Chapter 2
This is officially my first day as a doctor. Yet I wake shivering in my vampire-themed teenage single bed. My mum’s house is set at its customary erect-nipple temperature even though it is late October.
Objective reality: I am breathing. I am safe. I am warm … no, I’m not warm, they only ever heat this box room up for Christmas. Okay, anyway, I’m healthy …
Subjective reality: I AM FAILING AT EVERY CONCEIVABLE LEVEL.
The catastrophe of this whole thing has rendered me immobile.
I can’t move a muscle in my body, so I’m just going to lie here.
Forever. Flat on my back, staring at the ceiling of my yesteryear bedroom, rubbing my eyes as I study the Destiny’s Child Survivor Tour poster still suspended with Blu-Tack so old that it’s turned green.
Beyoncé, can you handle this? Kelly, can you handle this? Michelle, can you handle this? Poppy … Oh no, not me, not today. I definitely don’t think … in fact, no, I can’t, it is my professional opinion that I cannot handle this.
Look away, Bey Knowles, look away, this isn’t pretty or empowering in any way.
I turn my head into the corner of my pillow.
My black graduation gown is dumped in a crumpled heap at the base of the bed.
I vaguely recall throwing it there last night before collapsing into a pit of codeine-induced oblivion.
I don’t remember much else of last night.
There’s a hazy memory of me lying on the couch in my pyjamas, flicking through TV channels and drinking hot chocolate while Mum talked on and on about fate and destiny and new paths and embracing change and curves in the road and stuff at the end of the rainbow and how nice it was going to be for us to spend time together and eventually something would come up and all sorts of irrational fluffy fluff that people tend to print on souvenir fridge magnets or cross-stitch on to cushions.
Nice, well-meaning, but little more than frothy platitudes to keep the air moving between the rambling comforter and the person whose life is falling apart.
Then the questions and helpful suggestions started, which were just as well-meaning but downright annoying.
Why didn’t I give some old friends a call?
What did I want to eat?
What time should we eat?
Why didn’t I join her at aqua aerobics?
Maybe I should take a bath? Or go for a walk?
Why was I being so quiet?
In the end I had no energy for anything, so I nodded, apologised – just generally, for anything and everything – dragged my duvet back up the stairs, nicked a sleeping tablet from Frank’s emergency cabinet, shut my door and sank into the darkness, sobbing so hard that my jaw still aches.
And now it’s morning. And I have not dreamt this.
I am here, back in my parents’ house, fighting the cold shafts of light that stream in through the gaps in my blinds and muttering curses at the people setting up their stalls on the street below, banging and clanging, hitching and hoisting and getting on with their lives.
The south London dawn chorus of strident voices selling fish and fruit and flowers mixed with snatches of music and radio chat and cars and sirens and pneumatic drills.
The musical of my life set to Beyoncé anthems would probably be called Self-Destructilicious.
Or Crazy in Debt would also work. However, I already know that she won’t be up for collaborating on this gig; nope, not her style.
There are no redeeming features to this misery.
I survey the dusty shrine of my teenage self: plastic shelves lined with netball trophies and swimming medals; the small desk that Frank found in a churchyard skip littered with chewed pencils and stacks of outdated school books.
Dr Poppy Bloom, eh? What a joke. How the hell have things turned out this way?
Why am I back here? Winters, Harriet, Gregory …
the applause, the laughter, the heat creeping up my neck, the blast of cold air once I snapped open those metal doors.
I remember it all with razor-sharp clarity.
And I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it. I was close, but ultimately, I didn’t have what it takes. Not what they were looking for. Not up to scratch. I blow out my cheeks. I haven’t anything left. I’m here now, and I’m going to have to make the best of it.
A dog barks fiercely outside, then a car alarm starts to sound. The room is too bright to fall back to sleep, so I sigh, kick off the duvet and think about facing the day.
I shuffle downstairs, relieved that I’ve at least got the house to myself; a few hours without intense worried looks, very unsubtle nudges and – mainly – no questions. Though I will have to face my ex-dad at some point, and he’ll go in for the kill.
What do I mean, I haven’t got the fellowship?
What did I do wrong?
What did I do to lose it?
Why haven’t I applied anywhere else? Shouldn’t I really have been applying all year?
