Helen frowned. The ordinary scene struck her as very familiar, but her mind refused to cooperate.
She reached Piccadilly and stopped for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut. If she squeezed hard enough, perhaps she could force her memories to come back. Nothing happened except for a dull ache in her chest and a feeling of exhaustion. Sighing, she opened her eyes again.
A grey mist rose from the pavement, obscuring her vision. Her arms twitched involuntarily, her fingers tingled. She picked at her clothes, only partly aware she was doing it, and swallowed back a metallic taste in her mouth.
‘Not now,’ she whispered.
Brief, excessive electrical discharges fired in her neurons, a simple partial seizure. Her mind told her this rationally, but powerless to stop it, she was suddenly gripped by terror and a feeling that this was the end of the world. Putting her shaking hands on the wall beside her, she anchored herself so even when her brain switched off, her body wouldn’t continue walking and send her right out into the traffic without knowing it.
The raw stone scraped reassuringly against her knuckles as the seizure took hold of her …
‘Bit early in the day, wouldn’t you say?’
Someone was shaking her gently, an old guy with dark, bushy eyebrows. Helen registered the look of concern, the hand on her shoulder. For a moment she had no idea where she was or what she was doing, but slowly the pieces fell into place again.
He was a newspaper salesman, from a nearby stand. She’d been to Letitia’s office, had thought of Ruth, had become distressed because she couldn’t remember her mother. Then the seizure had imploded inside her.
Her arms down by her sides, she leaned against the wall. The traffic was roaring past, clogging the air with car fumes. The pavement teemed with office workers, tourists and shoppers too busy to notice a person whose brain had just glitched.
Except this guy.
‘S-sorry, I didn’t catch that.’ Helen’s tongue felt enormous in her mouth. Somewhere hidden above her pigeons cooed, a reassuring sound, a sign of normality returning.
‘I said,’ he repeated, slowly as if he were talking to an idiot, ‘it’s a bit early in the day to be knocking them back, innit?’
Another piece fell into place. He thought she was drunk. ‘I’m not …’ she protested but he’d already turned his attention to a customer wanting to buy a paper.
The temptation was there to blurt it all out, to seek comfort, to shock and horrify, anything so she didn’t have to be alone with this secret. She didn’t, of course, never had, never would.
A lot of people thought epileptics were freaks, that the condition was some kind of mental instability which could affect them if they got too close. The same way some people thought you could catch cancer. A stigma was attached to Helen’s condition as if this loss of brain control was voluntary, and that epileptics could stop the seizures happening if they just pulled themselves together.
Some shied away in horror, others wanted to show how tolerant and efficient they were by restraining the epileptic during the seizure or even put something in his mouth, the idea being to stop him biting his own tongue off. Too many myths and half-truths, too little general understanding of the illness drove sufferers underground.
Helen lived in that half-world, like so many others.
‘What business is it of yours?’ she snapped.
The man looked over his shoulder at Helen. ‘Steady on, love. Steady on. I was only concerned. If you can’t hold your drink, you shouldn’t be out and about like this. You should be at home sleeping it off.’
‘Who are you to tell me what to do?’
She didn’t wait for an answer but turned her back on him and headed for Green Park tube station.
‘I’ve got a daughter just like you,’ he called after her.
No, you don’t, she thought as her unsteady legs found the escalator. No, you bloody don’t.
The kitchen rang with Charlie’s laughter when she got home. Ignoring the pull in her stomach at the delicious smells of cooking wafting up the stairs, she headed straight for her room, kicked off her boots and collapsed on top of the bed.
It was dark when a gentle knocking woke her. She ached all over as if she’d been in a boxing match. Before answering the door, she scooped up her packet of tablets which lay on the desk and shoved it in a drawer.
It was Fay holding a tray with a covered plate, a glass of juice and a knife and fork.
Knife. Blood.
The memory was suddenly so vivid Helen swayed.
‘Did I wake you?’
Helen shook her head.
‘I did, didn’t I? Sorry, I just thought you might like something to eat. Charlie heard you come in earlier but we missed you at dinner. May I come in? This tray’s a bit heavy.’