Only We Know (12 page)

The sign outside the door gives no clue to the building’s purpose. Not even a logo or a simple
CAMHS in-patient unit
– just two words on a pale blue background.

It’s kind of ironic, because a short walk down the hill is the yellow-bricked Victorian monster that they converted into a hundred luxury apartments when the new hospital was built. The foundation stone at the front entrance rather gives the game away:

But if you check out the website – which I do sometimes, believe it or not – you’ll see that Oakhill House (established 2009) looks more like something off a TV design show: wavy award-winning architecture; a fern-strewn courtyard complete with decking and modern sculptures; its own gym, art studio and huge windows looking out
onto thirty acres of grounds. And most of the time I hated it.

There were two kinds of kids at Oakhill House: the ones who were desperate to avoid being discharged; and the ones, like me, who were desperate to get out. All I wanted was for my MTD – the multi-disciplinary team – to release me back into the wild. And every night I’d make a pact with myself that I was going to say and do all the right things. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that.

So why have I come back? What strange logic has drawn me to the scene of my darkest nightmares? The answer’s simple. This is where it all started to make sense.

And one place was special: a secret place, somewhere only the two of us knew about. I figure that if I can just get back to it, I might feel better.

But the night staff are arriving for the changeover in a procession of clapped-out cars (the Mercedes C-Class saloon probably belongs to the consultant). No matter how unlikely it is, I can’t run the risk of being recognised. So I hide in the trees, waiting for my chance. And when the last of the smokers drifts back inside for dinner, I shoot across the car park and down the hill, hugging the shadows in case the new inmates of the asylum think I’m a burglar and call security.

Waiting for me at the bottom is a row of derelict Portakabins, where yesterday’s lunatics assembled transistor radios or tended tomato plants. Slowly decaying, their shattered windows an aching mouthful of jagged
teeth, it’s about time the wrecking ball put them out of their misery. I crunch across the broken glass, craning my neck backwards and squinting up.

And there it is, piercing the night sky like a three-hundred-foot penis: the old water tower.
Erected by direction of the Asylum Visiting Committee to secure a better provision in case of fire.
It looks like the kind of place a Disney knight would rescue a Disney princess from, with fake battlements and ivy climbing the wall.

The Disney knight would probably have hauled himself up the princess’s hair extensions. But if he’d taken the trouble to do his research he would have found the rusty iron staircase at the back.

Last time I’d needed a bunk-up. I’m a lot taller now, so getting one foot up between the spiky green railings and launching myself over isn’t nearly as impossible as it once seemed. Ducking under the
DANGER: KEEP OUT
sign, I pull up the collar of the old man’s raincoat and start climbing.

Last time it was the middle of summer. Tonight it’s wet, cold and slippery, and the wind’s whistling around my mud-stained ankles. I stick close to the wall, like a cartoon bank robber on the run, already wishing I’d taken up jogging like Dad suggested. Because by the time I step out onto the roof, I can hardly breathe.

Weeds are sprouting up everywhere and I’m sure that crack wasn’t there before. I nestle down in our favourite spot by the back wall, pulling my knees up to my chest
and trying to look on the bright side. But you know what? I’m not feeling too great. Not surprising really, because I’ve started thinking about school.

He’s bound to have told them. The Chinese whispers will have whizzed down the corridors and be all over Facebook by now. How can I go back there if everyone knows? What’s the point if it’s just like before?

Maybe this will make me feel better. There’s no wall at the front of the water tower, just a row of fake battlements with two-metre gaps between them and a sheer drop onto the spiky railings below.

I walk towards the precipice, staring into the half-light. On a clear day you can see forever, but with the stars dimmed behind a cloudy curtain of rain, I can only make out the dark outline of the woods and a twinkly crocodile of cars heading home.

Half a metre from the edge I start feeling better. And I’m seriously thinking about taking the next step, when a familiar voice stops me dead in my tracks.

‘I thought I’d find you up here.’

H always insisted that he wasn’t an emo. He was just a twelve-year-old boy who liked to dye his hair and wear make-up. ‘Who wants to be like everyone else?’ he said, talking to his trainers as usual. ‘You’ve got to dare to be different.’

A lot of them came out with that kind of crap in group discussion sessions, ‘inspirational’ stuff they’d picked up on Facebook and trotted out for the benefit of their treatment teams. So it wasn’t his taste in advertising slogans that we bonded over, it was gambling and drugs.

The pool table in the recreation room was usually dominated by the older kids. Maybe there was a fight that night or some other Oakhill House psychodrama, because for once the table was free. I knew we shared the same key worker, so it was just possible he’d put him up to it, but it was a major surprise when the kid with jet-black hair and a soft squeaky voice challenged me to a game.

H was an old hand. I’d only been there a week; I was still terrified that I was surrounded by nutters. And perhaps if I’d noticed some of his more bizarre behaviours (always touching things right in the middle, only taking a pee at five, ten, twenty-five or fifty-five minutes past the hour) I would have rushed back to my little room with the blindingly white walls. But there was something so unthreatening about his refusal to make eye contact that – although I’d never played before – I said I’d ‘give it a shot’.

‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’ he said, chalking his cue fifteen times.

‘No,’ I replied.

And after he’d shown me the basics, we had a bet on how many colours I’d have left, and he fleeced me of my chocolate rations.

Like half the others at Oakhill House, we were both on twenty milligrams of Prozac: a green and white capsule that I struggled to swallow every morning. So while we played, we talked drugs, checking off side-effects like a shopping list.

‘Dry mouth?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Feel sick the whole time?’

‘But can’t puke either?’

‘Yeah. (Nice shot.)’

‘Feel like a zombie. But not in a good way?’

‘Yeah, or like an animal they’re experimenting on.’

‘Lab rats, that’s what we are.’

‘How about dreams where you want to kill somebody?’

I had those
before
I started taking Prozac, but I wasn’t going to tell H that. ‘Sometimes, yeah.’

‘But there’s one good thing about it.’

‘What’s that then?’

‘At least it makes you feel better.’

It wasn’t one of those intense friendships that sometimes developed in there, but after the game of pool we’d often find ourselves sitting together down in the dining room while they tortured the anorexics with a full-fat yoghurt, or sharing a nervous smile when someone had a public meltdown. We didn’t talk much. Both of us liked fast cars, but I’d never heard of half the bands he was into, and he certainly wasn’t interested in designer clothes.

Of course, the main thing we had in common was depression, although H had admitted himself to Oakhill House voluntarily, whereas after threatening the food-tech teacher with an electric mixer, they’d left me with no choice.

It was the middle of August so there were no classes, just a drug-dulled tedium of art therapy, African drumming lessons and weekly meetings with your treatment team. So it was a real release when your key worker decided you were well enough to walk in the grounds. At first we just dawdled over to the hospital shop together, but after a while H wanted to explore.

It was H who decided we should climb the water tower, catapulting me over the railings and racing up the iron
staircase because he was desperate to see how many steps there were. And for a few weeks we sat on the roof counting clouds. Well, H did – I lay back and listened. In between counting, he’d let slip the occasional detail about his past, and gradually I pieced together his backstory:

After several months of CBT and exposure therapy he was finally getting it under control. At its worst, he could barely leave the house. But it had all started with a tuna sandwich.

Two weeks after his dad went off with the kitchen designer H had this terrible premonition his mum was going to die. That’s when the ‘magical thinking’ kicked in. At least they call it magical; I don’t see it myself. H decided that if he chewed every mouthful of his sandwich thirty-two times, he could keep his mum alive. And after it worked, he did the same thing at every meal. But it didn’t stop there. His list of rituals grew longer by the second: checking every electrical appliance eight times before he went to bed (if they weren’t switched off his mum faced certain cremation); changing his computer password twice daily; only typing with his left hand. And then there was the obsessive washing: four times an hour with antibacterial gel and a scrubbing brush. He told his mum it was to protect her from bubonic plague. That’s when they knew he needed help.

It made for interesting listening. So I was happy to sit back and relax. But then, one afternoon, H started asking questions.

‘So what’s
your
problem then? I know you’re angry about something, but what is it?’

He was the first person I ever told.

And I’ll always remember his reaction: not horror or nervous laughter even, just a casual shrug and a few words of encouragement. ‘It’s all right, I understand. Everyone deserves a second chance.’

Back then I was glad I’d told him. From where I’m standing now, it feels like the worst mistake I ever made.

Sometimes H wanted to play ‘chicken’, seeing how close to the edge we could get. It seemed strange for someone who was frightened of practically everything, but he said it made him feel alive.

It made me feel better too, although it certainly wasn’t because I felt alive, quite the opposite in fact. You see, I always figured that if things got too much for me I’d be able to jump.

‘I think you’d better come away from there,’ says Harry. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

‘Supposing I don’t want to?’

‘Come on, Lauren. You could really hurt yourself.’

‘I thought that was the whole point.’

‘It’s so dangerous, especially in all this rain.’

‘You used to enjoy it,’ I say, turning shakily to face him. ‘Why don’t you have a try?’

‘Stop it,’ he says, dropping his crash helmet and edging towards me. ‘It was a stupid game. I was ill. You know that – we both were.’

‘Oh, so you know who I am then?’

‘Of course I do. I’ve known for a long time.’ (Right.) ‘It took me a while. But there was something really familiar about you. And then when you started asking all those questions, I gradually worked out why.’

‘No shit, Sherlock.’

‘Just come here, Lauren,
please
. Then we can talk about it.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything? Why did you pretend you didn’t know me?’

‘Why do you think?’ he says, taking another step towards me, his arm outstretched.

‘You tell me, H.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘Yeah, all right, keep your hair on.’

‘Please, Lauren. You’re frightening me.’

‘You haven’t answered my question yet. If you knew who I was, why didn’t you say?’

‘I’ve never told anyone at school about my … I didn’t want them finding out I’d been in Oakhill House. You know what people are like,’ says Harry. ‘And you obviously didn’t want to talk about it either, so I just kept quiet.’

