Tom and I have, until now, lived and worked in the city, our rooftop apartment light and airy with its views across London to the Thames. Although I seldom venture into the disorienting thrum and jostle of the streets, I do still feel part of a bigger humanity. I’ll miss the noise, the vibrancy and the feeling it gives me that I belong somewhere. It’s convenient for us but, and for me it’s a big but, Tom has decided the time has come for change. He wants to move out of the city, to a “delightful and sought-after rural location” where he can put down roots. Where he can breathe the air, grow things—presumably with more roots—and literally expand his horizons. The house in Cleaver’s Lane is the answer to all his prayers and today we go to see it in the brick.
I’ve tried, really I have, but still I feel an apprehension disproportionate to the task ahead; after all we’re only viewing a house. Maybe I do struggle to be the “executive of my life.” Maybe certain life changes do “exceed my threshold,” or maybe I’ve just spent too long listening to my doctors. Whatever the reason, I cannot shed the feeling that something is wrong, and I’m filled with a sense of foreboding. I’m resentful that this is being forced on me but feel I owe it to Tom to give it a chance. After all, as he sometimes gently reminds me, he’s given up much to be with me. I suppose it’s only fair I give up something in return.
The Cleaver’s Lane brochure Tom’s reading must be the new one he ordered. Once he thought it was that house, he had to know more. I haven’t seen it before but can see it has more details, with pictures of the house’s interior and its land.
“You’ve got to have a look at this kitchen Izzy, it’s absolutely massive. It needs complete stripping out and reworking but it’s big enough for an island in the middle and an Aga and for one of those big American-style fridges we’ve always wanted. Please at least have a look.”
Tom passes me the brochure and I glance half-heartedly at the photo in front of me. I feel all the enthusiasm of a pensioner facing the prospect of snow.
Suddenly a low humming fills my head and a breaker of anxiety rolls through me, bringing in its wake a wash of nameless dread. I have the sensation that I’m no longer anchored in the present but am swirling backward through time. I’ve been there. I’ve seen this room. I can smell wood smoke and washing powder. I see tiles with carrots and onions and pepper-pot motifs, the dirt in the grout, a feeling of coldness and grit against my face.
It’s a split second before the feeling passes and Tom is by my side. My teeth are chattering wildly and we look at the milk jug smashed at my feet. A tiny shard of china has speared my ankle and a trickle of bright blood runs to the floor.
“Izzy, Izzy! What is it, what’s wrong?”
Tom’s face is close to mine and for a moment I want to lash out at him, arms wheeling and flailing, fighting for my life. The feeling instantly passes and I let him lead me to a chair.
“No, no I’m fine; it’s just that I. . .”
As I start to explain the words leave me. I can’t remember what just happened or what I felt. All I feel is breathless—shaken and disoriented.
“I’m all right. Just dizzy for a moment, that’s all. It’s okay, don’t fuss, I’ll be fine in a minute.”
I realize I’m still holding the brochure and I look at the picture. It’s a tired kitchen, dark oak doors and dated tiles. Despite how much Tom loves it and how unique it is, I find I’m still crossing my fingers. It’s definitely a project for someone, I just hope it’s not one for us.
Tom fetches me a drink and I take his hand, his palm warm against my cold one.
“I’m not ill, before you start. It wasn’t a seizure or anything, that’s all in the past so please don’t worry. I’ve got a headache, that’s all, and I just felt dizzy. I need a plaster for my leg but otherwise I’m okay.”
He goes through to the bathroom and I close my eyes and take a deep breath. I cannot have another seizure, that hasn’t happened for at least four years and I’ve finally got a driving license. I may not often use it but I can’t bear the thought of losing it or the illusion of freedom it gives me.
Tom comes back with a Band-Aid and some antiseptic and gently cleans the blood from my ankle. I lay my hand on his head and feel the softness of his hair under my fingers.
“Tom, I’m going back to bed for a bit if that’s okay.” My head is starting to pound now, and I really do feel sick. “Can we skip lunch? I need to take something for my head and sleep for an hour or two, otherwise I’ll be good for nothing this afternoon.”
He leans forward and drops a kiss on the scar at my temple.
“Of course we can; I’ve got some work to catch up on anyway so we can go over there later. Go on up to bed and shout if you need anything.”
I hate it when he does that. There’s lots of other places he could kiss me, all of which would be preferable. He doesn’t realize it but each time he does it it’s like a reminder of what happened to me, a reminder that I’m damaged goods.
My damage happened long ago. I was just fourteen when I was hit on the head and at least seventeen before my faculties were sufficiently restored that I would attempt to eat soup again in polite company. They found me on a sun-gilded afternoon, cracked like a hapless egg, with the secret substance of me obscenely oozing into the light.
There was apparently little evidence of a struggle but I have struggled since. I have fought and clawed, tooth and nail, to bring myself back, to be the person I am today.
I wasn’t to blame. I wasn’t careless with my cranium. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, my little life colliding with someone else’s madness. Some people have told me I was lucky—although I struggle with their definition—and that it could’ve been much worse. I could now be no more than a distant memory, a ghost occasionally troubling the minds of those that once knew me. I am of course thankful that’s not the case but can’t help wondering what I might have been had the events of that summer not taken place, for something, if not my life, was taken from me.
The girl who woke up in that hospital bed was not the same one who violently fell asleep, so many days before. That girl was cocky and confident, with the naivete of youth. A mixture of innocence and attitude, ready to shrug off the constraints of childhood and sail out into the world. The girl who emerged was changed; scared and vulnerable, confused and crazy, a mixture of anger and apathy cast adrift. No pearl in the world’s oyster for her.
Time has healed, as the saying goes, but not completely for I am nowhere near the woman I was meant to be. I feel as if I’ve been two people, the me before and the me now. It’s as though some part of me escaped through the hole in my head; a wisp of the essence of me floating away across the playing fields never to return. I can’t put a name to what was lost yet some days I feel its absence like a missing piece of jigsaw—not a significant detail but perhaps a piece of the sky.
Even now, more than twenty years later, the events surrounding the incident remain stubbornly out of reach to me, an impenetrable blackness which time has done nothing to disperse. A deep dark hole lurks in my memory lane, which none of the therapies I’ve subjected myself to over the years have been able to patch and mend. I’ve long relinquished any real hope of knowing what happened to me or why.