Pausing the reel.

Sunday.

It’s a bit like life, really... as the preacher said.

Living with mental illness. An endlessly slightly sickening carousel veering between hope and despair.

Stop me if I’ve already crowed about this – I don’t think I have – but my play has now been selected to be repeated on July 23rd at Bedford’s Festival Fringe. This time, I’ve got enough notice to study the craft of playwriting and work out where I’m going with it and what the purpose is and how I want to change the audience’s life, and draft it with a bit more care and thought before the rehearsal process.

I haven’t suddenly decided to chuck everything in and do my PhD on Dramatic Writing for Seriously Small Theatres in the Twenty First Century and Beyond, but I have been reading Ayckbourn on the subject.

And Ayckbourn, like Shakespeare and unlike all those seriously big and serious guns like Sophocles and Æschylus and Racine and all that somewhat sombre gang, understands how comedy and tragedy dance arm in arm so closely entwined and in love that you couldn’t part them without tearing both apart.

Indeed, I read in his little book just yesterday, concentrating so hard in the garden and the sun as I was (and if I’d were concentrating a little harder now I’d look it up for you) how some wise geezer, probably Stephen Joseph, said they’re exactly the same: it’s just a question of where you stop the reel.

Take my father’s superbly long, successful and happy life. Doing a job he was passionate about. Married to a woman he adored. Surrounded now by family who love him.

And yet if you stopped the reel during the war, when his best friend had just been killed... or in the years afterwards, sobbing as he buried his own children at the bottom of the garden as my mother miscarried over and over again till they assumed they could never have their own biological offspring... or indeed now, trapped in his bedroom for ninety-eight per cent of his life, utterly unvisited by the church he served so faithfully, missing my mother every moment of every day...

It could be a pretty poignant tragedy, couldn’t it?

This last week, I’ve been full of hope over Bink.

I have lost count of the number of times she has rung, me... just… well, like a normal daughter.

She is moving back to the kind friends who offered her a home with them indefinitely, and haven’t at all taken offence at her running away.

She seems generally speaking to be awake by day, which presumably means she may be sleeping by night.

I’ve even been able to have several conversations with her about the best way forward for her future and health.

And she is writing, writing, writing.

Stop the reel at this point, and it would appear that life is beginning to hold promise for her.

Stop the reel here, and her tale could be... well, lots of tragedy and comedy mixed.

A bit like life, as the preacher said.

* * * * *

Now, something else I happened to read the other day is that a blog should be spiced up with videos. So I decided to flex my budding, Sunday, techi-muscle (which is why this post is rather late):

(And all you need to know is that a couple of summers ago, I planted a breathtakingly lovely rose garden in my mother’s memory. And Alex, if you could kindly devise a facility on my blog for a scent-experience for my readers, it would surely put me ahead of most of the other bloggers out there...)

More of the same

Autumn 2014…

…continued much the same. 

Bink had agreed, when we were all in Norfolk in August, to meet up with us and her excellent therapist Helen in Bedford in September.

But Helen had specified that the initiative must come from the patient. It never did, of course.

She continued to ring Rosie at school. One such conversation was an hour long... and the school reported the distress and disruption to bedtime.

My emails of that time are full of agonised questions to friends and professionals. How do we protect Rose? How do we help Bink?

How do I keep the two daughters’ needs separate in my mind and always put the child’s first?

The advice was generous, wise and endlessly compassionate.

It’s not realistic to shield Rosie from Bink entirely.

Would be distressing anyway, to lose all contact with her sister.

And don’t forget your own needs. Look after yourself: a lot of people rely on you…

(Skimming my inbox as I have been, to sort the chronology in my head, I conclude that the November meeting with Bink, Gatsby and my father – after we had the scare, one of many, that my father was near the end and Alex made the telephone call to get a message to her – was in fact in 2014 not ’13 as I’d relayed it to you.

Which makes a lot more sense: I couldn’t understand how we could have seen her during a winter when we scarce knew she was alive.

It still comes as some relief, now, to know that the relationship remained unconsummated a year on. How many women, in the long sad history of the world, have had to trade their bodies for board and lodging and the wolf from the door? From queens and princesses of the realm to veiled huddled figures by the dust of the roadside, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s half of us, one way or another… so why should Bink be any different? She needed the means to live, and a carer…)

In the early autumn I had been mugged outside our house, after a latish train back from giving away the prizes at a school Speech Day and then meeting up with a commissioning editor. The solicitous gentleman offering to carry my bag for me happened, accidentally no doubt, to off-balance me from my bike in the process. I didn’t think his gesture was such a good idea as he obviously did – not that I ever carry money, but my bag rather cleverly matched my gloves and hat and I didn’t think it would suit him nearly so well – and by way of presenting my counter-argument I set off a caterwauling, as I somersaulted into the gutter, so shrill, piercing and far-reaching (and, truth compels me to confess, foul-mouthed) that it brought a curious crowd of one from a street quite some distance and several blocks away. Running after my assailant, who had taken the opportunity to absent himself rather smartly, too.

All those drama school fees not wasted, then.

The only significance of all which is that I got to know the detective in charge of the case. (He was very confident of catching my erstwhile friend – imaged, quite recognisably, both on close-up CCTV and running after my bicycle – but was thwarted by an obscure law protecting any entrepreneur who hasn’t actually committed the very crime itself on CCTV.)

Which gave me an opportunity to pick his brains about harassment. And follow his instructions.

First I wrote a very long, friendly, chatty-as-possible but unmistakably-firm letter.

Then I wrote an extremely brief, clear, businesslike and therefore much more unmistakably-firm letter.

Then eventually, after much agonising, I wrote the following. Presumably after the two of them came to see my father and stayed all evening:

Sat, 6 Dec 2014, 08:59

Dear Jay

I’m glad you came the other night. It has been niggling me since the summer that Shaun agreed that we would meet up, but because the advice we were given was to let Lara take the initiative the project stalled. It was particularly good that you stayed for supper and we had a relaxing time together as we often used to.

There was one detail which I afterwards wished I had mentioned. I have been thinking of it for many months and have twice drafted a letter to you, but because there is no pleasant way to say it I have not sent it: you may find this hard to believe but I have no desire to hurt or offend you, and (in my better and more considered moments!) no personal animosity towards you. So I wish I had taken the opportunity to say this difficult thing on Thursday night, when it would have been less brutal than putting it in writing, but I didn’t and I don’t know when there will next be an opportunity so I have decided to write it now l and get it over and done with.

I am determined that Rosie’s summer holiday will not be spoilt next year as it was this. I have been uncertain about many, many things over this last terrible and painful year or two, but I am very certain indeed about our responsibility to the child who is getting hurt. Consequently, Shaun and I took careful advice some time ago, and were told that provided we have made it very clear to you that we do not want any contact between you and Rosie, any deliberate breach of this could be reported as it would be considered harassment of a minor.

So I am asking you please not to do anything which might spoil Rosie’s summer holiday next year. We are taking her to my father’s house in Sheringham for the first fortnight in August. If you wish to take a holiday in Sheringham, please kindly choose any of the other fifty weeks in the year. It is a small town and it would be very difficult for you to avoid her, especially if you are there with her sister.

The same applies to family events and social occasions. We will stay away with Rosie, if we understand you have been invited and have accepted. If you have not, particularly if you have reason to believe Rosie might be there please do not turn up.

Thank you. I am sorry for the tone of this but I can’t think of any other way to say it. (In truth, we were told that there is no nice way to say it, and there is an absolute requirement to be clear.)

If you should feel the need to convey the contents of this to Lara I would be grateful if you would simply show her the email rather than risk the inevitable inaccuracies of second hand reporting.

I genuinely hope there will more evenings when we can relax together over a bottle of wine, and I pray that it will be in the not too distant future. I hope you enjoyed at least part of the evening.

With very best wishes,

Anne

Cliff edge

August 2014

Yet again (I’m afraid it is in the nature of memories shared every day, without hindsight editing) I find I have omitted an early August event which I found horribly fascinating, like a Spotted Dick pudding, its stodgy insanity spiced with black little currants of insight.

