Robert asked me if something was wrong. There was a row of seats next to the bin. I went to sit down but missed the edge and dropped onto my tailbone. The platform was empty now. I stayed there on the dirty ground. ‘No. Sorry. I’m fine.’
He said good. ‘But should you find yourself becoming concerned later, I can assure you it’s perfectly safe, for mother and baby. Both pre-or postnatally. Thus, if this medication works and you decide to become pregnant, at a later point, you would not need to discontinue it.’
It was like a dream where you try to stand up but you can’t, you need to run away from something but your legs won’t move. I tried to answer him but there were no words. After a time, Robert asked me if I was still there.
I said I don’t want a baby. ‘I would be a bad mother.’
I do not remember how his reply began, only that it ended by him saying, ‘If that belief is connected to a sense that you’re perhaps unstable or might present some risk to a child, I would only say that —— does not disqualify you from having children. I have many patients who are mothers and do very well. I have no doubt you’d be a wonderful mother, if it’s something you wanted. Really —— is not a reason to forego motherhood.’
I told him I could not think of anything worse and laughed merrily as my hand went into a fist. I hit myself in the head. It didn’t hurt enough. I did it again. There was a spark of white behind my left eye.
Robert said indeed, indeed. ‘I am here, should you ever change your mind.’
Another train was coming. I watched its progress towards me. A minute later I was standing up in a crowded carriage, staring at nothing, letting myself be thrown back and forwards as it jolted over the tracks and tore through the total darkness of the tunnel.
*
There was an airport car parked in front of the Executive Home. Patrick was standing beside the open boot, trying to help the driver put his suitcase into it.
He saw me and let the driver take it, then jogged towards me looking unusually irritated. ‘I thought I wasn’t going to see you before I left. Did you see my calls?’
I said no and made up some reason why not, but Patrick’s attention had shifted to whatever it was he’d just noticed on the side of my head.
‘What happened to your face?’
‘I don’t know.’
He reached out to touch it. I batted his hand away and started laughing.
‘Martha, what is happening?’ In frustration, he said for goodness sake, which made me laugh more.
‘Stop it. Martha, seriously. Stop. I’ve had enough.’
‘Of what? Of me?’
‘No. Damn it.’
That was very funny as well.
He was angry then and he said, ‘I’m going away, I’m not going to see you for two weeks. Why can’t you just be normal?’
I was overtaken with laughter then. I said, ‘I don’t know, Patrick. I don’t know! Do you know? I don’t know. It’s a mystery. A complete mystery!’ and I walked into the house, sufficiently enlarged by the exchange that I could hate my mother and my husband at the same time as I did, from then on. Intentionally and unintentionally, they had both ruined my life.
That night, I took my pink pill even though it didn’t really matter if I got better any more.
31
PATRICK WAS GONE for ten days. He texted. I did not reply except to tell him I was going to stay with Ingrid for the week, to which he said, ‘Great, have fun.’
I said to her, a few days. I said, to help you out. And although it was unbelievable, she was too desperate for help to query it. And she was perpetually tired, often in tears because of the children, otherwise shouting at Hamish. The house was untidy and always loud with appliances and television and her friends and their children coming and going all day, the crying and door-slamming in the night, and I was perfectly invisible. Even when I could not contain my grief to my room, nobody noticed. I did not go home after a few days. I was still there when Patrick got back. He texted me. I said Ingrid wanted me to stay another week.
Only once, in what became two weeks and then three, did my sister ask me how I was, and she did not query it either when I said I was amazing, or request information beyond that. I said nothing about Robert or Patrick. I told her I was not speaking to our mother and she was not interested in the specifics of why since she had been not-speaking to our mother at so many points, for so many reasons, in her own life.
By the time he drove to the house, it had been a month since Patrick and I had seen each other. He walked in the open front door and came to the kitchen. Ingrid and I were at the table, helping the boys with their tea.