The Telling

blackbird, tilting his head to look at me.
    ‘Nothing,’ I said, not remembering the question.
    ‘Come home. Sweetheart, come home.’
    The blackbird’s eye was black and glossy, rimmed with orange. What did it see with the eye that looked the other way? In human vision, only a tiny proportion is direct, exact: the rest is filled in with the broad brushstrokes of the mind. So we see the mind’s constructions, not what is really there.
    ‘Sweetheart?’ Mark said it so gently; it made my nose prickle. ‘You’re allowed to find this difficult, you know. It’s allowed. You’re allowed to break down.’
    The blackbird turned its head again. I looked away.
    ‘Okay,’ I said, and sat down on the grass verge. ‘Okay then. I give up.’
    The phone cupped to my ear, I listened to Mark’s plans, the underswell of relief, the edging forward of my recovery. In a week, give or take, depending on appointments, I’d be sitting on Dr Cowan’s vinyl chair, the words squeezing out of me in ugly clots, part request, part defence, part apology. I’d be talking to Dr Cowan, but I’d be looking at the peeled man. The peeled man had watched it all, and didn’t judge. He’d observed the first blood pressure test, the dip of test-strip into the vial of urine, the taking of bloods; he’d seen the press of professionally cool fingers on my healing scar. His eyes bulging from the sockets, teeth bared in a lipless grin, he’d watched the same hand scrawl the prescription for those sweet blue pills. The peeled man knew everything. He knew the fury of a severed nerve, the touch-shy tenderness of inner flesh; he knew it in the dark meat of his heart, the dull ivory of his bones. And as I spoke to Dr Cowan, the peeled man and I would eye each other, and Dr Cowan would look at me, weighing me up, and when I’d finished talking he would caution me, and when he’d finished cautioning me, he’d reach for his prescription pad, and I would watch his pen scratch the words that conjured up those benzodiazepines, diamond-shaped, in the crease of my palm, sweet on my tongue, and the warm chemical certainty, the melting, the sense that everything would be fine.
    I wanted Cate. I wanted Cate. It already felt too much like goodbye.
    ‘Can I talk to her?’
    ‘Tomorrow. She’s at my mum’s. You can see her yourself tomorrow. Get a good night’s sleep, then tomorrow just sling your stuff into the car and come home. Bring whatever. We’ll sort the rest out somehow. I’ll deal with it. Or Lucy can; it won’t kill her to take on a bit of responsibility.’
    ‘What about school?’
    ‘You’re not due back till Monday; but I think you could do with some more time. We’ll talk to Dr Cowan about that.’
    *
     
    We said goodbye. I flicked the phone shut, and held it in my palm. It seemed impossible to move. There was nowhere to go. Not back to the cottage, and face the massed evidence of my failure. Not to the shop, since I was leaving tomorrow, and wouldn’t be needing anything now. But soon the car-cleaning man would be out with a chamois leather, to wipe away the beading water on the bonnet, and stare at me. I hauled myself back on to my feet.
    I walked slowly back along the verge, where the tarmac crumbled into grass, and little yellow flowers grew, their petals waxy and pointed. I had the word celandine in my head, but didn’t know where it came from. I reached the cottage. The sky was blue above it, the windows caught the sky and were filmed with shifting blue and white. All it needed was Mum on the front steps to complete the picture. I couldn’t go in. I picked a sprig off a low-growing plant on the garden wall, crushed the leaves, sniffed it. Thyme. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and continued on down the village street.
    The street ended at the church gate. Daffodils stood in clumps in the churchyard, snowdrops lolled under the weight of seedpods . A dark yew tree stood to the right of the gate. The space was so quiet, and calm, and so old; the surrounding woods were like a filter on the world. I went in. The graves stood blank, their backs to me, their faces to the east. I followed the path till it dwindled away among the graves, then I picked my way through the mounds till I’d reached the far wall, where I slumped down, and leaned my head back against the rough cool stone. The sky was overcast and the light was fading. A breeze had blown up: branches were tangling overhead, creaking against each other and casting