That summer, instead of staying with us in my father’s seaside house, Serena and Christian had gone Airbnb, and booked their own artists’ cottage a dogs’ cliff-walk away.

Lovely and tattily creative and within sound of the breakwaters.

And invited us all for a barbecue on Monday evening. Two days after the meeting with Bink and Gatsby, at my father’s.

With characteristic good manners and graciousness, they included them in the invitation. Serena would not find it easy, I knew. But at least this was one advantage of not having Rosie with us: we could not have included Gatsby, with Rosie there.

So we all tumbled over the cliff-tops and tripped over the dogs and arrived in the red-golden slanting sunset so iconic of that coastline, and sat in their for-the-week garden and nattered and chattered while Christian and Serena thrummed to and fro from the delightfully grubby kitchen to the even more delightful clifftop garden.

Getting into the kind of discussion and debate we always have around an Atkins table.

And every time I said something to Bink or she to me, Gatsby translated.

She means so-and-so. Her argument is such-and-such. What she intended to say was doo-dah.

Now, my parents brought me up scrupulously well and by-and-large I know more-or-less how to behave.

1. Someone is annoying your head off your shoulders, you smile and smile and say nothing.

2. Hospitality is making someone feel at home when you wish he was.

3. Even the most boring person must be interesting underneath.

And so on.

But something about Gatsby’s dancing around between my own daughter and me, as if neither could understand the simplest sentiment either said to other without him as intercessor – and, frankly, as if she was his, not ours – touched a nerve. Now there’s a surprise.

Thank you, Jay. We don’t need you to interpret for us.

I admit it was rude. Debrett’s would have something to say.

As, no doubt, would my mother. Having said which, my charming and quite disarming mother was capable of quirky quips in her time, catching you quite off-balance and not completely believing what she’d just said could have come from under that innocent grey hair or out of that sweet smiling face.

Anyway, Debrett’s wasn’t there and neither, to my very great regret (she would have solved a lot of this) with my mother.

That’s it, Gatsby said. I’m off.

(Thank goodness for that... No, no, no, that really wasn’t worthy either... though I bet I wasn’t the only one who thought it.)

[Super-solicitous.] Will you be all right to get home, Lara?

Oh, sit down, Bink said. Not even bothering to turn and look at him.

Like a naughty little puppy. Straight back down again. Never referred to again.

If we ever needed to know who was in charge...

Next day, I got one of the calls that all freelances get over Christmas or during their summer holidays. All the regular staff are swanning it somewhere exotic, a few poor hard-pressed and hard-done-by skeletal scribblers left in the office, so we come into our own.

I like these commissions. Partly because I’m freelance so I like any commissions. But also because you’ve only got till teatime, if that, so there isn’t time to agonise or turn an elegant phrase. You just have to chuck it out.

Bit like writing a blog, really.

I happened to be at top of the house – everyone else sunbathing with a book in the garden or building sandcastles on the beach or in town trying out ice-cream flavour number a hundred and sixty-seven – when Bink knocks on the door and comes in.

Can I talk to you?

Me to Serena, 7th August 2014:

She came round at about a quarter to five on Tuesday, mega-stressed because the fact that I’d snapped at Jay meant I was somehow still trying to control her or protect her or something which made her feel really patronised, so she felt she had to cut me out of her life for a long stretch all over again. I said, no it doesn’t, so she said, I knew you wouldn’t listen: I spent an hour talking to [her very sensible friend] trying to work out how to make you listen, so I said, ok, you talk and I won’t say anything. So she said the same thing over and over again for ten minutes with me saying nothing, and then the ed on the Mail rang and said she’d been trying to get me all day and needed 1200 words by 6.30 latest.

So I said, Really sorry Bink, what you have to say is far more important but this is more urgent so I’ll talk to you after 6.30. Oh but I’m really stressed and this has wrecked my day and is ruining my holiday and oh awful awful awful. I said I really can’t, sorry. So she lingered at the door to my bedroom for two more minutes to finish ruining her day completely. Can’t remember what prompted me (her probably) but I said, I wasn’t trying to protect you, I was just pissed off with Jay because he was rude to me and treating me like a child and I don’t like him. (Not really true, this last... but if it works, try anything, eh?) In that case, she said, I don’t mind at all. Don’t need to talk to you at 6.30. That’s fine. Goodbye.

What??!

I tried to find her at 7 but she didn’t need me any more. Next day I said, do you want to talk about it now I’ve got time, and she said, No. If it was about you not me, it’s fine. I said, I really think it was, mostly. OHHH, she said, you said it was ENTIRELY.

Entirely, entirely, I meant entirely about me.

[Phew.]

In other words, apart from the fact that the girl’s mad which we know already, given the chance, she would have talked about it for three hours and got even more stressed and exhausted and so would I. Given two minutes to get out of here, she solves it instantly.

?@1*&%!

xxx

Protecting the child

Late summer 2014

Rosie was not having an easy summer.

It isn’t easy, being Bink’s sibling. Or grandparent. Or indeed parent.

Least of all Bink herself.

You put up with something for a long time... not knowing whether it is damaging you.

Consider children of abuse. Would you know, talking to them? Would they themselves?

She was not long into term, and already I wondered whether she should come home for a day or two.

She has duties in the cathedral. You come here, her head mistress said.

So I took a train up North. Rosie was given leave of absence for the rest of the day. Including the school hockey match.

She was worried

They don’t have anyone to take my place...

For goodness’ sake, the head said. You can be too responsible: let that be our problem.

She said the moment Rose walked into her study and saw me, her face lit up; the sun came out.

Lovely to have a daughter actually wanting to see me...

We spent the day wandering among the first leaves of the city. Going out for lunch. Sitting in the sun outside a pub.

Rosie had been allowed to change out of uniform.

Lara – we were getting used to calling her that – would like to come and see you. This weekend. With a friend: we wouldn’t let her come alone.

Would you like that?

Rosie was the kindest child in the world. Almost unnaturally, worryingly so. I often wondered whether she was shoring up problems for the future by being so well-behaved about the present.

The silence should have told me everything.

No pressure, I said. Don’t worry.

Rose isn’t stupid. (I’ve just been telling her school today – she is in the middle of GCSEs, and picked up the bug which made me so sick last weekend – you don’t have to bother to put pressure on her about her exams, I said: she puts quite enough on herself.)

She knew, aged eleven, what it would mean to Bink if she didn’t want to see her.

We finished lunch and went for a stroll along the river. Moseyed around the market. Stopped somewhere for tea.

That would be all right, she said eventually. If she wants to come for the weekend.

How can you blame a child for doing what all the adults around are doing, have been doing, for all her life: treading on eggshells lest we hurt Bink.

We all tried to put the child’s welfare first. But we all, including the child, knew who the most vulnerable child was.

The irony is that by letting Bink visit Rose – which wasn’t, I’m sure of it now though I couldn’t see it then, the best thing for Rose herself – we did Bink herself no favours at all. 

We couldn’t have known, but she had joined a huge and rather good choir, and that Saturday evening was the concert they’d been working towards for months.

Yesterday I found Gatsby’s email. As with so much, it could be read either way:

Hi Anne and Ben,

Lara was going to be singing in a concert tomorrow night, and [a friend] and I were going to go to hear her.  Jenkins “The Armed Man” and Haydn’s “Mass in Time of War".  Since [the friend] and Lara are now going to miss the concert (by going to visit Rosie), and I don’t suppose I will go on my own, Lara thought perhaps you might like to go instead.  Let me know if you are interested in the tickets.  They were £21 each.

Why would we want to spend over forty quid going to a concert over fifty miles away that Bink wasn’t going to be in?

Buy his unwanted tickets?

Thanks, but no thanks.

It was long after the weekend that Bink told me. She knew the concert was going to be superb. Everyone said it had been, fabulously. She was deeply sorry to have missed it. She had wanted us part of it, somehow.

So she’d asked Gatsby to give us her tickets.

Of course she hadn’t wanted money for them!

She just thought we’d love it.

I’m so sorry you weren’t there.

But why did you miss it yourself, Bink?

Because she considered Rosie so much more important than anything she might be involved in. And the choir was so large, she wasn’t really letting them down…

She just wished she could have been part of it. Having us there instead would have made up for it, a bit.

