Chapter Four

Present Day

The predawn light seeped in through the curtains, bruised blues and purples, bitter and stark against the heat that lingered beneath the covers. Henry snored softly in his sleep, his breath ruffling against the back of Elizabeth's neck, the rise and fall as smooth and steady as the tide. And each breath that she took swam with the scent of sweat and Henry and sex. The thud of his heart against her back measured out the seconds as the alarm clock ticked over. 4:13. 4:14. 4:15. There's something sexy about a woman who enjoys her food.


May 1984

Elizabeth stared down at the mountain of cottage pie. Her stomach clenched, and tears welled in the corners of her eyes. She blinked them back. She wouldn't cry, she wouldn't let them see her cry. But as she raised each forkful to her mouth and choked it down, the dining room around her blurred and a sob escaped her. Then another and another. A dozen pairs of eyes prickled over her, and heat surged through her cheeks. How had she become this? How could a plate of food make her cry?

That evening, Elizabeth lay curled up in a ball on her bed, the thin polyester blanket draped over her. The lights in the room were dimmed, but the glare from the fluorescent strips in the hallway flooded through the open door.

A shadow fell across the room, and a moment later came Alice's voice. "Hey." When Elizabeth didn't reply, she sat on the edge of the bed and the mattress dipped beneath her weight. She laid one hand against Elizabeth's shoulder and held it there even when Elizabeth flinched. "It's never easy, but it does get easier."

Elizabeth snorted. Even that single huff of breath left her feeling drained.

"You know, I cried at every meal to start with," Alice said. "One time, a nurse gave me a double helping of rice by mistake and I just about lost my mind. I've never cried so much in my life. All the tears dried up, and then I was just sobbing."

Elizabeth propped herself up on the bed and then rested her back against the wall, her knees hugged to her chest. She patted the space beside her, and Alice shifted to join her.

"It always bugged me when people told me I just had to make more of an effort," Alice said, "but now I think I see what they mean."

Elizabeth turned her head to face her roommate, and she caught a glimpse of those vivid green eyes that gave the girl an almost witchy presence.

"If you push through, if you stop fighting yourself and instead turn all that anger against the voice, then there comes a point when it feels like a switch has flipped." She tapped the side of her head. "This starts working again, and you feel like you—the real you."

"But if I do that…if I do what they say…I'll lose control…" And that was all she wanted, to have a little control.

"Do you honestly think that you—Elizabeth—are in control now?" Alice's gaze sharpened, like shards of emerald that prodded Elizabeth and scratched away at her skin.

Elizabeth looked down, her gaze falling to her knees and the worn fabric of her jeans. She picked at the see-through patch until the fibres separated and formed a hole. "It feels like I'm in control when I calculate what I've eaten and what I need to burn." But when had food become an equation? And where was the joy that algebra used to bring?

"And you really think that's you doing that? Not the voice telling you to?"

Elizabeth opened her mouth, but then stalled. She pursed her lips and shook her head. She didn't know. With the fog in her mind, she didn't know anything at all.

"Tell me about Elizabeth," Alice said, and Elizabeth frowned. "The girl you were before. What was she like? What did she like to do?"

Elizabeth shrugged.

"Was she silent and sullen and so wrapped up in thoughts that she couldn't speak her own mind?"

A twitch of anger jerked through Elizabeth, but she shook her head.

"Did she spend hours and hours staring into space because she was too consumed listening to a voice?"

Elizabeth shook her head again.

"So what was she like? Tell me."

"Why?"

"Because maybe then you can find a way back to her, a way back to being you."


Present Day

And she had found a way back to being herself. That was what mattered, right? And that girl—that other—had been forgotten; a broken seed buried beneath the earth, never to grow, but to be thrust further and further into the darkness as the rest of her life layered on top and healthier plants bloomed.

Elizabeth's eyes fluttered open again. The numbers on the alarm clock had shifted. 4:21. A meagre snatch of sleep. Henry's grip on her waist tightened, just for a second, and her pulse raced. Five days left. She would tell him today. She would find a way.

Elizabeth prised Henry's fingers from her midriff, and she slipped out the side of the bed. Her skin tingled in the chill air, and a shiver shuddered through her. She waited a moment, watching her husband, and when he didn't rouse, she tiptoed through to the bathroom. The door shut with a soft click. She turned on the shower, and as the water gushed down, she began to peel off her clothes.


