Chapter 2
The motorbike rumbles beneath Phoebe’s leather-clad legs as she zips down the country lane, cherry-red hair trailing behind her in a blaze as it escapes from beneath her helmet. She had left the village quietly, aware of her neighbours still asleep in their beds, but now she has reached open countryside, she revs the engine, relishing the tiger’s purr that reverberates around her, sending a pheasant squawking up and into the air in the field beside her. She slows as she approaches a bend obscured by bushy hedgerows teeming with cow parsley and nettles, leaning her body with the bike. But then she turns onto a straight, wide road that cuts its way like an arrow across the green expanse of Somerset countryside. God love the Romans. She twists the throttle, really giving the crows on the telephone line above her something to flap about and making her heart race with the thrill of it.
The motorbike was a gift to herself on her thirtieth birthday five years ago. She’d always dreamt of owning one and it’s every bit as fantastic as she’d hoped. But Max has been on at her ever since they started dating three years ago to sell the bike and pool their resources on a new Land Rover. He says it would be more practical and that having the bike is irresponsible. But there’s no way in hell she’d ever let go of this. God knows she’s got enough responsibility in the rest of her life. When she’s out on the bike, she forgets everything else except the feeling of the wind on her face, the hyperfocus of following the curves of the road and feeling at one with the machine beneath her. Fat chance she’d feel like that behind the wheel of a bulky Land Rover. She keeps telling Max she’ll think about it, though.
She makes it to the supermarket as they are opening the doors, smiling at the sleepy staff and nipping inside for a pint of milk. Really, the milk is just an excuse. Mostly, Phoebe just needed to get out and clear her head. It’s been a long week. And it’s only Tuesday morning.
She lets herself back into the flat quietly, the silence telling her that Max is still asleep. Their apartment is above a shop, although the premises has been empty for a couple of months. Phoebe still misses the little newsagent that used to be there. The owner, Amit, was an ancient man who had the expression of someone who had seen some serious shit in his time, which Phoebe always appreciated because, despite being less than half his age, so has she. He never raised an eyebrow at a woman in her pyjamas clutching two bottles of wine and several packets of biscuits. He closed the shop when he retired and a new business is yet to move in. Phoebe thought she saw someone going inside yesterday but was running late for work so didn’t have time to investigate.
She unclips her bulky boots and unzips her leather jacket, hanging it on the peg. Underneath, she is already dressed for work, today opting for a denim shirt decorated with daisies that hugs her curves, the sleeves rolled up to reveal the tattoos that wind their way up her forearms. She tries to use her outfits to show when she turns up on someone’s doorstep that she’s a human being just like them, not just Community Mental Health Nurse Phoebe Harrison. It still doesn’t stop people shutting the door in her face sometimes. Not that she ever blames them. It’s a huge thing having a stranger come into your home wanting to give you meds and talk about the dark thoughts that have sent you down a spiral. She has to earn their trust before she can make any progress and, God, life hasn’t always given her patients many reasons to be trustful.
The open country roads she zoomed along earlier couldn’t feel further away as she grabs her laptop and immerses herself in prep for the day ahead. Even after all these years working as a mental health nurse, reading some of the new histories that have been added to her caseload still brings a lump to her throat. Not that she’d ever let anyone see it when she’s on the clock. At work, she’s as upbeat and chipper as her bright hair and fun outfits.
After an hour of work, she needs a break so grabs her phone to scroll through Instagram, craving the eye bleach of cute videos of pets being reunited with their owners or pictures of beautiful clothes she will never be able to afford to buy. As her finger drags its way across the screen, her attention snags on the holiday snaps of someone she went to school with but has fallen out of touch with, along with most of her friends, each lost one by one to her long hours and, later, their marriages and children. She never meant for it to happen and yet, as she’s got older, holding onto friends has felt like trying to clutch rainwater between her hands.