But Bink, the following weekend would have been just as good!

(And of course, that was when I realised we’d given permission for the visit for the same reason Rosie had said yes. For Bink’s sake: no more nor less. Would have done her far more good to sing.)

It’s not that I mind calling her Lara, Rosie said to me that early autumn summer.

It’s just that I miss Bink.

So much. So very, very much...

Clearing the air

Early August 2014

So, they came together. Bink and Gatsby. To my father’s seaside house. We sat around the table, the five of us: with my father and Shaun.

I am reminded of how my father, aged ninety-three or so, managed to persuade a recalcitrant builder – who had installed Bink’s disability shower in such a way that water was pouring into my father’s bathroom below… and then scarpered; who had been ignoring telephone calls and emails and even visits at to his house and church, from the rest of us, for weeks – not only to answer his telephone but to turn up, one or two minutes earlier than promised, on the doorstep, looking for all the world like a prep school boy twisting his cap apologetically in his hands. Not meeting anyone’s eyes. Dashing upstairs to spend the rest of his Saturday fixing it. Without asking for any more money.

How on earth did you do that?

My father wasn’t giving anything away. I wasn’t a head master for nothing, you know.

(He was once asked, by the head of a neighbouring school, how he balanced the books without a school bursar. Give me thirty quid and I’ll tell you...)

If Gatsby could have looked like a naughty schoolboy...

Yet again, I was struck by how he wasn’t in control. 

Desperately ill, desperately vulnerable though Bink is, tiny and petite and unable even to care for herself, she nonetheless has an energy, a vitality and personality that outshines people far more outwardly functioning than she is. This is partly why therapy has such a struggle to help her: she is so much more bright and perceptive and quick-footed than the average therapist. Rings and rings around…

(Professor Veale can keep up with her. And more. But Prof Veale is the exception.)

So it always was with Gatsby. Twice her age, double-first, director of his own company... and nothing but plasticine in her nimble hands. Which was why he was so dangerous: she could make him into any shape her dæmons demanded.

I can no longer remember what we discussed that day. Except that after my father had finished, Gatsby had protested, Bink had smoothed oil over the waters, Shaun had listened and listened and said nothing and the meeting was officially over, we moved into the kitchen so I could prepare supper and I said I’d like to know how we’ve lied about you. Please.

Because that needed to be put right.

You have accused me behind my back – hard to say without childish resentment – of being Lara’s drug-runner.

I accused you, I said, of what I understood to be true. Because Lara herself told me. That you shared a spliff with her. At your own party. In your own house.

Which is not only illegal, but very, very stupid and dangerous. Given her vulnerability. And the potential of cannabis to cause psychosis. And other mental illnesses.

Which therefore makes me very, very angry indeed. On account of how incredibly irresponsible it is.

Doesn’t make me her supplier, he said, the truth taking the wind right out of his sails.

But hang on. Bink came to his defence. Again stronger, calmer. In many ways.

You’ve turned a blind eye to it yourself.

I have never knowingly turned a blind eye to cannabis in my life, I said. More vehemently even than before.

It can do extreme damage. Shaun and I have witnessed its devastating effects, first hand, in a parishioner who lost his mind to it and has never recovered. I’ve also read Henry’s Demons and Julie Myerson’s book. And I’m not completely Guardian-reading-stupid.

Added to which it is against the law. And the law in this country is extremely benign, by and large: I’ve not yet come across much justification for civil disobedience in our gentle, liberal democracy.

(Civil disobedience is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Civil disobedience is my father, preparing to face a firing squad for refusing to carry arms as a member of the Medical Corps. Civil disobedience is not wanting a puff of pot.)

Really? Bink said. Surely there was a time, when we were teenagers...

There was a time, I said, when you were teenagers, when I said to all of you that if I ever found any of it in the house, or any of you using it, even one drag, I would have absolutely no hesitation whatsoever in calling the police. 

Oh, she said. Really?

Really.

So. I take it we haven’t lied about you, after all?

Gatsby was silenced.

Writing this, it has occurred to me that the conversation was perhaps not wasted.

It must have been around this time that Bink realised the terrible, terrible, life-destroying damage that even tiny, minute traces of the stuff was indeed doing to her.

Her psychiatrist didn’t stop her.

Her therapist didn’t stop her.

She stopped herself.

Else she might not be nearly as coherent as she is today.

The kindest joins the fray

Thu, 31 Jul 2014, 11:21

Alex, being Aspergic, is the most objective of all of us. He shows a remarkable genius for analysing a situation, even one he is caught right up in (as long as it doesn’t directly involve his own welfare, when he can be quite bafflingly blind to his own good…) as an academic, a researcher, an unbiased observer might.

And, therefore, of making the most logical response.

He also has an affinity with Gatsby, probably because Gatsby is a bit autistic too. They are clever in some of the same areas. And still friends. He went to Gatsby’s fiftieth birthday party a few years ago.

Alex, however, has been extremely fortunate. He wasn’t diagnosed early, by today’s terms. But he had some indication by his teens that he was “differently wired”. Aged eighteen, met Professor Simon Baron-Cohen. By his twenties knew definitely that he stood a little outside the herd. So he taught himself to become bilingual. Learnt how to blend in with neurotypical camouflage. (More or less, much of the time. Just his bright blue braces; or mad swirling hair; or twirling flashing unobtrusive water-squirting bow tie… or propensity to read AA Milne, giving all the voices, when everyone else has become too drunk to object… almost, occasionally, giving him away.) Whilst also exploiting the advantages of his other way of being.

As far as I know, Gatsby never had this benefit.

Alex also seems endlessly forgiving. (The rôle Ben took, when we were going through the trauma of homelessness as a result of the church in Oxford.) Indeed, Alex has never made an enemy of anyone.

(Except in a possibly uniquely-neurotypically-normal moment, an ex-girlfriend.)

So it was particularly striking that Alex, too, joined in trying to get Gatsby to see sense.

He wrote a longish – epic, by Alex’s standards – email to Gatsby in response to mine. 

He acceded (much more generously than I would) that Gatsby had no particular blame, save that of being far too much in love. That his “faults” were hardly his fault at all, aside from the fault of being besotted. That his main crime was the crime of having no judgement, because he was too infatuated.

And then – utterly, innocently, gloriously unaware how offensive all his excuses for Gatsby’s behaviour might be to the man himself in such a situation, viewing himself as Bink’s shining-armoured saviour as he did – Alex spelt out how Gatsby had been duped by love. How Alex’s beloved sister’s illness had created a rift between herself and her parents which he, Gatsby, was unwittingly playing right into.

Alex articulated this with the evocative expression that, “She has now demonised Anne to the extent that such a person could hardly exist”.

He explained why Bink’s therapist, Helen, was the best possible person to advise us. Going to some lengths to marshal the clinical evidence, since that’s what geeks like Alex and indeed Gatsby should surely be able to understand.

And finished by inviting any better suggestions from Jay Gatsby himself.

As with everything it fell, of course, on deaf ears.

None so blind as them that won’t hear.

Correspondence

27 Jul 2014, 08:53

Dear Jay

I’m sorry for any embarrassment, frustration and annoyance you experienced on Friday evening: it can’t have been pleasant for you and it was a shame. (I don’t mean I’m sorry in the sense of an apology: that it was my fault or that there was anything I could have done to alleviate it. Just that I’m sad about it on your behalf and would have preferred it not to have been so for you.)

Incidentally, this is not why I’m writing but I was also sad to hear from Alex, not for the first time, that he understands from you that we have been ignoring you. I thought we’d made our position clear but perhaps we have not done so enough so I will again: we have taken frequent and careful professional advice in recent months, most particularly of course over how to protect Rosie from distress in the current situation, but we have also had a number of professional consultations specifically in response to your email entitled “Bridges” and what course of action we should take. (You confessed yourself “Baffled” so perhaps I should spell out further: we take very seriously Lara’s current state of health; we are not trained or qualified in that area; we therefore take as much expert advice as we can as no doubt you did when [your child] was ill.) The advice we have been given, by a mental health professional we very much respect who also took advice from a colleague before giving a well-considered answer, was that it would not be wise for us to meet up with you without Lara present, and all initiative must come from her. We have no reason to put our own judgement above this, and we are therefore powerless to do any more if Lara does not wish it and chooses not to take action. Perhaps it needs spelling out even further that we consider her health to be so much more important than our relationship with you that there is not really any meaningful comparison to be made between the two. (Again, no doubt when [your child] was ill you would have put his health far above any friendship with us, if you had known us at the time, and we would fully expect you to. As you would with [any of your children].)