June 1984

"Clothes off," Rachel said, and she closed the blind over the square window set into the door. The room was small, more of a closet really, with a set of scales at one end and charts tacked to the wall.

The floor felt as though someone had coated it in sand, and it scraped against the soles of Elizabeth's feet as she walked across to the far side. She tugged off her pyjamas and draped them over the grey plastic chair, and when the cool air bristled over her skin, she shivered and hugged her arms around herself.

Rachel shot her a look. "You know the drill, Elizabeth. Underwear too."

Elizabeth bit down on her lip and fought back the flood of heat that rushed to her face as she removed her crop-top and knickers and dropped them on top of her pyjamas. How many weigh-ins had she gone through now? Yet still the humiliation hit her every time.

"Right," Rachel said, and she motioned to the scales, "step on." Elizabeth closed her eyes and held her breath, counting out the Fibonacci sequence—the beauty of nature defined by numbers—until Rachel said, "All done."

Elizabeth hopped back down and scrambled to get her clothes on. As she did so, she caught sight of the number that Rachel had jotted down. Her heart both swelled and sank. She was one step closer to being herself again, yet something—perhaps the echo of the voice—told her she had done wrong.

Rachel followed her gaze. "Are you all right, Elizabeth?"

"I just—" Dr Hartwell said she had to open up more, to trust others with her feelings until she could manage them for herself. "—it's stupid, because I want to get better and I know that I need to gain weight, but every time I do, I feel like a failure."

Rachel motioned for Elizabeth to take a seat, and then she knelt in front of her and clutched her hand. "It's not stupid." She stared hard into Elizabeth's eyes. "What you're feeling is totally normal. You're doing so well—"

Elizabeth flinched: 'well', 'good', 'normal', so many words with different connotations now.

"—but this is the crucial point. This is where you need to fight back, to push through. And if you do that, you have a real chance of putting this behind you."

Rachel gave a long sigh. She shook her head to herself, and fronds of chestnut brown shimmied across her forehead. "I can't tell you how many women I've seen who go through cycle after cycle of recovery and relapse. It gets to the point that their true selves are no longer left, or are so buried by the illness that it defines them." She squeezed Elizabeth's hand, and under the glare of the fluorescent lights, tears glistened in her eyes. "You're a bright girl, Elizabeth. You have such a spark. Please don't give up now. I couldn't bear to see that happen to you."


Present Day

Elizabeth crept down the stairs. The trace of garlic from last night's dinner staled the air, and the lamps in the living room steeped the lower floor in their hazy glow. She tripped over a pair of trainers that had been abandoned on the third step from the bottom, and with her heart thudding against her ribs, she grabbed hold of the banister. Well, that would be one way to avoid talking about 1984. "Jay-son," she muttered and swept the shoes aside.

"Hey." Stevie's voice came from the couch. She was curled up on the cushions with the grey woollen blanket wrapped around her like a shawl, a folder balanced open in her lap. "You're up ridiculously early."

"I could say the same about you." Elizabeth leant over the back of the sofa and kissed the top of her daughter's head before smoothing down her hair.

"Did the White House call?" Stevie looked up at her with wide eyes. Being summoned before five in the morning could never be a good thing.

Elizabeth shook her head and offered her daughter a reassuring smile. "Couldn't sleep."

"Me neither," Stevie said. "So I thought I'd make use of the time and read up on this report that Russell was talking about—" She laid her hands atop the file in her lap. "—but I think I'm just giving myself eye strain." She pinched the bridge of her nose.

Elizabeth chuckled. "You are such a McCord." She rested her hand against Stevie's shoulder, and her expression sobered. "What's up?"

"That obvious?" Stevie winced.

"Well, if that—" Elizabeth motioned to the report. "—hasn't sent you to sleep, something must be wrong." The only time such dossiers failed to lull her to sleep was when the country teetered on the brink of world war. She rounded the end of the couch, and as Stevie tucked her feet out of the way, she sank down onto the middle cushion. She squeezed Stevie's knee. "Talk to me."

Stevie closed the file and dropped it to the floor with a whump. Her gaze remained buried in her lap for a long time before she met Elizabeth's eye, and even then she was barely able to hold her gaze. "So, I was browsing through Facebook…"

"As you do."

Stevie nodded, and a slight blush suffused her cheeks. "…and I saw through a mutual friend that Jareth's just gotten engaged…again…" She pursed her lips and tugged them to one side.

