Painkiller (3 page)

With us is my mum (ten years dead) who is standing warily next to Dominic. I’m with his mum (six years gone) and his dad (still hanging in there, sulking in his decrepit cottage in the Highlands). Jesse is not there. She couldn’t make it for some reason, lost in the mists of time.

Every time I look at that photo I hope to see Jesse in the background. Sometimes, I even see her paying a visit.

Like now.

She wanders into the photo holding a big hat on her head with an apologetic sorry-I’m-late expression on her face. She kisses Mum hello and takes her place next to me, throwing wary glances at my new husband.

She waves at me. Not the me in the picture wearing the wedding dress, but the me slumped on the floor.

‘I can’t wave back,’ I find myself saying. ‘My arms can’t move.’

Damn! I thought I would be over this by now.
 

Agnieszka is, inevitably, from Poland. She is an excellent cleaner, young, bright, friendly and efficient. Thankfully, she is also very strong.

‘Meeses Wood? Moaneeka?’

‘In here, Agnieszka. I’m down here.’

She sees me, gasps, presses her hand comically to her mouth, and explodes with all manner of foreign oaths. She rushes towards me and her strong arms carefully lift me into a vertical position.

My nose is pressed into her large bosom and I smell lilac. I know she is being careful, so I try not to scream, but to my shame I fail, and the distress on Agnieszka’s face at the noise is one more knife to add to the collection of daggers inserted into my body.

‘Meeses Moneeka, you not good today! You go to bed, sleep, get rest!’

‘No, Agnieszka, I fine.’

‘You not fine! You on floor! Is not fine!’

‘Just a silly fall. Pain not too bad. I not go to bed. I will be OK, no rest, really.’

It always amuses me that I fall into this silly cod foreign accent when I talk to Agnieszka. It doesn’t belong to any particular country, and it probably makes it more difficult for her to understand me.

‘I be in kitchen, now, I clean, if you need, I come, OK?’

‘OK.’

‘You promise now?’

‘I promise.’

She won’t leave me alone, even though I try to bat her away. In the end I assure her I’m absolutely fine now, and I allow her to make me a cup of tea I don’t want, in exchange for some privacy.

I listen to her scuttle around the house, dusting and hoovering. I was hoping to go out today, but now I’m trapped in the office, the only place where she’s not allowed to dust.

I want to go back to bed, but she’ll be changing the sheets soon, so here I am, a prisoner, sitting alone in the office, teeth chattering with the pain.

I look back at the photo. Jesse is gone, of course.

I make a few calls, and then Agnieszka says goodbye, and my body tells me that’s the end of the day. I realise I never showered this morning, but I don’t have the energy to have one now, even though it would make me feel slightly better.

Then the day is over.

I’m lying on the bed in the spare room, and the room is nearly dark when Dominic comes home. Today I’ve swallowed a ton of Lyrica (which is the pretty corporate name for pregabalin. I guess someone in Marketing realised that a drug that sounds like it’s the literal transcription of someone having a gibbering fit would be a hard sell, so it’s ‘Lyrica’ now, which I think is something you might call a ‘Hits of Vivaldi’ CD) and it has side effects. Did I mention all my drugs have side effects? Yes, I think I did. Lyrica’s little trick is that it enhances all my senses: sight, smell, taste and hearing. In my head everything sounds noisy, like I’m in a horror movie where they’ve turned up the sound effects. Every broken twig is a pistol shot; every ticking clock a klaxon of mortality.

From my room I can hear the rattle of Dominic’s keys in the door, his feet huff-scuffing on the mat, the tired flap of the umbrella (has it been raining?) and the kitchen noises as he makes a cup of tea.

He used to look for me straight away if I wasn’t there to greet him, running around thinking something awful might have happened, but now… I suppose you get used to everything, even the most gut-wrenching of fears. I remember when Jesse had her first baby. ‘Those first few days I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t dare,’ she laughed. ‘I was listening for the breathing all the time, waiting for the noise to stop so I could leap into action and save my baby. Two weeks later and we’re lying in bed, and we’re praying for the little bastard to stop screaming and shut up.’

I wonder if that’s what Dominic feels about me, sometimes.

Eventually, I hear the door creak open.

‘You awake?’

‘Yes.’

‘Bad day?’

‘Yes. I’m afraid so.’

‘Sorry to hear that.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You want anything? Something to eat?’

‘No.’