So, again, I’m sorry for any collateral annoyance on your part. We are not particularly ignoring you or not ignoring you. We are going through a time of great grief, bereavement and anguish and there isn’t much we can do about it except take decent professional advice and protect Rosie as best we can. The loss of a friend we have known for a few years doesn’t begin to register compared with the loss of our very dearly beloved and sorely missed daughter and I don’t suppose it would for you.

I am taking the liberty of copying Alex in on this, because he has expressed himself puzzled at the discrepancy between your account and ours. I would probably copy Lara in too if I thought there was any point: we have nothing to hide from her.

With good wishes,

Anne

30 Jul 2014, 15:34

Anne and Shaun,

I have a pretty thick skin: I’m not bothered much by your repeated rudeness, by your attempts to have me ostracised, or by the falsehoods you apparently spread about me.  Plainly we can’t be friends until you apologise, but I have other friends. However, your behaviour does upset Lara a lot.  In particular, she made it very clear on Friday that she’s not willing to go anywhere (such as [her grandmother’s] party) from which I have been explicitly excluded or uninvited.  I encouraged her to go and enjoy the party while I found somewhere local for dinner, but she was quite insistent on this.  While I waited in the car for her to wish happy birthday to [her grandmother], she herself came out to have a chat with me, which was charming, and said that she would feel the same way in Lara’s position.

In short, by cutting yourselves off from me, you are cutting yourselves off from Lara, because she refuses to have anything to do with anyone who treats me this way.

Lastly, I’m intrigued by the idea of a mental health professional who would give a professional opinion without having seen or assessed the patient, without taking a history, and without knowing anything about current or recent symptoms, therapy, or treatment.  There’s a word for such behaviour, but it’s not “professional”.

Jay

30 Jul 2014, 18:04

Dear Jay

Of course we will apologise for anything we’ve done wrong. Please explain further, so that we can do so.

I’m aware, of course, that we turned you away from our door, once, some months ago, which was distressing enough to do and must have been far worse to experience. Perhaps you were not aware that it was the first time we had seen our daughter for many months, for much of which time we had had no news of her whatsoever – not even knowing whether she was alive or dead for some weeks – and it was a very precious evening for us. As I told you at the time, we were too busy for you: we could not contemplate sharing the evening with somebody outside the family (apart from anything else we had personal things to discuss, including regarding our child’s welfare, which we could not have talked about with an outsider present). So much so that we did not even include my father, which caused him considerable distress, though he quickly understood our dilemma and of course forgave us immediately. It was most unfortunate that you turned up, and we had done everything we could to prevent this as we realised how unpleasant it would be for you: Shaun, Ben and I had all tried repeatedly (via email, text and telephone, over 24 hours) to ask Lara not to bring you, as we did not want you to have a wasted journey and the unpleasantness of being asked to go away again. I can see that this will have come across as rude and I am very sorry indeed and apologise unreservedly (though I confess I was then and remain still at a loss as to what else we could have done). Please let us know of any other rudenesses so we can put those right too.

With regard to telling lies about you, that is a very serious allegation indeed and again, if you could kindly tell us what the lies have been (and what the truth is) we will of course not merely apologise, but contact anybody we have allegedly lied to and correct what we have said. Naturally I am not aware of doing this on purpose but it is still very serious indeed and I’m not surprised you are angry.

We are not really in a position to apologise for Friday evening, as we have no say over which guests [Shaun’s sister] chooses to invite into or exclude from her home. We had certainly not asked if we could influence her guest list. (Though it would be disingenuous not to add that, unusually, Shaun had asked his sister to let him know in advance who would be there as we were contemplating giving the evening a miss.)

Your observations on professionals are interesting, thank you, but have not shaken our confidence in those we have consulted. Partly, perhaps, because you are not in possession of all the facts: partly of course because it is not your area of expertise.

With very best wishes,

Anne

Always something to be grateful for

Sunday

Bink rang me twice last week.

Which ranks it as a really good week.

Of all the times Bink has been mad, Alex said, this must register as the least awful.

Could that be, Serena observed, because she hasn’t got someone in the background, far more poisonously nuts than she is, dragging her far further into the mire?

Why did you leave your kind friends? I dared ask.

Long silence.

You still there?

(God grant I haven’t offended her, and lost her for weeks.)

Yes, yes. Just trying to work out the answer.

A bit more silence.

Never mind. Here’s another. Have you any plans for the future?

Even longer silence.

This wasn’t supposed to be so difficult, Bink. Forget that. Let me ask something simpler. Can we help you?

Only if you’ve got a hundred pounds a day you can spare.

(So that is the cost of her current accommodation. What is it: three weeks already?)

Bink I would, if I thought it could help.

You haven’t got a hundred pounds a day.

I have savings. But I don’t think it would get you any nearer your long-term goal. It’s not worth all our savings just to keep you where you are.

Thoughtful silence.

Have you considered, I asked her, Professor Veale’s treatment plan? That you join a Christian therapeutic community?

I can’t think of that, she said. I need to solve the next week or two...

So, I thought, afterwards, if I could find a therapeutic community which might take her immediately... solve her immediate panic... might lead to a much better way to live.

Naturally, therefore, I spent the next two days ringing therapeutic communities.

Again.

She is far too ill for them. She needs to be motivated. She needs to enquire of them herself.

Always, too ill for help. Or not ill in the right way. Or in the right place.

Yet again, again, again.

What is there out there, for someone as ill as Bink?

Ah well. Sunday is a day for good news.

She rang me.

Twice.

And here are some pictures of the beautiful azaleas and rhododendrons at our friends’ beautiful party last night. Forty years being happy together.

Unfortunately I had picked up a bug from the little Viking and was extremely sick... but I could still enjoy the garden, if not the champagne.

Glass always a little full.

Siege and estrangement

High summer 2014

The mercy was that they arrived at Shaun’s mother’s birthday party before us, by some half hour or so.

So by the time we got there, the air conditioning had already distributed the sewage about as far as it could spatter.

Bink, unsurprisingly, was so offended at Gatsby’s being refused entry as her “partner” to the family he had virtually made her a stranger to, that instead of cutting her losses and deciding to have an evening of culture at the opera instead – or, far better, telling him to go boil his head and enjoying the night with those of us who genuinely loved her so much that we wanted her well – she had hunkered down in the local with him so that the waves of absence and antagonism could be felt through the walls of the house.

She sent messages to her brothers asking them to join her. So of course kind-hearted, disingenuous Alex left the cousins, aunts and grandmother he so seldom saw, to do so.

And after a while returned.

She wants to see Rosie.

Rosie is right here. Bink is welcome at her grandmother’s birthday party.

She can’t come in. She wants Rosie to go out to her. She’ll talk to her on the pavement if you don’t want her Rosie in the pub.

How could she even think, for a moment, that this would be suitable?

So eventually Bink had to come in, just to talk to her sister. At the bottom of the garden. Away from the rest of us.

Watching from afar.

As if we were supervising her.

It was pitiful.

How had we come to this? We love Bink. We never wanted such a stand-off.

But the only alternative available was capitulation. Accepting Gatsby as her “partner”. Not minding that she wouldn’t have anything to do with any of us and only wanted her adored and unthreatening baby sister.

Could that possibly have been right or proper?

There is no doubt whatsoever.

Bink was desperately ill.

She just couldn’t see that she was.

And Gatsby? How could he, sane as he officially was and nearly twice her age, consider this an acceptable way to live?

After details Bink had confided in me about the sexual arrangements of his domestic ménage some decade earlier or so, I could only conclude that Gatsby liked to think of himself as a trendy teenage rebel: nearer our age than hers, he nonetheless liked to construct a scenario in which we were the repressive, wicked older generation, he the heroic Romeo of a hundred tales of disapproved true love.