Elizabeth's heart sank. "Oh, sweetie. I'm sorry—"

But Stevie shook her head, her brow creased into a deep frown. She tried to smile through it, but it turned into more of a grimace. "It's stupid because I know that it never would have worked out between us, but it still feels like…I don't know…" Her eyes glistened. "…like that should have been me."

Elizabeth rubbed Stevie's knee, as if she were a child again with a scrape that she could soothe away. "I know it doesn't help right now, but it will get better. You'll find someone else—"

"Someone whose identity isn't classified?" Stevie's eyes hardened.

Elizabeth let out an inward sigh. Dmitri. Why did it always come back to Dmitri?

Stevie closed her eyes, and her face softened. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean…"

"It's okay." It would be a lie to say that she didn't blame herself and Henry for what had happened; well, perhaps Henry more than herself, for his inability to just let it go. He was forgiving of most things, but Dmitri…that had always been a sticking point.

"I guess I'm still angry at Jareth," Stevie said. "It felt like he hid all this stuff about himself when we were first dating, and then it's only after we were serious that it all started to come out, and it made me feel like he was a totally different person, someone I never would've dated if I'd known." Her voice sharpened, cutting through the shadows of the living room. "I mean, all that stuff about his family, and their titles, and the inheritance, and the way he was with his friends in Oxford…I just feel like that's the kind of stuff he should've told me."

The whir of the refrigerator kicked in, its drone an undertone to the clatter of trash cans as the neighbourhood foxes scavenged for scraps. Elizabeth looked down at her lap as she shook her head to herself, and her lips tugged into a sorry smile. "You can't know everything about a person."

"I realise that," Stevie said, "but there are some things that you ought to know."

Like her admission in 1984? But that wasn't the same. By time she met Henry, it wasn't a part of her anymore and it wasn't something that was going to crop up again, not like in-laws with titles or snobbish friends or issues of inheritance, and she certainly hadn't lied to him about it or hidden it from him; she barely ever thought of it, and over time she didn't think about it at all. Until now. But what would he think when she told him? Five days. You need to find a way to tell him. His perception of her would change, and she wouldn't be the same person anymore.

"Mom?" Stevie's voice was thick with concern.

Elizabeth looked up, jolted from her daze.

Stevie's brow was pinched, her lips pursed. "Is something wrong?"

Elizabeth toyed with the tassels that edged the grey blanket, tugging at them and teasing them apart. She tried to force a smile, but her lips quivered and twitched, and it fell away.

"Is it the interview?" Stevie shifted on the cushion. She hunched forward and hugged her knees to her chest. "I know Russell's concerned about Iran—"

Elizabeth snorted. Why did people always assume it was Iran? One teeny panic attack in public and people thought a single word on the topic would shatter her like a pane of sugar glass.

"Okay, not Iran…" Stevie's frown deepened. Her gaze flickered past Elizabeth, towards the shelves behind the kitchen table. Her eyes widened. She chewed her bottom lip. "Then…is it your parents?" She studied Elizabeth, her gaze raking over every pore. "You never really talk about them, at least not to us."

Elizabeth's throat bobbed as she swallowed. "That's because it still hurts." Like nothing you would believe; like something I hope you never know.

Stevie hugged her knees tighter. "How come you never visit them? Their graves I mean."

Elizabeth shook her head to herself, and wisps of hair fell forward to tickle her cheeks. "Because I hate the thought of them being there, trapped beneath the ground. It makes me feel like I can't breathe and—" Her chest tightened and squeezed every last drop of air from her lungs. She closed her eyes. In, two, three. Hold. Out, two, three. When she opened her eyes again, she clutched Stevie's hand and mustered a faint smile. "Promise me that when I die you'll scatter me on the breeze. Or maybe grow one of those trees, you know, the ones with the ashes."

Stevie's mouth opened and closed, tongue floundering. "Um…wow…things just got morbid."

Elizabeth chuckled. "Welcome to my five AM thoughts."

"I know it's really none of my business, but maybe visiting them would help." Stevie shrugged. "People say it can be cathartic."

Catharsis. Maybe that's what she needed. A way to confront and release those forgotten memories, those voices from the past. Maybe then she would find the strength—and the words—to face the fears instilled in her by stigma, perceptions, society, her aunt.