Saving Grace (7 page)

Sometimes she thinks about sharing her story with someone here, wondering if it would release some of the shame she still carries today, some of the fear.

But the words won’t come. Even when she knows she is safe, even when she wants to not feel quite so alone, the words are never there.

W
hen Grace’s father, Albert, met her mother, Sally, Sally seemed like the most glamorous, exciting woman in the world. She had more energy than anyone he had ever come across before, met every day with a new adventure, was filled with ideas that made him feel alive in a way he never had before.

Their courtship was a whirlwind. Sally brought up marriage after three weeks; instead of thinking it was a terrible idea, Albert, who had never fallen so hard or so fast, immediately proposed.

They eloped, took the train to Gretna Green and were married. Everyone presumed Sally was pregnant, but she didn’t become pregnant until six months later, and everything changed once Grace was born.

The doctors said it was postpartum depression. Sally stayed in bed for the best part of a year. She would barely speak, cried every day, and Albert, desperate for his wife to come back, took care of her and the baby as best he could, terrified this depression wouldn’t pass.

One day, Sally bounced out of bed, fully made up, bright, shining.
Back.
There was a buzzing edge to her as she left the house that morning, returning later that night with armfuls of bags stuffed with baby clothes and toys.

There was nothing that the baby Grace needed, but Albert understood Sally would want to buy her things, given that she had lost the best part of the last year. The shopping would pass, he thought, along with other behaviour he hadn’t noticed before. She would drink every day, often staggering up to bed, entirely drunk. When sober, she was distracted to the point where she could barely focus.

It didn’t seem to pass.

Out of nowhere, a temper appeared. If he did something ‘wrong’, not as she wanted, or if the baby cried, Sally would whirl into the room, screaming in fury. After a while, she would go back to some semblance of normal, but normal never lasted long. At any point she could either return to being wired or go back to bed. Flat. Tired. Teary.

In those days, in England, people didn’t believe in doctors unless you were truly at death’s door, and certainly not in
psychiatrists.
If something didn’t seem quite right, you would generally try to sweep it under the table, pretending that nothing was wrong until it passed.

Manic depression was something that happened to other people. No one knew much about it; certainly no one talked about it in anything other than a shocked whisper.

Grace grew up with the knowledge that her father was the only one on whom she could rely. There were times when her mother was normal, but it could change at any time. She learned to walk on eggshells in her house, to relinquish her childhood, to try and take care of herself, and her parents, as best she could.

She tried to cook by watching
The Galloping Gourmet
on television, and Delia Smith on
Swap Shop.
For Christmas her father bought her cookbooks, which were quickly decorated with grease and gravy as Grace attempted to re-create Smith’s recipes, many of which – including the cottage pie and apple crumble – she still uses today. Cooking was all a bit hit or miss until she met Lydia, her university roommate’s mother, who really taught her how to cook.

Lydia became Grace’s substitute mother, her roommate, Catherine, her sister, and the two noisy twin brothers, Patrick and Robert, not so much her brothers as the most important male figures in her life.

Robert was her secret love and Patrick her confidant. They provided her with a stability and a consistency that had been entirely missing from her own family.

At Lydia’s house, Grace was not only allowed to be a child, she was celebrated, even when she did something wrong. Not that Grace was a child who often misbehaved, but Patrick, two years older than her, led her into all kinds of trouble. When Patrick ‘borrowed’ his father’s car without permission to take Grace to Sherborne for the day, then drove into the back of a truck, no one screamed at Grace or told her they wished she had never been born.

Grace cooked all the time with Lydia, not because she had to, but because she wanted to. It was a world away from her own home, where cooking, cleaning and self-parenting were expected from Grace because there was no one else to do it; where she shouldered the entire responsibility of running a household she wasn’t old enough to run.

Today, her mother would, should,
could
be given medications to stabilize her, manage her condition, enable her to live a normal life. Had Grace’s mother been alive today, it is entirely possible her life would be manageable. It is entirely possible she and Grace would have discovered how to love each other.

As it is, shortly after Grace left home to go to university, her parents divorced. Her father, by then a shadow of the man he once was, left the house and cut off contact with everyone.

Grace would come home on weekends, attempt to look after her mother, but half the time her mother had disappeared, the house would be filthy, and chaos awaited her in every room.

Grace learned more about manic depression and alcoholism than she would ever have dreamed possible. Back then, however much she recognized that it was the disease talking and not her mother, Sally never lost the ability to hurt, to poison, to wound.

The last time she saw her was six months before she died. Grace was staying at Lydia’s when she got a phone call. It was a cousin she hadn’t spoken to in years, who had somehow tracked her down. He had seen her mother, knew where she was, and thought Grace ought to know.

Lydia had offered to drive her in to London the next day, but in the end it was Patrick who drove her. Patrick to whom she told the whole, sorry story, sharing the hell of her childhood, her fear of anger and volatility, her sense of never having a safe place to call home.

‘You do now,’ he had said quietly, expertly steering the car along the M4, then through the winding London streets, saying little, glancing over at Grace from time to time to check that she was okay.

They had the radio on, Grace grateful that today Patrick wasn’t his irreverent, amusing self, but in a nod to the seriousness of the situation was quiet, reflective; a wonderful listener.

