Gail Honeyman - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

This June Mullen was the first visitor I’d had since November last year. They come around every six months or so, the Social Work visits. She’s my first visitor this calendar year. The meter reader hasn’t been yet, although I must say I prefer it when they leave a card and I can phone in my reading. I do love call centres; it’s always so interesting to hear all the different accents and try to find out a bit about the person you’re talking to. The best part is when they ask, at the end, Is there anything else I can help you with today, Eleanor? and I can then reply, No, no thank you, you’ve completely and comprehensively resolved my problems . It’s always nice to hear my first name spoken aloud by a human voice, too.

Apart from Social Work and the utility companies, sometimes a representative from one Church or another will call round to ask if I’ve welcomed Jesus into my life. They don’t tend to enjoy debating the concept of proselytizing, I’ve found, which is disappointing. Last year, a man came to deliver a Betterware catalogue, which turned out to be a most enjoyable read. I still regret not purchasing the spider-catcher, which really was a very ingenious device.

June Mullen declined my offer of a cup of tea as we returned to the living room, and after sitting down on the sofa, she pulled my file from her briefcase. It was several inches thick, held together precariously by a rubber band. Some unknown hand had written OLIPHANT, ELEANOR in marker pen on the top right-hand corner and dated it July 1987, the year of my birth. The buff folder, tattered and stained, looked like a historical artefact.

‘Heather’s handwriting is atrocious,’ she muttered, running a manicured fingernail down the page at the top of the pile of papers. She spoke quietly, to herself rather than to me. ‘Biannual visits … continuity of community integration … early identification of any additional support needs …’

She continued to read, and then I saw her face change and she glanced at me, her expression a mixture of horror, alarm and pity. She must have got to the section about Mummy. I stared her out. She took a deep breath, looked down at the papers and then exhaled slowly as she looked up at me again.

‘I had no idea,’ she said, her voice echoing her expression. ‘Do you … you must miss her terribly?’

‘Mummy?’ I said. ‘Hardly.’

‘No, I meant …’ she trailed off, looking awkward, sad, embarrassed. Ah, I knew them well – these were the holy trinity of Oliphant expressions. I shrugged, having no idea whatsoever what she was talking about.

Silence sat between us, shivering with misery. After what felt like days had passed, June Mullen closed the file on her lap and gave me an overly bright smile.

‘So, Eleanor, how have you been getting on, generally, since Heather’s last visit, I mean?’

‘Well, I haven’t become aware of any additional support needs, and I’m fully integrated into the community, June,’ I said.

She smiled weakly. ‘Work going OK? I see you’re a …’ she consulted the file again ‘… you work in an office?’

‘Work is fine,’ I said. ‘Everything’s fine.’

‘What about home?’ she said, looking round the room, her eyes lingering on my big green pouffe, which is shaped like a giant frog and was part of the charity furniture donation I’d received when I first moved in. I’d grown very fond of his bulbous eyes and giant pink tongue over the years. One night, a vodka night, I’d drawn a big housefly, Musca domestica , on his tongue with a pilfered Sharpie. I’m not artistically gifted in any way, but it was, in my humble opinion, a fair rendering of the subject matter. I felt that this act had helped me to take ownership of the donated item, and created something new from something second-hand. Also, he had looked hungry. June Mullen seemed unable to take her eyes off it.

‘Everything’s fine here, June,’ I reiterated. ‘Bills all paid, cordial relations with the neighbours. I’m perfectly comfortable.’

She flicked through the file again, and then inhaled. I knew what she was about to say, recognizing full well the change in tone – fear, hesitancy – that always preceded the subject matter.

‘You’re still of the view that you don’t want to know anything else about the incident, or about your mother, I understand?’ No smiling this time.

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘There’s no need – I speak to her once a week, on a Wednesday evening, regular as clockwork.’

‘Really? After all this time, that’s still happening? Interesting … Are you keen to … maintain this contact?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ I said, incredulous. Where on earth does the Social Work department find these people?

She deliberately allowed the silence to linger, and, although I recognized the technique, I could not stop myself from filling it, eventually.

‘I think Mummy would like it if I tried to find out more about … the incident … but I’ve no intention of doing so.’

‘No,’ she said, nodding. ‘Well, how much you want to know about what happened is entirely up to you, isn’t it? The courts were very clear, back then, that anything like that was to be entirely at your discretion?’

‘That’s correct,’ I said, ‘that’s exactly what they said.’

She looked closely at me, as so many people had done before, scrutinizing my face for any traces of Mummy, enjoying some strange thrill at being this close to a blood relative of the woman the newspapers still occasionally referred to, all these years later, as the pretty face of evil . I watched her eyes run over my scars. Her mouth hung slightly open, and it became apparent that the suit and the bob were an inadequate disguise for this particular slack-jawed yokel.

‘I could probably dig out a photograph, if you’d like one,’ I said.

She blinked twice and blushed, then busied herself by grappling with the bulging file, trying to sort all the loose papers into a tidy pile. I noticed a single sheet flutter down and land under the coffee table. She hadn’t seen it make its escape, and I pondered whether or not to tell her. It was about me, after all, so wasn’t it technically mine? I’d return it at the next visit, of course – I’m not a thief. I imagined Mummy’s voice, whispering, telling me I was quite right, that social workers were busybodies, do-gooders, nosy parkers. June Mullen snapped the elastic band around the file, and the moment to mention the sheet of paper had passed.

‘I … is there anything else you’d like to discuss with me today?’ she asked.

‘No thank you,’ I said, smiling as broadly as I could. She looked rather disconcerted, perhaps even slightly frightened. I was disappointed. I’d been aiming for pleasant and friendly.

‘Well then, that seems to be that for the time being, Eleanor; I’ll leave you in peace,’ she said. She continued talking as she packed away the file in her briefcase, adopting a breezy, casual tone. ‘Any plans for the weekend?’

‘I’m visiting someone in hospital,’ I said.

‘Oh, that’s nice. Visits always cheer a patient up, don’t they?’

‘Do they?’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never visited anyone in hospital before.’

‘But you’ve spent a lot of time in hospital yourself, of course,’ she said.

I stared at her. The imbalance in the extent of our knowledge of each other was manifestly unfair. Social workers should present their new clients with a fact sheet about themselves to try to redress this, I think. After all, she’d had unrestricted access to that big brown folder, the bumper book of Eleanor, two decades’ worth of information about the intimate minutiae of my life. All I knew about her was her name and her employer.