In The Garden Of Stones

Chapter 1

She treads carefully between the headstones, the grass velvety and cool under her bare feet, droplets of dew wetting her toes, soaking into the fabric of her long skirt.

Above her, through the quivering leaves of the mountain ash, gold edged white wisps drift lazily through the shifting palette of early morning pinks, purples, and mauves. Soon the sun will breach the horizon to bleach the colours to a uniform blue, banishing the mist and kissing the exotic day-lilies, strengthening warmth and light, awakening their resting blooms and releasing their fragrance.

From its perch on the granite obelisk the bright eyed robin’s song is a delightful melody, filling the dawn with innocent joy, adding another dimension to the clean, crisp, freshness of a new day.

She wants to fill herself with this purity, sampling the air, closing her eyes and breathing in…only there is nothing there. No dawn, no dew, no grass and no air, only beetles and snakes in the darkness, clicking and hissing.

A snake is in her mouth, its head down her throat. It hisses air into her, too much, filling her lungs until she fears they might burst, and then with a click steals it back.

Hiss. In. Click. Out. The rhythm is all wrong. She has to get the snake out or she’ll suffocate.

She gropes blindly, fingers scrabbling to grab its tail and yank it out. The snake resists, probing the back of her throat with its forked tongue.

Now she can smell flowers, sweet and heady jasmine, knowing this is what Heaven smells like, and that death is near. She wants to scream, but there is no air in her to make the sound.

And then the hissing and ticking cease, something cool – smooth - rubbery takes hold of her hand, easing her fingers from the serpent’s ribbed body.

You’re okay, Grace. Keep still and let me take this out for you.

A soft, female voice. An angel?

A tug, followed by a sharp burning sensation on her cheek.

Take a deep breath in for me through your mouth please, Grace, the angel says.

Grace tries, but the snake won’t let her. Fight it. Fight!

A gasped inhalation fills her lungs with warm fresh air, and the snake moves, the length of it sliding up her airway, touching the back of her throat, making her cough and retch to the point of catharsis.

It is gone. The serpent expelled.

She swallows rapidly, convulsively, throat burning and sore.

Well done. It’s out. Now let’s have a proper look at you.

The darkness shifts, allowing light to filter through lids fused closed. Cool wetness bathes them, softening and loosening the seal.

Try to open your eyes.

Grace forces her lids apart, scratchy and dry against her corneas as if they are lined with sandpaper.

Everything is too bright in the cone of light from the overhead lamp. Hot salt water, Nature’s own lubricant, floods into her eyes and she blinks rapidly to spread it around to relieve the dry burning.

Through the blur a face swims into view, heart shaped and delicate, surrounded with a halo of golden curls. Angelic but not an angel, and the scent of jasmine is not a heavenly perfume, it’s coming from her. And then someone else is there. A man.

Hi Grace, how’re you feeling? I’m Doctor Burke. I’ve been looking after you. It’s nice to see you awake again, so I must have done something right. Mind if I sit down? Been on my feet all day and my dogs are barking.

Grace still can’t see properly, his features are indistinct, but she can tell he is youngish, dark haired, and is wearing a blue shirt. When he speaks, telling her what a lovely day it is outside and what a shame she’s stuck indoors and missing it, she can hear a friendly smile in his refined Edinburgh accent.

Now then, I just want to carry out a few tests to make sure there’s no damage done, he says, taking something from his breast pocket. He fiddles with it, muttering under his breath because he can’t make it work. Ah, got it now. I was pressing the wrong button.

He places a cold thumb against Grace’s left eyelid and forces it firmly but gently upwards. The light from his tiny torch is blindingly bright, then gone.

That looks okay he murmurs. Now the other.

He’s been eating cheese, Grace can smell it on his breath – cheddar, with tomato chutney. She can smell soap and aftershave too.

Her right eyelid is lifted. Another beam flares and dies.

Follow the light with just your eyes, please Grace.