‘Are you sure you want to go in on your own?’ He pulled up outside a dark brick building, bars on the window, weeds sprouting from the base of the walls. It was depressing, even from the outside, and Grace suppressed a flutter of fear.

‘I have to,’ she said, grateful he took her hand and squeezed it before she opened the car door. ‘Will you stay here in the car, though? In case I need to . . . I don’t know. In case.’

‘Of course. Good luck!’ he called as she walked to the front door and rang the bell.

A woman appeared at the door. Middle-aged, although it was hard to determine. She had long white hair pulled tightly back from her face in a bun, a face that was lived-in, sad.

‘Hello,’ said Grace. ‘I’m looking for Sally Patterson.’

‘Yes,’ said the woman whose name tag announced her as ‘Margaret’, appraising Grace coolly. ‘We were wondering if we’d see you.’

‘I’m Grace. Her daughter.’

‘I know.’ Margaret stepped aside, finally, to let her in. ‘Your mother has been wondering where you’ve been.’ She started walking into a large hallway, Grace presuming she was expected to follow.

‘I’ve been trying to find her,’ Grace said, flustered, not expecting to have to explain herself here. ‘Much of what my mum says is . . . fabricated.’

Margaret seemed to consider this for a while, then nodded. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have judged. It’s just that it’s so hard on these women when their families desert them.’

‘I didn’t desert her!’ Frustration took the form of a hot lump in Grace’s throat. ‘I’ve been looking for her for months.’

‘She’ll be glad you’re here,’ Margaret said in a tone conciliatory enough that Grace, correctly, took it for an apology.

‘How is she? How long has she been here? Is she taking her medications?’

‘Come in here and sit down,’ said Margaret, leading her into a small, dark, windowless room lined with institutional green chairs. ‘I can give you her recent history, at least what I know, then we can go to see her.’

S
ally, it seemed, had recently been in a housing and treatment programme. She was calm, not drinking, neither agitated nor unhappy. If you didn’t know better, you might even think her entirely normal.

The hostel was very familiar with Sally, said Margaret. When Sally was in a programme, or in a psychiatric hospital, as had happened before, they didn’t see her for months. But her pattern was always the same – she would seem to be normal, before mania would strike and everything would go wrong.

Lithium was the accepted medication for people like Sally. She had taken it sporadically, but complained of feeling ‘flat’, the drug making her lethargic, tired, lazy.

‘People don’t understand medication for manic depression,’ said Margaret. ‘They think that people start to feel so good they think they must be better, and that’s why they stop taking the lithium, but it isn’t that. It’s the opposite. Generally these medications make people with this kind of depression feel completely flat, and these are people who are used to the highs of mania, so to them, it’s tantamount to being dead.’ She stopped suddenly, peering at Grace. ‘This may all be stuff you know,’ she said tentatively ‘I know how difficult it can be for families of those who suffer.’

‘I know a little,’ Grace said. ‘She has tried taking lithium for years, but it never seems to last long.’

‘She definitely hasn’t taken anything recently. We got her back here two weeks ago. She’s in one of her more manic phases, although she did seem a little calmer yesterday. We’ve put her back on the lithium and we try and monitor it to make sure our residents are taking their pills, but it’s impossible to keep track of all of them.’

‘So she’s . . . manic? Still?’

‘It may just be that they haven’t got the dosage right. Or she’s hiding the pills.’

‘And there’s nothing you can do?’

‘We do the best we can. Are you ready? We can go and see her now.’

G
race said nothing when she walked into the room. She should not have been shocked at what her mother looked like, but nothing could have prepared her to face this woman who gave birth to her, who was now almost unrecognizable.

Sally was sitting in the front row of chairs facing a television, holding the remote control, zapping quickly through television channels, never settling on one for more than a few seconds, much to the frustration of the four other women in the room.

Grace stood off to the left, devastated at the toll living on the streets had taken on her mother. She had remembered her as young, pretty, normal looking if not always normal acting, but this version of her mother was years older than Grace would have expected, and so much bigger than when she had last seen her, almost a year ago.

Her pretty features were masked by doughy cheeks and a double chin. If Grace hadn’t known it was her mother, she would have walked straight past her.

Unexpectedly, Sally laughed. Grace saw her teeth, one missing on each side. She looked exactly as she was: a toothless, homeless woman with a glitter in her eye and a forcefield of energy around her that had a buzz that was almost palpable.

Grace remembered this buzz, this energy, from her childhood. This was when her mother would go on huge shopping binges, or drive Grace miles from home on a quest for some sort of treasure. It was exhilarating being in her company, and exhausting. And completely unsafe. Grace never felt she was in the company of a responsible adult during those times, would pray that nothing would go wrong.

‘Mum?’ Grace ventured after Sally paused to look at Grace, her eyes sweeping over her dismissively before going back to the television. ‘It’s me. It’s Grace.’

‘I know who it is,’ said Sally. ‘Are you coming in? What are you doing standing in the doorway? You look like I used to look, years ago. I may not have seen you for a while but I’d know you anywhere. I thought you were too busy in America to bother with me. I know you’re living it up in New York. What are you doing here? Nice of you to come and see me. I’m surprised you’re not off with your other mother.’ She gave a gap-toothed grin before handing the remote to a woman sitting next to her and standing up. ‘Don’t just stand there,’ Sally said, walking towards Grace. ‘You can give your old mum a hug.’