Milk, bread and other essentials can be bought in the village, but I have everything else delivered. You’ll find contact details for the delivery man enclosed, and since he’ll be coming once a week with cat food, I imagine it would be easiest if you simply add anything else you require to the existing order.
I also enclose my mobile number. Call me in an emergency but not otherwise.
Miranda
P.S. Very occasionally, you might get a goggle-eyed tourist poking around the garden or knocking at the door asking to look around. I’m not joking. They treat this whole island like it’s a bloody museum. Use your good sense and do not let strangers into my home.
P.P.S. If you go crazy again, there’s a doctor in the village. She’s retired but she once helped me out with an allergic reaction to a bee sting. I’m sure she’d be able to see you if it was critical (number and address also enclosed).
Tentatively, and from a very safe distance, I found myself warming to Miranda. Yes, she was still a sociopath, and God help her students in the States; being taught by the woman, I could only imagine, would be four months of creeping psychological torture. Nevertheless, at least she was honest. With Miranda, you didn’t have to worry about what she was really thinking. This was one of the reasons I knew I could tell her the truth when it came to my recent stay on the psychiatric ward.
Of course, there’s still a certain stigma attached to mental illness, but this isn’t something that bothers me all that much any more. I’ve been periodically crazy since my mid-teens, and any feeling of awkwardness on my part long ago lost its sting. But what you can’t prevent is the awkwardness of other people – their embarrassment, their hang-ups. They start tiptoeing – and even healthcare professionals are guilty of this sometimes – as if the smallest comment, a misworded question, might be enough to push you back over the edge. Every so often, you have to remind people that you’re not all that different from them: same complicated tangle of blood vessels, thoughts and emotions. You have to remind them that seeing a psychiatrist or taking medication is not the same as having had your former personality surgically removed.
I knew I didn’t have to worry about any of this with Miranda Frost. I’d tell her what had happened and she’d have some sort of immediate reaction that I didn’t have to spend hours decoding. But I suspected, too, that her reaction would not be a bad one. I have a sixth sense that has grown pretty reliable in these matters. Even if Miranda hadn’t had personal experience of mental illness – which I thought she probably had – then I was sure she’d know people who’d had similar breakdowns at one point or another; she’d probably driven a fair few of them to it herself.
My lack of worry was well founded.
I sent her the following message:
To: miranda@mirandafrostpoetry.co.uk
From: abbywilliams1847@hotmail.co.uk
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2013, 6:40 PM
Subject: RE: Cats?
Miranda
Sorry for the delayed reply. I went crazy and was on a psychiatric ward for a month. I’m better now, and would very much like to take care of your cats – assuming you’re still okay with this?
And within a couple of hours, I had her response:
To: abbywilliams1847@hotmail.co.uk
From: miranda@mirandafrostpoetry.co.uk
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 2013, 8:27 PM
Subject: RE: RE: Cats?
Abigail,
It’s okay with me. I assume you’re well enough to take care of two cats; otherwise you’d still be locked up.
Are you on medication? If you need a chemist, there isn’t one in the village. However, Berwick is only a short bus or taxi ride away. It’s quite easy to get there and back in a morning. If this is not a problem for you, I’ll send more information tomorrow.
Miranda
If only everyone had reacted like that.
My mum and sister spent the next fortnight trying to persuade me that I was not capable of living on my own right now. Even Dr Barbara was against it, and didn’t soften her stance until I agreed to have phone appointments twice a week. But Beck’s reaction was the most vehement, as I knew it would be.
‘Why?’ he asked, in one typically circular and frustrating phone conversation – the same one we had over and over until the day I left. ‘You hate the north! You get a migraine if you have to travel up to Birmingham for a couple of hours. Are you trying to punish yourself?’
‘No, of course not. It’s . . . I don’t know what it is.’
There was a five-second silence down the line.
‘Abby, I’ve tried – really, I have. I’ve given you space. I’ve hardly seen you for two months. But we can’t go on like this. I can’t go on like this. It’s not fair.’
‘I know. And I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. This is just something I need to do.’
‘You don’t need to do it. You’re choosing to do it. At least be honest about that.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘You know, Abby, sometimes you’re just completely fucking impossible.’
Then he hung up.
To be fair, I didn’t explain things all that well. But then, I didn’t really understand myself – not until I got here.
There are different ways of being alone, and being alone is not synonymous with being lonely. That’s something I realized quite recently. I’ve not felt lonely since I arrived here, not in all the hours I’ve spent by myself. But there are plenty of times when I’ve felt lonely in London. In London, you can feel painfully lonely on a Tube train, penned in by hundreds and hundreds of people.
Here on Lindisfarne, I’ve taken to seeking out new ways of being alone. Since the tourist season ended, I’ve spent consecutive hours sitting on my own in St Mary’s Church – outside service times, of course. It’s not that I’ve found God or anything weird like that. But there’s something very calming about sitting in such an old and impressive building, with all its statues and stained glass and towering stone columns. I think it must be something to do with the sense of history and shared endeavour that infuses the place. In St Mary’s, you can sit in absolute silence and solitude and still feel part of a much larger story.
Then there’s the beach past the sand dunes at the north-east corner of the island. It’s a good mile from the village, so you only get the odd dog-walker there, and not very often. Most of the time, you can sit at the foot of the dunes and see nothing but sand, sea and sky. It’s another place that’s nice to visit on the rising tide; the water comes in quite rapidly, making you very aware of the land shrinking minute by minute. In a way, I suppose this visceral feeling of being cut off is what draws a lot of people to Lindisfarne in the first place, and certainly those who have decided to live here. Being geographically isolated for up to six hours is an oddly comforting feeling. It’s crazy, but from London, six hours would be more than enough for me to get to a whole other continent. But here, I find myself increasingly appreciative of these long stretches when my entire world is limited to just four square kilometres of sand and rock.
The truth is I’ve never been on my own before – not for any significant amount of time. In fact, since the age of fifteen, I’ve never been out of a relationship for more than two weeks. I’ve just sort of fallen from one into the next, often with some overlap in the transition – though obviously this is not something I’m particularly proud of. I’m not proud of my record in general.