The story, more or less, that was posted on social media. 

That Shaun and I had parted two loving sisters, for no better reason than that we disapproved of a boyfriend. Whom we had even, outrageously, accused of being a paedophile.

There was so much more to worry about in Bink’s life that being portrayed as Cruella d’Evil Stepmother to a cohort of Facebook friends barely registered.

A week or two later, Bink wrote to my father.

When Gatsby and I come to the seaside, she asked, will you, too, refuse to let him in?

Not at all, he replied graciously.

Gatsby is welcome in my house... on condition that you agree to sit down and talk properly about what is going on.

To your parents, as well as to me.

Clashes of clan and kin

Midsummer 2014

Every summer, late July to mid-August, we go to North Norfolk.

Have for generations. Ever since my father was a little boy, and his father invested in a swanky new motor car, which raced along the country lanes at an impressive twenty miles an hour or so.

So Nanny and Cook and the luggage took the train, the family took the motor, and half way from Norwich, where my grandfather was vicar, to Overstrand, near the sea as the name suggests, the train contingent would lean out of the window and wave their white hankies at the car contingent waving theirs from the level crossing.

In 1948 my grandfather allowed his love of sea bathing to persuade him into investing in a terrace house, right on the cliff, near enough for the waves to wash the upper windows with seaweed and occasionally thunder right over the roof in midwinter and break empty milk bottles on the front doorstep.

My father inherited the house, my parents continued the tradition of holiday hospitality and my mother often laughed that it would be cheaper to fly the entire extended family to Majorca for the least rainy month of a rainy English year than run that little house in the teeth of the elements for the remaining eleven.

We love it.

That year, 2014, we had fixed our holiday dates in my father’s diary well in advance, as he likes us to do. Arranged Rosie’s attendance at a Christian holiday camp around these. Put all the necessary plans in place.

When someone – I believe my sister (who generously gives Bink houseroom in her own holiday house two hundred yards from my father’s, without its associations with her illness; its lack of a shower and pockets of sand in the corners and original cobwebs dating back to the mid-twentieth century) – dropped the ghastly headline that Bink and Gatsby had rented somewhere a stone’s throw away, in between her house and ours, for the very dates we’d be there.

Gatecrashing a family celebration of baptism was bad enough. Rosie’s longed-for holiday, a new depth altogether.

Again, on the telephone to Bink’s therapist Helen, asking for advice. You don’t need to give anyone a reason, she said, not to want your child to associate with somebody.

Not wanting is reason enough. The parent paramount.

When the offspring is under eighteen, anyway.

It was out of the question that Rose should spend a week of her summer holiday fifty paces from another cobweb so noxious. Lured onto the prom for icecream. Pulled hither and yon in such a toxic tug o’ war.

We changed the week of her holiday camp. She would join us the following week instead.

No child should have her pastimes and plans so perverted by adult politics.

Shaun’s mother was having a significant birthday in late July. Coming over from Ireland. Shaun’s sister posted invitations on Facebook. The whole family. Plus partners, of course.

We knew exactly what that would mean.

“Partner” can be a passport anywhere.

You don’t need to miss the party, Rosie said to us. If you just want me not to see him. I can stay at home: you go without me.

No child should have to grow up before her time, either.

Rosie sweetheart, it is very, very generous of you – but absolutely and completely out of the question. We wouldn’t dream of going without you.

If Gatsby is going to be there, we all stay away and do something else together.

I don’t want you to change anything around us whatsoever, I said to Shaun’s sister. We just need to know, please.

Is Gatsby welcome at your party? If he just turns up, say?

Because if so, we’ll stay discreetly away.

Shaun’s sister is a teacher.

Child protection paramount. No question. Trumps everything.

Rosie comes before anyone.

Bless you!

But how to communicate this to Bink?

No one can get in touch with her. You have to wait for her to contact you. It has been like that for years.

Shaun’s sister tried every means of communication. Nothing back.

What was to stop them turning up together anyway?

As they had to the family christening...

Joy and sorrow

Early summer 2014

We couldn’t protect Bink from Gatsby: she was of age.

I enquired into the law on “vulnerable adults” and there was no mileage there. (Mostly thanks to my stubborn protectiveness, Bink has never been sectioned.)

But at least Rose – in truth, perhaps considerably less vulnerable than Bink – was still under our jurisdiction. For a few more years yet.

We could protect her... or so I thought.

There was a family christening that summer. Rosie’s little cousin: first of the next generation. And the first family event since Serena’s wedding the summer before.

Might Rose be allowed, I had asked the cathedral organist some months beforehand, permission to come down South for it?

The organist agreed it was a significant celebration of faith and family, worthy of leave of absence. The dean and chapter were consulted and gave their necessary blessing too.

I booked her expensive train ticket well in advance. Advised on suitable attire. (I had decided on my outfit made for Serena’s wedding; Rose could wear her beautiful bridesmaid’s dress... just. For the last time.)

Cousins Fran and Fleur were coming for the weekend. And my sister’s family. We would travel in convoy.

No word from Bink.

You try to get into a rhythm of not caring. It doesn’t work, but you have to anyway.

Fleur had sent her a message a week or two before, offering a lift in their car. 

Deafening silence.

Friday, happened to be speaking to the infant’s mother. Had she heard anything from Bink? Did she know if she might be there?

I think so, said my niece. She asked if she could bring someone.

You said yes?

Well, of course. Otherwise she wouldn’t be able to get there.

Without someone to drive her.

The lie was almost as staggering as the cheek. She knew we didn’t want Gatsby anywhere near Rosie.

Who was already on the train home.

Absolutely nothing we could do.

Yet again, a day both beautiful and terrible.

For the first time, I found myself not even wanting to see Bink. Shrank when she came near me. Avoided her over lunch.

Cheated, manipulated, Gatsby in Rosie’s presence.

Weeks before, Gatsby had succeeded in riling even Shaun to anger.

For her eleventh birthday Rosie had expressed a wish for a leather jacket. And Gatsby – Gatsby – had promised it.

We struggled to articulate why Shaun was so incensed.

Because it’s sexy.

Because it’s expensive.

Because he was a man in his forties and she a child.

Should I not have given her Ugg boots? Shaun’s sister asked, concerned.

Absolutely you should! I said. That was extremely generous and entirely appropriate. Thank you.

So I went on eBay and found a black leather jacket for a tenner.

Rose was delighted. She could wear – even lose – it with abandon and little regard for expense. I expect she eventually did both.

And the child was perhaps in control of the situation in the end.

At the reception Gatsby sidled up to her and gave her a present anyway. Wrapped but obvious: CDs. (CDs, we discovered later, only appropriate with PG. And much later, rejects from his own daughter.)

Could you look after this for me? Rosie asked Serena.

I don’t have a bag, Serena said. Give it to my friend.

So Rosie handed her unwrapped, unexamined birthday present to Serena’s friend.

Who contacted us that evening.

I’m so sorry: Rosie never asked for her present back and I forgot to give it to her at the end of the day. What should I do with it?

Clever little Rose!

That’s absolutely fine, we said.

Give it to a charity shop.

A difficult Easter

Good Friday to Easter Sunday, 18th to 20th April 2014

A week is a lot longer, when you’ve lost a child, than it is in politics.

When Bink was twelve (in 1997) she went missing for two nights – one, by the time we realised – and it felt like years.

I last saw Bink on Friday night (last week, 10th May, 2019). Since then I’ve tried to contact her approximately once a day, and – after our friendly text exchange early in Saturday’s dark hours – heard no more from her than the silence of the roaring of the seas.

I should be used to it by now.

You never get used to it.

If she were in Thailand, India, Senegal, without a telephone or wifi, it would be easy. She would be having a life. Doing. Being young. Adventuring.

Instead, I see her years still slipping away...

Looking back, I am amazed how short the dates are in between (in 2013-14). It felt she was gone a dreary half-life.

We heard nothing.

After that débâcle at Rose’s school in mid-March, more thundering of the waves of nothing. She hadn’t spoken to us since February.

When Shaun gave up being a parish clergyman in 2009, Ben became counter tenor in Dublin’s Christ Church cathedral. When he came home from Ireland, Rose became a chorister. The family revolved around whoever was working at Christmas and Easter.