‘Yes but —’

‘We’ve both changed so much since then. It didn’t seem fair.’ His outstretched arm begins to shake. ‘Please, Lauren, just come away from the edge.’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because I’m begging you.’

Harry looks so desperate that I grab hold of his hand.

He wraps his arms round me, like a human straitjacket, and I drink in the reassuring combination of sweat, machine oil and Calvin Klein. ‘Don’t ever do that to me again. You scared me to death.’ Eventually he lets go. ‘What’s that you’re wearing anyway?’

‘I got it from the woman I hitched a ride with.’

‘You didn’t hitch, did you? You do know how stupid that was?’

‘You’re telling me. She was driving a Peugeot 107.’

Harry smiles. ‘So you’re still into cars then?’

‘Yeah, course, why shouldn’t I be?’

He takes a collapsible umbrella from his coat pocket, magicking it into life, like a schoolboy Mary Poppins. ‘Want to sit down for a bit?’

‘Yeah, why not?’

And without thinking, we take our place against the back wall, peering through the clouds at the smudgy stars.

‘You’re not counting them, are you, Harry?’

‘No,’ he says, putting his arm round me. ‘I’m just thinking how beautiful they are.’

‘That’s good then,’ I say, resting my head on his shoulder. ‘So how have you been?’

‘Yeah, good. Most days. I still get a bit down sometimes, but I know how to handle it now.’

‘Good.’

‘I was pretty confused when I realised who you were though. That’s why I kept my distance for a bit. I thought for a while it might, you know, set me off again. But even before we started … getting closer, I always tried to look out for you.’

I pull away from him, suddenly remembering how angry I am. ‘Look out for me? Is that what you call it?’

‘I still don’t understand why you walked out of school, Lauren. I could see you were losing it, but why?’

‘Let’s cut the crap, shall we? I’m talking about all those “presents” you sent me.’

‘What presents?’

I pull out the screwed-up Wallace and Gromit card.
‘“Why don’t you tell them what you did to Luke?”
Don’t pretend you didn’t write it, Harry. Who else could have done it?’

He takes out his phone and shines it on the message. ‘Well, it wasn’t me. I would
never
try and mess with your head like that.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Oh come on. Do you honestly think I’d start playing mind games after everything you’ve been through? I know what it’s like, Lauren. I could never do that to you.’ He taps out a rhythm on my shoulder. Anyway, that’s not the only reason. I think I —’

‘What?’

‘Nothing, I — Look, I swear it wasn’t me, okay?’

‘Fine, I believe you. But then who was it? No one else knows.’

‘What about the teachers?’

‘A couple of them, but they’d never say anything.’

‘Supposing someone let it slip by accident? Or what if it was a kid from your old school?’

‘They don’t know where I am. At least I don’t think so. But it’s just the kind of thing those bastards would do.’

Harry squeezes my shoulder. ‘What happened there anyway?’

‘It was just
vile
. I thought because they’d known me before they’d at least treat me with a bit of respect. I even created my own YouTube channel to try and explain it to them. But they couldn’t leave me alone.  And the girls were worse than the boys. Sometimes it was physical, and not a PE lesson went by when I didn’t have my kit stolen. But most of the time it was just a never-ending stream of nastiness on the internet.

‘And then this boy in my year, Ben, started showing an interest in me. I thought he was a nice guy. So when he asked if I wanted to catch a movie, I thought I might be getting somewhere. But it was all a big set-up. Half my tutor group turned up. Ben went to sit with them, and they pelted me with popcorn from the back row.

‘I just couldn’t take it any more. So when me and Mum got back from the States, we all decided to make a fresh start and move to a place where nobody knew about me. But then you came along, Harry.’

‘So that’s what you meant about leading you on. You think I’m going to turn out like that Ben guy.’

‘I don’t know … aren’t you?’

‘Of course not. That would
never
happen.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I – Because I
really
, really like you, Lauren.’

‘And it doesn’t feel weird or anything?’

‘Well, let’s find out, shall we?’

I close my eyes and enjoy the ‘experiment’ – twice.

‘Not weird at all,’ says Harry. ‘Pretty amazing, in fact.’

He’s right, the kiss was amazing. But it still doesn’t solve anything. ‘So what do I do now?’

‘What do you mean?’ says Harry.

‘Well, I can’t go back to school, can I?’

‘Why not?’

‘I just can’t.’

‘But you’ve come so far, Lauren. Are you really going to throw it away because some idiot can’t handle it?’

‘What if they’ve told everyone?’

‘Well, they haven’t said anything so far.’

‘I just don’t think I can face it.’

‘Yes you can, because you won’t be on your own any more. I’ll tell them everything you’ve been through; how I knew you from before.’

‘I thought you didn’t want anyone to know.’

‘Why should I be ashamed of it? And why should you? You’re not going to give up now, are you?’

‘I don’t know – maybe.’

‘Come on, let’s go down, shall we? I know someone who’d be really pleased to see you. Why don’t you pop in and say hi while I park my bike?’