Back to 2013.

We left Bink in the summer of 2013. The year of Serena’s wedding.

The year it began to be so obvious.

Again, I suppose. Obvious again.

Unravelling again.

Before I gather up the threads of Serena’s wedding, I should tell you where we are going together. When you pick up a book, you can see how long it is.

Life, alas and fortunately, isn’t quite so predictable.

I started this blog as an act of gratitude, for those who enabled Bink’s stay in the Priory... and we haven’t even reached that, not by five very painful years.

She has now left the Priory and still has a long way to go.

(Am I discouraged, that Bink isn’t better, or more better, already? Serena says I hope too much. It’s who I am and how I keep going. She expected less of Bink’s stay in the Priory, so is happy that all she has done is break free of the Lorazepam.

But isn’t that wicked, I said. That she needed four and a half months in the Priory to escape what NHS doctors put her on?

Yes, she said. It is wicked. But she’s done it now. At least, now, somebody might treat her. You couldn’t even get treatment for her before, because of the Lorazepam. Now you could.

Yes… if we can find any. And she is well enough to embark on it…)

In the meantime I’ve become very fond of you, readers (specially those of you who leave comments and “likes”; thank you).

And the story is far from over.

I started last July, 2018.

So I plan (no promises!) to finish the history of Bink’s illness by this year’s July.

After that, I will keep you updated in Bink’s life: of course I will. (As long as she allows me, I will.)

And perhaps persuade her to write for you, too. If I can.

So after July, I will post when there is news.

Not necessarily every day.

Bink had graduated. Not as spectacularly as if she’d never been ill, perhaps. But with a very respectable Cambridge degree.

She had been elder of the two of the loveliest, most beautiful bridesmaids at the loveliest, most beautiful wedding: sang a song, written a speech, looked gorgeous.

(Even if she did spend the last few hours outside, in the cold, in tears... With Gatsby.)

Now, the future beckoned...

All graduates, step up to claim your glittering, exciting new jobs!

Bink had talked of work she would like to do. The only suggestion I can remember from her was being a bicycle pizza delivery person. Then she would get exercise, and be paid for what she enjoyed.

Perhaps I should have shown more enthusiasm…

She decided, which seemed quite sensible on the face of it, that as it had taken her ten very painful years to graduate, she had earned two or three months off, celebrating and catching up with friends.

As I say, it sounded reasonable.

This is where we started to lose touch with her, and I have to shift to her viewpoint.

Gatsby asked my father if he could borrow his seaside home for a week, to take a party. He’d done this before, giving my father a financial contribution to the running costs. My father loves the house being used (and doesn’t object to a contribution) and very happily said yes.

(As an aside: this second time, Gatsby never gave my father anything. My father happened to mention this, and was puzzled. A few months later I had an opportunity to ask Gatsby if he had meant to... and he claimed my father had been most emphatic in saying he didn’t want anything. My father may be a hundred and one and a half, but he is in very full possession of all his mental faculties, and quite a lot more that the rest of us are. So I found this very interesting.

Because it meant that Gatsby no longer was.

As yet, I had no idea why…)

Bink was one of the party.

I knew, she told me years later, that I had to break away from him. My future, health, welbeing depended on it. It was vital.

I had to escape… or be destroyed.

Even if I simply walked and walked and walked, and dropped in a ditch exhausted, and slept under the stars... I just had to get away.

So I did.

I walked and I walked.

I left the house, and turned right, and walked along the cliffs. To keep going until I was free.

Oh! she said with agony. If only I had walked along the beach! I so nearly did…

Or if she had turned left instead of right. Or rung and asked us to rescue her.

Anything!

Gatsby went looking for her.

And as with so much that Gatsby did, he thought he was being loving.

He walked along the clifftops too.

And he found her.

Please come back! he begged her. Please.

So she turned.

And did…