The ex-boyfriend, I thought, was another piece of the puzzle, but there had to be more, obviously. Still, I assumed that if she ever wanted to tell me the rest, she would do it in her own time. I wasn’t going to press the issue, and she was quick to shift the conversation back to my problems.
‘You live together, right? You and the boyfriend?’
I nodded.
‘So what’s going to happen next?’ she asked. ‘You know, once you’re out of here. You gonna move out?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. For a while at least. In all honesty, I haven’t really thought that part through. But my options are pretty limited; I can’t afford much. I’ve got this massive credit card debt to pay, and I’m still going to be contributing my half of the rent on the flat. For the next couple of months, anyway.’
Melody shrugged. ‘Stay at mine if you want. I’ll ask my mum, next time she’s in.’
This offer was so unexpected and unthinkingly generous – albeit on her mother’s behalf – that I was at a loss for words for several seconds. Then I reacted as anyone would. ‘Oh, no, I really couldn’t impose like that. I mean, thank you – really, thank you – but—’
‘You can pay if it makes you feel better,’ Melody interrupted. ‘I give Mum sixty quid a week for rent and bills. You can afford that, right? Just sell a few of them magazine articles and you’re sorted. You got any more up your sleeve?’
I smiled. ‘Perhaps. I’d promised to write this piece for the Observer; God knows what’s going to happen with that. But, anyway, I still think it might be a bit unfair on your mother, having a complete stranger in the house.’
‘Oh, she wouldn’t mind. She’s good like that. I mean it’s not a palace, obviously – it’s a council flat in Acton – so you might have to kip on the sofa. Or you can have my room, if I’m not out by then, except . . . well, I think I might be.’ Melody smiled, a little shyly. ‘Lisa’s been talking about me becoming an outpatient. I’d just have to come back here a couple of times a week for therapy.’
I have to admit I was surprised by this, though I’m not sure why. A number of other patients had been released since I’d arrived on Amazon; it wasn’t as if the hospital was meant to provide long-term accommodation. I suppose it was just that I took Melody’s continual presence here for granted. I saw her so many times a day she was like part of the décor.
‘That’s great,’ I said, after a small hesitation. ‘You must be pleased.’
‘Yeah, I guess. Pleased, scared – you know what it’s like.’
I nodded. Because I did know, and I realized then how rare that probably was. It was strange: Melody and I had so little in common in so many ways – it was inconceivable that we would have become friends outside this place – and yet I felt we understood each other on a much deeper level. With Melody, I didn’t have to explain or justify concepts that others would have found irrational, just as she didn’t have to explain to me why she liked to cut herself.
That was the reason, I think, why the idea of staying with Melody once we were out of here no longer seemed so outlandish; or not for the next few hours.
That afternoon, I had an extra session booked with Dr Hadley. We’d agreed it would be sensible, in case I needed to talk after Beck’s visit. However, it also meant that Dr Hadley had been forced to rearrange her schedule and slot me into the gap between two other appointments – an hour that would usually have been free office time. Consequently, she had had a very busy day, and was uncharacteristically flustered before our session.
She was coming out of her office as I was about to knock on the door, her cheeks flushed and her lips pursed. ‘Oh, Abby.’ She gave a small, tired smile. ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten. Can you just give me a couple of minutes? You can wait inside if you like.’
I went in.
Dr Hadley was a compulsively tidy woman. I’d never seen her office looking anything but immaculate, and even now, it wouldn’t have been called messy by any normal standards. There was just a handful of signs that today had been exceptionally fraught: a pen on the floor, an unwashed coffee cup, a pink Post-it stuck to the side of her computer screen. But as I sat down in my usual chair, I found these details made me smile a little. Being in an NHS hospital, Dr Hadley’s office was inevitably rather plain and institutional, lacking the more personal touches I was used to from my therapy with Dr Barbara. But in addition, I’d often thought that this environment reflected something of her personality. She’d always projected a kind of austere professionalism that was difficult to warm to. So witnessing even this limited disorder felt quite refreshing; it was nice to see her human side.
I reached down to pick up the fallen pen and then placed it back in Dr Hadley’s pen pot, and as I did, I glimpsed what was written on the pink Post-it note:
Call CRT re: Melody Black.
It seemed completely innocuous at first – and in every normal sense it was. It wasn’t personal or sensitive information. CRT, I knew, was the Community Rehabilitation Team, and from this I guessed it must be something to do with what Melody had told me that morning, about her possibly becoming an outpatient. But it wasn’t this content that caused me to smile again. It was Melody’s name.
Odd as it may sound, I hadn’t known Melody’s surname up to this point. Mrs Chang aside, I don’t think there was another service user whose surname I did know. We only ever used first names, as did the staff when they addressed us. So this was the first time I knew Melody as ‘Melody Black’, and straight away it was a name I loved. It was so gloomy and lyrical it could have been a line from a Sylvia Plath poem.
There was something more than this, though – some other connection that I couldn’t yet put my finger on. I thought, at first, that it was just a strange feeling of aptness, as if the two words now resonating in my consciousness were someone’s taut synopsis of all the beauty and darkness of the past seven weeks.
It must have taken mere moments for the full revelation to hit me – and this really was how it felt. It was the Dorchester all over again; I’d been slapped full force across the cheek.
Of course, later I’d spend hours trying to convince myself that I might be wrong, that I was suffering from some kind of massive delusion. But the truth is I knew. In that precise instant, all the pieces of the puzzle – the conversations with Melody about her dad, the peculiar gaps in her backstory, even the fact that she looked weirdly familiar – fell into place. And this left no room for doubt.
Simon’s surname had been Black.
Melody was Simon’s daughter.
21
A HUGE FUCKED-UP COINCIDENCE
I ran.
I didn’t make any conscious decision, didn’t think about how it would look or where I was going. The problem, of course, was that I was on a locked ward; there was nowhere I could go. But I only realized this when I was out of Dr Hadley’s office and halfway down the corridor, and at that point, biology took over. I darted past a bemused-looking nurse and into the nearest bathroom, where I vomited in the sink.
I wish I could say it was cathartic, but it wasn’t. I kept retching long after there was nothing left to come up, and I was still bent over the sink when Dr Hadley started talking to me through the door, which I’d only managed to half close.
‘Abby? I’m coming in. Is that okay?’
It wasn’t okay, but I couldn’t speak to tell her this; when I tried, I felt my stomach starting to heave again.