For three years it was Rose.

We would beg digs or college rooms from friends at the university, borrow the van from the school where Shaun was working, all decamp to the North of England for half a week or more, my father included.

Most times I ignoring, as best I could, the ache that is Bink’s absence.

That Easter, 2014, we booked guest rooms in a local Priory, through a friend Shaun did theological training with.

We arrived in on Maundy Thursday.

We had several bedrooms, a little kitchen and sitting room, a tiny garden in the Easter sun.

I picked daffodils and forsythia, and put smiling vases of them on tables and windowsills.

Rose would be singing until evensong on Easter Day.

Good Friday.

Bink’s coming, Ben said.

It felt like a sick joke.

Ben’s jokes can be quite edgy, but always very funny. Not like that.

She’s on the train. She’ll be here in an hour.

I did indeed feel sick.

I should feel celebratory.

Could it be true?

What about... I don’t know. Apology. Explanation. Something.

We hadn’t heard from her for a lifetime.

What about, Have you got room for me?

We made up another sofabed in the sitting room we’d allocated to Alex’s girlfriend.

I went to meet her at the station.

Just Bink. Her little blue rucksack. And her fiddle.

So good to see you! How are you, Bink?

Don’t call me that, for God’s sake.

Silenced.

What do you want me to call you?

Anything you like.

Just not that.

I see.

This might perhaps not go quite as smoothly as a longed-for reunion might...

It was an awkward weekend, in many ways. Glorious in others.

Weather beautiful.

Bink seething, somehow, underneath. Nothing easy with her.

Good Friday supper, we invited Rose’s college organist (an old friend from teen years) and spouse; her head (a new friend, still is) and spouse; wondered how to seat us all; divided the party up between tiny kitchen and tiny sitting room; put Serena and Christian in charge of one table, Shaun and me the other; had a lovely evening together.

All of us trying to remember to call Bink, Lara. Her baptismal name.

Situations like that, she can be a pleasure. Charming. Socially adept.

Next day, Holy Saturday, Rosie free much of the day.

Tea in the garden. Books in the sun. Hired boats on the river.

Went to meet the others... saw Bink, sorry, Lara, outside a pub on the river bank, Rosie with her, several strange men at their table, all very drunk and loud and surrounding them.

Bink drinking with all of them

Oh my dear life and great aunt’s bones, what now?

However ill she was before, she always protected little Rose.

How do we get her away, without a scene?

And how long, oh Lord. How long?

Another dilemma

Weekend of Bink’s birthday, 1st March 2014

We put permission in place to enable Bink to visit over her birthday weekend. Not her birthday itself, Saturday 1st March, because the girls’ choir already had an activity for the day.

But the next day, Sunday, provided:

1. Gatsby had absolutely no contact with Rose, or even the school.

2. Bink and Rosie stayed on site, supervised, and didn’t leave the premises.

   Unless

3. Bink was able to call in the services of another adult, known to us and authorised by the school, to take responsibility for Rosie off-site.

It was the custom that whichever choir, boys’ or girls’, was not on Matins duty would attend the cathedral Sunday School. They could be excused to go out with parents; but we didn’t want Rosie to miss this.

So Bink attended Sunday School with her, and did the activities alongside her.

Then had school lunch with her. Then they spent the afternoon in school together.

(Gatsby presumably drove Bink up for the weekend. And drove her back down again afterwards. But this was none of our business. He was not seen at the school.)

The house mother reported afterwards what a lovely day the sisters had had together. Bink was charming to everybody, spent time talking to the head and “put a smile on Rosie’s face”.

So far, so good.

Phew.

Two weeks later she turned up at the school again. Unannounced. Unexpected. Without permission.

To spend the weekend with Rose again.

How much of my life has been spent agonising? Ringing friends for advice. Unable to find any professionals who can tell you what to do...

An eleven year old child.

A sister in her late twenties. Out of communication with the parents. And out of her mind.

Who love each other.

It was a Saturday. Bink there already. Having travelled two hundred and twenty miles. Alone. To see her.

I rang a GP friend.

And a vicar friend.

Both wise, kind women. With personal, family experience of mental illness.

What do we do?

Drafted as careful and loving a letter as I could. Explaining. It was understandable, the misunderstanding. 

But she needed permission from us each time. She couldn’t turn up and see Rose without, just because it had been arranged once.

We would give permission now, of course, because she was there. But another time...

A member of staff gave Bink the letter.

And later that day spoke to us. It’s not that I’m on her side, the teacher said.

Oh, my life.

Side?! Shaun said in exasperation. There aren’t any sides.

(There is only sadness.)

They have to stay professional.

I knew exactly what had happened. On receiving my letter – which she never read, not a word of – Bink burst into tears of such distress, such torment, such panic...

It has happened before.

You can’t help but want to help, when confronted by Bink’s raw suffering. I can’t, anyway. Why should anyone else?

How evil and manipulative we must appear. To someone who had no idea.

I’ve even suffered members of my own family telling me I don’t seem to realise Bink is ill.

What does a broken heart look like?

26th February 2013

Bink stepped over the threshold and left Gatsby outside.

I had, at the time, a friend called Graham. I met him when he was doing work on my father’s seaside house in North Norfolk.

The very first thing Graham asked me, knowing of my work, was would I help him.

He was losing – had virtually lost, indeed – his grandchildren.

It was breaking his heart.

Over the years I did what I could. Here, and here. Here and again here.

I always knew it was not enough. Not nearly enough.

To do enough, I would have had to abandon my own life, my own children and work, and chain myself to the railings of No 10 for him, full time.

Graham didn’t have the resources to do this for himself. Mostly, educational resources.

He was a good man. A member of the Sally Army. Didn’t drink or smoke or swear (then). Just loved his grandchildren and wanted to do the best by them.

But he got the wrong side of the Social Services and didn’t have the wherewithal to beat them at their own game.

Eventually he introduced me to someone else, Wendy, who lost her grandchild too – she must have contacted him through the Daily Mail – so I wrote about her, as well.

Graham cared a lot about Bink. Prayed for her regularly and often asked after her. He knew what it was to lose a child. To see others doing terrible damage to someone vulnerable whom you love, and be powerless to prevent it.

27th February 2014. 8.04

Hi,

    Been thinking about you. Hope the meeting happened and you was able to move forward, if only a little bit. 

                                                                                                                                                        Graham x

27th February 2014. 8.16

Thank you, Graham.

She turned up, with Jay. I said he couldn’t come in, so he asked her if she wanted to stay, which I found extremely manipulative and sinister.

She did stay, we had a very pleasant dinner, and she then asked Shaun if she could take Rosie out for the weekend. When he said no, not as things stand at the moment, she said there was no point in her staying.

She left without saying hello to my father, which caused him very great distress indeed. He still has her Christmas present here, and prays for her every day.

So… well, I don't know whether it was positive or not. It seemed lovely at the time to sit down and have supper with her, as if nothing were wrong. But afterwards we felt… used? I mean, I know parents are there to be used, but it's good to feel loved too. I think what really finished me off was seeing how much she upset my father.

Jay is very, very bad news indeed.

Thanks for caring. Funny: I've been so concerned for you over the years and now Wendy… and now we've lost our own child.

A

xxx

I don’t remember why Shaun said no. I don’t remember anything between Bink’s stepping into the house, and stepping out of it again, causing my father extreme and acute anguish.

To a waiting Gatsby in his car, presumably.

My father, ninety seven, wanted to scour the streets in his pyjamas, looking for her, like the Shulamite goatherd in the Song of Songs, going by night through the city, dodging the watchman, peering in alleyways… barefoot and desperate for one so loved.

I’ve no idea how we stopped him.

Heartbroken comes easily to the tongue.

The last time I saw Graham, to our and my father’s stunned astonishment and shock – given what a loving, Christian pair they had seemed before misfortune struck in the form of the SS as Graham called them, with bitterness – his wife had already left him. For someone less broken.

He had come down from Norfolk to stay for the week and do some work on our house. He often did.

He had been signed off, disabled, almost since I knew him. Occasional moonlighting – when he wasn’t too depressed – was his only way of hitting back at a system which had taken what he most cared for.