The pinpoint of light moves slowly from side to side, and then up and down, and her focus follows it. The light goes out, leaving a purple shadow on her retina.

Good. How many fingers am I holding up?

There are two and she tries to tell him so, but her throat is clenched, all the moisture gone from her mouth, and she only manages a dry croak.

Can you show me then? he says.

She puts up two fingers of her own.

Not exactly the sign I was looking for, but it will do, he says. Now this next test may hurt a wee bit, but not much, I promise.

He frees her feet from the bed sheet, presses something sharp against the sole of her right foot, and scratches it toward her toes. A sharp pain flares and she flinches. Ow!

Sorry.

He does the same with her left foot, getting the same reaction, but seems satisfied and covers her again.

Okay, the patient is awake and compliant, pupillary reaction equal and normal. Reactions to stimuli are also normal. Do you know where you are, Grace?

She nods, rips her tongue from the roof of her mouth and tells him, although it comes out as no more than a lisped breathy whisper.

Hothpital.

That’s right. The smell’s a dead giveaway, eh? And do you know what day it is?

She shakes her head.

Me neither. I’ve been on duty so long… He laughs lightly. Not much wrong with you that a good rest won’t put right, so I’ll leave you in Anika’s tender care and pop back later for a chat. Okay Grace?

’Kay.

At the foot of the bed, out of Grace’s earshot, he confers with Nurse Anika, scribbling his instructions on a clipboard. He then fights his way out of the privacy screen and leaves to see to his next patient, the clicking of his heels on the hard floor gradually fading.

Nurse Anika draws the privacy screen fully back and Grace can see where she is. The high dependency unit. Nobody comes here unless something has gone spectacularly wrong with them.

There are at least eight other people in here with her, stretched out or propped up in their beds, attached by wires and tubes to all manner of gently beeping machinery. Some have snakes in their mouths too, hissing and ticking as they ration the air.

The air hums with restrained chatter and that low background drone that seems to permeate all hospitals.

So thirsty. Throat is on fire. Mouth feels like it’s lined with carpet and hairballs.

Anything I can get for you, Grace? asks Anika, as she unplugs the intravenous drip from Grace’s wrist.

Grace puts a finger to her hard, cracked lips. Can I have a drink please?

Anika takes a beaker from the bedside cabinet and presses a fine tube to Grace’s lips.

She takes in the offered straw and sucks on it. Liquid fills her mouth. It tastes tepid and flat, like it’s been standing too long, but it is wet, which is all that matters.

Grace lets the water sit on her tongue before releasing it to slide down her throat and quench the fire. The thirst is overwhelming, she needs more, much more, and sucks again, and swallows, and sucks and swallows and... The straw is withdrawn.

Easy now, Anika says. Take a little bit at a time. Too much and you’ll be sick, and we don’t want that do we?

She’s right. The water is swilling around in Grace’s empty stomach and already nausea is building.

Grace’s eyes fall closed again as a sudden draining tiredness overwhelms her, so intense that her whole body might well have been stuffed with straw. A pounding headache starts up, making her eyes throb, and a light frown creases her brow, giving away her discomfort.

Headache?

Grace nods.

I’ll get you something.

Anika returns after a few minutes with a tiny paper cup containing two small white pills. Grace swallows the tablets with a mouthful of the stale water.

You should have a nap, to gather your strength, Anika says, plumping the pillows and straightening the sheets. When you wake up, I’ll bring you a cup of tea and a little toast. After that we’ll see about getting you moved into a general ward.

Grace takes more water, grimaces as she swallows, her hand to the base of her throat.

Your sore throat is from the endotracheal tube, says Anika. We had to put you on a ventilator for a while after your seizure. It will pass soon.

Seizure? I don’t remember –

It will all come back to you when you are rested. You’ve had a rough time and you’re going to feel pretty washed out, so you need to take it easy. The doctor will talk to you again when you are feeling better. Now, are you comfy?

Yes, thank you.