‘Drink? Cup of tea?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Have you taken your drugs for tonight?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want the telly on?’

‘No, thanks. I think I’ll try and get some sleep.’

‘OK. Love you lots.’

‘No, love
you
lots.’

‘You hang up.’

‘No
you
hang up.’

‘No
you
hang up.’

‘No you —’

‘Brrrrrrrrr.’

Happy that he has left me smiling, he closes the door and goes downstairs.
Thud thud thud.

Twenty-two
thuds
.

I know, because I count them every time. Then the television switches on and the microwave goes ping. I’m still awake when the twenty-two
thuds
go upstairs and our bedroom door opens and closes.

The hours pass, and I’m still lying awake. My super-hearing means I’m forced to listen to the clunks and gurgles the house makes at night, the scurrying animals in the garden and the cars on the road. The drugs designed to help my pain make it harder to sleep, and being sleep-deprived makes it much harder to combat the pain.

My life is built on solid irony. They are the foundations of my existence.

But finally, before I realise it, I have fallen asleep, a tiny fragment of orange paper nestled in my hand.

I wake up…

… I feel much better today.

The sleep has done me the power of good. Dominic notices the change in me, and he looks (
relieved
)
happy. He even gives me a tiny hug when he kisses my forehead goodbye.

The fragment of paper was still in my hand when I woke up. It never stood a chance to escape. The pain makes me clench my fists so tight during the night I sometimes end up with fingernail marks on my palms.

I leave the paper in a matchbox in the drawer. I don’t know why. I keep sliding the box open and shut to see if it hasn’t vanished like a magic trick.

Open…

burden
 

… and close.

Open…

burden
 

… and close.

I do it about twenty, thirty times, stuck in some kind of time loop. Something about the bit of paper bothers me. It smells funny. It looks wrong. But it could just be the drugs dancing around my brain, creating a distorted view of the world.

Enough now. I feel good enough to leave the house. I can’t waste the day.

I’m
definitely
going to Westbourne Grove. That is my solemn pledge to myself.

Another text from Niall. This time the U OK? has three question marks and four kisses. This time I reply
NO BUT GETTING THERE! Mx
(thank the good Lord for predictive text) and I get a :) in return. I hate those upended smiley faces people put in text messages; they look like the lopsided, dead smile of someone who’s fallen and broken their neck.

So after breakfast I’m in the car, driving, off to see one of my friends (
my only friend
)
.
OK, I admit it, my only friend. Apart from my Angry Friend, of course. He always stays around.

Most of my friends have gone. Of course they have. Why would anyone be my friend? The only conversations are the ones that go nowhere; they used to talk to me about my nerve pain, as concerned friends, and they inevitably used to ask what it felt like, and I inevitably used to tell them it’s like red hot needles under my toenails, or spears in my side, or like being kicked and punched all night, and they inevitably used to say something like:

‘Oh well, at least it’s not like you’re
literally
getting needles under your toenails/spears in your side/kicked and punched.’

Then I inevitably used to say they were wrong, and talk about the physical effects of constant pain, and then their eyes used to glaze over, and then I stopped talking about it, and then I would pretend I’d stopped thinking about it.

I ended up pretending (
lying
)
to everyone, all the time. Well that’s bound to erode any friendships. I’m lying to myself too.

I have to.

I’m pain in pain the car, breathe, smile, relax, driving to Westpain Grove. I tell pain myself I am being painanoid. It’s inevitable. Pain, breathe, relax. There must be a simple expaination. Breathe, smile, relax. Pain consumes everypain, paincluding my pain mind smile, breathe and relax more often than pain I pain up alone inside my pain pain pain breathe, smile, relax
…
 

I lie to myself that those things aren’t in there.

I drive on to Westbourne Grove, street signs and cars flashing past me (
every obstacle is a way to end my life
)
as I drive.

Angelina is different. She listens, and because conversation to her is like a fair exchange, I tell her about the gnawing pain in my face, and the crippling electrical shocks in my thighs, and she tells me about her night of disastrous sex with a t’ai chi instructor with mirrored ceilings, or her ex-boyfriend in the city who once suggested a threesome with his wife.

‘Fair exchange is no robbery, sweetie,’ she says, and I’m pitifully grateful she lets me speak of my life without feeling guilty.

When I text her to say I’m coming over she replies with OMG!!!! We haven’t seen each other in a while, so I guess we’re both excited. Westbourne Grove is only ten minutes in the car, but for me it might as well be in Japan. It’s been months since I had the strength to come out this way.

