? The creatures have stirred and are beating their tiny wings against my windpipe. Frantic little fuckers. I place my hand at the base of my throat. How can Maureen know I won’t suffocate Tommy with my need, set the house on fire, white out, black out, blank out, starve him? How can they say I’m ready when I’ve never felt less ready? Exactly the same feeling I’d get just before I’d go on stage, I remind myself, and then I’d be up there, being brilliant. I don’t have to be ‘up’ anywhere, being brilliant, though – just present, just sober, just normal.
‘I see… When?’ My voice is a wheeze.
‘Next week. We need to prepare him, and you, of course.’
Maureen is distracted, already moving on to the next case.
‘Clare has spoken to me about some concerns she has for him, particularly his building obsession with fire. We’ll need to monitor that.’
Obsession. Bit of a histrionic word – even for me. He’s only an almost-five-year-old. What to get him for his birthday? A fire hose? Feel the wrong sort of laughter building. Not now, Sonya, not now.
‘Sonya? Did you hear me?’
‘Of course, Maureen. Thank you for alerting me.’
This ability to manage myself is growing. Like last night with David when I told him we needed to slow things down. All very adult and civilised, and he seemed fine with it. So unlike my usual going cold and withdrawing. Am I learning how to communicate, to connect in a real way with someone who might actually be good for me?
‘Sonya…？ We’re letting Tommy go back to you earlier than normal on account of your father. He says he can vouch for you, and that he will keep an eye.’
A pretty waltzing number wafts from the speakers, and I can’t for the life of me fathom what it is. Father would know. My father, who has been in communication with this stranger, but not once in the last three weeks has picked up the phone to me. Has he really promised to ‘look out’ for us? I can see how easy it would be to believe him. I experience a familiar rage, and yet, even if he never shows up in our lives again, he has orchestrated this early homecoming. Perhaps he does, on some level, care, perhaps he carries some buried guilt after all.
‘Sonya, did you hear a word I said?’
‘About my father vouching for me, yes.’
‘And after? Obligatory aftercare for both you and Tommy.’
‘Yes, yes, of course…’
Maureen looks unconvinced, but not all that bothered, which makes me suspect my instinct was right – she’s overworked and under-resourced. I study her slack face and body, burrow deeper: she’s seen it all. Here she is, letting a little boy go back to a woman who’s capable of suffocating him with a surfeit of love – or is it need? The memory of that night twitches in me, terrifies me. Was it the booze, or will I be worse without it?
I go to the plastic spider plant on the windowsill, perfectly placed to drink in the sun’s rays, and rub my finger and thumb over its shiny surface.
‘Very lifelike,’ I say to Maureen, who doesn’t look up from her paperwork. I lean in to smell it. Artificial. Toxic. Obnoxious. What’s the point of such a thing?
A polite knock on the door interrupts.
Maureen looks up from her file. ‘He’s here.’
I nod. Don’t know where to look, what to do with my hands, how to stand. I am a seagull – no – no, I am an actress. My seagull has broken a wing and is thrashing about in the undergrowth. Feed me the lines, someone, please. A recurring nightmare in the run-up to opening nights. A prompt, please.