She flicks through glossy snapshots of sea, sunshine and heaped piles of pasta. A holiday. God, just the thought of it makes something inside her relax. When did she and Max last go on holiday? They had been planning a trip for the new year, but then a few of her patients had got really unwell – Christmas is always a hard time of year – so they’d had to cancel. And now it’s May and they’ve hardly spent any proper time together recently. She hasn’t been to visit her family in Cornwall for a long time either, she thinks guiltily, picturing her nan, who broke her hip a month ago, the final straw that led her to reluctantly leave her flat and move in with Phoebe’s parents.
She starts browsing a few holiday sites on her laptop, images of villas and beaches transporting her to a happier, sunnier place than her case notes and email inbox. As she scrolls, she can almost feel the sea breeze on her face, taste the pina coladas she and Max could drink in a little beach bar where she could feel the sand between her toes and watch the waves. Or maybe they could go for something more remote. A little log cabin in the woods somewhere, a place with no Wi-Fi or phone signal where no one could contact her, needing her. Where she could read a book and take a bath and actually find the energy to have sex with her boyfriend. They could even tag on a trip to Cornwall too on the way back, to see her family.
After extensive scrolling, she finds herself coming back to the first photos she saw on Instagram of her old friend’s Italian break. You can’t go wrong with Italy. Pizza, pasta, sunshine, wine. Perfection. Just the thought of it makes Phoebe smile.
But her patients … How would they cope if she went away for a week? It’s hard enough as it is to keep in touch with them when she’s working five days a week with more overtime than she’d ever admit. But she hasn’t used any of her holiday allowance for the year and still has some left over from last year too. Provided there are no emergencies and she finds cover for while she’s gone … Maybe she could?
A loud banging rises up through the floorboards.
‘Fuck!’ she lets out with a jump.
The building below has been empty long enough that Phoebe has got used to the quiet. But now she can make out muffled voices, followed by the sound of the radio. Glancing out the window, she spots a van parked up on the street below and a couple of guys heading to and fro, carrying boxes. She tries to make out any branding that might give her a hint about who her new neighbours might be, but there’s nothing discernible.
The sound of footsteps closer to hand makes her look up towards the doorway. ‘Oh hey, you’re up.’
Max is standing in the hallway, dressed but rubbing his eyes, a strand of his blond hair sticking up and making her heart skip a little.
‘How was last night?’ she asks him. ‘Sorry I couldn’t make it in the end. I’d hoped to get there in time to meet you all, but something came up …’
She tries not to talk too much about the specifics with Max, or anyone else for that matter. It doesn’t feel fair to offload this kind of stuff on others when she’s a trained professional and still finds it bloody hard sometimes. Plus, there’s the privacy of her patients to think about. Last night when she should have been at the pub with Max and a group of his mates there had been an emergency with one of her patients, Frank. He had started having serious suicidal thoughts, so Phoebe and the rest of the team had to arrange an emergency bed in the local hospital’s psychiatric ward where Phoebe used to work. As usual, they were pressed for beds, so it took hours. Phoebe waited with Frank all the same though, right past the end of her shift and all the way to the hospital, holding his hand in the back of the ambulance.
‘I do know,’ Max says, his tone making her recoil slightly. He probably just needs coffee.
She gets up to make him a cup, slipping in a dash of vanilla syrup when he isn’t looking. She knows he likes his coffee milky and sweet, but he would never in a million years order a vanilla latte in a coffee shop, thinking it emasculating. He’d rather wince his way through an espresso than ask for what he actually wants, the silly bastard. Hopefully the dash of vanilla will help sweeten his mood, and maybe her guilt too at being the cause of it. But what was she supposed to do? She was hardly going to leave Frank on his own last night or even with one of the other nurses who offered to take over when her shift was up. Frank didn’t know them, he knows her.
Once the coffee is ready, they sit down opposite one another at the table.
‘Thanks,’ Max says, wrapping his hands around the mug. ‘What’s all this, then?’ He points at Phoebe’s phone, where one of the holiday sites is still displayed on the screen.