Then sleep. Anika reaches over the head of the bed and turns out the lamp.

Safely swaddled in her cool cotton cocoon, Grace lets her leaden eyelids fall closed. Her ears, however, continue working.

They are attuned now to Anika’s slight Eastern European accent, and pick it up even when it is reduced to a hushed private murmur as she confers with her colleagues. There is the scrape of a chair on the tiles as she takes a seat at the desk, and there she will sit while she writes in Grace’s notes. She won’t move from it, she has her instructions. Her patient must be kept in sight at all times, not left alone for a minute, because a minute is all it can take.

That’s what they do with people like Grace. They call it 'suicide watch'.

Chapter 2

The door swings open and a man bustles out. Jeans, sweatshirt, Converse trainers. A pair of rimless spectacles are pushed up into a shock of sun bleached hair, and he has a fashionable goatee that really doesn’t suit him. A thirty something professional sliding towards middle age, desperately trying to cling onto the last vestiges of fashionable youth.

Hi, Grace. I’m Doctor Pettit, Malcolm, you can call me Mal if you like. I don’t stand on ceremony with titles and formality.

English accent, educated, every T sounded, clipped sharp. He holds open his arm, inviting her into the room. Come into my parlour –

Said the spider to the fly.

When she is safely inside, he pushes the door closed with his heel and it slides into the frame with a solid thunk.

Grace gives the room a cursory going over – walls painted institution green, threadbare carpet, desk and chair that look like they’ve been rescued from a skip.

On one wall are a couple of framed certificates, on another a painting that looks like it might be of a cow … or a giraffe, she can’t really tell. A set of wooden shelves overflow with books and magazines, and at the window a pair of mismatched armchairs keep company with a chrome and glass coffee table. All in all the whole room looks pretty shabby, as if it has been furnished down to a budget rather than up to a standard.

Take a seat, make yourself at home, says Pettit, guiding her to the chairs.

Grace pauses, weighing up which one looks the cleanest – no telling what other people have been doing in them - selects the green one and sits, clutching a faded tapestry cat scatter cushion to her stomach like a protective shield.

A triangular plastic sandwich holder, empty, a can of diet Coke and a half eaten bag of cheese and onion crisps lie on the coffee table. Mal snatches them up and drops them into the waste bin.

Sorry about that. Late lunch. You comfortable?

Yes, thanks.

Warm enough? Too warm perhaps? Don’t you find hospitals to be overly hot and stuffy? I know I do. I can open the window if you like.

No, I’m fine.

So how are you feeling? he says, dropping into the chair opposite hers. Been quite an adventure for you.

Shrug. Fine … considering.

Good.

They fall into the kind of silence that often occurs between strangers on a train, neither knowing what to say for the best, so choosing to say nothing.

Grace keeps her eyes on the motes of dust dancing in a beam of late afternoon sunshine leaking between the slats of the partly closed blinds, each passing minute making her feel more uncomfortable, more awkward in her chair, especially with him sitting opposite with that expectant look on his face as if he’s waiting for her to start the conversation because he doesn’t want to be seen to be leading her.

She’s not ready to talk just yet. What she really wants to do is rearrange his books. They are all over the place, higgledy piggledy on the shelves – big ones next to small ones, thin ones next to thick ones. He hasn’t even alphabetised the authors for goodness sake! Surely he must have noticed. How can he bear such disorder? Unless he put them like that on purpose - to test her.

Devious bastard.

Well more fool you. I’m not playing your power game.

She sits tight in the chair with her legs tucked under her, trying not to look at the books, getting pins and needles in her toes. Having her knees bent so tightly is cutting off the circulation to her feet.

They tingle and burn but she can’t, won’t, get up and walk around to relieve the discomfort, because she knows the moment she does she’ll be pulled toward the bookcase. And when she’s sorted it, she’ll have to adjust that picture. It’s ever so slightly out of alignment. Just a touch should put it right.

Now her toes have gone numb.

