Гейл Ханимен - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

‘Are you willing to give it a try?’

I stared at the door, willing myself out of it, willing the hands of the clock to tick round to the hour.

‘Eleanor,’ she said gently, ‘I’m here to help you, and you’re here to help yourself, aren’t you? I think you want to be happy. In fact, I know you do. Who doesn’t? We can work together in this room towards helping you achieve that. It’s not going to be easy, or quick, but I really think it could be worth it. What have you got to lose, after all? You’re going to be here for an hour either way. Why not give it a try?’

She had made a fair point, I supposed. I looked up and slowly unfolded my arms.

‘Great!’ she said. ‘Thank you, Eleanor. So … let’s imagine that this chair here is your mother. What do you want to tell her, right now? If you could say anything, right here, without being interrupted? Without fear of judgement? Come on, don’t worry. Anything you like …’

I turned to face the empty chair. My leg was still trembling. I cleared my throat. I was safe. She wasn’t really here, she wasn’t really listening. I thought back to that house, the cold, the damp smell, the wallpaper with the cornflowers and the brown carpet. I heard the cars passing by outside, all of them driving to nice places, safe places, while we were here, left all alone or — worse — left with her.

‘Mummy … please,’ I said. I could hear my voice outside of my own head, disembodied in the room, floating. It was high and very, very quiet. I breathed in.

‘Please don’t hurt us.’

I DON’T RESORT TO FOUL language as a rule, but that first session with the counsellor yesterday was bloody ridiculous. I started crying in front of Dr Temple at the end of her stupid empty-chair exercise, and then she actually said, with faux gentleness, that our session had to draw to a close and that she’d see me next week at the same time. She basically hustled me out onto the street, and I found myself standing on the pavement, shoppers bustling past me, tears streaming down my face. How could she do it? How could one human being see another so obviously in pain, a pain she had deliberately drawn out and worried away at, and then push her out into the street and leave her to cope with it alone?

It was 11 a.m. I wasn’t supposed to be drinking, but I wiped away my tears, went into the nearest pub and ordered a large vodka. I silently raised a toast to absent friends and drank it down fast. I walked out before any of the daytime drinkers could begin an interaction with me. Then I went home and got into bed.

Raymond and I continued to meet for lunch in our usual café while I was off work. He would text me to suggest a time and date (the only texts I had received on my new mobile telephone so far). It turned out that if you saw the same person with some degree of regularity, then the conversation was immediately pleasant and comfortable — you could pick up where you left off, as it were, rather than having to start afresh each time.

During the course of these chats, Raymond asked again about Mummy — why I hadn’t told her I’d been unwell, why she never visited me, or I her, until finally I gave in and provided him with a potted biography. He already knew about the fire, of course, and that I’d been brought up in care afterwards. That, I told him, was because it wasn’t possible for me to live with Mummy afterwards, not where she was. It was, I’d hoped, enough to keep him quiet, but no.

‘Where is she, then? Hospital, nursing home?’ he guessed. I shook my head.

‘It’s a bad place, for bad people,’ I said. He thought for a moment.

‘Not prison?’ He looked shocked. I held his gaze but said nothing. After another short pause he asked, not unreasonably, what crime she had committed.

‘I can’t remember,’ I said.

He stared at me, then snorted.

‘Bullshit,’ he said. ‘Come on, Eleanor. You can tell me. It won’t change anything between us, I promise. It’s not like you did it, whatever it was.’

I felt a hot flush streak right up the front of my body and then down my back, a sensation I can only liken to being given a sedative prior to a general anaesthetic. My pulse was pounding.

‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘I honestly don’t know. I think I must have been told at the time, but I can’t remember. I was only ten. Everyone was really careful never to mention it around me …’

‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘She must have done something really terrible to … I mean, what about at school? Kids can be little shits about stuff like that. What about when people hear your name? Although, come to think of it, I don’t think I remember reading anything about a crime involving an Oliphant …?’

‘Yes, I suppose you would have remembered an Oliphant in the room,’ I said.

He didn’t laugh. It wasn’t a very good joke, on reflection. I cleared my throat.

‘Oliphant isn’t my real name,’ I said. I liked it, always had, and was extremely grateful to whoever had selected it for me. You didn’t come across many Oliphants, that was for sure. Special.

He stared at me, like he was watching a film.

‘They gave me a new identity afterwards, moved me up here … it was meant to stop people recognising me, protect me. Which is ironic.’

‘Why?’ he said. I sighed.

‘Being in care wasn’t always much fun. I mean, it was completely fine, I had everything I needed, but it wasn’t all picnics and pillowfights.’

He raised his eyebrows, nodded. I stirred my coffee.

‘The terminology’s different now, I think,’ I said. ‘They call young people in care “looked after”. But every child should be “looked after” … it really ought to be the default.’

I heard myself sounding angry and sad. No one likes hearing themselves sound like that. If someone said, Please could you describe yourself in two words, and you said, ‘Erm … let me see … Angry and Sad?’ then that really wouldn’t be good.

Raymond had reached out then and, very gently, he squeezed my shoulder. It was superficially ineffectual, but, in fact, felt surprisingly pleasant.

‘Do you want me to find out what she did?’ he said. ‘I bet I could, quite easily. The magic of the interweb, hey?’

‘No, thank you,’ I said curtly. ‘I’m more than capable of finding out myself, should I ever wish to. You’re not the only person who knows how to use a computer, you know,’ I said. His face went very pink. ‘And in any case,’ I went on, ‘as you so thoughtfully pointed out, it must have been something fairly horrendous. Don’t forget, I still have to talk to her once a week — it’s hard enough as it is. It will be completely impossible if I know that she’s done … whatever it is that she’s done.’

Raymond nodded. To his credit, he looked slightly ashamed, and only a tiny bit disappointed.

He really isn’t prurient, unlike most other people. After this chat, he still asked questions, but they were normal questions that anyone would ask about their friend’s mother (friend! I’ve got a friend!) — how she was, whether we’d spoken recently. I asked him the same questions back. It was normal. I didn’t tell him most of what Mummy said during our chats, of course — it was too painful to repeat, embarrassing and humiliating. I was sure Raymond was already acutely aware of my many physical and character defects, and so there was no need to remind him of them by relating Mummy’s bon mots .

Sometimes, he made me stop and think. We’d been talking about holidays, about how he planned to go travelling when he retired, so that he would have enough money to do it in style.

‘Mummy’s seen so much of the world, lived in so many different places,’ I said. I reeled a few off. Raymond, surprisingly, looked distinctly unimpressed.