At home I lie in my bed, totally still, totally silent, with the curtains drawn and earplugs in. For about three hours. I don’t move a muscle. Sometimes I feel as if I’m a phone, and this is the only way I can recharge. Dr Sarah says my body is on an adrenalin roller coaster, and that’s why I lurch from totally wired to totally fatigued, with nothing in between.
At last, feeling wobbly, I head downstairs for something to eat. I write a text to Dr Sarah – I went to Starbucks but I had a meltdown – and send it off. The dark, ill thoughts have gone, but they’ve left me feeling weak and jittery.
I drift into the kitchen, and wince as I pass my reflection in the mirror. I look pale and kind of . . . I don’t know. Shrunken. It’s like the flu. It attacks you and your whole body takes the hit. I’m just considering whether to make a Nutella sandwich or a cheese one when I hear a rattling sound from the hall, and something dropping onto the mat, and I jump a mile.
For a moment there’s silence. I’ve tensed up all over like an animal in a trap, but I tell myself firmly, I am safe, I am safe, I am safe, and my heart rate slowly drops, and at last I wander out to see what it is.
It’s a note, on the doormat – a piece of lined paper torn out of a notebook with Audrey written in Linus’s handwriting. I open it to see:
Are you OK? I texted but you didn’t reply. Frank didn’t reply either. I didn’t want to ring the doorbell and shock you. Are you OK??
I haven’t even looked at my phone since I texted Dr Sarah. And Frank’s at the garden show, in the countryside. He probably hasn’t got any signal. I imagine Frank, grimly tramping around some field, and raise a faint smile. He’ll be in such a bad mood.
Through the ripply glass of the front door I suddenly notice a kind of shadowy movement, and my heart catches. Oh God. Is that Linus, there? Is he waiting? For what?
I reach for a pen, and think for a moment.
I’m fine, thank you. Sorry I freaked out.
I push it back through the letter box. It’s a bit difficult because there’s a spring, but I manage it. A moment later, it reappears.
You looked really bad. I was worried.
I stare at his words, my heart falling like a stone. Really bad. I looked really bad. I ruin everything.
Sorry.
Somehow I can’t find anything to put except that one word, so I write it again.
Sorry. Sorry.
And I post the letter back through the letter box. Almost at once the page is pushed back with his reply:
No, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. In Starbucks, what were you thinking?
I wasn’t expecting that. For a few moments I don’t move. I’m hunched on the doormat, thoughts running through my head like ticker tape. Do I answer? What do I answer?
Do I want to tell him what I was thinking?
The voice of that therapist from St John’s keeps running through my head; the one who used to take the ‘Self Assertion’ workshop. We do not have to reveal ourselves. She used to say it every week. We are all entitled to privacy. You do not have to share anything with others, however much they may ask you. Photos, fantasies, plans for the weekend . . . they’re yours. She used to look around the room almost sternly. You do NOT have to share them.
I don’t have to share with Linus what I was thinking. I could walk away. I could write, Oh, nothing! Or You don’t want to know!!!;) Like it’s all a big joke.
But somehow . . . I want to share. I don’t know why, but I do. I trust him. And he’s on the other side of the door. It’s all safe. Like in a confessional.
Before I can change my mind, I scrawl,
I was thinking, ‘I’m a total failure, I shouldn’t exist, what’s the point of me?’
I shove it through the letter box, sit back on my heels and blow out, feeling a strange satisfaction. There. Enough pretending. Now he knows just how weird the inside of my mind is. I hold my breath, trying to glean his reaction on the other side of the door, but there’s silence. The ripply glass is still. I can’t detect any response at all. I think he must have gone. Of course he’s gone. Who would stay?
Oh God, am I nuts? Why would I write down my most warped thoughts and post them through a letter box to the one guy I actually like? Why would I do this?
Totally deflated, I get to my feet, and I’ve reached the kitchen door when I hear a rattling. I whip round – and there’s a reply on the doormat. My hands are trembling as I grab it and at first I can’t focus properly. It’s a new page, covered in writing, and it begins,
What’s the point of you? Try this for starters.
And underneath there’s a long list. He’s written a long, long list that fills the page. I’m so flustered, I can’t even read it properly, but as I scan down I catch beautiful smile and great taste in music (I sneaked a look at your iPod) and awesome Starbucks name.
I give a sudden snort of laughter that almost turns to a sob and then turns to a smile, and then suddenly I’m wiping my eyes. I’m all over the place.
With a rattle, another note plops through the letter box and I jerk in shock. What more can he have to say? Not another great big list, surely? But it says:
Will you open the door?
A flurry of alarm races through me. I can’t let him see my shrunken, pale, ratty self. I just can’t. I know Dr Sarah would tell me I’m not shrunken or ratty, I’m imagining it, but she’s not here, is she?
Not quite up to it. Another time. Sorry, sorry . . .
I hold my breath after I’ve posted the page. He’ll be offended. He’ll leave. That’s it, all over, before it even began . . .
But then the letter box rattles yet again and a reply comes through:
Understood. I’ll be off then.
My spirits plunge. He is leaving. He is offended. He hates me, I should have opened the door, I should have been stronger, I’m so stupid . . . I’m just trying desperately to think what I can write when another page drops onto the mat. It’s folded over, and on the outside is written:
Had to give you this before I go.
For a few moments I don’t dare read it. But at last I open it up and stare at the words inside. My head is prickling all over with disbelief. My breath is jumpy as I read it. He wrote that. He wrote that. To me.
It’s a kiss.
At St John’s, they tell you not to keep rewinding your thoughts and going over old ground. They tell you to live in the present, not the past. But how are you supposed to do that when a boy you like has just kind of, virtually, kissed you?
By the time I see Dr Sarah at my next session I’ve replayed the scene like a million times and now I’m wondering if the whole thing was just him winding me up, or having something to laugh about with his friends, or was he just being polite? I mean, does he feel sorry for me? Was it a pity kiss? Oh God. It was so a pity kiss. (Not that I’m an expert on kisses. I have kissed precisely one boy in my life, which was on holiday last year and it was gross.)
Dr Sarah listens politely for about half an hour as I blabber on about Linus. And then we talk about ‘mind-reading’ and ‘catastrophizing’, just like I knew we would. I think I could be a therapist myself, sometimes.