Don’t move, because the second you do, he’s won.

She won’t let him win.

How many minutes have passed now? Five? Ten? It feels like half a day and he still hasn’t moved, hasn’t spoken. What is he doing now?

I bet he’s watching me. No. Don’t look at him. Keep your eyes on the dancing dust. No eye contact.

She takes the briefest glance from the corner of her eye. He’s just sitting there, waiting. He’s not looking at her though, he’s watching that fat pigeon waddling up and down the window ledge outside. But she’s not fooled. She knows what he’s thinking.

He’s making his judgements of me, weighing me up, wondering which pigeonhole to try and stuff me into and how he’s going to get me in there.

He’s either working out which drugs to give me, to make me so docile and compliant I’ll do anything he says, or he’s going to suggest I need a course of electroconvulsive therapy - wants to wire up my brain to the National Grid and spark it up like Frankenstein’s monster.

Newsflash, Doc, been there done that, got the T-shirt. Save the leccy for brewing your tea, because it doesn’t work. It will only disrupt my synapses temporarily. They will find their way back to how 'they' want to work, not to how you think they should.

Want to know why? Because my mind is the wrong shape, that’s why I see things, feel things, sense things differently to what your textbooks say is 'normal'.

Normal is … a setting on the tumble dryer. A ship that sailed long ago without me because I wasn’t even on the dock.

Pumping me full of drugs won’t change the way I work either. I’ve swallowed enough antidepressants to cheer up a whole graveyard full of emo-Goths, and look where it got me.

You’ll keep on trying this and that and the other, each thing more desperate than the last, but do you know what happens when you try to force a square peg into a round hole when it doesn’t want to go, when you keep on hammering and hammering and hammering until it’s in there good and fast where you think it belongs, when you sit back with the metaphorical mallet in hand, admiring the way the hole is filled and how you did it? Probably not, because you’ll be so self satisfied with your 'success', you won’t even notice that you’ve destroyed the peg in the process.

– would you like some, Grace?

His question shatters the silence like a brick through a glass window, startling her out of her skin.

Wha’? Sorry, I wasn’t listening.

I said I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready for my mid-afternoon caffeine fix. Would you like some coffee? Or tea?

Erm … coffee, please. If it’s no trouble.

None at all. How do you take it? Black? Milk? Cream? Sugar?

Cream no sugar, please.

Want something to eat? Sandwich? Biscuit?

After a meagre breakfast of soggy cereal, sweaty toast and cold tea, and lunch consisting of a bowl of tepid soup and roll so stale it could have been used as a cobble stone, she’s starving, and the mere thought of coffee and biscuits makes her stomach rumble.

Mal smiles and points at her, index finger and thumb cocked like a gun. I know what you’d like.

He scrambles to his feet and pokes his head through the door to have a word with his secretary in the outer office. When he returns he flops down into his chair with a sigh, for all the world as if he’s settling down to watch football on the television. He looks so relaxed that his ease bleeds into her. Grace feels a smile touching her lips. She didn’t put it there, he did, and with it comes the first tickle of trust. She might be ready to talk after all.

Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself, Grace? he says. Nothing much. Only what you’re comfortable with. Name, rank and serial number. We’ll call it an icebreaker.

She tips her head toward the folder lying on the coffee table. It’s all in my file.

I haven’t read it.

That’s a bit remiss of you. Forewarned is forearmed, don’t they say.

"I didn’t read your file because they are not my notes in there, and I don’t want my findings tainted by someone else’s preconceptions. I like to do my learning first hand. I would prefer you to offer me information willingly and let me make up my own mind, not have it made up for me."

What you see is what you get, she says. Move along. Nothing to see here.

His smile broadens. I doubt that very much.

Okay, bare facts. Grace Elizabeth Dove, age 34 and three quarters, single, mentally unbalanced, former interior decorator with my own –

A knock on the door interrupts, and Mal calls over his shoulder. Come in!

