Chapter 13
While they all waited to discover which of those options it would be, Aggie and Jemima had put her on a bright red bus, given her a colourful map, the small glossy black rectangle, and left her to her own devices for the morning.
A man in an amusing hat had told stories about London as she and the other passengers on the roaring, smelly contraption had been driven around the bustling streets. He had looked at her with increasing bemusement as she went round a second, then a third time.
Finally she alighted outside Buckingham Palace and made her way towards Hyde Park. This at least felt familiar. Grass was always grass, and pigeons were always pigeons.
She sat on a bench and poked at the shiny black thing in her hand until it lit up, scaring her enough to make her drop it.
Thankfully it fell onto the grass and remained intact.
After that, Aggie had somehow appeared to collect her, clutching two paper cups full of hot coffee.
Apparently the shiny black thing could also tell people where she was. Quite miraculous.
Hetty had sworn she’d never see a doctor again after all those she’d seen in her childhood.
She’d been poked and prodded, offered all kinds of potions and lotions (many of which had made her very seriously ill) and had, at one particularly low point, been given daily ice baths.
Nothing had helped. Especially not the leeches.
So it was with extreme trepidation that she sat in the stark waiting room, with Jemima knitting a strange lumpy pink object to her left. Something about test … test-tic … well, some form of cancer? Hetty didn’t dare ask any more.
The truth was, she’d decided on her bus trip this morning that it was worth a go. If she’d managed to find a way through time, surely she could find a way through the darkness.
Jemima had helped her fill in registration paperwork at the front desk, and as it crinkled in her hand she realised she was creasing it in her anxiety.
‘Henrietta Moore?’
She jumped, belatedly recognising her new name as Jemima poked her with a knitting needle.
She followed a distracted-looking foreign woman into a small, bright, clinical room, unsure which plastic chair to sit in as the woman took Hetty’s papers and dropped herself at a desk. Hetty began to feel immensely out of her depth.
‘I’m here to see Dr Ansari. Will he meet me here?’ she asked.
She knew instantly she’d said something wrong, as the woman’s head whipped around angrily. ‘I would hope so, since I’m Dr Ansari. Sit.’
Hetty felt her skin burn with embarrassment as she sat, unsure as to how to proceed.
‘I— I’m so sorry.’
The doctor was typing away at what Hetty now recognised to be a computer, ignoring her completely.
‘Henrietta Moore?’
‘Yes. I really am so very sorr—’
‘Date of birth?’
Hetty gulped. ‘Um … Oh lord … the eighth of May?’
Luckily Dr Ansari didn’t appear to require a year, because Hetty’s maths had completely deserted her.
‘What’s the problem, then? Symptoms?’
Suddenly Hetty felt more afraid than she’d ever felt in her life. All hope of recovery from the darkness that had followed her was in the hands of a woman she’d just accidentally but gravely offended. She covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
She felt something nudge her forearm and looked up to find Dr Ansari proffering a cardboard box of tissues. She was regarding Hetty with a mixture of pity and empathy.
‘I’m so very, very sorry. I—’
‘No, I’m sorry. It’s been a long day and I’ve been working evening shifts all week. Now, why don’t you tell me all about it?’
‘It’s … it’s a heavy sadness, an oppressive weight on me at all times. It just won’t dissipate, no matter what I do.’
‘And have you been eating well? Exercising?’
Little by little Hetty bared her soul to this clever stranger, who seemed to accept her story unblinkingly as though it were in fact quite ordinary to wake up crying every morning.
In fewer than ten minutes – the most difficult ten minutes of her life, but ten minutes nonetheless – Hetty was back in the waiting room clutching a green-and-white slip. She looked at her aunt, biting her trembling lower lip.
‘Aunt Jemima … The doctor thinks I have that term Aggie used before, “depression”. She says that it’s a condition many others experience, in fact. And she has provided me with a modern treatment to try that she says works for many people.’
Jemima stuffed her knitting into her colourful fabric bag and stood up to give her a hug. ‘Let’s pick up that prescription, then go and get a cup of tea and a cream bun.’