The excitement returns to Phoebe’s voice as she replies. ‘Oh, yeah. So, I know we haven’t spent much proper time together recently. Things for me have been kind of hectic …’
‘You could say that again,’ remarks Max. ‘It wasn’t just last night. Remember my birthday?’ He takes a sip of his coffee and his face relaxes slightly with the pleasure of it, making Phoebe have to hide a smile.
‘I know. And I’m sorry, you know I felt awful about that.’
His birthday had been a tough one. She’d organised the whole thing – a dinner at his favourite local pub with his family and his closest friends. She’d even made a cake, staying up late to get it ready because the time she’d put aside for it had got eaten up by catching up on important paperwork. OK, so it maybe wasn’t the world’s best cake – it looked absolutely nothing like the picture she’d found online and suspiciously like it might topple over at any moment – but it was a cake and she was proud of it.
But just as she was preparing to leave work and get ready for their evening, she had got a call from a patient who was in crisis. The voices had been getting louder and louder and had now started giving him instructions. They wanted him to hurt himself and he didn’t know what to do.
By the time Phoebe eventually arrived at the pub hours later, the meal was finished and Max was paying the bill. She’d tried to explain the situation, but the idea of voices had always perplexed Max.
‘Can’t he just ignore them?’
Phoebe tried her best to explain how real the voices were to her patients who experienced them, trying to get Max to imagine how he would feel if the same thing happened to him. She’s thought about it a lot over her career and has always believed it would be absolutely bloody terrifying. But he didn’t seem to understand and she was too exhausted to try to explain any further. Even the cake she presented him with at home hadn’t helped to lift the mood.
‘I know you’re fed up with how much I work, but I really want to make it up to you. I think we should go on holiday. It could be just what we need. A proper break. A chance to spend some time together.’
She reaches across the table for his hand, but he lifts it up to his coffee mug at the last minute.
‘You really want to go on holiday?’ he asked, meeting her eye. ‘But you always say you’re too busy. Remember New Year?’
God, she had hoped it would be easier than this. But he’s probably right to not let her off the hook so easily. She probably has been a pretty shit girlfriend.
‘I know. But I really want to make it work this time. How about Italy? Sunshine, enormous pizzas … It’ll be great.’
Max downs the last of his coffee and places the empty mug carefully on the table.
‘I don’t think we should go to Italy.’
‘OK, well somewhere else then. France? Spain? There’s wine and good food there too.’
But he shakes his head. ‘I don’t think we should go on holiday at all.’
‘Is it the cost? Because I was worried about that too, but I know you’re hoping for that promotion soon and I have a little bit saved …’
She’d always hoped that by thirty-five she might own her own place rather than still be renting and have more than the most meagre savings in the bank. It doesn’t help that her brother is a high-flying lawyer who goes on both a beach and ski holiday each year with his family. But she didn’t go into this career for the money – she would have been pretty disappointed if she did – although she’s been right there on all the various marches and picket lines over the years, trying to fight for better rights for nurses.
Since moving in together, Max has covered more of the household expenses than her because he earns far more in his job at a start-up tech company. He never seems to mind, but it weighs on her. She does what she can.
‘It’s not the cost,’ he replies.
‘OK …’ She really doesn’t want to have to do this right now but finds herself sneaking a quick glance at the time on her phone. Shit, she needs to leave soon. Her first patient of the day, Maude, lives a twenty-minute ride away. Her patients are spread out all over the local area. ‘Do you not think you could get time off work?’ she asks Max, trying her best not to show that she’s itching to grab her leathers and go. ‘We could go in a couple of months if that would work better for you?’
‘It’s not that.’ Max rakes his fingers through his hair again. ‘God, I didn’t want to do it like this.’
He looks up at her and as his eyes meet hers again, she realises how wrong she’s got this conversation. How wrong she’s been getting it all.
‘Phoebe, I have to tell you something.’