The door opens and his secretary enters, carrying a tray laden with a cafetiere, two mugs, a jug of cream, a small dish of pale brown crystals, and a plate with two plain digestive biscuits sitting alongside a pair of red and gold oblongs. Tunnock’s tasty caramel wafers. Grace’s favourite. How did he know?

The woman sets the tray down on the occasional table and depresses the plunger on the cafetiere.

Thank you, Denise.

When Denise has gone, Mal plays 'mother', pouring coffee into the mugs and topping it up with cream from the jug. He digs the spoon into the dish, drawing out a little pile of sugar, halting before he tips it into Grace’s mug.

Oh, you said no sugar, didn’t you, he says, diverting it to his own mug. "Sweet enough, eh?

A second spoonful follows the first and he gives both mugs a thorough stir with the teaspoon, before tinging it on the side, a high pitched annoying noise that sets Grace’s teeth on edge.

He offers the unsweetened drink to Grace. There you go. See how that suits you.

She takes it and risks an experimental sip. It’s hot, aromatic and quite delicious. No supermarket bargain brand this.

It’s really nice. Thank you.

If something’s worth having, have the best you can afford, he says. And good coffee is always worth having, don’t you think?

Yes. Yes I do.

He settles back in his chair. You were telling me about yourself, he says.

She screws her face up on one side. Do I have to? Can’t we just let it drop and you sign my release and I go home and clean Alec’s flat until I feel better?

Is that what you did before? The first time you...

Tried to kill myself? Yes.

Did it work?

She fingers the fine silver lines crossing her wrist. In a way.

Tell me about it.

She cradles the mug in her hand, letting its warmth flow into her fingers. I got myself all stitched up and locked up for a couple of days, she says. "The doctor I saw shoved some pills on me and threatened to have me sectioned if I didn’t pull myself together. Alec would have none of it. He signed a release responsibility, took me home and locked me in his flat with him, and gave me reign to do whatever I needed to burn myself out, fully prepared to have the place trashed or burned, his windows broken and himself to be battered to a pulp in the process. 'What the hell,' he said. 'The place needs redecorating and those curtains are just dreadful. Do your worst.' Nothing so dramatic happened, although, to be on the safe side he did take the precaution of hiding his kitchen knives, forks and other sharp implements."

I take it there was to be no trashing, beating or stabbing, says Mal.

No, just a solid twenty-four hours of frenetic cleaning, scrubbing, polishing, dusting, rearranging of furniture, all accompanied by non-stop gibberish babbling. When my rubber band finally snapped, I was spark out on Alec’s couch for a full eighteen hours. I didn’t need the pills. Wearing myself out and getting a good solid sleep pressed my reset button. A good long chat and a cry with Alec and his boyfriend, lots of hugs and fine red wine and I felt pretty okay again. I went home and carried on where I left off.

For how long?

Nearly two and a half years … until I crossed paths with that delightful charmer, Connor Mackintosh.

She spat out the name as if it were a bitter tasting poison.

Mal rests his head against the back of his chair. And would he have anything to do with what led up to this current event?

Everything. Connor inveigled his way into my life, making himself my partner, both business and personal. He was that sort of person … irresistible. He was talented and attentive and life seemed to be rather peachy … until I got pregnant. That’s when it all changed. Connor made it perfectly clear that having a kid would not be the best idea. Business was thriving, we were travelling a lot, neither of us could give a child the quality time and attention it needed, or deserved, he said. He told me the best thing I could do for all concerned was to get rid of it. So I did. A couple of months later he left me. Just packed his bags and walked. Said I was spending too much time focusing on the business and not enough on him. When he’d gone I found out he’d been seeing at least two other women behind my back, and one of them was within weeks of giving birth. Talk about rubbing salt into the wound.

She takes a sip from her coffee, letting its bitter sweet heat caress her tongue before she swallows it and continues.

