I tried to fix my mind on the music as we drove on through the miles of endless suburbs. We passed an empty graveyard chock-full of headstones that stretched out for half an hour. Then we passed the leisure complexes with their McDonalds chains, cinemas and sprawling department stores. Past all the plastic billboard signs with dumb ass men and woman posing at me, and the new Paul Jones film advertised- release date 24th October 2010. Out of the whole dusty mass of concrete jungle. And then out into the leafy areas, past houses that were far too big, past the golf courses and their plantation trees and exclusive members’ club buildings, until we finally reached the motorway and were out into the country, where the robotic arms of the city were reaching out and chewing up land.
I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was four pm.
Chapter 3
M ack and I sat in silence. I kept a keen eye out for each road sign, and the name of Chemsford ominously cut down in miles. My stomach started to squirm again and I tried harder to concentrate on the radio. The rock station was being eaten up by adverts. I changed the channel, -Adverts-Adverts-Shocking News Report!-Posh people speaking pish, -Shitty Pop music- more Adverts. I turned it off and gazed out my window.
Along the border-lines of the dual carriageway, the remaining browning fibers of the wheat fields were being tossed about by the breeze. We passed by another field, then another, then another of the man-altered stretches of land, most of them black and bare and being picked at by the crows while the cars whizzed by in both directions. Here and there a thin, sparse hedgerow separated the road from the fields and sporadically an old cluster of woodland could be spotted cornered into a field side, tightly bound by a fence. I pictured the brilliant sight of a comet screaming down through the atmosphere and blowing up everything. I willed it to happen.
“You know if you want,” Mack spoke up for the first time since London, “we can keep in touch. You should be able to call me from the hospital. I’ll leave you my work-”
“Thanks, but it’s ok.” I interrupted. “I just want to get in there, get my head down, do what they want and get back out. Thanks, though.”
She nodded, and the silence in the car resumed. Then, following a sign for Chemsford-24 miles, she turned off the motorway and exited onto a single-track country road. Twenty minutes later that road came to a fork. Mack went left.
I tapped my foot and held my stomach.
From the corner of my eye I watched her- to divert my attention as much as anything- her stooped frame in her faded cardigan, slouched over the steering wheel, her greyed-out hair, the wrinkles that lined her stoic face, especially deep under those pale green eyes behind her wide-rimmed glasses. She had been my social worker for almost two months, and I didn’t know her that well but I knew she was a decent person, one of the few decent genuine people that I had met. She’d been a social worker since she was twenty-five. Almost forty years. And although she didn’t talk about it that much, I could tell by her mannerisms, by the way she on occasions burst forth on tirades that could not be stopped, by the way her eyes were- I could tell that she had seen a lot, and got involved in a lot of stuff too that she probably didn’t have to. It all showed in her face. She cared, Mrs. Mack, she really did. One thing that she never stopped talking about was how frustrating the system was-“There’s no common sense anymore,” was the recurring quote she gave out at least once a day. She often went on about the bureaucracy, legislations and laws, the health and safety and the human rights that had made her work so hard to do and had ruined the country. She knew I didn’t speak much, and she just tended to let me be. I liked her. I could almost trust her.
She kept those pale green eyes fixed on the windscreen as we drove through a few small commuter villages and came out of the other sides. The road continued to get windier, bending sharply as the car went up and down the hills. From the tops, we got a good view over the fields and villages that we had passed behind us, all lying silent in the shadow of the overcast sky.
We were coming down one of these hills when quickly and without warning a great wall of fog materialized in front of us. The car broke through and I could barely see fifty yards around. I guessed we were getting close to the sea. I guessed we were getting closer.
“How long till we’re there?” I asked quietly.
“About an hour yet.” Mack replied, nodding firmly, determinedly.
I glanced at the clock on the dashboard, and I suddenly went reeling back in time. My mind flashed and recoiled against my will, back to what had happened earlier that day. I still couldn’t believe the decision. Of all the things that could have happened, I never ever considered that.
“Eighteen months of psychiatric evaluation” the Judge’s voice had boomed.
“Sleepyhillock Hospital” the noise continued as if on a distant static radio. As if it wasn’t me it had happened to.
“Eighteen months of psychiatric evaluation.”
I didn’t even do anything wrong.
I just couldn’t stop myself.
Oh fuck, what have I done?
Chapter 4
I tried to forget it, tried to tell myself that it would be okay. Maybe I’ll finally get the help I need, I told myself as I watched out the window. The road dipped down again and soon we were cutting through