My hands are almost shaking with the prospect of meeting actual people.

I park the car as near as possible to Angelina’s art shop, and inch my way out of the driver’s seat. There is a woman watching me, sitting on a bench. She is in her seventies, bundled up against the summer breeze, and using her
Daily Telegraph
as a windbreak. Her expensive coat and silk scarf cover most of her face, but her eyes are fixed on mine, and they are looking at me with unvarnished disgust.

I’m used to it by now. Old people glaring at me with righteous indignation. What they see is a very attractive middle-aged woman, dressed in expensive designer clothes, wearing stylish spectacles, driving a big glossy German car, parking in a disabled space.

That’s what
they
see.

I see a woman who’s driving a big German car because she can’t cope with a car without cruise control. I see a woman wearing expensive clothes because cheaper clothes would be too rough on her body. I see a woman wearing stylish spectacles, because one of the many painkillers she takes (the little blue pills in her purse) dry out her eyes so much she can’t wear contact lenses.

But I do look damn sexy, though I say so myself. I’m still youngish, forty-three, and even though I’m a bit short, I’m quite trim. I can eat most things and still stay thin because the pain burns up calories like a forest fire.

Lucky me.

Hey ho, I think, I know by now exactly what the old people are thinking, because some of them tell me. Some of them have no trouble unburdening their minds. As I’m not elderly, or doubled up with arthritis, or on a mobility scooter, I am not one of
them
, and I have no right to be there. They are trained like attack dogs by the
Daily Mail
, to salivate and growl at possible scroungers, cheats milking the system.

There was one time when Dominic and I parked in Sainsbury’s one Sunday, for our weekly shop. I was driving. I had insisted that I drive. I hadn’t driven for years, because the act of changing gear was not good for me. Little actions like that would send me back to bed for days. When we got an automatic it got easier, so I wanted to try and pull my weight by driving as much as I could. I had barely started to look for my little blue card to put it in the windscreen when a voice said:

‘There’s people who will need that space, you know.’

It was an old man standing there with his little dog. He had been watching us like a hawk, watching us park, waiting to see who was going to get out of the car that had so thoughtlessly parked in the precious space.

I didn’t say anything, but Dominic was furious. I’d never seen him so angry, and it scared me a little. He’d seen the looks and the expressions too, but he’d never actually experienced an actual comment made by an actual person before. His face grew red and he slammed the car door with far too much force.

‘
What
did you just say?’

‘There are disabled people who need that, you know.’

‘Well actually,’ said Dominic, his voice quavering, ‘actually, for your information, my wife happens to be disabled.’

The man was already walking away. He’d done his job. He’d given the scroungers What For. ‘Oh yes,’ he said with a sly wink to my husband. ‘We’re
all
disabled now, aren’t we?’

And the old man walked into Sainsbury’s, his dog trotting behind him. Dominic looked like he was going to follow him.

‘Dom,’ I called, using my most exhausted voice. ‘Can we go and shop now?’

Dominic recovered himself, and brought out the bags from the boot. We went round the supermarket and when he thought I wasn’t looking, he kept peering around, searching for the man, presumably to show the old sod how exhausted I was looking, using the trolley as a crutch to stay upright, but we didn’t see him again. I guessed he’d just popped in for some fags and a lottery ticket.

So to sum up – I don’t look ill. Not to the casual observer.

I used to look bad. I used to walk with a stick, and my hair went white at the roots, but once I found the better drugs, and started to manage the pain, and got some hair dye, I started to look better.

On the surface, on a good day, I look fine.

It’s when you look close up you can see what’s inside.

Angelina is ridiculously thin, pale, with wide olive eyes and tinted red hair, which falls to her shoulders and hangs in a fringe over her forehead. She is always draped with coloured bead necklaces and bracelets, comprising shiny stones and bits of silver. I always think of her like a sea nymph, decorating herself with jewels from Davey Jones’ locker, emerging from the ocean all damp and alluring.

She looks artful and disinterested, but I know it’s all an act, a character that fits her job running her own tiny art shop; literally a single room and a big window. One wall is covered with her paintings and sculptures; huge angry shapes in oils, sheep skeletons and human skulls and screaming mouths. She’s got a grim style, but she’s never ghoulish when it comes to me. She is one of the most sensitive, warmest people I know.