"I was distraught, confused, angry, you name it. The man I thought was going to be my forever partner, both in life and business, turned out to be nothing more than a cheating, lying, pump action sperm dispenser. My trust had been betrayed, my baby gone, and he made it sound like it was all my fault because I wasn’t paying him enough attention. Before I knew it I’d obsessed myself into a state, feeling guilty, trying to work out what I’d done to make it all go wrong. I stopped eating and couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t face being in the flat with his ex-presence all over it. I moved out, put it on the market and had to fall on the mercy of my darling long-suffering Alec once again for somewhere to put my head down. I got so stressed and depressed my OCD and ADHD exceeded the limits of my medications, exacerbating to the point where I could barely function."

So you thought you had to take back control, Mal says, and the only way you could find to do that was to...?

Put a stop to it once and for all. To go into that deep dark hole where everything is still and quiet and peaceful, where no one would make demands of me or criticise everything I said and did, where no one could tell me what to do or what to say, what to feel and what to think, where to go and when - or who with. Remember the strong pills my doctor prescribed, but I never took? I didn’t throw them away. I stuffed them at the back of my sock drawer as a 'just in case' measure.

And you felt this was a 'case'?

Yes. A brittle, sardonic laugh. You’d think swallowing every last one of them and washing them down with half a bottle of vodka would do the trick, wouldn’t you? Noooooo. Not me. I made an arse of it, just like everything else in my life. I couldn’t even kill myself properly. Can’t do anything right. Never checked the label. Turns out the bloody things were past their sell by date. They’d gone off, lost their effectiveness and didn’t do their job. Never checked the label on the vodka bottle either, so that was probably fake; methanol mixed with horse piss or something. City’s swimming in the stuff. All I managed to do was pass out on the bedroom floor and have a seizure, puking everything up onto the rug and then, as a final indignity, wetting myself. Can I have a biscuit?

Mal offers her the plate and its tempting contents, and she takes one of the gaily wrapped oblongs, teasing off the wrapper and forming it into a neat holder. She takes a savage bite, talking through her mouthful.

My reward for my sterling endeavour - three days in intensive care on a ventilator in a medically induced coma, to see whether I’d given myself brain damage, followed by enforced rest on the lockup ward –

Followed by a compulsory visit to my delightful domain? he says.

She sighs deeply and takes another bite. She really is hungry. She follows the mouthful with a swig of her coffee. The mixture of coffee, chocolate and caramel flavours, is like angels dancing on her tongue, so why doesn’t she feel cheered? Tunnock’s wafers have always been her go to feel-good food. Have they lost their magic too?

Mal is sooking chocolate from his fingers. Have you spoken to anyone outside since your admission? Friends? Family?

Grace pushes the last of her biscuit into her mouth and picks up the discarded foil wrapper, smoothing it against her thigh. No. There is no one.

What about your flatmate, the one who brought you in?

Alec? It was his rug I puked and pissed on. It was a really nice rug, too. Hand made. Brought it back from Tunisia, or was it Morocco. Some North African Whereverthehellristan. Probably cost him a fortune, so he’ll be pretty pissed off with me for ruining it and won’t want to speak to me.

Would it help if I told you he’s rung the ward every day to find out how you are?

Grace feels her stomach shift. He has?

Twice some days.

And turn over. Really? Nobody told me. Why didn’t they tell me?

I don’t know, but they should have. Maybe he asked them not to. Do you want to give him a call, just to let him know you’re okay?

Shrug.

Mal lifts his chin and looks down his nose at her. What’s the real reason you don’t want to talk to him?

Silence.

Truth be told? I’m too embarrassed, she admits. I made a real show of myself, left him to clean up an awful mess, and –

Nobody ever died of embarrassment, Grace. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to be sure, but it’s completely natural, and people who care have short memories. Mal screws up his foil biscuit wrapper into a tight ball and drops it onto the plate, where it sits like a jewel. Do you want to call him now?

I, er –

"No time like the present. Grab the bull by the horns. You don’t need to say much. Hi. How are you? I’m fine. No need to