The Day She Died

One

Tuesday, 4 October

It was already a hell of a day. That much was clear when I found myself curled in a corner, in a cupboard, feet tucked in, arms wrapped round my shins, head buried between my knees so I could squeeze it hard, hurt it enough on the outside to make the inside hurting go away. My breathing was good and loud, from how your legs make a kind of cup if you sit that way, like an echo chamber, but I still heard Dot’s soft knock on the cupboard door.

“Jessie?” she said in that kind way she’s got.

It had to happen sometime. So, okay, it had happened today. Now what? (A) I could walk out and never come back. Wouldn’t be the first time. (B) I could tell her everything. (C) I could make a joke of it. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d done that either. I was an old hand. Had my spiel polished like a double-glazing salesman. And laughing at yourself first before anyone else gets the chance to? That’s nearly as good as squeezing your head between your knees. Works every time.

They do laugh too. No one laughs at claustrophobia. Or agoraphobia either. Or blood and needles. But try pteronophobia and see what you get. First it’s the lip twitch and then, even if they listen to the story right to the end (of the bit I’m willing to tell), when my granny came and found me, even if they nod and murmur, eventually they get that look and start laughing. Smiling anyway. So I play along.

“Sodom and Gomorrah,” I say. “I know what you mean.”

Because that was just the same.

There was much wickedness, so God sent in the boys-angels actually-to sort it out. And they went to stay at the house of Lot, who was a righteous man. And the not-so-righteous got wind of it and came to see what was up. “We know you’re in there” kind of thing, “come out here where we can get a look at you.” But Lot-hell of a host he was-was all, “don’t bug the angels, whatever you do. Here, take my daughters; knock yourselves out.” So then the angels start to get a hustle on, no surprise, asking Lot to gather his family together-wife and kids, all that-and hit the road. And they said, “Don’t look back.”

But here’s the thing: they didn’t say why not. And so Lot’s wife looked back (who wouldn’t have?) and blammo! Pillar of salt, which, if the angels had mentioned it, might have helped her not do it in the first place, but there you go. And so Lot and his daughters end up camping and they get him plastered and then they sleep with him, and they both get knocked up and then the whole plot goes back to Abraham again, where it started anyway.

“And the moral of the story is,” I said to Dot once I was out of the cupboard and back in the tearoom at work that day, “God hates fags. He doesn’t mind dads pimping out their daughters or daughters seducing their dads, but he reckoned the angry mob banging on Lot’s door had a twinkle in their eye. And since the mob were men and so were the angels, there it is. God hates fags. Couldn’t be clearer, really.”

“Well,” said Dot. “There was Leviticus too.”

“Oh, right! Leviticus!” I said. “Tell the truth, Dot. Who would you rather be stuck in a lift with? That angry mob from Sodom and Gomorrah or creepy Leviticus?”

She shuddered.

“Hah! I knew it. ‘What’s that blouse made of, little girl? What’s in your sandwich today? When’s your period due?’ Total psycho.”

“Stop it,” Dot said. “How can you sit there and talk about being stuck in a lift after what you’ve just said to me?”

“That’s my whole point,” I told her. “I’m not claustrophobic. It’s like Sodom and Gomorrah all over again: the take-home message isn’t what you’d think it would be. And I wish I was because tight spaces are pretty easy to avoid. Unless you need a pet scan, and then it’s not your biggest worry. But me? Walking down the street, going in people’s houses, watching things on telly… it’s rough.”

“But you seem fine,” Dot said.

“Yeah,” I answered. “I know I do.”

So when we went back to work again after lunch, she opened the bin bags and poked around to see they were safe before she turned them over to me for checking. I do the checking because I’m the boss. The manager, or maybe just the supervisor. Really, it’s because I’m an employee, in all four days a week the Project’s open, and the others are volunteers. So strictly speaking, Dot should have opened the bags if I asked her, even told her, without the story at all. But it’s not that kind of place.

And while I was busy sorting, checking the labels, checking the pockets, colour-coding the washing loads, writing up the dry-cleaning (only if they’re worth it, even with the discount), I was wondering how long it would take her to come and ask me.

An hour and twenty minutes. She appeared at the door of the wee room by the toilets where the washer and dryer are and leaned against the jamb.

“You came to us from the RSPB,” she said.

“Guilty,” I said. “Shoot me.”

“How could you work in the charity shop of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds of all things if you’re-”

“I couldn’t!” I squeaked. “Not in the shop. My God. I was in the office. Totally separate building.”

“But even so… ” Dot said.

“Yeah, even so,” I agreed. “I lasted a year, though.”

“Why?” she asked me. “Why did you put yourself through it?”

Her face was puckered up with concern. Well, she’s sixty-three, so her face was puckered anyway, but the way she was looking at me, almost like she would cry in a minute? It floored me. Shouldn’t have, really. Dot rakes through manky clothes fifteen hours a week for no pay and deals with our lippy clients too. Dot organised five separate jumble sales for JM Barrie House and didn’t even swear when it went tits up in the end. She’s got to have a caring streak a mile wide running through her.

“Atonement,” I said. First time I’d said anything like it to anyone.

“Atonement?”

I’d floored her back. Was I really going to tell her the rest of it? How something doesn’t need to be true for you to be sorry it happened? How you can know from a thousand hours of therapy that you didn’t do something, and still it’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

“It’s not the birds’ fault, you know,” I went for in the end.

“You were atoning to the birds?” she said, and the middle of her face unpuckered as the edges creased up. “You’re a funny wee bunny, Jessie, you know that?” She shook her head, laughed a soft laugh, and then squeezed past me to fill the kettle for our tea. “Quite entertaining, mind you,” she called over the sound of the tap. I just kept stuffing in my load of dark mixed-fibre easy-care.

So my point is basically this. The day I met Gus, the day she died, the day I grew a family like I’d planted magic beans, was the day I told Dot at work about my pteronophobia and told her quite a lot really, when you get right down to it, about where it came from too. It was the very same day.

Maybe I ended up where I ended up, did what I did, because I was already down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass. Maybe it’s not totally my fault that I tripped and went over the rainbow.