Chapter 38
38
ELENA
Elena sat in Rory’s apartment, shivering. He put on the heating and fetched a blanket. She huddled under it on the floral sofa. Like his dress sense, the apartment’s décor was fluid, with a chintzy sofa and armchair holding their own amongst minimalist wooden side tables and shelves. Curtains hung at the windows instead of blinds, with multi-coloured decorations fixed to the plain magnolia walls, like the hanging alpaca blanket from Peru. However, the kitchen and bathroom renovations had both been practical, with marble fittings in grey, black and white. The apartment smelt of fresh paint and sawdust. Elena inspected his shelves, as she did on every visit. There was always a new souvenir from a sports trip to join the ones he already had, like the Matryoshka nested dolls and the Thai soap carving. He rambled on about the dust, joking that he’d need to get industrial cleaners in when the builders had finished.
She took out her phone and texted Gary, saying the cocktail had gone to her head – that she and Rory were going home. He sent back a row of winking face emojis, followed by the words Do it . Perhaps Gary was right. She should tell Rory how she felt. It couldn’t make his opinion of her worse.
‘The renovations are beautiful,’ she said instead of ‘doing it’. ‘Real quality. You must be over the moon.’
He came over from his hot chocolate machine and handed her a steaming mug. He snuggled under the blanket with her. ‘Yep. Good craftsmanship apart from a couple of small issues. Also, the crew is more or less on target, timewise.’
‘About earlier and me leaving the pub,’ she said. ‘The cocktail made me feel a bit woozy and?—’
He looked her dead in the eyes. ‘I didn’t know that fact about cats or midnight either.’
Dear Rory. Always so understanding. ‘I’ve got something I want to talk to you about,’ she said, heart thumping loudly in her ears.
‘Me too,’ he said and took a large mouthful of the creamy, sweet drink, wincing as it was still too hot.
‘You go first,’ she said with relief. She needed a hit of chocolate first.
‘Sure?’
Quickly, she raised the mug to her lips.
Rory pulled down the bit of the blanket covering him and turned sideways to face her. ‘It’s more of a question really – that might shed some light on what happened years ago.’
‘But… don’t you, like Morag, believe that children’s book provides all the answers?’
‘Huh? Not all. Not in my opinion.’
Was there a chance he didn’t think her ridiculous?
He put down her mug too, and took her hands. ‘Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that you did get confused and there really wasn’t a promise made…’
‘One was ,’ she said, face pinched .
‘Okay. But can you recall any episode in your life where you’ve convinced yourself that something bad has happened – but it hadn’t really?’
She pursed her lips.
‘It’s important, Elena,’ he said gently.
She thought hard. ‘Nope.’
‘Nothing at all, where you’ve been convinced of something that would make no sense to anyone else?’
She broke eye contact. Well, there was that thing that happened at school. She was sixteen. It had felt like the end of the world. But it was nothing; she’d just been a stupid teen.
‘Elena?’ he pushed gently.
She sighed. ‘It was just me being weird as a teenager, during a stressful time. I don’t see how it’s relevant.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘I revised really hard for my GCSEs. The pupils I hung out with were straight-A people and I wanted to be the same. It… it happened right at the beginning of the exam period. I came home from a chemistry paper. I’d had a crisis of confidence halfway through and panicked afterwards, convinced I’d failed. It was the first exam and it really affected me. I didn’t perform as well as I reckoned I should have, in the following ones. I worried about it all summer, hardly sleeping, telling myself I wouldn’t be allowed to do the A levels I was interested in, telling myself I’d let my parents down. But then the results came through and I more or less got straight As. I don’t know why, but the idea popped into my head that the exam board had made a mistake and muddled my results with another pupil’s, especially as a couple of people in my class were devastated by their unexpectedly bad results – and one of them had a similar surname to me. That mere idea became a solid belief, fed by doubt – it grew and grew. I didn’t say anything as it would have sounded stupid, but ke eping quiet made me feel even more guilty, even less deserving.’
‘Did you know it wasn’t true at the time?’
‘Deep down, yes. You remember what pupils are like – every exam we came out talking about our answers, and mine were the same as my bright friends who also got As. I could appreciate that, when the results came through, but even that logic didn’t erase the doubts in my mind about being given the wrong results, not at the time. That logic couldn’t overpower the ‘what if’ voice. Mum and Dad were so proud when I opened my results, but this obsession clung on tight. I pretended to be happy, but as soon as the fuss died down, I went up to my room and cried and cried.’
‘You’ve come to terms with the truth now?’
‘It took several years. Told you it was weird.’
Rory took her hand. ‘I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been. But… there’s someone who could.’
Elena raised an eyebrow.
‘The reason I went to see Julian on Sunday… I hope you don’t mind, Elena, but I told him about the woods and the children’s book, because he’s been through a similar thing.’
She sat more upright. ‘He met a fortune teller as a child? Did Julian make a deal? Did it come true?’
‘No, nothing like that. He was doing voluntary work at an animal shelter that had a veterinary wing. A favourite patient he’d been working on, an Alsatian dog, rescued from years of abuse, died, despite him insisting on personally giving around-the-clock care. Julian was approaching exam time. He’d convinced himself he’d killed the dog in a cruel way, that he’d let it die on purpose; that the animal had looked him straight in the eye as it passed, knowing that Julian had effectively murdered it. He couldn’t shake this off for a couple of years, telling himself he was a bad vet and it would only happen again. After he recovered from this, like you, Julian put it down to him being… odd, the whole episode simply being one of the quirks of his personality.’
