Page 94 of Hope and Happiness in Bluebell Wood
We move a sleepy Merlin, and sit at each end of the sofa in silence for a few minutes. Me in my dressing gown and Callum in his slightly odd state of dress – the buttons on his shirt still only half done up. I try hard to distract myself from how sexy he looks like that, by looking at Merlin, the bird table outside, and the birds’ gifts up on the mantelpiece.
‘Ready to talk yet?’ Callum asks eventually.
‘It depends what you want to talk about,’ I reply, still not making this easy for him.
‘You. Us. Me, if you want to? Look, why don’t you go first, if that’s going to make it easier. Ask me what you like?’
I think for a moment, and I’m surprised by just how many questions flash through my mind.
‘Why are you so convinced there’s this superior being watching over us all?’ I settle on. ‘What makes you so sure?’
Callum smiles. ‘Start with the difficult one, why don’t you?’
I shrug. ‘It seems to be our biggest issue currently.’
‘All right then. But if what I’m going to say is going to make any sense to you, I’ll have to tell you something about my past first.’
‘Okay.’
‘Do you remember I told you I used to work in London when I was younger?’
I nod.
‘A bit like you, I was what they call a highflier. A go-getter. A high-achiever. Any of those names that people who want to be the best at what they do are called. I worked hard in the City and I played hard in the City. I’m not proud of some of the things I got up to, I’ll admit. But at the time they seemed part of the character I was playing.’
‘Whatdidyou get up to?’ I ask. Callum seemed so unsullied by the vulgarities of life; I couldn’t imagine him doing anything unseemly.
‘The usual: far too much drink, a few too many drugs, and too many one-night stands that were only ever going to be that. I lived a shallow and unfulfilling life. But I didn’t know any other way.’
I’d always known there was something different about Callum, but I hadn’t expected him to say that. It did kind of make sense, though; he really wasn’t your typical vicar. I’d known that from the start.
‘What happened to make you change?’ I ask, genuinely interested to know. ‘You clearly did.’
‘I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with my life, nothing made sense any more. I was doing things, but I didn’t know why I was doing them – they weren’t making me happy, but I didn’t know any other way. I began to feel there might be something else to life, something much better I could be doing. But I didn’t know what. And then something happened. Something that changed everything for me.’
Callum takes a quick sip of water from his glass. ‘Sorry,’ hesays, looking nervously at me. ‘I always find it difficult to talk about this.’
‘It’s fine, take your time,’ I say, wondering what he’s going to tell me.
‘My sister,’ he says, looking down into his glass. ‘She . . . she tried to take her own life.’ He looks up at me to see my reaction.
‘Gosh, I’m sorry,’ I reply, not really knowing what the right answer was to this. ‘What happened?’
‘She tried to overdose on a cocktail of painkillers, sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety meds.’ Callum’s face is wrought with anguish as he remembers. ‘Luckily a friend found her unconscious in their flat, and she was rushed to hospital. She was lucky to survive.’
‘But she did,’ I try to say with positivity. ‘That’s good.’
Callum nods. ‘It would be if she’d learnt her lesson and never wanted to do it again.’
‘She tried it again?’ I ask, shocked to hear this.
‘A few times, sadly – luckily for us she’s never been successful. She got pretty close the last time, though,’ Callum says almost matter-of-factly. ‘Ever since then she’s been residing in a mental health hospital just north of Peterborough. She’s stable for much of the time, and she has a lot of medication to keep her that way, but she’s considered a danger to herself and others, so it’s thought best she stays there.’
‘There’s nothing they can do?’ I ask, again feeling totally inadequate in my replies.
‘Jena has an extreme form of bipolar disorder – that’s what we’ve been told, anyway. She lived a pretty wild life when she was a teenager and into her twenties, but there was nothing unusual about that, that was just Jena enjoying herself in the way most of us do when we’re young. I was always consideredthe calm and dependable one back then – even when I was running amok around the bars and clubs of London. But none of us realised what else was going on until Jena tried to take her life that first time – that was the turning point for all of us.’
I wait for Callum to continue.