He had badly miscalculated the cost of the work, he and I both lost money, he couldn’t finish it and we couldn’t pay him so much more than he had quoted for less than half of the work.

It was a dismal business. Friday lunchtime he packed up, shouting at me for twenty minutes in front of a number of people included passersby in the street, and then drove off.

By an unhappy coincidence I was then screamed at by someone else living with us – we were doing a kindness – who is not much to do with our story but was also disintegrating into mental illness.

Afterwards I sat in a sunny garden with a cool beer, a friend… and Bink herself. I felt like shaking.

That day I wrote Graham a sad email, as kind as I could. Several thousand words: he was a dear friend.

I finished:

I wish you well, Graham. For the time being I am going to block calls and emails from you so I can concentrate my emotional energies on looking after Lara (and other members of my family who need my help: she is not the only one who is ill and struggling). I am not ruling out friendship with you.

[Alas, in his distress Graham had fallen out with many. I didn’t hold out huge hope.

I then made it very clear he could continue to contact Shaun, if he believed we still owed him money.]

With very best wishes and I do, genuinely, hope that life looks up for you soon and also that we remain friends in the future.

Anne

It was not long afterwards – perhaps a few months; not four full seasons – that Graham went into his garden shed, as he often now did, alone and heartbroken.

Forget the day job.

Sunday

[Explanatory note: Fran is my cousin. Married to Fleur. Ex-actor, now barrister – and director – and very highly critical – like Fleur – in a very, very good way. Trust their professional judgement hugely.]

Saturday 11th May, 1.02 am

Can’t send you a thank you card cos don’t know where you’re living.

Thank you.

For coming.

Meant the world to me.

Keep writing. Always thought you were a writer.

LY

Axxx

I said that your play needed honing. Fleur said the reason I think your play needs honing is because my head is wrong and I can’t understand anything that isn’t completely straightforward. (Fleur didn’t actually say that but that is what I conclude from what she said and my own observations.) If it doesn’t need honing then I think it is brilliant.

Are you sure that’s what she said? Fran certainly suggested rewrites. I think it needs honing!

Then again Fran also said it needed a lot of honing.

I think your play is brilliant and possibly needs honing.

I think you are brilliant and possibly need honing.

(But then most people probably do.)

Thanks anyway.

PS Yes, thank you to those of you who have kindly asked: we had a great evening.

(You’d never know Bink was ill. Except that she was dressed in loose cotton trousers and at one point said, please don’t let your shoe touch my shoe.

Are you clean or dirty?

Dirty.

So why does it matter?

[Shrug and smile.])

The audience laughed a lot, which was the point.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it, even more the point.

Including my family, who are very hard to please, so that is also to the point.

And several people said, please develop this into a full length play: I will definitely pay to come and see it… which is presumably the most point of all.

So if anyone is still free next Friday evening and can travel to SE London…

The pity of it.

This week.

It was my play last night.

A few nights earlier.

Text correspondence. Circa 1 am.

I was pretty careful not to promise [I could come]. did I accidentally do it anyway?

Well, I thought so…

I would simply love it if you’re there…

Please come.

I’ll TRY. I’m sorry if I promised…

it better be funny.

Thursday.

This is a picture of Bink trying really, really hard…

Because she promised.

Softly, softly, catchee monkey.

February 2014

It was bound to happen.

Bink adores Rose. She had promised to visit again very soon. She wasn’t allowed to without contacting Rose’s parents.

And therefore, her own.

Who knows how long it might have been, without this incentive? But one Wednesday afternoon in late February, having not spoken to any of us apart from Rose since the previous November, Bink contacted Shaun at work again.

Wed, 26 Feb 2014

I’m coming to see you this evening to talk about visiting Rosie. I’m bringing Jay [Gatsby] - not to influence the conversation, just to make me feel better. We'll bring sleeping bags.

How Bink has dominated our family!

For the rest of that afternoon the emails whooshed back and forth between at least five of us. (Serena had long asked to be excluded from communications about Bink: she found them too distressing.)

How to make her feel welcome without inviting him. What was most constructive, and fair, and helpful. 

Should the meeting be in a public place, to make her more comfortable?

Would she come at all, if Gatsby wasn’t welcome.

After a dozen or so of these: 

I'm not sure email is the best medium for discussing this issue. Please could we form a committee so we can talk about it properly?
Best,
Ben

Good idea. I’m not quite sure of the correct procedure for proposing that. Could we form a committee to appoint someone to look that up?
A x
(Ben, piss off.)

Most pertinent of all perhaps, how to get a message back to her? Lost though the love wasn’t between us, we didn’t want Gatsby driving all that way, only to be left on the doorstep.

But Bink doesn’t really do being contacted.

I tried everything. Not answering her telephone. Of course. Or responding to texts.

I was adamant – I don’t think anyone disagreed – that we mustn’t contact her the easiest way: via Gatsby.

This was between us and her.

We were absolutely not playing that game.

All we could use was the medium she had.

Dear Bink

We would love to see you. I will be free from about 7 pm and Anne earlier.

Sad to say, Jay is not welcome here. Is there anyone else who would make you feel better? For instance, Christian or Ben? Alternatively we could ask [Helen her therapist; or her best friend] or Alex, though obviously we can't answer for any of them until we've asked them. We would like to do all we can to make you feel comfortable.

If this will make it difficult for you to get here without a lift, Ben can pick you up. He is free to leave Bedford at 4.30; assuming you are [at Gatsby’s] and the traffic isn’t too bad, he would probably reach you at about 6. Please let us know what you would like to do.

You don't need a sleeping bag, of course. We will happily make your room ready for you.

All our love,

Shaun and Anne.

Rev S Atkins

Chaplain
Bedford School

No reply. Knew she wouldn’t receive it.

So I threw the Yale lock on the front door, to prevent Gatsby from just walking in.

Doorbell. 

Both of them.

Hello Bink!

I’m really sorry, Gatsby, but we haven’t got time for you this evening.

Stunned. Shock. Haven’t time?

That’s right.

(Haven’t seen Bink on her own for a long while. This is just family... surely most people could have worked this out?)

His next comment said it all.

Turned to little Bink. Utterly confident in her answer. Without him there to protect her. Against her evil family.

You surely don’t want to stay, Bink?

Honest Iago.

Through and through.

A most old-fashioned question

November 2013

Yet again, I find I have skipped an episode in the chronology.

Which has become relevant now, because it is all mixed up with Bink’s living with Gatsby and the confusion their relationship was. And communicated to others. With all the mist and concealment and obfuscation. 

There is a reason society comes up with signposts. So the rest of us know how to relate: give a couple the support they require. Marriage. Cohabitation. Concubinage.

Which?

You may remember, back in the autumn of 2013, Alex had rung Gatsby to ask him to pass on to Bink that my father wasn’t well.

After the age of ninety-five or so – my father was born on the day of the October Revolution, not that we necessary blame him with any direct cause and effect – not-being-well can mean not-being-around any moment.

So Bink – and Gatsby, who was fond of my father: they had pacifism in common, though my father had tested his commitment in the teeth of ostracism and his best friend’s sacrifice and on one notable occasion, in the chaos of war, the very real threat of the firing squad – asked to come and see him. Early evening. Wouldn’t stay long.

We sat at the kitchen table together, hoping Shaun would get back from work soon, while Bink offered to play chess with my father: something they had done together in happier days.

She beat him fairly quickly.

So he decided not to wait any longer, and turned to Gatsby. 

I can’t remember quite how he phrased it, in the so-courteous terms that a gentleman was brought up to use in a different era altogether – an era when Gatsby’s behaviour would have been very much seen for what it was – but the gist was very clear indeed.

The nature of your relationship? On what terms are you living together? 

Something like that.

What I do remember, very clearly, is Bink’s reaction.

And Gatsby’s.

Bink’s lack of reaction, rather. She remained quite calm, as if perfectly accepting of her grandfather’s interest and why he would ask. I’m not saying she thought it was reasonable. Or unreasonable.

She didn’t rise to it at all.

Gatsby, on the other hand...

