Lock Me In

Don’t think about it, I told myself.

The only images I have in my head of the night my friend died are Mum’s, just hand-me-down mental pictures appropriated from her description. The problem was that these appropriated visual details are lodged so close to my own memories – of the endless summer before it and the black-hole horror of the months after – that I sometimes feel that it was me who was there, not just Siggy. But that would mean the lines between her and me had started to blur, and if that could happen …

Just don’t think about it. Calm down. Breathe.

Mum found her down by the river, where we go on Cherry Tree Day, to mark a special day for Siggy. I’d never taken Jodie there before, and it’s a secret place, inaccessible, overgrown and wooded. But I – or Siggy – had taken her there that night. It was days until Mum admitted to me what she’d found.

The missing belt—

I can’t breathe.

The missing belt from my—

Shit. I can’t breathe!

The police were still in the hall, just a couple of inches of plasterboard separating us. I tried to force myself to think about something else, because this couldn’t happen, not with them there – the police! – right outside the bedroom door with my mother lying to them.

Breathe. Breathe. Please just breathe.

Everything rotated. A slow, dark tornado, twisting around me, and the vacuum in my chest got harder, tighter. My vision darkened at the edges and my skin started to burn, and the insides of my lungs started to curl up from the heat and this was it but right at the last second, the pressure broke, and I was breathing but

Calm. Calm down.

Too fast now. I couldn’t stop.

Deep breaths. Slow. You are having a panic attack. Slow down – breathe slowly – but I couldn’t stop. In and out and in and out and too shallow, not enough, not enough air, and all the time the only thing I could think was all the things Mum had eventually told me—

The missing belt from my coat, sodden and caked and wrapped twice around Jodie’s neck and

her fingernails broken and her hair bloodied and studded with broken leaves and

not enough air!

the skin of her throat pressed white and her mouth slack and her eyes wide and glazed and

the rain falling against their bulging, panicked, unblinking surfaces

Because of me.

Movement in the hallway. I felt myself lighten, losing consciousness. Were they, were they coming in? They were coming in.

They know what you did.

The last thing I heard was the front door opening, and then everything went black.

11. (#ulink_ad35d87c-cf44-51b6-9cff-5a83ac9c68d5)

CC: So let’s start by checking in. How are you feeling today?

EP: I’m OK.

[pause: 32 sec]

CC: I’m sensing some anxiety.

EP: No. I’m fine.

[pause: 22 sec]

EP: Can you – why do you leave these huge long gaps all the time?

CC: OK. I’m glad you asked. Sometimes we find that when we’re not rushed, when we’re given the time to go into greater depth, we discover things that really help our journeys.

[pause: 23 sec]

EP: I haven’t got anything to say.

CC: Sure.

[pause: 35 sec]

EP: OK, look, fine. She came. Last night.

CC: Siggy came?

EP: Yeah.

[pause: 19 sec]

CC: Would you like to talk about the episode you had?

EP: Well I don’t know, do I? That’s the whole fucking – sorry

CC: That’s fine

EP: That’s the whole problem. I don’t know anything about it. It’s like I go to bed every night and I’m me but then this other person I don’t know or like or want there, this other me climbs in. She moves me about, says things like she’s me, like I’m, I’m, I’m just this, this puppet. I don’t think you can possibly know what that’s like. It’s terrifying. I’m terrified, and I can’t even think about it without ending up – look, like this – ending up shaking. Do you see that, my hands?

CC: I do.

EP: It’s like, and I know that I shouldn’t say this and that it’s not the same thing but having someone else in your body, someone you, you hate, who is there without permission, it’s like waking up and finding you’ve been … I can’t say it.

CC: You feel … let’s say, you feel violated?

EP: Yes. Yes. Even if she’s just got me up and walked around the flat. I can’t remember any of it. [crying] Anything, at all. And just – my mum, the way she describes it – I just-I just [crying] I want to just

[pause: 1 min 6 sec]

EP: Sorry. I’m sorry.