Lisa hadn’t known what to expect when she got there. Even now, she had no idea what was going on. All she knew for sure was what the nurses had been willing to tell her, that Rebecca was being discharged and treated as an out-patient.
Rebecca hadn’t spoken to her. The whole way home she’d seemed so angry. Angry with Lisa too, she guessed. Which Lisa had been expecting. For not sticking up for her, for not being able to do anything about Rebecca being sectioned.
Lisa had been dreading what state she’d find Rebecca in.
‘I’m fine. I’m just exhausted. And I need to see Ella,’ Rebecca says, eagerly pushing the door open. But the minute she’s inside the house she senses that something’s not right.
The house feels cold and echoey. There’s an eeriness that tells her that there’s no one home. ‘Jamie?’ she calls out, but she already knows she won’t get an answer as she scans the coat pegs in the hallway and sees that his is gone. The space on the shoe rack that hold his boots is empty.
This is why he didn’t come and collect her.
‘Why isn’t he here? Why wasn’t he waiting by the phone to hear when I’d be coming home?’ Her voice shakes with raw emotion. She’s been so desperate to get home, to see her daughter. Jamie would know that too. How eager she’d be to reunite with Ella. How it physically pained her to be away from the child. It had felt as if a part of her was missing. ‘Is this his way of punishing me? For what? For not being well? Where’s he taken her?’
She’d had a feeling something like this would happen when the nurses Lisa was coming instead. Rebecca had dutifully nodded. Not giving them any kind of reaction.
Focusing instead on the full assessment that the doctor insisted she complete before they discharged her and listening carefully to her instructions about taking her new medication instead.
‘Jamie?’ she called again, climbing the stairs, in the vain hope that maybe he just hadn’t heard her. She ran from room to room, with Lisa following closely behind her trying to calm her down. ‘Maybe he just took Ella out for some fresh air. He might just need a bit of space? You’ve both had a manic couple of days.’
‘Space? He had that last night when he walked out and left me all alone in a fucking mental hospital. He can’t do this, Lisa. He can’t just take Ella from me,’ Rebecca screeched, trying her hardest to stay rational and in control even if the last few days had thrown her whole life off balance. Her whole world seemed upside down. And the only thing she knew with absolute certainty was that she missed Ella so much it was like a physical pain. ‘He’s got no right. He’s got no bloody right!’
‘Rebecca, I really think you should try to calm down. Wherever he is, I’m sure he’ll be back soon and when he does come back, the last thing you want is to be in a state. You need to keep calm. Think of Ella.’
‘Oh, please, Lisa! Ella is all I ever think about,’ Rebecca said, angry at her sister-in-law for making such a flippant comment after everything she’d been through. She’d thought about nothing else but Ella.
Her daughter was her entire life and Lisa knew that.
‘This is your brother’s way of punishing me. He’s done this on purpose. He’s taken Ella away from me.’
Flinging open the wardrobe in her bedroom, Rebecca’s worst fears were confirmed as she noted the empty space where some of Jamie’s clothes usually hung. She raised her eyes towards Lisa then, as if she’d just proved her point.
‘I bet he’s taken Ella’s stuff too.’
Running into the nursery, Rebecca pulls open the drawers in the dresser, her hand sweeping the small pile of baby grows Jamie left behind.
She runs down the stairs her head spinning as she wrenches the hallway cupboard open, eyeing the empty space that normally occupies the pushchair and travel cot.
‘He’s taken her,’ Rebecca said, turning to see Lisa standing awkwardly on the bottom step. ‘The bastard’s taken her. He is doing this to punish me, isn’t he? He’s doing this to hurt me.’
‘Why on earth would Jamie want to hurt you, to punish you, Rebecca? He’s worried about you. We are all worried about you,’ Lisa said, doing her best to calm Rebecca down, but realising it was proving an impossible task.
Rebecca was on the edge, hands trembling, and her voice shook with raw emotion every time she spoke. She was hysterical and Lisa wondered if the hospital had got her diagnosis wrong.
‘You can’t see it. No one else can see it. This was all his plan. He’s behind all this. He wants to make it look like I’m going mad. He’s been setting me up.’
‘Why would he do that?’ Lisa said, watching as Rebecca slipped into the office and booted up the computer, before picking up the phone from the desk and dialling a number.
‘He’s worried sick about you,’ Lisa said now, tactfully, aware that Rebecca wasn’t making much sense. ‘Maybe he just wanted to give you some time to yourself. You’ve been through so much the past few days. Maybe he thinks that a break from Ella would do you good?’
‘I don’t need a fucking break from Ella. She’s my daughter. I want to see her!’ Biting down on her lip, Rebecca suppresses her scream as she listens to the dial tone, before the call goes straight through to voicemail, just as she expected it to.
Rebecca leaves a message.
‘Jamie, where are you? This isn’t fair…’ She’s sobbing now, her words barely coherent. ‘You can’t just take her from me? I haven’t done anything wrong.’
Holding the phone to her cheek, she knows it’s useless. That her pleas will fall on deaf ears.
‘He won’t answer.’ She hangs up the phone and flings it down on the desk in anger, before frantically searching through Jamie’s desk, pulling all the drawers open and searching through the piles of paperwork, looking for some sort of clue as to where he might have gone.
‘Do you know where he is, Lisa? Please if you do, you have to tell me.’
‘No, Becks. Of course I don’t.’
‘How did he seem last night, when he came back from the hospital? Did he seem angry? Did he say anything at all?’ Rebecca asked, searching Lisa’s face for clues.
Lisa had told her in the car on the way home how well behaved Ella had been when she’d looked after her last night. Wanting to put Rebecca’s mind at ease, she’d told her how she hadn’t woken up until the early hours of the morning and how Lisa had fed and changed her just as Jamie had walked back through the door.
She’d said it was weird how no one could reach Jamie, but she’d played it down.
Not wanting to stress Rebecca out any further than she already was.
‘He was fine,’ Lisa said resolutely. ‘Worried, exhausted.’ She shrugged. ‘You know my brother… he doesn’t give much away.’
Rebecca scoffed, bitterly.
‘He said you were in safe hands, that the doctors were looking after you, and then he poured himself a large Scotch. He was sitting on the couch staring into space for a while, and in the end, he told me to go home. He said that he was going to try get some sleep.’
‘And that’s the last you saw of him?’
Lisa nodded her head.
‘The next thing I heard was the nurse on the phone asking if I would come and collect you, I tried his phone to see what was going on, but he didn’t answer.’
Making her way towards Rebecca, she crouches down beside her and wraps her arm around her. ‘Rebecca, please. You need to stay calm. We will sort this. Jamie will be home before you know it. Everything will be okay. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. Jamie would never just purposely keep Ella from you without a good reason. He knows how much you worry about her,’ Lisa says, trying to appease her sister-in-law, though she’s angry at Jamie now too.