Maureen Johnson - The Madness Underneath

The radiator clanged and whistled, and Jazza and I sat there, both staring down at the floor. She was my friend, but she was Jerome’s friend before she knew me.

“Do you hate me?” I asked.

“Do you know what I think?” she replied.

“Smarter and better things than me?”

“I think…we should go next door and see if Gaenor and Angela have any plonk.”

“Plonk?”

“Wine. And I have chocolate. I say we wrap ourselves in our duvets and drink wine and eat chocolate.”

I started to shake my head—I didn’t want anyone to be nice to me—but Jazza was not taking any of that. She pulled me upright, yanked the cover from my bed, and wrapped it around my shoulders.

“This is not me asking,” she said. “This is me telling you.”

17

THE NEXT MORNING, I WOKE TO THE SOUND OF CHURCH bells. London is full of them, old bells in old stone towers, calling out through the gray December gloom. They continued to ring and vibrate in my head, each percussive blow bringing thoughts of nausea. I’d had one and a half mugs of the warm and cheap red wine Gaenor kept in the bottom of her closet, really not that much, but the effect was still seeping over me. My mouth felt like an acre of cotton field, and there was a vague and unspecified ache crawling up and down from my stomach to my head.

I liked it. I liked waking up like this. I’d had a good night. Everyone had rallied around me—Gaenor and Angela and Jazza. Eloise had come in and told us about all the French guys she’d dumped. No one seemed to think I was a monster—though I was sure Jazza was going to check on Jerome immediately and make sure he was okay. She was already awake, bundled in her robe, a cup of tea in her hand and the German book back in front of her face.

“Morning,” she said. “Breakfast? I’ve been up for hours now and I’m starving.”

Hours? A look at my watch (and the bong of the bells) told me it was only nine in the morning. She was making up for the time she’d lost on me last night.

Breakfast, of course, meant facing my now ex-boyfriend. It was going to be an issue, this eating business. I sat with Jerome and Jazza and Andrew. How would I ever eat again?

“Not for me,” I said. “I think I’ll stay here and die.”

“Ill?”

“A little. I’ll be fine. You go.”

So Jazza got herself together and left, and I thought about the word ex-boyfriend .

How was this going to be, seeing him everywhere? What the hell had I done? A quick flush of terrible feelings came over me—guilt, sadness, shame—they were all in there. I shook them off. This morning I would find some money—I had to have a few pounds left—and get a muffin and a coffee for myself. I would deal.

I shabbily dressed myself in already worn sweatpants and a T-shirt, brushed my hair with my fingers, and rubbed some terrible crud from my eyes, then I scuffed down the steps. As I reached the bottom, Charlotte came out of Claudia’s office.

“Oh,” she said. “Here she is now. Rory? Claudia needs to see you.”

“What for?” I mouthed.

Charlotte smiled a bit stiffly and gave a little shrug. I stepped around her and into the office.

“Please close the door,” Claudia said. “I’ll be just a moment.”

She was typing away on her computer and didn’t look up. Her office was icy cold and kind of dark. She had all the lights off except her desk lamp, and only a small electric heater by her desk. I huddled in the chair, pulling my fleece down over my hands.

“Aurora.” She swung around to face me, and the effect was a bit disturbing, like I had been called into the office of the evil supervillain. “Tell me about how this week has gone for you.”

“Oh. Well, it’s been good, I think.”

I was expecting that she would say something rote in return. “Good” or “glad to hear it” or “let’s arm wrestle in celebration, for I am very strong.” But she didn’t. The high, red flush on her cheeks seemed a bit higher and redder than normal, and the cold crept up my sleeves and down my neck.

“Aurora,” she said again. (It’s never good when someone uses your name twice at the start of a conversation.) “I am aware…”

She let her open-ended awareness hang in the air for a moment.

“I am aware…you were a bit behind when you returned.”

“Well,” I said, “I did what I could. You know. I was…”

“Of course.”

She adjusted something in the top drawer of her desk that must have prevented it from closing all the way and gave it a firm push.

“You have handled this situation very bravely. But there are some concerns. It’s become fairly evident that you are falling behind academically, possibly to the point where you cannot catch up to the place you need to be.”

She opened a folder on her desk, and I saw it contained my history pre-exam.

“I wasn’t really ready for that one,” I said.

“These are quite basic questions, and much of this was material you covered before your departure…though of course I understand that there were stressors then as well. But there are other things. I have reports of you using your phone in class, of sleeping in class, and even, just yesterday, of missing class.”

Okay, so maybe they did track you at Wexford.

“And I do understand that these circumstances you are in are not normal,” Claudia went on. “But you should know that anyone else would have already been disciplined for this. Anyone else at your level of progress would already be gone.”

“The class I missed,” I said. “I was at therapy. That’s where I was.”

“You had therapy? You haven’t been to the sanatorium.”

“With an outside person. Charlotte gave me her name.”

That was possibly a misstep. If Claudia called Charlotte, Charlotte would give her Jane’s name and number, and if Claudia called Jane, she would soon discover that I was a big fat liar. The lies, the problems, they seriously never ended.

“If you are going for treatment, we need to be informed—certainly if that means you won’t be in class.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought it was okay for me to go.”

Claudia pursed her lips and looked down at the desk drawer again. The room suddenly seemed very dark, and the orangey light from her desk lamp throbbed in my vision.

“Having you come back was an experiment,” she said. “We’ve had a week to assess where you are. And I have to be honest, Aurora…I don’t think it’s quite fair to you to have you continue at Wexford. Perhaps this isn’t the best place for you to regain your footing. Before you go through the stress and strain of exams, I want you to think carefully. I think you should consider departing early.”

What was happening? This couldn’t be what I thought it was. Because it sounded like I was being kicked out.

“Departing early?” I said.

“The exam process is quite arduous, and it was always a worry. There is no shame in any of this. You are not to blame for the events that led up to this moment. However, I don’t see how you can recover academically, certainly not enough to participate in the exams. If you wish, you may remain for the exams. I am trying…”

And she was clearly trying. I didn’t think this was comfortable for her at all. For all her meatiness and love of hockey violence, I never got the feeling that Claudia was an unkind person.

“I’m trying to give you the best way out. Go home for the holidays. Be with your family. Make a fresh start in the new year.”

“But not here,” I said.

“I think it’s unlikely, Aurora.”

I would not cry in Claudia’s office. No. I would not. I looked up, because sometimes you can dry up your eyes that way, but all I saw were mounted hockey sticks. Hockey sticks are not calming.