Am I not aware of the competition? The demand? The race for jobs? For placements? For experience? For that crucial foot in the door?
Isn’t it about time I stopped thinking and started doing?
I stop dead on the stairs and try to hold my brain together: calm down, Poppy, breathe, breathe, just concentrate on now.
I’ll get some breakfast and a nice cup of coffee and think about whatever I need to think about later.
But it won’t be long. He’ll be on the phone soon enough, and what will I tell him? What will he think?
My head starts swimming again. I scrunch my eyes shut as if it’s a proper strategy to shut down stressful thoughts.
I know I’ve got at least six hours of peace, as both my parents are at work.
Frank is the flower seller at the entrance to Brixton tube station, just around the corner, but my mum travels across London to work as a hairdresser in Holloway.
The majority of her clients are well known to the women’s prison there; Mum essentially just bleaches, shaves and spikes their hair in between sentences and when they are out on parole.
She’s worked there since I was a baby, so even when she met Frank and we moved into his house here in Brixton, she kept her job despite the hour-long tube commute.
I haven’t actually set foot through the doors of the salon since I was a toddler, around the time my mum and my ‘real’ dad split up.
It’s weird to think that I’m edging thirty, the same age they were when everything went tits-up for them.
I used to think that things could only go tits-up for grown-ups if you were incredibly reckless.
Obviously I’m reassessing that viewpoint now as a twenty-nine-year-old standing in a onesie in my mum’s kitchen, my only ambition for the day being not to see or speak to anyone.
I run my fingers through the knots in my hair, still full of kirby grips and sticky with the hairspray I used yesterday to secure my graduation hat against the wind. Twenty-four hours ago, that was my biggest concern. Oh, the naivety.
Even though my mum’s a hairdresser, I’ve never even let her give me a shampoo and blow-dry, never mind a cut and restyle. I know that sounds bad, but her skill set very much reflects her clientele’s tastes, and I’ve always worried about ending up with a crispy yellow bob or a badly shorn mullet.
Even though I tease her about the salon, she has never had a day off sick in her life, and when she effectively became a single parent with no money, it was that little salon that kept us afloat.
She loves the other hairdressers in Holloway, loves the women who come in to pour their hearts out about fights they’ve been in and men they’ve threatened, and the way they tip her in SIM cards, semi-defrosted trays of meat and anything she wants from Superdrug.
Maybe I should put an order in myself – is there such a thing as personality concealer?
Mood contouring? I could totally reinvent myself and nobody would ever know it was me.
I could return to Banbridge undetected, enrol as a new student and introduce myself as a more sociable, confident, charismatic version of myself. Dr Poppy Bloom take two.
Downstairs, I hear the landline ring from the hallway.
‘Hello?’
It’s my mum. ‘Are you awake, love?’
‘By virtue of me speaking to—’
‘Yes, yes, yes; why is your mobile off?’ She cuts me off. She hates it when I give smart answers. ‘I’ve been trying to ring you on your mobile, but a weird tone comes up.’
‘My mobile? I turned it off last night, remember, and took out the battery, because I didn’t feel like dealing with anyone,’ I remind her.
‘Okay, well, fine. Actually, I think that was very wise. But turn it on again now, will you, so we can track you if you go out.’
‘In what way do you want to track me?’
‘You know perfectly well what I mean – so we know where you are, so you don’t go and do anything silly.’
‘Mum, I’m fine. I just want to relax and take a break from everything, be by myself for a bit.’
The phone goes quiet. It sounds like she’s clapped her hand over the receiver and is whispering to someone; I can hear a deep, gravelly, hushed voice in the background.
Mum comes back on the line. ‘Surround yourself with people,’ she says.
‘Huh?’
‘Surround yourself with people. That’s a good piece of advice, don’t you think?’
‘No, and no. No, I won’t be doing that, and no, I don’t think it’s a good piece of advice.
I think it’s a patronising and ill-informed piece of advice.
I don’t want to see even one person, never mind throw myself into some kind of pseudo-social crowd surf because one of your clients watches Oprah and now thinks she can counsel me on what’s best. What would really, really be best for me right now is some decent coffee, and some food, and some heating, and for you to stop discussing my prob …
my current status with people who think feminism means shoplifting tampons. ’