Just Before I Died. S. K. Tremayne

it’s time now, time we went to a doctor. Get her properly statemented? If it really is Asperger’s—’

      ‘I’m not putting a bloody label on her. Told you.’

      ‘But I’ve been researching, talking to people, going online. They say that if you get diagnosed earlier it’s better, the earlier the intervention the better the outcome, because you can get real help, therapy for social skills.’

      He shakes his head. ‘I’m not hanging a sign around her neck. Look. Here’s Lyla Redway. She’s hopeless. Take pity. Hell with that.’

      I raise my voice. ‘Asperger’s kids aren’t hopeless! You can’t say that. It’s a spectrum, we’re all on it somewhere, she’s just further down that spectrum, where you might need some help, and she’s definitely getting stranger – the birds, it was too eerie. Adam! Listen to me, please. She’s getting worse.’

      Adam straightens his arms and lays his big hands hard on the steering wheel, as if he wants to race away. ‘And why do you think that is, Kath? Eh?’

      ‘Sorry?’

      His face is turned towards me now: the blue eyes burning. ‘Why the hell do you think she might be getting worse?’

      I flounder. Thrown by this outright hostility. ‘Sorry? What? Are you actually blaming me? Somehow it’s my fault? It’s my fault she’s getting worse?’ I have my own anger, now. ‘For God’s sake, it was an accident! It’s not anyone’s fault. I skidded on some ice.’ I search his face for sympathy. ‘I don’t understand, Adam – you and Lyla – you should be happy I’m alive: I nearly died. I’m alive! And anyway: this is about our daughter, not me. We have to think about her.’

      ‘That’s all I do think about,’ he says, in a low, dark voice. ‘And now I have to go to work. Earn some money. For Lyla.’ Without another word, he leans across and opens my door, inviting me to step outside.

      His stubbled jaw is set, his frown is sombre. He won’t be swayed. He is looking at me the way Lyla looked at him. Wary. Distant. Guarded. It feels like our once-contented family is falling into mutual suspicion. And I have no idea why.

      ‘OK, Adam, OK, but I won’t let it go. Not this time.’

      Climbing out of the car, my bag over my shoulder, I watch him drive away, gears grinding. As I turn towards the Park offices I can sense the great prison, looming behind me.

      You can always sense the prison, in Princetown.

       Monday afternoon

      Two p.m.? I stare at the clock on the wall of the cream-painted National Park offices with a sense of unhappy surprise.

      Where did the day go?

      I’m used to losing track of working hours if the work is compelling. If I am, say, writing new brochures about the history or archaeology of the park, describing the wistful stone circle of Buttern Hill, the cottage at Birchy Lake where the old witches lived with a dozen black cats, the famous grave of Kitty Jay who killed herself for love, after falling pregnant by some wicked toff – that grave on which people still poignantly lay flowers – when I am immersed in writing these wonderful stories, I can happily misplace an entire afternoon.

      The same goes for a busy summer day at one of the visitor centres, in Haytor, or Postbridge, when we can’t move for hearty German caravanners and determined French hikers – all looking for maps, loos, Wi-Fi signals – then the hours can fly past.

      But it’s the depths of winter. No one comes to the moor in January. Half the National Park staff take long holidays around this time, as there is little to achieve – except what I’m doing now. Tweaking, twiddling. Revising the Park’s official leaflets and websites. Updating the policy on dogs in National Park tea-rooms. It’s deathly boring. The sort of stuff that would normally make the minutes drag by.

      And yet I’ve got myself lost in the assignment.

      ‘What’s up, Kath? Having too much fun?’

      It’s my boss, Andy, he must have heard me sigh. He’s a nice guy, blond, younger than me, newish. Been here two years. I sometimes wonder if I should resent him, that I didn’t get the promotion. But I don’t. I like my more varied employment. Usually.

      ‘Sorry, Andy. Was I sighing a bit loudly?’

      ‘You could say that.’

      ‘Well, I’m updating the rules on campervans in car parks, out of season. Perhaps I’m overexcited?’

      I hear him chuckle. He’s the only other person in the large, open-plan office today. He is framed by the windows, where the Princetown sky is now as dark and sombre as Dartmoor granite. The winter sun can be so painfully brief.

      ‘You should pity me, Kath. I’m doing Section 211 on Tree Preservation Orders, it’s practically better than sex.’ He clicks something on his computer. ‘Jesus, I hate January. What we really need is a massive accident to liven things up. Like, a bus could drive into a lake, up at Meldon, that would help.’ He stops, and turns my way. ‘Hey, sorry, ah, Kath, I—’

      ‘No. It’s OK. I want people to forget, Andy, I’m bored of being The Woman That Had That Accident.’ He listens as I go on: ‘In fact I want to go back to regular work soon, working proper shifts, doing my job as before, I mean: it’s nice you’re giving me half days, letting me work from home, but I’m OK now. Can we get back to normal?’

      ‘Abso-bloody-lutely. If you really feel you’re up to it, that’s great. We’ll put you back on normal shifts in a few weeks.’

      He returns to his work. I gaze at him as he concentrates.

      Why won’t he let me do proper shifts now? Sometimes it feels as if everyone is tip-toeing fastidiously around me, scared I might break. They’re not treating me like someone recuperating, they’re treating me like something odd. Unusually fragile.

      Returning to my work, I scan the words on my own computer. The official Dartmoor Tourism website.

      Dartmoor constitutes the largest area of granite in Britain, with about 360 square miles stretching across central Devon, making it the only true wilderness in Southern England. Much of it is covered by marshy peat deposits, in the form of bogs or mires. The moorland is also capped with many characteristic granite outcrops, known as tors (from the Celtic ‘tor’, meaning tower) that provide varied habitats for wildlife. The entire area is rich in archaeology, from the Neolithic to the Victorian …

      I want to edit this, make it flow better, liven it up: but the words blur in my eyes. Sphagnum. Carboniferous. Wassailing …

      I hate this new, enduring haze in my mind, I despise this peculiar sensation – since the crash – that my mind has become one of those vast cupboards in my mum’s old kitchen, in the big Victorian house, down on the coast at Salcombe. Those cupboards were dusty and chaotic, and every week my hippy-chick, eco-sensitive mum would reach in and find some pot of organic mustard, or jar of Manuka honey, that she’d clean forgotten, and she’d say, Gosh I didn’t remember we had this, and sometimes she’d have to throw it away, wasting more of the dwindling Kinnersley cash, and sometimes the jar would go back in, only to be forgotten and retrieved and thrown away all over again … and that’s what my brain feels like, since the accident. I don’t quite know what’s in there, and when I put things in there they sometimes get lost, and when I find things in there they are often useless, past their sell-by date, actively unpleasant.

      My brain is hiding things from me.

      And now it’s 3.15. So dark the office lights are on.

      I try to relax. Perhaps I am being hard on myself. The stress about Lyla doesn’t help, the tensions with Adam, too. Perhaps we all need more time. That’s what the doctors repeated from the start: Be patient, don’t expect instant miracles. And remember, they said: remember that you are relatively lucky: because you will heal over time.