What has this got to do with Elena’s story? Exam time was stressful; they’d both simply let the pressure get to them. This had nothing to do with that night on the common.
‘Then a few years ago, when he went through a difficult divorce…’
‘Julian’s been married?’
‘He doesn’t talk about it often… Things turned ugly, and what with a busy career, bad stress kicked in again. Julian went through a phase – it lasted about a year – of convincing himself he knocked pets over with his car and killed them – that he was guilty of multiple hit-and-runs and leaving the animals to die in pain and their owners bereft. Driving to and from work became increasingly upsetting as he kept having to park up and go back and check the street behind him. Eventually, he broke down in front of his boss when he was late, yet again, for his shift.’
Poor Julian. But what had this got to do with her?
‘It’s called False Memory OCD, Elena. False memories about the sufferer doing something wrong. The hit-and-run subcategory is, sadly, a popular one, with sufferers believing they’ve hit and killed passersby. For you, it’s been believing you did a terrible thing: for selfish reasons, tampering with the course of nature, risking awful consequences for your mother.’
‘OCD?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Is that what this chat is about? Me having a mental health problem? Come on, Rory. No way. Not me. I mean… I like checking things and?—’
‘Exactly. The tendency has always been there. I did a little research – hope that isn’t overstepping – but being bullied at school might have triggered it. That phrase you told me your gran would always say: “It costs nothing to double-check.” That probably fed into it. Gayle, your parents, they were aware of how super safety-conscious you were as a child – unusually so. It’s always struck me how safety aware you are too, even though I’ve only known you for a year. Then your routines have become heightened in recent weeks due to the stress of your approaching birthday.’
He meant to help, that much was clear, but Rory couldn’t have been more wrong.
‘I saw a documentary about OCD once,’ she said. ‘This woman had to stare at the hob for two hours, each night, to make sure it wasn’t still on. Another spent the whole of her day doing housework, terrified of dust collecting. I’ve never been that bad! OCD hugely disables people’s lives. It’s insulting to them that you think that’s what my problems have been about. A few bolts on the door and double-checking windows, that’s nothing in comparison.’ She wasn’t up all night, washing her hands; wasn’t paranoid about catching germs. Her food tins weren’t colour-coordinated. No, rational Elena had a successful career, a beautiful house. No illness had held her back.
‘Suffering for years about false guilt over exam results? Believing you’d made a reckless pact that would end your life? I’d say that’s been equally as disabling and painful.’
Elena gave him a fixed stare. In Rory’s opinion, she was seriously, mentally ill. But if that were the case, she’d never have coped all these years. ‘Look. You’re mistaken. Leave it. I appreciate the time you’ve taken looking into this, but I haven’t got OCD. I’d know if I had.’
‘Julian didn’t. Not when he was in the midst of it.’
She scrambled to her feet. ‘For God’s sake, stop, man! I’m not listening to this rubbish.’ Because accepting she had that mental illness would mean admitting that… that… she hadn’t coped at all; that the stress she’s suffered hadn’t been about saving Mum, a belief that had made the last two decades bearable. No, it would mean that the time she’d spent these last years playing it safe and worrying was down to something truly imaginary that her brain alone had created.
What a waste that would have been. What a pointless tragedy.
Rory had misjudged this completely. Elena had been instrumental in saving her Mum’s life, and that was a price she’d always been willing to pay. How dare Rory try to take that away from her?
‘There’s one more thing,’ he said quietly.
Why was he doing this? Her heartbeat raced. Elena’s fists curled; her face screwed up. ‘I’m not interested in your amateur theories! You’re going too far now. This is all highly offensive.’
‘But you’ve mentioned the two words that plague sufferers of OCD. What if . What if it happened? What if I did it? The two words that eat away at any common sense and?—’
‘That’s enough! I’m leaving! Alone!’
‘Elena… I… I didn’t mean to upset you,’ he stuttered and rubbed his forehead. ‘But surely it’s good to know? Now you can get treatment and get rid of your guilt – Julian said that feeling is a massive part of it.’
Her breath hitched. Rory didn’t see her as someone who’d valiantly emerged from trauma stronger, but as someone who needed fixing, instead of a person who’d saved the life of another. ‘You can forget coming back to mine.’ Her voice trembled. ‘Your apartment’s renovation is almost completed. It’s time to move out of my place and… and’ – her voice rose – ‘take those fucking stick insects with you. I’ll pack up your stuff and bring it into work tomorrow. ’
Rory winced and he stood up too. ‘Elena, let’s talk this over. Look, I’m sorry if?—’
‘Why would you inflict a mental illness on me? Does it make you feel like a bigger person, thinking that I’m nuts?’
His jaw dropped.
‘I am Elena Swan.’ Her voice shook. ‘I have a solid marketing career. I was just ten years old when I sacrificed everything to save my mum. Maybe it was selfish, maybe I risked angering some dark force, but… but I was a child, and it’s… it’s been so fucking hard for me. I am not ill. I am of sound mind. You ask anyone who’s ever known me.’ A sob escaped her lips. ‘I held my family together when it mattered, when the grown-ups were panicking about Mum dying. It was me who saved her and this is the thanks I get for it?’
Fist in her mouth, she ran towards the door, yanked it open and slammed it shut behind her.