I once asked her about it, if she ever felt drawn to my condition because of her art.

‘Jesus no, sweetie,’ she said, tapping her cigarette into an ashtray. It was the nearest she ever sounded to being offended. She gestured round her studio. ‘This is all work, yeah? It’s what I do, not what I am. I don’t sleep in a coffin. At five o’clock I go home and stroke my cat and watch
Masterchef
.’

We sit outside the trendy Eat Me café, sipping our coffee. We watch the bored yummy mummies turn up after dropping their little darlings off at their expensive schools.

‘How’s Brian?’ I ask.

Angelina pulls a face, widening her mascara to form inkwell circles and contracting her bright red lips into a tiny budding rose. ‘Brian?
Brian?
Oh,
Brian
!
He’s ancient history, sweetie. Long gone. Looooong gone. He decided to go back to his wife.’

I frown. ‘I thought you said he was a widower.’

‘Yes, darling, that’s what
he
said. So, obviously…’ she cocks an eyebrow and spins her eyeballs to the heavens, ‘she got better…’

She dips her finger in the froth of her coffee and sucks it. ‘I’m with Clyde now. He’s a struggling artist. Which is about the same as having an extra cat, but the cat vomits less and shows slightly more affection. I think of him as an investment, yeah?’ She winks. ‘Which means he can go down as well as up…’

It takes twenty seconds of coffee-blowing before Lena cuts to the chase. ‘So, how’s the pain?’

‘Good at the moment. I’m dealing with it.’

‘That’s great. You look really well.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And how is Dominic?’

I was thinking about the suicide note. I was thinking about the expression on Dominic’s face when he reached for the note and tore it up.

‘He’s… OK.’

‘You don’t sound convinced.’

‘Well… work is a problem. There’s never enough of it… He’s not really suited to his job. He struggles with it a lot…’

‘Tell me about it. ’Twas ever thus. We all have to struggle.’

Angelina doesn’t struggle at all, but I know what she means.

‘I know. But sometimes I feel I’m a bit of a burden…’

‘You should never think like that, sweetie. Dominic is with you because he wants to be with you. You know the statistics of guys who stay with their sick wives?’

‘I don’t want to know.’

But she’s already scrabbling in her pocket. ‘I put it in my phone. I thought it was really interesting.’ She scrolled to the correct page. ‘I think this might be just America, but I could be wrong… Marriage break-ups, when the man gets sick… Three per cent. Marriage break-ups when the woman gets sick… Twenty-one per cent. Fuck. Men are such feckless bastards.’

I roll my eyes. ‘Lena… that makes me feel
so
much better,’ I say in a sarcastic drawl. ‘Why did you read that out?’

‘But don’t you see, darling? How long is it since the accident?’

‘Five years.’

‘So there you —’

‘Five years
this week
.’

‘Jesus. Seriously?’

I nod.

‘Five years this week since…?’

I nod again. ‘It’s my anniversary. That’s why I wanted to come out.’ I shrug and give an embarrassed chuckle. ‘That’s why I needed to come out.’

‘Jesus…’ She stares, looking at nothing for slightly too long. Then she recovers.

‘Well, there you go. Five years since the accident and Dominic’s still here, still going strong. He’s a diamond, darling. An absolutely twenty-six carat diamond. You could put him in the window at De Beers.’

‘I know he’s great,’ I sigh. ‘But that doesn’t alter the fact that I feel a burden…’

The suicide letter flashes across my eyes.

…
B-u-r-d-o-n
.
Is that how you spell it? No
…

…
Burden. I’m a B-u-r-d-e-n
…
 

‘… I can’t do things that I could do before.’

‘Like sex?’

‘Lena! I was thinking about gardening.’

She lowered her coffee cup. ‘Don’t evade the question. Sex is still OK, yeah?’

‘We manage,’ I say evasively. ‘It’s not hanging from the chandeliers but we manage. I can’t hold any positions any more.’ I flick my eyes from side to side, watching for eavesdroppers, and lower my voice. ‘I can’t ride him, or anything like that.’

‘So sex is basically you lying there doing nothing, thinking of England, and him running up the flag and doing a twenty-one gun salute over your tits?’

She says this in an incredibly loud voice, quite deliberately. A couple of starved Kensington housewives look up from their papaya salads, and I giggle with embarrassment, blowing bubbles into my coffee.

‘Angelina!’

‘But I’m right, yeah?’

‘Pretty much.’