Gatsby is a polite sort of dude who never seems annoyed. Unassertive. Liking to be liked. Wouldn’t openly challenge your views, even if he thought them absurd behind your back.

A cross between a middle-aged Guardian-reading hippy, and a gawky geek with the kind of intelligence that gets you a First at Cambridge.

(So for instance, he kept, for many years, a bottle of champagne to celebrate the day Lady Thatcher died. Not the day she left office. Not the day his preferred political party was democratically elected. But the day a long-retired, completely impotent, somewhat demented and presumably very much loved and mourned mother and grandmother finally turned dust back to dust and ashes to ashes. That sort of misjudgement, you know.)

So you wouldn’t normally expect him to take the bait.

Indignant? He was steaming.

How dare you? He turned to me.

I wasn’t the one who asked, I observed. (Nor would I. Not completely suicidal. Nor ninety-six, with all the licence that brings.)

But I’m not at all surprised at your reaction, I continued. You must feel ashamed of yourself either way.

And rightly so.

Which brought the apoplexy neatly to a head.

If I needed any assurances he wasn’t getting nooky out of this dismal and quite-exploitative-enough-already arrangement, it was all before me on the table.

No wonder he was touchy. 

No wonder he felt a spare pillock.

Since that’s exactly what he was.

Bink’s unpaid carer, then.

Stay for supper? I asked.

Her.

Yes, please, she said.

They stayed for hours. Or rather, Bink stayed for hours and Gatsby wasn’t consulted.

And when they left – strangest thing in the world – Bink held on to me for a full half-minute or more. Bink, who won’t ever give you a kiss and whom you daren’t even hug uninvited in case you are or she is the wrong side of clean or dirtiness.

One of the many wearisome aspects of living with mental illness. Up and down. You take comfort from the tiniest crumbs.

I remember ringing Fleur the next day and telling her. Something to be grateful for, I said.

Not sure it makes any difference, Serena observed. The relationship is so toxic I don’t think sex could make it any worse.

I said I thought sex could make anything a very great deal worse.

I remembered his words the night before. None of our business.

None of my business? I was one flesh with her myself, for nine months. Whose b***** business is it, if not mine who bore her?

That’s the trouble with ageing hippies. They think they can throw out wisdom going back millennia.

Fleur agreed.

She is Jewish, after all...

A few days later, Bink wrote Grandfather a most gracious card. Not that she thought it was his business, but for his peace of mind she clarified that they weren’t living together like that, no.

And then – after such an embrace; such reassurance – we didn’t see her for... how long an agonisingly harsh winter was it?

Stalled

January 2014

And Bink wasn’t talking to me.

That is, she wasn’t talking to any of us. But her silence was more particularly targeted at me than anyone else.

Serena interprets this as a form of self-loathing, when Bink punishes me. Why else but that I am the nearest she has to herself?

It came as a surprise, when she was in her early twenties, that she told me she had always assumed she would go up to Oxford to read English, marry at twenty-two, become a writer and have lots of children by the age of thirty. It never occurred to her that she wouldn’t do as I had done.

Poor Bink.

So any ruling about Rose’s safety had to come from both of us. More particularly, Shaun.

Please explain to Bink, I said to the house mother, that it’s very kind of her to want to take Rosie out for the weekend, but she’ll have to talk to us first. Either of us. If you can say it’s policy that you can’t allow a child off the premises without express permission from the parents, it would help.

I can’t, she said.

Can’t what?

I’ve tried and tried. Bink doesn’t answer her telephone. She left me a message, but I can’t get back to her. And there’s no facility for voicemail.

Ah, that one...

No, she doesn’t I’m afraid. Not telephone, not email... doesn’t even read old-fashioned letters. All contact is on Bink’s terms, always.

So she might just turn up, two hundred mile journey and more, to take Rose out... and not be allowed even to see her.

It was heart-breaking. But then, so much of Bink’s life has been.

Why was I the one worrying about this? Bink and Gatsby decide to drive half the weekend to see a child without confirmation from the school or the parents that they can... why should I care?

Why should the house mother care? But she worried too.

Bink had rung the school earlier in the week.

A few hours before they set off on Friday, the house mother managed to speak to her.

Please contact your parents before you come. We can’t let you visit a pupil without permission from the parents, and they’d like to talk to you.

There are advantages to being a father. Not nine months dragging around an extra stone and a half culminating in an excruciating few hours of utter and extreme torture and then having the life sucked out of you for several months more being not quite all of them.

Though this possibly informs the subsequent lifelong difference.

Shaun was working all day. In classrooms. A bit preoccupied. Given that he was the one preoccupying the others in the space.

Me, if I were a brain surgeon in the middle of operating on Einstein, involved in the trickiest medical manoeuvre known to Man, and Bink had rung me that day, I’d have shoved all the scalpels in the hands of the most junior nurse in Theatre and taken the call.

(Actually, this is a lie. If I were playing Lady Macbeth, I wouldn’t. Just shows: I wasn’t called to be a brain surgeon.)

Shaun was busy.

Sent Bink a text saying he couldn’t speak until later.

So she had to contact the school and leave a message for Rosie, apologising that they’d left it to late to organise this time.

Very sorry.

We will come and see you very soon indeed.

How would she do that, I wondered. 

Given that she still didn’t want to talk to us.

And we would never let Gatsby see Rose again.

Cards and calls

Winter 2013 and 2014

2013 was the Year of the Christmas Card.

I hadn’t forgotten the card: of course I hadn’t. I don’t suppose I’ll forget it as long as I live. I still have it, in the tiny drawer in my study where I keep precious things, but I don’t need to rootle through other treasures and find it, dig it out of my heart again, to know what it says.

I didn’t realise it was that year, that’s all.

It wasn’t until yesterday afternoon, when I looked back through the emails of the first half of 2014 so that I could drop back into place which order everything happened in, that I found a reference to it in a letter to someone else whose daughter has a similar illness. He had kindly asked. And in a rare moment of confidence I had shared what we both knew we shared anyway.

What surprised me was the timing. I hadn’t realised we had fitted so much pain, so much estrangement, into so few, such short months.

It was indeed in late 2013 that Gatsby and Bink had taken Rose out of school for the weekend. Despite, you notice, his insistence that he had no idea where she was or how she was living.

The envelope arrived just before Christmas

Bink’s writing is unmistakable. Very neat, very small, un-joined-up letters. Like a very careful child’s.

Addressed to Shaun and me.

All clichés apply. Heart racing. Palpitations. 

I saved it up. Put it aside while I got some business out of the way. Made myself a lovely cup of coffee, with cream. 

Took it into the sunlight in my East-facing study.

When had I last heard from Bink? Really? Was it years since she had last actually sent me something?

Took a sip of my coffee.

Slit the envelope open with a knife, to keep the envelope neat.

Slap in the face.

Bucket of iced water.

Bucket of scalding water.

All of them and nothing.

It was a cheap card, obviously someone else’s choice, out of a packet of childish, sentimental such. A gaudy cartoon kitten with a ribbon and bell, looking out at snow and a pillar box.

Shaun and Anne

Don’t expect me for Christmas

Bink

(Possibly there was an x. I suppose I ought to check really. An x might make all the difference, mightn’t it?

But not to me. Not then.)

I howled for half the morning.

One of the boys – Ben perhaps; or more likely Alex – came and found me. Asked the matter.

I gestured.

But don’t you see, he said. Calm. Objective. Does sound more like Alex.

This was kindly meant. She means exactly what she says. Don’t expect her.

She doesn’t want you to expect her.

How liberating it must be, to be Aspergic, sometimes!

2014

The emails to the school pick up in the New Year. Bink ringing Rosie several times a week. Put through to her but monitored, to make sure Rose is coping.

Trying to hammer out some kind of policy with the staff, to protect her.

Then the inevitable…

Bink told Rose she was coming to take her out for the weekend again. Rang the house mother to arrange it with her.

Who, of course, told us straight away.

Oh lordy what now?

How to love both daughters, whilst protecting the younger?

Whilst the older wasn’t talking to us at all.

I will be in Cambridge tonight. Speaking at the Cambridge Writers.

Yet again, no idea where Bink is or how she is living.

Yet again, no way of seeing her, loving her, helping her…